Financial Feminist - 302. How to Ask for a Raise in 2026 with Kathryn Valentine

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

The 2026 job market has been brutal. If you’ve been looking for a job, you know how tough it is. If you already have a job, I’m sure you’ve been told that you should just be grateful. Keep your head down, don’t make waves, ask for a raise when things "settle." My guest today thinks that instinct is completely backwards, and after this conversation, so do I. Kathryn Valentine –– executive coach, one of the country's leading experts on women's negotiation, and repeat guest –– coaches women inside communities like J.P. Morgan, Bain, and KPMG. And her work starts with an uncomfortable finding: women now negotiate as often as men, but succeed about half as often. Today we're talking about what to do when your company says there's no budget, why the timing of your ask matters so much, what AI gets wrong about your salary, and how to survive the messy middle of a negotiation without folding. If you've been telling yourself you'll just wait a year to ask, listen to this first. Kathryn’s Links: 76 Things You Can Negotiate at Work Learn more about Kathryn Valentine   Negotiate Like a Woman with Kathryn Valentine Learn the exact strategies to save money, pay off debt, improve your money mindset, and increase your net worth. Get your personalized plan: ⁠⁠https://herfirst100k.com/ffpod⁠. 00:00 Intro 02:13 Why negotiation matters: career, stress, and $1M 05:24 Women ask now, but with the wrong tools 06:30 Negotiating during layoffs 08:28 The relational ask (and the WSJ advice that backfires) 11:36 Common negotiation mistakes women are told to make 13:12 What to ask for when raises are frozen 15:33 The 76 things you can negotiate 19:42 The gender gap goes way past base salary 26:42 In the room: what to say when it goes off-script 31:08 The three biggest mistakes that sink negotiations 34:15 How to find your market rate 37:32 "Ask a white guy" 40:34 Should you use AI to prep? 44:29 The average negotiation lasts 25 days 45:57 Live calculator: what one raise is worth 50:25 Who to talk to (and who to avoid) during a negotiation 56:54 Changing jobs when the economy is bad 59:25 When to leave corporate and build your own thing 66:27 Why mid-sized companies are best for flexibility 71:07 What to do this week Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Right now, a lot of women are watching the headlines. AI layoffs, hiring freezes, low hire, low fire, and quietly deciding, this is not the year to ask for a raise. Just keep your head down, be grateful you have a job, and wait for things to settle. But my guest today is here to tell you that that instinct is actually backwards. So what we're getting into today is how to respond when they tell you there's no budget for raises and how to make and ask in a way that puts you on your manager's side, not on their firing pile. Catherine Valentine is back on the show.

She's an executive coach and one of the country's leading experts on women's negotiation, whose TEDx talk became the number one most trending talk on TED.com. She coaches women inside communities like JPMorgan, Bain, and KPMG, and her whole body of work is built on one uncomfortable finding, that women negotiate as often as men now, but succeed about half as often. If you've been telling yourself, I was just going to wait a year before I ask, or don't even know how to go about preparing for a negotiation,

I want you to hear this episode. Let's get into it. But first, a word from our sponsors. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. When I first started her first 100K, way back in 2016, Squarespace was the very first thing I invested in. Truly the very first thing. When you've heard me talk about me starting a multimillion dollar business with just $40,

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Head on over to Squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code FFPod to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. One of my priorities as CEO and leader of a company is making sure that our team has all of the skills and tools that they need to be successful. And one of the things we do at HFK is lunch and learns. We do developmental sessions for our team and we've incorporated Masterclass into those lunch and learn sessions. Because Masterclass helps you learn from the world's best instructors, unlike other learning platforms, masterclass is putting you in the room with the people who defined their field. There's over 200 classes across 13 different categories. So yeah, we've got business and writing, but we also have cooking and

creativity and wellness. And three and four members feel inspired every time. they watch. 83% have applied something they've learned to their real lives. Masterclass keeps adding new classes so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a listener of this show, you get at least 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash ff pod. That's 15% off at masterclass.com slash ff pod. Head to masterclass.com slash ff pod to see the latest offer. So Catherine, welcome back to the show. I need you to walk us through what you're actually seeing right now. Are women negotiating more are less in this market and what is that actually doing for them long term? So I have good news and bad news.

The good news is women are actually negotiating as often as men are. So yay, we're doing it. The bad news is we're successful half as often because we continue to do it with the wrong tools, which I know is something we're going to solve today. So for the woman who's never really thought about negotiation as a skill she needs, you mentioned maybe having the wrong tools to do this, why does learning this matter so much, especially right now? I'd say there's three reasons. One is because it will advance your career and it will give you more control over the way things happen, right? And so are you getting credit for that work or is somebody else? Do you have an additional resource to do it with?

When is the deadline? These are all things that help you continue to move upwards. And we know that promotions are really where you get a lot of that financial gain. One. Two, it reduces stress. So I bought a car on Monday and they didn't have the hitch on it that I needed. Instead of me driving another four hours, he drove to me. and put it on my car in my driveway.

And so those are the kinds of things. Like, I just got half of my date back because I was able to negotiate that, right? So you can negotiate to lower your stress at a time when we see unprecedented levels of burnout and women. And then the last one, which I know you talk about a lot, is just the financial ramifications of this, right? So the kind of stat that people toss out a lot

is Linda Babcock's choosing not to negotiate as like leaving a million dollars on the table over your career. Margaret Neal at Stanford did a different version. of it that shows that it's equivalent to working an additional eight years to do the same wealth. But then what I was thinking about actually in listening to one of your episodes is that a lot of it depends on how old you are and how much you make, right? And so we created this new custom negotiation calculator. And I'm happy to do it live with you if you want right now, where you put in your age, what you make and what you can think you can negotiate. And it'll show you the lifetime

value of that one conversation. Because much like compound interest, our brains don't necessarily understand that that $5,000 raise is a raise that you get for the next 40 years. Well, and the thing that you just talked about, I think, was the belief that also the data was backing for a really long time, which is that women were not negotiating at the same rates men are. We're now at parity there. But what you said is that we're not seeing success in the same way. And of course, we know that partially this is because of society, not liking when women ask for more money. like that being really uncomfortable and believing that men might deserve money over women.

Those are the systemic reasons, which of course we talk about on the show. But I want to talk about like what can we do at the individual level? And you said it's not landing the way that it should. Women are negotiating now, but we're not doing the right things to make that negotiation work in our favor. So what changed and what does that really tell us about the problem and where that real problem is? So what changed, and what you're referring to is women don't ask, which was this amazing book that came out in the 90s. And that was the problem. Now, women are very aware of this.

Good job for us. Like, let's celebrate that win. Yeah. The problem now is that we continue to walk to the negotiation table with tools that were not built for us. But they don't come with that warning. Like, warning, higher chance of backlash if you do this. We're not talking about that. And so instead of giving you the sort of set, quote, unquote,

ways to do things that we know aren't working. Today, we're going to talk about a completely different set of tools, specifically for women, that we know allow you to get a higher chance of success and virtually eliminate the risk of backlash, which means that all of a sudden you can ask for anything you want because there's no downside. They're going to say, you know, if they say no, it's the same way they say it's raining. It's okay. You were quoted in CNBC as framing negotiation as a us versus the problem, does that framing get easier or harder to make when the company is cutting costs? I'm going to argue it's just about the same. And so I just did an negotiation with a woman whose boss was fired for a massive layoff, but her boss made 50% more

than she did. And so when they asked her to take on those responsibilities, even if her raises, call it 25%, that's still a deal for both parties, right? If they ask her to take on that role and there's no raise at all, there's no way that anybody could deliver to their full impact when they don't have the support that they need. And that raise is part of that support. And so what we see with even negotiations and layoffs is that it's still a very individual situation. And a lot of times, it's still very much true. I want to highlight what you just did because you're so good at this, it just happened naturally. But for the average listener, what you just said was, this person will not feel fully supported and the work that they have to do if they're under compensated.

Like that is the framing, I think that is so important because what I hear, especially when the economy is bad and layoffs are happening is women go, I can't possibly negotiate more money. They're going to laugh me out of the room. But that framing, even what you just said, that was so subtle, it's almost, you almost miss it because she did such a good job at framing it. But like, that's what we're talking about here of saying, basically, if you want me to do more work, I have to feel incentivized.

supported to do that. So talk to me about that framing in particular. So that framing is a little bit of what we're going to call a relational ask. And we can kind of break that down if you want to. But what I like the most about this is you aren't going in there and saying, as the Wall Street Journal advised you to do, was walk in and say, I deserve to be promoted. Well, we know from the research, that is the quickest way to end your career. What you want to do is you want to go in and say, hey, as you know, I was able to add whatever, it is three great clients last quarter. I think I can do that again this quarter in order to achieve that. I wanted to talk to you about X, Y, and Z. I mean, let's be realistic about the world right now, right? Things are expensive. If you make more money,

what? You get to move 30 minutes closer to the office and now you have an extra hour a day, at least half of which will probably go to being better at your job. You're able to get better child care so you can go to the client meetings Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Right? There's all kinds of things that that enables that allows you to advance faster, better for them, better for you, because you're delivering the impact that you're capable of. Yeah. I mean, let's talk about that Wall Street Journal article because I want to say you and I talked about it. Like, I remember seeing it and just being like, oh, of course. Of course, this is the answer from the Wall Street Journal. Yes. And this is from a negotiation, quote unquote, expert, right? And I think when we talked about this, I said the same thing,

which is like, I didn't sleep for days because I can't imagine the careers that were derailed because somebody took that advice. And by the way, Tori, it's not just in, So since you and I chatted last, the research lens has grown. It's not just in negotiation. It's also in time management. How many productivity bros are like, well, you just want to get to inbox zero, like blah, blah, blah. Well, listen, dude, I do 750 to 950 more hours of unpaid labor every year than you do. So your tool's not going to fit my life.

And that's okay. That's totally fine. But stop acting like you know what this is because you don't. So talk to me about the advice that is commonly given to women that does not work. And we mentioned this in your first episode, but I think it's worth talking about again, especially since this advice in national publications is still being talked about. So one is, yeah, you can't just waltz in there and be like, I deserve more money. Talk to me about the other common mistakes that women are making that maybe even they're encouraged to make. I think one of them is to make an easy ask. Like, oh, you should make it easy for them to say yes. That's actually not how negotiations. works, right? We want to anchor high and then we want to be able to agree to something. This is how we appear to be a very good team player, right? That's number one. Number two, and I hear this all the time, is people who are like, well, I thought this negotiation would be, is scary, but somebody said it's just in my head. Let's go ahead and wipe the slate clean on that one. It's not just in your head. This is your spidey

sense trying to protect you. And Tori, I'm happy to like go into the building blocks of what's happening here and what leads to backlash. But essentially, women know, as early as the age of eight, women know that there's something about negotiations that means we need to tread lightly. And so I have an eight-year-old. He doesn't know that the tooth fairy isn't real, but his female counterparts know that there is something about negotiation that is set up for them to lose. And that's right. The way that we've played the game, we've been set up to fail. And so what we want to do is we want to talk about changing the game so that it's fair again.

So when we look at negotiations in this moment, because I want to talk about backlash in a second, but at this particular moment where everything seems awful, if cash is frozen, what are other things women should think about asking for instead? If you do hear, you know what, raises are not on the table right now. So two things. One, I want you to ask for whatever is that you wanted six months before your annual review, right? companies have gotten really smart. They're freezing budgets now or budgets are due a couple months before your annual reviews. So let's front run that and ask for them as soon as possible. And then you can revisit. Okay. So what you just said, I did not know that. So we have companies that are purposefully not budgeting in, oh yeah, we're probably going to give this person this kind of raise. They're purposefully having those conversations six months before annual reviews are happening. Is that what I'm hearing? Let's do kind of the average company calendar. annual reviews are in December.

Budgets for managers are due in October, which means that if you ask for something in December, your manager, when they say my hands are tied, they're probably, they might be telling you the truth. So what you want to do is you want to make your ask in June, July, so that you can say, hey, you know, past performance, future vision that we're all excited about. In order to accomplish that, I want to talk to you about, you know, this ask.

What do you think? I want to talk to about being promoted. I want to talk to you about a 10% raise. I want to talk about adding people to my team. What do you think? And what you want is for them to either say, yeah, that sounds like a good idea or, ooh, I'm not sure at which point in time you say, I understand you're not sure right now or I understand you don't think I'm ready for this opportunity.

Can you tell me what I need to demonstrate to prove that I'm ready the next time it comes around? Because objectivity reduces bias. So if you can get that checklist from them, then you can run that thread through. So that was, you know, to your first question. So we have a list of 76 things that we've seen women negotiate. plenty of them are compensation focused, only one of them is based salary. And so if, you know, salary increases are frozen, okay, what about a performance bonus? What about more in my 401k? What about X, Y, and Z? That's definitely a path you can go down. Or if money itself is not negotiable,

then let's talk about all the other things you can negotiate that you can monetize later. Can you get a promotion, which, you know, later on will come with a raise either at that company or a different company. Can you get, I worked with somebody the other day who got a training at Harvard. It was a couple thousand dollars, but that she's going to be able to monetize in her next review. What else is it that you can ask for that you can either monetize later, which is my favorite, or that just allows you to have less stress and more joy in your day. I am on a health journey right now. I have been working with a coach over the last six months. And I truly, truly think that factor is making all the difference for me. My stamina's increased. I'm sleeping better. I just absolutely love these meals

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that they want you. So I don't think they were doing it intentionally. Some companies do. They try to purposefully get you to say yes quickly with the sense of urgency. I think they just weren't aware of that. But the thing I kept telling him is I'm like, you control the pace of this. And they couldn't pay him more money, but they gave him a sign on bonus. And they got him to where he needed to be with a creative version of that. And so I think that this is what Catherine saying is, yes, if we can negotiate based salary, absolutely. But when you're looking at your total compensation, it is everything. in that. It is their health insurance premiums that they're covering. The ability to work from homes, some if not all of the time, sign on bonuses, a better title, a learning stipend. Like,

there's so many things that you can negotiate, especially when a company is saying, you know, actually our hands really are tied. And that's not just like a fun little thing we're trying to get you to do. So you don't negotiate. Like, we don't have budget. There are other things you can negotiate for. Well, and I think that time pressure is especially pulling. in severances where we need you to sign this right now. Don't sign that right now. There are so many things that you can negotiate. You just need, you're a human being, you deserve a second.

I also really love that he negotiated after he got the offer. One of the mistakes I see people make is they negotiate in the job interview process. We don't want to do that because your leverage is highest after you've gotten the offer and everyone has said like, this is my person. My name is now next to their name and they don't want to lose face by you saying no. And so that's when you're most likely to get what you're asking for. Yeah. They've also put in all of this work to find this person.

And if they're offering you a job, that means you are the candidate. So you have a lot more power in that moment than you do when you're fighting 20, 40, 100,000 other people for this job. Yeah, exactly. I think the other thing I would want women going into job offer negotiations to know is that the gender gap in face salary is about 20%. That's still dwarfed by the gender gap in other compensation thing. Stock options is the big one. Stock options, 80%. Performance bonus, 72%. Equity, anywhere from 10 to 40%. Number of people on your team anywhere from 25 to 40%. And so I really, when we do a negotiation,

I would love for you to think really creatively and very holistically about what it is that you want to negotiate. I mean, I've worked with people who have negotiated parking spots because they weren't expecting mother to a dedicated conference room because they wasted half their day trying to find a conference room to meet with their team in to a $2 million inventory system that saved their team 30% of their time, right? Like, you are only limited by your own creativity when it comes to this stuff. Okay, so we talked about bias, and we have to keep talking about that, when we're worried about pushback or we're worried about the optics of negotiating.

So talk to me, you said you have a solution, and please, dear God, if there is a solution out there. Tell me what it is. Let me tell you a little bit about where backlash comes from so that the solution makes sense. Is that okay? Yeah, it's great. So backlash is sort of two parts. Part one is societal concepts of gender. If somebody's listening to your show, they're very familiar with us, right? But I am expected to be others focused. My husband is not expected to be the same. Right. Let's add that to negotiation, which is generally perceived of as this like aggressive competitive battle. Even folks who have taken, you know, a semester's worth of collaborative negotiation, when you say, okay, now picture negotiating with your employer, they still default into this

winner or loser thing. So backlash is when we take somebody who is expected to be others focused and put them in an environment that expects a winner versus a loser. That's inherently set up for us to fail. Okay. So what we want to do on the solution is we want to change that. So we're going to wipe that off the table. We didn't create that. That wasn't created for us. The three things, we're going to do to maximize our negotiation and eliminate that risk of backlog, or the researchers say virtually eliminate. So I'm going to use that language. The risk of backlash is one, we're going to think holistically. Again, what we talked about, it's not just base pay, but what other things would allow you to deliver more impact, have a better time, reduce your burnout, any of those. Two, we're going to

use that relational ask that we talked about. So past performance plus your future vision that everyone can get behind, plus your ask, and then stop talking. because women are so great, we'll end up negotiating against ourselves. So end up with a collaborative question. You know, what do you think? How can we make that happen, that sort of thing? And Tori, if it's helpful, I'm happy to run through some examples. And then the third step we want to do here is we want to negotiate collaboratively.

And that is a you and me versus the problem mindset. Interestingly enough, some new research came out last year showing that if you walk with a person while you're negotiating, you get better results. And it's because we, we, anything that we can do to avoid this being a face off, we want to do because we want to remind people, whether it's how we're standing, how we're interacting, whatever it is, that we're on the same team. We want the same thing, which is for the company to be successful. And part of that is for you as an individual to be able to be successful within the company. Catherine, this is so validating because I've been teaching this exact method of negotiation to thousands of women since 2019. So I feel very validated in that the research is now not only talking about this, but supporting it. I literally have talked about negotiation being a collaboration, not a conflict and using collaborating statements.

So I want to work together with you on this. I want to find a number we can collaboratively agree on. I want to make sure that I can stay and do my best work. Help me do that. That's the kind of collaboration we're talking about here, right? Well, yes. And Tori, there's a reason why when I read your book in 2020. too. I was like, oh, I have to email this woman. Well, and it was because I was seen in my own life

and experience with talking with other women. It was like all of the research, especially in this time, right? And, you know, my corporate career was 2016 to 2020. And it was like very much the, yeah, you just negotiate like a man. And I'm like, if I try to do this, it will not work. Like, again, it's the, I deserve this. It's like, it does not work. It doesn't work. And it doesn't feel good. So people are, you know, just walk in. uncomfortable. You don't want to walk in uncomfortable. You want to know that what you're doing is good for everybody, right? Who wouldn't want that? Yeah. So talk to me about what this actually looks like in practice, but especially not just like the prepared speech you have, because this is what

my partner realized is it's like I gave him the script of that first reach out after the offer. But then as things started going back and forth and back and forth, this is where you start feeling out of your depths because it's suddenly like, it's kind of like me when I try to speak French is it's like, I've planned the first sentence and then they like, they're off and they're having a real conversation with me and I'm like, fuck, I don't. Yeah. Yes. And you did not stick to the script that I had in my head of how this was going to go. So talk to me about when we actually are in the midst of the negotiation. We may have already done the here's what I'm looking for in terms of my range and here's how we can do this collaboratively. When we actually start talking back

and forth, what am I saying? What am I doing? Especially while my palms are sweating. Yeah. So a couple of thoughts. One, we know that the closer you can get to in person, the better your results. So people right now really want to negotiate on text or over email because it's, quote, unquote, easier. That might feel better in the moment, but it's actually not going to get you better results. So if you can do it live or as close to live as we can get, that's what we want to do. Two, a couple of general rules of them. One, don't say yes, too quickly. If you say yes too quickly, they're going to assume that there's more there that they can go get and they're going to go after it. Two, never give something without getting something in return.

Because if you give something without getting something in return, again, it's like children. They're going to think there's more cookies in the cookie jar because you didn't tell them there weren't, there was nothing else there. So, hey, we'd really like for you to start immediately. I'm going to try and riff off a little bit of the situation. We really want you to start immediately. I understand you want me to start immediately, that's going to be really tough because of X, Y, and Z. I think I might be able to pull it off. But in order to help me do that, can you throw me a couple thousand dollars in signing bonus because I'm not to move faster than I thought I was going to? Or I'm going to need additional child care that I wasn't expecting. Or I'm going to, you know, whatever it is,

help them make it easy for you to do the thing they want you to do. The thing I always keep in mind, too, is it's like if you can understand why they're asking you, you can acknowledge why that's important to them. So if you didn't want to start early, for whatever reason, you were like, no, I want to take a vacation or whatever. You can be like, I am so excited about this job and I really value that you're excited to get me started. That means a lot to me.

Like that tells me that you're so excited for the work that I'm going to do. And that makes me even more excited to take this job. I'm wrapping up a three year, you know, job at this other place. I would love to take some well-deserved rest so I can hit the ground. running when I get back. Like that is my way of saying, oh, you want me to start immediately because you want me to get going. And that's great.

And I appreciate that. And I see that. I'm going to go take some rest. And then you rebrand it as, of course, I'm taking rest so that when I start, I am ready to go. And brand to your point, like it doesn't mean it's a lie. It's an absolute truth. Yeah.

I think in the before times, I was working at a global firm that quote unquote didn't negotiate. I was just getting married to somebody that I lived across the country from and wanted to have this really amazing month-long honeymoon was in my brain. But the firm was like, oh, everyone has to start on X date. And so to your point of asking questions, I got on the phone with the HR rep and I was like, can you tell me why this date is important? And she was like, I am required by our legal team to have all of the new employee information uploaded by that date.

And it was like, oh, okay, well, what if I start on that date? date and then two days later I go on an unpaid leave. Does that work? And she was like, yeah, that works. So I started and I just went on a six week unpaid leave. Fine, you know, win, but it only happens when you ask those questions that you were talking about of like, can you help me understand why this matters? What other places are we sinking the entire negotiation? Where else are we shooting ourselves in the foot? So I would say there's sort of three, I don't know, biggest mistakes that I see. One is undervaluing ourselves. So, we know that women tend to undervalue ourselves by about 40% starts when we're eight.

One of the course corrections you can make on that is benchmarking is great, but if you need to figure out how to course correct quickly, it's what would you advise a friend of yours in the exact same position or same place to ask for, right? And that, we know course corrects. You're usually spot on after that. So number one, don't undervalue yourself. Number two, don't wait until your backs against the wall and there are no other options. This is when we were so tied into this one big conversation that we end up shooting ourselves in the foot because we don't feel like we have other options. I would much rather you negotiate proactively than defensively. And then the last one I think is negotiating just one thing, right?

If you can negotiate a package of things, that's great. Or if there's one thing you really want like that base pay, I would love for you to have a back pocket ask because there are seven times more likely to say yes to you once they've said no to you. So if they say no to that, and actually I think your partner's example is a great one. If they say no to that raise, I understand you can't do the raise right now. What about a signing bonus? And like, oh, okay, I can make you haul on a signing bonus. Okay, great. Well, and the funny thing, he didn't even have to ask for it.

They gave it to him because he kept asking for increased compensation. And they were like, we can't do that, but we can do this. And that was their concession prize. And he was like, yeah, sure, great. I also think the negotiation is a really good litmus test of whether or not that's actually somewhere you want to work. Like if they were working with you. Yeah.

And it was actually, you know, halfway through the process. Like, again, I don't think that this was vindictive. But they were trying to move so quickly. I kept telling him, I was like, this might be a red flag. I don't know if it is yet. But like, because they're pushing you so hard, it might be something where you realize, actually there's this sense of urgency about everything at the company where like, we're not curing cancer.

This is not an emergency room. This is not a triage center. Like, it might be a red flag. And I completely agree that watching how they move throughout the negotiation, because if they're not willing to see your value now, they're not going to be willing to see your value through your entire tenure of employment there. Agreed. When you're running a small business, you're not just doing the job.

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and you said it, right? Like figure out how to value yourself correctly. How does someone actually do that? How do they figure out what their market rate is generally? But how do they figure that out, especially right now in this moment where there's AI and there's layoffs and all of that shit that they have to deal with? This is a great question. Okay.

So foundationally, the way to do it is benchmarking, right? And we have on our website the ultimate guide to benchmarking, it has a ton of resources on how to do this. Okay, fine. So we talk to people who have left the company because they don't care anymore. We talk to people who are in the same role somewhere else. So we talk to people who are in a different role, but in the same industry, yada, yada, yada, and kind of get yourself there.

In the age of AI, what's really interesting is that AI has the possibility of short-kitting that. And what I love about that is that we know that women have less time. And so I want a shortcut when I can get it. The problem we're seeing right now is the research shows that AI is advising a woman with exactly the same background for exactly the same role to ask for 40% less. 40% again, that magic number. So I don't love that. I'm not shocked by it. It's a bias in, bias out system.

Do we say, do we tell AI I'm a man? Here's what I would do is I would use AI as one data point. And if you don't have a lot of time, don't let this stop you from negotiating. Just stop there. But type in the phrase, please remove all gender bias in your response. It's not going to make it perfect, but it's going to make it a lot better. In my ideal world, you're also going to talk. to a former employee and you're going to talk to one of your mentors who knows, you know,

what everybody's making and all of that stuff. But if you don't have time, just type in that phrase and we're going to do the best we can. The other thing about market value is so much of it is perception, right? Are you a high performer? Are you a low performer? We're so busy right now. People don't actually know. They just know how you present. And so research by Northcroft and Pinkley shows that people end up taking what you make and using that to deduce how valuable you are, not the other way around. And so accepting less implies that you're bringing less value to the company. And so I would actually prefer you to ask a little high and then negotiate down because that's how we're going to put forth and then reemphasize the perception, which I'm

an argue is probably true, that you're a high performer. Well, and you've given some really blunt advice before that asking the real benchmark, which is just ask a white guy. like that's where we should be going. Is that like, do we need to be adding that into who we're asking beyond our mentors and our colleagues? I'm really glad that you brought that back up. So we know with networks that people tend to flock with those that are like them. Right.

The problem with women benchmarking then is we benchmark a group of people who are all being paid 20% less. And so ask a white guy is a pretty good one. I also in asking like to say, hey, I'm, you know, getting ready to negotiate. I'm thinking of asking for X. What do you think? And what I found is most of the time, that person is like, oh, yeah, I make Y, so X makes sense. Or, hey, I make Z. You might want to ask for a little bit more. And so if I give a little bit, the majority of the time, they'll give a little bit back. Or at the very least,

they'll say, oh, that seems a little high or, oh, that seems a little low. And directionally, that's helpful. And everybody listening, I really want you to take that advice to heart because it's so easy with the negotiation to avoid talking about money and being like, okay, I'm going to go on Glass Store or I guess the 2026 equivalent is, yeah, I'm going to just talk to AI. And it's like, you have to talk to real people, even if it's uncomfortable to talk about money. One, because you need real data. You need real data from other people, especially if you are telling your boss or your potential boss, I have done research to know what my market rate is. It can't just be I type my job title into Glassdoor. Like, that cannot be the research. But also in addition, if you want this

negotiation to go really well where you're about to talk about money with somebody that seems a little intimidating and you're not comfortable talking about money with somebody that you like know or somebody who's mentored you, then we got to, we got to start there because you're going to get more comfortable being uncomfortable, the more reps you put in. Agreed. The other thing that I'm always surprised by is how many people I work with who are doing a negotiation and they benchmark with somebody and then end up getting hired by the person they benchmark with because while they were talking about it, They were like, hey, I've done X. I'm getting ready to do Y.

I think I'm going to ask for Z. And that person says something like, oh, shoot, we need, you're great. We need you. Right. And then three or six months later ends up swooping in and hiring you. Great. I love that for you. Let's create, plant some more of those trees.

So we mentioned AI. I don't want to spend too much time talking about it. But like a lot of people are leaning on AI right now to like prep their resumes and their interview questions and also to negotiate. Is this a good idea? So with benchmarking, I think we've done kind of a course correct. It's not great, but sometimes we walk before we crawl, crawl before we run. When we're talking about negotiating, role playing, like actually going through it, is one of the most underutilized tools.

It does help you have better outcomes and people hate doing it. Please do it. I don't love when people only do it with AI because AI again has consumed what's out there and 98% of what's out there is negotiation strategies for men and it doesn't say that. And so AI is going to give you back something that probably isn't research backed, at least not for women. And so what I would love is if you listen to, you know, go watch my TEDx. It has 400,000 views. Listen to this podcast again. But work through your relational ask, then work through it with somebody else who's a real human being.

I think AI, though, is really good at predicting what things, the person you're negotiating with, what concerns they might bring. So that allows you to prep your response. Like, hey, I'm going to ask for a raise. I'm going to say the following thing. What concerns might the person I'm negotiating with have? And it's a really good way to tease some of those out in your prep. Yeah. And this is also where the like voice to text like can be really helpful if you're literally

just like, this is what I'm planning on saying and the way I'm planning on saying it. If you don't have like a negotiation buddy to do this with. Yeah. Great point. And I think again, I'm living this because my partner just did it. And this is the first time I've been like knees deep in a negotiation in a very long time, at least on the asking side. But the thing that I had him do is I, like, gave him his script and he was doing it over

the phone. And so I had him literally write down what he was going to say on the paper. But then I also purposefully tested him of like, okay, he's not going to follow this script. Like the person you're negotiating with, he's not going to do exactly what we expect him to do all the time. So we ran through, like, if this negotiation goes totally sideways and he gets like really defensive or weird, here's how we're going to respond.

If he gives you exactly what you ask for, here's how we're going to respond. Likely he's going to do something in the middle, which is go like, oh, I'm not sure if we can do that. I have to go back to some people and have a conversation. Like that's the most realistic version of this. So I want to talk about that because that's the murky middle of, oh, I got to go talk to somebody. I see women go either, oh, don't worry about it.

It's okay. And they just accept whatever's going on or they don't know what to say next. So when somebody gives them the like, I don't know if this is possible, I'm going to go have to talk to somebody. What do you say to that? That sounds great. Is there anything that I can send you that would make that conversation easier? How can I help you? And so a couple of things came into my mind when you were giving this really helpful example.

One, the average negotiation lasts 25 days. People come to me and they're like, oh, I failed. I just got out of the office and we don't have an answer. It's like, no, no, these are big, important conversations. They deserve time. Don't sweat it. It's a series. Catherine, I have to stop you.

I'm so sorry. Everybody, 25 days. Okay, so over three weeks, nearly a month long. It's like all of February, basically, right? So if you're going in and thinking, I will have one conversation and if I didn't, it didn't get what I want after that one conversation, it's over. It is not over, not even close. So 25 days.

And if that seems like a long time, think about that million dollar stat, right? You are making over a million dollars more in your lifetime for having 25 days of discomfort. We can tolerate 25 days of discomfort for 35 years, 40 years of making what we're actually worth. But I just wanted to pause you there really quick. 25 days is a long ass time. It's a long time to experience discomfort. Tori, I love this point so much because I love that you're doubling down on the motivation to get you through the messy middle. And so what I would love people, to do is go to our website, look at that negotiation calculator, and figure out what your number is. So I'm filling it out now. If you're 30 and your current compensation is $75,000, Tori, why don't you pick an increase? The average increase is 2.7. People who take our course get about 10%. The people I work with in coaching get about 28%. Why don't you choose a raise? Let's do 12%. That seems like a good amount. Great. So let's say you're 30 years old. You're making $75,000 and you negotiate a 12%

raise. That is $569,000 over the course of your career just because of that one negotiation. Let's assume you never negotiate again. You just sail off into the sunset. Right? That's half a million dollars. And so to your point of getting your motivation in line, like fill out that calculator, write on a Post-it note what your number is. And then the other thing about it being 25 days that I actually love is it makes breaks normal. So if things start to go off, the rails, as you said earlier, if somebody gets, you know, if somebody that you're negotiating with gets upset or sometimes I like to start negotiations with is now a good time because I've been in situations where somebody's uncle passed away the day before and like they're at work because

they're in shock. Like, this is not a good time for this. So it takes a little bit of the time pressure off. It also means that if you feel like it's going off the rails, you can say, hey, you know, this is a really important conversation and you've given me a lot to think about, why don't I take 24 hours and think if there's some more creative wins here? And can I come back to you tomorrow? Can we talk about it next Tuesday in our meeting? Can we, you know, whatever, grab dinner? Feel free to take a break. Yeah. And the other thing is it's just a lot of like, as somebody who now is on the opposite side of it, who's hiring people, it is often, oh, I have to get my contracts together, or I have to go and chat with legal or, oh, the person I need to talk to, they're out sick or they're out on vacation.

it's just like, I think it's so easy to believe that if this is taking a long time, it's because you fucked up. And I think that's such rarely the case. And if it truly is, it's taking a long time because either this company is like turned off by you asking for more money or because they don't have their shit together. That tells you everything you need to know about this organization. Do you want to know the number one reason why in my client's negotiations it takes a long time? Oh, because they don't have the, the companies don't have their shit together. Because the companies come back and say, we actually think you're over. overqualified for this role? What do you think about that role? It's amazing what you can do in a

negotiation. Yep. And it's realizing when I say don't have their shit together, it's either disorganization or it is going, oh, we actually need something different out of this role than what we thought. And I will say candidly, that even happens with us sometimes. And it is, we find a great candidate and we're like, oh, actually, we could do this with them as opposed to the role we had envisioned. And so then we kind of have to, we have to do some reorganization. Like, we have to figure out if this person is really great and we want to make sure that they have a place here, I want to make them a place as opposed to trying to square peg round hole. Well, and with companies that do that, that take their time to do that,

you're going to be, the employee is going to be happier. They're going to stay longer. The employer is going to be happier. I mean, I love it when companies think about this is the right talent. Now what box do I need to create for them? Totally. So you mentioned the 25-day discomfort of a negotiation process. process. What other things happen in the murky middle that cause us to panic? You spend time with

someone who doesn't believe in you. And I don't know if this is friends, if this is your uncle, if this is, you know, actually a lot of what I see right now is the parents generation saying, well, you can't get a job if you don't have a job. Like you need to get a job right now when you have a job. Don't, don't risk a layoff or anything else. And that's just not true anymore. And so I think that there's a lot of fear from an older generation that sometimes gets put on when you have 25 days to wait. I will say one thing that we see that helps combat a lot of it is planning a reward right after the first conversation simply for being brave enough to have it. And having that dinner with good friends or the bottle of wine you were looking forward to or whatever it is gives you

a whole new energy in that room. So in the murky middle, one is starting to question yourself. Don't do that. You set up this negotiation for a reason. I believe in you. Let's surround yourself with people that also believe in you. Sometimes people try and push it to a more async version to get through it. Sometimes that has to happen. It's not ideal. So if you can wait for the meeting and have it all together, that helps.

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I think a lot of that is just the impatience. And so you cry, uncle too soon because you're just uncomfortable with the uncomfortable. Because I think we're, again, all of the expectations for us as women is we just accept whatever's given to us. And we just like, we're happy with whatever that it feels like we're being difficult. Just because it's like, oh, it's taking 25 days. And it might take more than that, right? That's the average.

So this is taking 30 days, 40 days. I don't want to piss anybody off, so I'll just accept whatever. And I think that's just, that's all mindset work and that's all reminding yourself that this is normal and that the very reason you're having a conversation about your compensation is because you want to be compensated fairly so you can do your best work. And that's it. It's not greedy. It's not selfish. It's not you're stalemating. You are having a collaborative conversation about how you can get compensated fairly so you can do your best work. I think the other thing that I would build in there is develop an alternative, right? Yeah. Yeah. You don't date, well, most people don't date one person

their whole life. Like, if it's not this, what else would it be? So I just bought a minivan on Monday. I'm in that phase of life. It's not just the Honda Odyssey. It's also the Toyota Sienna. Like, what other things are that could be a good path forward for you? Because when you have options, you're in a better place to maximize that negotiation. And so I think what we've said in terms of like the messy middle is motivate yourself. Remember that number. Look at our calculator. Remember that it's normal. It's just so normal. 25 days. And that's an average. Don't sweat it. Surround yourself with the right people, especially during that point in time. One, two, that is very with the surround yourself with the right people that I think about is there

are certain people I go to for certain things. And if you go to the person in your life who unfortunately maybe play small or is like, can't believe you would ask for more money, they're going to sew doubt in your brain. And they might be great friends or, you know, your mom might be great for other things in your life. But I know there are certain things I go to my dad for that my mom will freak out about and vice versa. There are certain things I can tell my best friend. that I might not be able to tell this other friends that I have. And so I think that, like, you have to understand in that specific season, who are the people that are going to rally behind you and go, yeah, I've negotiated.

I know how to do this. I've, 100% you should be doing this. Don't talk to the people who have never negotiated. Don't share this with them because it's going to end up freaking you out when they go, wow, you're asking for that much. But the economy is really bad right now. Are you sure that's going to work out for you? Like they're doing, they care about you.

They're trying to look out for you. And that's how they think they're going to take care of you as preventing you from having any sort of discomfort or pain. But like those are not the people in a salary negotiation that are actually going to help push you and challenge you and confirm. Yeah, you're right for negotiating this amount of money. So I think it's like having people to support you, but understanding that like for that 25 days, I'm not calling my mom. Like I'm just, I'm not calling my mom and talking to her about that particular. thing because she will freak out. Right. It's, um, don't get advice from the messiest person you know about how to organize your closet. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. And specifically about that thing,

because money and career and negotiation, like it is a very, it's, of course, very gendered, but it's also very generational. Like, the amount of times that, you know, my mom, early in my career, we're like, just go and, you know, show up at the office and bring your resume and like, they'll give you a job and it's like maybe, maybe. That's not really how it works. Sometimes it is, but like, it's just, it's very different advice in how her career was approached versus mine. Or also like, don't take on any risk whatsoever because we don't want to put your 30 year career and your pension there at risk. Well, guess what? Yeah. The pension's already at risk. Yeah. It's gone. It's gone. Okay. So,

So before we get into a rapid fire, the question I have for you about all of this, about making sure we negotiate, making sure that we are helping mitigate any bias is what happens then when we're in a career for a while and we're starting to wonder, oh, is there something else out there? Maybe that's a different job. Maybe that's even a different career path. but then all of the gas is $6 and the economy is bad and layoffs and AI start creeping in. How do we reconcile that?

The economy might be bad with also understanding, yeah, we can find something else. I mean, part of it is remembering how big this world is, right? Six billion people, you're going to tell me this is the only one job that will hire you. That's not true. I think the other part of it is, and actually back to something that I learned in your book, about like what are the three things that you care the most about. It's okay if you're in a season where one of those isn't X, Y, or Z, right?

So early in my career, I was in a season where I wanted to learn as much as I could. I didn't care as much about the title. Fine. Right now I have these little kids that I, like, that think I'm cool. So I want to spend all my time with them. And so right now negotiating for the schedule is the most important thing. I'm not necessarily totally maximizing on. the money the way that I would have before.

Yeah. And so I think part of it is like being really honest with yourself about what the next couple years should look like. Don't ask a forever question we can't answer it. But what are the next couple of years? What do you care about? And then what are other options that could give you that thing? And frankly, I would love for you to always be able to answer the question.

If you weren't doing this, what would you do tomorrow? I'd love for you to know that. I mean, this is why we network, right? Because if we lose our job, we want to know what are the three phone calls we're going to make that night. Yeah. And so keeping those options generating is always going to be, I think, the most helpful thing you can do. I lied.

I have one more question. When I, when I look. You know, I'll talk to you for ages. I know, I know, I know. The thing that I experienced very acutely is I realized obviously very early on in my career, mid-20s, that I did not want to work for somebody forever. And in fact, every year that went by, I was like, oh, I. I had one foot out the door. Like, I am ready to be my own boss because of many reasons.

But one, my salary was pretty capped. Two, I was working for a lot of men I didn't respect and who didn't respect me, quite frankly. And three, I just realized it was going to be very hard to do what I emotionally, financially, wanted to do in a structure that I did not build. So obviously we know that the corporate environment, that work, that life that the world in general is not built for women. So at what point do you counsel somebody to say, yep, go build your own thing? Like at what point should a woman think, actually, I am not going to get what I need to get out of this corporate environment and I'm ready to bet on myself? Tori, have to be honest with you,

I wish I had an insightful answer to that question, but I think it comes from within the person, right? I mean, obviously I did the same thing a few years ago and it came because I no longer could deal with the fact that I wasn't in charge of my time before it didn't matter to me and then all of a sudden I couldn't handle it. You know, there's pros and cons to that. I do think one of the things that I've seen in our negotiation coaching is that sneakily, 20% of our clients now are entrepreneurs who are female who are figuring out how to negotiate with clients. And so I think it's really interesting and I haven't seen the stats on it yet, although you may have, of the movement of women saying, screw it, I'm out because I want to create an environment where I am able to be financially

rewarded for the output that I create, not the input that I demonstrate. Yeah. I mean, I don't have the exact stats on it, but post-COVID, we've seen so many more women navigate towards part or full-time entrepreneurship. And it's largely because of children in time. Like a lot of moms realized in COVID, this is not working for me. And the expectations are too high for managing both at the same time. And so I think a lot of women have been forced to build their own thing in a way that, again, comes with challenges, but is very, very fruitful. And I do encourage women that if your corporate career is not working for you, one, there's a company out there's a company out there that will treat you with respect. Like, they do exist. And if you, A, don't want to find it or be,

for whatever reason, are not finding it, then it's time to build your own. And that's what I kind of realized is it's like any job I had was not running their business the way I wanted to run a company. And so I decided to run my own. Tori, I had this one interview. And when I had it, I had an MBA. I was one of the youngest advisors ever at McKinsey. I had already been involved in the sale of two companies and I asked this major company what their part-time options for me would be. And the man that I was interviewing laughed. And it was like, oh, that's where we are. Okay. Okay. Cool. You're a children's brand. But if you're laughing about giving me flexibility as a mom, like, I think, I think this is where I'm going to call it. Yeah. And I think we all, well,

any of us who have chosen, making this decision that you and I have, have had that moment, I've been really fascinated. Honestly, you're 10 years younger than me. I've been fascinated by folks like you and our friend Mallory who made the decision, and Mallory and I've had this conversation, but made the decision because one day she wants to have the flexibility for X, and she knows that it's going to be a bolder. She has to push up a hill early, so she wants to do it before she needs it. And that to me was like, oh, that's impressive foresight. I just got hit by the Boulder first. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that maybe that is my question is it's like, how can we start thinking about creating time flexibility in our lives before we might be at our

width's end about it. And I think that that is a friction point where we're both trying to just see the path in front of us the next couple years while also trying to like solve a 10 year from now problem. And that leads to its own issues. But I just think that really your advice about creating plan B and plan C, I think is what this looks like. I encourage anybody listening to have one of those plans B, maybe I do my own thing, at least if it's part time. So that, you know, if plan A is this dream company, plan B is a good enough company, plan C is maybe plan C is entrepreneurship. Like maybe plan C is I am going to invest in myself. I just don't ever want to take that off the table for women because in my own life, I have seen it radically change every single

aspect, including my financial life. I would not be where as financially stable as I am at such a young age. If I would have kept corporate, it just wouldn't have happened at the same rate. And I've seen it for other women in my life who run their own businesses, but make a quarter of what I do or even an eighth of what I do. And they have such freedom and stability in that when it's often been labeled such an unstable choice. Well, and look at, you know, the richest people in the world, the rich people in America. I'll do that. They're entrepreneurs. The fastest path is entrepreneurship. It carries risk. That's part of the deal. I will say if you want to stay as a W-2, which we, what we know from the research perspective is if flexibility is going to be really important to you,

you want to be at a middle-tier company. So 30,000 employees is kind of the key that you see in the research too big and you're very substitutable, too small, and you're too important. So 30,000 employees or so, and find two really strong sponsors that will stand by you when you want that. We also see, I mean, Tori, you and I are a certain brand of people. We also see people who, you know, I did a negotiation recently with an incredibly well-compensated woman in tech. She's W-2. And part of it for her is like she loves her job. She doesn't.

Flexibility isn't as important to her. It's agency and trying to grow that. cool, then maximize for that. You don't need to maximize for what I'm maximizing for. We should be having different negotiations because we're different people. Yeah, and understanding what your motivation really is. Like, what do you actually want? And I think that's a really, really great piece of homework for people is it's like, what do you want your career to look like? Do you want to make a bunch of money and have a big sexy title? That's going to require potentially 60, 70, 80 hours of work a week. Do you not want that?

Okay, great. You have to figure out what do you want? Not what does somebody else want for you or what does society expect you to have? But like, what do you actually want your career and your life to look like? And you can make decisions that get you closer to that. You're not at societies back and call about what the expectations are. You can find companies and organizations that support whatever dream you have. And again, your dream might be different right now than it is in five years. And I actually think the hardest part of negotiations I see is people who don't know what they

want to negotiate because they don't know what their dream is. And I think in watching you, Tori, you are uniquely capable at this, but really separating out your voice from your parents' voice or your sister's voice or your partner's voice or your kid's voice or whatever it may be. Like, what is your voice saying? It can be tricky to put your finger on that. But once you do, let's build a whole world for you there. And I think negotiation is a really good tool to help you do it. Catherine, quick, rapid fire. Are you ready? Let's do it. Okay. One thing everyone should stop negotiating for. Only base pay. Make it bigger than that. Most underrated thing on your 76 things you can negotiate list. My favorite is new systems, new business

systems, because it allows you to get your job done so much faster. Worse negotiation advice you hear repeated constantly. Tell them you deserve it. Or tell them that your own personal costs have gone up, rents gone up, da-da-da-da. That's my least favorite one. I hate that for you. Like, that's terrible, but we need to make a business thing. Tori, I have another one. Tell them that it's about asking for what you're worth. I hate this. You're infinitely worth things because you're a human being. I think when we tell people like, make sure you're getting what you're worth, they get all wrapped up in this one thing. This is not, this is just market value. This is just dollars and cents. This is not who you are. This is not what you're worth.

I know that turned out to be the best thing that happened to a client. A job she really wanted. They couldn't come to terms on the negotiation. and three months later she found out it was because the firm was going billy up. She was like, it's so weird, it shouldn't be this hard. I really wanted it. It was her dream title, you know, for 20 years she'd wanted this title. But I think sometimes when things don't go well, we end up finding out later what the story was. And actually, another thing I've been seeing a lot right now is people whose sponsors are backing

away from them. And six months later, we find out it's because the sponsor was let go and new, you know, you have two weeks to wrap things up kind of thing. So for the woman listening who's scared, she's looking at layoffs and the headlines and thinking, I should just keep my head down this year. What do you want her to do this week instead? Grab a journal, grab your favorite drink, listen to your favorite music, and write out what your dream life would look like. And from there, figure out what's one thing you can negotiate that would get you a step closer. Is it that you leave early on Fridays because you love hiking and that's how you can get out to the place you like to hike?

is it negotiating that you'll sit in as a silent observer in a certain meeting because you're really curious how, I don't know, X, Y, and Z is working? But think about what that one thing is and just start there. I love that. Plug away, my friend. You have some of the best resources on negotiation I've ever seen. I'm so excited after your TED talk. Everybody needs to go watch that, but tell people where they can find out more about your work. Tori, that means a lot coming from you. Thank you. I think the first one is if you want that list, like don't reinvent the wheel here. Get that list of 76 things. It's at 76 Things, T-H-I-N-G-S dot com. And then we have a negotiation course. It's 45 minutes because you're busy. It's supposed to be priced to be reasonable. We have negotiation coaching. It's more expensive. But if it's a big negotiation, like, I'm here for you. Let me know how I can help. Amazing. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Tori. Always good to see you.

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