Episode 185: Women Getting Paid
/Show transcript:
Welcome to The Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace, and success.
I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte.
This time, women and money. Some say look, for us, work is about so much more than money. But for others...
“At the end of the day what I find really interesting is only people who have the privilege of saying that it’s not all about money can actually say it’s not all about money.”
And when you’re negotiating a salary offer, or asking for more money at a current job...it’s worthwhile to prepare.
“Take a moment a few weeks beforehand to step back and think, how am I feeling about this? What am I dreading them saying to me when I ask for this? What do I think the weaknesses are in my case? What do I think they’re gonna point out is a reason why I don’t deserve this salary?”
Women getting paid fairly for their work - coming up on The Broad Experience.
Today I’m re-visiting some moments from past shows where we focused on women’s worth, how we often question that worth, how to charge for our services, and how to negotiate. Most women still get paid less than men for the same work. I want to cover this more in the new year. But in the meantime here are some guests whose words made me sit up and think. The audio quality of the past definitely leaves something to be desired in some cases.
Back in 2014 I had been working for myself for a few years, I’d been doing this show for about two, and I came across this article on Forbes.com entitled, No You Can’t Pick My Brain - It Costs Too Much. It was by Adrienne Graham, a small business owner in Atlanta who had found herself increasingly inundated with requests to have coffee, chat over the phone...all from people who wanted her advice - advice she was charging clients for. She wrote the article describing how and why she said no, and offering readers tips on setting boundaries.
This is a clip from episode 52, When Women Work For Free, where Adrienne describes the moment she realized that as a small business owner she was undervaluing herself.
“My dad had a saying: a closed mouth don’t get fed. If you don’t believe you’re worth what you’re charging, other people won’t, they’ll smell that fear and they’ll try to haggle you down. When I first started my first business, my recruiting firm, I was very new, very green, I had no connections. I just picked up the phone and started cold calling. Reached out, finally got this ad agency and the CEO of the agency decided to take my call. And I was very excited. I won’t go into the details but every time I threw out a price he said, oh, no, that doesn’t work for me. Because I wanted to snag a client I agreed every time he lowered. He got me down to 11 %. My fee at that time was supposed to be 33%. He said, OK, 11% is good. Then he said let me stop you right there: I’m not going to do business with you. He said did you learn anything yet? He said you never, ever, ever discount yourself, you never let anybody diminish your worth right before your eyes. He said if you have a price, you stand firm in your price and let them see that you are confident in what you have to give. He said in essence. because I came down so much on my price so much, I was telling him I wasn’t worth it.”
That phone call was instructive and Adrienne never looked back. But other women can have a hard time naming their price and sticking to it, especially if they’re in a helping profession. In that same episode I spoke to career coach Kathy Caprino.
“I had a funny thing happen a few years ago. A neighbor of mine told a friend, ‘Kathy charges because she has to charge.’ I had to laugh. I charge because I run a business…and I’m in the business of serving others and generating income. But there is an expectation in some ways that women are gonna give, be supportive, it’s how we’re raised, and the messages we get. But the most important thing isn’t to blame society and culture. It’s to look at yourself and look at how comfortable are you charging? I work with a lot of women and they’re not comfortable. They went into this because it’s a service business and they want to be of help. And charging top dollar can be very jarring. There’s process they have to go through to be comfortable charging and not offering everything for free.”
She says you can’t just pick prices out of the air. You need to do a lot of competitive research. Find out what other people with similar businesses are charging. What exactly do they offer, and how are you different? What can you guarantee you’ll deliver to your clients?
“And then you start setting what those prices are and you start offering that, and you start doing the work of the pushback – there will be pushback, but let’s face it, money’s tight for a lot of people today, there will be pushback: oh, do I really have to have 10 sessions for $3500, can it be less? You’ve got to learn to get comfortable that yeah, this is what I’m worth, and sure we can talk about this, that and the other thing, but you’ve got to set the boundaries and live with it.”
That, I needed to hear.
I also wanted to ask Kathy about the whole ‘can I pick your brain?’ question. As someone who has a public profile she does hear from a lot of strangers, many of whom just assume she’ll help them out. She says she had a major revelation about this a few years ago...
“…when a post went viral and I got 300 requests a day from people a day to look at their LinkedIn profile for free. And I got mad. And after the third day my husband came in and said you’ve got to find a way not to get mad at this. And that was such the light bulb. I thought oh, he’s so right. From that day to this I’ve done a lot of work about it: don’t get mad and don’t get resentful. I’ve seen a million posts so snarky about this and I wrote one. People don’t know your business model – they see you write, they want some help and they’re desperate. That’s all. So get over being mad. We have to educate them on what we offer and what we charge. That’s our job. We don’t have to expect that they’re going to peruse our website for 10 minutes and find our prices. But when people ask me to meet and they do, here’s how I view it: is it going to be a connection that is mutually beneficial? And if so, in fact this week I am meeting with someone in my town who’s got a wonderful nutrition business and works with a ton of women, and it’s gong to be very beneficial for both of us to chat about how we can help eachother. But if it’s people wanting to pick your brain and they’re not offering anything, they’re not offering to barter, they’re not thinking of paying, there’s ways to respond to that. I have a pre-written response, which is totally true, which says ‘Due to the very high volume for free help that I receive, I’m unable to give you tailored recommendations if you’re not my client’, and the reason for that is to offer effective guidance I have to know a lot more, and that takes time and commitment. On the other hand here are my free resources. And Ashley, that is a key component – if people want to be of help and they don’t just want to be of help to people that have a lot of money, then to have free resources available – downloads, guides, webinars, audio – it’s so powerful. Because now you’re able to say I’m sorry I can’t give you my personal time but I have these wonderful free resources.”
So that’s women who run their own business. But if you work for an organization, you’re relying on someone else to pay you fairly.
In 2016 I got an email from a listener who was looking for some advice about her employment situation. I brought in financial behaviorist Jacquette Timmons to comment. First, I read out the email:
“If I look at my current position I am very successful based on what I have been able to accomplish and the perception of other people. I enjoy my work most days and am pleased when I can lead the university in efforts to improve the lives of students.
That said, I am grossly underpaid compared to not my most recent predecessor (female), but her predecessor (male). I would be interested in a discussion on how far you push gender equality if you are indeed satisfied with everything else in the work environment."
So I asked Jacquette, is it OK to rest on our laurels IF we earn enough, and we’re happy with everything else?
“On one hand the short answer to that question is yes of course you can, you can rest on your laurels if that is sufficient to you. But obviously it isn’t or she wouldn’t be asking the question. So I think in this particular case what it comes down to is have you defined what good enough is for you individually on many different levels? What’s good enough in terms of compensation, in terms of scope of work…and if you do that assessment and you walk away with everything I have here is just fine, then you don’t have to make any changes.”
But again she says that’s probably not the case here.
This particular listener isn’t the only one to have written to me saying look, with women it’s about more than money. Another woman emailed saying women care about other things, like flexibility. We’re just not thinking in terms of every last dollar.
“What I love about exploring this topic is that – while we’re not going to come up with an answer, but I like all the different things we can tap into to get to an answer or several answers. At the end of the day what I find really interesting is only people who have the privilege of saying that it’s not all about money can actually say it’s not all about money. So I think in having this conversation, for the person who says ‘money isn’t everything’ I would push back and say OK, if money isn’t everything, then what would you do if you didn’t get your next paycheck, what would you do if the money you have currently is no longer there? I think you can only say that if you know you have a cushion. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, right…once the bottom level is completely satisfied then you can go up to the next level and after that, I mean the whole idea is you get to the final pinnacle, and that’s the whole self-actualization where you can focus on personal development, self-fulfillment and things of that nature.”
Jacquette Timmons in episode 81, Money vs. Fulfillment.
Now I think a lot of us in the position of that listener who wrote in would be furious to find out the guy who’d done the same job had been paid a lot more. I know that kind of rage has propelled women to ask for more money and I’m planning to include one of those perspectives in a show early next year.
But ideally you’re not asking for more money in a fit of rage - a negotiation is something you should carefully plan for. A few years ago I met Natalie Reynolds on a trip to London. She featured in episode 128, You’re Worth It - the Power of Negotiation. I kick things off.
AM-T: With a salary negotiation you need to know what others in similar roles are getting paid. You need to take stock of your own achievements so you can talk them up. In short, you have to know your market value.
And this is another thing I wanted to discuss with her – the fact that a lot of women find talking about their worth and their achievements really uncomfortable. I certainly have. We’re often nervous because a lot is riding on this. The whole process just doesn’t feel like ‘us’. But Natalie says that’s no excuse to duck out.
AM-T: “You say in the book, look, just get comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable. I think that’s really worth talking about.”
“I think a lot of people strive to feel comfortable when they negotiate but I would never advocate that. An element of nerves is useful, it keeps you sharp, it keeps you focused, it keeps you wondering what’s coming next. So I will spend a lot of time with male and female clients getting them to understand why they feel like they do and getting them to own that feeling. I talk a lot about the little voice in the head, a lot at the start at the book, and this idea that we become overwhelmed by feelings of, ‘I just want to get out of here.’ If you can listen to where is this discomfort coming from? What am I afraid of? If you can embrace that discomfort and channel it in a different way, you stay sharp and focused and aware, but because you’ve prepared properly you’re ready to deal with that. You should never want to be so laid back you don’t want to worry about these things. I think nerves and anxiety exist for a reason and if you can harness them properly they will work to your advantage.”
AM-T: I want to go back to the voice in our head. This is a huge thing with women. You’ve got that voice saying, ‘I’m not worth that, who do you think you are asking for that? Ooh, you’d better scale that back.’ And it’s…what do you tell people about that because I think feeling like we do not have value, whether it’s monetary value or value as a person, this goes really deep inside women.”
“First of all I’d say to listeners, please don’t think men don’t suffer from it. Some of us are just better at controlling it than others and women do seem to struggle with it, particularly around the self-worth and how we value ourselves. The little voice in the head is an interesting one. So many of us think, oh right, don’t listen to it, it’s telling us negative things so don’t listen to it. And the problem with that approach is if you ignore it in the run up to the negotiation that little voice will rear its head right when you least need it to. Right at crunch time when you need to ask for what you want. And this is the problem, that you can ignore it and ignore it and pretend it’s not there and then you sit down, open your mouth to give your number to your boss and then it kicks in. And then the little voice says, ‘you’re not worth that, they’re gonna think you’re greedy, don’t be ridiculous, say this instead.’ So you do, you say a lower number, or you say very little and let them take the lead.
Instead I advocate a completely different approach which kind of seems counter-intuitive but to me makes perfect sense. Which is, that little voice actually represents our innermost fears, inhibitions and anxieties and also weaknesses in our position or argument. So actually what we should be doing is long before we get to that negotiation table, whether that’s an actual table or a conversation, however it looks, take a moment a few weeks beforehand to step back and think, how am I feeling about this? What am I dreading them saying to me when I ask for this? What do I think the weaknesses are in my case? What do I think they’re gonna point out is a reason why I don’t deserve this salary? You should start then almost accessing that little voice in your head in advance of the negotiation, what you can then do is start to mitigate against what it’s saying.
So if it’s saying to you, well, you can’t prove you’re worth this, what you should then do is go away and build up a business case that says why you are worth this. If it says, you can’t prove other people are being paid this, at that point go away and establish what other people are being paid. If it says, what are you gonna do if they say no, guess what, go away and start to plan your responses if they say no. So maybe they say no, we don’t think you’re worth this, you then say OK, so what do I have to do within a 3-month period to be able to access that level of salary? So if you can own that voice in advance, it helps you be more robust when you get to the negotiation table.”
Natalie Reynolds, negotiation expert and author of the book We Have a Deal.
These are just a few moments from shows where we’ve covered the topic of women and money. A topic I think many of you will agree is incredibly important. I’m going to link you to some great pieces I’ve read lately on women getting paid, I’ll put those links under this episode at TheBroadExperience.com - I’m also going to include those in my newsletter this week, which you can sign up for on the website - I’ll also link you to all the episodes I’ve excerpted from today.
If there is an aspect of women and money that you would like to hear covered on the show, let me know - message me on Facebook or Instagram or email me at ashley at TheBroadExperience.com. I’ll be back with a new show in a couple of weeks.
I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte. Thanks for listening.