Ep. 8: Know Your Worth (Part 1)

All right, welcome to another episode of Black Girl Fly. I'm your girl, Tenisha Nicole. And I'm Tashaunda Dixon. And today we're gonna be talking about knowing your worth. So what in the world does that mean? You know, people say it all the time. But I think there's so many different facets of what that means. If I had to say the first thing that comes to mind, especially in the black community is salary and wages in, you know, being paid what you're worth. Yeah. But then I think we can also go to other parts of that romantic relationships. I just don't know where to start. Where would you? Oh, I mean, let's, let's talk about let's talk about salaries.

I remember a few years ago, we had an experience. I lived in DC and you were living in Dallas at the time, I believe. Yeah. But you and mom and until you maybe came up for a weekend to DC where the nonprofit I was were volunteering with they were having an event. Yeah. And you met a bunch of people. Thank you. So I was shocked. Okay, so we're not gonna say names and everything right. But this organization, it was a bunch of professionals. Yeah. Black, perfect. young professional. Yeah. DC. And so I was thinking so I'm from Texas, mind you the cost of living in Texas at the time, you could buy like a nice house for 150 grand. And I made Okay, money, but I met these people. And I was like, they must be balling right, like they gotta be making bank. And so I don't know how we get to talking about it. Do you remember how we started talking about it at all? I don't know. I don't, I really don't know. But so we were like introducing ourselves. This was the first time that I had really been introduced to this group. And it's something that my sister have been a part of for a while. And so she's really close to some of the individuals there and I don't know how we started talking about salaries, but someone said their salary. And I was like, Oh my God, that's all you make. I mean, these I mean, it wasn't that they didn't have the job what what I was comparing where they had these titles, where I knew in taxes counterparts with similar titles, similar experience and less education, who made substantially more than the people that I had talked to at the event. Yeah, and I would say that that was, I mean, that was actually the first time I had really thought about it in that context, because in that group, we never talked about our salaries. I mean, I remember the dad was dating at the time he, he had told me his salary. And, you know, I didn't think it was that high because he was like, several years older than me, but I was also making around the same so I knew there was something off about the situation, but I didn't realize like why, and I had my own issue with this. When I first graduated college like I was making basically below the poverty line, yeah. So I will tell you, I actually read a study. And a lot of people talk about the wage gap, right? So we understand that there's a wage gap between females and males. And blacks and whites and even Asians, like you look at this numbers, actually, aging population makes more money than blacks and Hispanics. Yeah. And so we talk about this all the time, but we don't really talk about how it happens. We don't talk about how it happens. And when you're experiencing it, who do you talk to? about it? I would say this is this is a echoing theme of the conversations we don't have. Corporate America taught us by the way, it was our employers that said, Oh, it's taboo to talk about salary. And they are also the ones who are telling you this is what you're worth. When they make you an offer. They're telling you this is where we believe that your skills and your experience that is correct And and so it is definitely a conflict of interest and why they told people not to discuss salaries had nothing to do with relationships and things. But it was because employers were paying people unfairly and they knew it, and they didn't want their workforce to find out. Right. But I would relate that to a couple of things. We are we were talking about before, how financial advisors get paid off commissions conflict of interest, big time, same thing. Yeah, yeah, same thing. And so I did want to say, I did read an article, and they talked about how the reason for the wage gap wasn't necessarily race or discrimination or prejudice, but certain types. So So for instance, women are more caring and nurturing by nature. And so when they're given an opportunity, they tend to take it and not ask for more, whereas males don't negotiate. Yeah, males actually will say, I'm worth more And I believe in worth more than you need to know that I'm worth more. And they would make more just for that factor alone, right? And people don't realize too is like, in a negotiation, the worst that could happen is the person could say no, that was actually lifted from mom right up. So a mom actually, when I was younger, I was very intimidated by her bike. I was like, I was scared. She's gonna do something. I don't know what I thought that was really your logic was that I was not afraid of mom. I was terrified. And so well, my mom knew it. My mom knew it. So I remember having this conversation. I'll never forget this conversation. She actually came to me and cheese. I wanted something really, really bad. And I was like, Okay, I'm gonna ask her. And I like built up courage. It took like weeks to build up this courage to ask her. And so I finally get to and I was like, Mom, can I please, please, please, I just really want it. And I told her what I wanted and she was like, Yes. That's it. That's all She said, Tashaunda. You know, I've come to know about you, if you come to me, that means you really, really, really want it. So I'll probably say yes. Because you only come to me if it's like, right? Yeah. And so in that she told me, and this was the lesson that she wanted me to learn. She said, The worst thing people can ever tell you when you're asking for something is no, that's real. And no does not hurt that bad, right? I mean, sometimes it can be a little thing or something. But you can get over that. Number one, like if they say, no, that just means no, you can't have that increases. I like to look at No, it's like, it's more of a not yet. Yeah, not really. Like that. It's like, No, you can't have that to come in with but we're still offering you the job. Right. Yeah. I mean, they didn't rescind their offer unless they did. But you know, it's not. It's something that you can recover from. Yeah. And I would say to that, in a salary perspective. Now you set the expectation. Yeah, it's Yes, I know. I'm working More I'm coming to you. And if you decide to stay, even if they tell you no, right, everyone else knows, I expect this. And I can actually tell you, I actually had an employee that reported to me. And when she was hired, she asked for a certain salary. We didn't give her that salary, but she took the job. And her negotiation for the job was, I know, this position that what I'm going to bring to the table is worth more. Yeah. And she said, I'm going to prove myself this. I'm going to prove myself to make sure that you know that I know that I'm worth more, and that I deserve more. And at the time we hire, we're like, Oh, sure. Well, we'll get there. We'll work through it, which is typical. Yeah. Yeah, what so next year, actually, so the next year, we were going to promote her she had done phenomenal. We are going to promote her. And we wanted to offer some less money for her promotion. And she came to me and she said, This is terrible. I'm not accepting it. I said, Oh, wow. What are we gonna do? And by the way, that point she has leveraged. Exactly she understood that we needed her. Yeah. And that's going back to knowing your worth. She understood that and what do we do? We went back to the drawing board. And we actually gave her more than she requested. Because at that time, we knew that we had to show her that we were as committed to her as she was had been us and the value that she gave us. And we knew that we'd have to go out and and hire more people. So we would the cost of Korean person and training them up and the downtime that wouldn't care. And so it is so important. And so kind of back to the subject from a salary perspective, it is so important to know, hey, I'm actually worth this because if you're worth it, people are gonna pay you that right. And how do people find out how much they're worth? Because I feel like that's like the hardest part. Yeah, yeah. So I've done a lot of research in this because I've also struggled my career, making sure that I understood my worth, and I'll get back to that, but there guides in your particular field. There's always something so for technical staffs, not just technical, but like accounting professionals, technical like it positions, Robert Half actually publishes a salary guide every year. And it's actually normalized for every state in the country. It has a Canadian version as well. So Robert Half does it. There are a lot of other resources like Glassdoor salary comm there's there's tons of things that you can do, but also getting out now and researching the positions that are available in your city. A lot of them will have a range now because they know that that's an expectation. Yeah, and I would even charge people to like, talk to your friends. Yeah. And you know, have the open conversation. I kind of used to get offended when my friends would ask me a salary because it kind of felt like a competition. But really, like we're all in this together and it's good to know like what's going on at a certain company. Maybe they're competitors to yours. Maybe they're, you know, you might want to go there in the future. So at least you know what you're getting yourself into. And one thing I want to talk about is one of my jobs, I didn't negotiate my salary, but what they did they were slick with it. I want to know, so they instead of increasing my salary, they gave me a larger signup bonus. Okay, and lesson learned. Now, I didn't know at the time I was like, give me some money right away. But then the next year when I didn't have that money, it was kind of like I had a decrease now hey, yeah, so I will always tell people now to don't take the sign on bonus. And then once I get text like Hill anyways, so it doesn't it's not as much money as it feels like it's gonna be. So I would tell people to negotiate that amount into your salary because if you now get a 2% increase on your salary The next year, that's an increase on that whole amount. Yeah, and not just whatever the smaller not to say, though. I Don't want to say that. You don't want to take an opportunity that's there. You have the option to switch it around, though. Yeah. Yeah, the reason I would say that too is because over all it increase your bottom line. And for employers actually things like sign on bonus doesn't come out of a salaries expense. So their ratios and how they determine what they can spend. It's different. So the same for going in as an employee versus going in under a contractor. It's a different expense. There's leverage ratios that a company needs to take into consideration if they're especially if they're financed in the way. So not just salary salaries important, so knowing your worth, but also identifying different ways that they can compensate you. They may not attack their bottom line. Yeah, you can sometimes negotiate how many days off you get a year you can sometimes negotiate how much they're contributing to your retirement fine. Those are many different avenues to negotiate. But I think the bottom line is like the offer that they're putting out is that their best and final, not at all. Never, so test the waters in whichever way you can. And if they say no, they say no, but at least you tried and you know, who knows you might be better off by doing so. Yeah. So I don't want to leave this topic without talking about the other space. Yeah, the relationships. Oh, yes. So So everybody kind of talks about Oh, I'm worth this in my profession. And I'm sure we saved it to a next episode. Cuz we're already at 13 I mean, that's a juicy episode. It could be a juicy episode. Yeah. Those do a dig. Alright, so until next time, y'all, we're signing off. I'm your girl Tenisha Nicole, and I'm Tashaunda Dixon and we are Black Girl Fly