Salary Negotiation Checklist
Transcript of the episode recording:
Big f*cking practicality include understanding how to negotiate your salary, understanding how much money that you're making, understanding your stock investing plan, especially if you work in tech and you've got ESPP.
Hey, big f*cking dreamers. I'm so pumped to be here with you today and to talk about something that I am very passionate about, which is salary negotiation and just making more money in general and having more money. And I will caveat this and just say, I am not a rags to riches story. Like, let me be, I'll just be real with you guys. Like I didn't grow up underprivileged in this area of my life.I think I've overcome a lot of things in other areas of my life, but it wasn't like my family grew up massively underprivileged or anything like that. But I do think that salary negotiation, understanding how to get more money for the work that you're doing is extremely important no matter where you come from.
Why I'm so passionate about this is that a few years back when I was working for LinkedIn and I had been at LinkedIn for...maybe it was three years. At that point, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn and there was a huge bump in the stock price. And everyone, I think the stock price at opening was like $116 and then Microsoft when Microsoft acquired it, was 187 or something like that. And I had received some pretty bad financial advice. And it was around Employee Stock Purchasing Program, so ESPP.
By the way, this is not a financial advice. I'm not a financial advisor. I am a life coach and a career coach, but I'm just going to walk you through this and this is kind of personal what happened to me.
So when this Microsoft acquisition happened, a lot of my friends cashed out and basically they were getting, you know, this huge stock bonuses where they initially would have 30 grand and then it turned into 50 grand or 80 grand or whatever. And I realized that I had missed out because I wasn't really at that age financially literate and because I didn't understand what was going on with my money.
I never wanted to be in that decision or I never wanted to be in that place ever again. I never wanted to not know what was going on with my money. I never wanted to be financially illiterate. I never wanted to miss opportunities when I could have actually gained them.
So from that moment on,I invested in ESPP. I did 15 % salary sacrifice. What that allowed me to do is when I left LinkedIn and I was very sick and I had burnout and I needed to take time off of work, that allowed me, that pot of money that I had saved up actually allowed me to take quite a bit of time off to go back to school for creative writing. I had the capital to start my business.All because I was financially literate and I knew what my money was doing and I had planned ahead.
I'm extremely passionate about all of this. And especially if someone, cause a lot of people do come to me and they say,I want to start a business or I want to do what you're doing. Maybe I'm in tech now, but I really want to be of service or something like that.
And I always encourage people, but I also say, okay, step number one, let's look at this practically.You need one solid year worth of capital. Like, let's say you weren't getting paid for one year. That's what you need to forecast for. Because when you're starting your business, and this podcast definitely isn't for people just starting their business, but you have so many costs you need to retrain. You need coaching. You need to build a website. And there's so many time costs as well of not knowing what the f*ck you're doing and that you really need at least a year.
I think people have always like big kind of lofty dreams and I so encourage that this podcast is called big f*cking dreams for a reason. But there also needs to be big f*cking practicalities.And big f*cking practicalities include understanding how to negotiate your salary, understanding how much money that you're making, understanding, you know, what is your stock investing plan, especially if you work in tech and you've got ESPP, you know, is that something good for you to be looking into and getting really financially literate?
So this episode is for you. Let's say if you want to be making more money, you want to ask for a salary increase, but maybe you don't feel confident. You've never actually asked for a salary increase before. You feel like you don't like to rock the boat, like it's how you don't like having tough conversations. You don't want to be appearing as difficult or too much. And you just find this whole conversation awkward. So that's for you. But if you want more money, if you want to be paid what you're worth,then listen on because I'm gonna actually walk you through a process of what I take my clients through to get them more money.
Okay, so the first process in negotiating your salary is having self -awareness. And I would say, and when you want to think about a salary negotiation, you really want to think about starting six to 12 months before you're actually ready. So you need to understand a few different things. You need to understand how you're performing in comparison to your peers. This is a lot easier to tell if you are in any type of sales role versus if you are in a project -based role or any other type of service -based role where you don't have, let's say you're a project manager or you work in finance. So it's harder to tell in certain types of roles, but if you have a role which is like, how many projects do you complete? Or in terms of how quickly that you get your projects to your stakeholders, but you actually need to understand what is your calibration? So what are they measuring success against in your organization?What is exceptional success? What is average? And what is good?
If you are going to ask for a salary increase, you really want to be performing at that exceptional level. You want to know what does exceptional look like in comparison to my peers. You need to be performing at a high level in order to negotiate.
If you have no self -awareness, and I've actually had this happen to me when I have been a people leader, is that I've had people who are underperforming try to negotiate their salary. And that just tells me that they don't have a lot of self -awareness, that they don't understand what's going on in the market. And then it actually makes me want to give them less money and promote them less because they don't have an understanding of what's going on.
And so you need to really know how am I performing in order in relation to my peers? How am I performing in relation to standards? If there is any sort of calibration documents, HR would have this or your manager would have this. Some organizations have this, some organizations don't in terms of job roles, in terms of different levels. Like if you're level one, two, three, four, for example, okay, you're level three. What's expected of a level four and then doing performing at that level.
One of my clients that we've walked through this process, basically he was negotiating a salary increase and he could actually say that he was overperforming in comparison to his peers. It was very obvious in terms of quota carrying, in terms of mentorship. So it was actually compiling all of that data and saying, okay, I am overperforming in comparison to my peers. Here's all that data to back that up.
Understanding first ,what's the comparison? And then also what I would do is actually research what are people in this industry making? Because sometimes, and I've actually coached this before, people will realize, actually according to industry standard, I am overpaid.
Look on LinkedIn. Look on job boards. If you're in Australia, look at Seek. If you're in the US, potentially Glassdoor, Monster maybe. I don't really know the US job boards. I've lived there for 10 years. But understanding what's the benchmark data, actually getting it. If you can't find the data, reach out to recruitment agencies. And reach out to recruitment agencies that are specialized in your niche and say, what is average salary that you're seeing for this? And then gather information in that.
So what you want to do is, first, understand the benchmark. Second, get the salary information. And I also have a template that explains all of this in a step -by -step guide and checklist. So if you want that, you can just DM me saying “salary”, and I'll send that template to you. It's also on my website. So look at that first. So that's kind of the first thing.
Then I would say that what you actually want to do is practice your conversation.And typically, if you are a people pleaser or if you don't like to have difficult conversations, if you like to think that you're too much, what I would actually do is almost give yourself an insurance policy and actually say this in writing that you want to have a salary conversation. This is all included in in my salary negotiation guide, by the way, so which is an actual template.
So I had a client and she, and she wanted a 10 % increase on her base salary, which we successfully negotiated, which was really great. But she was like, I've never done something like this. I'm really scared. I feel like I'm not confident in these situations and I'm afraid that I'm actually gonna back out of the conversation. So what we had to do, and it was so funny because I actually made her send this, I didn't make her, but she sent it while she was in a session with me. She sent this email to her boss. She outlined what she actually wanted. So she sent an email and she said, you I wanna have a salary review conversation. Here's all the data that I've gathered. Here's the benchmarks in my industry. Here's my performance over the last years. She also included letters of recommendation. So this is another tip, including letters of recommendation from clients, from different stakeholders. That is also going to be a huge help of going above and beyond of saying,this is what you're doing in the role. This is how much people value you. But that's something that's just going to give you that little bit extra that's really going to differentiate you from your competitors if you are competing all for the same pool of resources. That is something that's going to put you bit ahead.
So she wrote an email, and she was very specific of like, this is what I'm looking for. This is the type of conversation that I want to have. And then this is actually absolutely crucial, which is she then said,”Can we have a conversation about my salary at this date during this time?”
So, and it was in writing, so she couldn't take it back. And then that also allows your manager to prepare. So they know that you're coming in for a salary negotiation conversation. They're not blindsided. They can prepare. Everyone knows what it is. It's fully disclosed. She actually said, you know, I'd like to talk about a 10 % increase.
Everyone knew what was on the table. That conversation went amazing, went for my client. She was then reinforced by her boss and said, you know, she's doing really amazing work. She was afraid that in that conversation, that if she hadn't put it in writing that she wanted to have a salary conversation, she was afraid that she would back out. So really important to almost know yourself. If you feel like you lack confidence in this area, you're not empowered, then sending an email saying I want to a specific conversation about this. Here's directly what I'm asking you for is protection from you then chickening out on the day. So that's what I highly recommend.
The last thing is understanding, you know, what happens if people say no? And sometimes companies do say no. Sometimes there are, you know, redundancies that are happening soon. Sometimes the company is just not at a profitable place where they don't have additional budget. So then really understanding, OK, this is a conversation. It doesn't end here. But saying, are there any other options?
I had a client also say, OK, if I'm not going, she ended up getting a salary increase, but not as much as she wanted. But then she asked, could you pay for coaching?And they've agreed and she said, know, this is my, like I've invested in my development, can you invest back? They then agreed that they would pay for coaching.
So thinking about, okay, is there an L &D budget? Are there courses that you wanna do? Is there development that you can get in other areas that would really help satisfy? Can your business pay for the life and work transformation,my group coaching program? Also, what about stock options?
So if you are working in a tech company or any other company which does give you options, is there a potential that they could give you more stock? So thinking about, OK, it's not a NO. What other things can you pull? What other levers can you pull?
And then also, this is essential. Saying if it is a understanding why if it's based on company performance, saying, OK, what can I do so I can absolutely ensure that in the next round when the company is able to give salary increases that I am fully prepared to receive one? I would like a plan on how I can really position myself. Or you could even say, I mean, this would be more of a bonus of say, OK, this is how I want to position myself. So I'm in the running for the next round of increases.
Here's what I am going to do in order to really get that salary increase. Is there anything else I should be doing? Or do you agree or disagree that this is the plan? What can I do in order to make it better?
Also in these conversations, you don't want to be a pain in the ass for your boss. You don't want to be sitting there, being a victim about it. If there is no money or if you're not receiving it based on performance.You want to know why. So using this as an opportunity of, OK, I want to know why. I want to get better. What more can I be doing? This is a fact finding mission. And this is then going to enable you to be at the front of the list. But if you're sitting there and if you're really upset or throwing your toys at the pram or a victim about it, you're likely not going to be in line to the next salary negotiation because your hiring managers or your boss is probably going to think, God, they're really a pain for me.
You want to be positioning yourself as an asset to the organization, as an asset to the team. You want to be there for your boss. You want to be positioning yourself to them as someone that is going to help, that someone is going to over achieve. And if you feel like, you know what, I don't really want to do any of that. Like that's actually not what I am right now. Then that's a different conversation. If you feel like you want to just kind of ride, I have clients as well.who are like, you know what, this isn't the season that I'm going to push myself at work. Amazing. If you know that, if you fully know that, and if you're like, this is a season of integration, this is a season of chilling, this is a season of rest, this isn't a season of pushing myself, then this might not be the season that you negotiate your salary. But it's all around knowing, okay, what stage are you in, what season are you in, and using that to your advantage.
That's it. This is kind of like a shorter, sharper episode on salary negotiation. But again, I do have a template. I will include it in the show notes or you can DM me saying salary and it's a very comprehensive template. I've had a lot of people. I had one client negotiate up to 120 K using this template. So it's highly effective. I've had so many people use it. So many people share their stories with me, success stories.
So if you want that DM me “salary” or it's in the show notes and I look forward to seeing you guys next week. I hope that you achieve your big f*cking dreams and also your big f*cking salaries.