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Episode 72: How to change your internal script about negotiations with Olivia Jaras

Welcome to The Career Clarity Show, where we help you find a lucrative, soulful, and joyful career path for you!

Today we are talking about all things negotiation. When it comes to thinking about making a career change, it’s so easy to psych yourself out at tons of different points along the way. 

There are all kinds of limiting beliefs and fears and worries that can pop up in our minds from “I shouldn’t be negotiating right now because of the economic climate we’re in” to “I shouldn’t be negotiating because I’m making a career change.” 

To debunk and bust all of these internal scripts, I have negotiation expert, Olivia Jaras, who is going to be sharing all about her work, her expertise, and how to make sure you are setting yourself up for success.

This episode is for you if you have been on the prowl for a job, and you want to be prepared for a negotiation situation when it comes up. If you’re not on the prowl, yet, but you’re thinking about making a transition and want to make sure that you understand how to show other people what you’re worth. And if you are in the thick of interviews right now, and you may be receiving an offer imminently, and you want to make sure that you have got exactly what you need in your toolbox to make that offer and the offer negotiation process go in your favor. 

Want to learn more about our strategic framework for successful career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

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Transcript:

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04  

Welcome to the Career Clarity Show. If you want to create a career path you’ll love, you’re in the right place. I’m Lisa Lewis Miller, career change coach, published author and your host. And each week, we’ll bring you personal transformation stories, advice and insights from experts about how you can find a more fulfilling, soulful and joyful career. Hello, and welcome, clarity seekers. I’m your host, career change expert and the creator of the Career Clarity Show method, Lisa Lewis. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:38  

And today on the podcast, we are talking all things negotiation. When it comes to thinking about making a career change, it’s so easy to psych yourself out at tons of different points along the way. But man, oh man, I thinking about getting a job offer and closing the deal is a big one. There are all kinds of limiting beliefs and fears and worries that can pop up in our minds from I shouldn’t be negotiating right now because of the economic climate we’re in to I shouldn’t be negotiating because I’m making a career change. And they’re taking pity on me to even hire me. And so to debunk and bust all of these internal scripts, I have got a fabulous guest on the show today for you. This episode is for you, if you have been on the prowl for a job, and you want to be prepared for a negotiation situation when it comes up. If you’re not on the prowl, yet, but you’re thinking about making a transition and want to make sure that you understand how to show other people what your worth. And if you are in the thick of interviews right now, and you may be receiving an offer imminently, and you want to make sure that you have got exactly what you need in your toolbox to make that offer and the offer negotiation process go in your favor. So if any of those things apply to you, we’ve got a treat in store for you today. I have brought on negotiation expert, Olivia Jaras, who is going to be sharing all about her work her expertise, and how to make sure you are setting yourself up for success. Olivia, welcome to the Career Clarity Show. 

Olivia Jaras  2:08  

Thank you, Lisa, I’m so excited to be here. This is honestly I’m just I’m just thrilled because you know, career clarity is such a fundamental component of knowing your worth and getting your worth. And this is something like there’s just so much here to unpack, and I’m thrilled to be here and to be able to talk about salary negotiations. But for those of you who have no idea about my work, my name is Olivia, I’m the founder of Salary Coaching Ror Women. And honestly, it’s I would say it’s like a bit of an underground movement helping women figure out their worth and help them figure out how to actually advocate for what they’re worth. But like you said, there’s such an important starting point, which is getting really clear on what you want before you can even start advocating for yourself. And I loved how you positioned it is as, you know, these internal scripts that we talked about that really limit us from even going to the negotiation table and asking for what we’re worth.

Lisa Lewis Miller  3:06  

Absolutely, there’s so many other limitations, biases and challenges that each one of us faces, you know, based on our unique background, or identity that can make it harder. And we don’t need to make it any harder on ourselves by putting ideas in our heads about what is and is not available to us. That is for sure. But Olivia, I want to start us today with having you share a little bit about your background and why this became not just an area of interest for you, but an area that you wanted to build a business and a brand.

Olivia Jaras  3:39  

Yeah, so there’s, there’s just like a lot of failures that led to building up to where we are today as a business. I’d say probably over during the Great Recession is really when it all started. I got laid off, it was 2008 I got laid off from my job working for a company setting people salaries. So my background is is in compensation and figuring out what someone’s worth and how to advocate for it and all the negotiation side of things. But I got laid off right and I had a great job at that point. I thought it was gonna be like my my it job even though it wasn’t paying me that well or I wasn’t, you know, I don’t know. It wasn’t like my dream job, but I thought I was on track, right?

Olivia Jaras  4:27  

 And then we got laid off. And I thought that that was like one of the more embarrassing moments of my life when I was being ushered by two security guards out of the office with like my cardboard box. But what ensued was even more humiliating in my I applied to 1231 jobs, 1231 jobs, and I got five interviews and zero job offers. It was one of the worst times of my life. I was just so humiliated. I felt so dejected. You can imagine the internal scripts that were going through my head. And at this point in time, you know, I just had so much going on. My husband was deployed in Iraq, my father had just passed, passed away. It was just, you know, when you hit rock bottom, and you know, you’re there, right? And I remember vividly one morning, that morning where I, you know, I knew I realized I’d applied to 1231 jobs, I went to claim an unemployment check back, then you had to line out the building for like, two hours before you would even get access into the building. And it was my turn, I’ve been on in the line for at least three hours. And it was finally my turn to go up to the unemployment clerk. And on one hand, I have my resume, which, you know, reads that, like, had an MBA and I’ve been to nice, East Coast University, I’d gone to Tufts University. And then I have my list of jobs on the other hand, and show like 1200 and 31 jobs that apply to and one of the places that I’d applied to that week was McDonald’s, and I’ve gotten rejected from McDonald’s. And, and I go up to the clerk, I’m like, but here’s my stuff, here’s my application and stuff. And the clerk was have been having a really bad day. Because he got he looks at my resume.

Olivia Jaras  6:26  

That he looks at my applications. And he’s like, wow. Yeah, I guess that expensive East Coast education didn’t pay off, did it? That’s just like, Ah, oh, my, like, crushed. I didn’t even make it out of the building. I was just start collapse and started flipping, bawling. And I think that really set the stage. For me having an epiphany, which was, it’s not me who’s broken. It’s a system that doesn’t work. Right? It’s a system that doesn’t quite work when it comes down to helping women not only land their dream job, but figuring out their worth. So over the years, you know, many other failures led me to deciding I’m going to quit this cozy job that I’d landed eventually by figuring out our own methodology. I started to realize that women, I landed a job at Dartmouth University doing their compensation, sending people’s salaries. And one of the things that I read on an article by like a Sheryl by Sheryl Sandberg, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal, or the New York Times was that companies were to blame for the gender wage gap. And like, whoa, okay,

Olivia Jaras  7:48  

I’m working diligently for this for on behalf of this company, and I’m enforcing every single government regulation there is and transparency policy available to make sure that the salaries that I recommend to hiring managers are fair. So I actually went out to prove that there was no gender wage gap. And in doing so, what I realized was that indeed, there was whenever I recommended a salary range, say from zero to 100, and a female was being hired, she would be hired and brought in hovering around the 25th percentile. If it wasn’t guy who was being hired, he hired hovering around the 50th percentile, and

 

Olivia Jaras  8:28  

Whoa, what gives? So I started to do some research and talking to compensation experts and peers in other industries. And they were seeing the same problem. So I went down that rabbit hole, and realize that when it came down to it, it was that women either didn’t know what they were actually worth, they had no idea what their market value was. Or even if they did, they didn’t know how to advocate for it. So that’s where I was like, I’m quitting today. This is my job. And that’s where Salary Coaching For Women started.

Lisa Lewis Miller  9:05  

Wow, that’s a really interesting perspective on the gender wage gap. Because, you know, as somebody who’s similarly been in this space for years, you hear a lot of questions about the validity, like, Oh, well, is the gender wage gap real? Well, what if you control for level of education? What have you control for whether or not the person is a parent? What do you what have you control for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I feel like there is there is a place somewhere in the data, that if you are a, a sis hat, white woman, and you have, you know, a master’s degree or a bachelor’s degree, like some level of education, but there are like three years in which you might be out earning men. But overall, when you look at the data, it’s so shocking and discouraging. And the cross tabs once you start looking at different outcomes by race, just get really really dire. 

Olivia Jaras  10:01  

And I think that there’s a lot to be said for cultural baggage, if you will, as in, you know, when we think about people who are successful were multimillionaires and fly around and jets and all that stuff. The image that is probably going to pop into your head is that of a man, right?

Olivia Jaras  10:23  

I don’t know, I can’t even think of the names of like, multimillionaires and billionaires like we don’t really think about many women when we think of wealth, and when we think of success when it comes down to careers, right. So there’s a starting point in which things are not they’re not equal anymore, like and it’s it’s just before you even enter the workforce, we don’t see women as being capable of the kind of success that men are. Right. So it really is, it’s an internal conversation it is there’s part of it is a cultural conversation. But if you’re aware that that cultural conversation is happening, that you know what, I’m an African American woman, and odds right now are stacked up against me, because this social conversation going around me says that I’m not quite capable of landing that kind of dream job, or that dream salary. 

Olivia Jaras  11:13  

But if you anchor yourself on people who have indeed, achieved that kind of success, and indeed, the person who is revered, beyond anybody else, as the best negotiator on the face of the planet, is Oprah Winfrey, talk to any negotiation expert, and they will hands down, say, Oh my gosh, no, Oprah, she can get anyone on her stage to confess anything that she wants. And by the way, she’s one of the wealthiest women on the planet. Right. And she’s African American, she did not start out with the kind of education that you would have expected. a billionaire to have right, she was raped at 13, I think by an uncle or something along those lines, she, she got pregnant. And she lost she had a miscarriage when she was 13. I don’t know if any of your ladies here in the audience have ever had that. But to have that 13 to be pregnant, have a full birth and then have a miscarriage. That sets you up for failure, let alone that your mom. At this point, she was mentally unstable. She was raised by her grandmother who was a maid in her house in her prayers. Like there’s a really good story. And I’m sure it’s somewhere on YouTube where Oprah’s grandmother is helping Oprah. Or like Oprah is helping her grandmother set out the laundry and hanging it up on the clips outside so it dries out. And her grandmother says to Oprah, you know what you need to learn how to do this really well. So that one day a nice family can hire you, you can do this too. And Oprah is thinking to herself, she’s like, You know what? I see that, I see that this is a path that most women like you and I have gone. But that’s not going to be me. I’m cut out for more. Right? So it starts with that story, right off the bat before you enter a negotiation ever.

Lisa Lewis Miller  13:12  

Hmm. I love that. And I feel like there’s so many things you’ve shared in the past couple minutes, I want to make sure to underline for anybody listening, I think Thing number one is find some role models, you know, if find somebody who has a similar story to you, who looks like you who might have a similar ethnic or religious background to you, that you can point to and say, all right, she or he did it. So this is going to be possible for me. Because if you search you can usually find amazing examples of people, people who may not be you know, as much in the limelight as Oprah. But people who are still incredibly inspirational, powerful kick ass humans, who you can channel a little bit of their their hutzpah, like you could channel a little bit of their energy when you’re walking into any situation around your own worth. But I want to come back to a couple things you were sharing a moment ago, around women, either not knowing and not not recognizing their worth, or not knowing quite how to get it. And I feel like both of those are things that we should we could spend, you know,a whole hour on our own. Riff a second on the not recognizing your own worth piece of this.

Olivia Jaras  14:25  

Well, it’s funny because, you know, there’s this there’s this kind of common knowledge. But the truth is, I’ve seen it to be fairly, fairly accurate is that when a woman and a man fairly equal in qualifications and background, right, nobody’s going to be exactly the same but relatively equal. See a job posting right and the guy sees it. And if he meets 60% of the criteria for the job, his internal story and narrative is going to be like, Oh, I’m a shoo in for this right? If He meets only 60% of the key accountabilities. And that job description is good. Like, I’m, I got this in the bag, I got it. But the woman comes, sees that same position description. If she doesn’t feel like she needs at least 90% of the criteria, she won’t even apply, which is so devastating. Because she’s missing out competing with people, we’re more than likely less than qualified than her. So not knowing your worth is not only a matter of like, it is obviously, a huge component is the internal narrative. But if you don’t know how to put your finger on the pulse of your market, and understand, okay, what is this worth? What is this job worth, in my industry, in my geography? And in this kind of size of company?

Olivia Jaras  15:53  

Then why would I expect anyone else to know my market value? Why do I expect HR at a company to know what my market value is, if I’m the only one who knows what the worth, or if it shouldn’t be the only one who really knows the worth of my career assets and all of that career capital I’ve accumulated over the last however many years you’ve been in the workforce, right? So there’s that side of it is that we don’t know what’s in our backpack. And then there’s the other side of it, that as women, we don’t necessarily realize that, whether we like it or not, we’re showcasing our professional or personal brand, whatever you want to call it. 24. Seven, right, if you created a LinkedIn profile years ago, and you haven’t curated it, well, I’m sorry, but you’re showcasing that obsolete version of you to the world. And recruiters and headhunters and hiring managers. Hands down are preferring to use LinkedIn than rather than any other source to look for candidates, there’s over 600 and 60 million people like you and I hang out on LinkedIn. Right? And and recruiters know this. So they’re looking through these people finding candidates, and no wonder you you’re not being found if your profile is completely obsolete, and you’re not showcasing your way yourself in a persuasive way to attract your dream job holder, you’re not going to get it. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  17:27  

Again, I feel like there are tons of different pieces we could dig into about what you just shared. It feels like making sure that you are presenting who you are externally, in a powerful way such that the conversation starts with a certain impression about who you are, and how valuable you are as a candidate is a really important piece of what you what you teach and what you share with folks. And that makes total sense. Because when we’re entering into a job opportunity and negotiation situation, we start typically with what the company’s perceived value of you is. And you affected that dramatically by how you present and how you put yourself out there. And I’ll share a personal story on this friend for listeners. So when I was back working in corporate, I was working at a communications consulting firm, I was deeply unhappy. And I applied for a job working at an education tech startup. And when I went to the education tech startup, the job that I had applied for was going to be a lateral move, it was going to be I think, a little bit of a pay cut, if anything. But when I went through the interview process, what I talked about in the interview process was how much I loved managing people project teams budget, I talked about my philosophy for how to create a cohesive team and how important it was to me to create a healthy happy culture. I talked about how much I think about other people’s personal development and keeping them happy and retaining team members. And at the end of the interview, the person who became the the CMO of the company, was finishing the interview up and said, Can you consider that conference room for a minute?

Lisa Lewis Miller  19:14  

 And I’m thinking “Oh my gosh, Oh, sure.” So I go, I sit in this conference room for about 20 minutes. And he comes back in with a piece of paper. And he says, Listen, based on the way that this interview is based on what you showed us about what you bring to the table, we decided that you’re not the right fit for the job that that you applied for, and the job that you were interviewing for. And we created a role for you at the managerial level to come in and be a part of this team. And we bumped this out around 20K, how does this feel and so it’s just a point to show people that it’s way that you present who you are. And the value of what you bring to the table makes a huge difference on the price anchoring that a company has in their brain when they think about what it would take to get you on board.

Olivia Jaras  20:13  

Exactly. And everybody think it’s a women in particular think it’s a white or black. situation. Most times when someone’s hiring you into the company, it’s not white or black, there’s a massive gray zone in there. Especially if you’re not being hired into a set salary structure, right? Like in the military, you go from one grade to the next grade. And that literally means that you get paid next, when the next raid is why the next one is z. The most jobs that we’re talking about here, there’s a massive gray zone. And the other thing that women don’t necessarily realize is that they can accept the job offer, but ask for help with a salary. So you basically say, hey, yes, I, I love. Like, I cannot wait to get started with a job. I’m supremely excited. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That said, I really need a little bit of help. You see, when it comes down to the salary I was expecting, closer to 150,000? Let’s say something, if they offer you 100,000 Can you help me get there? Right? You, I don’t want you to go at this conversation saying like, I deserve more I, I was thinking more like $150,000. Because then if you literally say like I was thinking more than like $150,000 you’re alienating the person at the other end of the table. But if instead you ask for help you partner with them in the conversation, it’s a completely different ballgame. You say, Listen, I take this job. I’m excited about I can’t wait to start. That’s it. I really need your help with something. 

Olivia Jaras  21:45  

Can you help me? Get me closer to well, where I was when it comes down to my salary expectations? I was thinking a little bit closer to $150,000. Of course, they’re gonna say no, you should always expect a no, in a negotiation. He absolutely always expect that when you push back, they’re going to say no, they’re going to say no, first of all, because they want to feel in control of the conversation. And it also helps them ground themselves in their position. So what I want you to say is, when they push back, when they say no, you make them feel like they have control of that conversation, you echo what they just said, like, I completely understand that it’s not in the budget, that totally makes sense, like, make them feel grounded, and that they are in control of the conversation. But then I want you to circle back with the same point that you’re trying to make, right? But you you anchor in on that little problem that like that excuse that they gave you. Right? So you say I completely understand that it’s not in the budget right now. Now, can you and I work together to figure out so that I can help bring that into the bottom line so that it can be in the budget? Right? So you kind of help address the core problem that they gave you. And more often than not, that core problem is not going to be the actual problem of the comp, like why they’re not offering it to me, it’s just because it’s 150, you’re going from 100 that’s a lot of money, so they don’t wanna go there. And then they’re gonna say like, okay, yeah, maybe. 

Olivia Jaras  23:24  

But the truth is that the reality is like, HR is never gonna prove it. Right. So there’s gonna be multiple, it’s kind of like peeling an onion, there’s many layers here that you’re going to probably have to circle back to this conversation multiple times. And then you do the same exact thing you like, anchor in on whatever that little problem is. But first, you need to make them feel grounded, right, you butter them up and say, I completely understand that a church not going to be okay with this. That totally makes sense. I mean, they weren’t prepared for that said, Is there any way we could help, perhaps redraft the position description or change my responsibility or do something along the lines so that it does make sense for HR to get me up to this point, right? And you’re going to cycle through that same conversation until you really find out the truth. And when you find out the truth, and you try to resolve that true promo, which more than likely is like they just felt like you know, they wanted to not pay you that much, which is often the case because business of the day is a game and so are negotiations and you can really help resolve that problem for them. And that’s when you you get literally whatever you want. Does that make sense? We’ve had we’ve used this literally this technique to help women negotiate half million dollar raises million dollar raises.

Lisa Lewis Miller  24:47  

It’s a cool technique. I think that that that looping in the circling makes a lot of sense and the way that you’re entering the the negotiation conversation with the Will you help me language is is really interesting. That’s actually something that I’ve never come across in the the research that I’ve done on negotiation. And I’m wondering, how much does that play into differences based on gender identity, or perceived gender,.

Olivia Jaras  25:15  

One hundred percent 100. And that’s a crazy thing. There’s just not enough literature. And this is this is one of the reasons why I started into business because most of them which are out there, I mean, I got all the books on the back in there. And I’ve interviewed many of the authors and such. They don’t differentiate genders. They don’t, there’s like negotiation books on, you know, Getting to Yes, or negotiate anything, or, like, there’s all of these incredible books. Like I’m looking at them right now. But none of them address the innate talents and tools that we have as women to negotiate. And this is something that, like those nurturing schools, skills, motherly skills that we’re told, like, we’re supposed to keep at home, and that they’re, they’re meant for the hot house, like, those are the exact skills that can make you a better negotiator than any guy could ever possibly dream to be. You see, being empathetic, being able to nurture make someone feel nurtured and trusted like that they women have an ability to build this instant bond of trust with people. And these are all things that don’t come so naturally to guys, like, from a social vantage point is okay for a guy to be assertive, direct, and compromising. 

Olivia Jaras  26:38  

Go for it, go achieve their dreams be ambitious, socially. When a female embodies all those traits, and I’m talking regardless of gender, I’m just saying, by virtue of being born a female, you’ve got all these motherly traits, or like, softer traits than men. When you embody these masculine traits. Inevitably, it doesn’t follow the same way as it would if it were a guy. Right? When you come across as assertive, it ultimately falls even if it’s barely perceptible, as aggressive. Right? And this is something that people don’t realize, as women were amazing negotiator. And just again, look at Oprah. She’s not assertive, she’s not aggressive. She is the ultimate nurturer. Everybody trusts her. I’ve never met her. And I trust her. And probably everybody would say the same thing. And she gets everything she wants, because she uses the skills that we’ve been told are meant to keep at home. Right? So yeah, when it comes down to negotiate, it’s just as women were uniquely equipped to outperform a guy any day, but the literature doesn’t seem to take that into account. They haven’t picked up on it. Yeah.

Lisa Lewis Miller  27:59  

Well, and Oprah is a great example, to come back to talk about a little bit more about your own personal perception of your worth, because Oprah would not be able to do any of the stuff that she does so successfully, without also having some power and some leverage and knowing what she has to offer, knowing her platform, knowing her worth having an audience. And so for people who are listening to this, who are thinking like, well, I’m, I’m not Oprah, I don’t have a, you know, a billion dollar media empire in front of me. And they’re trying to think about how do I even understand what I’m worth and what kind of leverage and assets I have to bring to the table? Where do you help people start with that? 

Olivia Jaras  28:44  

Well, I think first thing, first, they need to get Career Clarity, right? They first need to go to you, and get absolute clarity with regards to what they want, right? Because if you don’t know what you want, then you don’t know what you bring to the table. If you’re in any way confused as to what you want to be doing with your life, what your purpose, what your mission and your vision is, you’re screwed. Like this is how you land up in what I call a mediocre career with a mediocre paycheck. If you know what you want, then it’s so clear to you to understand what your strengths are. And you know, to play your strengths and not focus in on your weaknesses, right, that case that you just gave me right there. It’s evident to me that that woman in that case scenario does not know her strengths, because she’s playing her weaknesses, right? If you’re playing in what I call your genius zone, and you know what you want, you know how to bring it to the table, you know, to wrap your conversation around what you’re good at, and what you actually bring to the table rather than what you’re not bringing to the table. Does that make sense?

Lisa Lewis Miller  29:54  

Well, I’ll contextualize it for for listeners who might be having a tough time sort of sinking their teeth into it. So imagine that you are a person, let’s say you’re a marketing manager at a company, and you are considering a career change, and you’re trying to figure out what direction to go. One Direction you might be considering is going into HR. And you really want to help with employee engagement and internal communications and coaching. Once you know that, that’s what you want. And those are some of the component parts of it. The way that you position yourself and your brand, what you bring to the table is relative to where you want to go. So if you want to get into HR, then the things you’re going to talk about from your marketing background are going to be things like helping individuals with branding and positioning or the time when you helped with an employee engagement program, or the time that you were helping with a change management project for a company that was going through a merger and acquisition. And similarly, if you’re a marketing manager, and you really want to make a transition into being a copywriter, and the way you talk about what you bring to the table, and who you are, is totally different. Right? If you want to move into copywriting, you’re going to be emphasizing, I am a fantastic writer, here’s all the nonfiction writing, I’ve done. Here’s all the fiction writing I’ve done here is the editing that I’ve done, here are all the different trade publications that I am, you know, paying attention to, so I can keep my fingers on the pulse of what’s going on. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  31:22  

So I think that the the punchline here is that for everybody listening, you have an incredible amount of things that you bring to the table. And the way to make those things even more valuable than they already are, is to strategically highlight the ones that are going to be the most interesting, and the most exciting and the best fit for the direction that you want to move in. It’s not that any of the other valuable, not that any of the other things that you bring to the table are not valuable. But that by strategically curating who you are and painting a very narrow, targeted picture of what you can do for somebody, you can often increase the perceived value of your skills, your experiences and your relationships, just by being thoughtful and strategic.

Olivia Jaras  32:12  

Exactly, amen. Yep. Awesome, dude.

Lisa Lewis Miller  32:17  

Well, Olivia, I’m wondering, before we close for today, knowing that the biases and the perceptions that each individual faces in a negotiation are unique, and that some people face different and harder biases because of their racial background, because of their age. Do you have any specific advice for people who are anticipating that they might have to be facing some extra levels of bias in order to still be able to negotiate for a top dollar opportunity?

Olivia Jaras  32:48  

Mm hmm. I would say when you’re anticipating bias, right, you’re only face this a lot in negotiations with some of our, like, male dominated industry, ladies is that they know that that’s coming, right, they can perceive they know that they’re women in a male dominated industry. And we see this a lot in tech. And in the finance and banking industry. The way that I would say is the best way that you can possibly address it is on one end, put create leverage, right? So put your finger back on the pulse of your market, understand what your position is worth in the market, and get legitimate comps, right? Don’t just go to salary.com or the ladders.com and pull some market data because I guarantee you 100% of the time, HR, the comp department is going to tell you like oh, that’s junk data. We don’t actually use that data, right. I mean, we have a bunch of resources at salary coaching, if you’re interested in figuring out like how to really get an accurate read on your market value, we can help them with that. But when it comes down to, you know that you’re going to be facing these extra layers, understand very clearly what your market value is. 

Olivia Jaras  34:05  

But Furthermore, generate leverage, start fishing for opportunities, because when you generate leverage, you come from a very different position of strength to the negotiation table. You’re not being perceived, as most women tend to be perceived as a captive audience, right? Like, she’s not going anywhere. So if we say no, and we don’t give it to her, she’s still not going to go anywhere. Because women tend to be more loyal than men. Men, they tend to get pushed back, they leave, right? But I want you to come to the negotiation table saying, Hey, listen, I don’t want to go anywhere. But this other company is offering me $150,000. Can you help me get to that point, again, partner with them, don’t alienate them, because that builds even further loyalty and further rapport. Right. So as long as you own one and know what you’re worth You know how to create leverage. But Furthermore, understand that if you believe that you’re worth less than a guy, that’s going to permeate every single word you speak, because 20% of what we’re saying comes out of our words, the rest is your nonverbal communication, your thoughts permanent permeate your body language, and the way you carry yourself all day long.

Olivia Jaras  35:25  

So if you don’t feel confident, it’s gonna read and they’re going to pick up on it, maybe not tangibly. Like they might not be consciously perceiving it, but they will at the subconscious level, and they’re gonna be like, we can play this down. Does that make sense? 

Lisa Lewis Miller  35:43  

I love that you’re outlining the importance of mindset, the importance of self perception, and saying leverage, you know, the importance of identifying as many other opportunities and possibilities as you can both are competitive offers, but there are also plenty of ways to create leverage just based on you and who you are and what you bring to the table.

Olivia Jaras  36:03  

Play the game. Exactly. Absolutely.

Lisa Lewis Miller  36:07  

So for people who have been listening to this conversation, Olivia and I have been really appreciating your perspective and your thoughts. Where can they find out more about you and your work? 

Olivia Jaras  36:16  

Well, they can go to either OliviaJaras.com and we got to many places, but the place that we are, I think we’re most excited about is the empower society, so it’s empowerhersociety.com. And then there’s OliviaJaras.com or salarycoaching.com. They’re all kind of different threads for what we do. But ultimately, all all roads lead to Rome. So yeah, I’m so excited. Thank you so much for having me here.

Lisa Lewis Miller  36:51  

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Olivia, we appreciate it.

Olivia Jaras  36:54  

Thank you.

Lisa Lewis Miller  36:56  

If you are appreciating Olivia’s message and insights and wisdom about the negotiation process as much as I was, I’d love to hear your feedback, whether as a direct email to me at Lisa@get Career Clarity.com or as a review on Apple podcasts. We here at Career Clarity Show trying to give you any tools, resources, etc. that can help for you to feel empowered, clear and confident about how to make some moves in your career that feel really good for you. So any ideas you have about ways we can serve you even more powerfully are incredibly appreciated. And if you haven’t gotten your hands on it already, that Career Clarity Show book is out in the world. So if you want to pick up a copy of that or read the first couple of chapters for free, head to GetCareerClarity.com/book to find out more and to get any of the links and things that we’ve mentioned on today’s episode. Don’t forget to get tools etc. At GetCareerClarity.com/podcast. You’ll also see a direct link to this in the show notes from today. And remember, if you don’t love your work, we should talk because the Life is too short to be doing work that doesn’t light you up. Talk to you next time.

About the Author Lisa Lewis

Lisa is a career change coach helping individuals feeling stuck to find work that fits. She helps people clarify who they are, what they want most, and what a great job for them looks like so they can make their transition as easily as possible. Lisa completed coaching training in Jenny Blake’s Pivot Method, Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter Sessions, Kate Swoboda's Courageous Living Coaching Certification, and the World Coaches Institute. In addition to that, she apprenticed with the top career coaches in the country so she can do the best possible work with — and for — you. She's helped more than 500 individuals move into more fulfilling, yummy careers and would be honored to get to serve you next!

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