EP 302: The 10 Skills of the Highly Paid (Not the most qualified

If you are not making the money you want to be making, you've maybe been stuck at the same income for a really long time. Maybe you made a lot of money in the past and you landed a high-paying job, and then you went back into the cycle of accepting low-paying positions. If that's you, let me tell you about 10 skills that get you paid. And I guarantee none of them are what's coming to mind right now. I'm Natalie. I'm going to teach you about skills that get you paid. The first skill. Is truly understanding your value. If you are blind to your own value, I won't be able to help you. Nobody will be able to help you because you will make excuses for why you're making less money, and your excuses will be so valid that you won't be willing to see outside that box. So for example, I was in a relationship for 10 years where my needs, my requests, my wants, my feelings were not valid. Like, He literally said, no, you're wrong. I don't understand what you're talking about. We're doing it my way. And I accepted that and just believed that that was true. And when it wasn't true, I swallowed it and just accepted it and stayed for 10 years. Nobody could tell me that I was in the wrong place. People tried to tell me, they did. People would say, he's not allowing you to be human. How is that even possible? That's abuse. And I just accepted it because I could not see. If you are blind to your own value, you will make excuses. You will say, oh, but they gave me a Starbucks gift card. They didn't give me a raise, but you know, they said they would give me a raise in 2 months. 2 months comes by, they don't give you a raise, and you will always find the excuses that will justify why you accept less. That's the first one is you need to go from being value blind to having value vision and being able to see What your contribution is actually worth. And in these next 9 skills, I'll show you how to do that. If you have ever made excuses, if you have ever said, oh, they said they were going to, but then they didn't, and it's been, I don't know, 10 years, or maybe it's been 2 years, or maybe it's been 6 months, and you have a reason that's justified as to why that's going on, then this will resonate with you. Number 2 is the models that you are processing in your head. So you have thought models, and they are thoughts followed by feelings, Followed by actions, followed by results. You have thoughts in your head that keep you in that level of earning, in that environment that you don't like. They keep you choosing environments you don't like repeatedly, if that's you. And those thoughts and beliefs need to be shifted. If you believe that whatever you do, you're not going to be able to find the environment that you want because maybe you believe it doesn't exist. Maybe you think, oh, I've worked in startups before and all the startup culture is just putting out fires and unreasonable expectations. And then you think, I want a job at a stable company. And then you think, my relative has a job at a stable company and they are tracked every minute of every day. They're not even allowed to eat their lunch unless they're moving their mouse. I don't want that either. Your brain is going to think what I want actually doesn't exist because I haven't really seen it or I have, I don't have much evidence of it. Therefore, it's not possible for me to get it, and it's not going to be able to take the necessary steps to see it, to then get it. Okay? You're going to need to identify the beliefs and the thoughts that are not allowing you to move to it and change them. The way you do that is you find evidence against what you believe. So say we identify the belief is what you want doesn't exist. You're going to need to find evidence that it does. You're going to need to find one person who has a job where they have freedom. Where they have what they want, where they get paid well, where they have autonomy and they're having a great time in their role. And you're going to have to use that one person in the beginning to show your brain that it is a possibility. Now your brain will say, oh, but they have this and they have that and they live here and that they have, that's all the reasons why they do and I can't. Then you're going to have to continue to build that belief and daily show yourself the evidence until you can start to crack the belief. Number 3, you're going to have to do some math on your own value. If you are like most of the people that I talk to in my profession as a career coach, you have created massive amounts of value. You've worked on projects, you've made major differences, you've moved things, you've created communication where communication wasn't happening before. You have moved mountains. You have created a lot of money. You've saved a lot of money. You've taken on things that seemed impossible before and figured them out. You have stories, my friend, and you're gonna have to do some math on your stories. I have a process to do it. One of my clients, for example, she was an instructional designer and she saved people a lot of time by creating really great training materials, training materials that people actually followed, people wanted to watch, and people even shared around the company because they were interactive and fun and funny. She got people watching these training materials so then they weren't fumbling around when they went out into the field to do their work. They knew what they were doing because they'd actually watched the training materials and they were well trained. And they had less turnover. More people wanted to stay with the company. They were better trained. They felt more competent in their role. So now you might think that's really hard to measure. And it's a guesstimate, but it is math that is worth doing. So she would guesstimate, okay, 500 people watched my training. And in that time, they saved themselves at least 2 days because they were able to grok information that they wouldn't have if they hadn't have watched my training, or if they'd watched the old training that nobody really wanted to watch because it was just boring PowerPoints. You take those 2 days that each one of those new people saved, you add up the hours of what they would have made in those days. You start by adding up the impact with How many people were affected, how much time was saved, and so on and so forth. There's a bunch of different ways that I do this. It is worth doing because it will show you the magnitude of the impact that you had. That's number 3. You will have to do some math. Number 4, you will need to learn to market yourself and sell yourself. There's a product called the V-Bar, which nobody has ever heard of. Okay. I don't know. Maybe you've heard of the V-Bar, but it's unlikely. Unless someone's told you this story, the V-Bar is a fitness workout device from the '90s. Nobody knows about it because it didn't sell. Nobody wanted it. But I bet you have heard of a little thing called the ThighMaster. Now, the ThighMaster is a global phenomenon and it's a cultural icon. Everybody knows what the ThighMaster is, and that's because Suzanne Somers took the product, she demoed it, And she renamed it the ThighMaster, rebranded it, and sold millions. Now, it is the same product as the V-Bar, but nobody's ever heard of the V-Bar. Everybody knows what the ThighMaster is. My point here is that you can have the same skills, the same experience, the same degrees, the same qualifications, but if you're marketing yourself like a V-Bar and not a ThighMaster, then you're not gonna get hired. And it's not because you have to change anything about you. It's not 'cause you have to get any more certifications. It's simply because you have to learn the skill of marketing and selling yourself Where people actually want what you're talking about and it's actually landing. That's a thing that you need to learn that you're not going to get if you just go back and get another qualification on whatever certification you're eyeing right now. Because I can tell you're eyeing one. You're probably eyeing at least one certification, or maybe you think you need a degree, or maybe you think you need to go get some more experience. I know. Yeah, I know. That's number 4. You need to market yourself like a ThighMaster, not the V-bar. Number five, you need to get really good at asking for what you want. Okay, you don't want to sit and wait to be asked. This is a problem with women especially. They think that they're going to be asked, and sometimes maybe they do get asked, but we need to ask for what we want, and we need to get really good at doing that even when the answer is no. Okay, so I learned this lesson when I was eighteen. I was filling in for a fitness instructor who was sick. At first it was just 1 or 2 times 'cause we didn't know she was gonna be sick for a lot longer. I was getting my fitness certification and I was eager to get in front of people and teach the class. I said, you know what, she's sick, I'll step in. So I taught the class. Turns out she was out for 2 months at least. So I just kept teaching her classes and I wasn't getting paid for it. I told my dad, I said, yeah, I get to teach these classes. It's great. I get hours for my experience. He said, wait a minute, are you being paid for teaching these classes? I said, no, but it's okay. I love doing it and it's great experience for me and I don't have to pay to do the classes. So basically the classes are free. And he said, no, you go and ask to be paid. Anybody else would be paid for those classes. There's no reason why you shouldn't. Your time is valuable. Your effort is valuable. You go ask to be paid. And at first I said, no, I think it's really fine, Dad. You don't understand. They're giving me the experience. I'm a beginner. Like, you don't understand. This is a Great arrangement for me. And he said, I don't care. You go and ask to be paid. And it was uncomfortable and I did not want to, but you know what? I did it. And you know what they said? They said, okay, we're gonna make, uh, an honorarium check for you and you can come and pick it up at 2 o'clock today. I was floored. I was like, okay, so imagine if I hadn't have asked, I would just be working for free. And because I asked, they're just willing to cut me a check. So that changed my view of doing things for free. You ask, and even if they had said no, it would've been worth asking and questioning why. So asking for what we want is a non-negotiable. Maybe you haven't had to ask a lot in the past and you've gotten it, but every time you ask is every time you increase the chances that you will get what you want. And if you become the person who knows that they ask for what they want, then you will get what you want. Repeatedly and indefinitely, and not every time, not 100% of the time, but over time you will become the person who gets more things, right? If you're out at a restaurant and you say, hey, can I have some free tortilla chips? And they say no, that's fine. But you go to another restaurant and you ask them that and they might say yes, right? So it's just more likely that you will get what you want over time. To know that you're valuing yourself and you have a desire, you have a need. You need to ask for it. So for women, it's especially uncomfortable. It feels like a leg cramp for a few minutes sometimes, especially if you're asking for a raise or the ask you're making, you feel personally, if you have anything to clean up around feeling like you might not deserve it or you might not be enough, it might feel especially uncomfortable, but it is a requirement for valuing yourself. Humans who value themselves, they ask for what they want and they are not ashamed to ask. Number six is you need to frame your asks in what is in it for them. If you're making an ask, for example, like you want to meet with somebody, or you want to do a presentation, or you want an interview, or you want something in your career that's going to move you forward, especially in times when there's going to be competition for this thing that you're asking for, you need to work the WIFT. It's called WIFT. What's in it for them? You need to frame your ask in a way that shows them what is in it for them. For example, when people are messaging people and they're like, oh, I want a 15-minute call with you because I really am interested in what your company is doing, and I think I could be a really good fit for you. Nobody cares about what you want. If you frame it more like, you seem to be doing some really interesting stuff, and I'd love to give you some ideas about how I can contribute. These are three of the things I'd like to discuss with you. Are you interested? They're going to be more interested versus I, I, I, I, I. We've got lots of examples of these, and it's the ones that focus on the person and their needs and what they want are much more likely to get a response than the ones that focus on you. Number seven, you're going to have to stop discounting and using your assets. For example, if somebody asks you a question in an interview and you don't have that particular experience, now what most people, especially women, tend to do is they tend to shrink and start thinking, yeah, I don't have that experience. You're probably right. You probably do need someone with that experience. Instead of the reason I don't have that experience is because top performers actually want to do things that they haven't done before. If you have checked all the boxes on the job description, You probably would be bored in that job and it wouldn't be challenging and you wouldn't want to stay in it for very long. So the primary reason for somebody selecting you is because you are somebody who wants to take on new challenges. We want to use your quote unquote lack of experience as an asset, not as something to curl up into a ball and be embarrassed about. Hiring managers, they will think that they want somebody who has done it all before, but I can't tell you how many times I have shifted this in an interview myself because I am somebody who wants to learn and I want to do things I haven't done before. And I don't want to just go and do a job where I know I can do everything and it's going to be really easy. And the truth is, is that a company who wants to hire a top performer is going to recognize a top performer. Here's how I answer those questions. I say, nope, I don't have any experience in that whatsoever. And that's actually what attracted me to this role. And I haven't had any experiences where I've done something before and just jumped in and done it perfectly right away. Every single one of my life experiences has been me reaching for something I haven't accomplished yet, or I haven't done. And that's who I am. So if you're looking for somebody like that with that kind of ambition, then that's me. If you're looking for somebody who's done everything before, that's not me. And I definitely don't have experience with that. And then I drop the mic and I walk out. Just kidding. I make it known that we are not meant to have done it all before. And if you want somebody who's done it all before, That's not me, and I'm not going to be applying for a job where I have done it well before because that defeats my nature. Number 8, transforming your stories. You can tell a story where you get it all perfectly right. You do the STAR method, you explain the situation, the task, the action, the result, and you do it all perfectly, yet it can fall really flat and it can really just suck. Let me give you an example. I'll tell you about my company moves. I helped my company move That was the situation. The task was to move 78 people from one office to another office. The action that I took was I made a checklist and I completed the checklist thoroughly. I checked everything off on the list, made sure it all got done, and the result was that we moved successfully from point A to point B. The end. That story technically covers all the points. It says the situation, the task, the action, the result, but it is boring AF. And it doesn't show anything about who I am. It just basically says, yeah, I was perfect. I did it. Here's the story that's gotten me hired repeatedly. It is the same story. It is just told differently. So watch for the differences. I got called into the CEO's office one day unexpectedly. I didn't know what was going on. They called me in and they said, hey, we want to put you in charge of the office move. Now, before you say yes, this is a highly sensitive project. It's going to involve a lot of moving pieces. And there's going to be a lot of pressure on you because we can't have any downtime and everything has to go well, or customers are going to lose access to our systems and we can't have that happening. This is a really high stakes project. So before you say yes, we'll give you time to think about it. We want to make sure that you are prepared for what you're taking on. So I'm like, ooh, okay. Okay. So I'm thinking about this. In the end, I say yes. And I'm stressed out about it now because they've told me how much is riding on this. The first thing I do is I go to Amazon and I get approval to order 10 books on office relocations. The first chapter of the first book, I open it up and it says, this is what it says. It says, now the person who usually gets assigned this task is not well equipped to execute it properly, and they either end up with a demotion Or out of a job by the time they're done. To add on top of all that, I'm stressed out. I already know this is gonna be a hard job, and then that's the first thing I read in the book. Because of that though, that was actually really good that that happened because I took action on steroids. I took every single book, every single checklist, every single idea, and I categorized it into phases. So I was like, okay, phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, phase 4. And I started mapping out my plans. What the plan ended up looking like was a whole relocation plan with a whole relocation team. I figured out that I wasn't going to know everything that needed to get done. I was going to miss something if I was trying to take this all on my own. I recruited a representative from every department, one from DevOps, one from operations, one from IT, one from admin, the department, and One from executive. I took one representative from every department and we met every single week about the relocation plan. So IT and development, they knew things I could never know about what needed to happen when things were being transported. I went through the checklist, make sure everything was covered, and they jumped in to help. If I hadn't have had people jumping in to help with their expertise, I wouldn't have succeeded in this endeavor because it was very big. It was a large project. It wasn't just about saying, hey, here's the movers, everybody label your boxes and let's go. It was a very big project. Because I did that, we didn't miss things that we would have missed. And on the day of, we did have a fire to put out. Not a literal fire. Something got stuck in the server room and we couldn't get it out. We tried to get it out and it broke something. We needed an electrician to come and fix it and make sure everything was kept online. And because everything had been so well planned out, I was able to get an electrician on short notice on the weekend to come and help us with that. Had I been running around like a chicken with my head cut off, that wouldn't have worked. Because everything was so planned and the relocation team was in place and everybody had their tasks to do and their responsibilities, it went off without a hitch. What I learned from that is you can't try to do everything yourself, especially on a big project where you can't possibly have all the expertise needed to make it successful. That's the story, and I've told it a lot of times, so it's not gonna come out exactly the same every time, but it doesn't matter because it's the energy behind the story. I'm proud of that. I know the nuances. I know what made that different for me than if somebody had just talked about doing it on all on their own. And it demonstrated a whole bunch of different things that I did that other people wouldn't have talked about. So I talked about gathering a team together when nobody told me to do that. I talked about the joke about the first thing that I read. I inserted some humor. I inserted my lessons. So if you're telling stories and they're not landing, it's probably not because they're the wrong story. It's probably because of the way that you're telling them. They're not actually giving the people what they need to trust you. Number 9, you're going to need to learn to manage fear and doubt. Fear and doubt is going to come in when you are doing something bigger, when you are going for another goal, when you are wanting to level up your skills. When you are wanting to do something that you haven't done before, fear and doubt is gonna come in. Now, the key is not making the fear and doubt mean that it's not gonna happen, that it's not possible, that you are not capable. It's acknowledging the fear and doubt and saying, I see you, I see you, and even welcoming it in and being like, okay, come on in. You can be here. You're welcome here. We're moving forward and you can come for the ride, but you're not gonna dictate what's gonna happen and you're not gonna drive. I'm not gonna make decisions based on you, but you're welcome to come in and sit down and have milk and cookies and chill on the couch whenever you want. Number 10 is you're going to need to take action from the right identity. So you can go into an interview and you can say all the right things, but if you say them from the identity of somebody who is tentative and scared and unsure of themselves and doesn't value themselves, then that won't work. You could say all the right things. You need to identify as the person who is valuable, who they would be lucky to have, not the person who's really super grateful to be there and happy for any crumbs that get thrown their way. You need to identify as the person who is somebody who people are calling and asking for, and somebody who is that go-to person that you would call on if you had a problem and you wanted someone to look at it. You have to identify as that person. Now, a lot of people are identifying as the person who is very lucky to be there, to have this opportunity. And while that might be true, it's supplicant versus confident. They call it please pick me energy, I think. It's like, oh, please pick me because, you know, I'm, I'm a really hard worker and I'll do really good and I'll try my very, very best and I'll just, I'm going to do really good. Versus, here's what I do. This is who I am. I don't have experience in that. This is what I can do. This is why I'm here. And if that resonates with you, then I think this might be a good fit. 10 skills that get you paid. Let me recap them. You need to know how to value yourself. So you have to have value vision on your own value versus value blindness, because if you are value blind, if you are blind to your own value, Nobody can help you because you won't be able to see it. So therefore you won't go after things that pay you more. You won't go after environments that are better because you won't believe that you deserve them. You're gonna need to pay attention to those thoughts and beliefs in your head. If you're believing that something you want doesn't really exist, if you're believing that the past equals the future, that because you chose wrong in the past, you're gonna choose wrong in the future. If you are believing any of those things, then you are not going to be able to move forward in a different way. You're gonna have to acknowledge those old beliefs and shift them. You're gonna have to do some math on your own value. Be amazed and impressed by the value that you've brought to companies in the past or to clients or whatever. If you actually sit down and do the math on the time and the money and the impact that you've had, then you will blow your own mind. It happens every time. Every time I do the exercise with people, they say, whoa, I've been underpaid by a lot. And then they go out and make more money because showing you the math, you can't unsee it. You need to market yourself like the ThighMaster, not the V-bar. So you need to market yourself like something people want, and you don't have to change your skills or get more certifications to do that. You simply need to learn the skill of marketing yourself. You need to ask for what you want. You need to get into the habit of being somebody who asks for what they want, even if you do it badly at first. Frame things in the what's in it for them mentality. So when you make an ask, say, hmm, why would someone say yes to this? Why would they want this? Why would they say yes to me if they've got 3 other people to choose from? Stop discounting your value. So just because you don't have every box checked on the list, it doesn't mean that you are not the right person for the job. It simply means that you have to reframe how you see that. So not having every box checked on the list is actually an asset because it means you're a top performer going for things you haven't done before. Transform your stories. A lot of stories fall flat. Even though they use the STAR method, they are not very interesting. They're not very revealing about what the person actually does or who they are or what character traits they possess. Manage fear and doubt. So you will need to acknowledge that fear and doubt exist and they're around. They will be in the world with you. They will be in your brain with you. You just need to acknowledge them, invite them in, don't be scared of them, let them come along, but don't let them make decisions. Number 10, you will need to bring the identity of the person who is valuable into the room for the interview. So some good questions to ask might be, what does the person who's valuable believe about herself or himself? How will that person be different than every other person? Thank you so much for watching. That's what I got for you today. Give me a thumbs up if you liked this video. Give me a thumbs down if you didn't like this video and don't watch any more of my videos. Leave a comment. The comments help, and I will see you next week.