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

98: From Underpaid to Unstoppable: My Journey to My First $500K Compensation Package

• Nicole Bryan • Episode 98

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Money conversations remain one of the most challenging aspects of career advancement for Black introverted female leaders. This deeply personal episode breaks the silence as I share the detailed journey of how I negotiated my first $500,000 compensation package over 15 years ago—a story I've deliberately avoided telling until now.  Three powerful principles emerge from this experience that can transform your approach to compensation negotiations. 

Ready to develop your own total compensation strategy? Join my "Her Executive Conversation Playbook" workshop on September 6th, where we'll walk through exactly how to advocate for your true market value and secure the compensation package you deserve. 


Your financial future is too important to leave to chance or discomfort—it's time to lead in this area of your life too.

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Ready to ask for your next 5- or 6-figure salary raise and get it? Register here for our September 6th workshop “Her Executive Compensation Playbook” where we’ll build your personalized strategy for calculating the value you add and negotiating the salary you deserve. 

Speaker 1:

Hi there, lady leader, and welcome to this week's episode of the Leading Her Introvert Way podcast. I'm Dr Nicole Bryan and I am your host, and for the past several weeks, we have been talking about money Money as Black introvert female leaders, money as career women, and it's been such an interesting ride because I've heard from you in terms of how you're feeling about building wealth, how you're feeling about the salary that you're earning, how you are feeling about all the things that you've heard and learned about money growing up and listen, it's complicated stuff, right. Many of us are suffering from money trauma. Many of us have big goals for ourselves to stop the financial bleeding that many of our Black households have had to suffer for generations, and there's just a lot going on, right. We also are expecting more of our employers in terms of how they treat us from a day-to-day standpoint as well as from a financial standpoint, and there's a lot of things kind of mixed up in all of that. The money series that I have been doing, meaning the last three, four, five episodes of this podcast, have been completely dedicated to and us as a Black female introverted community, and it has sparked a lot both in me as well as in you based on all of the feedback that I've gotten from you via email, from my newsletter, from LinkedIn and TikTok and Facebook, and so I want to continue that conversation, and so I want to continue that conversation.

Speaker 1:

So today's podcast is actually a replay of a live that I did last week, and actually it's not even full week yet. Just a few days ago I did this live and the response was so, so deep that I knew that I had to bring it here to the podcast, and so the topic that I'm talking about is, for the very first time, I'm telling my story of how I was able to negotiate my very first $500,000 compensation package. Now it's been several years since I first did this for myself, and I've since then done it countless times for my clients and for my friends and for family members as well. But I was able to negotiate my first 500K total compensation package back in about 15 years ago, and at the time it was unprecedented for me and there was no one that I could ask advice of. There was no other Black females in leadership at the company that I was working with or in my network that I could go to and ask for counsel and guidance and tips. So, now that I have been able to do it for myself several times over, I've been able to do it for others, for my clients, for friends and help them to achieve their financial goals.

Speaker 1:

I wanted to tell my story because I think there are some key lessons here that everyone can learn from, particularly if you are a Black, introverted female who has financial wealth goals for yourself and your family and plan to use your job or your career as a primary source of income to reach those goals for yourself. So I won't keep talking. I'll pass the mic on to the recording, but I want you to listen closely and, as you are listening, be prepared to take some notes, because I was specifically trying to hit on three key points, three key takeaways that you should be able to not only learn from but start executing on ASAP, and I don't want you to miss it. So, without further ado, enjoy, right. So let's go ahead and transition to today's topic.

Speaker 1:

Like I said, this is not a story that I tell, right, I've deliberately, in full disclosure, I've deliberately avoided talking about my income throughout my entire career. In fact, one of the reasons why I'm even here is because my coach my business coach has been encouraging me to tell my story more openly and more publicly for the same reasons. Her thinking is aligned with mine, which is the more people that know, the more people that will learn and the more people can leverage that to forward, get yourself and get you into the place where you want to be. But I'll admit it's taken me months to get up the courage to actually have this conversation and to be also 100% transparent. I haven't even told this story yet and I've already been getting negative replies, negative direct messages, right, negative comments on my posts. It's the name of the game.

Speaker 1:

But what that tells me is that it's probably something I should be talking about. We're at a point in time in history where we shouldn't have to keep these things undercover. There's actually no reason for us to do that anymore and, in fact, by talking about it, my hope is not only that you can take the information and use it, but, honestly, that we get rid of the stigma around talking about salaries, that we get rid of the cultural blocks that we might have about our money trauma, right what we earn, what we spend. So that's all a part of the discussion as well. Okay, excuse me, you guys got to forgive me for my little cold here. Okay, excuse me, forgive me for my little cold here.

Speaker 1:

Ok, so if you are like me and you have in the past been uncomfortable about talking about money or asking people about money or sharing what you earn and how you earn it, then drop uncomfortable in the chat and let me see. Let me see if I'm alone in that or if you guys are feeling that as well. And if you're on Facebook or Facebook on LinkedIn, go ahead and drop it in the comment section. And if you're on TikTok, go ahead and drop it in the chat for me, okay, all right, good, so I'm not the only one, all right? Okay, so let's talk about, before we go into the details of my experience negotiating a K salary package.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk about why this even matters, right, right, we already acknowledge that there is a stigma, particularly amongst the Black community, particularly those of us who are introverted. There is a reticence to be transparent about our income and what we make as career professionals. It does keep us stuck and one of the ways that it keeps us stuck is that the system is able to continue to hold us back because we, without knowing kind of what the salaries are and what we could be earning, then it prevents us as individuals from connecting the dots right and connecting the dots with each other in a way that allows us to advocate for each other. When I know what my sister or what another person in the organization is making and we have similar roles, yet I'm earning $50,000 less than this other person, I wouldn't have any idea that that is happening unless there is some type of transparency around salaries. Now, as you know maybe you don't know there are new laws, at least in the United States, where some states there's about 11 states in the United States who have passed recent laws as of 2024 to increase salary transparency.

Speaker 1:

Now, it's not that everybody in the company needs to know what everybody else is making, but when they're posting jobs, they get to basically put a salary range that's associated with every role that they are recruiting for right. That's one level of salary transparency, but again, that's only in 11 states and that is not all companies across the United States or across the world. In lieu of that, when we don't have laws that require companies to reveal what they're paying oh, by the way, in the US, if you're a government employee, those are usually state government employees. That's usually public information as well. You can actually look up what someone who works for the state government makes, but government sector pays very differently than private sector and that pays different than public sector. So there's a lot of variation there.

Speaker 1:

With that said, when the company or the organization you work for is not being transparent about what they pay and some organizations are, I would say a very small percentage, but some organizations are but when we don't have that information and the company is not supplying it to us, then that only leaves us as individuals with the power to kind of share that information, and I think we all know that's not a common conversation. You're not walking up to the water cooler, you're not texting on chat with your colleagues and talking about what you make right, and very rarely are you likely even offering that information. However, the more comfortable we get with that, particularly with those people, our colleagues, who we trust and we respect and we know will have our backs, the quicker we will get to a place where we understand the internal equity and we can validate, verify or prove that the internal equity is actually in place right. If I'm making 50K less than my colleague, I won't know that unless I either ask my colleague and they share the information with me, or somehow I get access to the company's information, which is very, very rare. The transparency piece is really, really important, and that's why I wanted to tell my story right, because the thing about negotiating your salary is, I would say, the very first thing you have to be thinking about is we're in my. It's not just about what you want to make right, it's mainly about what your skills and your tech is valued at on the market. Many of us are very emotional about what we make, and rightfully so. It feels very, very personal, but when we're dealing with a company or an organization, it's usually not personal for them. They are usually looking for and basing their information, their salary decisions, off of data, and so it behooves us to also have data. So let's talk about the very first lesson that I wanted to make sure that I shared with you when it comes to my salary.

Speaker 1:

My first time that I was able to negotiate a 5K salary, the first thing that I had to do was I needed to make a mindset shift. Every time I thought about salary and what I was earning, I was only thinking about base dollars, base salary and what I had to learn really quickly was that I needed to make a shift from base salary to total compensation, and the reason why that's important is because base salary is for junior team members. Base salary is essentially what the X amount of dollars you're making for this role right, it's what you get in your bi-weekly, monthly, semi-monthly paycheck. That's your base salary. Total compensation is more for middle managers and above, and when you think of total compensation, it is everything that you are paid in dollars, that you are paid in dollars in time, in effort, in future, you know, future potential, everything that your company gives you in return for your talent and your skill set. The reason why this is important, to make this shift is because of a variety of reasons. Your company is going to be probably limited in what they can give you in a base salary and you might have priorities that go beyond your base salary, right? Okay, so when I talk about total compensation, I'm talking about base salary, bonus, equity, executive health, retirement, pay, time off, development, your managerial development, leadership development, lifestyle perks, severance all of those things. Total compensation, right? Total? And each component is important and weighs in importance depending on what is your priority at the time.

Speaker 1:

So when I first was in the position to negotiate my first 5K salary let me set the context, because that lesson in terms of total compensation plays in there and what happened was I was responsible for the time I was working in HR, but I was responsible for all things talent right except talent acquisition. So I was not, I did not have responsibility for leadership development, you know, performance management, employee engagement, all of those things Everything, talent except that right Except talent acquisition. I had been with the company maybe almost three, no, almost, yeah, almost three years at the time and what was happening was, even though I was part of HR, I had no access to compensation information. I had no reason to have access to compensation information, right? So I wasn't aware of what other people around me were making, but I was a part of this external professional development group for talent professionals and I remember going to a roundtable like every month. Every month there was roundtables and every six months we did in-person roundtables. So I was going to these roundtables and I don't know how the subject came up, but one time they started, we started talking about salary, started talking about compensation. One time they started, we started talking about salary, we started talking about compensation and I quickly realized that I, although these people were my peers and they worked for different companies, right? So they were the heads of talent in a variety of companies Although they were my peers, I felt like I was making significantly less than what they were making, and I when I say significantly, I mean like a hundred K less than what they were making.

Speaker 1:

And at first I was like you know that it didn't. It didn't feel good, but I didn't feel confident enough to do anything about it or to start asking questions about it. But the conversation kept coming up. Every time we met there was some little conversation about compensation amongst the group, right. And so I remember that I decided that I was going to ask one of my colleagues in that group who also worked for a large company, and I was like I trust her, I like her, we get along right, we stay connected outside of the group, so I decided to ask her. Now.

Speaker 1:

By the way, it was very, very, very uncomfortable for me. I admit that I have a lot of money trauma. I admit that I was scared. I admit that I had no idea how this conversation was going to go, because here I was asking someone what they make, right. But the way I went about it was I said to her hey, can you know, do you have like 15 minutes for me? I have an important question for you. It's kind of I even said it's kind of uncomfortable, but I don't trust anybody else to ask. So I put her on the, I made her feel good in terms of responding to me and she was like sure. So we set up a coffee break 30 minutes or whatever and we had the conversation. And I remember saying to her like look, that's your question. If you don't feel comfortable, please just tell me. We won't have this conversation.

Speaker 1:

And then I told her the background. Like I'm like, hey, I've been participating in these sessions. I get the sense that I might be making significantly less than everybody else. I'm trying to think about whether that's true or not and how to approach it and how to deal with it. And so I asked her if you're comfortable, if you can share with me what your, what your salary is, because I think we are a comparable, comparable roles, comparable size companies and she told me she was making 120K more than than I was at the time and I was like shit, okay.

Speaker 1:

And then all types of emotions came up right. I was pissed, I felt like I was being disrespected, I was anxious, I had a lot of anxiety, I was resentful. All the things happened in terms of what I was experiencing. And I remember, for like the next month or so, I was coming to work and I was just. People were like what is wrong with you? Because I really had an attitude, I was showing up in a way that was not who I was and it took me a month to figure out what I wanted to do about it. And I decided that, even though I mean and I love my work, I love my job and that's what I hear many of you guys say right, like, you love the work, you love the team, the people who report to you. You may not love the system that you're in, but you enjoy your work and you enjoy the people that you work with and you don't want to let them down. You could probably give two craps about the actual company per se, but those are the people that you're loyal to, the people that you work with on a day-to-day basis.

Speaker 1:

I felt the same way in that moment, but after a month or so, I decided that I couldn't go on like that. It was too heavy a burden for me to carry and I decided that I was going to talk to my boss about it. But before talking to my boss about it, I needed data, I needed information. I needed to understand what the actual market paid for my job, my role. Not me, nicole, personally, but for the skills and the abilities that I brought to the table. What is that on the open market and the abilities that I brought to the table? What is that on the open market? So you know what I did.

Speaker 1:

I started interviewing. So I started interviewing for, by the way, I had no intention of trying to leave Marvel, but by interviewing I knew that I would be able to understand what other companies were paying. This was before salary transparency even was a discussion topic. So interviewing was the only way at that time for me to understand what, like roles, were paid. And so I started interviewing. I got to a place with two different companies where they actually told me what the actual salary was going to be. Potential salary was gonna be for the roles and, at to be, potential salary was going to be for the roles, and at that time the difference was between I think it was like 40 to K different more than what I was currently making, so not the 120 that my colleague had mentioned, but it was between 40 and 60 K. So to me that was one piece of data.

Speaker 1:

The second thing that I did is after I worked up the courage and had the conversation with my colleague who was in a similar role outside of my company. I then talked to a peer inside my company. Now the thing about it was there was no one that did my job right. No one did my role. And I, as a manager, I knew what the people under me were making people on my team. I knew what the difference between what I was making and what the next person senior in my department was making. I knew that. But I didn't know what my peers were making. So, for example, I was the head of talent. I didn't know what the head of talent acquisition was making. I didn't know what the head of compensation was making. So I didn't know what they were making.

Speaker 1:

But I have to ask why? Because it's one thing to know what the external market is paying, but your company also has their own rules around how they pay, so you're going to have to have some type of information in terms of what your company's pay scale is going to be. Now your company might publish that. You might already know what the salary bands are within your company. That might be in your employee handbook or on the employee website and that's fantastic. But salary bands are usually really really broad. So if you're trying to kind of narrow that down and understand how those salary bands might be applied to your specific function or your specific department, the only way for you to know that is to understand, know how other people are being paid right.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing I did was I talked to somebody out not somebody, multiple people outside of my company and understood and that was the first clue to me that, okay, I might be being underpaid. Then the second thing I did was I spoke to someone I trusted outside of my company in a similar role to see what they were being paid, and she validated for me that I was being underpaid. Then I was like, okay, I'm going to test it, I'm going to interview and put my name in the hat for my same role in other companies and their offers came in above what I was getting paid. And then my next step was to talk to peers inside of the company just to see how far, if any, how far off I was from them being paid. I spoke to two peers again who I trusted. You got to have good relationships because the worst thing that can happen is you ask a question and they go and either block you or tell someone before you're ready to have that level of conversation.

Speaker 1:

So I asked two of my peers I asked the head of, not the head of conversation. I asked the head of benefits who was a peer, and then I asked the head of not the head of compensation. I asked the head of benefits who was a peer, and then I asked the head of talent acquisition. Spoke to both of them both of whom, by the way, were in the company much longer than I was but the smallest gap was 30K. Right, so the smallest gap was 30K. So again, validation that I was being underpaid, at least in terms of my peers internally and my peers externally.

Speaker 1:

So now I felt like I had all of the data that I needed. I had the information to go and have a conversation with my boss about how I was being paid, with my boss about how I was being paid. Okay, so that that is. That is how I did the research. That all of that took me about three months. Three months why? Because that first month I was just pissed, I wasn't doing anything, I was just so angry. And then it took me all that time to kind of deal with my emotions and figure out what I wanted to do with it.

Speaker 1:

I'm pausing here because there are so many women that I talk to that you know, reach out to me and they hear, or they think that they're being underpaid, or even if they have the proof that they're being underpaid, and they get so angry that their first instinct is to walk out the door. And while I get that, I do get it. While I get it, it's not always the best thing to do, because when you get to a certain level of your career, you don't want to always be walking out the door. If we walked out the door anytime our company pissed, don't want to always be walking out the door. If we walked out the door anytime our company pissed us off, we'd be walking out every freaking door, right? You don't want to do that. You want to make the decision, not from an emotional place but from a intellectual place, about how you want to handle this situation.

Speaker 1:

Three months in, I was actually ready, now prepared to have the conversation with my boss, and I had to think about do I need to have this conversation with her? Do I need to have this conversation with HR for HR, or do I need to have this conversation with my boss's boss? Because at that time I had skip levels. Every two months, I was having skip levels with my boss's boss and I decided that I would have the conversation with my boss for a variety of reasons. I didn't particularly like my boss. To be fair, right, and I hear that many times from you, I didn't particularly like my boss, but I knew that if I went to HR or if I went to her boss before having or trying to have that conversation with her directly, then that would say more about me than it would about her right? That would demonstrate that I don't have the maturity to deal with the situation head on. That would say that I don't have a respect for the organizational dynamics. If I didn't have a conversation with her Now, in my mind I thought I could have a conversation with her and if that conversation doesn't go well, then I can go and I can escalate it, but I couldn't start off by just escalating it. That's at least what I was thinking.

Speaker 1:

So I got the data, I set up the conversation with my boss, which, by the way, I did not set up a separate conversation. I did not say, hey, I'd like to talk to you about my conversation. I did not want to give her the time or the ammunition to prepare for the conversation. I literally used one of our one-on-ones, which I always set the agenda. I was. There's something that's come up recently also that I don't want to write. I don't want to put in writing, but I want to say make sure we save at least 20, 30 minutes of our one-on-one to talk about it. That's all the heads up I gave her. I used one of my my one-on-ones and I presented my information. This is what happened. This is what my understanding is. This is my concern.

Speaker 1:

I believe that I'm being underpaid. Could you help me understand how we came to this salary that I currently have and, more particularly, what the internal equity was in terms of my peers right, internal peers? That's how we got to that spot. Now, I took her completely off guard In the moment. She was like you know what? Maybe you know, I think she said something like you know, these are really good questions. I don't know all of the, I know what you make and I know what her directs make, but I don't know what. You know. The head of talent and the head of head of talent acquisition and the other heads make Like she didn't know that information. But she was like but I am willing to, like, go and figure it out and ask the questions and maybe what we should do is maybe we should include HR in this conversation. Great, that's even better for me. That's how we came to have this, the dialogue.

Speaker 1:

It was a little adversarial, it was a little uncomfortable because I was challenging her, her lack of knowledge and, frankly, the company's compensation practices. But the way I approached it was this is the information that I have. If you say that that is not the correct information, then I want to see it. Can you show me, prove it to me, explain it to me, et cetera? Right, that was the conversation. Okay, let me show, let me share what, what the numbers were at the time.

Speaker 1:

So at the time and again, this was about 15, 16 years ago at the time, I was making um. I was making a 225, um $225,000. Excuse me, I'm sorry, sorry, I was making $265,000. That was my base, $265,000. I was also earning a bonus of 15 to 20%, that's 20%. As you know, bonuses annual bonuses are not guaranteed right, but I will say with this particular company they paid out the max or close to the max every year, except for one, and that one year was when we were in a recession. The entire world was in a recession. So I was feeling pretty confident that if I could negotiate a higher salary and a higher bonus, then I could feel I would be, I would get my full bonus payout right, unless again we ran into some type of recession. So my base was $265,000 at the time and as part of my negotiation as by now you probably already know I was successful in my negotiation.

Speaker 1:

The negotiation took God. It was painful. The negotiation took, all in all it took about two months. So month one, just to be clear. Month one for me complete anger. I did nothing but stew in my own anger. Month two and month three I was collecting data externally and internally. At the end of month three, beginning of month four is when I had my initial conversation with my boss.

Speaker 1:

It took two months after that for any action to take place, right, and that's all about setting up the meeting, having conversation, pulling in them, going back and doing their research, having another meeting to figure out what it is, whether or not they actually are underpaying me or maybe even overpaying me, like all of this was back and forth, maybe even overpaying me, like all of this was back and forth. The last conversation I had was a meeting between my boss, myself and human resources and by this time it wasn't it was HR for HR, but they had like two representatives in there. Right At that point in time, the conversation that we were having I won't go by blow by blow right at that point in time, the conversation that we were having I won't go blow by blow, but the conversation that we had in the last time that we all met was them acknowledging internally that I was underpaid against all of the other vice presidents we were all vice presidents Against all of the other vice presidents in HR. Okay, forget about finance and all the other groups, but in HR I was the lowest paid, which is crazy Because, if you think about it, my whole point to them was I am responsible for and this is what this is something that's important for you to think about. You can't just think of. Yes, it's important for you to have the data in terms of what other people are paid, but the way you make your impact, the way you make your case, is about what you're contributing to the business In HR and definitely in talent.

Speaker 1:

We are not the people who are bringing in the revenue. It makes sense that the people who are bringing in revenue to the company, or people who are delivering services to the customer it totally makes sense that they make more money. They're bringing in the money, so they should get more of it Like that's logical. They're bringing in the money, so they should get more of it. That's logical. However, what is not logical is I was the person who was responsible for making sure those revenue generators were developed. I was the one who was responsible for building the leaders in the company. I was the one who was responsible for making sure that the employee experience was top-notch so that we could retain the talent that we brought into the door.

Speaker 1:

Yet I was being underpaid. Right, I was being the lowest paid amongst my HR colleagues. That didn't make any sense. You're depending on me to improve your talent and to retain your talent, yet you're not valuing that above other things Didn't make any sense, right? That was how I made my case. It wasn't about. It wasn't only about hey, my job is underpaid in the market. It was about, hey, my job is underpaid in the market. It was about, hey, my job is underpaid in the market, my job is also underpaid internally. And, by the way, just using logic, what you say you value in this organization, my role delivers this for you. My role keeps people here. My role improves your leadership, which, in turn, keeps people here. Right, my role makes your employees better than when they came in the door, but you're not paying me accordingly. That was the conversation and that's how I made my case. And that's how I made my case.

Speaker 1:

I went from $265,000 base salary to $318,000 base salary. I went from a 15 to 20K bonus, a 15 to 20% bonus, to a 30% bonus, which was annually, was about $90,000, $95,000. I went from zero stock options right to $100,000 in stock options $100,000 worth of stock options. Now, the thing about stock options you may or you may not know is that when a company gives you stock options, now the thing about stock options you may or you may not know is that when a company gives you stock options, they don't just hand over the stock options. You have to usually stay with them for a certain amount of time to be able to get the full value of the stock options. And in this instance, I got $100,000 in stock options that vested at 25% a year. So I would get 25K in year one, another 25K in year two, and so on until 100K was done. I knew at that time I wasn't staying at that company for another four or five years. So I was thinking about, okay, if I can make it two more years, I wasn't staying at that company for another four or five years. So I was thinking about okay, if I can make it two more years, I will walk away with another 50K. Right, that's what I was thinking about. Okay, all that to say, I got 318K base salary, 95k bonus, 25k bonus, $100,000 stock options, and then I also got another 25,000 per year in my 401k and my 457b, right? So that was another 25k per year.

Speaker 1:

The other thing that and this will be important for you as well as you think about it, at different stages of our lives, different things are important. The reason why, for me, the stock options were so important is because prior to that, I had jumped from company to company, I had stopped working for long, I had gaps in my employment and I just didn't prioritize my retirement funding Right. So here I was, in my late 30s and I'm like, huh, I need to start thinking about how I'm going to survive when I retire. I need to start thinking about how I'm going to survive when I retire, and so I was trying to make up for lost time in making sure that I get the most out of my 4K and 457B and that I could use those stock options to actually help fund my retirement. That's why that was so important to me.

Speaker 1:

Some people would say, well, did you not want that in base, you know, could you not get that in base salary? Well, first of all, I probably couldn't, because I had already jumped like 20% up right. So I probably couldn't do that, and that's a big jump. I went from 265 to about 320, 318, right, that's a significant jump. To about 3.20, 3.18, right, that's a significant jump, particularly internally. But even if I could go more, if someone would have given me the option, I would have said give me the stock, because I know the stock is going to outperform that stock, outperforms the market all the time and I know I need it. I knew I needed to start building my retirement piece right, so that $100K in stock options was really important to me. To me that was like the biggest thing that I accumulated and if I look at my stock portfolio today it is definitely the biggest thing that I got out of that negotiation package.

Speaker 1:

And then the other things that I got that, you know, the value to me was immeasurable was I got unlimited PTO. I can't put a dollar amount on that. So I got unlimited PTO. And I got executive health benefits, which again was really important to me. I didn't have I mean they had the company had good health benefits, but when you get executive health benefits it comes with a whole bunch of other things. It comes with they pay you. You know they pay for your any health club of your choice. They give you annual annual exams right Annual, like above and beyond what you get from your Exams right, annual, like above and beyond what you get from your normal providers. They pay for anything related to health. So if you go to a spa, if you go to, if you want to do a weight loss program, if you like, anything related to your health, this particular company included as part of your executive health benefits. That was fantastic.

Speaker 1:

The last thing was that I negotiated a four-day work week, so I got Mondays off, which was great. To be fair, it wasn't Mondays off just to have Mondays off, so I worked Tuesday through Friday condensed work week so that I can have Mondays off. Because I was starting a private psychology practice I was becoming a therapist, right. So K plus salary package, and one of the reasons was because I went from thinking just about base salary and bonus to thinking about it in terms of total comp, right. The other thing I want you to remember is, whatever your priorities are, whatever season you are in your career, you need to know what's important to you beforehand before you start having conversations with your boss about a salary increase or anything like that. You need to know what is most important to you, because that's what you will stick to when you're negotiating for whatever it is that you want. For me, it was the stock options and it was the 401k and 457b. For you, it might be bonus, or it might be a day off, or it might be work from home. It could be anything that you value right now. So that's my story.

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Let me just recap what I think the important things are for you as you're walking away from today's conversation. The first thing I will say is everything is negotiable. There should be nothing off the table right, and even when your company might say it's off the table, they are. Trust me, I know, I've done it, I've had, I've helped my clients do it. There are creative ways to get what you want and what you need right by having the conversation. There's ways to bring it up. There's ways to ask for it. There's ways to bring it up. There's ways to ask for it. There's ways to secure it. Nothing is not. Everything's negotiable. That's the first thing I want you to walk away with.

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The second thing I want you to walk away with is it is important to have data. Do not negotiate based on feelings. So don't negotiate on I feel I'm worth more. It's not about your worth. It's about what the market is willing to pay and what you contribute, what your skills and talent contribute and do for your organization. Both of those things are quantifiable. Feelings are not quantifiable.

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The third thing I want you to think about and remember is not just base salary.

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Think about total compensation. As a middle manager, a vp, a director, a senior vp, you need to be thinking about total comp, not base, because you can get more from total comp than you will ever get from base salary. Okay, and then the next thing that I want you to think about is if you don't negotiate, you're literally self-sacrificing, you're self-abandoning, abandoning it. If you do that, right, you're allowing your company, your boss, even your colleagues, to devalue you. The first instinct you might have might be to walk out the door and say F you, I get it, but don't do that. Think about if you're going to do that, make sure you are making that decision from the right place, right. There's no guarantee that the next place you go is not also going to pay you below market, or you eventually, because you may come into the company at market, but over time you may be below market, right? So don't self-abandon, don't allow your company to devalue.

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Negotiate, okay, listen, if you are ready to build your confidence, if you need help building your skills on how to negotiate, on how to get information on salary, information on how to navigate whether you're trying to navigate internally to your company or, as you are, on the open market, then I definitely invite you to join me. On September 6th, I am holding a workshop called Her Executive Conversation Playbook and we are going to be going step by step through how to develop your own total compensation strategy and how to negotiate it for yourself. Okay, lady leader, I hope that you enjoyed that replay. Lady Leader, I hope that you enjoyed that replay. There were a number of gems that were discussed, and I have already been getting so many questions and inquiries about it. Someone who is ready to take action on accelerating your leadership career and including increasing your total compensation package, being able to understand what you should be making according to the market, as well as how you go about in your company getting what you should be making in the market, then do not hesitate. Go straight to the show notes and click the link to the total compensation playbook. That is the workshop that is happening on Saturday, this Saturday, september 6th.

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I would love for you to join me, mainly because I want you to have this information. This is the type of stuff that no one teaches us. It's definitely the type of stuff that no HR department reveals to the average employee or the average leader. And one of my objectives. One of my missions is to make sure that Black introverted female leaders have the information that you need to have in order to advocate for yourself and in order to make sure that you are navigating your career as quickly, as solidly and as effectively as possible, and knowing how and what your total compensation package should look like at this stage of your career is a key component to that. So don't hesitate, join us. Click the link, get your name on the list and I will see you on Saturday. Until next time, lady leader, keep leading your introvert way.