Life Uncut - Boss better have my money! Pay rise and pay gaps with Meggie Palmer

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

Hey Lifers!We kick off today's ep by telling you about all of the penis straw profanities of Britt's sister's hens party! The girls well and truly let their hair down. We then (somehow) chat about who is and isn't good in a break in an emergency, and spoiler but it's not Laura!Next up we take a bit of a deep dive on how we view cheating and do a bit of a litmus test of where our internal bias is. Do we think cheating while the woman is pregnant is more deplorable than when they're not pregnant? Then we jump into the wonderful Meggie Palmer to chat about all things gender pay gap and how to get a raise. We talk about:-what the pay gap is-why there is a pay gap between men and women in Aus-pay secrecy clauses and whether you can discuss salaries with colleagues-how to actually get a raise at workYou can check out the challenge that Peptalkher has here: PepTalkHer.com/challengeAnd download the app whereever you usually get your apps from!If you loved the ep, flick us a review on apple pods or a star rating on spotify and you know the drill!Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because we love love!!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Life Uncut podcast acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today. This episode is recorded on Gadigal land of the Aurora Nation. Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Laura.

And Brit. It is so nice to see your face today after what I saw of you on the weekend. I knew you were going to start. I just wanted to come in hot. Do you know what happened this weekend, everybody listening? We went to Britt's sister's hens, Sherry's hens. Oh, we're really just not even going to ease into this conversation today. No, it was the best time.

And halfway through, I saw Brittany's entire labia. It's true. Yep, both of them. Well, you didn't seem mad about it at the time. That's why. Or not just the one. I love that you have to clarify that there were two labia involved. There was.

Was there though? Because I thought just one was there. Nope. The thing that was the most surprising to me is that you were wearing a G-string and pretty much the entire thing had been eaten by your vulva. It was just gone. It was gone. And Brittany did the sluttiest of slut drops in the middle of a dance floor

at 1 o'clock in the middle of the day, and there it was, a whole vulva. Also, I love that it was 1 o'clock in the day. We need to set this scene a little bit better. It was my sister's – Oh, yes, you don't start by saying, hey, I saw Brit's labia. It was out on the dance floor. Bye. No, we set the scene.

It was my sister Sherry's hens. She's getting married in three weeks. She is on the Gold Coast, but she flew to Sydney and I all got, there's about 20 of us. It was an amazing day, but it started at midday as you know, Laura, because you were there. Honestly, we went for lunch at what was, okay. It was a bottomless lunch, two hours. Didn't know what to expect, but I was well and truly surprised and pleased and still recovering. It was amazing. It was, there were dances there. It was free flowing alcohol and food. I didn't even eat any food. That was my problem. That was why my labia came out because I was so hungry that I ate my

underpants so the the drinks are flowing we're all on the dance floor dancing i had like a huge split in my dress and you know sometimes like you guys all know if you wear a g-string it moves around when when you're walking when you're dancing when you are dropping it like it's hot that thing moves around somehow it did get eaten we lost it temporarily i did a drop to the ground did some maneuvers and Laura and probably a lot of other patrons may or may not have seen my lady up and it was I like the pause for dramatic effect and it was at that point that Keisha producer Keisha turned to me and said I've changed my mind I think we might need a HR department well it wasn't at the workplace so it's fine just because just because all the workers

were somewhere doesn't mean it was at the workplace okay we went to this bar or this restaurant it's called Eros it's in it's in King's Cross or Potts Point in the city and let me tell you, it felt like a nightclub, but in the middle of the day, like it went from zero to a hundred so quickly. I was like, I am way too old for this. And how funny when you walk outside, right? You've been drinking and partying and eating. You walk outside and you, in your head, you're like, it's gotta be midnight. It was two o'clock. It was daylight. We were like, whoa. It felt so fucking weird. And there was like drag dances. It was truly just the most awesome time. And then for anybody who knows King's Cross, cause King's Cross is a kind of a weird fucking place now.

like it used to be super vibey it used to be where you'd go out for like a night out everybody knew the cross right everyone even if you didn't live in sydney everyone had heard of the cross it was where everyone went to party because the cross had such this wild name there's this one really well-known bar there called weld bar which anybody who's been out in the cross would know about it they used to serve their cocktails and teapots so we come out of this restaurant and we get sent next door with some free drink vouchers like this is we're classy very classy we only went there because we got the free drink vouchers. We got sent to Whirlbar in the middle of the day

and there is nothing more seedy than seeing the inside of a nightclub when it is not nighttime and it is completely empty. I was surprised, but there was still so many people there. It was, they were all hens. Yeah, they were, weren't they? Three separate hens parties. And we did meet a bunch of you actually,

the listeners that came up to say they love the podcast. So we absolutely love that as well. I don't, I want to apologize in advance. If anything happened, if I said anything, I was pretty well intoxicated by that point. Was there anything else that happened? so I left early I had kids to put to bed was there anything else that happened in the night time that I should be aware of apart from the fact that you walked around with a dick on your

head for the rest of the afternoon oh it went downhill rapidly there's there will be no photo evidence of that nothing will ever we're not gonna talk about the podcast we're gonna talk about anything else but it was wild Sherry said it was the best night she's ever had which the relief I felt I cannot anyone that's out there that has planned a hens there is so much stress because you it's all on you for however many people 20 people to organize to do everything and you want to make sure this person has the best day right but you're like I don't want to do anything they're not going to like I don't do anything extra how do I make sure everyone has fun how do I make sure everyone's having fun because if they're having fun the hen's having

fun oh yeah you have to set the vibe high from the minute that you get it okay and this is the question we've discussed it before I brought it up a few weeks ago planning Sherry's hens I was like do I do a stripper or not that was the question I mean that's done now do you want a stripper that is the question we need to ask you so we can know what we're doing I say no but then maybe it's a yes like I don't want to say that I want a stripper but I want to be surprised okay so let me tell you I didn't get Sherry stripper and then I tried to get her the Channing Tatum stripper but he was booked out he's like I want to come so bad he's like but I've already committed something so I was very drunk at the hens and I started to message my ridiculously hot best friend

the dentist i started texting him and i was like please i do me a solid come and strip and he's he's one of sherry's best like they've known each other so long and he's like you want me to come right now yes and you should see the chain of messages you're like i will put some music on spotify come here and take your clothes off anyway he's like i'm with my mom i can't leave her in he's like i would do it but i can't leave my mom in the car and i was like i'm so glad you didn't do this i'm glad this failed because if you came and stripped for sure it would have been hilarious but it's done it's dusted i feel relief now we've got to get through one more hands that's your hens and then I feel like I can sleep easy so I left I left this hens party early I went home I

had children to tend to also it kind of got to the point where things were going to go they were either going to go really downhill and I was either going to have to commit to the process or it was time to evacuate we were on the precipice oh yeah it was going to go either way into an absolute chaotic emotional and moral debris but so I left I went home put the kids to bed Matt and I went to bed early that night and I was like laying in bed feeling a little bit like woo anyway part of time a little bit vibey really good for the intimacy challenge so this is what no there was no intimacy matt tried and i was like oh i feel queasy that was mine i was like no no thank you not tonight i'm full of margaritas they're just sloshing around in my stomach

okay so we're laying in bed it's like 11 o'clock at night and i hear this it sounds like somebody is breaking into our house i hear this massive smash through what i thought was a window i thought somebody had thrown a brick through our back window and was breaking in and so matt gets up frantically to go and check like what's happened i'm getting deja vu that last time someone broke into your house remember matt went and punched him in the face wasn't that bad so we go in we can't we can't find we can't find what's happened anyway eventually we go into lola's bedroom and the entire fucking mirror so like we have these wardrobes uh like built-in wardrobes they both have mirrors on the side of the wardrobe full-length mirrors great

yep i've got them in my house i know exactly what you're talking about the mirror completely fell out of the wardrobe and smashed right next to Lola's cot just in the middle of the night what a trooper she slept through the whole thing not even a trooper what if that fell on her well what if the kids were playing there yeah totally like that could have been disastrous and this was this was very much I mean I was on the text message in the middle of the night to the landlord like my children could have died I got real Karen on her ass well you'd also had some margaritas it was bad anyway but then add some margaritas okay but this is not my my question I have for you or I guess something that I kind of realized is so we're laying in bed this all

happens and that that moment of like fear like oh my god what the fuck was that noise what's going on it really makes you assess who you're with in your relationship when things go down and stuff gets really messy and you're like we're getting burgled some catastrophe or emergencies happening do they hide under the bed do they go to your aid do they defend you what do they do what do they do so here I am I'm laying in bed and you would think like a mother's instinct would kick in I'd be like I've got to protect my children I was like fuck that Matt you go check what that is and that was like i was like i am not getting out of bed so we sat in bed and laid in bed for a couple of minutes had a fight over who was going to get out of bed because we were both too scared eventually he did

it so i have something to say about this this too scared okay as somebody that is listens to a lot of true crime i have listened to hundreds of every true crime podcast out there i've listened to every episode if you think there's a burglar in your house and you have children in another room you need to go to those children immediately yes no Laura this isn't a question it's a statement I'm telling you I was laying in bed listening for footsteps there weren't any footsteps and no one was crying so I was like everything I think is okay but I'm a bit scared to get out of bed right now so just give me a second to process okay can I'll tell you a story not good in emergencies okay for all of those people out there that are similar to me where you don't have a partner to

rely on to save you if there's a burglar i was in my old house a couple years ago and i lived in the most amazing house on the beach in port macquarie it was all glass at low look to ocean like if you guys have followed me for a while you'll know what i'm talking about it was a it was a beautiful house but there were so many points of entry and there weren't a lot of blinds so like at night you also forget that people can see in and you walk around naked every lazy i was always named perpetually naked that's how i roll labby is out labby is left right center no just two left and right that third lady to clarify anyway every single room in this house like laundry two bedrooms two bathrooms lounge room kitchen every room for some reason had a fucking

door an exit and entry to the house so if someone was breaking in there wasn't one they could come in any way they wanted and this one night this is when i lived with a dentist my best friend that i told you about the guy that you wanted to get strip it the guy i just the guy just want to get stripped he had told me he was in sydney for the weekend so it was night time i had come home and i heard him in his room and the house isn't it sounded big it's not that big right i heard him in his room didn't think anything of it went to the kitchen messaged him and i was like hey i thought you're away this weekend you came back early he said i am away and i was like oh i was hey we always used to play pranks on each other and i was like i was like you went away i

i can hear you he's like babe i'm not here and i was like just come out i can i can hear you in your room he's like Brit I'm not here and I was like don't fucking joke and this is when this panic hit in I was like don't joke with me because I'm at home now and someone is in the house and this is when I'd been harassed by a lot of paparazzi and stuff like a few years after it was after the bachelor right and uh I still thought he was joking and then he facetimed me and I put on quiet and he showed me where it was and he's with his mum in Sydney I was like somebody's in my house i'm about to die i was like well i said to him what do i do i'm going what do i do i like that i went to stage five i'm about to die they could have just been taking your tv anyway i heard

i could hear them moving because they'd obviously heard me and were freaking so i just i didn't know what to do but no one else was going to protect me i got this huge knife from the i'm going to spoil this i didn't kill anyone i got this huge knife out of the kitchen and i just started yelling the police are on their way i've called them like i just yelled down the hallway and i hid in the pantry in my pantry and then what happened did you hear them leave i'll never know i sat in the pantry for a day with my knife wouldn't come out i was in there for hours i heard something else knock over i heard a door and they obviously ran away so there was there actually was someone 100 100 in my house and i was completely alone and i would hate to think

what would have happened did you call the police yeah i called police yeah but there's nothing there's someone breaking in it wasn't obviously for me they wanted to steal something and i left okay so what i'm getting from this is that i need you in an emergency and me and matt suck but like i am gobsmacked that you guys spent five minutes finding over who's gonna go check on the kids what do you think this burglar in the house no we did we just thought that they'd thrown a brick through the window we didn't think they were in the house we thought they were trying to figure out how to get into the house totally fine yeah and there's a night time and i'll be drunk maybe you guys need to have a bit of a what's it called like an intervention

maybe i need to come and have the intervention with you and you need to talk about what's going to happen in case of an emergency yeah well so for the rest of like a fire exit plan you need Next up, for the next six months, I slept with a knife under my bed because I thought, what if I am all home alone and something happens? This is, okay, this is a bit of a weird one. I feel like this is going to make some people think that I'm batshit crazy. But through my whole 20s. This is what's going to make them think that?

We're three years into the podcast. They've got it. But literally for my entire 20s, didn't matter if I was in a relationship or not, any time my partner was away or I was by myself, I would sleep with a knife under my pillow because I am a psycho. What was I going to do with that? Yeah, but the pillow, no, you don't put it under your pillow.

under my pillow what if you roll on it and put your hands under not just there so I can grab it whip it out at any time I was I live with your ninja skills you put it on you don't put it somewhere that you could cut yourself inadvertently while you're sleeping have you I used to just have this like irrational fear and I think it's gotten a bit better as I've gotten older I'm a lot better than what I used to be the fact that I got out of bed at all was like a real it's a real turning point but I used to be so petrified about being at home alone and I used to have so much worry and fear around it and I know that it was to a point where it probably was a bit abnormal but I think a lot of people do especially people who have been in long-term relationships or don't

spend a lot of time on their own this irrational fear about being alone at night time I think is quite relatable maybe not to my extent but it's relatable we're going to talk about some exit plans after this I'm going to give you some tips don't have the knife under the pillow but I feel that I've been alone for a long time when since I got Delilah I feel a lot better like having a dog or something that's going to pick up maybe a noise that I don't I'll bust it we'll just sleep through it but also that's what she does she doesn't know what me at all so like i don't think that was the great idea anyway that's that was rogue we were not even going to talk about that i don't know i don't know how we went down that like let's we're done we're so far down the rabbit hole

oh we are done with that i'm glad nothing happened let's move on let's actually talk about what the episode is about before we get into another chat true so just to clarify like i didn't get robbed burgled my kids are fine but my house is falling the fuck apart okay we're talking about something we are talking to an amazing woman called Meggie Palmer today Meggie Palmer is the founder CEO she's a speaker and she's a journalist she's created an app called pep talk her and we're speaking to her today about something very important and that is the gender pay gap and how to get a raise at work now look I think that you know when I hear gender pay gap I'm like oh okay what am I going to learn that's new here that's what was it was my first thought

when we said we were going to do this as a topic. It's so relatable. It's so relative because so many of our audience is female. But I also think the conversation around like how to get a pay rise at work is something that I think every single person will get something out of because it is an area where so many of us feel insecure or feel like we lack confidence to ask what we actually deserve. And I think that Meggie has some really amazing points as to how you can go and achieve that. The reason we decided to talk about this now is there were some statistics that came out in August in Australia this year. And these statistics said that the gender pay gap had increased in the past six months. So it had increased from 13.8% to 14.1%. It adds up to

a lot of money. But also on that, you know, we're living in a day and age where the pay gap should not increase at all. We should be constantly working towards a reduction in that gender pay gap. Well, a lot of people out there, if you're like me or like Laura just said, there's a lot of people that have heard about the gender pay gap. They've heard the term, you generally know what it is but you don't know a lot about it in depth or you don't know why you don't know the reasons and that's why we decided to talk to Meggie today she talks about how it's not necessarily that men earn more than women but it's things like the careers that women are drawn to the fact that we have to be caregivers I mean we don't have to be but that we carry the baby then there's a point

of time that we generally take time off to look after the baby the baby depends on us and then the flow and effect of how this pay gap will affect things like superannuation and your savings for the future. One of the things that you just touched on Britt and I think it's really important to kind of hone in on this is that I do think that there is a bit of a misconception around what is the gender pay gap and I think for a long time I just assumed that it was you know you work in a workplace and it's men get paid more than women. Because they have a penis. Yeah and I thought it was as simple as that which is that is not what the gender pay gap is that's something that's called unequal pay and it's illegal within Australia. Yeah gender equality. And we still

see it we absolutely see it especially in the entertainment industries for example you would have heard of a male actor getting paid way more than their female co-star or you see it in radio male radio announcers are paid more than female radio announcers and that's very much a generalized statistic that I'm throwing out there the reason why it happens in the entertainment industry is because often people are employed on contract basis so you're not all working within the same employment scheme it's like people are employed as individual talent and they negotiate their contracts individually. Whereas say, for example, in a workplace, if you've got a female accountant and a male accountant, if they are paid unequal, if they're paid differently and they're doing the

exact same amount of work, that is actually illegal. So there is a difference. What we're trying to say is there is difference between inequality in pay and gender pay gap. And we want that to be very clear from the outset. And then if you can take that knowledge going into the rest of this episode, it'll be a lot more interesting for you. Now, we are going to get into all that in a second, but something I wanted to talk to you about first Brit, which is something a bit rogue for me. I want to talk about the Kardashians. This, I'm glad you're coming to the table with this. This is very rogue for you because you, I have never watched a single episode ever until last night. I've never watched an episode of keeping up with Kardashians. I've

never watched an episode of the Kardashians, you know, their new series last night after everything that's been going on after all the conversations about Khloe and her surrogacy baby and Tristan cheating and I was like I need to know more I watched the first episode of season two are you hooked sign me the fuck up I am here so you know that I've only watched probably three episodes ever for the same purpose I have put I always watched highlights because I didn't want to watch the whole episodes I always read about them I watched them online I knew that like the rest of the world if I watched it I'd be hooked and I was I watched the first episode and I was like oh my god this is me done I get why they're a phenomenon I have always kind of sat there on

my little high horse being like I'm too good for the Kardashians I don't understand why people get obsessed with that no one's too good for them thought I was too good thought I was above it thought I was better than it and now I understand okay can we just start before we get into the whole surrogacy cheating like I have many feelings and I want to talk to you about them before we talk about that can we just spend a moment and maybe I'm very late to the party here but that aerial zoom through as the whole series as it opens of their house of Kylie Jenner's workplace of like I was just first three minutes I was in I was like that well this is me done yes you are late to the table yes you are late to the party I mean they're a family of billionaires like what

did you expect I don't know I just think like the whole it's incredible obviously it's so voyeuristic but seeing the houses and the way that they actually live is just it's such an hugely unrelatable thing to me and I don't even find it aspirational it's just unrelatable but that's not relatable to anyone. Totally, totally. So I was obviously so freaking hooked. But the reason why I wanted to watch this was because there has been so much in the news in the last couple of days around Khloe Kardashian and the whole shebang about her surrogacy, being cheated on, Tristan. And now we all know this is not the first time that Tristan has cheated on her. No, we've seen, I mean, like even if you don't follow the Kardashians, you know, somewhere or another

that in this relationship with Tristan and Chloe he has cheated on her multiple times he cheated on her when she was two weeks away from giving birth well she wasn't no so what happened was is she found out she found out that he had cheated on her and then the stress of that put her into early labor so she went into labor 48 hours later insane and okay this the reason I wanted to talk about this is because I had a moment where I was like I need to check my internal bias here because I remember when that story broke. I remember when Tristan then went on to cheat on Chloe with Jordan. I mean, it's been a fucking shit show. He cheats all the time. Yeah. He's cheated several times. And in my mind, in my, from my mighty high horse of a great relationship that I have at the

moment, I was like, well, you know, like I've obviously had shit relationships and now I have a great one. And I was, I was looking from my little glass palace and I was like, how could you stay? How could you stay with someone who you have a baby with, who keeps treating you like this. And I had that moment where I was like, God, what is she thinking? It's so easy for us to do that from the outset of a relationship. We have such a clear picture. It's so easy to look in on someone else's circumstances and go, why don't they just leave? And then I realized that that's also the same mentality that we have towards survivor victims of domestic violence. And we think, well, why doesn't she just leave? I guess like this part that I found so sad about this

whole situation that Chloe is in is that she was talking to the camera and she was saying the biggest fear I have is people thinking like I'm a fucking loser like people thinking like why would you stay with him and then being blamed for the situation and I guess it's that old analogy right that saying of like fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me but we all know people who have been in relationships where they've been cheated on and they've stayed because either they wanted to give their family unit another chance or they just saw the potential in who that person could be or you know what maybe they're scared of being alone there's so many reasons why people stay and try and try again in relationships and I think it doesn't the part of

this that was so relatable the thing about this episode that I thought wow like I that just clicked for me is that it doesn't matter how much money you have doesn't matter how much access you have to therapy or self-improvement or counselors this can happen to anyone you can be in a relationship where you're treated so poorly and yet you stay because you see the potential of what the relationship could be. Yeah, and just going back to one thing you said that Chloe came out and said,

my biggest fear is people thinking I'm an idiot and I'm embarrassed. That is such a normal human reaction. And I have so many friends, so many people I know, so many famous people come out and say this. This is a really common human reaction for you to feel embarrassed and for you to feel like you're the one to blame

as opposed to, well, hang on, I'm the victim in this. like this is embarrassing for this dickhead that can't keep it in his pants but it is because we know as a society there are going to be people out there that judge us why didn't you see the signs well he did it once they did it once why did you stay like that's on you even the social media commentary of like well you deserve it like if you're going to stay in that relationship you deserve to be cheated on it's like nobody ever deserves to be cheated on having empathy and hoping that your partner is going to be a better person doesn't equate to being deserved to be treated poorly and some of the reasons are as humans people make mistakes we know that you and

i have spoken to psychologists that have said some relationships come back stronger than ever after infidelity and we don't condone infidelity but it doesn't have to be the end of the world in this position specifically tristan and chloe we don't know that he didn't come and say i'm so sorry i've done this this is the worst mistake of my life i love you i love you i love our daughter i want a family with you i will never do this again who are we to judge chloe for trying to keep her family unit together with someone that she believe it or not really loves why are we saying this is your fault for staying what do you think was going to happen why aren't we saying what an asshole he cheated she deserves better well I think ultimately we're kind of saying both

I think that's the thing it happens on both sides of the coins of course there's people being like he's an absolute piece of shit but then there are also people in the commentary which is what she's experienced in the past is like how stupid is she for staying and I guess the big thing that I took from it was like, you know, I've personally been in a relationship where I was cheated on multiple times and I stayed. And the only reason why I ended up leaving, it wasn't because I even wanted better for myself. Like I did of course, but it was because I was so ashamed of what people thought of my relationship. I was so embarrassed that I had been cheated on again. So I felt like my hand had been forced. Like I had to leave because my family wouldn't like him. My friends

didn't like him. And I felt like I was going to lose my community around myself. And you didn't want to leave because of what he did I didn't know because because I had become so conditioned to the behavior and sometimes when you're in a relationship it's almost like you know for Chloe I'm sure and this is obviously me just speculating I'm sure we don't know them I don't she's not my friend even though I feel very connected to her now now that I've seen her house but like yes now that I've been inside all of their houses the thing is is like I'm sure the biggest blow came to her when she first found out that she was being cheated on when she was pregnant with true, but that would have been the biggest blow. Then it happened again. And I'm sure that that

was a huge blow, but it always kind of is a little bit less of a blow because you're like, well, it's happened before we survived it. We got better. We can work through this again. And I think it's that almost exposure that something becomes almost normal in someone's relationship. And then you forgive and you work through it where, when you look from the outside and you see that happening, you can realize how toxic it is and you can see it on face value for what it is but when you're in the trenches of it sometimes it's really hard to extract yourself yeah it's exposure therapy it's a thing it's what people do to help people get over fears or things like that people might have a fear of heights exposure therapy to heights really slowly over time

makes it not so bad anymore this is the same thing it's exposure therapy to a level of trauma by the time it happens for the 20th time the shock's not there the surprise isn't there the hurts usually way less because you've felt it so many times and I think that's probably what has happened with Chloe but I have friends that are not uber famous that are not uber rich they're just your average Joe Blow they're in a relationship one in particular that I'm thinking of now that was pregnant and their partner was he was cheating it came out it was a very big thing but there wasn't even really this consideration of if she should leave why would she leave she was about to have a baby and to everyone on the outside you're like why wouldn't you leave but

we're not in the situation and at the end of the day it's really hard for a lot of people same as in domestic violence situations it's hard for a lot of people to leave what do you do for money where do you physically go how do you go if you don't have any support or anyone else to help you like there are a lot of things to consider then there's the also what we just mentioned with Chloe and Tristan maybe you can forgive and forget maybe they want to keep their family together there are so many things to consider and I just at the end of the day don't think that we from the outside can be judging people to the level we are unless it's the man we're judging totally And I think also just on what you said, Brit, like the most basic one is wanting to keep

a family unit together. You know, in our society, we have such a huge, like, I don't, you know, it has such a huge desire and such a huge push for what seems to be quote unquote normal. And that is, you know, having a mom and dad in a house and raising the kids together. And I guess fundamentally, like it is so much better to have a separated household where, you know, your mom and your dad live independently, but they both are strong and like well-functioning humans rather than having an incredibly toxic upbringing household just because you want to maintain what is a family unit but that doesn't mean that we're still not so many of us are still

not conditioned to think that that's what we want you know like that we'll do anything to try and keep that family unit together regardless of what toxicity is happening within the relationship the other part of this and I think this is really interesting the timing of it all is the fact that this cheating scandal has happened during pregnancy now we've seen it this last week as well with Adam Levine and his cheating scandal like whatever's just gone on there literally made worldwide news it's making worldwide news every day it's insane but there is just like this huge I think it is so much more impactful we care so much more when there is a pregnancy and there are children involved when cheating happens especially when it's like within

the public figure space when celebrities are cheated on or there's cheating that happens during a time around childbirth or very freshly afterwards and I think it's because the level of betrayal is so much greater not only are you betraying that one person but you're betraying the family unit that you have made a commitment to well it's also what your partner's going through what your pregnant partner is going through when they're heavily heavily pregnant like in adam levine's situation you're heavily pregnant they're at home creating life for you their whole body i mean i haven't been pregnant but i still know what happened oh yeah their whole body's the whole thing it's horrific it's it's not horrific but it's not going on but it

can be really horrific there are women that vomit every day for nine months there are women that can't walk because their pelvis splits open like there are so many things that a woman's body is going through and what you're at just fucking someone else because because you didn't get attention at home because you didn't get enough attention at home your poor thing yeah like woe is me so well i'm glad you're on the kardashian train now because you a week ago didn't even know any of their kids names you don't know their partner's name do you know anything about them i constantly called uh chloe courtney so it's good to at least know which is which now well i think I have a feeling that we're going to be following this pretty closely I think that this isn't over

for both Chloe and Tristan and Adam and Behati and we haven't even spoken about that that's a whole nother story there are people coming out every day saying that they were sexting him and there are some great memes that came out of that that's the only good thing that's come out of that well let's get into our last section before the episode and our favorite section I love you say before the episode like it hasn't started yet I know but we're like 40 minutes deep let's get into our favorite segment accidentally unfiltered all right i live in a relatively small town and last night i ordered in dinner from a local restaurant via uber eats as i was too exhausted to cook dinner after getting home from a long day at work i live in an apartment building and

initially told uber eats for the driver to ring my doorbell on arrival but when i saw that my order was close i decided to go downstairs and just wait for it myself however in a rush i forgot to check the driver's name and when he arrived i couldn't shake the feeling that he looked really familiar to me I was pretty tired at the time and then as he gave me my food he jokingly asked my name and which apartment was mine which I thought was really strange but I got my food and then he left it wasn't until after that that I realized that I had failed to recognize that this is a guy that I had actually had sex with before not only that not only had I hooked up with him but he'd also been inside my apartment and inside me I was mortified and now I am too embarrassed to ever use

i mean this is the stuff that happens oh hey she could have invited it doesn't happen in small town that was the end of my sentence in a small town you can't do anything like you you know everyone you have a connection with everyone everything like have i have i slept have you been inside me i don't know this is like yeah i mean you and i have both done this to an extent this is like when i thought i had slept with sam worthington when i saw him in the supermarket but it wasn't it was sam worthington and it was like when you waved down your best friend on the street remember you're like hey how are you it was Natalie and Brulia yeah like we had both done that different very different well she hasn't neither of them have been inside us

that's why it's different but I was sure I had hooked up with Sam isn't it funny though okay I don't know if anyone else has experienced this or if this makes me sound terrible this is years ago now but I was trying to make a list of my of my history I was trying to make a list of all my ex-lovers and like I don't think I haven't had any I don't think I've ever had a one-night stand like not an actual technical one-night stand where I've just brought someone home slept with them never seen them again never spoken to them it's all I always love a bit of aftercare so I was trying to write this list down I for the life of me cannot remember three quarters of their name so I had to like write down descriptions like policeman pizza boy guy with dog like not the

I had a guy with dog hair. Vizsla guy. Like, Man Mountain guy. We both had Vizsla guy. No, that's a different Vizsla guy. But, like, I have to have, like, pseudonym names for them because I can't remember their actual names. I remember their faces.

I remember something that's, like, you know, some key ingredient about the conversation, but I can't remember their names. And I don't know if this is saying that there's been a lot of people we've slept with or that we're old and we have a really bad memory. Dementia does run in my family. Okay, next.

Okay. okay this one is funny because this is my entire life like i i get this situation i thought this would be funny as it was my first time going to a radiology clinic today for those of you that you don't know i have been a radiographer for 14 years that was me that is not the accidentally unfiltered i had now britney just talks about labias i had no idea what to expect it was my first ever time and i had this lovely european lady but she was just cutting to the chase on what I needed to do. There was no small talk.

She tells me to take off my bra and just leave my shirt on. So I do that and I go and stand where the x-ray machine is. She starts taking some pictures with very quick instructions between stances, move here, move here, hands here, arms here, before telling me to hold my breasts. Huh? I thought. Well, that must be because I'm not wearing a bra and they're saggy. So I hold my breasts.

then she comes back in from taking the pictures takes my hands down and says no hold your breath not your breasts i just burst out laughing so embarrassed hoping she would laugh too but she didn't it was absolute radio silence i stood there saying i've never done this before and i'm really sorry and i kept trying to make jokes and kept trying to make her laugh with me but she was stone cold and walked out without saying anything i know if brit was my person she would have definitely laughed with me the reason this is so funny is because this is what i've done day in day out so i know this exact situation and like what what would have happened is she would have taken a picture of her chest and because she held her breasts the hands would have been over there's

gonna be two big hand x-rays on top of the breast and the lady was probably like this is disastrous but when this this used to happen to me when i lived overseas in i was working as a radiographer in england and scotland now they have a different term for the pants and underwear over there so i used to go if you have to do a leg x-ray or a knee x-ray or something that's not invasive right you would say hey just take your pants off and lay on the table meaning as we know take pants off jeans off shorts off whatever they are and you can leave your undies on just take the pants off so it's not in the x-ray every day 10 times a day i would walk back in and there's someone naked just laying there and I'm like why are you naked I'm like this is a toe x-ray I'm like put

your pants put your pants back on they're like you told me to take my pants off and I was like just your pants why are you naked you're underpants so they call underpants pants so for two years I've just seen naked people every day because I couldn't I couldn't condition myself so everyone just used to get naked all the time it was a great time to be alive anyway I feel I feel this girl all right let's get into the chat with Meggie Palmer meggy palmer is a founder ceo speaker and journalist she created pep talk her an app and community which helps support the careers of hundreds of thousands of women around the world meggy palmer and her company pep talk her are working very very hard for a very important

reason and that is to close the gender pay gap meggy you incredible woman you're fighting the good fight, all the way from New York. Welcome to Life Uncut. Thanks for having me. I'm stoked to be here. I felt like I was just introducing someone at a stadium, like welcome. How's New York right now? Yeah, New York's awesome. It's the end of summer, so you know, always a bit sad to see the end of the beach days, but no, it's always really good fun over here. No complaints. Okay, well it's raining here for six months, so you win. Maggie, we start every single episode here with accidentally unfiltered just throwing you under the bus straight away it's an embarrassing story we've had some pretty good ones so don't worry too much do you have one so uh you know

i've got way too many sadly it was hard to choose just one but one that stands out to me is when i had very first just started dating my now baby data i think we were like you know two or three dates deep or something like that i don't know anyway maybe a few more i was staying at his house got up one morning and i was like i'll just brush my teeth like so fresh whatever go into the bathroom I was like I'll just get the toothpaste brush a brush a brush I was brushing my teeth with deep heat when you have like really sore legs or whatever and I was like and so I was like and I was like looking at the labels I'm gonna die of poisoning I'm in this bathroom we've only just started dating and I was like I'm so embarrassed I don't want to tell him

because like what sort of a loser does that was your mouth on fire I don't even really remember I think I was just in shock so then I just put heaps of water I'm just trying to get it out of my mouth it was pretty bad I think I ended up just like I think I just bailed I just said I had to go home or something because I just had to go and talk to my roommates immediately be like what do I do do I go to the hospital like anyway it was all good luckily maybe I hadn't swallowed enough of the uh situation so yeah anyway all good but mortified you wouldn't have wanted to give him a blowjob would you that would be on fire could you imagine going in with a burning mouth can imagine. So Meggie, let's just start. How does one start to dedicate their entire life

to the gender pay gap? What is your background? What did you study? What do you do? And how did you get to this place now where you would be doing podcasts and having apps and educating women around the world about the gender pay gap? Yeah. So when I was like at high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was like, oh, I don't know. I guess I'll study business and journalism. Long story short, became a journalist, loved it. It was the best job in the world so I was a journo for 15 years in Australia at like SBS channel 10 channel 7 but then I moved to London I went for the BBC world over there yes I worked all over the world you know I did some super fun stuff like interviewed Bashar al-Assad in Syria and then

that wasn't super fun but then interviewed like Brad Pitt on the red carpet which was a bit more fun you know I was about to say I think we might have a pretty skewed difference in what we think is fun interview fun job interesting shall we say interesting that's probably a better turn of phrase yes it was a super fascinating gig right and I loved it but it's so interesting at one point in my career I had this one particular job that shall remain nameless where I found out that my paying conditions were super different to the blokes who did the same job as me and I was like oh whoops they've obviously made a mistake oh that's like whatever they'll fix it and so I said something uh turns out that wasn't a great idea maybe because it didn't go down very well and

they were like hey Meggie if you don't like your paying conditions why don't you quit or take us to court and I was like what are you for real I was kind of naive right like before that I didn't really know the gender pay gap was a thing I just didn't realize that this discrimination was happening like naively so kind of opened my eyes to it the blinkers were taken off so to speak and then I became obsessed with like figuring out how I could stop that from happening to other people in future yeah so did you in that situation did you quit yes I quit ultimately because you know quality and fairness is super important to me ever since I was a kid I used to get pissed off when like I got in trouble with something my brother did you know and so like that hasn't changed even

now and so when an employer treated me differently I was like oh no you don't I'm out of here so I got another job which was rad anyway so it was all good but actually kind of was a blessing in disguise right because now I'm sitting here chatting to you and like you know my career has been super fascinating because of that sort of fork in the road I suppose. When you went to them and said that you know asked if there was a mistake on your pay slip what excuse did they forgive you for there being this discrepancy? Did they say it was because they had other qualifications? And I ask this because I wonder if other people have been in this same position and maybe there are some sort of stock standard excuses as to why there would be a different pay

set. I'm guessing that again, sadly, a heap of your listeners have had an experience where they've been treated differently at work, right? Because of their gender, because of the color of their skin, whatever the case may be. I'm not particularly special. The sorts of things that they said to me are what they say to everyone, right? Like, oh, but you're lucky to have this job. Oh, but I can't believe you're complaining oh but how could you be so high maintenance and it's like well actually no like equality is not high maintenance like firstly it's the law secondly like what you can't do that you know and this is the thing like it does happen people are being paid differently and I guarantee there are people listening right now who are nodding away going yeah I had a suspicion

that I was you know and I know that it happens because I hear from hundreds of people every month in the pep talker community that they're getting screwed over frankly on pay or they're getting you know lower bonuses and there's literally no reason corporates do bully people like you know particularly women particularly women who are pregnant particularly women of color you know we know that this discrimination is worse for women of color we know that the gender pay gap is significantly worse for women of color right so this is a huge problem that again too many people have experienced and I kind of felt like quite a responsibility actually to kind of fight back because I was like you know I had the means at that point in time I backed myself that

I would get another job and like if people are low in confidence at that point in time if people have a mortgage if people have kids they can't always take on that fight you know because they don't have the resources at the time I felt like I could so I sort of felt like I really had to do that on behalf of the next you know women that were going to come behind me I kind of felt like I had to stand up for them basically. I feel like that word in and of itself is also very gendered I mean you would never hear somebody describe a man as being high maintenance it's definitely something that as a female, it's geared towards our gender. Maggie, we have you here to talk about the gender pay gap. Now, firstly, I want to kick it off by asking the question, what is the gender

pay gap? And also, is there a bit of a misunderstanding that maybe it is that men are paid more than women for what is the exact same job? So in Australia, in most developed countries, actually, there's a pay gap of around 15 to 20%. Depends how you cut the numbers, depending on what country you're in. In Australia, it's a little under 15%. So basically what it means, And by the way, it is illegal for you to be paid less than a dude who does the same job as you, right? In every developed country, again, it's illegal to pay you less for doing the same job. So that is in every country?

Well, most developed countries, right? Like most developed countries have law against that, but it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. And I personally experienced this myself. I'm sure, sadly, a lot of your listeners have had an experience where they're like, wait, what? Bob earns how much? So we know that it happens because the thing is the only way to actually prove it really

is to either have the two pay slips side by side or to go to court, right? And so often it does happen. Employers get away with it, sadly, but they're not supposed to be allowed to do that, right? But the gender pay gap still exists. And let me, let me break it down for you. The reason for that is overall, there's a gap between what men on average earn versus what women on average earn, right? And researchers have looked at this for a really long time. And there's like three major reasons, right? So the first one is time out of the workforce. So women are more likely to take maternity leave or take leave to care for elderly relatives. The second reason is that women, we've been socialized to be more likely to want to do jobs that are paid less, right? So like teachers

and nurses aren't paid as much as say like engineers and bankers, for example, right? So there's a gap there, but researchers can account for both of those situations. And even when they take those pieces of info out of the statistics, there is still a gender pay gap, right? And that is the part that statisticians and researchers put down to unconscious bias and discrimination and that's the part of the gender pay gap that I'm really interested in trying to solve. It's funny this is something that popped into my head right now because it just came out on the news. Now this is highly unrelatable but I think it's still proving a point. This is Jennifer Lawrence, a quote that Jennifer Lawrence just came out with, very famous actress. She was

in the movie last year, Don't Look Up with Leonardo DiCaprio. She was paid $5 million less than him for the exact same movie, the exact same amount of work, $5 million less. Now the sums are ridiculous, right? She got $25 million. He got $30 million, but the principle remains the same. And she said, it doesn't matter how much I do. I'm still not going to get paid as much as that guy because of my vagina. It's happening in all walks of life and all levels. And I know that everyone listening to that it's not relatable it's not relatable to us at all but the principal remains the same she's doing the same job even at that high standard yeah some research came out about a month ago that over the past six months the gender pay gap in australia has increased from

13.8 to 14.1 now what does it actually mean when they say the gender pay gap has increased so colloquially what this means is let's use 100 bucks because that's easier so basically what it means is that if I'm taking home a pay packet, my pay packet is going to be 14% smaller than a dude's basically. Like that's what it means. So it means at the end of the year, I've got 14% less that I can invest in the share market, 14% less to blow on a holiday or like an epic dinner with mates, whatever the case may be, put on my mortgage. Like I actually will earn that amount less on average than men will on average, right? So there's people that are earning a squillion dollars and then there's people that are not earning as much money as well on the other end

of the spectrum right so there's like outliers to these statistics but it's these are talking about average figures right so it's significant amounts of money and the thing is in Australia is that like women age over the age of 55 are the fastest growing group of homelessness right and so these statistics are not helping that situation right so it's it's a huge problem and you know one of the things I hear a lot from the women in the pep talker community is oh look I'm paid pretty well like I don't know should I even ask for a raise like is there even any point because I'm paid pretty well I'm like well yeah because if you should be earning 14% more you should 100% get that money and invest it blow it on a big night out do whatever you want to do but take that money

because as I said like the capacity to be able to invest that the capacity to be able to save for the future the capacity to be able to leave a bad relationship is so much easier when you've got money when you've got a little bit of savings or a big bit of wealth right and so the gender pay gap is not just numbers and statistics like this is actually impacting people's lives as well well we did just a quick little google to show the averages just so people can understand that are listening right now what this means and you just made a really good point that I don't want to gloss over the average full-time male earns about $1,872 a week whilst the average full-time female earns $1,609 a week. So this is a difference of about $264 a week. Now $264, I mean, it can sit

on the fence, right? There'll be people out there saying, I mean, sure, $200 is a lot, not the end of the world. But if you are somebody that is trying, like you just said, if you're somebody that is trying to leave a difficult situation at home, or you need to start fresh, or you have medical bills or anything 250 odd nearly just under 300 a week that's 1200 a month that could be the difference with a woman leaving and starting fresh if she has to that could be the difference with them not actually being homeless because they can afford to put a roof over their head so in fact this discrepancy this small discrepancy to some people is actually huge and like to your point like 250 300 bucks a week that's like what 1200 a month that's like 13 14 grand a year what's

people's rent. 14 grand. That's a hell of a lot of holidays. You know, like that's a, that's a lot. You just touched on before that there's this growing population of homeless women above the age of 55. And we spoke about how the pay gap exists also because of women taking time out of their work for carer's leave or for raising children. Does this impact and have a flow and effect into things like superannuation and savings? And how does this impact this growing population of homelessness over the age of 55? Yeah, of course. If you're superannuated, is paid at, what is it, 10% on top of your wage. I've been out of Australia for a few years, so it's hard to know the exact numbers, but let's say it's 10% on top of your salary, right? So if

you're earning a hundred grand, your super is $10,000, right? For argument's sake. If I'm earning 80 grand or $85,000, then my super is only $8,500. So I've only got $8,500 compounding annually for say 20, 30, 40 years. Whereas my male counterpart may have $10,000 compounding annually for that amount of time and that's going to add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars at retirement time right like it doesn't you're like oh okay well it's like you know a thousand dollars here or there right now okay well whatever but no actually compound interest as we know is an amazing mechanism to create a lot of wealth so when you lose now you lose even more in the future right it's a it's a huge huge problem to our retirement lifestyle as well this could be

something i feel like i've experienced probably more i think in the entertainment contracts but I don't know if this is something that is legal or is illegal. When you say you weren't aware that you were earning a different amount to your male colleagues, is it legal to put in a contract when you sign with a company that you cannot talk about your pay with other people? Because I feel like in my entertainment contracts before, it's been like, you know, you must not discuss anything we've spoken about. Is this a thing?

Yes, this is such a good question. I'm so glad you raised it. Not many people know about this. So pay secrecy clauses. Pay secrecy clauses are illegal in America. they're illegal in the United Kingdom, they are legal in down under Australia for some unknown reason. So yeah, so a lot of consulting companies, a lot of the big banks still, and it sounds like a lot of entertainment companies still use these clauses. So there was a case in the press maybe

12 months ago actually about someone at a big bank who was fired because they discussed salary with a colleague. And so pay secrecy clauses actually serve to benefit the employer. Because let's say I'm earning a hundred grand and let's say Joe next to me who identifies as a dude is earning 120k. If there is a contract that says we can't talk about it, like that's kind of in the bank's interest, right? Cause they don't want me to know that I'm earning 20k less than old mate. It's pretty wild. There was discussion at the election that maybe the government, the now government would overturn those clauses. So like fingers crossed that happens at some point, but let's wait and see. But yeah, make sure that you read the fine print in your contract. It's not

like it's not super common like it's not in every clause but it is in a lot of the higher end of town clauses I would say so you have to kind of read the fine print I would say that there's ways that you could maybe surreptitiously get around that you can always talk in ranges so for anyone listening even if you don't have that in your clause and if you want to try and figure out like where you're paid on a spectrum one of the best things you can do is start to talk about money and salary right with people that you trust and who you know love and respect you so I want to like issue a challenge to everyone listening. Like I want you to talk about your salary with one person this week, right? Like someone who has got your back and who loves you as a human,

not someone who's going to screw you over. Right. And the reason for that is it's really powerful when we start to talk about money, because you might find out that you're earning actually quite a lot compared to whoever you talk to, or actually you might really be quite underpaid. Right. So one of the things that you can do, some people find it a bit awks to talk about money, a bit awkward, But what you can do is say, hey, listen, you know, I'm going for this promotion. I was thinking that I should really be asking for somewhere between 70 and 80K. Does that sound about right to you? And then it's sort of like a blink twice if I need to ask higher.

Kind of, yeah, kind of, exactly. And also from a contractual perspective, yes, but also from a like social perspective, it's just kind of easier because some people don't want to say I'm earning $76,500, but they will be happy to say, yeah, listen, I'm in that ballpark. so yeah that seems about right you know because that's kind of easier for some people to kind of go with the general rather than the super specifics I find this so interesting because I myself didn't even know that there were these secrecy clauses and I think a lot of that comes from because I have worked for myself for so long but I do remember from when I was working in an office

environment how uncomfortable it is to discuss your salaries or to discuss your pay with other people who you work alongside and I don't know why it is but we do seem to have this culture that makes it really uncomfortable to talk about money. I mean, like I've worked in a hospital for 13 years. You don't really negotiate your contracts there. It's government. You go in, it's like, this is your level. This is what you get paid.

And it's the end of it. So I've never been in that position where I've really had to negotiate that. I imagine for a lot of women that go into a new job or get a position, it's obviously very competitive industry as it is. You know that a lot of people are fighting for your job. You know that you're going up against men for a lot of jobs.

If they get offered a position, I feel like there's a lot of women that don't feel like they are in a position to negotiate that contract straight off the bat. Maybe they think I have to go and prove myself for 12 months so I can have some legs to stand on and then I'll go fight the good fight. Do you agree with this or do you think from the get-go a woman should be questioning her contract? It's all about the way you frame it, right? So you can go in and you can say, I got your offer. I want to be paid more. I'm worth more than that. That's one option. Or you can get your offer and you can be like, hey, thanks so much for the offer. I'm

really excited to join the team. I'd love to talk to you about my compensation and see if there was any room for me to move up to the next level based on my previous experience and the value that I'm bringing to the table. So there's ways and there's ways, you know what I mean? So the way that you ask and the way that you frame it has to be quite nuanced. And this is a lot about, you know, this is what we teach at Pep Talker, right? In our courses, a lot of our free content covers this. You can check out peptalker.com forward slash pay me more. And there's a heap of free scripts that you can use there because, you know, like you actually have to do the preparation ahead of time. so you don't want to be going into these conversations without any notes without any

preparation without having done some of the mental gymnastics first because it's kind of scary right like negotiating can feel like oh my gosh what your first conversation about salary or your first few conversations you might feel a bit sick about it because it's a big deal and so you know the whole reason of our community and the whole purpose is to demystify these conversations and give you the confidence so that when you walk into these combos, you're not freaking out. It's not like high octane. Oh my gosh, I feel sick and I'm sweating. And it's just more reframing that as a conversation because you've actually done the groundwork and built your confidence. You're backing yourself because you understand your value and your skillset and your transferable

skills so that when you're having that conversation, it feels more like you're an equal rather than like, you know, there's this huge power dynamic. So it's, I'm not saying that it's easy, but there are things that you can do to sort of set yourself up for success and to prepare so that you get the best possible results from those convos. I like how you phrase that around, let's talk about compensation for how I can move up to the next level. Now, for anybody who's listening to this, who has struggled or doesn't know how to approach the conversation

around increasing their salary or getting a pay rise, and we all know that cost of living is increasing, everything is increasing. How would you suggest somebody brings up that conversation with their employer and actually really starts to be able to take some agency over asking for a pay rise? So what you've identified is really interesting, right? It's the fear often of being told no. Like we often don't ask, we don't question our contract. We don't question the rate because

we're worried. What if they say no? And here's the thing. Sometimes you're going to ask for a salary increase and they're going to say no. And that's actually okay because they might say no now, but that doesn't mean they won't say yes in six months. That doesn't mean they won't say yes in 12 months. That doesn't mean they won't say yes in two years, right? So you actually, I actually encourage everyone in the pep talker community to ask for a raise every year right you have to be asking every single year you got to be performing and doing your job really well but you should be asking the question at least once a year during your performance review time right because why wouldn't you and to your point especially now with inflation going bananas if you're not getting at

least four or five percent increase you're literally sliding backwards you know five percent would be the minimum increase anyone in our community really has ever got from a pay raise perspective sometimes they're getting 15 22 30 like we had three women actually two of whom are from australia get 100 000 pay raises that's pretty next level can i have their scripts that oh no hang on i'm my own boss shit i won't give you obviously won't preach their privacy but one of them was earning maybe she was earning 180k to start with so like pretty good cash right but she got 103 000 on top of that huge so it's 100 possible this was during covid too so like it is possible it's all in the way you frame it you've got to understand like what's

your value if you leave what happens how much does it cost to recruit for your role like often there's a 30 to 50k recruiting fee you know so it's frankly easier for them to give you a 10 20k raise and keep you happy than it is to lose you and pay for a recruiter so you know you've got to kind of you've got to understand all these machinations before you go into these conversations right what you were just describing it's funny just this week we did an episode on askers versus guesses yeah listen to it yes and that's exactly what people that are scared to get the answer no so they don't want to ask but I think you're better off to have asked and had the answer no so that the following year in your employer's head and in your head you can say hey look this

is the second time I've done this this is actually the third time I have asked if you never ask it's always going to be the first time and then it's going to be an easy no because it's easier to say no once than multiple times no that's exactly it and I had a client who came to me recently, she was also Australian actually. And she said, oh, you know, I tried to get a raise and it didn't work. I was like, okay, cool. Tell me more. And she's like, yeah, six years ago, I asked for a pay rise. I was like, cool. And then what happened? She's like, well, that's it. And then what happened in six years? I'm like, it's so sad because she hasn't had an increase in six years. Like my heart broke when

she told me, I was like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. And I know that there's going to be listeners who are like, oh, I'm also six or seven years without a raise. And I want, you know, I really want to encourage you to like check out the app or check out our resources because like, it is possible to get raises I'm telling you everyone's always like it's not possible in my industry oh yes but not for me oh yes that person can but I can't but like no I'm telling you it is totally possible I don't know in some ways it's almost like dating you know like I used to feel sick about like asking a dude out I didn't want to like ask them out because I was like oh what if they say no and you just kind of feel crushed and you're like oh it's like a dagger to the heart

and it's me and it's like something's wrong with me but like if you don't ask then like who knows Like, you know, like maybe they've been waiting for you to ask them and it's like, also if they don't say yes, like they suck and they've obviously lost out on an amazing opportunity with you because you're a legend, right? So you've got to sort of reframe your mindset as well in terms of your raise. It's like, my boss is lucky to have me. Like if you were shit at your job, you're fired. Like they'll just sack you.

You wouldn't have a job. If anyone listening has a job, you're obviously pretty good at your job, right? If not amazing. And if you're crap, your boss will have fired you. So like the fact that you have a job is awesome. and if you're great or excellent or amazing at your job that's even better and it means that like they would be stoked to keep you in that job and to keep you within the business so you actually do have power a lot of people forget that they have any power they're like my boss or you know

the md or the ceo like i couldn't possibly but like if you leave they're a little bit screwed because you take all your institutional knowledge maybe you take clients like the new person takes three months to get up to speed whatever there's been a cost to the business right so you've got to think about what is your value and you do have value I need you to like back yourself on this and I love the pep talk I guess this is why your app's called that pep talk okay some other advice for people that are going into a new job or with a contract they ask for the pay rise immediately to negotiate the contract it's a no what are some other options because I feel like another option would be okay the pay rise is no but can

I put into this three-year contract that every year we review the pay instead of just saying cool. I'll sign my life away. We'll revisit in three years. Totally. And you know, that's such a great point. So money is great. And we always want to maximize for your salary because that's where your retirement is based on of your salary. You know, we want to maximize for salary, bonus, commission, all that kind of stuff. That's the first step. Awesome. We've got that. Great. Then we want to think about non-monetary benefits. So what's like the bigger picture here? If they say no to this money, or even if they say yes, you might want to say, great, let's talk about my annual leave. Let's discuss paid parking on site.

Can we talk about the fact that I'd like to do a short course? Would you consider paying to do one of Pep Talker's corporate programs? Like what else can the company pay for? Would you consider business class flights for flights over five hours or whatever the case may be? Like there's other benefits that, you know, don't come out of the salary portion of their budget that you can consider and have a conversation about. Maybe you want to start work at 12 on a Friday. Maybe you do cello lessons. So you leave work at 3 PM on a Tuesday. I don't know. Those are things you can negotiate. One of my first jobs, my boss was really kind and I was still studying at university and she let me come in late two days a week so I could go to lectures. She doesn't know that I was

mainly hung over and did not go to lectures, but she still paid me a full salary. And like, she was flexible because she was like, I don't really care. You can still file a story at the end of the day. So think about those non-monetary benefits. And especially to your point, if they say no we can't match the salary that you want you can say listen that's disappointing I'm happy to stay with the company because I really love your leadership vision I'm really enjoying the role could we review this in six months time what do you need from me within the next 12 months so that it's a no-brainer for you to say yes at the next review you know I had one of my clients and they were asked to take a cut a pay cut during COVID and so what we strategized with them was

that that's fine and then it would be reviewed every 90 days so that it wasn't just set and forget because you know like you could have been stuck on that for three years so yeah putting in those stipulations in your contract and then following it up with putting it in writing is really important oh yeah the writing thing don't ever have these conversations on the phone put everything in an email yeah totally i think something else that would have come up for a lot of people in the last couple of years is like it doesn't always have to just be a monetary value for example you might be negotiating how to save money so if it costs you x amount to drive into work or to get public transport into work every single day of the week. Maybe it's about negotiating

to work from home two or three days a week to compensate for that. What do you think are some of the ways that you can approach a conversation in order to get your employees to say yes or to agree with what you're proposing? Now, you've said that it costs them a lot of money to actually replace you, but what are sort of the best techniques or conversations or tactics to use in order to get them to agree to the terms of which you want your employment to be? The first thing you want to do is you want to make it really easy for your boss to say yes, right? It has to be a no brainer for them to say yes, right? So what you need to do throughout the whole year, I know you're awesome at your job. Hopefully, you know, you're awesome at your job,

but like you need to prove it to your boss. And sometimes you need to prove it to your boss's boss's boss or to the chief financial officer or to accounting or whoever it is, right? so what you want to do is start tracking your success right and that's the whole reason why we built the pep talk her app is so that like tracking your successes is super easy right because you've got all those data points in the one place so the app will be like hey what's up like britney like talk me through like what have you done this week that you're really stoked about or whatever and you can kind of put in recorded three podcasts we got this award whatever and then if you do that every week at the end of the year you've got 40 or 50 awesome things that

you've tracked and written down right and so then when you go into your review you're not just walking in blind being like what's up please can i have a raise you're like oh hey here's 50 awesome things that i've done by the way let's talk about my comp you know like you're kind of going in with power and i want everyone listening to be quantifying it like did you save the company three thousand dollars by you know negotiating a good deal at a restaurant for the office christmas party or whatever did you bring on coca-cola as a client which has added three hundred thousand dollars to the business bottom line did you improve seo clicks on the company's website by three percent which is added however much to revenue if you're a teacher like i don't know

are your students better at reading than the other classes like how can you quantify it like dollars cents statistics year-on-year change all of those things makes it really black and white and it's hard to argue with black and white right so like if you bought in 200 300 2 million dollars worth of new business to a company, it's really hard for them to say, no, you're not getting a raise. Like that's really hard for them to say, you know, but if you just walk in and be like, yeah, I've had a good year. Like, yeah, I'd really, I'd love a raise. They'll be like, maybe. But if you're like, Hey, I bought in this, let's be honest without me, these clients might not stay with the business. Like it's just, you then have so much more power and so much more leverage to,

to get the terms and conditions you're looking for, for your compensation. Yeah. And so whatever, what you're saying is whatever it is, maybe you're in a position right now that isn't quantifiable with money, with actual dollar values that you've brought into a company, but you can still quantify what you have done and what you have provided to a company. Yeah. Like how many podcast episodes did you produce? How many clicks did your article get? How many donors did you introduce to the donation team? If you work for a charity, like there's always something that you can do. Did you change the culture of the company? Did you organize like, I don't know, a trivia night once a month for your team? Did you start an

intern program. Everything that you do has value to some extent. You've just got to kind of put a little bit of like two or three minutes a week aside to be like, okay, what did I do that contributed that's really going to help my boss understand why they need to keep me and why they need to retain me and not replace me with someone else, right? And why it's going to be really easy for them to give me the pay rise that I really want. You mentioned the benefits of like jotting down your achievements or what you have contributed to the workplace. You know, the facts that sort of show how you've been successful in your role. And you mentioned that this is all included in Pep Talk Her app. Can you talk us a little bit through about what Pep Talk Her app is and how

it can help people who are wanting to have these conversations in the workplace? Yeah. So the app is really designed. It's free, by the way. Like for us, it's all about impact and helping support everyone listening to earn more money and get promoted way quicker. And then the app's the same. It's in the Apple and Android app store, Pep Talk Her, H-E-R. Basically, it's just kind of like a cheerleader, you know, it's like a Fitbit for your career. It's just going to like message you once a week. It's just going to send you an alert and be like, Hey, what do you want to track this week? What are you really proud of this week? What happened this week that you want to remember at performance review time? And so you just kind of like jot down whatever you want.

You can upload photos, just take a few notes, whatever, you know, maybe your boss has sent you an email. You might want to screenshot that and upload it. Maybe you organize an event, take a photo upload that i honestly legit cannot remember what i had for lunch like two days ago let alone what i did at work in like december because the app will let you like you can export all of your wins to yourself it'll email it to you as a pdf or a google doc or whatever so then you can edit it you can print it off like it's pretty powerful to walk in with a folder like i do think if you're doing an irl performance review walking in with folder of notes showing that you're taking it seriously it also kind of puts your boss on notice they'll be like damn

she's prepared you know like it's kind of it's just like it's just a bit of a subliminal message of like okay I'm gonna take this seriously because they're obviously taking it seriously too you know do you suggest like rocking up to your annual review with a powerpoint presentation or something to say like this is what I've done for the company I just had this mental image then of people walking in with a folder of notes pretending but you open it up and it's just like stick figures and stuff like there's nothing on the notes but you just pretend that you thought you're going through all these notes that you've got it's just it's just blank paper and you're like I have 25 pages here of why I need to get a pay rise.

I've got some notes. I don't need them, but I have got notes. Printing something off and having it with you, it kind of is like your crutch a little bit. Like it kind of just feels like if you freak out and if you get nervous, you can kind of refer back to your notes. Like it does for a lot of people

give you a bit more confidence. I need you to walk in there with confidence because confidence and like being perceived as confidence shifts the way other people behave towards you, right? And it changes their mindset towards you. So I want to give you every single tip to inch towards the best possible scenario that you can get that changes the way you feel about the conversation and when you feel better about the conversation you like are a bit happier your

body language is better and so it shifts the entire dynamic and you know people be like body language whatever it's all on merit like it's not like the way the world works is that it is about how people perceive you I wish that we lived in this world where everything was equal that you didn't have to negotiate, that you didn't have to take in some notes to get a better result. But at the moment, the UN reckons that we're looking at, you know, a hundred years at least until we get to equality. And so meanwhile, we have to take into account all of these little things that do make teeny tiny shifts to, you know, add up collectively to be a really big difference to your salary at the end of the day. And then the other thing is like, sometimes you have to be prepared to walk away.

When you are prepared to do that, that's when you have the most leverage, right? And that's when you can often get the best results so starting a new job it is crucial that you negotiate at that point because any other raise you get from there is really anchored to whatever you came in at and so a lot of people you know and I found this I've left networks and gone back to them back when I was a journalist and like when you leave and come back your salary like goes up exponentially you know like sometimes you do have to leave to get those jumps you know and you've got to be prepared to do that sometimes it's not easy if you love your boss or you love your colleagues but if money and salary is important to you,

sometimes that's a hard decision you've got to consider. Pep Talk Her is the app that has helped so many people around the world get their pay rises and get what they deserve. Meggie, where can people find you?

Please don't be a stranger. Shout me out on DMs and let me know that you heard about Pep Talk Her from this awesome podcast. Pep Talk Her is our Insta. My personal is Meggie, M-E-G-G-I-E Palmer,

Meggie Palmer on Insta, TikTok, etc. And we've got a free career challenge coming up. so if anyone really wants to like end the year with a bang our goal is to get you a 10k pay rise by the end of the year so not the bang that we're used to talking about but yeah yeah yeah different sort of bang so how do i get like both bangs simultaneously that would be great yeah yeah that would really finish off the year on a high dating wise salary wise if that's a priority for you this year um yeah you can check it out peptalker.com forward slash challenge and it's

like three, five days. I'm doing live coaching every day to help people get a pay rise by the end of the year or another rise. Who knows? Can't be sure on this podcast. We can't get through a whole episode without the sex jokes. I love it. I know. I hope it's a successful year for you either way. Thanks so much for coming on. You're a legend and thank you for fighting the good fight on behalf of all the women out there, Maggie. Thanks for having me. All right. You guys know that we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet, our highlight and our low light of each and every week. Britt, what is your suck? Okay. My suck this week, there was a lot of people going to be listening to me like, that is not a suck. That is a sweet. But for me, it was a suck.

A few days ago, Keisha and I on a weeknight, a school night. Oh, I know this. It was a Wednesday. Yeah. It's a Wednesday night. We decided it had been, we had started work that day at about 7.30 AM. We'd had a big day of back-to-back stuff. We'd had recordings, interviews, meetings. It was about six o'clock and we just finished i said do you know what i'm just so sick of not doing anything the only people i socialize with is the people at the dog park i was like let's just go for one drink it's happy hour at our local so this is like 6 30 now let's go for one drink she's like yes i'll have one but that's it because we as you know laura we had to get up at 8 a.m for a record with someone in new york we had an early morning thursday morning record yeah we had an interview

on Thursday morning uh so Keisha and I went for our one drink at 6 30 4 a.m it is 4 a.m and I have ordered a pizza on my way home I do not know what happened and this is very un-Britney like but the part of this story that you've you've missed that I think was my favorite part of the story is that I rocked up to Brit's house at what was it 7 45 to do our record and there in the doorway were two male shoes and I haven't seen who owns those shoes but he was still in the bedroom there was I did have a friend that needed somewhere to stay that night yes but that was not the suck the suck was that it escalated very quickly the one drink Keisha was with me we stayed out the whole night and I don't know I don't we ran into some people we knew then we ran we both ran into

people we dated it was like everything was happening it was chaos we came home at 4am it was fun but then we had to get up what like two and a half hours later for this interview well at what point did you find the friend to bring home along the way along the journey that's not the journey it's the destination and where did you where did you end up I love it you're missing the point of my story this is my story Laura this is my suite so like we're getting full circle here my suck was that we dragged us off out of bed Keisha turned Keisha's ubered back to our house for the interview as the producer Laura's drag I've dragged myself out and then there was a time mix up the person couldn't make it to the interview so we were all ready we dragged

ourselves out of bed to do this interview and didn't even happen that also it was on a public holiday so not only did we get up early to do the interview we worked on a public holiday brit was hung over and we sat there and the zoom then no one ever came no one came to the zoom that was my suck uh what's your sweet my sweet it was my sister's hands we had an amazing time 20 of our friends because sherry and i are so close that we all have the same friends so her friends are my friends my friends are her friends so it was a really great I felt like it was my party I was like it's great I've got all my friends here I mean we've all grown up with the same people and so it was it was just brilliant she had a great time I had a great time you had a great

time my lady had a great time everybody had a great time they did okay my sub for the week is that uh not only has the mirror fallen off the bedroom in Lola's bedroom which could kill my children let's focus on that for a little while I also have had a broken dishwasher for a month like a month are you having a lot of home problems yeah look i feel like for how much we spend on our apartment too many things are going wrong yeah and i know that it's like like i shouldn't complain it's just a broken dishwasher but a month of a broken dishwasher with two kids has been a bit of a pain that's life-changing having a dishwasher or not whether you have what is this what is that i just think i just found a rolled up band-aid on brit's seat no i think that came out of your top

anyway okay sweet so that's my suck so like i don't even know if we're ever going to get a dishwasher again you will i never ever ever want to wash another plate with my hands it's a horrible experience something okay my sweet for the week is that we've had a few wedding dramas like wedding planning dramas a couple of things have been behind schedule and uh we're like six weeks away from the wedding now so there was one thing that i i had thought someone else had organized it matt thought i had organized it anyway fucking shit show the cake nobody had organized a cake for the wedding yeah i don't know if you've seen my baking skills laura but i'm pretty handy in the kitchen and believe it or not but we didn't want crispy creams at our wedding so um i was like

fuck we're just not gonna have a cake that's that's where we're at because all the suppliers were like booked out until 2023 surely for like another six to eight weeks we can find you a cake so i found someone who's making me a cake they've come to the rescue they are my sweet for the week the fact that we you know a few of these things that i don't wedding planning weddings are just you think that things are getting done or you kind of like think that you have done things and then there's plenty of other little stuff that like without like a full checklist it just goes by the wayside so like now we've got a cake that's my sweet okay so we're still getting married we're still getting married okay we've got a cake we don't have other things it's gonna

be fine it's gonna fine all you need is a cake and a band and it's gonna be great alcohol we have plenty music and food the bride and groom to turn up i'll be there and food they're like the four key points still haven't made mine or matt's rings yet that's that's another lucky you're a joy yeah six weeks all right well that is it from us guys another episode done and dusted if you loved the air please jump on to life on cut podcast on apple you can leave us a review there we love love love hearing your reviews and your feedback except when it's terrible but apart from that we really love it and also if you want to get a book you can jump on to get our book Get a book.

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