106. The Secret to Making More Money in Public Health
You are not paid for your time, you are paid for the value of your work. But value is subjective, and other people think your value is worth different things. This is the challenge of making money; identifying your value and the value your organization desires.
Your expertise, skills, innovation, and creativity are your value. Your brain power is your value. If you want more money, you need to make a value match. A greater salary, a new job, and showing how you provide, are all avenues for developing your value match.
This week I share the one secret that will change how you look at making money: VALUE. Chances are you are bringing more value to your organization than you are receiving in value (salary) back. Why? This is what I call a “value mismatch”. Let’s dive in and discover what to do when you have one.
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What You Will Discover:
One secret that isn’t taught about making money.
Why value is subjective.
What your value is.
How to identify if your value is imbalanced and what to do.
Methods of identifying values within your organization.
Resources:
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67. What Women and People in Public Health are Taught About Money with Natasha Tekeste
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey you all, I’m Marissa McKool, and you’re listening to the Redefining Rest Podcast for Public Health Professionals. Here we believe rest is your right. You don’t have to earn it, you just have to learn how to take it and I’m going to teach you. Ready? Come along.
Hello friends, welcome to the Redefining Rest podcast. If you’re new around here I’m so happy to have you. Our philosophy around here about rest is so much bigger than what the world has taught you. Rest isn’t limited, it’s not just vacation or spa days, doesn’t have to be earned or justified. Rest is how you prioritize, live and experience your life. And today we’re talking about creating more rest through money.
I did a poll on LinkedIn, if you aren’t already connected with me on LinkedIn, go find me, well, after you listen to this, Marissa McKool, M-C-K-O-O-L. I post a lot of really cool shit on there. I want to connect with you. I want to see your beautiful picture, hear more about you, what's going on. So please go connect with me. But I did a poll about what podcast episodes folks wanted to see. And this episode was the top vote, how to make more money, but it actually only won by one vote. The second was how to stop people pleasing. So I’m going to do both.
Today we’re talking about making more money and next week we’re going to talk about how to stop people pleasing. And this episode is jam packed and I’m about to head out in about, I don’t know, 40 minutes to go get my haircut. So I’m going to get this done. I’m going to give you the secrets to getting money and then I’m going to go pamper myself a little bit. Does that sound good? Sounds good to me.
If you haven't already listened to my other podcasts about how money, rest and stress are related, I want you to go back after this and listen, episode 66 called Money’s Role in Stress and Rest, is really foundational. And then episode 67, I talk with money mindset coach, Natasha Tekeske about what women and people in public health are taught about money. Today we’re talking about the one secret that isn't talked about when it comes to making money. It's not taught in your grad program or any negotiation class. You’re not taught it growing up. Your parents probably had no idea about it. It’s not really taught in any financial education space or book or podcast.
I’m going to teach you a completely different way of thinking about money. I want you to listen with curiosity. I want you to take this on, try it on, I promise it will change your life. It will change how you look at making money. It will make any future negotiation or decision around money easier, around making and creating money easier. You'll be more confident and any discomfort you feel when you really embody this way of looking at creating and making money will be eliminated.
Here's the thing, you know how to make more money, the actions. They are obvious to some degree, negotiate for a raise, get a job with higher pay, negotiate in the job offer, start a business, start a side hustle, sell some shit. The problem you face with making more money is not the how as far as what actions to take. You know the options you have for taking actions. It’s the how in your thinking because you think you are paid for, you earn money, you get a salary for your time, for your degree, even for the work you produce. And that's not true.
You are paid, you get money, someone gives you money for the value you give them. It’s an exchange, you give value, you get money. It's not an exchange of time for money, even if you work hourly, it's an exchange of value for money. I don’t pay my housekeeper for her time. I pay her for the value of my house being clean. The outcome is a clean house. But actually the value for me is not having to do it myself, is having it cleaner than if I would have done it myself, is saving time, is feeling happy when I see it clean. I don’t pay her for her time and honestly not necessarily the outcome of it being clean.
I pay her for the value I place on the outcome of it being clean. This is really important because not everyone places the same value on the same outcome, the outcome of a house being cleaned by someone else. Not everyone sees that as valuable. Not everyone puts the same dollar amount to that value. My housekeeper could go clean my neighbor’s house, give them the same outcome, but my neighbor might not value it. They maybe don’t want to pay her or pay her that much. That's because value is perceived, value is subjective.
Let’s take a public health example. When I was working as an assistant director in a training program I was not paid for the hours I worked. I was not paid for the outcomes I created. I was paid for the value I created. And that value I had a say, I had thoughts, I had opinions of what that was, but so did my boss, so did their boss. And sometimes they were the same, sometimes the opinions were different. If I worked 60 hours a week, but I didn't create any value, my organization wouldn’t want to pay me.
If I produced 30 outcomes a week but none of them were valuable to my organization, my boss would not want to pay me. I was paid for the value I produced and you are paid for the value you produce. For the role of assistant director I was in, the value I gave was that the director, my boss, had less work and more time, that was the value. I did that by running the program efficiently, by having the students in the program feel heard and respected and included. By the quality of the grant reports and applications I put together.
I provided value, not by my hours I worked, with my brain, with my intellect, with my creativity, with my innovation, with my skills. And I was paid for the value of that to my boss, the value I brought to her through my work. The value was her not having to do the work, her not having to correct my work, her not having to micromanage me, her feeling like she could trust me. That's really what I was getting paid for because for her, the person who was signing off on the checks basically, metaphorically of course.
But for her, her time was the most valuable to her, mattered the most because she was very busy. She was the director of so many different projects. If she had an assistant director who worked 60 hours a week but that didn’t reduce her time, she had to micromanage or give a lot of feedback. That would not have been valuable even though it was more hours.
If she had an assistant director who produced 10/20 outcomes but none of them reduced her time where she had to constantly review because there were errors or correct because they were the wrong outcomes, that wouldn’t have been valuable. She paid me to keep shit off her plate and off of her mind. That was the value. Value is subjective and value is not the same as worth. This is really important. The worst advice you can follow, especially as a woman in public health is to negotiate for your worth. I hate that saying, know your worth.
No, don’t negotiate from that place because your worth and the value you bring to your role are not the same thing. You're born worthy. Your worth is immeasurable. You are worthy just for being human. No amount of money can pay you for your worth. Nothing you do in life changes your worth. The value of what you bring to a job is subjective, your worth is not. There is no objective measure of someone's value they bring to work, it’s all subjective, but worth, everyone’s 100% worthy. And there’s no job in the world that pays enough to match that.
But value, this is why it’s really important to change how you look at this and think about it as value. You bring value to the job. You might think your value matches x salary, your boss might not agree, that’s because it’s subjective. It doesn't mean anything about your worth or your worthiness.
So let me give you an example. There is not one product, one job, one person the whole world agrees brings the same amount of value and should be matched by the same dollar amount. Let’s take Amazon, some people think Amazon is a very valuable business and provides a very valuable product, and not valuable by revenue. People think Amazon is valuable to them because it brings value to them. Maybe it's how quickly the items get delivered or how they can find unique items easily.
Yet for other people they do not think Amazon brings them value, they hate it maybe. They think it’s harming communities and the environment. One set of people are going to pay to have Amazon Prime because they believe that dollar amount matches the value Amazon provides, or at least is under it, they overdeliver their value. And other people think the cost of Amazon Prime is not worth the value.
For you in public health, the value you bring to your job is your brain. That is what you contribute and exchange for money. And when I say brain, I mean the contribution of your ideas, your execution, your skills, your experience, your innovation. You bring that in exchange for an amount of money. That is a value exchange. As an assistant director I exchange the value I brought, which the main value I brought was keeping my boss’s workload lower and her not having to worry about this program running. That was the value I brought and in exchange I got a salary.
Now you want to earn more money then you have a value imbalance, meaning the value you bring to your current job is not being matched, is not balanced with the value of the salary you are making. So let’s say you’re a project manager and you make 60,000 a year. In your opinion what is the value you are bringing to the job, is it more or less than the $60,000 in salary? Now, there is no objective way to determine this. You have to decide for you what your opinion is based on what you believe.
And know, not everyone’s going to agree. There’s no way to get everyone to agree because it’s subjective. It doesn't matter what they think, truly it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. You have to decide for you. And this is really uncomfortable for women because we are taught we are bad with money, we don't deserve it, we have to be given if we don't take it. And we have to wait around for someone to hand us a promotion. No.
And this is really uncomfortable for people who work in helping professions because we are taught that you should always come last. The money should all go to helping other people. If you get more money, then you’re hurting our communities. None of that is true. So if you determine that, yes, the value I’m currently bringing to the job is more than the value of my $60,000 salary, then you either negotiate for a raise or you get a new job that the salary does match the value you bring.
If you determine, no, the value I am bringing to this job is not more than 60,000, but I want to make more than that, then you need to create and bring more value with your brain, with your ideas, with your innovation, not with your time, not with your time, in order to advocate for a raise. I have a huge, huge note I want to put in here, huge. If I could blare sirens right now to make you listen to this piece, what I’m just going to say, I would.
Every single fucking woman I know in public health is bringing way more value to their job, to their organization than they are being paid. It is way more likely that right now you are bringing more value than the value you're getting back in your salary. The imbalance most likely is that you bring more value than the value of the salary you’re getting back, meaning it’s not about you providing more value. It’s about you getting more value back in salary. And you might not believe this because of the lies of the patriarchy, but for almost all of you this is true.
Did you know, women are not just underpaid compared to men? We all know about the gender wage pay gap where women in the same jobs as men make less. And depending, if you stratify by race, then it varies a lot. Latino women make, I think way less than white women if you look at it that way. But here's a piece that’s often missing. Those women who are already underpaid compared to their male counterparts in the same job, those women are working more than the men, bringing more value. Meaning you're not only working the same job, you are working more and providing more value and being underpaid.
So let's talk about value mismatches so you can take action confidently to get your value to match, to get the value of the salary you’re getting to match the value you bring. Let's say you do think that the value you bring to your job is more than 60K, so you want to negotiate. And maybe you do and your organization says, “We can’t, or we won’t pay you.” Whether it's they can’t because they don’t have the money or they won’t because they disagree about the value match. It doesn't mean anything about you either way. It's just a value mismatch.
It doesn’t mean you have to stay, it also doesn’t mean you have to quit, you get to decide. When I was working as that assistant director of the training program I talked about earlier. I had been there for almost three years and I brought huge value to that program. The number one was I saved my director time and energy and worry and effort. She was able to feel secure and confident about the program running, that was the number one thing.
This is why it’s really important to understand if you are negotiating, the other person, whoever says, “Yes, we’ll advocate for you or yes we’ll give you more money”, who they are, what matters to them, what’s the value they think your position or you need to be providing. So my work as an assistant director, I provided the value my boss wanted, which was to save her time. I also had improved the program in so many ways. So it was running more effectively and efficiently more than ever. That gave her more confidence, more peace and security.
I created a brand new state of the art educational resource that elevated our program, which was valuable to my boss because she wanted our program to be on the map, to be well known. The value I was bringing at that point was not equal to the value I was paid in salary. And in this situation my boss actually agreed. “Yeah, they decided we can’t pay you more. We’re grant funded.” And they didn’t decide to figure out how to pay me more, which they could have, but they didn’t, and that’s fine. I wasn't upset and you don’t have to be upset either.
Your boss may or may not be in agreement with your assessment of the value match. That’s okay, you still get to decide what you want to do. You don’t have to make it mean anything about you or your worth or your work. And in this situation for me, I decided to leave. I got a director level position where the value of what I brought and the value of the salary did match in my opinion, and obviously in the opinion of those who hired me.
So when you want to make more money the goal is to create or find a value match, where what you think about the value of what you bring to the job and the value of the salary you get back is matched by your employer, by your boss or by your new job. So it might look like negotiating your salary, so the value of your salary matches the value you’re already bringing. It might look like creating more value for your boss or a different type of value now that you think about, okay, what do they really care about, what do they really want.
And really tailoring the work you’re doing or showing more of what you’re doing that really matches what they value most so you can advocate for more salary. Finding a new job that provides the salary that you believe matches the value you bring, in a job offer, negotiating for a higher salary for the value you bring. So many women are scared to negotiate and this is because you make it about your worth. It's not, it's about a value match.
Let me give you a story. I was on a hiring committee, I actually led it. This was a staff member who is not going to be working for me but working for someone I worked with. And they offered this applicant the top range of the salary. And this applicant negotiated even though it was the top range of the listed salary. They believed the value they would bring, the salary that was offered did not match and that a higher salary would match.
They both agreed, the applicant and the boss both agreed the value the applicant brought, matched a higher salary, that their experience, that their independence matched a higher salary. The boss, whether or not this applicant was able to suss this out or not, and you can ask questions during the interview to do this. But the boss who was hiring, what mattered most to her was that she didn’t have to micromanage, that someone else, whoever she hired was super organized, because she was not. That was the highest value. Not have to micromanage, someone who can keep me organized.
This applicant showed evidence of it. So of course the boss was going to go above and beyond to get a salary that matched that value, because that was the most valuable thing to her. So I want you to think whether you're applying for jobs, whether you want to negotiate for a raise, what is the value you already bring, and what is the most valuable thing to your boss or to the person who's going to advocate or fight or sign off on you having a higher salary? What matters most to them, is it their time? Is it someone being organized? Is it someone having a technical skill they don’t have?
Is it someone who can speak a language they can't speak? What is it, what matters most to them? Are you bringing that value? How can you highlight it more? How can you point it out more? How can you advocate that the salary matches that value? When you start to view making money this way it gets so much easier and less dramatic. It’s not about your worth, it’s not making it mean anything about you or that other people disagree. It's so much easier to negotiate, to leave a job, to find a new job, to not feel shy or uncomfortable because it's just about a value match.
There is no right or wrong, objective right or wrong. Everyone has a different view of what's valuable and what isn’t to them, whether it’s the value of the skills you bring or the value of the salary and that's okay. Your goal is to work for a boss or work in a job where what they think is valuable, the value exchange, you have the same belief. The goal is that what you think as far as the salary, value you want to get for the value you bring, is to find a boss, find a job that agrees with that match. And if you’re in one that doesn't, there is a mismatch, to change that.
Okay, so I want you all to re-listen to this again. I know for some of you, you’re like, “This feels like a foreign language.” I get it, we never talk about money this way. And I probably said ‘value’ 10,000 times. So I want you to relisten. Actually you know what could be really helpful? Go to my website mckoolcoaching.com/podcast and download the transcript.
I do this all the time with podcasts. I download the transcript, I highlight, I write little notes. It can be so helpful when you're learning a new concept like this, when you’re learning a whole new way to look at an approach to something, to achieving a goal, to understanding something, to building a skill.
The last thing I want to say before I let you go, if you’re not aware, if you’re new around here or maybe you have been hearing but you haven’t taken action, I want you go sign up for my brand new free course, it’s called How to Delegate to Reduce Your Workload. Listen, if you are in the market for a higher salary, if you want to earn more money, if you want to negotiate for a raise. Learning how to reduce your workload, how to confidently delegate without the guilt is so valuable. It’s going to be valuable to you because you’re going to experience the extra time you get the less stress you have.
But it’s going to be so valuable to your boss and your employer. So I want you to go sign up. It’s 15 minutes. It’s completely free. I walk you through why delegating can feel so uncomfortable, how you can make delegating easy and how to delegate even if you're not a supervisor, whether you lead a committee, whether you have a partner or a roommate at home, whether you want to delegate during a meeting. I have so many clients who say, “I leave a meeting with way more to do after than going in.” It doesn’t have to be that way.
Alright, so I want you to go to mckoolcoaching.com/courses, sign up. It’s 15 minutes, I promise you, 15 minutes to watch this video. You’ll get so much more value out of it, twice, three times the value. It’s delivered right to your inbox, so head on over there, reduce your workload, have less stress, bring more value to your life, your boss’s life so you can increase the value of salary you get. Alright, you all, I will see you next week for Stop People Pleasing. Bye everyone.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
Hello friends, welcome to the Redefining Rest podcast. If you’re new around here I’m so happy to have you. Our philosophy around here about rest is so much bigger than what the world has taught you. Rest isn’t limited, it’s not just vacation or spa days, doesn’t have to be earned or justified. Rest is how you prioritize, live and experience your life. And today we’re talking about creating more rest through money.
I did a poll on LinkedIn, if you aren’t already connected with me on LinkedIn, go find me, well, after you listen to this, Marissa McKool, M-C-K-O-O-L. I post a lot of really cool shit on there. I want to connect with you. I want to see your beautiful picture, hear more about you, what's going on. So please go connect with me. But I did a poll about what podcast episodes folks wanted to see. And this episode was the top vote, how to make more money, but it actually only won by one vote. The second was how to stop people pleasing. So I’m going to do both.
Today we’re talking about making more money and next week we’re going to talk about how to stop people pleasing. And this episode is jam packed and I’m about to head out in about, I don’t know, 40 minutes to go get my haircut. So I’m going to get this done. I’m going to give you the secrets to getting money and then I’m going to go pamper myself a little bit. Does that sound good? Sounds good to me.
If you haven't already listened to my other podcasts about how money, rest and stress are related, I want you to go back after this and listen, episode 66 called Money’s Role in Stress and Rest, is really foundational. And then episode 67, I talk with money mindset coach, Natasha Tekeske about what women and people in public health are taught about money. Today we’re talking about the one secret that isn't talked about when it comes to making money. It's not taught in your grad program or any negotiation class. You’re not taught it growing up. Your parents probably had no idea about it. It’s not really taught in any financial education space or book or podcast.
I’m going to teach you a completely different way of thinking about money. I want you to listen with curiosity. I want you to take this on, try it on, I promise it will change your life. It will change how you look at making money. It will make any future negotiation or decision around money easier, around making and creating money easier. You'll be more confident and any discomfort you feel when you really embody this way of looking at creating and making money will be eliminated.
Here's the thing, you know how to make more money, the actions. They are obvious to some degree, negotiate for a raise, get a job with higher pay, negotiate in the job offer, start a business, start a side hustle, sell some shit. The problem you face with making more money is not the how as far as what actions to take. You know the options you have for taking actions. It’s the how in your thinking because you think you are paid for, you earn money, you get a salary for your time, for your degree, even for the work you produce. And that's not true.
You are paid, you get money, someone gives you money for the value you give them. It’s an exchange, you give value, you get money. It's not an exchange of time for money, even if you work hourly, it's an exchange of value for money. I don’t pay my housekeeper for her time. I pay her for the value of my house being clean. The outcome is a clean house. But actually the value for me is not having to do it myself, is having it cleaner than if I would have done it myself, is saving time, is feeling happy when I see it clean. I don’t pay her for her time and honestly not necessarily the outcome of it being clean.
I pay her for the value I place on the outcome of it being clean. This is really important because not everyone places the same value on the same outcome, the outcome of a house being cleaned by someone else. Not everyone sees that as valuable. Not everyone puts the same dollar amount to that value. My housekeeper could go clean my neighbor’s house, give them the same outcome, but my neighbor might not value it. They maybe don’t want to pay her or pay her that much. That's because value is perceived, value is subjective.
Let’s take a public health example. When I was working as an assistant director in a training program I was not paid for the hours I worked. I was not paid for the outcomes I created. I was paid for the value I created. And that value I had a say, I had thoughts, I had opinions of what that was, but so did my boss, so did their boss. And sometimes they were the same, sometimes the opinions were different. If I worked 60 hours a week, but I didn't create any value, my organization wouldn’t want to pay me.
If I produced 30 outcomes a week but none of them were valuable to my organization, my boss would not want to pay me. I was paid for the value I produced and you are paid for the value you produce. For the role of assistant director I was in, the value I gave was that the director, my boss, had less work and more time, that was the value. I did that by running the program efficiently, by having the students in the program feel heard and respected and included. By the quality of the grant reports and applications I put together.
I provided value, not by my hours I worked, with my brain, with my intellect, with my creativity, with my innovation, with my skills. And I was paid for the value of that to my boss, the value I brought to her through my work. The value was her not having to do the work, her not having to correct my work, her not having to micromanage me, her feeling like she could trust me. That's really what I was getting paid for because for her, the person who was signing off on the checks basically, metaphorically of course.
But for her, her time was the most valuable to her, mattered the most because she was very busy. She was the director of so many different projects. If she had an assistant director who worked 60 hours a week but that didn’t reduce her time, she had to micromanage or give a lot of feedback. That would not have been valuable even though it was more hours.
If she had an assistant director who produced 10/20 outcomes but none of them reduced her time where she had to constantly review because there were errors or correct because they were the wrong outcomes, that wouldn’t have been valuable. She paid me to keep shit off her plate and off of her mind. That was the value. Value is subjective and value is not the same as worth. This is really important. The worst advice you can follow, especially as a woman in public health is to negotiate for your worth. I hate that saying, know your worth.
No, don’t negotiate from that place because your worth and the value you bring to your role are not the same thing. You're born worthy. Your worth is immeasurable. You are worthy just for being human. No amount of money can pay you for your worth. Nothing you do in life changes your worth. The value of what you bring to a job is subjective, your worth is not. There is no objective measure of someone's value they bring to work, it’s all subjective, but worth, everyone’s 100% worthy. And there’s no job in the world that pays enough to match that.
But value, this is why it’s really important to change how you look at this and think about it as value. You bring value to the job. You might think your value matches x salary, your boss might not agree, that’s because it’s subjective. It doesn't mean anything about your worth or your worthiness.
So let me give you an example. There is not one product, one job, one person the whole world agrees brings the same amount of value and should be matched by the same dollar amount. Let’s take Amazon, some people think Amazon is a very valuable business and provides a very valuable product, and not valuable by revenue. People think Amazon is valuable to them because it brings value to them. Maybe it's how quickly the items get delivered or how they can find unique items easily.
Yet for other people they do not think Amazon brings them value, they hate it maybe. They think it’s harming communities and the environment. One set of people are going to pay to have Amazon Prime because they believe that dollar amount matches the value Amazon provides, or at least is under it, they overdeliver their value. And other people think the cost of Amazon Prime is not worth the value.
For you in public health, the value you bring to your job is your brain. That is what you contribute and exchange for money. And when I say brain, I mean the contribution of your ideas, your execution, your skills, your experience, your innovation. You bring that in exchange for an amount of money. That is a value exchange. As an assistant director I exchange the value I brought, which the main value I brought was keeping my boss’s workload lower and her not having to worry about this program running. That was the value I brought and in exchange I got a salary.
Now you want to earn more money then you have a value imbalance, meaning the value you bring to your current job is not being matched, is not balanced with the value of the salary you are making. So let’s say you’re a project manager and you make 60,000 a year. In your opinion what is the value you are bringing to the job, is it more or less than the $60,000 in salary? Now, there is no objective way to determine this. You have to decide for you what your opinion is based on what you believe.
And know, not everyone’s going to agree. There’s no way to get everyone to agree because it’s subjective. It doesn't matter what they think, truly it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. You have to decide for you. And this is really uncomfortable for women because we are taught we are bad with money, we don't deserve it, we have to be given if we don't take it. And we have to wait around for someone to hand us a promotion. No.
And this is really uncomfortable for people who work in helping professions because we are taught that you should always come last. The money should all go to helping other people. If you get more money, then you’re hurting our communities. None of that is true. So if you determine that, yes, the value I’m currently bringing to the job is more than the value of my $60,000 salary, then you either negotiate for a raise or you get a new job that the salary does match the value you bring.
If you determine, no, the value I am bringing to this job is not more than 60,000, but I want to make more than that, then you need to create and bring more value with your brain, with your ideas, with your innovation, not with your time, not with your time, in order to advocate for a raise. I have a huge, huge note I want to put in here, huge. If I could blare sirens right now to make you listen to this piece, what I’m just going to say, I would.
Every single fucking woman I know in public health is bringing way more value to their job, to their organization than they are being paid. It is way more likely that right now you are bringing more value than the value you're getting back in your salary. The imbalance most likely is that you bring more value than the value of the salary you’re getting back, meaning it’s not about you providing more value. It’s about you getting more value back in salary. And you might not believe this because of the lies of the patriarchy, but for almost all of you this is true.
Did you know, women are not just underpaid compared to men? We all know about the gender wage pay gap where women in the same jobs as men make less. And depending, if you stratify by race, then it varies a lot. Latino women make, I think way less than white women if you look at it that way. But here's a piece that’s often missing. Those women who are already underpaid compared to their male counterparts in the same job, those women are working more than the men, bringing more value. Meaning you're not only working the same job, you are working more and providing more value and being underpaid.
So let's talk about value mismatches so you can take action confidently to get your value to match, to get the value of the salary you’re getting to match the value you bring. Let's say you do think that the value you bring to your job is more than 60K, so you want to negotiate. And maybe you do and your organization says, “We can’t, or we won’t pay you.” Whether it's they can’t because they don’t have the money or they won’t because they disagree about the value match. It doesn't mean anything about you either way. It's just a value mismatch.
It doesn’t mean you have to stay, it also doesn’t mean you have to quit, you get to decide. When I was working as that assistant director of the training program I talked about earlier. I had been there for almost three years and I brought huge value to that program. The number one was I saved my director time and energy and worry and effort. She was able to feel secure and confident about the program running, that was the number one thing.
This is why it’s really important to understand if you are negotiating, the other person, whoever says, “Yes, we’ll advocate for you or yes we’ll give you more money”, who they are, what matters to them, what’s the value they think your position or you need to be providing. So my work as an assistant director, I provided the value my boss wanted, which was to save her time. I also had improved the program in so many ways. So it was running more effectively and efficiently more than ever. That gave her more confidence, more peace and security.
I created a brand new state of the art educational resource that elevated our program, which was valuable to my boss because she wanted our program to be on the map, to be well known. The value I was bringing at that point was not equal to the value I was paid in salary. And in this situation my boss actually agreed. “Yeah, they decided we can’t pay you more. We’re grant funded.” And they didn’t decide to figure out how to pay me more, which they could have, but they didn’t, and that’s fine. I wasn't upset and you don’t have to be upset either.
Your boss may or may not be in agreement with your assessment of the value match. That’s okay, you still get to decide what you want to do. You don’t have to make it mean anything about you or your worth or your work. And in this situation for me, I decided to leave. I got a director level position where the value of what I brought and the value of the salary did match in my opinion, and obviously in the opinion of those who hired me.
So when you want to make more money the goal is to create or find a value match, where what you think about the value of what you bring to the job and the value of the salary you get back is matched by your employer, by your boss or by your new job. So it might look like negotiating your salary, so the value of your salary matches the value you’re already bringing. It might look like creating more value for your boss or a different type of value now that you think about, okay, what do they really care about, what do they really want.
And really tailoring the work you’re doing or showing more of what you’re doing that really matches what they value most so you can advocate for more salary. Finding a new job that provides the salary that you believe matches the value you bring, in a job offer, negotiating for a higher salary for the value you bring. So many women are scared to negotiate and this is because you make it about your worth. It's not, it's about a value match.
Let me give you a story. I was on a hiring committee, I actually led it. This was a staff member who is not going to be working for me but working for someone I worked with. And they offered this applicant the top range of the salary. And this applicant negotiated even though it was the top range of the listed salary. They believed the value they would bring, the salary that was offered did not match and that a higher salary would match.
They both agreed, the applicant and the boss both agreed the value the applicant brought, matched a higher salary, that their experience, that their independence matched a higher salary. The boss, whether or not this applicant was able to suss this out or not, and you can ask questions during the interview to do this. But the boss who was hiring, what mattered most to her was that she didn’t have to micromanage, that someone else, whoever she hired was super organized, because she was not. That was the highest value. Not have to micromanage, someone who can keep me organized.
This applicant showed evidence of it. So of course the boss was going to go above and beyond to get a salary that matched that value, because that was the most valuable thing to her. So I want you to think whether you're applying for jobs, whether you want to negotiate for a raise, what is the value you already bring, and what is the most valuable thing to your boss or to the person who's going to advocate or fight or sign off on you having a higher salary? What matters most to them, is it their time? Is it someone being organized? Is it someone having a technical skill they don’t have?
Is it someone who can speak a language they can't speak? What is it, what matters most to them? Are you bringing that value? How can you highlight it more? How can you point it out more? How can you advocate that the salary matches that value? When you start to view making money this way it gets so much easier and less dramatic. It’s not about your worth, it’s not making it mean anything about you or that other people disagree. It's so much easier to negotiate, to leave a job, to find a new job, to not feel shy or uncomfortable because it's just about a value match.
There is no right or wrong, objective right or wrong. Everyone has a different view of what's valuable and what isn’t to them, whether it’s the value of the skills you bring or the value of the salary and that's okay. Your goal is to work for a boss or work in a job where what they think is valuable, the value exchange, you have the same belief. The goal is that what you think as far as the salary, value you want to get for the value you bring, is to find a boss, find a job that agrees with that match. And if you’re in one that doesn't, there is a mismatch, to change that.
Okay, so I want you all to re-listen to this again. I know for some of you, you’re like, “This feels like a foreign language.” I get it, we never talk about money this way. And I probably said ‘value’ 10,000 times. So I want you to relisten. Actually you know what could be really helpful? Go to my website mckoolcoaching.com/podcast and download the transcript.
I do this all the time with podcasts. I download the transcript, I highlight, I write little notes. It can be so helpful when you're learning a new concept like this, when you’re learning a whole new way to look at an approach to something, to achieving a goal, to understanding something, to building a skill.
The last thing I want to say before I let you go, if you’re not aware, if you’re new around here or maybe you have been hearing but you haven’t taken action, I want you go sign up for my brand new free course, it’s called How to Delegate to Reduce Your Workload. Listen, if you are in the market for a higher salary, if you want to earn more money, if you want to negotiate for a raise. Learning how to reduce your workload, how to confidently delegate without the guilt is so valuable. It’s going to be valuable to you because you’re going to experience the extra time you get the less stress you have.
But it’s going to be so valuable to your boss and your employer. So I want you to go sign up. It’s 15 minutes. It’s completely free. I walk you through why delegating can feel so uncomfortable, how you can make delegating easy and how to delegate even if you're not a supervisor, whether you lead a committee, whether you have a partner or a roommate at home, whether you want to delegate during a meeting. I have so many clients who say, “I leave a meeting with way more to do after than going in.” It doesn’t have to be that way.
Alright, so I want you to go to mckoolcoaching.com/courses, sign up. It’s 15 minutes, I promise you, 15 minutes to watch this video. You’ll get so much more value out of it, twice, three times the value. It’s delivered right to your inbox, so head on over there, reduce your workload, have less stress, bring more value to your life, your boss’s life so you can increase the value of salary you get. Alright, you all, I will see you next week for Stop People Pleasing. Bye everyone.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
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