Claire Wasserman
Appearances
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
As I go through each of these four, we're going to talk through your resistance, where you're going to give me all the reasons, which are all valid, of what you hate about it. And then I'm going to hopefully show you both a different way to see it and also a different way to approach it. Because mindset's just the first step.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
It's a critical one, but you've really got to put the mindset into motion for there to actually be change. So let's talk about product. And for anybody watching and listening who maybe works for someone else... This still applies to you because what the product is, well, first of all, it's you. You ultimately are the product, which you may have some problems with, but you are the product.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
What is the problem that you solve and for who? Some of us do that while being employed, but you still are solving a problem for a group of people. You just happen to get your paycheck from a boss, right? So again, trying to like thread the needle for anyone watching and listening who maybe isn't an entrepreneur, this is still relevant to you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So tell me, Danielle, what is the problem that you're solving in your business and who do you solve it for? And it's totally fine if you don't have a concise answer and you want to just share a bunch of stuff with me. But I would love to hear in your words what that is.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
You can play the game and play it in a way that honors your values. I'm so curious to hear what you think about my advice. So comment below and don't forget to like and subscribe. Take a listen. Danielle, thank you so much for joining me today.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
The reason we're going through all of these is I want to illustrate both to you and everybody watching and listening is that there isn't one golden bullet here where if, oh, you just figure that thing out, everything else will follow necessarily, right? Right. But if you don't tackle this product and this product market fit, as you say, which is the next step of like the pricing, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Who's willing to pay for it? Of course, you're going to still have resistance. Of course, you're not going to know where to allocate your time and you're going to have to say yes to things that aren't correct with your values. And so we've really got to figure out a way to find a core group of people who are willing to pay for your services and
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
while also carving out time in your life to be able to do things that maybe fill your soul, if not your bank account, and then seeing in a given week, in a given month, in a given quarter, when you step back, you go, okay, I do have balance. I don't have it in a given day or maybe in a week.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But when I look at overall my month and or my quarter, actually, I am giving a proper percentage to helping people. And I am giving another proper percentage to putting food on the table. I'm going to throw out a couple of suggestions to you. What would it look like if you produced an amazing sort of podcast docu-series for a tech company? And that was how you brought in a paycheck.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
However, you made sure that it was for a company that was aligned with your values and that you had sort of systems in place to protect you from burnout, whether it was you setting your own boundaries with yourself and not overworking, but also conversations, you know, transparency with your boss of I'm unavailable after 6 p.m. Right. Because I've got young kids or whatever. Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Tell me your resistance, if you have any, to the thought of working full-time for somebody else. Again, the only reason I suggest that for you is because it's a little bit easier to find product market fit because, well, those jobs are posted. They're telling you there's product market fit. They want to hire you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I know you've had bad experiences in the past working for other people, but you're wiser now. You know what to look for. You know what to safeguard against. Tell me about the prospect of going full-time.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And I know we've spoken already before, you know, you have some feelings about money as we all do, but in your own words, could you give me a little bit more context or details about where you're at in your relationship with money and how I can be most helpful and supportive to you today?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Okay, let's then go into how you can cobble together some money right now. So the people that you currently want to work for, they just don't have any kind of budget or talk to me about when you price something, like your experience of putting a dollar amount on the work that you do, what does that feel like? And then when you tell somebody, what is that experience?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Just stay myself. So the people that I work with, I'm never surprised when it's somebody who is struggling to charge or charge more. And they also struggle to brag about themselves or to sell themselves. I think it's the different side of the same coin. Because it's about taking up space, right? So when you receive money, you are taking from someone else.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And if you have grown up believing that more for me is less for you and you are service oriented or you're in a creative field, which society often can make those of us in creative fields feel like we shouldn't have to charge. I mean, listen, so many people stream music for free, right? Like it's very difficult now to say, well, actually you have to pay for my writing or my art, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So this is not in your head. There are forces around us that are literally telling us, do not charge more. Taking up space is receiving money or putting ourselves out there saying, I am great. Honestly, we need to completely look at this in a different way. Otherwise we will always struggle. So I'm going to give you a suggestion for us. a different view and you tell me how you feel about this.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And by the way, this is coming from a very personal place since also the people I coach, I want to give everything away for free. They come to me, they're suffering with money. And here I am going, can you pay me more? I mean, it feels totally wrong, but here's what I have found. The act of paying me, or in your case, the act of paying you, it's not about you at all, actually.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
The very act of handing you money is an act of me investing in myself. Think about that for a second. So a person comes to you with a project. I know you do video work, you do marketing work, right? So they believe in what they do, right? They just need help getting the word out there. When they pay you to help them get the word out there, Again, they're not really paying you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
They're investing in their own business. They're investing in their own brand. And so when they don't spend much money, it's a symbolic way of saying, I don't really believe that much in my brand. Like it can feel good to spend money. I've also found that with my own clients, by the way.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
If I'm coaching somebody, oftentimes they will do way more work if they pay more money because they're like, I got to step up to the plate. I got to make my $1,000 worth it versus $100 or $10. But you're not going to believe this until you think about how you have done this actually in your life. So let's think about brands or businesses or people, services that we have paid for
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
we felt really damn good paying and by the way this is assuming that you are charging something that is fair now that can be a little bit tricky right so to me what's fair is you've done really good market research which sometimes is harder depending on the field that you're in you know for example if you're a speaker you know a lot of times people aren't talking about how much they charge
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Hi, I'm Claire Wasserman, the founder and author of Ladies Get Paid, a podcast newsletter and coaching practice dedicated to helping women embrace their worth inside and out. I'm honored to be guest hosting for Nicole while she's out on maternity leave. And you've probably noticed that there's a few of us, although just a heads up, I'm a little bit different.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
for their speaking gigs or they charge for brand deals, right? So you're really going to need to talk to people and say, are you willing to share a ballpark of how much you charge? And the reason I'm asking is so that we're not undercutting each other. Because if we all try to charge less than our counterparts, that becomes a race to the bottom and nobody wins.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
We're all going to go out of business because of it. So do make sure you are talking to other people about the rate. You will pick a rate that is mid- or a little bit higher than mid. And that's just a suggestion for you. That's not my suggestion to everybody. Depending on the kind of brand you have, perhaps you need to be charging the top. You want to be a luxury brand.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
For somebody else, they go, no, I'm not really a luxury brand. I really want to help people. We're going to get into that because you are going to be giving things away for free. And that's going to be part of your pipeline. That's going to be part of the marketing. Free is marketing. Product is paid.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
By the way, when people give you money, they're investing in themselves, but also they might be investing in other people. Meaning you could have a one-for-one, not necessarily, but think about like the Tom's model, right? Back in the day where you would buy a pair of shoes or socks and then they would gift another pair to somebody else. In this case, you could do scholarships.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I don't think one-for-one is appropriate because you do not have the literal luxury to do that, but it would be, hey, when you invest in my business, you actually are investing in my ability to serve people who cannot pay. Right. Okay. So not only is somebody going to give you money to help themselves, they're also going to be giving you money because it just feels good.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
There's going to be a sort of philanthropic aspect to this. So let's just recap for a second though. What are you going to charge? Please do not undercharge for both your sake, my sake, and also your customer's sake. It's got to be mid or a little bit higher. That will make them feel better. Trust me, it'll make them feel better. However, You'll work with them on a payment plan if you need to.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So not the pay what you want model. I've tried it. It doesn't work. It also doesn't make people feel safe. You want to confidently say, I charge this amount. Actually, I'll give you a good example. I have somebody who's contemplating signing on for a six session series with me, right? And that's a little bit of money. And she said to me that she was interviewing other coaches.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And I asked her, do you feel comfortable sharing with me? Where do I fall in pricing? And she said, you're mid, you're like mid-priced and just a little bit above mid. And I was like, ooh, that's exactly what I wanted to be. I don't want to be the most expensive. That just isn't right. That's not my brand. I'm not a luxury brand. I'm of the people, right? But if she said low, I would be mortified.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And I actually would love for you to tell me that, too. If I were talking to you and also talking to some other creative agencies, tell me, Danielle, how would that make you feel?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Yes. So let's get into pipeline for a second here, because this is where you're going to be driving traffic to your product and at the same time, giving things away for free. So making you feel really good and turning on its head, the experience you're currently having, which is I hate that I have to talk about myself.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
However, before I get into it, I actually want to circle back to a question I posed a little bit earlier. Can you think of a product that you pay for that you really love, whether it was a one-time payment, a subscription, a service where it was not cheap? And you were like, hell yeah, I got my value and more and I happily paid for it. If you don't have anything coming to mind, that's okay.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But I think it's a really good question that you and everybody watching and listening should take a second because you're not going to believe what I'm saying unless you realize that you have actually participated in this. You have enjoyed handing over your money at some time in your life.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Yeah. I think that sounds similar to the resistance to playing the game. I don't know. It's capitalism, right? Things are discounted. It's short-term loss for long-term gain. So there'll be supermarkets that have what's called a loss leader, where they will take certain items like eggs and charge very little for them. Or Costco does this with their hot dogs or rotisserie chicken.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
they're charged very little. So they lose money on it, but they get you in the store. They get you in the store and you eventually buy more. Same thing for all of us who have what's called lead magnets, right? We give away free things on the internet so that you give us your email and then we can eventually upsell you as we develop a relationship and trust.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And all of a sudden you're being coached by me for thousands of dollars. Okay. So this is part the game. So when you have resistance to paying a discounted price or whatever, I really think it's related to your resistance to all of it, you know, different side of the same coin. I think you contradicted yourself also, because in the beginning, it sounded like you were pretty proud of having been
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
a recipient of social benefits, which by the way, my family, we went into over $3 million of medical debt because of my son who has congenital heart defects. And, you know, we've been on food stamps as well and thank God for it.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But it sounded like you were okay with receiving help in that aspect, but you're sort of picking and choosing other areas of life and money where you go, okay, well, not that, but I'll take this. Does that sound true? Did I get that right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Keep in mind, whenever you're paying for something, and that includes taxes, it's going into a system, into like an economic system. riptide that is coming out the other end to either you or to somebody else. So for example, if I can't get people to give me good money, then I can't continue to give free things and help people.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So the act of taking money from some people allows me to keep serving others. They're all connected. So we really have to learn to let go of this binary view of more for me is less for you. It literally does not work like that. Can we figure out a way, and we'll get into this now with the pipeline of how you're putting yourself out there and also the process.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So how you're managing your time as well, because time is money, how you can do it in a way where, again, it's not about in a given day or in one client, do you feel good? But it's in a week, in a month, in a quarter, in a year, what does balance look like? in a way more holistic version. Hopefully that made some sense. Let's talk about putting yourself out there though, in this pipeline.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So getting people to know about, eventually we will figure out in another episode, maybe of just exactly what the product is and the product market fit. And maybe there's three things you offer and they are, each one is a different kind of tier. You've got your DIY, you've got your mid tier, and then you've got your sort of pricier one. But we need to get more people to know about you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Because if you're only pitching to, let's say, 10 people, well, chances are you close one or nothing. We need 100 people. We need 1,000 people to know about you. You've almost got to be spending more time putting yourself out there than you do even doing the work. That probably frustrates you. Or people listening, they go, I just want to do the work.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I don't want to have to be applying for jobs or I don't want to have to be promoting my business. Just let me do the work. Sorry, guys, it's not how it goes. It is about who has oftentimes the loudest megaphone, but you've got to find a way to do it where it feels really good. So I'm going to share with you how I'm doing it. And then you tell me what resonates in your scenario. Okay.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
What I love to do is to share lessons from my life. Lessons I've seen in running ladies get paid to the 55,000 people over exchanging 4 million messages. Like I've got a very interesting bird's eye view of where women are in their relationship with money and work. I want to share, I want to teach. And I'm like, just give me a microphone. And I'm like trying to make products.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
People aren't buying it. And it's taken me a long time. I'm a perfectionist. And then I realized, oh my gosh, social media. All I have to do is get on literally my phone and I can reach millions of people and just give away everything for free. As long as there is a tight call to action and I make it extremely easy for people to take the next step with me.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And the next step, by the way, is not giving me money because this is a relationship of trust and credibility that we need to develop with them. So they're going to be receiving a downloadable guide or a five-day email series, something, again, that takes everything I'm doing on social media, gives them a little bit more, and I give it to them for free. In exchange, I get their email address.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Now they're in my pipeline. And I do oftentimes like free Sunday sessions where I was doing job seeker support groups and just constantly putting myself out there doing things for free, but being very, very wary of how much time and energy it was taking and also ensuring that I could repurpose that free content. So if I'm recording it, guess what?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
It becomes a transcript, which can become a blog post or a newsletter so that you don't feel so scattered. When I do free things, somehow that's different or separate from my paid things. No, it's all the same. And if you're wondering, well, gosh, if I give everything away for free, why would anybody pay me? Let me share a quick example.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Somebody in my community said to me that there's a person she follows on LinkedIn and he posts a lot. And she was like, you know what? I'm going to copy and paste literally every post that he puts on LinkedIn. I'm going to put in a Google document. He helps with job seeking candidates. She goes, I'm going to teach myself off of all of his posts. She did that for a week.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And then she said, screw it. I'm going to pay him to teach me and to help me because time is money. So that's why somebody will pay you. Because when they work with you, you are going to save them time, which is saving them money. You're just going to get them where they want to go faster and also more personalized. But I really got to urge you, don't look at the free shit as something separate.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Otherwise, you're going to go, oh, it's selling. It's like, no, it's doing what you were going to do anyway. We can get creative about it too, right? So maybe you decide, okay, once a week you do a live with another creator and you're talking about projects that you love doing and what you found difficult about it and what you learned. It's not just putting yourself online and seeing what happens.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Let's get a little bit strategic about it. But I think this separation that we see selling as different than ourselves or different from our ultimate product is is a problem. It's a problem both for ourselves and our motivation. We're going to be like, oh, I don't want to do this. But it's also a problem for the audience because they don't want to be sold to either.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
They're like, just give me value. Tell me from that ramble, questions, thoughts, feelings, what's resonating? Where do you find resistance? And if my example lends itself to you, and if so, how?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Let's dig into that for a second. I know we don't have too much time, but I always have to get to a place where you're not just like, okay, I have homework, but you're actually kind of jazzed about the homework. coming from somebody who hated school over here. So tell me when I say putting your content out there for free, you're giving people things of value, things you're excited about.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And your first reaction is, Oh, it feels like I'm being exposed somehow. So I think that it feels like so existential.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I absolutely know what you're saying. And it's so funny because the answer is actually to be yourself. But I think it is cherry picking a little bit, right? Like I'm not necessarily going to get on live and tell you all. Well, no, actually I do. I do tell people I have breakdowns all the time. What am I talking about? Okay.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Let me tell you though, the danger of being perfect on social media or the danger of putting up a certain veneer, there's a lot of issues with this. Number one, it's not sustainable because it's taking energy to pretzel yourself. Okay. So it's not good for you. It's also not good for your audience because it makes them feel bad about themselves. That's just like the act of giving you money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Like I want to give you money because it makes me feel like I am getting more for it. I am investing in my business. Same thing when I watch your content. If you come out here and you're like, I'm killing it or everything's buttoned up. Well, I'm messy. I'm, you know, confused in my business, right? So I think the key that you're looking for here is how do you carry all of it?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
How do you be both your authentic messy person questioning, anti-capitalist, whatever self, and also be professional, which I think goes back to the overarching theme of today, which is how do we play the game our style, our way? And it is possible. I mean, we have to map it out a little bit here. So you might say, okay, what In one column, what does being authentic mean or messy?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And then write out a whole bunch of both like topics you would share if you were just being your quote authentic self, maybe formats in which you would share it, right? Just go on a whole bender pretending that you felt comfortable totally live streaming your life. Then in the next column, what do you imagine being the buttoned up business business?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
girl boss version, the one that you feel pressure to pretzel yourself into, make a column for, okay, well, what would be the topics or the way in which I express myself? What would that look like? Right. And then you have to find a third way, which I do believe is possible. That third way of how do I blend the two?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
you might make some rules for yourself, which are certain topics are off limits right now. Like I share pretty much everything in my life and that's how I grew my newsletter to 50,000 people. But you better believe my wife is like, you are absolutely not talking about our sex life. There are some rules. Last night I posted, I have anxiety.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I was curling my hair and yeah, I don't know if we want to include this in the podcast. I think I'm okay with it, but like I smoked some pot because like I live in California and it's allowed. And I posted on Instagram. I said, wow, this is the best way to simultaneously stop my anxiety and come up with amazing ideas because the act of curling my hair while stoned, you have to be so, so focused.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
to not hurt yourself. And in that focus, I kind of created a state of flow. Since I posted that I've been stressed because that felt too exposed for me, even though I'm not embarrassed that I have, you know, used marijuana, like there's still a stigma. My mom's going to see this, you know, again, I've decided to share it. And But the point is, it's a line that will move, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
It's a line that will move and change because you are moving and changing. You just need to figure out the what as like a foundation for your business, the way you talk about your business, the way you conduct your business, the way you price your business. Foundationally, what is aligned with your values? So how, you know... You're not going to price the highest nor the lowest.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
You're going to have a philanthropic aspect to what you do. You're going to look at marketing as all the free content. So you never have to feel bad about charging for people. When you put yourself out there, it will be your authentic self. However, a non-raw self. Right.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So it's like if we're going to be girly about it, it's like if you decide I'm never going to wear makeup on social media, but I'm going to throw some lipstick on. That's how I see it. And then it's a muscle that you develop over time. Just like in negotiating with people, you get better at it, but also it gets harder because the stakes get higher.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So just as something's working for you this quarter, I want you to reevaluate it and say, okay, so based off of all the free content that I'm putting out there and how I'm expressing myself, you know, where we want to make some tweaks. Where did I feel too exposed, but also where did energetically it feel like I had to become another person. And that's just not right.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Just pushing yourself to say, am I looking at this in too much of a binary? Is this black and white? That's most of us, by the way, we're wired oftentimes to see things in black and white, right? There's either danger or safe. No, that's why we're constantly frustrated because life is in the gray and life is in the contradiction that many things are true at once.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So when you do find yourself up against a wall in some aspect of your business, your money, your life, et cetera, just, I would say the first thing to ask yourself really is, is there another way to look at this? Like, am I really seeing it as a zero sum game here? You know, is it possible to find another way in? On that note, I want to thank you so much for being here.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And I'm honored to get a chance to coach you, but also do it on Money Rehab. Thanks to Nicole Lappin for giving me the opportunity to guest host while she's away on maternity leave. And just know that hopefully I helped you today, Danielle, but in sharing your story, we certainly helped other people too. hopefully gain some next steps, but also just recognize that they're not alone.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
We're all going through this. And just because I'm the one sitting over here, quote, coaching you, girl, I'm coaching myself. I'm right in it with you. Is there anything you want to share as we close up?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Yeah. And by the way, money is just a portal. It's symbolic too, right? So if you find that you're looking at money in a certain way, I would challenge you to say, okay, am I looking at other things also in that way? So whether it's your interpersonal relationships, romantic relationships, the relationship you have with yourself, with your time, with your kids, whatever.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Again, more for me is less for you. Is that always true? Could there be more for me is more for you? I know that this stuff is really true. I started my career in first independent film production, so raising money for a foreign film. And then I went to nonprofit fundraising. Giving feels good. Also, people were getting their name on the credits, which they then leveraged for other projects.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
It was networking. Yeah. People don't do things just solely out of the goodness of their heart. They really are getting things for it. So just challenge yourself. More for me is more for you. And by the way, what an abundant way to go through life, right? That like one plus one equals 11. Life can be way bigger and more expansive than I think we give ourselves credit for.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And a lot of it has to do with feeling proud. Like it's not just a necessary evil to charge this amount or to put ourselves out there. But I really do believe we can get to a place where... Every time that we say our price point or apply for the job or market ourselves, we're letting another person out there know that we've got them, right? We can solve their problem. We recognize them.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
They're not alone. We give them an opportunity to participate, right? Like if you have an idea and now they get to participate in your idea and it changes their life, okay? More for me is more for you. On that note, thank you, Danielle. And thank you to all for watching and listening. We'll see you next time.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Very, very, very helpful. There's a number of things that you've said that I want to point out. Well, first of all, acknowledging the fact that you have been on a roller coaster of a relationship with money in the sense of how you grew up. So service-oriented parents who didn't make much, but you had exposure to people who did, felt they were egotistical maybe.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Instead of interviewing my guests, I'm going to be coaching them. We have three women lined up, each one struggling in her relationship with work and money. You'll be calling in no camera on to protect their identity so that they can feel as comfortable as possible to share. Because I believe transparency can be transformative. When you see yourself in somebody else's journey, you realize.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Then you made very little when you first graduated. You had lots of debt, but it was taken care of through social services, and then you worked your way up to six figures. But in doing those things, in the working your way up and making more, you burnt out. Is that right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Let's not say, you know, you can say hopefully, but with a plan, we will ensure that you are off that cycle. So from what I hear from you, you equate money. And when I say you, by the way, for anybody listening and watching, I'm also saying you too. And me too, because this is a lot of us.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But for you, Danielle, particularly, you seem to associate money with... Okay, so ego, which we can go a little bit more depth. Okay, so ego. So maybe... more for me means less for you. So this binary way of looking at receiving money, money is ego. Money also equals burnout because when you did make six figures, you were overwhelmed and in a sort of toxic work environment, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So has there ever been a time where you made a lot of money and it felt really good?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Yeah. I'm going to say a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason. You know, this expression, you can't be what you can't see. It's very true because when you haven't yet experienced something in your life, it is so difficult to imagine that it could possibly happen for you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So I am curious, do you know of anybody, whether you've spoken to them so you know them personally, or maybe they're more aspirational, where they seem to have made a living, a really good living, while also not burning out? Of course, we don't know the true story of behind the scenes, but is there a good model to follow possibly to remind us that we can do this, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
That many things can be true at once. You can do good and do well and provide for your family while also not burning out. Do we know anybody who's done that?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
You're not alone. And that can do so much in letting go of the shame that so many of us carry in regards to money. Today's guest is Danielle, who is really struggling to charge what she's worth. She has had a roller coaster of a relationship with money. Danielle has gone from making very little and being on food stamps to making over six figures, but being burnt out and getting burned.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Yeah, okay. I'm about to say something that I want you and everybody watching, listening to listen up. It is not about being qualified, okay? Making money, doing well in our careers, growing our businesses. I wish it was whoever is the most talented person makes the most money or whoever works the hardest, whoever's the most qualified, the best person gets the reward. And it is so not the case.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
You know who gets the reward? The people who play the game, okay? Who can really... optimize within the system. Here's your problem, my problem, and a lot of our problems. We hate the system. So we hate the game. So we go, screw it. I'm not playing. Well, I'm not trying to be broke here and neither are you. So what I'm going to share with you is a whole process. Okay.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And we're going to go through step by step. And you're going to tell me all the things you hate about my process. And we're going to work together through that resistance, right? Because trying to sort of do things for the aspiration, they never work, right? Obstacles are always greater than the aspirations. So we'll make the plan around the roadblocks and the resistance.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But we have got to dig into this system that currently exists and find our own way, find our own way of playing it while also kind of on the side. And I'll get more specific about this in a minute. But can we create a new game as we are playing the one that currently exists? And of course, this all sounds very exhausting.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And that's why we have to have outlets where we can connect with each other and have catharsis, et cetera, et cetera. But I think many things are true at once. We can do more than we realize, but we have to do it smart, okay? Because we cannot burn out. That is not an option. Neither one of us can literally afford to burn out. Right. We're both breadwinners for our families here.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So it's just literally not a possibility. Okay. Right. So I want to say that it's not about being qualified. It's about who kind of plays the game the best, but you can't win at a game you hate. So we're going to actually learn to love the game. All right. And then here's your first piece of homework. Okay.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
For you, Danielle, but everybody listening, find examples of people who are doing things in the way that you would like to. Okay. So you see these guys out there who are like, I'm making $4,000 doing nothing. And it makes you enraged. Okay. Don't pay attention to those guys.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But see if you could go find somebody who reminds you of you, who figured it out, who said, hey, listen, I'm a creative person. I've been through a whole journey with my relationship with money. I've resisted X, Y, and Z. And here's how I'm making money in a way that feels good. So I want you to go find examples, you know, and they can all represent different sort of aspects of aspiration.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So it might not necessarily be a person who's exactly like you in all of the things, but they have figured out some way to run a business, create a life that does not require burnout. Nor selling their soul. Okay. So that's the first order of business for you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Before I get into the process, all the steps, the resistance, et cetera, anything else you want to share, any sort of feedback, things that you're thinking, feeling to what I've talked about so far?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Good news. That's going to be one of my suggestions for you. And we're going to make it into a schedule that works and a pricing that feels good.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And now she runs her own business, a creative agency, but is seriously struggling to ask for more because in her words, she feels like. It's taking away from the people she wants to help. In this episode, we tackle the mindsets needed to not see things so much in black and white. I really urge Danielle to be able to see that many things can be true at once. You can do good and do well.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Feel Guilty Asking For More Money. Am I Wrong? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So let me walk you through four major areas of building both a business, but also a life and career that fills your bank account and your soul. How about that? Okay. So we've got the product, the pricing, the pipeline, and the process. I love a good alliteration. Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I think that's great.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
reassuring them that the learning curve will be more minimal with you than they might imagine is demonstrating an example from the past in which you were new, right? So what you just shared with me, even though it was more of an example for why does an outsider perspective give you an advantage, I like that it also kind of does double duty of I was new, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So that's also something to have in your back pocket prepared. Maybe even mention like really fricking hard things that I'm sure you had to do, right? That's going to now put into pretty nice perspective. I'm sure the things you would be doing for a tech company are not as difficult to learn as things you would learn for nursing. Are we talking about life or death circumstances here?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
By the way, my son is medically complex and has had multiple open heart surgeries. So I am like, I'm all about the nurses and the doctors. mostly the nurses. And that makes me feel like, well, I just send newsletters for a living. So you can sort of make a joke about it. Like, hey, I had to learn these things. And I love learning. I'm all about learning.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So I give her tips on how to tell her story in a more compelling way, that her skills really are transferable, and that the learning curve will be minimal. I also talked to her about how she can kind of broaden the field of where she's applying to, how to be more creative and more strategic in doing research on what companies are out there.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And I'm sort of looking forward to not having to learn when there's a life or death situation. Or you can kind of point out the absurdity. Have you ever managed somebody before? They're like, well, I've kept people alive. So if maybe there's a way to weave in some humor, again, the self-awareness is so critical. And it sounds like you really do have that already within you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
It's just being able to connect the dots explicitly for them about why, again, minimal learning curve and benefit to being an outsider. The third thing here is your why. Now, you can tell a beautiful story about it, and that's fine. But we want to now take it to the next level, which is why. It's going to sound funny the way I say this, but why does your why matter?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Like, why does that matter to them? Why does it matter for your work? Is that something that you do when you talk about your reasons for wanting to go into this field? Do you then connect the dots to how it affects the work you do? And of course, that is the impact on the business bottom line, ultimately. Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Yes, but why you? Okay, so I was like, I got stuck. Yeah, like all of that was great. I'm like, that all makes sense, but it's not connected to you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And you're trying to make the point that you are the hire, you're the special hire, not that there is a need for this thing to be done and that you believe in the need, you've seen the need, but why does it make it a benefit to them that you know this?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
You don't need to answer that question, but I really want to push you and everybody watching and listening because I've worked with thousands and thousands of job seekers. Oftentimes I hear the first part of the answer where I go, yes, that is correct. And we've got to now show them how you do that in your way and how that's an impact on their bottom line or how that's going to help them.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Before though we dig too deep down that road, I want to talk about the jobs that you are applying to. I have suggestions for where I think maybe you should be looking that are going to say yes to you much quicker than other people. Not specific company names, I'm sorry to say, but kind of categories of companies.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
This is really good for somebody who maybe is considering a career pivot or someone who's in the throes of the job search and is just getting demoralized. Don't worry, I got you. Hey, Katie, thanks so much for joining us today on the podcast. If you can give me some more context to what you're going through and how I can best support you, let's get started.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And by the way, anyone listening or watching, this is relevant to you too, no matter what industry or role that you have or want to be in. Before I talk about that, though, maybe you tell me, how did you decide which jobs to look at or which companies to be researching? Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So my suggestion is a little bit radical. I would not be looking at open job postings. Okay. I mean, fair enough. Have a Google alert up, you know, compile it into a spreadsheet. But chances are it's too late because a lot of these jobs, when they're listed, they're already in motion filling the role, whether internally or through relationships.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Doesn't mean you don't look at them, but I would say your best bet is is to first make a list of all the companies that you have interacted with over the past 10 years, if you can remember them. This is advice to you, Katie, but also everybody watching and listening. You want to move on from your company. and you're going to try to make a big leap, chances are no one's going to hire you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So we've got to find a company that we have some familiarity with already. That doesn't mean that company has to know us. It literally could be a piece of equipment that you used in your job. Or for example, in my son's case, he has a stent that was put into him that was approved by the FDA two days before it was put in. Well, that is a biotech company.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So if I were working at the hospital, I was one of his nurses, I'm trying to move on from nursing, going into healthcare tech, med tech, I might say, hey, I was a nurse for this child who got a stent that was created by this really cool company. I would look into the company. So it's not, oh, does that company have an open job? But it's saying,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Who are basically the players in the field that I'm interested in getting into? Like, who's in this space? Starting with the company, and then you look at, well, who are the people? Maybe you've worked with, you know, for those watching, listening, who maybe are, let's say, I don't know, you're in advertising, right? You've worked for an agency.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Well, who are the brands that you've interacted with before? Or platforms, right? Softwares, right? Maybe there's a piece of you're like obsessed with Todoist.com, right? Or there's just something that you have used or been exposed to that kind of makes a cool product, you know, for lack of a better way of putting it. You're just like, huh, I'm interested in this. Clearly they're doing good.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I would start there. Does anyone come to mind, by the way, when you, you know, and have you thought of it in this way yet? Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Yes. And you know what? I'm going to tell you something that'll help you come up with even more for every company that you write down. So the Renata Medical, you know, this is the stent company.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
i would then google competitors by the way this is helpful advice for anybody who's also trying to do market research for your salary the way that you get paid and this is something i'll probably talk about in another episode but the way that you get paid is based off of well what is the competitor paying a similar role that's how these companies are deciding how much you're currently worth in the market they're going well
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Our competitor company, how much do they pay their talent who does something similar? So follow that as your kind of research rabbit hole roadmap. I like an alliteration. Research rabbit hole roadmap. So you go, OK, I like this company or I'm intrigued by this company. Now I'm going to Google competitor.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
The other thing you can do is see who works there in the position that you're looking for, and also maybe the CEO. Then look them up on LinkedIn. Where did they used to work? Write that company down. Now Google competitor to that company. Write that down. And then look at CEO and somebody or a few people who do something similar that you wanted to do, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
This way, for everything that you come up with, so for every one, two, three, four, five companies you come up with, you now have exponentially increased the number of potential opportunities you could find. And you're doing it in a pretty easy way.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
The other thing that you can think about is not just companies or brands that you've sort of interacted with or observed over the last 10 years, but problems that you have been itching to solve. So this is going to give you a little bit of an edge when you're interviewing, because you can then say, I have intimately experienced this problem.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So for example, and I'm sure you can give me some right now. whether it's in your day-to-day as a nurse, or maybe it was during a certain experience that you had where you were like, man, this thing needs to be better. There's got to be a more efficient way to do this. Or man, like the patient care was sort of lacking here, whatever. Like there was something that you felt could have been better.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I would then try to research Who out there is solving this problem? Because chances are somebody is trying. Maybe not. Maybe that's why there's still a problem. But maybe you could find at least one or two companies that are attempting to address this problem.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
This might be a company you want to work for because, A, listen, if you're solving problems that you're passionate about, that's purpose, right? That's purpose-driven work. And number two... When you apply, you're going to say, I have experienced this problem. So even if you are making a leap into a new field, you're going to have to explain why your skills are transferable.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Well, this is pretty obvious that you're exactly the person to help them solve this problem because you've experienced it on the other side. It's almost like you're their ideal customer because that's the other thing. Applying to companies where you are their customer brings this amazing perspective that they could really leverage and learn from. Tell me what your thoughts are and all about that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So you're going to be looking at these companies, looking at these people, make sure that your LinkedIn will tell me you are currently employed elsewhere. So if you were to update your LinkedIn and be like, pretty transparent about the pivot you want to make that that's not okay right now. Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
All right. You could always message people privately for everybody else watching, listening, who maybe are unemployed, or as I like to say, fun employed. And it's not a problem to be explicit about where you want to go next. You're going to want to put in your headline. the job title that you're looking for. And you can even just say, looking to, you know, applying to these kinds of jobs.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And in your about, you know, you'll be very clear about it. Because when you start to follow and comment on other people's LinkedIns, they will inevitably look at yours. And I want it to be representative of where you're at and what your goals are. In your case, okay, not so much. But you will at least see who you have connections to.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So talk to me about your network and how you're currently leveraging or not.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Yeah, no, and it is.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
By the way, it will, I think, always be demoralizing. I think the goal should be, though, how can we recover from the rejection faster? So if right now the rejection, I don't know, it hurts for like five days or five hours, let's make it five minutes. And how do we do that? That's therapy work. Okay. So that's also a different coaching session.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But one thing I will invite you and everybody listening who is dealing with rejection from others, it is a signal to us that we need to develop a sense of self and a self-worth that is protected from whatever somebody else says to us. It's almost impossible to do that. We're wired to be social. We're literally wired to... do the best we can to not be rejected by others.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So don't fight this too much. Again, it's like kind of accepting that, yeah, I'm gonna feel bummed for a little bit and not piling on to it, right? Not now getting mad at yourself that you're feeling rejected. It's like, yeah, every time I get rejected, I'm gonna feel like crap for a little bit of time. I'm gonna do something nice for myself or whatever, but maybe just see it as a reminder of,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
This is you building, again, this like deeper sense of self that no matter what happens outside of you, you are still okay on the inside. And if you can kind of master that, again, very difficult, ever-changing, but it is probably the number one skillset you could develop that will safeguard you against any of the chaos in this world.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Because so much of it is other people's stuff or things that we can't even, I mean, quite frankly, we just can't control. And it's so difficult. So you are right now in an experience that is challenging you to address this number one skill set. So again, you're never going to truly master it because we're sort of not wired to.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But if you can minimize the suffering in some way, take the edge off in some way. That would be a great goal. And as you witness yourself doing that, make sure that you celebrate it. But to get back into leveraging, you're going to now amass this much larger spreadsheet. This ultimately is a numbers game.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
However, I don't want you wasting your time applying to places where the fit isn't right, which you've mentioned you're not doing. I really think if you go, I'm going to recap the stuff we've talked about. Sounds like you're doing all of them-ish, but I want to turn up the volume on it.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Talk to real people who have the job that you want or something similar about what is extremely difficult in their job and the skills that they've needed to get through it. Use that to reflect on how have I done that? Tell that story with specifics and as best as you can metrics, okay? How did all of this impact the business or another team that impacted the business?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Or how did this relate to the company's goals? Like always, always take that next step. Any of the feedback you're getting from hiring managers, if it's been specific at all, I think some of it has, you're missing this, you're missing this, missing this. I would say maybe proactively address it. with specific examples of learning curve, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So next thing is demonstrating that the learning curve is minimal and here's how you've learned in the past and learned quickly. Then really emphasizing your why, but connecting it to why that matters to the company, okay? And then really dive into, again, problems that you've solved that are absolutely related to this company. You've seen it in a different way.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So you are familiar with this product or this experience, but just from the other side. And then you'll end with, and here's why an outside perspective is an asset with an example of how you've done this before. The last thing I want to mention is Just bridge opportunities, right? And I'm sure you've thought of this, but I want to just mention it. You know, some of these companies...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Do we need to have some experience in the interim in order to get them to say yes? And if so, can we get specific about what it is that they need to see from you that you, I guess, don't have? And how can you, as best you can, generate that experience for yourself, right? If we keep waiting for somebody else to say yes to us, we're going to be waiting a really long time.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So maybe you could kind of spitball with me for a second here. Has there been anybody who's given you feedback and made you think, okay, where else can I look, or how else can I think about giving myself this, whatever it is that they're looking for, so that when I do apply, I'll have something to say.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Yes, thousand percent. I love that you're already thinking about this. Yeah, I think any kind of startup or nonprofit that you could participate in. I mean, even things like if there's a focus group, you know, for any of these startups who are looking to connect with nurses, whatever, like something where you're able to
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Not just get the experience that they're looking for, because chances are it's not going to totally be what they're looking for, of course. But it's demonstrating that you're putting in the work. To my earlier point of when you talk to a bunch of people about what's difficult in their job and the relevant and critical skills that they need, that makes your story stronger.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But it's the self-awareness. It's the doing your homework. It's the fact that you are taking steps. You're not just... hey, I'm applying, pick me, or hey, here's the work I've done. Again, it's like, I am so self-aware and self-motivated. I understand what your concerns are. I hear you, and here's what I have done and am continuing to do.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
to kind of bridge that gap between where I'm at today and where I am tomorrow. That is really impressive. And you also can't teach somebody that. I mean, I guess you can. I'm trying right now, right? Because I'm coaching, but you already know all this stuff.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I hope I'm giving you that extra boost of where you should put your energy so that you're not repeating the same, you know, applying to the same kind of companies that only have open job postings with the same story over it. Like we've got to try something new, something different. And kind of what's exciting about that is you will get traction somewhere, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
If we keep applying for the same stuff and keep getting a no, of course, we're going to feel like crap because there's literally no progress. But if you now are talking to these startups or maybe not just a startup, I don't know, let's say you connect with...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
tech crunch or like a tech publication, and then you connect with a journalist who covers health care tech and you're like, hey, I can be a source for you. I don't know. You just think of this really creatively. You may find you get a yes from somebody unexpected, and then that's going to give you a boost of energy to sustain you through the demoralizing nose.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So I'm feeling pretty positive about where we're at. And I think we're going to close up in just a second. So is there anything else you want to add or any area I can kind of clarify for you? I mean, I'm feeling good about this, but you're the one who's going on this journey. So tell me how you're feeling.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And also everybody was you at some point. I mean, maybe they weren't making a big pivot, but they were trying something new or just entering the field or if they're the person who created the company, right? The fear of starting something. So really don't underestimate what it takes to do this, both for yourself and the pride you feel, but also how that's an impressive part of your story, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
The courage to go, this isn't working and I found out the path that will work for me. You know, just that you did that inner work and you took the extra steps, right? So make sure that's part of the story. It's not obvious to everybody. So as long as you're explicitly sharing it, and again, why does this make you the right fit? Why does this make you good at your job? always take that next step.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I'm going to thank you, Katie, so much for being here. Please keep us posted. I always want to do a follow-up episode, especially if the person gets the job, you know, kind of where you're at. So definitely reach out. Maybe Nicole will let us come back and I can guest host again, but super appreciate you being vulnerable.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And I know that there's a lot of people out there watching and listening who have been nodding their heads at many aspects of this conversation. And I have no doubt you're going to end up in a really awesome place.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I wanted to have you on the show because I think a lot of people out there are itching to pivot, but have a lot of questions about, am I going to have to take a pay cut? And also, can I even get the job in the first place? So how do I demonstrate in a compelling way that my skills really are transferable, even if I haven't had the traditional experience or title?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Yeah, it can be a little complicated, so I'm going to do my best to unravel and give you action steps. So the first thing is congratulations on the bravery required to do something different. So I hope that you're feeling proud and can maintain some of that pride as you go through this process. I know it's demoralizing to be rejected, but as long as you are learning, building, growing,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Doing, feeling, trying, and breaking it down into actionable, reasonable steps for yourself. Hold on to that as best as you can throughout this process. Sustaining your energy is everything in this. Okay, so we've got that. The people who are going to hire you are the ones that you've convinced are effectively two things.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Number one, that your learning curve will be minimal because nobody wants to take a chance on somebody they can hire an easy fit, right? So we've got to show them that the learning curve is minimal. And I'm going to walk you through how to do that in just a minute. The second thing that we want to demonstrate to them is that you being a non-traditional candidate is actually an asset.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So instead of it being a thing that we hide, I want to figure out, after we've established that the learning curve is minimal, that you bring something extra by being an outsider. Before I dive into all that, am I on the same page with you of where you want to focus today? Yes, that sounds wonderful. Okay, great.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So you mentioned a few things already in feedback that you've received, and I'm glad that you've gotten, you know, not just rejected in the first round. The reason I'm glad that you've gotten a few rounds in is because you've now established relationships with these hiring managers and whoever else you've met. We have no idea where they're going to go next.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And also if another position may open up later down the road. So for you and anyone watching and listening who is in a process of, yes, I've had a few rounds of interviews, but I'm not landing the job, don't feel like it's all a waste, okay? It's broadening your network. And listen, I've never gotten a job through a cold application.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
It's always come through my network and through my relationships. So you are doing that and you're doing it successfully. But how do we take that next leap past the oh, okay, you sort of have comparable but not totally right experience. Let's break it down into as many different areas in which we can nail either the gap you have or the story we're going to tell around the gap.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
We've got skills, we've got experience, we've got network. What else could we be missing? Just throw out as many as you can. And by the way, it doesn't have to be what you're missing. It's just the things that they're looking for that they don't want to have to train you on. I mean, it's basically credibility, right? So again, we've got skills, we've got experience, we've got your network, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Relationships are important. Schooling maybe. I mean, is there anything else you can think of?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Money Rehab Hi, I'm Claire Wasserman, the founder and author of Ladies Get Paid, a coaching practice newsletter and podcast dedicated to helping women embrace their worth inside and out. I'm so honored to be guest hosting for Nicole while she's out on maternity leave, although a bit of a heads up that
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Okay. Well, we're going to obviously put that front and center. I'm so sorry to hear that that is your story, but I'm also so happy that you can leverage it for growth. Yay. Seriously. Yes. My dad would be happy.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So here's the best way I think you can work backwards from anything that you might potentially be quote missing. And tell me if you've done any of this. Have you spoken to people who have the jobs that you want or people who are doing similar things? And by speaking to them, I don't just mean, oh, what do you like about your job?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
What I want you to do when you talk to these people is ask them what is difficult about their job. What skills have they felt that they've really needed to learn and leverage to not only solve the challenges of their job, but to be excellent?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I want you to dig into the details of that because you'll then work backwards from those details and speak to them, literally, specifically speak to them in your cover letter, in your interview, in whatever kind of exchange you're having. You will acknowledge the fact that, yes, you are excellent. making a pivot.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
However, you have spoken to, let's just say, five or eight or 10 people who've been in the trenches for some time in doing this work and told you that the three biggest skills that they've used or whatever it is, it's making sure that the person who's hearing you understands that this isn't just about aspirations. It's about the obstacles in the way of the aspiration.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So what is difficult about this job? And chances are what was difficult was probably not, I don't know, learning how to use a platform or a piece of software. It was probably the soft skills, right? It's probably going to be things that when you hear them, you go, oh, I totally have a story for that. I have a great example of how I've done that. Tell me, though, is this resonating?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Have you tried it? And what do you feel?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
My hosting, it's slightly different because instead of interviewing my guests, I'm actually coaching them. They'll be calling in cameras off just to protect their identity so that they feel as comfortable as possible to share. That's because I believe that transparency is transformative. And when you can see yourself in someone else's journey differently,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Okay, so if I asked you, based on these new positions that you're applying for, do you feel confident that you could tell me the three biggest challenges that this role has to solve?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Really do. intense research because they'll also be impressed that you did the research. So let alone the story that you tell, the fact that you went and talked to all of these people, that you're self-aware enough to recognize that, yes, there will be a learning curve, but you did your homework, you did your due diligence to minimize how much of a learning curve that is.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
and that you are explicitly calling out to them saying, hey, listen, taking a chance on me is not gonna be as big of a leap as you think it is because I have spoken to these people. And also if you're getting feedback about certain things that they feel like you are lacking, how do you speak to that upfront? So don't make them ask you, right? Cause then you're sort of more in a defensive position
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But really, as part of your opening case, and I'm a really big believer that when having these kind of conversations with both employers, but also just people we network with in general, they kind of only remember how we started the conversation and also how we end it. And so it's your opening case and your closing case is reiterating to them very specific points, usually bucketed, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So here are the three major challenges in the research that I did that I'm going to come across in this role. And here are examples. in the ways that I've approached these kinds of challenges in my current position. And by the way, in the stories that you tell, right? Like I'm the person in the meeting who always asks about the next steps. I love that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
The next thing I would say though is, and if this is possible for you, What was the impact? Like what happened next after that? And if you can help the other person visualize that scene as best as possible. So even mentioning things like what was at stake, right? Like when you worked on this project or had this meeting or whatever the experience was, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
you know, investment that the company was making in your time and energy that because of the fact that you were focusing on this, why did that matter? Right. So let's like pump up the drama also in the story that we tell. And none of this is lying, by the way, all of this, you know, it's all true. It's just you express it in maybe a more compelling way.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And that honors, you know, the truth of the situation. OK, so minimizing the learning curve. Now, if they keep saying, all right, well, you haven't had the title, you can say, well, yes, I may have not had that specific title. But again, based off of everything that we've discussed in the research I've done, these are the areas in which my skills are transferable.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And then you would transition into why being an outsider gives you an advantage, actually. And not just this bullshit like, trust me, being an outsider gives you an advantage. No, you have to give an example. So that's something we could maybe even brainstorm here. So an advantage to being an outsider, giving an example of that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So if there's ever been an experience you've had where, you know, whether you were taking some time off and you came back and you had fresh eyes, you really want to help the other person visualize it as best as you can. So not speaking in these like broad abstract terms, but okay, in this experience, you know, we were all trying to figure out this solution and no one could. And then,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
you realize that you're just a little less alone. So today's guest is Katie, who wants to pivot from being a nurse to going into the tech healthcare field. But she's feeling really demoralized because even though she's getting past a couple of rounds of interviews, they keep telling her that they're going with candidates that have, quote, more traditional experience. I know how that feels.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
"I Keep Hearing ‘No’—How Do I Pivot Careers Without Giving Up? Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
you know, whatever it was. I had two days off and then I came back and I had this aha moment, or I don't know, Katie, if there's anything that's coming to mind for you where you could show me how in hopefully your professional experience, that outside perspective has been helpful for you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I'm going to give you some next steps for information that you can gather. I think a lot of people get very stressed when they think about the prospect of change. They get stressed for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons that we get stressed, it's because we actually lack information about how to make that change. So the change itself isn't even daunting. It's really just the process.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And you don't even know what the process is unless you gather some information. first. So there's kind of what you know and what you don't know. So let's talk about what you know and what you know is yourself to a certain degree, to a certain degree. So these are the things I'd love for you to reflect on. And if you have any thoughts, feel free to share.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
What are the things that when you do them, you really light up, really light up. And of course it makes it easier if it's work related, but just think kind of generally you as a The things you do, you light up. And what is so interesting about exploring those experiences is you can see, ah, what's the environment that helps me do the work that makes me light up?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
What are the strengths and skills that I'm using to make me light up? What are the problems that I'm solving that make me light up? Now, I don't think this is you, but I think there's some other people watching or listening who are thinking, it's been a while since I've lit up. I'm just very unmotivated and not into what I'm doing. That's when I would say go back way in time to childhood.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And seriously, there are very good clues from back in the day when you were just doing things for the sheer joy and pleasure and curiosity of it. OK, but sounds like you're in a pretty good place. So I would think back now. All right. In the last few years. And it could be everything from you really like the experience of.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
preparing and delivering a presentation, or you really liked going to this conference or, you know, so they could be moments in time. This doesn't have to be, oh, this project I worked on, right? It could really, you know, or like I liked being on a team. I like this environment or process or these kinds of details are very important. As we say, the sort of devil is in the details here.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So as you're doing this reflection, just write down, there's no wrong answer. The reason I'm having you do this first is these become kind of the foundation upon which you're building the rest of the house. So you know what you want to carry with you, right? We want you to activate these kinds of strengths in this sort of environment. And then as we take the next step of figuring out
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
people to talk to both internally. Okay. So at the company, but also externally, when you start to explore what's out there, you can now filter it. Ah, if I take this next step, will I be leveraging these talents to the best of my ability? You know, or, Is this skill set I have in this next role, would it be a nice to have?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Like, I remember a friend once said to me when we came home from an event, she said, Claire, you know, your ability to connect with people and to network, you really take it for granted. And not only do you take it for granted, You're not even monetized. You should monetize this.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
You should make this a front and center aspect of what you do for a living, both in terms of your role and even companies you look like. And from then on, I only worked for companies that literally the job was to network. The companies themselves were networks, were professional networks. And I was the person marketing and fundraising to help people connect. So I really listened to this one.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I was a friend of mine who said this to me. So that'd be the first step. Second step is what are you curious about? This is all about learning. I like to think about work as if it were school and not school in like a school because I actually really didn't like school that much, but more school of life. Like we are getting our MBA. And it is now our time to write up the curriculum.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
What do we want to learn in our MBA? And here's what's kind of awesome is instead of us paying for the MBA, they're paying us, right? Like you were getting paid to go to school. That's how I think of work. Like you were just here to learn. And in learning, you have to deliver. You're doing projects. You've got senior thesis, right? Like you've got teams, you know?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
You're getting your, you know, an A plus or not, right? You're We want to build the curriculum. And this is a cliche, but I'm going to say it anyway. You don't know what you don't know. You don't even know what opportunities are out there unless you put yourself out there. Unless you get exposure somehow to something or somebody who's simply interesting to you. And let yourself be open-minded.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Let yourself be curious. And if there's, let's say, a person at your company, you just kind of admire them. Like they've either risen up in the ranks or they totally pivoted or came from a different background or feel similar to you. There's somebody. Start there, especially a person who has changed or has done any kind of path that looks somewhat similar to you or something you admire.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I would love to hear from them how they did it. And then I want to hear more about their job, right? What do they do and what do they not like about what they do? What skills and strengths and expertises do they really leverage in that job?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Gathering this kind of information will help you, A, make a better decision about what your next move will be, and B, how to make a compelling case that you are indeed ready for this. Or C, you'll discover, actually, I want this. I'm not ready for it. Okay, now we can make a plan for how to get ready for it. Based off of all that, tell me what you're thinking, what you're feeling.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Yeah. But I think you bring up a very valid and important point, which is people are busy and we don't want to bother them. So I want to actually work backwards from that for a second. When you reach out to somebody who I'll just say has influence, right? or somebody you want something from, and you're like, oh, I know they're busy or whatever.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Well, first of all, before you reach out, think about, is there anything that you can do for them? Now, in your case, it's a little bit different because it sounds like you already are just sort of a helpful person to her anyway, and you have somewhat of a relationship, right? So this is maybe a different use case than a person who wants to reach out to somebody they've never met before, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But- One way to help another person is this is going to be a totally random idea I'm throwing out there. It may not apply to you, but hopefully it inspires you to start thinking creatively about how to connect with people of influence. Can you recommend them for a conference or a podcast if you feel like that's something that would make sense for them, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
For example, if anyone wants to reach out to me, and is like, hey, I could connect you with this conference. I think you'd be a great speaker. I mean, that might be money in my pocket. And it didn't take you more than like five minutes potentially to do that. I mean, of course, there's like an etiquette to making kinds of connections, et cetera.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But that's you bringing value in a way that doesn't take much time and effort, but has a big positive impact on the other person. So just before anybody reaches out to anyone else, just think, is there something I could do for them? Or it could be as simple as they post it on LinkedIn, you reshare it or you comment. So I don't want anyone saying, let me volunteer and work for this person for free.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
We don't have to do anything big to have a positive impact on another person. So think about that. Second, when you ask her to connect with you, I want you to give her a time frame. Say, I'd love 15 minutes of your time. I have 20 minutes of your time. You're probably going to speak for much longer. But when you give people that short time, Period.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
They can now visualize how it will fit into their schedule and they're much more likely to say yes. You also want to have very specific questions prepared. By the way, you could say, hey, I'm happy to send you my questions beforehand if that would be helpful. I know your time is really valuable.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
By the way, Jay, you may be listening to me going, this sounds way more formal than I need to be with this person. Totally. Do whatever makes sense for the dynamic that you have. I just want to always say what I feel like kind of the framework that would be the correct etiquette in all of this, but tailor it for your situation, of course.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Hi, I'm Claire Wasserman, the founder and author of Ladies Get Paid, a podcast, coaching practice, and newsletter that helps women embrace their worth inside and out. I'm so honored to be guest hosting for Nicole while she is out on maternity leave, although just a bit of a heads up, my hosting style is different in that I don't just interview guests, I actually coach them.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And by the way, in your case, right, you may not want to come out and say, I want to like leave or I want to like move into a different position. I mean, maybe you do feel comfortable saying that, but you might want to navigate kind of carefully here, right? We don't want this getting back to your boss or they don't want to lose you. So instead, it's really more about
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
First of all, I've been very, I love what I do. I'm really inspired by the path. Like you start with, here's why I love what I do or like the positive aspects of what you do and what you've learned. And then you say a specific part of what you've either observed about yourself, about the company, about the industry that intrigues you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Like I've noticed in my time here or in, you know, networking or doing research, whatever, connecting with this client. I really am interested in the X, Y, and Z. I know that that's something that you focus on or have been part of your story. I'm really curious.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And then you can figure out your next question, but usually it boils down to like, what is one thing that you feel like was such a necessary lesson for you to either get to this place or to have overcome this challenge or have excelled in this area, whatever it is, right? People love talking about themselves, but you're not getting, you're not starting too granular.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Like you're starting specific enough. You're giving context to why you're asking. You're making it positive. You're tying it to the other person, right? Here's why I admire you, but you're not saying, well, How did you, and it's so specific that like it kind of ends the conversation. We want to see where it goes.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And so by teeing them up by like the biggest lesson you learned in tackling this thing or whatever it is, it is probably a nice way to begin. And then you can see by the end of the conversation, if you want to be a little bit more transparent, like I'm feeling the itch to grow, you know, to grow my responsibilities, to grow my skills and hey, grow my paycheck.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
This is the area I think I want to focus in, but I'm also aware that you don't know what you don't know. And this is when maybe you say to them, what questions do you think I should be asking? What questions do you think I should be asking? Or what have I not asked you that if you were me, you would do? And this is also another line to say, if you were in my position, what would you do?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Maybe not, that doesn't quite make sense for this interaction you're having with the person that you wanna talk to. But in general, when we say, if you were in my shoes, how would you be approaching this? Or like, how would you be thinking about this? It literally is kind of enforcing empathy on them. Now they are like you and you are like them.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And when we establish that kind of empathy, we are establishing a deeper connection. And when people see themselves in each other, they naturally want to help one another. So you never have to feel like, I'm bothering them or, you know, there's nothing you have to do. You just have to be. You just have to be smart. You have to be curious. And then you have to follow up. That's the big one.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Afterwards, obviously thanking them. But this is really, really strategic. Send them a line that they mentioned or a note that you took that really stood out to you. It struck me when you said... And just write that. That shows that you were paying attention. Because like I mentioned before of, hey, only 20 minutes of your time, right? Demonstrating that you respect their time.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Okay. I got very excited when you said the kind of company that you work for, because I think we can make a good connection for the last guest that I coach on this podcast, who is a nurse looking to go into healthcare tech. Oh, awesome. Hey, if anything... Maybe I can't help you, but I can help the other woman. Or maybe she can replace you when you leave. No, let's not have you leave just yet.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Respecting somebody's time is respecting their life, okay? It's respecting their presence. All we have is our time, really, and energy. When you say this thing you mentioned, it really struck me. Hey, I was listening. That shows even another level of respect. And then keep them updated. It doesn't have to be in a week or two weeks, just a month or once every quarter.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Hey, I made progress in this way. It doesn't have to be a big update. It's really more of a, I'm still thinking of you and I wanted to thank you again. I just blathered on for quite a bit there. So tell me, Jay, thoughts, feelings, next steps that you can envision.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Yeah. And always, you know, what can I do for another person? Always put it through the lens of that won't take me much time, you know, or that's like easy for me to do.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
The other thing to be on the lookout for as you start having conversations with her, and by the way, if it feels appropriate at the end to say, is there anyone that you really admire or you've really learned from that you think I could learn from? And that might be, you know, she may recommend a book or a person.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
The best thing would be actually if she connected you with another person, and she probably will because you'll have teetered up quite nicely for it. But what you want to do in these conversations is to figure out Is there growth in this area? And that's why I'm having you on today's podcast, which, you know, technically the filter is money, right? Like money rehab is the podcast.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And today we talked a little bit about salary negotiation, but it was more about work and upward trajectory because that equals money. I want to know, though, what's the ceiling on how much you can make? Right. There's a reason, many reasons that a wage gap exists.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And one of them is a lot of times women are just not in roles that are highly compensated and or they are on career paths that there's just a ceiling on it. Like they're even if they get to the top, like it just is never going to be compensated the way they want. So we've got some decisions that we have to make. Not today. You're not ready for it. You're just gathering information right now.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
But as you do that, I want you to know What's the runway on this kind of position, right? Like who's getting promoted? How long does it take to get promoted? You know, what does it look like to get to the top? What does it mean to get to the top? What are the paychecks associated? Also, is this an industry or a role that isn't growing? Are these jobs starting to be outsourced to AI?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
If so, does that mean you don't go down that path? Not necessarily. Maybe you become the person who's really fluent in AI, right? Like you have your skillset and now you're the person who can say, I'm like a Swiss army knife, right? I got X, Y, and Z other skillsets. You know, and this is part of the information gathering process. How do I make a roadmap out of it?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Like, because at the end of it, you're going to have all these conversations and hopefully they leave you with more clarity than confusion. But you'll say, all right, I have an area I think I want to go in, whether it's an industry, a department or a role. Great. You're not ready to make the decision yet. Okay. What does the top look like?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And it doesn't mean that you want to or have to get there, but just seeing what the possibilities for growth and also what will be the roadblocks to those growths. All the reason I'm saying this is so that you make your decision with your eyes wide open. And it's not necessarily knowing everything, but it's understanding options. Like if you're, let's say you wanted to make a company, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
You wanted to start a company. A question that a lot of people will probably ask you, maybe not a lot, but I was certainly asked when I started. And by the way, this was like, I was brainstorming in my journal and people were going, do you I don't have an LLC. Like I literally have a journal with ideas and they're like, okay, but you should work backwards from knowing, do you want to get acquired?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Okay. It kind of boils down to two things here. It's how you see yourself and how others see you is a big area I want to focus on today. But before I dive in too deep, let me just clarify and confirm everything that you're looking to figure out right now. You are in a company that's a little bit bureaucratic, it seems, right? It's global, it's big. Okay, so it's bureaucratic.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And I think sometimes those questions are just too intimidating at the very beginning, but they are something to remember, which is what does a potential end game look like for all of this? And the only reason I ask you to think about this is so that as you are starting to make some moves down the path, You are not surprised and you know how to leverage it.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Meaning I understand that if I go down this path, I probably will only be able to make up to X amount. I don't want to become the top, top, top. That doesn't interest me. That person has no life, like what's required for it. The sacrifices required, not interesting or not aligned with my values. No worries. I am going to use this next two, three years of my life in this position to
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
to get another job, actually. And I may not know what that next job is, but I know that the skills I'm developing, the networks that I'm cultivating, they are valuable. I'm learning things. Doors are opening. I'm aware of trends. That's all. So again, it's not that you have to have the plan perfectly set out, but it's an awareness of
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
the important things to be considering because they all matter holistically. It's never just the paycheck, the reason you say yes to something or just the boss or just like it should all be considered through a lens of what are my goals and values? And if I can consider now all of these aspects of this next move, does that feel right to me?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Hopefully that didn't just throw a whole bunch of stuff at you that now you're like, oh God, I have to know all this stuff. It's just like, Again, information gathering. What are all the questions I can be asking, if not of one person, because that's too much? What are like the five, six, ten people that I can be learning from?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Again, whether you talk to them specifically or you're reading their posts on LinkedIn or listening on a podcast or reading a book. make your curriculum, make your curriculum to decide the MBA you want to get. And then once you start getting that MBA, again, it's like, do I want to transfer schools? Like, what do I want to learn now? Tell me thoughts, feelings.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I feel like we got to a pretty good place and I'm happy to answer anything else or clarify, or you feel like you're obstacles in any way that you're going to encounter. Like we can dig into that as we close up today.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And as you're gathering this information, because it may become overwhelming, you just continually come back to, well, what's most important to me? And not for life, because we don't know what's going to happen, right? So for this chapter of my life, the next three years, let's just say, maybe three to five, but three years, or even just this next year, what's most important to me?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And maybe it's money, right? And that's cool. It should be. It could be. But it doesn't have to be. So maybe what's next is more responsibilities or more responsibilities in a certain area or more learning. And maybe what we're doing is now asking your boss to pay for you to, I don't know, go to take a class of some kind or whatever.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
It's just like a little building block towards something greater. And you don't necessarily have to know what the something greater is to start putting the pieces together. So, yeah, what's most important to me? And also, by the way, lifestyle, very, very important. In all of these conversations that you're having or research that you're doing, just what's going to be required of you?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I used the word sacrifice earlier, and I want to use it again. Every choice has a trade-off. It always does, right? You're doing this, that means you're not doing that, right? So just be clear that when you are receiving this information, Asking, yeah, why is this important? But like, what does this mean? What will this mean for me?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
So there's a process at this company to move up and you're not quite sure what that process is, right? Yep. So there's moving up within your company. So that's a title change and a raise. Okay. And then there's the moving on, you know, so maybe exploring opportunities either in other departments or other companies. Have you gone down that path at all yet?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And what might this mean for me in a sacrifice, potential sacrifice, whether it's your time, energy, travel, you know, money or whatever, as long as you're not, you know, just don't sacrifice yourself. Okay. On that note. Thank you. Thank you, Jay, for being here. Super appreciate you. I hope this is helpful. I think it was not just to you, but to everybody watching and listening.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Very appreciate your honesty, your vulnerability and keep us posted. I think you got this. I know you got this.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Okay. So there's not like a secret dream here, right? Like, oh, you wanting to, you know, work at some other company or start a business and you're just kind of denying yourself that. Okay. So it's really more the comfortability that you mentioned. All right. You're comfortable. What made you, you know, if you're comfortable, why not keep on keeping on?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Like what, what makes you want to make a change?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
All right, let's work backwards first from how to get a salary bump and potentially a title change at the current job. So first thing, market research. I need you to know exactly how much somebody who is very similar to you makes. Best way to do this is to go look up the competitor companies to where you currently are and find somebody who works there, preferably a white male. Okay.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And today I'm going to be talking to Jay, who has been stuck in the same role with the same pay for the past four years. So this episode is perfect for anybody who is looking to grow, grow their paycheck, grow their title, grow their skill set. I'll be giving you and Jay practical strategies for your next move. Let's dive in. Hey, Jay, thanks so much for being here with me today.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Those are the ones who make the most, right? So let's just not be comparing to necessarily other women. Go and message them on LinkedIn and say, hey, I've been doing some research and I'm worried that we all might be underselling ourselves here. I want to confirm a market range. I don't I think it should be around this. Would you be willing to share either your salary or the ballpark?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And this is a great way to be an ally or just showing them that if we can all be a little bit more transparent about how much we make, we take the power back from the employers where, by the way, it used to be illegal to talk about this because we would then ask for a raise. That law doesn't exist anymore. So take advantage of that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And also, I think a lot of men are looking for ways to be allies, to be helpful. It's also good networking, right? Because maybe you end up wanting to go to the competitor company. Who knows? So you understand the market research. You're going to see there's a range. I know you already know there's a range, but you are no longer at the bottom of the range anymore.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
You have those years of experience, but it's not just how many years of experience, it's what you did during those years. So that brings me to the next point. Have you documented over the past couple of years all the wins you've had, the time you've saved in making processes more efficient or projects you've worked on and what the results were and that impact on the business bottom line.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Do you have any of these numbers written down anywhere?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Okay. Yep. And I don't mean to make it sound so simple, but it is as straightforward as I did this thing. Here's how I did it. Right. The problem solving. And then it's all the soft skills that go into the problem solving. Right. Like the act of listening, empathy, the resourcefulness, et cetera. And literally saying, here's how it impacted the results. So we can workshop this out right now.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
What is something in the last year that you are particularly proud of? and or you know that it's a win that your boss or your boss's boss would feel good to know that this happened.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And that's why you're not getting paid what they're getting paid. Right. But you should still be getting paid more than what you are making because you have unfortunately fallen into what happens to people who've been at companies for a long time, especially if they started at the lower level, they get those incremental raises, right? Those merit-based raises that are like, I don't know, 2%.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And it doesn't even come up with inflation. And if you started beneath market rate, you will never catch up. This is a reason for the wage gap, okay? So it really, really is critical that you get that bump. But remember, it's not like you are necessarily going from where you used to be to now where this senior person is. Sure.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
You just need to get higher within your range and then a plan to continually move up, which we'll talk about in just a minute. So I want to talk to you about this phenomenon of because you're not the only one who has mentioned this to me. I wasn't the decision maker. Like, I know I had impact. You know, I know I contributed, but it wasn't ultimately my decision or my ownership role.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
You know, how much quote credit can I take or how do I articulate my contribution in an authentic way while also still honoring the hierarchy that exists? Again, these are good questions to ask, but I think it's pretty straightforward. You literally say that. I mean, you don't have to say, I didn't make any decision, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
No need to like, you know, take away from what we've done, but it is taking ownership at least over what we had ownership over, right? And by the way, the people on the top or the people who are making those decisions, they are only as good as the people who are running the day-to-day beneath them. Like companies are only as successful as the people who work for them.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
If you could give me a little bit of context to the situation that you're in and how I could best support you, I'll do my best to support you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
I want to say that again, because I think that's very important for us all to remember when we are feeling disempowered. Or by the way, being made to feel disempowered. Companies, products, businesses are only as good as the people who work for them. And that includes you. That includes you. And so anything that you do, there's a domino effect.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
It impacts another person or another team who then is able to make the decisions or get the clients or whatever, right? So it's not that you are bragging or not bragging. It's really saying, this was my role in the project, how you did it. what you learned from it, how you made it better, and then the results. Ultimately, And yes, it was a successful ship, but maybe even take it the next step.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
What was the global impact of that? So you might say, okay, we got it out the door. Great success. Here was the response. And if you could try to find all the ways there was a response, whether it was number of downloads, the reviews, right? So you can get kind of qualitative here too. So it's not just lots of people loved it, but like, what did they say? Maybe there was press. And then maybe...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
all that got leveraged for something else. I don't know. I mean, this could be some investigative work here, but was there more investment that came in? Were you able to land another client or sponsor or partner? Did the CEO get to speak at a conference? Did they talk about this product that got shipped?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Nothing happens really in a vacuum, which we can sometimes feel that it does if we are in a more sort of bureaucratic environment, that sort of cog on the wheel experience. And you've got to see how, again, even if you feel small or are made to feel small, there is a ripple effect, or as I said, a domino effect. And it is on you to chart that and to tell that in a concise and compelling way.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And none of that is mutually exclusive with the fact that you are still on the more junior side. You can be junior and still have ownership over your domain. So before I continue to ramble and then talk about how to propel this, how to kind of leverage it for propelling us forward, any thoughts or feelings on all of that?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And yeah, By the way, the very act of doing that will, well, first of all, make you feel more confident because you're like, well, hold on. I did all that. Okay. Okay. But also it makes you look really good. It makes you look like a leader. It makes you look self-aware. And it also makes you look really empathetic to the business needs, which brings me to my next point, which
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
If you want to move forward, by the way, is there opportunity to move forward in this company? Yeah. Okay. And do you have an interest in continuing on the path that you currently are in or maybe exploring other departments?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
Or yeah, talk to me a little bit about either things that you have felt about how you could move up or maybe you've witnessed another colleague making some kind of pivot within the company. I'm curious. Give me more context if you don't mind.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
“I’ve Been Stuck in the Same Job For Years. Coach Me!" with Claire Wasserman
And by the way, we're not changing right now. All we're doing is exploring.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
If you always make your case about how there's profit to be had in your growth. Okay. If you have a random number and you can't back it up with that kind of persuasive case, it's like, what are, we don't have a conversation starting point. There's no common ground for them to be able to now pick the ball back up.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Um, I actually had somebody tell me that he was so impressed with the way this woman negotiated for herself and it was a high number. but it was rooted in reality, backed up with the research and the receipts. He kept thinking to himself, wow, she's gonna represent my company really well. I can't wait for her to negotiate for me. He admired her. It showed good character.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Um, and that made me very proud because I had coached her.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
How far apart are they? Great question. This is completely based on your own budget. So when you do your market research, you'll find there's something called a pay band. Okay. And you might think, all right, highest number. I'm going to go with the middle and the low, but for your own personal budget, maybe you have a lot of expenses and you can't go.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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to the bottom of the pay band in the research. Maybe you really need it to be more like, you know, $2,500 gaps or whatever. Like it's totally based off of your life and also your goals. That's why I love talking about salary negotiation because it's really an opportunity to explore what do you want to do in your life and how much is it going to cost you to get there?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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So I really can't say what the kind of increment is between the three other than pay a lot of attention to that bottom line for yourself because You cannot go below it. So you really have to think to yourself, is this opportunity worth the financial sacrifice I might need to make if I say yes to this? And then there's a whole other option that's just a perks option. Oh, well, sure. Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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I mean, there can be offers that you're given that actually cost the company a lot more money, not because they're paying you so much, but because the benefits are so great. And that's where you have to reflect for yourself. Where do you want to go in your life? And yes, how much is it gonna cost? But could this company help you get there by what they're offering?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Cell phone, career coach, going to a conference.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
An expense account, a signing bonus, something that's commission-based. You know, it doesn't have to just be for salespeople. Like, look at metrics for the work you're doing and say, all right, if I hit X, Y, and Z targets, let's do, you know, an incremental raise. My biggest recommendation, I have two. One, don't go off of what you think you can get.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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or what they've demonstrated that they're willing to offer. Had so many women be the first person at their company to suggest, for example, bereavement leave, you know, not just paid leave. And now that's become institutionalized at their company. So you could be the first person to do this.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Second, in the conversation, in the negotiation, don't be the first one to ask for it because chances are they were going to give it to you anyway. So if you come out and say, all right, I'm asking for this amount of money. plus this benefit, they might think to themselves. Oh, that's a chip. Yeah, they just showed their hand, right? To go off of the game analogy, right?
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Okay, they showed their hand. Sorry, we can't do that amount, but we could give you that perk you asked for.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
So just say the number you want with no benefits, decide on the number, then go to the next part of the conversation. What are you offering for the comp? Make them show their hand first and then have in your back pocket all the other things you wanted.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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That was kind of an extreme example. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, the bereavement person, the first thing she did was got extended paid family leave because she knew she wanted to have children soon and they didn't have a very good policy and made sure to bring that up.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Chances are they're going to actually just tell you all the things right off the bat that they're going to give you or you'll have done your research and you'll already know. But point being, don't. Say what you want first. Really have them tell you what's available.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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I love this question. I love anything that feels really uncomfortable because I'm like, how do we not only move through this, but actually turn it into an opportunity to look good? I would love anybody out there to say, I know that you're a company that values whatever, you know, pay equity or you, you know, your talent, you know, that like humans, family.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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And if there's a competitor company that does it, okay. and I know competitor company also offers it, you know, offers this.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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So I'd be really excited to talk to you about the possibility of making something like this happen, almost as if you are not necessarily volunteering yourself to like create a whole new program, because I don't want anyone to put extra work on themselves unless they want to and they're getting paid for it. But like, not like, are you giving this to me or not? But like, let's work together.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Let's figure out Because maybe for them, they go, we can't fully do that right off the bat, but we could start in a small way. There could be a, all right, we don't normally let people work from home. Now, most companies do, but we don't normally let people work from home, but let's try one week out of the month, right? So you're effectively saying to them,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Here's a small version to test what I'm asking for and understanding this is a collaboration together. That you don't necessarily need a yes or a no immediately, but that you have a willingness to work with them to figure out some way to get there. Because chances are they're not able to do it right away, but they're willing to try a smaller version of your ask. So signal that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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from the beginning. And by the way, a great benefit that every single person should ask for, and not just women, subsidize childcare. Right? There are organizations out there that work with companies to get them tax breaks, if they offer childcare.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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So you could even come with your own research, hey, I know about this company, you know, make it easy for them to say yes, versus putting all this work on them that they might not be prepared to receive.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Yeah, I think being proactive with what their concerns might be and addressing them off the bat. So if the concern you have is X, Y and Z, here are some suggestions that I can imagine might work. Just making sure that communication is there, you know, that you never feel like I'm not showing up or, you know, that to me is the foundation of every great relationship is communication.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Maybe that's all you need to say, to be honest. It's not that you have to have specific solutions, but that you're empathetic to the reality for them, that you're not just thinking about yourself. And use it as an opportunity to be closer to them, I think. I mean, every single person has a thing that they're worried about at work. So if you can turn this into a real human connection moment,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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I have found in the most difficult times, that's when, you know, you really can create a strong bond with somebody. Yeah. But again, TMI. I mean, it's always contextual, right? So like, who is this person? And that's why I really encourage everybody to try to get to know people, even if you don't like them.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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It's just, you know, kind of understanding how they operate, what their dynamic is, what their goals are, so that you can speak to that. I mean, that to me is the greatest negotiation. I mean, it's common ground, right? So you have to know what ground they're standing on too. To make it common.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Yeah, I've had that happen with a few clients of mine. I think for anybody listening or watching who's thinking, if I want more money and they're telling me no, then how could I get a signing bonus or X, Y, and Z other things that cost money, different budgets from different departments. Okay. And you'll never know if you don't ask. And also this is you being creative.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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So also if you think you're a bad negotiator, but you think you're a good problem solver and you're creative, then you can be a good negotiator. So signing bonus, that's a wonderful example of exactly how do you get to what you want in a way that works for the company.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Yes, I think you should be thinking about who can I build a relationship with at this company that can give me that information. So HR, good. Recruiter, good. Honestly, executive assistants. The person, you know, they know everything. Somebody who has worked there for a long time, institutional knowledge. It's not that this one person's going to be able to give you everything.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Probably not, but you're going to take bits and pieces of information. Things like, when are budgets decided? And by the way, it's never because I'm asking for a raise and I deserve it. Of course you do.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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But you tell me that you don't tell these other people that you say, I want to make sure that the work I'm doing is maximizing whatever the bottom line, you know, profits, goal, whatever for the company. And so you really make it about just general growth, your work priorities, you know, and that's the entry point. into maybe hopefully getting more specific information about the money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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You may never know, but you just want to be able to benchmark it against the competitors out there. That's it. Because what you were being paid has everything to do with what the competitor companies are paying.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And that you're asking because you want to make it as easy as possible for the company to be able to do this, right? So it's saying, you know, how do I get what I'm wanting, but in a way that's not, I guess, taxing on you. Whoever is hearing that information is going to go, oh, okay, common ground. They're thinking about my best interest as well because they have to balance the budget or whatever.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
They have all these competing dynamics. So already hearing from you that you're thinking about yourself within a context, you know, again, it's that connection where they go, oh, this person's, you know, reasonable. Yeah, you're still going to be asking for that highest number, but you're looked at as reasonable.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
It's funny because I used to hand out dollar bills at all of my events that I stamped with get paid what you deserve. And I actually really regret that. A, because of what we just said of like what you deserve, it doesn't really matter what you think you deserve. But also, I think a lot of women don't think they deserve that much, actually. And it's abstract and it's worth related.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
It's too messy. Get paid the highest in the market research that you did would have been a better line. Stick to the data. Stick to the data, research and receipts. My biggest pet peeve, I think, is seeing a no as a no when it really is a not yet thing. And whatever their resistance is, that is part of their job. Your job is to transition the conversation to getting the next thing you ask for.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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So sort of challenge yourself to make these conversations last as long as possible in a way where there is something you are getting, if not the money. And just know that this is going to be, you know, I'm not going to say the worst negotiation you ever do, but practice makes progress. So maybe even imagine that you're practicing for the next time you negotiate.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Oh, yeah. Again, subsidized child care. I mean, think about all the things that you're paying for in your life. If somebody else paid for it, that is money in your pocket.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
You ready to role play?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Oh, well, first of all, I'm so glad that you made time for me because I know you're super busy. I, you know, I've been reflecting a lot on the work that I have been doing recently, and I'm seeing a shift in some of my responsibilities, particularly around client facing work. So I wanted to have a chance to talk to you just to get on the same page about that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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you know, where I'm going in the company and, you know, seek your guidance on this.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
It's going to be hard for me. Hold on, by the way, it's gonna be hard for me not to commentate on why I said the words that I'm saying. It may be, it may be obvious to everybody, but it's already enlisting them to be on the same side as you. That it's not, I'm asking for something that you have to say yes or no to. but I'm looking at you almost like a mentor in a way, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Like seeking your guidance also.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Yeah, yeah. And that it's not just about the money, but also that you are aware of your impact on the business bottom line. You're not just thinking about yourself. So all of those word choices signal those important things. And so to that, I would say, absolutely. I would love to help you. Let's get on the same page. Great. Okay. So now I brought my notes. And by the way,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I recommend that people do this. Take notes. Bring out your notes. Bring out your notes. Make a PowerPoint. I've had people do this.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And this is helpful for them. Otherwise, I mean, how can people just hear things and know what you're saying? Like they want to see visuals, right? So you might say, you know, I prepared. So if you don't mind, I just, I took some notes. Okay. I love that about you. So thanks so much again for the opportunity to discuss my offer. Okay. So the progress I saw last year
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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And by the way, so the progress I saw last year, and now you're going to interject, quantified examples. So give maybe your best example of something you did that there was a great result on. I saw a huge increase in whatever. It really encouraged me that I have what it takes to hit it out of the park, especially as it relates to the business bottom line in X, Y, and Z ways.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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So you'll say things that are about future things you want to do. So remember... this is an opportunity for growth in more than just money. So if there are projects you want to work on moving forward, you know, this is the time to get them excited about you. It was a bit tricky to do market research for this role or, you know, this opportunity I want to talk to you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
So I did do some market research, but I'll admit it was a little bit hard to do it. I talked to about six people who, you know, explain your method. And it looks like for what I do, the Commensurate compensation would be closer to very high number. And I know that you're a company that values pay equity. And you personally, you care about the employees.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
You want to make sure we're here as long as possible. Because it's expensive to lose talent. That's my commentation. Curious, what do you think are my next steps? How can we approach this? What can we figure out together? So it sounds like you're asking for a raise.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Yeah. Well, that number that I said. By the way, I call it the FU number. The FU number, that number, that to me is what made the most sense for the work I've done, the impact I've had, and what is in the market. Obviously, if you have budgetary constraints, I mean, tell me. I want to make this work.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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XYZ people about it. How can I help you help me? Like what would be, based off of who you're talking to and how they make their decisions, what do you think would not only get them to say yes, but actually be excited about this?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Sure, sure. Okay. Well, a couple of different scenarios. Obviously, if you're negotiating for a new job versus a current job. If the job says you cannot negotiate, can you? Yes. You can always negotiate. They are fully aware that by the first offer they put out, it is just that, the first offer. It's always how you do it, not the fact that you're doing it.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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And all the work that you do. And I want to stay, listen, I don't want to leave. Veiled threat over there, right? That's my commentation. And listen, I don't want to leave. I want to make this work. I really believe in this company. But let's talk about if the company's not doing well, where are areas that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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Like if we were to invest some more effort, you know, I just, I want to make this company do better, not just for me, but for all of us. So whether or not, you know, you have any insight in it, or maybe this is a conversation with somebody else, where does it seem like we are doing a little bit better?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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And is there any timeline or what are we looking at to indicate that this investment that we're making in this area of the business is going to pay off literally? Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Well, actually, I do have some more case studies that I put together. Very specifically, like here's my work and quantified impact and also some testimonials. So my comment here is go and take screenshots if possible, or at least copy and paste Beautiful feedback you've inevitably gotten, like whether it was from clients, teammates, managers, like don't just take it from me.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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You know, so-and-so said this thing. And the analogy of you are pitching your business for investment, you would have product reviews ostensibly, right? Use the same thing. Use the same thing. But always going back to what do you think I should know to make this as easy of a yes as possible? And if it's not a yes for this number,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
let's talk about full comp so maybe at this point you could even open it up to you know asking for their guidance on other things right but it sounded like in this exchange the next step would be the hr person would go and make that case i mean you could say would this powerpoint be you know do you want to present it to them maybe i could present it to them yeah why don't you email it to me okay great i would always say see if you could be the one to present it if possible
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Because that's FaceTime with somebody influential that you're going to get. Again, this is an opportunity to look really good. You may still get a no, but they are going to be thinking to themselves, that's a go-getter. That's a go-getter because they really thought about business bottom line.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I think this is why, not to say that business owners who fail should go and get another job and they'd be great at it, but they kind of would be great because they have so much empathy on what it takes to run a business and that every... quote, argument they make. It's always about how is this, whatever it is, time investment going to pay off?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And what are the reverberations with other people in this company? You know, what I do impacts this other team, etc. I think thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur is the key to making a very compelling negotiation.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Listen, my mom ran a nonprofit for many years and she said, you know, people come to her and ask for raises that she couldn't give, but she would give them to some people who talked about how they were going to help fundraise or, you know, they had an idea for the development department. And again, I don't advocate for people to add extra things to their plate necessarily.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Who tells you you can't negotiate, though? Some jobs right off the bat will say this is non-negotiable. And I always say, go do the market research. By the way, market research is not Glassdoor. Market research is... You have to talk to real people who work at the competitor companies. And it's contextual.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
But if that's the way the company needs to make more money, it might not be your department, but do you want that raise or not? And also, by the way, getting more insight into how other departments work might allow you to say, I actually want to move into that department. Or now I'm, you know, even more valuable person here or for another job. You've hired people. Have people used these tactics?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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I don't have any employees. I literally cannot afford anybody because I'm ladies get paid and I would have to pay them a top fricking dollar and I'm not making enough. So, and the other crappy thing about what I do is I have so many women saying I'd like to volunteer. I'm like, oh, but I can't do that. But here's what I've learned. Value exchange. And it's a real thing.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Though you have to obviously think for yourself, okay, I might not be getting paid But is this thing that they're giving me a barter? Right. So if the person's like, I'm trying to pivot into a new industry. Listen, I still say no to everybody because I'm just too nervous. I don't know. I feel like I have to be held to a really high standard here.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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And there's been lots of other women's organizations that have like gone down in flames. Every day I'm like, am I going to be canceled? And then I think no, because I literally don't. let anybody work for free. And I don't have anybody who works for me at all. I don't have the budget or the bandwidth to be the wonderful employer that I think people should have, which keeps me small.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And that's unfortunate, too. But so mighty.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
How did you start Ladies Get Paid? Ooh, I mean, Ladies Get Paid, it started with a sexist experience. I was at this conference with my coworkers, and a man asked me whose wife I was. And certainly not his. I was there for work. And for whatever reason, that sexist comment unlocked everything for me. It's not like I hadn't experienced stuff like this before.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I think I just had brushed under the rug. I saw the rest of that conference through an entirely different lens, noticing how I was frequently in a group and a man would not look at me or shake my hand. and would speak to the men. And I remember going into the women's restroom and seeing all these women trading business cards and like lipstick and makeup tips.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And it was like, that's where the women were doing business. I have goosebumps to this day because it was the first time in my life that I experienced the power of what it can be like when you are around supportive women. This was probably 10 years ago at this point. I Googled women and the wage gap and I was blown away by what I found. That was the beginning of, you know, the rest is history.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
But sort of my little awakening, my aha moment, for whatever reason, it was that sexist comment. So thank you to that man.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Oh, yeah. Again, I'd had all of these other kinds of sexist experiences before. but that I had never allowed myself to say, that is wrong. For whatever reason, I just wanted to keep moving fast. Well, all right, well, screw that guy. Let me find a different person. Or I would internalize it. You know, it must have been because my dress was too short or I was too, you know, friendly.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
LinkedIn. Yeah, LinkedIn. So let's say you work for a startup. Don't be talking to people who work at a Fortune 500 company. I would say look for a company that's comparable in size, location. Yes, revenue. You find white men who go work at that company, and you message them on LinkedIn. And you don't have to say straight up, how much do you make?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I mean, I'd even been told that by one guy was, well, why did you give me your business card? You know, if you didn't want to be kissed. And I'm glad that I took a moment to say, hold on. What is happening here? And is it happening to other people? And most importantly, what can we do about this? And where do we start? Where do we start?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
No, I was a baby. I was this was just me being struck by the energy of all of these women and I think it was after I went home and I Googled women in the workplace and the wage gap.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And I went down this sort of research rabbit hole and I started to talk to a friend of mine who was a freelance art director, very talented, who admitted to me that she was not charging as much as her male counterparts. So for her wage gap, it was self-inflicted and she didn't know how much to be paid. So there was a lack of information, but this is the part I found most interesting.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Why did she default to the lower amount? Because she knew that it was less. She was aware, but she didn't know how to bring herself to ask for more. That was the real aha moment of what is the first step to closing inequities in our life? Let's talk about it. And specifically money, because that's the vehicle to power. And it's also so much more than just money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I mean, it's, you know, I mean, literally it's everything. It's just a portal.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I grew up in an avoidance mindset. Oh, yeah, we never talked about money. But I have an interesting memory that I wrote about when I went and I got a master's certificate in behavioral finance and financial psychology. And this memory was the first time I was ever paid. It was $20. And I was thinking about all the things I was going to buy. And we were walking down the street.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
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This was in New York. And I was probably six. Yeah, I was six years old. I'd gotten paid $20. And so I was walking down the street and it was, you know, 94, 1994, I think. And there was a lot of homelessness in New York at that time. And I, you know, really wanted to buy something for myself.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
But then I saw a person on the street, this woman, and I felt this urge to like, I want to give my money away, which sounds really lovely. But when you dig in deeper, if you get a master's certificate in financial psychology and your professor tells you this, This desire to just say, I don't want it, get rid of it. Or to help other people first, like not put your ox or mask on first. Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And I kind of wish my mom had said that's so noble. Yes, we should donate, but let's take a percentage and save it. Percentage and spend, you know, sort of use it as a share. Exactly. Use it as a teachable moment for how to build a healthy relationship with. But, you know, I don't mean to blame her, but it was OK. We'll give it away.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
So I sort of love that story, but also I'm kind of sad by it because I've held on to that today. This this sort of martyrdom of I want to obviously make money, but I frequently want to give it away, too. And I have a hard time balancing the two.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
You can ask for a range, a ballpark, or you can say, what's your input on the research I did? Just in the message? In the message. But you tie it to a greater purpose. And that is, you are being a wonderful ally. Because I think a lot of men are looking for ways that they can help, but they just don't know how. And I always say, share your salary.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. Guilt. Guilt that more for me means less for you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Again, if money is power. You can wield it. So it's just another example of diminishing yourself. Give it away. I have less than I have less than or a lack of worthiness. Right. If I don't deserve to take up more space, you know, it's it's deep.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And I always say it's like join ladies get paid or, you know, listen to your podcast, but also get a therapist because you start to unravel this stuff and you realize it's so much bigger than just what's in your bank account. Oh, yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Something that was helpful for me in unpeeling my own layers was to also start to peel back the layers of my family. Sometimes we know the trauma or the baggage that our family has gone through, but sometimes we don't, but we can imagine. So an exercise that has been helpful is thinking about, well, what was my mother's relationship with money growing up in her family?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Or let's take the word money out of it and say, how about just space, her ability to show up as her full self in her family? Then we jump to her mother, right? So my grandmother, what about her relationship with money or her ability to take up space, right? All through the generations. And then I find myself feeling lighter, actually, because it's not my fault. You know, it's not my fault.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And also, I want to do better, you know, for my kids. And, you know, I feel proud that I'm making a difference in my own behavior. But knowing that it doesn't happen by, you know, one day you wake up and everything's fine. It's the work that you're putting in. right? That's what counts. It's the books you read, the podcasts you listen to. It's the desire to change. Like that counts.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I think too many women think until I am fixed, then I will be happy. No, it is lifelong. You will probably always have a relationship with turning on or off the lights, but hopefully now it can be, you know, sort of funny. You go, oh, well, that's my thing. Totally.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Oh, and by the way, the other thing you say is, this way we can all get paid more. I'm happy to share what I'm making. Or I'm happy to be a reference for you when it's your time to negotiate.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Thank you. Also, I think a lot of people get frustrated because they say, well, I intellectually know better, but I'm not doing better. It's almost more frustrating when you can see you're aware, but you don't know how to make the change. It's like ignorance is bliss exists as a cliche for a reason. Just know, start with the triggers.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Like just what happens to trigger that behavior and really focus on being kinder to yourself in that moment and taking a pause over time. That's the muscle that you build. So- That's always my first step that I give people because I have a lot of folks come to me and go, oh, but I have the awareness. And it's almost like more excruciating now.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
let's normalize talking about money otherwise who has the power when there's not transparency we as the employee lose okay so when you position your ask to another person in that way now all of a sudden it's bigger than both of you so this is a cold message on linkedin like hey bob i'm I'm negotiating for a salary and you have a similar job to me.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I know. I was like, I think I know when you're going to have your baby because that's what I'm filling in, which, again, is so smart. See, this was a solution. You think to yourself, oh, I can't do my job or I have to take time off. But I bet some amazing things are going to come out of all of these guest hosts. We're all going to cross pollinate audiences and get to experiment.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And so it really illustrates the point that when something is difficult, there is absolutely a way to make a really exciting thing come out of it. What are you excited about bringing to the audience? I've just launched a new program.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I coach women through all kinds of challenges at work, but a lot of times the barriers that they're facing, it's really their internalized patriarchy, for lack of a better word, right? You can't ask for more money if you don't believe you're worthy of it. I mean, you can, but are you gonna stand your ground? Are you gonna be the most compelling version of yourself?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
So I'm starting to work with women in a very structured way to just quiet the inner critic Have accountability to doing that and really experiment with different techniques and, you know, to come up with a practice for yourself that makes it so that when you are having a struggle, whether it's with money, your job or whatever, you're like always able to come back to yourself.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I think that's the key to unlocking whatever you want in your life. It's the foundation of the house. Kind of jump to like the house part, which was let's get more money. But hold on. Let's make sure you feel okay first. So I'm really excited about that. And then my podcast, Ladies Get Paid, which is my, as I joke, wannabe Esther Perel. I coach women who are really brave.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Because we don't have time to not be real. I know I'm very gleeful about this. Listen, Oprah, I'm sure, is saying the same thing. Like, it is a success if the person is crying. Because, like, everybody emails me the same email after they come to my event or listen to my stuff. I thought I was the only one.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I'm like, there have been three million messages exchanged in my Slack group that I can see you are not the only one. So if we can just get people to be very transparent about the thing they're struggling with, that almost is the first step to like, I don't have shame about this. All right, we can figure it out.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
You gotta love the shit out of her. I don't know if I'm allowed to curse, but that's actually the key, is you have to have an awesome relationship with the mean ones. versus fighting them, because they'll win.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Yeah. They're just trying to help you out, but they didn't know how to do it, because they formed at a young age. So you go, I'm really curious to learn about you, and I want to thank you. Yeah, it has to all be about compassion and curiosity. It doesn't mean you have to like the behavior, but you have to love the child inside that's doing that to you. I mean, they're throwing a tantrum.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Now that I have kids, I see lots of analogies there.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Yeah, yeah. I think one tip to take away to the bank is if you don't ask, 100% guaranteed that you won't get. You literally have nothing to lose to ask except for a lot of money. I should mention people will go, will I lose the opportunity? It rarely happens. And do you want to work there anyway? which is a privileged response on my part.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
This is why always have a safety net, whether it's savings, side hustles, networking, other offers, be prepared to walk away. I mean, those make the strongest negotiators the ones who can say no. It's so scary though. It is scary. But again, how do we grow if not by doing the scary things? I mean, to me, it's unfortunate, but it's always through the suffering that we gain the most wisdom.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And it's always through the hard stuff that we're like, I actually feel really proud of myself. This is an opportunity to feel really good. I keep saying that, but I've seen it over and over again. It's not a think positive silver lining bullshit. Like I have genuinely seen women and also feedback from male bosses going, This person is dynamic. They came in and they did it this way.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Like, you look good doing that. But again, practice. You have to practice it because it won't necessarily be natural to you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
You can also, by the way, blame it on ladies get paid. You can say, listen, I, you know, I read this crazy book and I was curious, you know, if the offer that I'm getting is on target with what you're making, if you'd be comfortable to share, that's, you know, wonderful way to support, you know, women and the wage gap. But most importantly, I think let's be allies to each other and
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Do we have a shirt for that?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
In everybody getting paid more, if you could get an introduction, it probably would be better, right? Like go to some friends and say, hey, I'm negotiating an offer. Do you know somebody who fits X, Y, and Z description? Would you be open to making an intro? Again, let me do this for you when it is your time. And make this a regular occurrence that you do.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
By the way, I would love it if everybody could do this when actually they are not looking for a job, but just want to get a sense of what They are in the market as of now. This is how my sister-in-law realized that she was being underpaid and needed to get a new job. Well, she just was going out there looking around. Proactively. Proactively, yeah. Because this stuff takes time.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And if you only prepare when you need it, you're already behind or you're putting pressure on yourself.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Yeah. So just, you know. Like, Bob, I must know by Tuesday. Yeah, exactly. And also negotiate or at least start doing this research certainly if your responsibilities have changed. So I would say approximately give or take 20%.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
So keep a hold of your last job description and then track how responsibilities have shifted, your scope, because you are absolutely due for a raise if you are doing more, if you're doing work that impacts the business bottom line.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
also by the way the market is always changing so maybe your skills are more desirable now so just because you were paid a certain amount last year doesn't mean that's what you should be paid this coming year you really have to take a look at how you've grown and how the market's changed and the only way you're going to know this is by talking to real people because there's not accurate data out there that unfortunately we as the employee have access to hr they have logins to
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
you know, these aggregates of data that I would love it if somebody could just give me, you know, their password. But we don't have that. We have Glassdoor. And if you bring that up to your employer, that's where you found your number. It's going to shut down the conversation. Yeah, but... This is the other thing.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I think when you negotiate your salary, you should actually make the conversation really about how you came up with the number, how you did the research, but also how did they do their research? How did they decide that this is why you're lower on that pay band? Because there's always a range of what you could make. Why did they decide it wasn't the top? So make it about the method.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Make it about the method, because that also allows the conversation to be back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, as opposed to, I'd like this number, yes or no. That's a close-ended question, and the conversation will be over quickly. And then you don't have a chance to like dig into the how did we get here? And then most importantly, how can I make more moving forward? Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And then second, you've already been there.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I think if you've had a really big win that has had impact on the business bottom line, everything's always about how do you fit into the financial ecosystem of the company, making money, saving money. Okay. So you've had a really big win. Might be time to have a conversation of comp. You could have a conversation six months in. It's not necessarily about pay, though.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I think it's just about growth. What am I doing here? How can I do it better? What is the company prioritizing? What are your goals? Where are you investing? Take a look at where budgets are changing. So just aligning your work with their upward trajectory. So when I say six months, is it that you're going in and saying, I'd like a raise?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
No, but you're kind of priming them to see you as somebody who should get a raise. then probably at your annual review, but try to find out when budgets are decided. Okay, so let's say your annual review's in February, but budgets are decided in November. Have the conversation in November, because chances are the person you're speaking to is not the ultimate decision maker.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And they're going to need you to kind of help them help you. Yeah. And so it's really about how do we all do better here? And even saying things like, how does the company give me a raise as opposed to personalizing it? Because chances are the person you're talking to, they want a raise too. Yeah. Make them your ally. I'm going to keep using that word. Like, we're all in this together. And
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I have to remind everybody that because I think when we ask for a raise, we think it's me versus them. It's win or lose. And that just puts so much pressure and almost guarantees that you're not going to get what you want. And hopefully you get, if not the more money, full compensation or there's just some momentum happening in your career at this company in a way that's important to you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
So come up with three numbers because expect that it's going to be a no for your first number. So but throw out the number. It depends on the situation. OK, so if you are applying for the job and you do not have the offer yet and they ask you how much you want to make, do not tie yourself to a number. Say this is the general research I've done. I've seen a ballpark.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
I'd like to hear more about the role or I'm sure we can figure something out. You do want to make sure you're on the same page. Otherwise, you're actually wasting your own time as much as you're wasting their time. But I wouldn't tie yourself to a number, okay?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Okay, no. No, I disagree. I respectfully disagree. Also, she's very senior. Again, this is all contextual. But let's say you do have the offer, and they say, great, we want you to work here, or you already are working there. Then I think you should throw out the number. And you should always say the absolute highest in the market research you did.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
So for you personally, that might feel outrageous, right? Compared to what you currently make, maybe that's 20, 30, 50,000 more than what you're making, you know? So good. I hope you're uncomfortable saying it, but remind yourself it's not random. You didn't pull it out of the sky. You can back it up with solid market research that you did. You talked to six real people, okay? And you also have
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
What I say, research and receipts. You got the receipts. You're going to back it up with examples, quantified examples of how you've impacted business bottom line and how you bring extra to the role, like access to clients, good relationships with vendors. You know, it's not just about I can do this job. It's how you're doing this job to highest possible number. They'll probably say no.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
No worries, you got two more numbers to go plus full compensation. I have a whole method about this, but don't say too much. Just say that top number and then be quiet, which is very hard to do. So hard. Yeah. Silence is delightful if you can sit in it. I mean, you hear me jabbering about, shouldn't have had that espresso, Morgan. And I'm like, yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
You know, I actually have a funny story about how accidental silence got me a lot of money. Do tell. Yeah, so when I first became a freelancer, I had this client that I, or potential client I was negotiating with. And I said a really, really high number. Still rooted in market research, but like a scary number for me. And they said no. And I was very crushed.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
A month later, I get an offer from them for triple the amount. What? And I'm like, triple? This is not how I thought negotiations were supposed to go. Turns out they had emailed me twice and had gone to my spam folder, and they thought that my silence was a negotiation tactic, which guess what? It is. Wow.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
So I thought, this is a very good teachable moment for me because I 1,000% would have said yes immediately to that first number we discussed, but it turns out I was, quote, worth it. Triple, actually.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Well, also, I don't recommend that people negotiate over email because nuances are lost. And especially for women and women of color, we are looked at as aggressive when we're just being assertive. How do you kind of caveat that or soften it? positive body language, you're excited, you smile. I hate to tell women to smile, but it matters. So you can say that strong number.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Text could be the exact same thing a man says, but we have to do that extra step of, I really hate to say that, but there's research. There's research that shows when we don't act positive, then we're defaulted to this nasty woman. So I have the quote, you know, what is it? Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, but backwards in heels. Like, that's why it's exhausting to be us.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
And we need spaces like this to come together and commiserate. And I would say have a glass of wine, but I'll have your wine.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
If you know that there is research behind it and you are playing the game of capitalism... It's just a game. It has nothing to do with your actual worth as a human being. You are priceless. But in this system that is set up, I mean, I'm sure you talk about how money it's real, but it's fake. It's a made up system that we've all bought into literally.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
But if you can kind of separate it, it's like, okay, I am Claire and I am priceless. But within this dynamic, we are both playing the game of capitalism and we have to wear certain masks and costumes as we play this game.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
Yeah. I mean, I think we want to hire people who have common sense. So if a person's coming in and giving me some random high number and they can't back it up and it's like, where are you? What planet are you on? So I think if you come in there and you have done your research, You back it up, you talk about how your work impacts the business bottom line. You really make it about the future.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
So how investing in you is investing in them. I have this whole thing about how it's, imagine you're not even an employee. Think about yourself as a business and you are actually asking for investment. So it's not a, you know, charity or even a reward, okay? Because that's the past. Now we want to think about the future.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Get the Raise You Deserve with Claire Wasserman
If it's about investing in you, you're really making the case that they're investing in themselves. There's going to be a return, which is true because everyone has a margin on their paycheck. Maybe not nonprofits. I'm not sure about that. But like if you are hired by a company, that company is profiting off of your labor. OK, so.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And the last question to ask yourself here around feeling helpless is how can I make it easier to remove that obstacle? That's actually my through line in everything that I do with my coaching and my coaching programs. It's all about how can we just make life more easeful for ourselves? It's not about hustle or working harder. It's all about working smarter. And to me, that means working easier.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Now let's talk about the final two core fears, feeling unloved. And on the flip side of that is feeling unworthy, right? So if you're feeling unloved, how do I need to feel loved, right? And this kind of gets into like those love languages. Have you heard of those, right? Love languages. How do I need to feel loved?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So one way to figure this out for yourself is just thinking about how do I know when I'm loved? And hopefully you've had some experiences in the past. Like, for example, I remember my wife and I, This was only recently. She gave me a hug and it was such a good hug. And I realized I'd never really let myself feel a hug in my 38 years, which is really kind of sad.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
You might've had a moment like that in the past. That's important. So maybe physical touch or, you know, again, starting with how do I know when I'm loved? And then the next part of that question is how can I give love that is not money related? Because if the core fear is, with your money is I am not loved. That's all about you, right? How can I receive? You're taking. We've got to give to get.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
You've got to pay it forward. You've got to invest to get those dividends, right? That's a bit corny. But point being, sometimes to receive, I find in my life, you've got to be what you want. So if you're searching for a mentor, you can't find one. I'd like you to flip that around and ask yourself, how can I be a mentor? et cetera, et cetera, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So the same thing, if I'm not feeling loved, how can I give love? Just make sure there's no spending money related, all right? And then the other side of this, of course, is feeling unworthy, right? Just ask yourself, well, what problems do I enjoy solving? How can I do more of that? What do I need to feel my impact? And then what can I do to feel more of that?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So I highly encourage you to pull back the curtain of whatever is on the surface, this financial anxiety, right? The trigger of somebody unsubscribes from my newsletter. I'm not making enough money. I'm feeling freaked out. What do I actually feel afraid of here? And if I could reduce it to unloved, unworthy, and helpless, Let's make a plan around that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Now, I'm going to go just one step further into addressing core fears, and this is really ongoing work. So do take time and space to do this. And I always encourage people, you know, listen to me, get my book, but hey, also get a therapist, all right? I'm going to walk you through an exercise first and then apply it with my own example so you can really see it come to life.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Maybe let me define what broke baggage is real quickly. So broke baggage is this feeling that you never have enough money, no matter how much is in your account. Broke baggage is feeling guilty or uncomfortable to ask for more. Broke baggage is feeling like you're drowning and you can never get your head above water.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And I highly encourage you to get a pen and paper and do the same. All right, so we're going to start with whatever money anxiety you are feeling the most in your life right now, okay? And I want you to ask yourself, why is that important? Now, the way that you respond, okay, you're going to write this down in the following order.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
You're going to say, this is important to me because... Now, whatever the answer is that you come up with, you're going to repeat it using the following framework. Taking that answer, however you responded, is important to me because... Now, whatever the answer that you have for that, you're going to repeat it again in the same framework.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So your answer is important to me because... And you're going to repeat this usually about three to four times. I think you'll notice that when you do this exercise, there will become a point where you... are just going in circles, that means you're done. You got to the end.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And for anyone curious or feeling like this exercise sounds familiar, that's because I was inspired by the downward arrow technique in cognitive behavioral therapy. And I have found that this works really, really well for all kinds of anxieties, but specifically financial anxieties. Now here's the end of the exercise and the most important part.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Whatever you get to in your final answer, so again, remember, it might take like four or five times to get here, you are going to take the response to the last one that you came up with, that last answer, and you're going to fill in the blank of this sentence. What I really want is...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
After that, you're going to brainstorm things that you can do to cultivate, achieve, integrate more of this into your life, or maybe just reflect and say, hey, do I already have this in my life? Am I already doing this? And if so, maybe I should celebrate that. Let me give you my example, and hopefully it all comes together for you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So for me, I'm stressed out right now about not providing enough for my family. And that really does keep me up at night. It's important to me to provide for my family so that my kids are never restricted in what they can do so that they can have a good quality of life. It is important to me that my kids have a good quality of life so that they have as many options as possible.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
It's important to me that my kids have as many options as possible so that they can create the life they want. It's important to me that my kids create the life that they want so that they can feel free. What I really want is my kids to feel free. Which, by the way, I did a little bit more brainstorming, like what does it actually mean to feel free? So feel free to be whoever they want to be.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Feel free to do whatever they want to do. And this is the action part. This is the one that's going to move you from feeling helpless to hopeful. Here are ways that I can help my kids feel free. Things like...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
you know, encouraging them to follow whatever passion or pursuit they're interested in, you know, not passing judgment either on them or on myself or somebody else because I want to set a good example. What I love about this exercise is that you really get to the core value that is buried deep inside. Your fear is covering up.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
You're having a hard time seeing the value because that fear is like smoke thrown in your face. When we can get to the core value, we can create a plan to cultivate it and realize it may not require any money at all. You may find that the solution to your money anxiety doesn't require money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
In short, broke baggage is feeling like money controls you and not the other way around. Now, listen, I am not going to gaslight you and tell you that financial anxiety is all in your head because, quite frankly, money does make things easier. See, money buys you time. It buys you space. It buys you freedom. But not to be cliche, more money, more problems too, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Which brings me to the deeper work for those of you who are ready to unravel and unburden your broke baggage. So here are prompts to get you started. What is the story that you're telling yourself about money? What is the story you tell yourself about how you can make money? What is the story you tell yourself about how you spend money, about how other people spend money or make money?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Your money story is what you believe that money represents and how it's used. So for example, for me, right, I came to that conclusion of, okay, I want my kids to feel free to create the life they want. Money equals freedom for me. It also can be power. It can be security. It can be love. So again, what does money represent and how is money used?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Knowing this can really help shed some light, give context to why maybe you've been stuck with your broke baggage. Now, if you really want to see this come to life, go check out the episode that I did with Danielle, who believes that you have to burn out in order to make money. That's what she's done in the past. That's been the example that's been set by her family.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So it was hard for her to imagine any other way of being. The other thing that she believes is that getting rich is mutually exclusive with being a good person. And as you saw in that episode, she mentioned how she was raised. And that brings me to the next question I want you to ask yourself is, where did this money story come from? And who did I learn it from?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
This is where we're putting on a detective hat, just digging deep into that broke baggage, trying to understand why. the context in which we learned it. Whether it was consciously learned or absorbed, it doesn't matter. But we've got to try to figure out where the heck this came from in order to unburden it, all right? So what I want you to do is to reflect on what's called financial flashpoints.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
It's just a fancy way of saying memories from the past about money that are particularly emotionally charged for you. So if you can think back to the first memory that you've had about money, That's a good one. By the way, it doesn't have to be a big dramatic situation. It's just when was the first time that you became aware of this thing called money? And then see if you can go from there.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
When else have you experienced any kind of emotional charge around money? Here are the prompts to ask yourself next. Who was there? What did they say or do? Now this is where we're going to get a little bit imaginative. What do you think were their underlying stressors and fears?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So really imagining their broke baggage and then putting yourself in their shoes, trying to visualize how they maybe grew up and what messages around money they received. And now see if you could just send a little bit of compassion to them, especially if you're almost imagining yourself as them growing up. witnessing whatever they witnessed. By the way, none of this stuff has to, quote, be true.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
This is all in your imagination. But really do your best to honor the emotional authenticity of who this person was and how you could envision the way that they received their broke baggage. Gosh, you might feel a little bit bad for them, and that's OK. Here's what I want to demonstrate to you. If you can learn something, That means you can unlearn it too.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
None of this stuff was inevitable, as hopefully you've seen in the way that you imagine this person who impacted you. Well, who impacted them? If all of this stuff was passed down, it means there's a point in which you can consciously choose to not continue to pass it down. And that's what we're going to do in just a minute.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Or more money and the same problems. Because like I said, what is in your bank account doesn't matter as much as how you feel about what's in your bank account. If this is feeling resonant with you, welcome, you are in the right place. Now I'm going to say something that you probably won't believe at first, but if you stick with me, I'm going to show you how to do this. Okay.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Now, for those of you who are very intellectual, and I sort of count myself among you, If you think knowledge just stays in your head, you are going to stay stuck because we absolutely carry knowledge in our bodies. So as you imagine the person or the people who burden you with their broke baggage, I want you to visualize the following.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So where do you feel like maybe their baggage is being carried in their body? So it helps to close your eyes here for this. All right, so my mother gave me her broke baggage. I'm going to imagine that her baggage Money stressors, they exist in her shoulders. And now I'm going to imagine blasting warm light at it. This just like sunbeam going at this broke baggage.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And in doing that, the broke baggage disintegrates. And then I want to blow it out into the air. Seriously, if you are somebody who's skeptical of what I'm saying, but you've tried a bunch of other shit and it's not working, give this a chance. Do it a couple of times.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Again, the whole point is we've got to address not just the thoughts, not just the feelings up here in our mind, but where is it in our body? And we need to release it. Otherwise, it will stay stuck and we will stay stuck. the reason I'm having you release this other person's broke baggage first, right? Because you're probably thinking, well, Claire, what about me? Let's get to me.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
I'm getting to you in just a second. The reason I want you to forgive and release this other person's broke baggage first especially for women, can be a lot easier to do things on behalf of other people than it is to do it for ourselves, especially if we are still struggling with some feelings of unworthiness and adequacy.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
If you're a person who can self-sabotage, you get in your own way, that's why we begin with doing it for somebody else first. Then we can see, ah, that felt good. It felt good to relieve and release this broke baggage for this other person. then you're going to do it for yourself. So you're going to go through all those prompts I just gave you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So you can pause the video or the podcast, go back, rewind. All right. And you're going to do it again for yourself. But at the end, I want you to imagine coating your body with gold paint. Yes, gold paint. This is your way of kind of bubble wrapping yourself, protecting yourself.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
making that definitive and declarative statement that yes, whatever chaos is happening out here, whatever number is in that bank account, you will not let it permeate Yourself on the inside, right? You are protected. Now, woo woo, as all of that might've sounded to you, seriously, it's based on research. I promise you, it is based on research.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
It is backed by principles and it helped me and the clients that I've worked with, including one woman who even legally changed her last name to gold. Yes, she changed her last name to gold because that exercise was so effective for her in protecting her PSP.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Whatever is happening on the outside, you create your reality on the inside. So whatever chaos, money chaos is happening outside, you can protect yourself from the inside. Now, how do you do that? You do that by learning to objectively engage with your thoughts and emotions. What does it mean to objectively engage? Okay, so it is not controlling.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
But I'm going to warn you, losing your broke baggage is not going to happen overnight, and it's not going to happen with one visualization. So you need to find a way to kind of tangibly chart your progress. Otherwise... You're just not going to want to keep going. This progress, it really can't be tied to anything external, meaning when I make more money, I'll feel better.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Well, that depends on a lot of factors that are totally out of your control. And if one of our core fears is feeling helpless, we do not want to outsource our life in that way. I think a really nice way to kind of chart your progress that you have full command over the amount of time that you spend in a financial freakout, as well as the amount of time that it takes you to recover.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So for example, you tend to be up in the middle of the night like me, worried about what's not in your bank account, and you toss and turn for hours. The goal right now is not to not wake up because that's going to take some time and work. The goal is to maybe not spend hours having that financial freak out, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Also, see if maybe you can start to notice when you are freaking out about money or perhaps you made a kind of poor financial decision. Just don't add judgment to it. That's something a lot of us do and we're not even aware of. We might have a certain thought or feeling about our experience in life, inject a narrative into it that just makes it worse.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So you invested some crypto and there was a dip and you're disappointed that you lost money. You're really nervous. that you're gonna have to now tell your partner that you lost the money. And now all of a sudden you catch yourself going, you're so bad with money. That's adding that extra narrative, that judgment that is only going to compound your broke baggage even further.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So it's really critical for you to strip away any of that narrative, any of that shame that you might be feeling. Another pro tip here is anytime that you were making a statement about yourself or actually about the world. So for example, I am bad at money, or money is really hard for me to make, or you have to sacrifice your values to become rich, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
These declarative statements about, well, your money story. I would love for you to inject the word feel. I feel because that is a more accurate portrayal of what's going on, which is this is your opinion. This is your money story.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
This is your opinion about the world and money that, by the way, might not be mine or might not be hers, which means it's not the absolute truth, which means we can create a new reality. We can make change. So, for example, I'm bad with money becomes I feel like I'm bad with money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Or you have to sacrifice your values to become rich becomes, I feel like you have to sacrifice your values to become rich. Another reason that little sort of word shift is helpful, not only is it more accurate to what actually is going on, but it creates a little bit of distance between you and the thought and the feeling. And when we have distance, we get perspective.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
It is not about trying to tell your thoughts and your feelings about money to shut the F up. Because trying to control your thoughts and emotions, it's kind of like trying to push a bouncing ball on the top of a pool. Every time you push it down, what happens, right? Tops back up.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And that is the whole goal here. Again, going from that state of contraction, fight or flight, freak out, to options. We can see more clearly. We can find opportunities. We can be creative. We can be ourselves. Now, for those of you who, quote, know better but struggle to do better.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So these are the people who are like, I know everything I'm supposed to do, but yet somehow I cannot make myself do it. I'm here to tell you that you are wired to stay stuck because what's familiar feels safe. even if it doesn't feel good. Plus, the more we think or do a certain thing, the more solidified it becomes in our brains. It's harder to make change.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Literally, there are grooves in our brains that have been created as a sort of shortcut way through life to operate more optimally, but that doesn't mean we feel good. And so this requires us to be consistent with making small, habitual changes. This is neuroplasticity. Highly encourage you to Google more about neuroplasticity. It's just a fancy way of saying it's possible. Rewire your brain.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Yes, you can rewire your brain to release money stress. So as you reflect on today's practices, it's just so important to ask yourself, how can I implement them sustainably? How can this go from being a one-time thing that I am watching or listening to? I journaled on a Sunday. How can we journal again next Sunday and again and again? You are rewiring your brain to release that money stress.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
What a massive undertaking. I hope you are so proud of yourself. I hope that you've stuck with me throughout the kind of woo-woo of it all. Again, it's backed up with science.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
my certificate in financial psychology now for those of you who are going well i have broke baggage because i am broke all right this is for you as much as you need to fill the emotional bank you've also got to fill the bank bank okay so what is in your bank bank it depends on basically two things how you spend your money so that's money out and what you earn which is money in.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And with our thoughts and emotions, usually that happens at seriously inconvenient times and in inconvenient situations. So my intention with today's episode is to really give you practical exercises so that you can start to observe your emotions and thoughts about money in a nonjudgmental way and maybe even try to inject a little bit of compassion in there because, I mean...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So if we want to make a change with the number in our bank account, we have to really look at how we're spending and how we're earning. For those of you who want to earn better, I encourage you to check out my salary negotiation video, which is a five-hour course with a 200-page workbook complete with scripts. And I have a little goodie for you, which is the code MONEYREHAB.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
If you use it to buy the course, you will get $50 off. All the links are in the show notes. For today, we're not going to talk about how to make more money. We're going to focus on spending or more specifically how to spend happier because I'm not a huge fan of budgets. They feel really limiting, constricting, and I'm all about let's get expansive. Let's feel good.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So how do we feel good with our spending? There's a whole theory out there that awesome people like Ramit Sethi talk about, which is spending big on the things that you love so that you can cut down on everything else. And there's been research that shows that there are five areas of spending that has an effect on you well beyond immediate gratification. So here are the five categories.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And I'd love for you to now review afterwards. Am I spending money in these areas? If not, do I want to? Does it resonate? Number one, buying experiences. Number two, making something a treat. Number three, buying time. Number four, consuming it later. And number five, investing in others.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Everything that you spend your money on, every time that you hand over your credit card or cash, it is an extension of who you are and the values you have. You might have heard of that expression, you can vote with your dollars. It doesn't have to be political. You are investing in a product or in a person when you give them money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
I want you to think intentionally, is this aligned with how I want to live? If that's all feeling very intense to you, and when I bring up values, you start to be overwhelmed. This is a simple fill in the blank exercise. Every day, I want to feel these three feelings. You can't come up with three? No worries. At least one. I just don't want you to go crazy here, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So maybe it's I want to feel secure, grounded, and creative. Whatever. Those are mine. Next question. What can I do to experience these feelings? Every choice you make, from the actions you take to the money you spend or don't spend, should help you get closer to experiencing these feelings. I want you to ask those two questions of yourself every quarter, okay?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Because things change and you change and I don't want you spending or saving based on someone else's goals or values. The whole point is being intentional in your action and that means slowing things down. So when you are about to swipe that card, slow it down. When you are getting stressed about money, Slow it down.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
The goal is to be thoughtful in how we self-engage, not judgmental or punitive, which unfortunately is a lot of the ways that we interact with ourselves, each other, and money in this world. I think money holds a mirror up to ourselves. And so you have the decision right now to decide what you want to see in that mirror. Who do you want to be? How do you want to feel?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
How do you want to make others feel? Because you owe it to yourself, quite literally. On that note, thank you so much for watching or listening to today's special solo episode, or maybe it was more of a window into my personal therapy. So if that resonated with you, I want to hear from you. All my links are in the show notes. You can find me on social at ladies get paid.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Life is hard enough, right? Why make it harder for yourself? So let's face our broke baggage together, okay? We are going to talk about in the moment strategies that you can implement when you are starting to feel financially anxious. Then I'm going to go over ongoing work, deeper work that you can do to heal your relationship with money and hopefully drop that broke baggage for good.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
I'm so honored to have been with you here today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We got this.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And then finally, I'll give you some key takeaways on how you can start to spend happier. Ready? Let's dive in. I want you to think of the biggest financial stressor that you have right now. Actually, before you do that, let's take a deep breath together. Wiggle our fingers, wiggle our toes, ground ourselves.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
I was going to say shut your eyes, but you might be listening to this while you're driving, so don't do that. Okay, so I want you to think about your biggest financial stressor right now, or maybe a certain behavior or mindset around money that you have that maybe for years has been getting in your way of living life. the life that you want. All right, I'll give you my example.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
I am the sole breadwinner in my family right now. And I'm going to be really honest with you. I am just not making enough money. So even though rationally, and I'm putting rational in quotation marks, I know that I can cover our basic needs. I'm not worried that we're going to lose the roof over our head. I have a lot of feelings about what I'm not making right now.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
I'm massively disappointed in myself. I feel like I'm letting... My kid's down and I'm extremely worried that I am not going to be able to figure this out soon. Although I'm going to interject here because you might be feeling similar to me. On one side, I do believe that I can figure this out. But on the other side, I have a ton of fear that I won't be able to.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So let me know, is that resonating with you, right? Sometimes we have these conflicting thoughts and feelings, kind of like the devil and the angel on our shoulder, right? These are just different parts of ourselves. And what I want to do with you all is, is learn how to become the conductor of an orchestra.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And instead of all of these instruments, these parts of us kind of yelling and pulling at us, we're gonna make some beautiful music, hopefully. And hopefully that analogy made sense to you. I am gonna walk you through a number of prompts that I want you to use for those in the moment money freak outs.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Okay, so prompt number one, know your triggers because once you know your triggers, you can prepare for them emotionally and logistically. There's something about removing the element of surprise that just helps contain the emotional fallout, right? If you can predict, yeah, I'm probably going to feel a little bit freaked out and it happens, it's not going to freak you out even more.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
My triggers include this. No one buys a course after I send out an email trying to sell it. people unsubscribe from my paid subscription, or just randomly at night, I wake up fully in terror that I cannot afford to give my kids what I think they deserve. So here's how I prepare. I just give myself some space.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So knowing that whenever I send out an email to my subscribers and somebody unsubscribes, it's going to make me really nervous that I can't cover the bills for my family. I'm going to take a deep breath and set an alarm for, say, 15 minutes. I call it designated dwell time. I literally give myself the opportunity to freak out, but it's contained. Also, these are micro moments, and...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
They don't tell the true story of what actually is happening here. You've got to take a big step back and look holistically at what's going on. So instead of saying, oh my gosh, somebody unsubscribed, I can't make rent. How about we look at the data in the aggregate? So in a given week, a month, a quarter, six months to a year, are we on track to reach our goals?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So constantly remind yourself, okay, micro to macro, step in, step out, and take a deep breath. All right, let's assume that the trigger happens and you are caught up in that money spiral. All right, so let me tell you what's going on in your body. I think it's helpful to understand what is happening that is kind of out of your control so that you know how to deal with it better.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So whenever an anxious thought flares up, your body is going into fight or flight, which is really a state of contraction. And when you are in this state of contraction, it just becomes so much harder to to see alternative solutions, because quite frankly, you are not thinking clearly. This is not when we want to be making decisions about ourselves, our worth, money, or whatever.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
It's all about calming the nervous system. So this brings me to prompt number two, the five-finger framework, otherwise known as BAFA. B-A-F-A-H. Okay, so this is a strategy that I came up with that has really helped me calm my nervous system. It's great to use when you're having any kind of freak out, but specifically today, it's financial freak outs. All right, so BAFA. B, it stands for body.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Wiggle your toes and take a deep breath. To get from your head, we want to go into our body. So the minute we're freaking out, let's try to get into our body by breathing. taking a deep breath and then wiggling our fingers and our toes. A is for acknowledge. So what am I really afraid of?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Hi, I'm Claire Wasserman, and I'm guest hosting for Nicole while she's out on maternity leave. My day job is running Ladies Get Paid, a coaching practice, podcast, and newsletter that helps you increase your worth inside and out. This episode is a little bit different from the other ones where I was coaching real women through their work and money challenges.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
In a couple of minutes, we're going to go into a deeper exercise to unravel our core fears, but it is helpful in the moment when you are having that freak out to just face it, to name it. If you try to shove it into the back of your subconscious, it's going to be taking a precious energy that quite frankly, we don't have the luxury to spend. So why don't you just look it in the eye and say,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
What am I actually afraid of here? So body, acknowledge, F for feel. Okay, so now that we've recognized the fear that we're having, let's try to find out where in our body are we storing this fear, okay? So you might wanna shut your eyes for a second. I'm feeling a tightness in my throat, or maybe it's your heart or your shoulders are up to here.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
We always store things in our bodies, especially our anxieties. So see if you can locate it and then breathe into it. So just giving it a little bit more space, almost imagining like when you breathe into the fear, It's dissipating it. Or imagine breathing around the fear, making your body bigger. And inherently that then makes the fear smaller if you are visualizing it.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And if you're not a visual person, I do encourage you to just try this and you'll see that you're just going to be able to... get more into that relaxed state, right? We've got body, acknowledge, feel. Now we're on A for action. What is one step that you can take right now to address your fear? This has to be something you do in the moment. So it's gotta be realistic. It's gotta be reasonable.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And maybe it shouldn't take you more than five to 10 minutes. Just anything to get you from the thoughts and the feelings into movement, momentum, action. You will feel so much better knowing that you are doing something about the fear. And the last letter is H and that stands for hum. Yes, humming.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
It stimulates the vagus nerve, which helps to move your body from that fight or flight state into more of a place of relaxation. I encourage you to try humming at any point during the day. I do it just naturally, but especially if you are feeling all kinds of feelings, let's do it together. Yeah, it does help.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And if you're feeling disconnected from your fears and your feelings, right, when you ask yourself, what am I actually feeling here now? What am I actually afraid of? And you just can't come up with anything. By the way, that's a lot of us. I want you to go look up the emotions wheel. It's also called the feelings wheel. And it's going to help you pinpoint at least one emotion.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
For example, are you feeling bad? And then from there, it will prompt you, well, okay. More specifically, are you tired? Are you stressed? Are you busy? Are you bored? And then prompt you again.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
The whole point is to get more familiar with the range of emotions that we have, the nuances around them, because when you're specific about what you are feeling, that can help then direct you to take more specific action to address it instead of just trying a whole bunch of stuff, seeing what sticks, and up, we're too exhausted, and we're back to our old patterns.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Instead, today, I'm going to be coaching you. That's right, you and me a little bit. What we're going to be focusing on is how to relieve and release financial anxiety, or as I like to call it, broke baggage. Because here's the thing, there is a number in your bank account, and then there's how you feel about that number.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
But I'll tell you this, whatever you are feeling in the moment, there's often a core fear beneath it, okay? And usually it boils down to two things. And I don't mean to grossly simplify here, but this has been my experience and as well as the clients I've worked with. Here are the two core fears beneath a lot of the financial anxieties we have, and it is this. Number one, being helpless.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And number two, being unloved or unworthy. But I should rephrase that. It's not really being helpless or being unloved or unworthy. It's specifically feeling helpless or feeling unloved or unworthy. This is not your fault, okay? This is all about your survival wiring. We evolved as human beings to constantly problem solve. But when you problem solve all the time, guess what that does to you?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
At least for me, it makes me anxious to constantly be scanning the horizon for possible threats, right? So... Just thank yourself. You're feeling helpless. You're feeling unloved. Thank you. We're trying to protect me, but we're going to find another way. Which brings me to prompt number three. Let's address your core fear.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So we're going to talk about feeling helpless, feeling unloved, and feeling unworthy. And I'll give you exact prompts to ask yourself, hopefully in the moment, but you may not have time. So just circle back when you've got a little bit of space and energy to reflect. These will really help you. So here are the prompts if you are feeling helpless around your money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
What is the smallest action I can take? Small, that's the critical word. We want to build a muscle of sustainability here. And you're not going to be able to build those good habits if you can't be consistent with them. So it's got to be broken down to its smallest piece. So if you're feeling super helpless, drowning in debt, you're not going to solve all of it today.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
Maybe that one small action is Googling credible sources. to figure out what your roadmap will be for paying down that debt. So it's not doing anything with that information yet. It's just gathering information. That brings me to my next prompt. What is standing in my way of taking that small action? Oftentimes, it is actually a lack of information, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
In theory, it would be good to do X, Y, and Z, but then you're like, I don't really know how to do that. So maybe the first thing you need to address, right, the obstacle in your way is who can support me? Who can help me? Where can I go to gather more resources to help me figure out what my next action steps? Or maybe it's a question of time. you're just super busy or you feel super busy.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
So instead of taking that next small action to address your financial anxiety, just carve out a little bit of time and space in your week so that you can now sit down with your money.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
How to Rewire Your Brain to Overcome "Broke Baggage" with Claire Wasserman
And everything that I'm going to share with you comes from what I've seen, what I've experienced, and what I've learned. I run a community of 55,000 members who've exchanged more than 3 million messages. I've been in over $4 million worth of debt. Yes, $4 million. And I have a master's certificate in financial psychology because, quite frankly, I was sick of my own broke baggage.