38. Money and Compensation
Let’s talk about money, namely how to get more of it into your hot little hands.
(And if you think you don’t want more of it, take a moment to just hear me out.)
Money is a tool in our world. And it’s an important one. Unless you live on a farm where you grow all your own food, generate your own electricity, and somehow magically acquire high-speed internet without any cash, money is part of your life. (Also, even in the farm scenario, chances are there would have been money involved.)
Making money isn’t just about making money. It’s about all the things money grants us access to. Things like food and shelter, yes, but also things like taking our kids on a fun trip or buying a fantastic piece of art from a local artist or supporting a dear friend’s kickstarter.
Money matters.
But in order to get more of it, we have to do a little housekeeping. Not of our actual, physical houses, but instead we have to clean up the BS stories we’ve been taught about money. Stories like money is evil and the only way to make money is to exploit people and rich people are dicks.
Because when we have beliefs like that, we will actively push money away. Why would we want to have more money if people with more money are dicks?
Now consider this: who benefits when you don’t think money is that important? Who benefits when you believe that it’s morally corrupt to make more than a certain amount of money? Who benefits when you don’t negotiate your pay?
Not you.
But also, not your family. Not other people you care about. Not your values and visions for the world. Not the organizations that you would donate to if your needs were totally met. Not the companies you would buy from if money were no object. Not the geniuses whose kickstarters you would invest in. Not the business you would launch if you could leave your day job, and not the clients that business would lovingly serve the shit out of.
Women are taught not to prioritize our wealth. That it’s unseemly. That we should be more heart-centered. That we should prioritize other values. But that just keeps us making less money, having less access, and often having less of a voice to do shit with.
So join me this week on the podcast where we’ll dive even deeper into the BS stories we’ve been taught about money and how to deprogram them so we can make bank and influence the world the way we want to see it be influenced.
If you love the podcast and want to take this work deeper, I have great news! I have space for new one-to-one coaching clients starting this month, so click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to teach and talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why understanding your social conditioning around money is a vital part of building a career you love.
What to consider if you’re currently ambivalent about money and think it’s not a big deal.
How money provides choices around your time, career, and countless other areas of your life.
Where our social conditioning around money comes from and how it shows up in our lives.
Why the seemingly small decisions that we make about money now can make a huge difference years down the line.
The coaching and self-coaching I’ve had to do around money in my own life and career.
How to negotiate your salary.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about money and compensation.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Y’all, we are going to talk about money today. And I’m so excited because I think that this is a topic that deserves so much talking about and yet I don’t see enough people talking about it. I don’t see enough conversations about it.
It’s interesting because in the coaching world, which I’m now part of, people talk about money openly all the time. We’re all talking about our numbers all the time and people are very open with it and there’s very much this acceptance that coaches want to make money.
And they want to make a lot of money. And that that’s a beautiful thing because it’s also about having a huge impact on the world and what we’re doing to create that money. And the idea that people, but specifically women and other marginalized communities can create wealth for themselves and wealth for their communities by doing something that is helpful for the world.
So much of what people have been raised to think about money is that it’s evil and that it’s exploitative and that it hurts people or that people hurt each other to get it. And in the coaching industry that idea gets totally turned on its head. Where we’re like money is amazing, and it’s wonderful, and you can create it doing things that are good for yourself and for others.
It’s very much like moving from an either or to a yes and. But I think that’s not the way that a lot of us think about money when it comes to being an employee, especially if you’re in the corporate world or not as involved in the coaching world.
And I know I’m talking a lot about the coaching industry and y’all, my listeners, are probably not coaches, although I do have people out there I know who listen to me who maybe want to become a coach. That used to be me. I was in corporate, but I wanted to become a coach.
But I wanted to bring that up because I think it really highlights how differently we can think about money and how the way we think about money matters. Because I see a lot of people who want to make more money in their career but they’re harboring all these old negative thoughts about money that are going to make it very hard to make money.
And this used to happen to me. I've done a lot of my own self coaching on money, and I've had a lot of coaching from other coaches on money. And it's been really helpful. Especially for allowing me to create a business that serves people, where I also make a lot of money.
I make way more money than I used to make when I was in corporate. I mean, technically, I'm like now fancy and I pay myself a salary. My salary is lower than it was in corporate. But I'm also a business owner and the business revenue is much higher.
I think at this point I've already earned this year in 2021, and it's July, in revenue, which is not profit but go with me, more than my yearly salary back when I worked in corporate. And that's wild, because I'm having way more fun doing work that really matters to me and doing work that I believe helps people have a better experience of their lives, their careers, their relationships, all the things.
And I love that as an example because I think so often, we get caught up in this like, “Oh, it's not about the money” thing. But work is work. It's not a hobby, so in many ways it is about the money. And we're going to get into more of that in a minute. But I just wanted to give you all a little spiel about why I care so much about this topic.
So I also want to share with you a Gloria Steinem quote which is, “The truth will set you free, but first will piss you off.” And during this podcast episode that may be your experience. You may be pissed about what you learn here. You may be pissed about what girls and women are taught when it comes to money and compensation and how that plays out for our careers. And you may be especially pissed about all the money you've left on the table up to this point in your life and in your career.
And I know that's something that I was pissed about at a certain point when I realized how much I just took what was offered to me, instead of negotiating more to get a salary that I really wanted. Or that would have been commensurate with the value that I was adding to that organization.
I remember one of my friends, who's also a mentor of mine, I shared with her my salary when I was in corporate and she told me, she was like, “They're not paying you enough.” And she is someone I would consider an expert in both understanding the nature of the value that I was offering there, and also corporations and salary negotiations and things like that.
And I remember when she said that I kind of had this moment of like, “Oh, I could be making more money, I'm adding more value.” But I also didn't do anything with that information. I didn't have a conversation with my manager. I didn't ask for a raise because of the value I was adding.
I kind of did talk to him about wanting a promotion. Wanting to move up and like look what I was doing in the organization. But I didn't say like, “Hey, here's the value I'm adding to this company. And I think it's equivalent to this, and my current salary is that.”
And, I mean, depending on who you ask, some people say it's useful to do that, others don't. But what I care the most about is not what you actually do with the information that I give you. I care about you having the information so you can make an educated choice.
I care about bringing the socialization you've received your attention so you can decide what you want to do with it. Because someone telling me that I wasn't getting paid enough, it both kind of stung because I was like, “Oh, I'm not getting paid enough.” But it was also kind of like, “Oh, I'm creating even more value.”
But it also didn't help me understand why I wasn't having more conversations about money. Or why I wasn't negotiating harder, or really at that point at all, to get a salary that was equivalent to what I was offering the organization.
So, like I said, you may be pissed off. Also, that's okay. Because as we know, negative feelings won't hurt you. And it's okay to have negative sensations. I think we talked about this last week in the 50:50. Allowing our feelings and letting them be there and knowing that sometimes we even want to choose negative feelings is wonderful. Because what it does is it really takes the resistance out of the negative feeling.
And when you take the resistance away, feelings are just a set of sensations that you have when you think a certain way. I know that seems maybe a little reductive, like we're like, “No, they're huge and they move the world.” And they do, but a lot of times they do that when we're not aware of them and we're not allowing them.
When we're aware of our feelings we're like, “Yeah, I'm super pissed. I'm learning these facts, I'm super pissed. I also know I'm super pissed because of my own thoughts and the way I'm thinking about this. And I'm cool with that. I want to choose these thoughts.” Then it's like just a feeling you can bring with you throughout your day. You can decide what you want to do with it.
And getting this information, even while you may be a little pissed at the same time, is going to give you so much more freedom. Like we said, you can't go back and collect all the money you left on past negotiating tables. But you can take what you're learning and change the rest of your life. And there's probably a lot of that left. And honestly, even if there's not, you can still change that.
We get this thing in our culture sometimes where we're like, “Oh, well, I'm already 40. So what's the point?” And I'm like, “What do you mean, what's the point? Even if you're only going to live to 41, that's one more year you could do any way you fucking want to on your own terms. Like eating fucking vanilla gelato for breakfast if you want to.”
So I don't care how old you are. First of all, you probably do have a lot of life left to live. And even if you don't, that's all the more reason to have a wonderful experience now and to do things your way now. Because you can't go back. But you can always go forward.
Okay, money and compensation. Whether you are pleased with your current compensation or not. And I just want to take a moment, of course, to say salary is only one part of compensation. But that's what actually we're going to talk about here. We're not going to talk about all the other things. But they may be really important to you.
And I do think we're kind of reductive and how we talk about comp sometimes, in that we only look at salary versus you might decide that what's really important to you is a flexible schedule. Or what's really important to you is working four days a week instead of five or getting a very specific kind of health insurance.
That's all compensation. Even vacation days are part of compensation. You get to decide what matters to you, but this is a conversation about money and comp so that's what we're going to talk about.
And I also want to say this week's podcast is really focused on the experience of women and of girls. But all marginalized people get a lot of messaging about money. And so even if you're not a woman or a girl, you probably can find something in here that's going to be really powerful for you. And all humans receive a lot of social conditioning about money. So, again, this will still be valuable for you. But as always on the podcast is the experience of women that I'm going to speak directly to.
Okay. All that being said, let's get back to money and comp. Whether you're pleased with your current comp or not, understanding the social conditioning that you have received around pay and money, specifically that women have received, and the actions that stem from that social conditioning is an essential piece of building a career you love.
A lot of people who come to me they're more about loving the work, loving the job, feeling less stress, all of that, creating meaning in their work. And that's all really important. But work is still work. And one of the defining characteristics of work is that we are paid for it. And because of that, having a conversation about money and pay is extremely important when it comes to you building a career you love.
Let's also talk about why this matters. Because I know there are people out there who are like, “I get paid enough, the money is not a big deal.” Even if you feel ambivalent about making more money, this is still a worthwhile topic. And I just want to take a moment to point out that ambivalence is part of the social conditioning you may have received about money. It's not necessarily your inborn characteristic.
Money is a tool. It is a currency, literally. We live in a capitalist society; money is the way you get the things you want and need. Money creates options, money creates choices. While you may think it's not that important to you, consider this, money can buy back time you currently spend doing things you'd rather not do, you prefer not to prioritize, whatever. Like cleaning or grocery shopping.
For me personally, I buy back time by paying someone else to clean my home. Sometimes I buy back time by paying Instacart to bring things to my house. That is not a plug for Instacart, I don't have any paid affiliations, that's just literally the service I've used.
Money can give you options that help you build a career you truly love, such as being able to leave a job without having another job lined up. Or being able to take an unpaid sabbatical. Or being able to take a job that actually doesn't pay as much as you want if you want to do it as a labor of love at a certain point.
Having money allows you to have choices about what you do with your time, and in your career, and so many other areas. Money also grants you access to services and goods, from housing to healthcare to the food on your dinner plate.
As much as some people want to say that money is not a big deal, it is literally how we get everything. If our children are the most important things in our lives, money is what allows us to care for them, clothe them, feed them, etc. This is all really obvious. But I also think it gets lost sometimes in the way we're socialized about money.
Another thing money does is allow you to support your values. When you have more money, you can use it to support businesses whose values align with yours, even if that means spending more for a similar item. This is something that I've really lived and experienced.
As I've had more money, I buy much more expensive groceries than I used to. And I get to vote with my dollars on what kind of stores I want to support, what kind of businesses I want to support. And that is a form of access. It's also like a form of me getting to support other people's livelihoods.
And this is just a handful of things that money can do. There's so many more. So when women are socialized to think that money is bad or problematic, it doesn't just cut us off from money. It cuts us off from power, it cuts us off from access, it cuts us off from the ability to live our lives by our own designs, and to create change in the larger world.
And the money we're talking about is not insubstantial. Over the course of your career the choices you make about your salary compound. A difference of a few thousand dollars in one year of your career may add up to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars by the time you retire.
So how do we get the ideas that we have about money? Social conditioning, which I know it's all I talk about all day long, but it's super important y’all. Women start receiving social conditioning at a very young age. And the social conditioning we receive about money is no different.
And you know the deal, we get this social conditioning from authority figures, social influences, parents, yes, but also books, films, our peers, etc. I think for me personally, books and films, and when I say films, I just mean movies, I wasn’t watching fancy ass films or anything. I was always, as a kid, taking away lessons from whatever I was watching.
And if you think about social conditioning, it's like everyone has it. And if we don't know we have it, we kind of all are perpetrating it all the time. So I could be reading a book like The Baby-Sitters Club, but I may be picking up lessons about money that the author may or may not have meant to put there. Because if she also received social conditioning things just filter through. They filter through and are examples, they filter through in our speech.
We can be teaching each other things we don't mean to be teaching each other because when we have social conditioning, we don't necessarily realize we have it. And until you can see that social conditioning for what it is, it's going to seem like your own ideas or just the way things are.
We keep playing the same old thoughts on repeat, often without realizing that they're optional and we could choose differently. One way to think about this is that social conditioning is like an invisible script you don't even know you're following.
I actually learned that phrase from someone who teaches and talks about finance, Ramit Sethi, I think I'm saying his name right, I hope I am. He uses this phrase invisible scripts and that's how I think about it with money, probably because I learned that idea from him. And we have these with everything right?
Social conditioning is an invisible script that we follow without realizing we're following. Until we understand what it is and then it's optional, it feels like us. It feels like it's our ideas and our decisions. But it's the socialization running our thinking from behind the scenes.
One thing that's really fucked up about this is that social conditioning takes external oppression. Which is the very real and statistically observable ways that people are discriminated against. Women, yes, but lots of kinds of people. And it turns it into internal oppression.
And what that means is instead of, or in addition to hearing that messaging from external sources we will also be the ones repeating it to ourselves. And this is exacerbated for people who belong to multiple marginalized identities, such as women of color, queer women, women who belong to any religion other than the dominant one.
And it can also obviously be true for men. And men can have many marginalized identities as well. So the more marginalized identities you have, the more kinds of internalized oppression you may be experiencing sort of all compounded together at once.
And again, it may not be obvious to you that what you're hearing or telling yourself is social conditioning. Because once social conditioning has been absorbed by your beautiful brain, it doesn't sound like social conditioning, it sounds like you talking to yourself in your own voice. It sounds like the truth. It sounds like there's just a certain way of doing things and this certain way is correct.
And you may be hesitant to push back against that thinking because you think it's your own insight, or your own fears about the way the world is, or your own fears about what money is and what it means. Versus seeing it for what it is just ideas you absorb from people you would never ask for salary negotiation or money advice today.
Also, when it comes to creating real and substantial change in the way we earn and think about money, we have to start by changing the internalized oppression and our own social conditioning first. And this is especially true when it comes to salary and comp negotiations.
If you try to change the way women are paid in general, or whatever marginalized group you belong to are paid in general, without first doing the work on your own mindset, you will likely find the same thoughts that block you from asking for a raise, blocking you in your efforts to change the larger system.
There's a siren going by outside. I don't know if you can hear it, but if you can, I just want you to assume that the siren agrees with me and thinks this is very important.
Okay, so what does this actually look like though? I have a list here of common thoughts that we have been socialized to think about money. And by we, I mean women, but they may apply to you as well, even if you're not a woman. As I read through them take a moment to notice which ones you believe or identify with.
Money is bad or dangerous. It's not important how much money I make. Money is not something I should talk about. Money is something I should have, but not want or pursue. Money is difficult or painful. Money is something women should lead to the men in their lives. It's greedy to want more money.
I could go on and on, but I think that's a good handful. How many of these are things you learned to believe? What thoughts did you learn about money that aren't listed here? Thoughts are not just words that pass through your brain. I mean, they literally are, but if they go unchecked, if you don't notice them and interrupt them and see them for the social conditioning they are, they have cause and effect.
So thoughts create feelings and feelings create actions. Here are some examples of actions you may take if you are living according to social conditioning about money, such as the sample thoughts I offered earlier. Something you may do is rather than negotiate terms of comp, you may focus on generating gratitude for the comp that is offered.
You may work to stretch the comp you receive or shrink your expenses rather than negotiating higher pay. You may remind yourself of all the people who don't have a job or make less than you do even if your pay is below market rate. You may guilt trip yourself about caring about money at all.
You may decide not to negotiate your salary because you don't want to come across as greedy, or risk the offer being rescinded. You may stew in resentment over your pay while not taking any steps to secure higher comp. And you may also beat yourself up about your pay. While you may believe intellectually that you “should” negotiate and ask for higher compensation, you may not because of the discomfort you would feel. And the discomfort you would feel is because, again, of that social conditioning.
But wait, there's more. On top of the social conditioning women receive on money, women are socialized to get along with other people, make sure everyone around them is happy, and never let other people be uncomfortable. And if you're in a group with additional cultural implications around this, you may feel this pressure at an even higher level.
As an example if you're a black woman, you may feel the need to be even more delicate in salary negotiations so as to not be perceived as overly aggressive.
With this kind of social conditioning, it's no wonder that many women are hesitant to negotiate the terms of their compensation. The idea of talking about money at all, let alone asking for more of it, may be deeply uncomfortable.
And as a reminder, when women don't negotiate their salaries, they're shutting themselves off from hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars a year. Money that could buy them options, grant them economic power, help them change their lives, the lives of their community, and the entire world.
And I want to take another moment to say this is not women's fault. It's not women's fault that we have these thought patterns. It's not our fault that people try to pay us less. None of that's our fault. But when we have internalized oppression, that internalized oppression does the work of keeping us stuck. Even if the systems went away, we may still stay stuck.
So while I'm not saying it's okay, that other people are doing what they're doing, I'm not saying it's okay that we received the social conditioning. I'm not saying it's okay that companies try to pay women less. What I am saying is, I believe that the number one place to start is by cleaning our own brains out from the bullshit social conditioning we received. Because I think that's essential for us to go out and make bigger change in the world.
But I think it's so important that I call that out clearly here, understanding what our thought patterns and mindset is doing is not blaming ourselves. It's more like understanding that we have a viral infection. And until we treat the viral infection, the virus will replicate. And it will replicate in our bodies, and in the case of a thought virus, it will replicate in our minds, in our actions.
So it's not to say we're to blame or anything like that. We're totally not, you're totally not. It's to say we got to clean up this fucking infection so we can think clearly, thoughtfully, intentionally, by our own design. And then we're going to go out into the world and we're going to kick some ass and we're going to change things. That's what the fuck is up right here.
So how do we solve this virus? How do we cure it? How do we get these fucked up bullshit social conditioning thoughts out of our head? We have to learn to think new thoughts. We have to learn to see the old thoughts for what they are, not our own ideas, but just our social conditioning. And we have to think new things instead.
We have to choose new thoughts about money. And I think we also have to be willing to be uncomfortable, because it's going to be uncomfortable. First of all, changing our thoughts is uncomfortable. Second of all, going against 20, 30, 40 years of social conditioning feels uncomfortable at first, even when we're changing our thoughts.
In order to do most of the big, beautiful things I've done in my life since I've learned about coaching, and even before I learned about coaching, I had to be able to tolerate discomfort. I had to be able to tolerate it physically in my body and let that discomfort sit with me and be there while I did the action I wanted to do. While I asked for what I wanted.
And this is as true in work as it is in anywhere else. When I'm going to have a difficult conversation with my partner that really matters to me, but everything in my social conditioning is like, “Don't do it. Don't say anything, just pretend you're fine.” I feel immensely uncomfortable in my body. And so a big part of my work is just learning to tolerate that. To just let the discomfort be there and know it's the discomfort I'm choosing on purpose, like we talked about last week in the 50:50 episode.
But on top of that, I want to also offer you a framework that's going to help you move towards more useful thoughts. So one place where I see people get stuck is that they think negotiating their salary is the same as “asking for more money.” But that's not actually true or accurate. A salary is not a handout, it's an exchange. Every kind of work has a certain financial value determined by the market.
For instance, if you have a skill that many people want and few people offer it, you can charge a lot of money for it. How much money? As much as anyone's willing to pay. That's what market price means, it's the price at which one person or entity is willing to buy and another is willing to sell.
When we think about earning money, we need to understand what the value is that we offer. Now a lot of people do stuff that's incredibly valuable, but we have to understand what the financial value of it is, what the market value of it is. Because that's the system that we're in right now. Maybe one day we'll be in a different system, and we can think about it differently. But in this system, it's the financial value.
So what is the financial value? What is the market rate for what you do? An easy way to figure this out is to ask yourself, “What would a straight white man be paid to do the same work?” That is the market price, or the basic cost that someone would pay to do the work when it's unimpacted by other factors, such as the way women and people with marginalized identities are often paid less for the same work.
If you don't know what a straight white man would be paid for the work, you can also go find some real world data. Websites such as PayScale can help you get a better understanding of the salary range for the role or work you do.
Now, here's the thing, y'all, you may want to make more money than the market price of your work. And that's okay. But if you want to make more money than the market price of your work you either need to find a way to add more value, increasing your market value. Or you need to find a way to explain why the value of your work is actually higher than the market price.
In order to do either of those things, you're going to have to go back to that social conditioning and question it. And it's going to be the social conditioning about like, is it greedy to ask for more money? But it's also going to be the social conditioning about like, it's not okay to talk about money.
Okay, we talked about a lot of stuff so let's review. Whether you want to make more money or not, I really just want you to understand that you have fuck loads of social conditioning about money. And you may need to look at that before you even know if you want to make more money.
Now, for me, when I was younger, I for sure knew I wanted to make more money. I'm a Taurus, I like to have nice things, I wanted to make more money. But for a lot of us, even the desire to make money might feel conflicting. And that is from your social conditioning, maybe among other factors.
So what I want you to think about when it comes to your salary and your compensation is what are all the messages I've received about money? What are the messages I've received about pay? And get a piece of paper and write that shit down.
And then ask yourself, “Where did these ideas come from? Who profits from these ideas? Do I profit from these ideas? Does the world profit from these ideas? Or does only the company I work for profit from these ideas, because then I just don't ask to be paid more?” And go through one by one and examine those thoughts and decide which ones you want to keep.
And then you need to pick some new thoughts on purpose. And throughout this podcast I've offered you tons. Like money is agency, money is power, money is an opportunity to live in more alignment with your values. Those are some of my thoughts, some of my chosen mindset about money. And they may resonate for you, or they may not. You may want to design your own thoughts, your own new mindset about money.
But I want to say for a lot of people, this is really deep coaching work. Because for many of us, we were taught that money is a taboo subject. So it may be difficult for you to even look at your thoughts about money.
If that's true for you, that's okay, there's nothing wrong with you. But you in particular might really benefit from working with a coach. Because this happens to me in my own coaching too, sometimes there's stuff that I just don't want to look at. And if I'm not getting coached by someone else, I'm just like doing my own self coaching, sometimes I just don't look at that shit. I just don't look at it, and then nothing changes.
I don't see the social conditioning, I don't question it. I don't choose new thoughts. So sometimes we need a second person who doesn't have our same social conditioning, who doesn't think it's taboo. Like that's half my job as a coach is to just hold space for whatever you bring, and not think it's taboo and not be like, “Oh, I can't believe Claire talked about money.”
You can bring anything you want to coaching. And I'm going to treat it as it's neutral because that's my job as a coach. And then we can look at it and examine it and see if you like it or see if you'd like to have something else. And if you want a different thought, I can teach you how to have it. I can teach you how to program that neural pathway.
And listen, it doesn't have to be me. If you want to do money coaching, I want you to do it because I think it's so incredibly powerful will change the rest of your life. And it'll pay for itself in no time. Because so many of us have social conditioning that has us pushing money away or overspending money. Or doing all kinds of bullshit that we don't actually want to be doing that we just don't know how to stop doing until we get those old thoughts out of there.
So I just want to say you don't have to do this alone. Money particularly is an area where many people need a second set of eyes. It doesn't mean you have to, maybe you can do it on your own. It's a juicy topic, I want you to explore it.
And yeah, if you need some help exploring it, come hit me up, send me a DM on Instagram, email me at hello@korilinn.com. And let's talk about it because I want you to have a rich life on your terms, by your definition. Not just in salary and money, but in whatever kind of compensation you want, in whatever kind of career you want. And I know without a doubt coaching can help you get there.
And if you love what I teach, and you want some help taking things a little bit deeper and figuring out how this all applies to your own life. I've got good news for you. I've got space for a few new one on one coaching clients starting this month. So let's hop on a call. I'll give you some coaching right away to help you get going. And if it seems like a good fit, I will share with you how we can work together. Just head on over to my website and click on the work with me button and get started there.
Also, bonus, my coaching offering is totally virtual so as to better serve my global audience. And yes, I do work with people who are not native English speakers, and we've had great success doing that. There's even a testimonial on my website with someone in that category. So you can check that out on the testimonials page. All right y'all, have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Y’all, we are going to talk about money today. And I’m so excited because I think that this is a topic that deserves so much talking about and yet I don’t see enough people talking about it. I don’t see enough conversations about it.
It’s interesting because in the coaching world, which I’m now part of, people talk about money openly all the time. We’re all talking about our numbers all the time and people are very open with it and there’s very much this acceptance that coaches want to make money.
And they want to make a lot of money. And that that’s a beautiful thing because it’s also about having a huge impact on the world and what we’re doing to create that money. And the idea that people, but specifically women and other marginalized communities can create wealth for themselves and wealth for their communities by doing something that is helpful for the world.
So much of what people have been raised to think about money is that it’s evil and that it’s exploitative and that it hurts people or that people hurt each other to get it. And in the coaching industry that idea gets totally turned on its head. Where we’re like money is amazing, and it’s wonderful, and you can create it doing things that are good for yourself and for others.
It’s very much like moving from an either or to a yes and. But I think that’s not the way that a lot of us think about money when it comes to being an employee, especially if you’re in the corporate world or not as involved in the coaching world.
And I know I’m talking a lot about the coaching industry and y’all, my listeners, are probably not coaches, although I do have people out there I know who listen to me who maybe want to become a coach. That used to be me. I was in corporate, but I wanted to become a coach.
But I wanted to bring that up because I think it really highlights how differently we can think about money and how the way we think about money matters. Because I see a lot of people who want to make more money in their career but they’re harboring all these old negative thoughts about money that are going to make it very hard to make money.
And this used to happen to me. I've done a lot of my own self coaching on money, and I've had a lot of coaching from other coaches on money. And it's been really helpful. Especially for allowing me to create a business that serves people, where I also make a lot of money.
I make way more money than I used to make when I was in corporate. I mean, technically, I'm like now fancy and I pay myself a salary. My salary is lower than it was in corporate. But I'm also a business owner and the business revenue is much higher.
I think at this point I've already earned this year in 2021, and it's July, in revenue, which is not profit but go with me, more than my yearly salary back when I worked in corporate. And that's wild, because I'm having way more fun doing work that really matters to me and doing work that I believe helps people have a better experience of their lives, their careers, their relationships, all the things.
And I love that as an example because I think so often, we get caught up in this like, “Oh, it's not about the money” thing. But work is work. It's not a hobby, so in many ways it is about the money. And we're going to get into more of that in a minute. But I just wanted to give you all a little spiel about why I care so much about this topic.
So I also want to share with you a Gloria Steinem quote which is, “The truth will set you free, but first will piss you off.” And during this podcast episode that may be your experience. You may be pissed about what you learn here. You may be pissed about what girls and women are taught when it comes to money and compensation and how that plays out for our careers. And you may be especially pissed about all the money you've left on the table up to this point in your life and in your career.
And I know that's something that I was pissed about at a certain point when I realized how much I just took what was offered to me, instead of negotiating more to get a salary that I really wanted. Or that would have been commensurate with the value that I was adding to that organization.
I remember one of my friends, who's also a mentor of mine, I shared with her my salary when I was in corporate and she told me, she was like, “They're not paying you enough.” And she is someone I would consider an expert in both understanding the nature of the value that I was offering there, and also corporations and salary negotiations and things like that.
And I remember when she said that I kind of had this moment of like, “Oh, I could be making more money, I'm adding more value.” But I also didn't do anything with that information. I didn't have a conversation with my manager. I didn't ask for a raise because of the value I was adding.
I kind of did talk to him about wanting a promotion. Wanting to move up and like look what I was doing in the organization. But I didn't say like, “Hey, here's the value I'm adding to this company. And I think it's equivalent to this, and my current salary is that.”
And, I mean, depending on who you ask, some people say it's useful to do that, others don't. But what I care the most about is not what you actually do with the information that I give you. I care about you having the information so you can make an educated choice.
I care about bringing the socialization you've received your attention so you can decide what you want to do with it. Because someone telling me that I wasn't getting paid enough, it both kind of stung because I was like, “Oh, I'm not getting paid enough.” But it was also kind of like, “Oh, I'm creating even more value.”
But it also didn't help me understand why I wasn't having more conversations about money. Or why I wasn't negotiating harder, or really at that point at all, to get a salary that was equivalent to what I was offering the organization.
So, like I said, you may be pissed off. Also, that's okay. Because as we know, negative feelings won't hurt you. And it's okay to have negative sensations. I think we talked about this last week in the 50:50. Allowing our feelings and letting them be there and knowing that sometimes we even want to choose negative feelings is wonderful. Because what it does is it really takes the resistance out of the negative feeling.
And when you take the resistance away, feelings are just a set of sensations that you have when you think a certain way. I know that seems maybe a little reductive, like we're like, “No, they're huge and they move the world.” And they do, but a lot of times they do that when we're not aware of them and we're not allowing them.
When we're aware of our feelings we're like, “Yeah, I'm super pissed. I'm learning these facts, I'm super pissed. I also know I'm super pissed because of my own thoughts and the way I'm thinking about this. And I'm cool with that. I want to choose these thoughts.” Then it's like just a feeling you can bring with you throughout your day. You can decide what you want to do with it.
And getting this information, even while you may be a little pissed at the same time, is going to give you so much more freedom. Like we said, you can't go back and collect all the money you left on past negotiating tables. But you can take what you're learning and change the rest of your life. And there's probably a lot of that left. And honestly, even if there's not, you can still change that.
We get this thing in our culture sometimes where we're like, “Oh, well, I'm already 40. So what's the point?” And I'm like, “What do you mean, what's the point? Even if you're only going to live to 41, that's one more year you could do any way you fucking want to on your own terms. Like eating fucking vanilla gelato for breakfast if you want to.”
So I don't care how old you are. First of all, you probably do have a lot of life left to live. And even if you don't, that's all the more reason to have a wonderful experience now and to do things your way now. Because you can't go back. But you can always go forward.
Okay, money and compensation. Whether you are pleased with your current compensation or not. And I just want to take a moment, of course, to say salary is only one part of compensation. But that's what actually we're going to talk about here. We're not going to talk about all the other things. But they may be really important to you.
And I do think we're kind of reductive and how we talk about comp sometimes, in that we only look at salary versus you might decide that what's really important to you is a flexible schedule. Or what's really important to you is working four days a week instead of five or getting a very specific kind of health insurance.
That's all compensation. Even vacation days are part of compensation. You get to decide what matters to you, but this is a conversation about money and comp so that's what we're going to talk about.
And I also want to say this week's podcast is really focused on the experience of women and of girls. But all marginalized people get a lot of messaging about money. And so even if you're not a woman or a girl, you probably can find something in here that's going to be really powerful for you. And all humans receive a lot of social conditioning about money. So, again, this will still be valuable for you. But as always on the podcast is the experience of women that I'm going to speak directly to.
Okay. All that being said, let's get back to money and comp. Whether you're pleased with your current comp or not, understanding the social conditioning that you have received around pay and money, specifically that women have received, and the actions that stem from that social conditioning is an essential piece of building a career you love.
A lot of people who come to me they're more about loving the work, loving the job, feeling less stress, all of that, creating meaning in their work. And that's all really important. But work is still work. And one of the defining characteristics of work is that we are paid for it. And because of that, having a conversation about money and pay is extremely important when it comes to you building a career you love.
Let's also talk about why this matters. Because I know there are people out there who are like, “I get paid enough, the money is not a big deal.” Even if you feel ambivalent about making more money, this is still a worthwhile topic. And I just want to take a moment to point out that ambivalence is part of the social conditioning you may have received about money. It's not necessarily your inborn characteristic.
Money is a tool. It is a currency, literally. We live in a capitalist society; money is the way you get the things you want and need. Money creates options, money creates choices. While you may think it's not that important to you, consider this, money can buy back time you currently spend doing things you'd rather not do, you prefer not to prioritize, whatever. Like cleaning or grocery shopping.
For me personally, I buy back time by paying someone else to clean my home. Sometimes I buy back time by paying Instacart to bring things to my house. That is not a plug for Instacart, I don't have any paid affiliations, that's just literally the service I've used.
Money can give you options that help you build a career you truly love, such as being able to leave a job without having another job lined up. Or being able to take an unpaid sabbatical. Or being able to take a job that actually doesn't pay as much as you want if you want to do it as a labor of love at a certain point.
Having money allows you to have choices about what you do with your time, and in your career, and so many other areas. Money also grants you access to services and goods, from housing to healthcare to the food on your dinner plate.
As much as some people want to say that money is not a big deal, it is literally how we get everything. If our children are the most important things in our lives, money is what allows us to care for them, clothe them, feed them, etc. This is all really obvious. But I also think it gets lost sometimes in the way we're socialized about money.
Another thing money does is allow you to support your values. When you have more money, you can use it to support businesses whose values align with yours, even if that means spending more for a similar item. This is something that I've really lived and experienced.
As I've had more money, I buy much more expensive groceries than I used to. And I get to vote with my dollars on what kind of stores I want to support, what kind of businesses I want to support. And that is a form of access. It's also like a form of me getting to support other people's livelihoods.
And this is just a handful of things that money can do. There's so many more. So when women are socialized to think that money is bad or problematic, it doesn't just cut us off from money. It cuts us off from power, it cuts us off from access, it cuts us off from the ability to live our lives by our own designs, and to create change in the larger world.
And the money we're talking about is not insubstantial. Over the course of your career the choices you make about your salary compound. A difference of a few thousand dollars in one year of your career may add up to hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars by the time you retire.
So how do we get the ideas that we have about money? Social conditioning, which I know it's all I talk about all day long, but it's super important y’all. Women start receiving social conditioning at a very young age. And the social conditioning we receive about money is no different.
And you know the deal, we get this social conditioning from authority figures, social influences, parents, yes, but also books, films, our peers, etc. I think for me personally, books and films, and when I say films, I just mean movies, I wasn’t watching fancy ass films or anything. I was always, as a kid, taking away lessons from whatever I was watching.
And if you think about social conditioning, it's like everyone has it. And if we don't know we have it, we kind of all are perpetrating it all the time. So I could be reading a book like The Baby-Sitters Club, but I may be picking up lessons about money that the author may or may not have meant to put there. Because if she also received social conditioning things just filter through. They filter through and are examples, they filter through in our speech.
We can be teaching each other things we don't mean to be teaching each other because when we have social conditioning, we don't necessarily realize we have it. And until you can see that social conditioning for what it is, it's going to seem like your own ideas or just the way things are.
We keep playing the same old thoughts on repeat, often without realizing that they're optional and we could choose differently. One way to think about this is that social conditioning is like an invisible script you don't even know you're following.
I actually learned that phrase from someone who teaches and talks about finance, Ramit Sethi, I think I'm saying his name right, I hope I am. He uses this phrase invisible scripts and that's how I think about it with money, probably because I learned that idea from him. And we have these with everything right?
Social conditioning is an invisible script that we follow without realizing we're following. Until we understand what it is and then it's optional, it feels like us. It feels like it's our ideas and our decisions. But it's the socialization running our thinking from behind the scenes.
One thing that's really fucked up about this is that social conditioning takes external oppression. Which is the very real and statistically observable ways that people are discriminated against. Women, yes, but lots of kinds of people. And it turns it into internal oppression.
And what that means is instead of, or in addition to hearing that messaging from external sources we will also be the ones repeating it to ourselves. And this is exacerbated for people who belong to multiple marginalized identities, such as women of color, queer women, women who belong to any religion other than the dominant one.
And it can also obviously be true for men. And men can have many marginalized identities as well. So the more marginalized identities you have, the more kinds of internalized oppression you may be experiencing sort of all compounded together at once.
And again, it may not be obvious to you that what you're hearing or telling yourself is social conditioning. Because once social conditioning has been absorbed by your beautiful brain, it doesn't sound like social conditioning, it sounds like you talking to yourself in your own voice. It sounds like the truth. It sounds like there's just a certain way of doing things and this certain way is correct.
And you may be hesitant to push back against that thinking because you think it's your own insight, or your own fears about the way the world is, or your own fears about what money is and what it means. Versus seeing it for what it is just ideas you absorb from people you would never ask for salary negotiation or money advice today.
Also, when it comes to creating real and substantial change in the way we earn and think about money, we have to start by changing the internalized oppression and our own social conditioning first. And this is especially true when it comes to salary and comp negotiations.
If you try to change the way women are paid in general, or whatever marginalized group you belong to are paid in general, without first doing the work on your own mindset, you will likely find the same thoughts that block you from asking for a raise, blocking you in your efforts to change the larger system.
There's a siren going by outside. I don't know if you can hear it, but if you can, I just want you to assume that the siren agrees with me and thinks this is very important.
Okay, so what does this actually look like though? I have a list here of common thoughts that we have been socialized to think about money. And by we, I mean women, but they may apply to you as well, even if you're not a woman. As I read through them take a moment to notice which ones you believe or identify with.
Money is bad or dangerous. It's not important how much money I make. Money is not something I should talk about. Money is something I should have, but not want or pursue. Money is difficult or painful. Money is something women should lead to the men in their lives. It's greedy to want more money.
I could go on and on, but I think that's a good handful. How many of these are things you learned to believe? What thoughts did you learn about money that aren't listed here? Thoughts are not just words that pass through your brain. I mean, they literally are, but if they go unchecked, if you don't notice them and interrupt them and see them for the social conditioning they are, they have cause and effect.
So thoughts create feelings and feelings create actions. Here are some examples of actions you may take if you are living according to social conditioning about money, such as the sample thoughts I offered earlier. Something you may do is rather than negotiate terms of comp, you may focus on generating gratitude for the comp that is offered.
You may work to stretch the comp you receive or shrink your expenses rather than negotiating higher pay. You may remind yourself of all the people who don't have a job or make less than you do even if your pay is below market rate. You may guilt trip yourself about caring about money at all.
You may decide not to negotiate your salary because you don't want to come across as greedy, or risk the offer being rescinded. You may stew in resentment over your pay while not taking any steps to secure higher comp. And you may also beat yourself up about your pay. While you may believe intellectually that you “should” negotiate and ask for higher compensation, you may not because of the discomfort you would feel. And the discomfort you would feel is because, again, of that social conditioning.
But wait, there's more. On top of the social conditioning women receive on money, women are socialized to get along with other people, make sure everyone around them is happy, and never let other people be uncomfortable. And if you're in a group with additional cultural implications around this, you may feel this pressure at an even higher level.
As an example if you're a black woman, you may feel the need to be even more delicate in salary negotiations so as to not be perceived as overly aggressive.
With this kind of social conditioning, it's no wonder that many women are hesitant to negotiate the terms of their compensation. The idea of talking about money at all, let alone asking for more of it, may be deeply uncomfortable.
And as a reminder, when women don't negotiate their salaries, they're shutting themselves off from hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars a year. Money that could buy them options, grant them economic power, help them change their lives, the lives of their community, and the entire world.
And I want to take another moment to say this is not women's fault. It's not women's fault that we have these thought patterns. It's not our fault that people try to pay us less. None of that's our fault. But when we have internalized oppression, that internalized oppression does the work of keeping us stuck. Even if the systems went away, we may still stay stuck.
So while I'm not saying it's okay, that other people are doing what they're doing, I'm not saying it's okay that we received the social conditioning. I'm not saying it's okay that companies try to pay women less. What I am saying is, I believe that the number one place to start is by cleaning our own brains out from the bullshit social conditioning we received. Because I think that's essential for us to go out and make bigger change in the world.
But I think it's so important that I call that out clearly here, understanding what our thought patterns and mindset is doing is not blaming ourselves. It's more like understanding that we have a viral infection. And until we treat the viral infection, the virus will replicate. And it will replicate in our bodies, and in the case of a thought virus, it will replicate in our minds, in our actions.
So it's not to say we're to blame or anything like that. We're totally not, you're totally not. It's to say we got to clean up this fucking infection so we can think clearly, thoughtfully, intentionally, by our own design. And then we're going to go out into the world and we're going to kick some ass and we're going to change things. That's what the fuck is up right here.
So how do we solve this virus? How do we cure it? How do we get these fucked up bullshit social conditioning thoughts out of our head? We have to learn to think new thoughts. We have to learn to see the old thoughts for what they are, not our own ideas, but just our social conditioning. And we have to think new things instead.
We have to choose new thoughts about money. And I think we also have to be willing to be uncomfortable, because it's going to be uncomfortable. First of all, changing our thoughts is uncomfortable. Second of all, going against 20, 30, 40 years of social conditioning feels uncomfortable at first, even when we're changing our thoughts.
In order to do most of the big, beautiful things I've done in my life since I've learned about coaching, and even before I learned about coaching, I had to be able to tolerate discomfort. I had to be able to tolerate it physically in my body and let that discomfort sit with me and be there while I did the action I wanted to do. While I asked for what I wanted.
And this is as true in work as it is in anywhere else. When I'm going to have a difficult conversation with my partner that really matters to me, but everything in my social conditioning is like, “Don't do it. Don't say anything, just pretend you're fine.” I feel immensely uncomfortable in my body. And so a big part of my work is just learning to tolerate that. To just let the discomfort be there and know it's the discomfort I'm choosing on purpose, like we talked about last week in the 50:50 episode.
But on top of that, I want to also offer you a framework that's going to help you move towards more useful thoughts. So one place where I see people get stuck is that they think negotiating their salary is the same as “asking for more money.” But that's not actually true or accurate. A salary is not a handout, it's an exchange. Every kind of work has a certain financial value determined by the market.
For instance, if you have a skill that many people want and few people offer it, you can charge a lot of money for it. How much money? As much as anyone's willing to pay. That's what market price means, it's the price at which one person or entity is willing to buy and another is willing to sell.
When we think about earning money, we need to understand what the value is that we offer. Now a lot of people do stuff that's incredibly valuable, but we have to understand what the financial value of it is, what the market value of it is. Because that's the system that we're in right now. Maybe one day we'll be in a different system, and we can think about it differently. But in this system, it's the financial value.
So what is the financial value? What is the market rate for what you do? An easy way to figure this out is to ask yourself, “What would a straight white man be paid to do the same work?” That is the market price, or the basic cost that someone would pay to do the work when it's unimpacted by other factors, such as the way women and people with marginalized identities are often paid less for the same work.
If you don't know what a straight white man would be paid for the work, you can also go find some real world data. Websites such as PayScale can help you get a better understanding of the salary range for the role or work you do.
Now, here's the thing, y'all, you may want to make more money than the market price of your work. And that's okay. But if you want to make more money than the market price of your work you either need to find a way to add more value, increasing your market value. Or you need to find a way to explain why the value of your work is actually higher than the market price.
In order to do either of those things, you're going to have to go back to that social conditioning and question it. And it's going to be the social conditioning about like, is it greedy to ask for more money? But it's also going to be the social conditioning about like, it's not okay to talk about money.
Okay, we talked about a lot of stuff so let's review. Whether you want to make more money or not, I really just want you to understand that you have fuck loads of social conditioning about money. And you may need to look at that before you even know if you want to make more money.
Now, for me, when I was younger, I for sure knew I wanted to make more money. I'm a Taurus, I like to have nice things, I wanted to make more money. But for a lot of us, even the desire to make money might feel conflicting. And that is from your social conditioning, maybe among other factors.
So what I want you to think about when it comes to your salary and your compensation is what are all the messages I've received about money? What are the messages I've received about pay? And get a piece of paper and write that shit down.
And then ask yourself, “Where did these ideas come from? Who profits from these ideas? Do I profit from these ideas? Does the world profit from these ideas? Or does only the company I work for profit from these ideas, because then I just don't ask to be paid more?” And go through one by one and examine those thoughts and decide which ones you want to keep.
And then you need to pick some new thoughts on purpose. And throughout this podcast I've offered you tons. Like money is agency, money is power, money is an opportunity to live in more alignment with your values. Those are some of my thoughts, some of my chosen mindset about money. And they may resonate for you, or they may not. You may want to design your own thoughts, your own new mindset about money.
But I want to say for a lot of people, this is really deep coaching work. Because for many of us, we were taught that money is a taboo subject. So it may be difficult for you to even look at your thoughts about money.
If that's true for you, that's okay, there's nothing wrong with you. But you in particular might really benefit from working with a coach. Because this happens to me in my own coaching too, sometimes there's stuff that I just don't want to look at. And if I'm not getting coached by someone else, I'm just like doing my own self coaching, sometimes I just don't look at that shit. I just don't look at it, and then nothing changes.
I don't see the social conditioning, I don't question it. I don't choose new thoughts. So sometimes we need a second person who doesn't have our same social conditioning, who doesn't think it's taboo. Like that's half my job as a coach is to just hold space for whatever you bring, and not think it's taboo and not be like, “Oh, I can't believe Claire talked about money.”
You can bring anything you want to coaching. And I'm going to treat it as it's neutral because that's my job as a coach. And then we can look at it and examine it and see if you like it or see if you'd like to have something else. And if you want a different thought, I can teach you how to have it. I can teach you how to program that neural pathway.
And listen, it doesn't have to be me. If you want to do money coaching, I want you to do it because I think it's so incredibly powerful will change the rest of your life. And it'll pay for itself in no time. Because so many of us have social conditioning that has us pushing money away or overspending money. Or doing all kinds of bullshit that we don't actually want to be doing that we just don't know how to stop doing until we get those old thoughts out of there.
So I just want to say you don't have to do this alone. Money particularly is an area where many people need a second set of eyes. It doesn't mean you have to, maybe you can do it on your own. It's a juicy topic, I want you to explore it.
And yeah, if you need some help exploring it, come hit me up, send me a DM on Instagram, email me at hello@korilinn.com. And let's talk about it because I want you to have a rich life on your terms, by your definition. Not just in salary and money, but in whatever kind of compensation you want, in whatever kind of career you want. And I know without a doubt coaching can help you get there.
And if you love what I teach, and you want some help taking things a little bit deeper and figuring out how this all applies to your own life. I've got good news for you. I've got space for a few new one on one coaching clients starting this month. So let's hop on a call. I'll give you some coaching right away to help you get going. And if it seems like a good fit, I will share with you how we can work together. Just head on over to my website and click on the work with me button and get started there.
Also, bonus, my coaching offering is totally virtual so as to better serve my global audience. And yes, I do work with people who are not native English speakers, and we've had great success doing that. There's even a testimonial on my website with someone in that category. So you can check that out on the testimonials page. All right y'all, have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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