Let’s Talk About Salary
As a society, the norm has been to avoid talking about money and, more specifically, your salary. Corporate America has taught us that speaking about your salary isn't politically correct and or appropriate. I, unlike corporate America, totally disagree with this thought. I have always seen this as a tactic that helps corporations and entities to underpay employees. Being left in the dark regarding what your peers are making leaves little to no room for you to ask for more money. In my opinion, discussing salary specifics with your peers, friends, and family should not be taboo.
Sharing information, in general, is powerful, especially when you share your salary/income with your friends and family members. Being open about your income helps others achieve their financial worth within businesses that they may work for or take on as clients. When we are cryptic or flat out avoid speaking on income, it opens the door for us to leave money on the table, become underpaid, or become undervalued. We must stop the notion that speaking about income is a terrible thing or impolite.
It is not uncommon for me to ask my close friends, "how much money do you make?" It felt uncomfortable at first, but over time my friends and I laughed it off and started leaning into the conversation. Introducing the topic, especially to those in the same industry, helps you understand what is possible and whether or not you are currently leaving money on the table. Ask your friends questions revolving around how they achieved their salary, what their end of year bonus is, what kind of incentives they have, if they received a signing bonus, and what they are studying to add to their skillset. Trust me, I understand how uncomfortable this conversation can be, especially if you are not openly confident with your current income level. Hopefully, this dialogue will help you know what the possibilities are and how you can begin to acquire more.
Benchmarking salaries is imperative. If you are in corporate America, utilize salary tools like Vault, Glassdoor, Salary.com, and PayScale, to name a few. If you are a freelance worker, ask your peers their pay rates or ask them to read over your contract and to provide their thoughts on your pay. Please speak with your mentors within your industry and talk with them about what they were getting paid starting out and whether or not your current pay rate is in line with the industry. Be sure to read your contracts thoroughly, and if something is off or doesn't sit well with you, speak now before signing. I work in human resources. There are countless numbers of people who try to negotiate or challenge aspects of their contracts after they have already signed it. Trying to negotiate after you have signed a contract is a terrible tactic as most companies, entities, or people will be hesitant to renegotiate a contract that has already been signed.
By speaking candidly with your friends, family, and peers to benchmark your pay, it helps ensure you are leaving little to no money behind. A millionaire mentor of mine taught me that "everything is negotiable… so negotiate." My wife and I are personally chasing our millionaire friends and mentors, and we look to them for guidance and feedback. We need insight into how they were able to become wealthy and when they hit certain income thresholds. Knowing this helps us add specific tactics and strategies to our working styles and approaches. It also highlights our areas of opportunity where we may need to add to our overall skillset. It is unrealistic to expect or even ask for top dollar when you are not willing to work at getting better and adding to your repository of skills that you are offering daily.
The number can be astounding in regard to how much money is left on the table or how often people do not receive their worth by simply not knowing what their peers are being paid. Reflect on the time that you have committed towards your education or your freelancing/entrepreneurial skillset and put that same amount of time and energy towards achieving what you believe your worth to be. If you are ethnically diverse, a woman, or both, there is a very high possibility that you are being underpaid in comparison to some, if not all, of your white peers regardless of your education or experience. We collectively need to work to change this by sharing our salary/income, sharing our tactics with the people we love and care about, speaking up, and asking for our worth to narrow this gap. We need to shift the conversation from taboo to becoming a standard norm for the process to be fair and equitable across all industries, regardless of race or gender.