Leading Her Introvert Way: Conversations about executive leadership, career growth, business and mindset for mid-life Black women.

95: Your Money Shame Is Stopping You From Earning A Higher Salary

• Nicole Bryan • Episode 95

Share episode

Money shame runs deep, especially for Black introverted women. We're often raised with messages that discussing finances is taboo, that we shouldn't share our successes, and that we should make ourselves smaller to make others comfortable. We're weren't taught to ask questions about managing money, building wealth or how to negotiate our salaries.

And the consequences are profound on your career and earning potential.  

Listen to learn how to break out of that cycle and set yourself up for success


*******

LET’S CONNECT!


* Work with me 1:1 to land your executive promotion, increase your impact, hone your executive presence and increase your salary by $50-100k. Book your call here to get your Elite Executive Experience.


**Leave the podcast a 5 start review (https://ratethispodcast.com/leadingherway) and help other introverted women find and join our community.

***Connect with me on LinkedIn : www.linkedin.com/in/thechangedoc

Speaker 1:

Hi, lady Leader, and welcome to today's episode of Leading Her Introvert Way. If you are new here, first of all, welcome, welcome. I am your host, I am Dr Nicole Bryan, and this podcast is for Black, introverted women who are ready to get promoted into senior leadership and executive roles, who are ready to be the best leaders they can possibly be, without sacrificing who they are right and without becoming addicted to work. If you are a returning OG, welcome back. So a couple of things before we get started on today's episode, the first of which is I am going to be hosting a workshop on September 6th. I'm probably going to announce it more formally and publicly next week, but I'm really excited about this workshop. Right, and it will be a workshop, meaning that it will be interactive. It will be something, a place, a time and experience where you will be doing things, not just sitting and listening to me educate you. It will definitely be some of that. There will be some education, there will be some small group work, there will be some individual work, but it's going to be a workshop and it's going to be a workshop all focused on negotiating higher salaries for yourself and, honestly, it doesn't matter what your current salary is. It doesn't matter what your ultimate salary goal is either, but there are just some things that Black introverted women because we are uniquely positioned in the marketplace, in the job market, there are things that we need to know and skills we need to develop that I want to be able to show you and teach you in this workshop. Okay, so keep your ears and eyes open for that.

Speaker 1:

I'm gonna be making a formal announcement, but it will be held on September 6th. That's the first announcement. The second announcement is that I am fast coming up upon our 100th episode for this podcast. I cannot believe it, but this, if you're listening to this, this is episode 95. So in just a few weeks, we'll be at episode 100. And I want to do something to celebrate. I have come up with different ideas, but I would love to hear from you what you think would be good or a good milestone marker to celebrate this podcast episode. So, if you think of something, send me a direct message on LinkedIn. If you're on my email list, when you get this, when I send out this episode, go ahead and reply or just tap me in any platform that we're connected and let me know what you think, because I would love to do something celebratory that my introvert heart can take and that will mark the occasion. But the fact that most podcasts don't even make it to episode six, seven or eight, and the fact that we have and we are at episode 100, we definitely can't let that go by without marking the occasion. Okay, all right.

Speaker 1:

So with those announcements out of the way, let's go ahead and talk about today's episode. So today's episode is probably the most vulnerable thing I've ever shared publicly, and it's about the day that I became a millionaire, or I should say that I found out that I was, I had made my first million, and why I was terrified to tell anyone about it for almost two years. Now let me just say up front I mean, if you're, if you're not, new here, you already know I'm not a bragger, right? So this is not about bragging, but this is about something much deeper and it's about what happens when you can't or you don't own your success. It's about how money shame affects every career decision that you make and it's about why your relationship with money might be the thing that's actually holding you back and holding back your salary negotiations and your leadership advancement. So if you've ever felt like you couldn't fully celebrate your wins, or if you've downplayed your success to make other people comfortable, then this episode is for you, because I'm about to share how I almost let my money shame sabotage my career, and what changed when I finally learned to own my success. Okay, Okay. So let me also admit that for some of us and including for me money shame runs very, very deep and even when you are aware of it and you have worked on it, it still tends to pop up every now and then.

Speaker 1:

I mean a perfect example in full disclosure is I thought long and hard before bringing this topic to you, right Before talking about this with you. I kept going back and forth because I wasn't 100% comfortable sharing that I was a multimillionaire. So, to be able to tell the story about how I first realized that I had made my first million, I had a lot of angst around that. Right, and it's not. It wasn't shame necessarily because I've worked through the shame piece of it, going back to what my parents used to tell me, which is you know, it's nobody business what you make, what you have, what you earn. I go back to you know, you potentially thinking that I was bragging, right, all of these things kind of are still in me, even though I've worked on them and I continue to work on them. So I say all that because money, shame, money, vulnerability it doesn't just disappear overnight. It's not like a light switch that you can click on and off. It is something that most of us, we have to continually work on.

Speaker 1:

And shout out to my coach and, yes, I do have a coach, I have a couple of coaches, actually. So shout out to my business coach who, frankly, for the past year and a half, has been saying to me more people need to hear your full story, nicole. More people need to understand not just where you came from, but where you are now right and all the things that have happened in between. And for some of my story, I've been very, very vocal about it. But when it comes to the money piece because I'm still continuing to work on owning what I've been able to accomplish from a financial standpoint I was hesitant to bring this topic to the podcast and to every other social media platform that I'm on. But you know what? You can't just talk about it. You can't just talk about it. You got to be about it, right. So this is me stepping out of my comfort zone, and what I'm going to be doing with you for the next however many minutes of this podcast episode is I'm going to be challenging you to also step out of your comfort zone when it comes to your mindset on money.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let me tell you about my story. All right, I'm taking you back to 2000. Yes, the year 2000. I was actually working at Citibank, right, and if you're not familiar, citibank is a global bank. It has all types of divisions, et cetera. Hundreds of thousands of people are employed all over the world with Citibank.

Speaker 1:

But at the time, in 2000, I was in my third professional human resources role and I had been assigned to support, to provide HR support to the private banking division of Citibank, and the private banking division of Citibank and the private banking division of Citibank serves high net worth clients and customers. Now, at the time, I mean I was in my mid-20s and I didn't grow up with money or excess resources in any shape, form or fashion. But suddenly, here I was, this little Black girl. I was working amongst people who either had those resources, so who were multi-millionaires, even billionaires, so they had those resources themselves, or they were directly serving clients who were millionaires or billionaires. So I did what introverts do best I listened, I asked questions, I absorbed everything I possibly could learn about how wealthy people think about money, how they invest, how they make financial decisions, and over several years, I was able to learn just enough to start making good financial decisions for myself.

Speaker 1:

So one Tuesday afternoon and I remember this so clearly I was sitting in my office. It was one of those days where I just did not feel like doing anything work-related. Feel like doing anything work-related, but I was there in my three-piece blue suit and, yes, at the time we had to wear suits to work and we had to go into the office every day. Working remotely wasn't even a concept at that time, right? So I was there in my office in my three-piece blue suit, and I still have that suit to this day, believe it or not.

Speaker 1:

I started going through my financial accounts online. I looked at my checking account, my savings account, my money market account. I also started looking at my investment accounts. Right At the time, all of my accounts were not in one place, so they were scattered across different institutions, and I also had a fair bit of debt. So I'm sitting there with my notepad and my calculator and I'm adding everything up. I'm subtracting the debt and I calculated it once. Then I calculated it again and again. I must have done those calculations like five or six times, because I just could not believe what I was seeing. Holy amazeballs, I was a millionaire.

Speaker 1:

I remember I got up, I closed my office door because I wasn't sure whose eyes were going to be on me. I didn't want to be disturbed. I also didn't want people to see my reaction right, because I was getting very emotional. I closed my office door, I leaned against my desk and, instead of feeling excited or instead of celebrating, I felt anxious. I was scared. Even my mind immediately started racing.

Speaker 1:

I was asking myself what does this actually mean? Am I supposed to be doing something different with this money? Am I supposed to be feeling different? Who can I tell? Should I tell anyone? See, I had been raised by my family with very, very clear messaging when it came to money you don't share with other people what you make, you don't tell people how you make it, it's nobody else's business and you keep your financial information to yourself. I didn't even want to tell my mother and my father and frankly I didn't. But then I started thinking about my friends, like my small, intimate group of chosen family who we normally tell each other everything. Should I say something to them? Would they think I'm bragging? Would they be happy for me? Would things get weird? And then there was this voice in my head, that little poor girl mentality, that was like I should do something special with this money. I can't just let it sit here. I should spend it, I should buy something. But then the other voice was saying save it, let it accumulate, let it work for you. It was like I had the devil and the angel on my shoulders, one saying to spend it, spend it, spend it. And the other one saying save it, invest it, like just let it multiply.

Speaker 1:

For years and I do mean years I didn't tell anybody what I was earning, what I was able to put away, how I was investing and multiplying my money. I was straight up gatekeeping. I was learning incredible financial strategies and negotiation strategies from the private bankers that I worked with, but I wasn't even passing that knowledge along to my friends or my family, because to pass along would put me in a position of having to admit that I was making this, that I was earning it, that I had the cash. And here's the kicker Once I reached that millionaire status, I thought I've made it, this is it. I don't need to do anything else. This I am here. This is the place I have dreamt of for decades. I've now surpassed everyone I know in my family in terms of money that they can earn right.

Speaker 1:

But that same mentality was detrimental to me, because here's what happened when I couldn't own my success. First, I paused my career progression for longer than I should have. I stopped negotiating aggressively for opportunities and for salary increases because I felt like I had already had enough, like I had already made it. I turned down opportunities because I didn't want the visibility. I avoided networking where I might have had to talk about my career wins. Second, I developed this with money that actually became risk averse when I should have been getting more strategic. And third, I started thinking and acting in a very limited, closeted way when it came to money and career advancement. I made myself small to make others comfortable. But the most damaging thing Couldn't advocate for myself the way I needed to, because I was afraid of seeming like I was too much.

Speaker 1:

When you can't own your current level of success, you will never be able to fight for your next level. All of this was rooted in conditioning that I received from my family, from friends, from society, about what this young Black woman was supposed to have or not. Who was I to be earning enough money to financially outpace many of my peers? Who was I to be making multiple, multiple thousands of dollars more than both of my parents combined? What was I supposed to do with all of that? Ladies, your relationship with money affects every career decision that you make.

Speaker 1:

If you cannot celebrate your wins, you won't be able to position yourself for bigger ones. If you can't own your success, you won't negotiate from a place of power. When I finally learned to say and own, I am a millionaire out loud, not because the money changed me right, but because owning my success gave me permission to keep growing. Everything shifted after that. I started negotiating more strategically. I looked for, got and took on bigger roles. I invested in myself differently. I showed up in rooms where I belonged instead of shrinking to make others comfortable.

Speaker 1:

The day that you can separate your human worth from your financial success and then own both of those fully is the day that you start operating like the executive that you are meant to be. So here's what I want you to think about. What success are you afraid to own out loud? What wins are you currently downplaying? What financial goals are you not pursuing because you're afraid of what others will think about you and how others will react? Your ancestors, my ancestors, our ancestors, did not survive and sacrifice for you to accept the minimum of your salary band. They didn't fight for freedom so you could make yourself small, and they damn sure wanted you to have options, security and generational wealth.

Speaker 1:

Now, if this resonates with you, like I said at the top of the podcast episode, I'm hosting a workshop on September 6th. It is called Her Executive Compensation Playbook how to Calculate what you Do and Win when you Negotiate. We're going to address both the mindset and the strategy that you need to get paid what you deserve, because you can't negotiate effectively from a place of money shame. But you can heal your relationship with success and learn to advocate for yourself strategically. And remember your success is not taking anything away from anyone else. Your wealth creates opportunities for you, your family and your community, and your leadership paves the way for other Black women. Own it, own all of it, and so until next time. Lady leader, keep leading your introvert way.