John Bates - Salary Negotiation Expert, international Best-Selling Author of "Act Your Wage"

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W four CY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helenan believes that certainly applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com and now your host, Kevin Helena.

0:54 Thanks everybody for joining in today. I am Kevin Hallan, and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on W four cy dot com. We're streaming live on Talk the Number four talkfour tv dot com, and we're streaming streaming live on Facebook and at Winning Business at at Winning Business Radio, and of course we're available in podcasts after the Lime Live show. While I can't talk today wherever you get your podcast content, that's YouTube, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple. The mission of Winning Business radio and TV, as regular viewers and listeners know, is really to offer insights and advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others, to learn best practices.

1:37 Those are the how tos, the what. Tos, the what not tos, to be challenged and hopefully to be inspired by the successes of others. Who are those others consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and owners, entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But you know, virtually every successful person I've ever talked to has had some form of failure in their lives and careers. As I say every time, while we all have to get our knees skinned once in a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it. I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses to grow from solopreneurs to small and medium sized companies all the way up to the Fortune fifty. I've seen some of those companies win, and to varying degrees, I've seen some fail, and I've had the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the highest performing people around and with some who probably should have found other professions. And in my own businesses, I've had lots of success, but some failures too. I like to think I've learned a lot from those experiences. So yeah, you'll hear from me, but mostly you're going to hear from our guests, those experts, consultants, coaches, advisors, etc.

2:44 And today is no exception. My guest today's John Gates pay negotiation, negotiation expert, keynote speaker, and best selling author of Act Your Wage. Here's his bio. John Gates is an international best selling author and Egotian expert negotiation expert who has overseen more than seventy five thousand not a typo job offers during his thirty year career in corporate recruiting. As a former head of global recruiting for multiple Fortune five hundred companies, he trained hiring teams on how to negotiate, giving him rare insider insight into what actually works. Now. The creator of the salary Coach method, John helps executives and job seekers confidently navigate offer conversations without risking the deal.

3:30 His sessions blend sharp strategy with a calming, practical tone that audiences love and apply immediately. John's a mission driven speaker who loves leaves professionals saying why didn't anyone teach me this sooner? He's the international best selling author of Act Your Wage, What to Say and How to Say It to get the best possible salary package. He holds a bachelor's in Management and Finance, a double major from the University of Oregon. He resides in Medford, Oregon, and has five kids, two boys and three girls. With an interesting story, but we'll get to that in a moment. John, Welcome to Winning Business Radio. Thanks so much Kevin for having me. I was so excited to hear about your show, and now that I'm here, I am absolutely thrilled. It's going to be a fun ride today.

4:13 I agree. I agree. And before we're done, John, we're going to promo a second appearance, which is a little unusual, but we're going to do it. So tell us about your kids. So I have five children. Two of them, excuse me, two of them are biological. They're both boys, and the three girls are all adopted and adopted them when they were older. Children like most people who expand through adoption adopt when they are you know, children are very young. They do that for specific personal reasons. But you know, I wanted to impact the lives of people that were already somewhat formed and so on, and so I adopted two girls from Columbia, South America when they were ten and seven, and now they're about thirty and twenty seven, so they've come a long way. And adopted another girl from Alabama. Met her through the foster care system when she was sixteen, actually adopted her when she was in her mid to late twenties, and now she is thirty seven.

5:22 So most people have no idea why you would adopt a child, or anyone for that matter, who's older than age eighteen. But over the years, I built a very personal relationship with this person, she had been involved in the family. I'd become a primary advisor for her in a lot of ways of her life. And I know that people who grow up without a family identity are at risk in a lot of ways. Like I think, you need to know where you belong to who you are. That's really foundational life for any person.

6:04 So and I know in today's you know, in today's world, it's controversial to even say a father figure, but I believe people I think you do too, need both a mother and a dad. Yeah, absolutely true, and people who don't have that have a really hard time making good choices. Children who age out of foster care are significantly higher for criminal backgrounds, for single motherhood, single fatherhood. Basically, they make less desirable decisions throughout their life. Data bears this out. If you look at the prison population of the United States, a very large portion of those folks are people who aged out of the foster system without any sort of meaningful family connection. And if you think about it this way, this is kind of how it works. Like I don't know about you, Kevin, but when I was growing up, a lot of the reasons why I didn't do certain things is because Grandma would have been ashamed if I had been caught doing or I would have disappointed my mother or something like that kind of acts as a curb on your behavior. It enhances your conscience in those situations.

7:22 But if you're growing up in a group home, which is where most foster teens live, who are your influencers, Well, they're usually going to be state employees or other foster kids that you're in that group home with, who are equally like untethered. And I think that's why bad choice is life altering decisions. You know, the face tattoo or something like that happens to you when you're in that situation. It's funny you were saying that, and I remember my grandmother, My mom's maiden name was Rachuti Italian, and she would my grandmother always say, would always say, make sure they know you're a rachutee. I mean, she was really about reputation and good choices. But you just reminded me of that.

8:14 So now you grew up in Oregon as well. Yeah, I did. I was born here, raised here, lived in Portland and Eugene, graduated from the University of Oregon in Eugene, and then sometime around nineteen ninety eight I left Oregon to chase the Fortune five hundred career. I ended up moving to Richmond, Virginia, which is about as far away from Oregon as you can get and still be in the continental US. And after that I went to Birmingham, Alabama, then to Fort Wayne, Indiana, then to Saint Louis, Missouri, then to Houston, Texas and now back in Oregon. So I've lived in a lot of places.

8:56 Yeah, we're going to talk about some of those positions. What were your early interests though, before college? Before college? A great question. So when I was in middle school, I wanted to be an astronaut, and that was no like casual interest either. I actually reverse engineered the path I would need to take in seventh grade. I did this on my own figure out well, all right, I thought about, how do most people get to become astronauts, and typically they are navy pilots something like that. And so how do you become a naval aviator, top gun guy something like that. Well, you need to have an appointment to the Naval Academy. How do you get that?

9:44 You need the you know, a sponsor, like a senator or somebody like that usually to get you into the naval academy. That's very helpful. So I was thinking about this stuff at the age of I don't know, twelve or twelve years old. I was really good. What I was going to do was really inspired. It was a huge goal of mine to become an astronaut. A little later on in life, though, I switched over to wanting to be a scientist, and then I figured, well, you know, all the scientists of the world, they work for business people, and so then I decided to shift over into a business focus and always had a strong interest in owning my own company one day, so I majored in management and finance, thinking that that would help me toward owning my own company one day.

10:36 Here, I am, what was behind your decision to go to your organ. I lived there at the time. Actually thought about getting into a university in California called Harvey Mud University, which a lot of people don't know about Harvey Mud, but it's like an mi I on the West Coast, very niche. The best science nerds of the universe go to Harvey Mutt. I actually didn't get in. It was a shock. I was one of these people. It was used to achieving everything. Took five advanced placement courses as a senior in high school science, languages, and music, so I was very very well rounded and active in the community, and I still didn't get in, very very selective. So it was after that that I sort of did some rediscovery and decided just to attend the University of Oregon because it was local.

11:39 I was going to fund all of my own university costs. My family weren't in any position to help me at the time, so I ended up figuring out the most efficient path to completing university with the smallest investment possible. Man. Back in those days, they would charge you full time tuition for twelve or more credits in a term, and I took advantage of that, taking eighteen to twenty one credits a term, oh Man to to reduce the cost per class basically, And that was that was the way I was thinking about things. I guess I've always been a little bit of a logical pathfinder in those ways.

12:27 Yeah. I remember my student loan payment was fifty five dollars a month, I mean, and I thought that was a lot. You know. I worked my way through college. Like Besides that sort of heavy courseload, I worked thirty hours a week at Domino's Pizza Oh wow, Yeah, slinging pizza and try not to speed because back then there was a thirty minute guarantee. They had to do away with that eventually, But that made working at domino Is exciting and fun. It was a place I. Can challenge every delivery, right Yeah, yeah, So how did you I mean kind of a big answer here, just maybe the last question before our first commercial break, But how did you get to recruiting and talent management at such a high level.

13:17 Well, the first part of that is how did I get into it at all? Like I wanted to be a financial analyst and got an offer while I was in college to join a big tech company in Portland, Oregon to be a financial analyst. And three weeks before I got that I was supposed to start, they sent me a message, a letter saying We're so sorry, but we're rescinding all offers for anyone who hasn't started yet. So I had that happen to me once. Yeah, too bad, So sad you're laid off before you even start. And so I was in a position where I was newly married, had a son on the way he wasn't born yet, my first son, and terrified. So I ended up just networking like crazy. It took me three months in a poor economy in the Pacific Northwest to find my job after college, and I ended up recruiting for a temporary agency in Portland. They hired me because I had a degree and I could speak Spanish, and I looked good in a suit, and that was the criteria. They wanted me to go open a new office in Hillsboro, which and that was heavily hispanic at the time, and they wanted someone who could recruit that population, translate all the testing and application materials, and then dispatch people on temporary assignment. And that's how I got my job,

14:49 first job in recruiting, and I've been there ever since. Five years later, I decided to join corporate recruiting, leave the temporary agency industry behind, and very quickly rose into leadership. So I think by the time two thousand and two came around, I was leading a recruiting function, building one from scratch, and then went into leadership in the Fortune five hundred. Well, all right, hold that thought, everybody. We're going to come right back with John Gates in about a minute after this break. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.

15:36 Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. Best in Wealth Management is family owned for two generations. They take pride in thoughtful financial planning and wealth management with a family feel for your closely held family business. Best in Wealth Management focuses on deep planning, integrating your business planning with personal They will help put your money to work and your mind at ease. Go to Bestinwealthmanagement dot com for more information. Advisory services offered through. Commonwealth Financial Network, a registered investment advisor. Join the Best Family and let our family advise your family. That's Bestinwealthmanagement dot com for your complementary initial consultation.

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17:17 Welcome back. We are with John Gates, pay negotiation expert, best selling international best selling author and keynote speaker. You you're judging from I use LinkedIn as a source document. Of course, you joined it T which is a company that I haven't heard a lot about, even though they're giant. I was in the private career school business and I of course remember it T Tech and knew some people that. Worked there as a divisional recruiting leader. Tell us about that role. And we'll get into some of the others as well. That was interesting, actually, he takeaways yet.

17:58 Yeah, I started that job actually as a response to the two thousand and seven two thousand and eight financial crisis that we all know about. Before that, I actually took a chance and started my own recruiting business the first time, hung out my own shingle and decided to specialize in the mining sector because that was what I was just coming out of talent acquisition in the mining sector. Was going to do a lot of headhunting in that. And then I sensed the economic headwinds of the two thousand Starting in two thousand and seven, I didn't know if I had the right financial depth to weather a significant storm, and I didn't know if this was going to be a blip or a tsunami. So I decided to shutter the business, and I took this job in Fort Wayne, Indiana. And this ITT at the time was a conglomerate company they controlled. It was a lot of technology and so on. At one time in the past, I think the IT Technical Institute was part of their holdings, but they divested that and still now people when they hear the name, they think of the technical school. But this in Fort Wayne, Indiana, they were making battlefield radios for the US Army, so all the radio units that slide into a hum vy or fit into a tank or something like that. They were also doing satellite navigation equipment,

19:32 things that would give surveillance advantage to troops on the ground. But it was a defense company and for the last twenty five or thirty years they'd been operating that facility producing this kind of technical equipment for the military, And so I thought, Hey, this will be a nice safe place to go and be and if I like it, I can stay there. Two and a half three years later, I got laid off because the defense industry just got hammered with massive budget cuts in the federal government. And I had this was the most advanced sort of talent acquisition job that was available in the small community of Fort Wayne, Indiana at the time. So I was pretty sure I was going to have to relocate if I was going to continue my career in ta and that's what then moved me to Saint Louis, Missouri, and that was Pebety Energy YEP. Worked for Peabody Energy for four years.

20:35 Global Mining Powerhouse. What a fun company to work for. Some of the best people I've ever met in my professional life worked at Peabody Energy and they had mining operations all over the planet, and I was ahead of recruiting there, so I was responsible directly for all recruiting in the US and dotted line responsibility for all Australia and China and any other markets that they wanted to expand into. They were toying with the idea of launching a mine in Mongolia, in southern Mongolia, and I had the responsibility to figure out the staffing plan for that mine, and that was really really fun. How are you going to staff it? You need hundreds and hundreds of people where no people live. I saw pictures of the Gobi Desert in Mongolia and it looked like Mars Kevin. It was like red sand. No trees, just rocks and sand and everything from hundreds of miles around. After I got far down the path of figuring out how are we going to staff that, the company ended up curtailing that investment because they couldn't come to terms with the Chinese government.

21:55 And you would imagine that what is China have to say about what happens in southern Mongolia. It has to do with flight evacuations. If somebody gets hurt at the mindsight, you want to be able to evacuate the wounded person. And Peabody else has always had a gold plated philosophy around safety. That was something that I truly loved about representing them as a recruiter. They were always much more concerned about safety than a lot of other mining companies, and they couldn't get clear like flying that close to the border of China, if you have an uncleared flight plan or something like that, you're just going to get shot down. So we couldn't resolve that issue, and so decided to scuttle the whole idea of doing this based on that. Until that could be fixed, there was just no way they would commit to building something there that was going to last for one hundred and forty years, So.

23:09 That would have been almost like generating or creating a city or town. Yeah. Yeah, it's like picture of the old fashioned company town where you would have told build a town with all the infrastructure of a town, a fire department, a police department, housing for people, place for them to get food, and entertainment, everything else. Yes, schools are kids, and then training infrastructure, like how are you going to teach the rural Mongolian population who doesn't know how to drive a car to drive a four hundred ton rock truck safely?

23:49 And you've probably seen these giant mining rigs where the tires are twice the size of a man. You could run over an f one point fifty and not even know you've done it in one of those. So there was a lot and we were imagining that this would be a multi generational situation where you would recruit Mongolian nationals to staff most of the mind. You would bring in initially international expats to lead and train and do all that with a period of time where you're going to hand over and train up to Mongolian nationals over the course of several years, eventually just handing the whole thing off to mostly local people, and then you would probably employ their children and then maybe even their grandchildren.

24:42 So sorry, it reminds me of visiting the Hoover Dam and they built Boulder City. M That sort of idea doesn't exist often in today's economy, But in the mining business I learned that it's geologic time. Really, it takes years to create to go from greenfield project to actual revenue production. So you have to be looking at the price of commodities and be pretty sure that three four or five years from now, when you're starting to get the money recouped from your investments, that the commodity price is going to justify actually operating the thing.

25:26 So every mining project has break even point, just like anything else. I learned this in the oil business as well. You might have a price per ton of I don't know for coal, maybe it's twenty dollars a ton or something. It's like that. Well, if it costs you twenty two dollars a ton to get it out of the ground, you're not gonna You're just gonna shutterer the thing until the economy or the price of that commodity shifts to where it's favorable. And there was an old say in that industry that you've got to make You've got to make hay while the sun is shining. So if the commodity prices go way up and you have an operating asset, you're going to try to double staff, triple staff, you know, do what you can to produce, to expand production during that window, because there will come a time. Sure is anything a few years down the road where the commodity price goes below what it costs you to get it out, and then you're laying people off, you're slowing things down, you're waiting for the market to return.

26:40 So after that, you made it to Marathon Oil head of talent acquisition mm hmm yep. I moved out of Saint Louis down to Houston, Texas to take on the head of talent acquisition for Marathon Oil. And that was a terrific job. I reported to a challenging personality there. That was fun. And for those listening, you probably have also had times when you had great bosses and difficult bosses to work for. And so three months after joining Marathon Oil, the price of oil dropped from ninety five dollars a barrow to sixty five dollars a barrel. Huge, yep, and their break even point was somewhere in the forties. And then over the next few months after that it went from sixty five down to a low of twenty six dollars a barrel. So that was a shock. They were underwater. And this has been the case throughout my career. When you are the head of town acquisition or you work in corporate recruiting. As soon as the company you work for decides it's time to get smaller, the people who make the company bigger are pretty easy targets for layoff packages stuff for that.

28:04 So I helped Marathon Oil go through four rounds of layoffs, you know, having the conversations, escorting people out of the building, doing all that until the fun part. Yeah, it was finally down to me and an ACE recruiter that I had selected and hired. We were the only survivors of the talent acquisition team at that point and more cutting had to be made. So they decided to cut the expensive head of the function and take the ACE recruiter and fold her under another HR leader. That was something they felt they could do at the time, so I took a layoff package and hung out my shingle again.

28:50 So yeah, Recruiting Transformations tell us about that company. Yeah. So, Recruiting Transformations is a company where I help manufact acting businesses mainly to fix their broken recruiting process. So if they takes too long to hire people, or they're spending too much money on search agencies, or their internal recruiting function has a bad reputation, or they seem unresponsive or something needs to be done and they don't know how to fix that problem, then I can go in and help them fix it. And sometimes I act as an interim leader if they've just fired their head of recruiting or somebody is on a maternity leave or something like that. I love those interim leadership gigs. Those are a lot of fun. But I did that for several years before starting Salary Coach.

29:45 Can you give us a couple of highlights? Yeah, so, I guess the best highlight of that time with Recruiting Transformations is a company called DLL, which is a financial services company based in the Netherlands. Their head of recruiting was going to go on maternity leave and so they reached out to me to ask me if I would cover during that time. But also the head of HR wanted to know if there was anything that could be done to improve the function. So while I was going to be there for three months holding down the fort, she wanted me to do my typical analysis and diagnosis of what could be improved and build a roadmap for that, so when the current TA leader came back, she would have a list of action items and things to pursue. Well, she came back for about a week and then decided that she didn't want to come back after all, and then they extended me. I ended up doing that for a year. It was completely remote and so it was all during the pandemic and travel restrictions.

31:01 Nobody was traveling anywhere, so I was in zoom calls all day long working on stuff, fixing stuff, rolling out new process. That was an absolute blast, and I left there on extremely good terms. I missed the team very much. In fact, behind me somewhere here, I've got a picture of me with the team. We finally were allowed to gather face to face nice to finally build a global recruiting process. So that company they were operating in like twenty seven to thirty countries worldwide, and each country had its own recruiting process, and so that was a big thing where we're trying to achieve together was to create a uniform global recruiting process that everyone could agree to.

31:52 We needed to get there so that we could share recruiting resources. So say the Germany recruiter was slow, it would be very difficult for them to help out the recruiter in Southern Europe because the processes were completely different. Now, with a uniform process, we could share resources across boundaries much easier that way, So that's one. I also was interim head of HR for a company called Analogic, and Analogic is in Boston. They make the stuff that scans your bags at the airport for explosives and things that shouldn't be there. Very interesting. I love technology companies. I relate really well to engineers and just love the talent issues with engineering heavy companies. So that was an interesting situation.

32:52 Lasted about seven months and it was really sort of like, I don't know, it was nebulous. It was one of these things that wasn't scoped really well. They wanted the improvement roadmap. I was acting like an interim head, but didn't have that formal title, so it was it was just a little bit squishy here and there, a lot of political nuance within that company. I really enjoyed the time there. Ultimately helped them to select and hire a new permanent head of HR. And she's been phenomenal in terms of taking what I started and finishing it with her own set of priorities and so on. So I like doing that kind of work.

33:41 All right, We're going to take another break right here for about a minute. Everybody will be back in just a minute with John Gates. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go way. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. Best in Wealth Management is family owned for two generations. They take pride in thoughtful financial planning and wealth management with a family feel for your closely held family business. Best in Wealth Management focuses on deep planning, integrating your business planning with personal They will help put your money to work and your mind at ease. Go to Bestinwealthmanagement dot com for more information. Advisory service is offered through Commonwealth Financial Network, a registered investment Advisor, Join the best family and let our family advise your family. That's Bestinwealthmanagement dot com for your complementary initial consultation.

34:46 The YP dot com website is your local search engine. If you're looking for a good restaurant, it can help you find the right one nearby with ratings and reviews. Or if your car breaks down, you can use the YP app to find the closest repair shop. Or maybe your looking for something to do on a Friday night. Well, it has great local coupons for all sorts of things in your area, no matter what, when or where. If you're looking for something, YP local search can help you find it. So go to YP dot com or download the app to search local, find local, and save local. And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene, presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helene.

35:40 We are back again with John Gates. So tell us take us from a sante or santy I think in healthcare and then to salary coach in twenty one. Yep, yep, okay, so excuse me. So, after a while of consulting I decided it was time to come back to Oregon, and I had an opportunity to join a company which is a significant healthcare provider in southern Oregon, and they were going to pay for my relocation and everything back to Oregon. So I thought, well, Okay, maybe it's time for me to dive back into the corporate world.

36:21 I was really aligning with a mission of Assante. It's a regional healthcare company, so they have three hospitals and over fifty medical clinics throughout southern Oregon. And I never lived in Southern Oregon. It sounds like a really cool opportunity, and I loved the people of this place, so it was a great chance for me to come and do that. And just like a lot of opportunities though, you start working and you have this dream boss that you're working for, and people listening might be able to relate to this. You join a company because there's such amazing alignment between what you want to do and what your boss wants you to do. And so there was a CEO shift a couple of years into my tenure with Assante. The old CEO retired, they brought in a new CEO, and the new CEO fired my boss, so he fired a couple of people actually, and the new boss, the new head of HR, had conflicts with me and what I wanted to do. So I performed best with a boss who says, I don't know a lot about recruiting. John, I'm hiring you because you know a lot about it,

37:52 So please go solve these problems. Just tell me how you're going to go about it, and then I'll provide you some political cover bridge and the budget that you need and everything else. So the new head of HR was an absolute micromanager, and I die under that kind of leadership. I can't handle it. The days grew from ten hour days to fourteen plus hour days trying to please the micromanaging nature of playing bows and that was tough.

38:32 So I thought, well, you know, it's time for me to leave and to go back to being independent because that's what I truly love doing. So I got back into recruiting transformations. And then sometime during the you know, following the Great Resignation, I don't know if you remember, Yeah, there was a period of time where during the pandemic where everyone was quitting their jobs and companies were hiring lots of people, and it was a very favorable recruiting environment. Sometime during that then, the FED started to raise interest rates, and I knew from all the previous shifts in my career that and rapid increases of the interest rate is going to cool the hiring economy quite a bit. I knew that was coming, and so I started thinking, Well, if recruiting nationwide or even internationally hits the skids, what is it that I'm going to do? And I started thinking about all the things that I was good at.

39:43 What could I offer? And that's how I came up with salary coach. Because for years and years I had helped friends and family to negotiate their pay. I knew a lot about how to do that safely because I was the guy on the other side of the negotiating table or my whole career. I knew what mistakes look like. I knew what annoyance. I knew what would annoy me, what would annoy hiring managers, what would introduce risks? I knew what would be the safe path forward, And so I just took some time and I developed a salary coach method. I wrote Act your Wage, I launched Salary coach.

40:24 But before I did any of that, I did a pilot program a few years ago, maybe four years ago now. I went out to LinkedIn and I found some job seekers and I said, I'm thinking about launching this as a product line, but I want to test if I can work effectively with people that I don't know, that aren't members of my inner circle. So I'll do this for you for free. I'll be your advisor. I'll tell you how to navigate the upcoming offer process or the money conversations at every step, I'll walk you through that as a silent advisor, and let's measure the results together.

41:05 And if you want to do this, I'll do it for free. I just wanted to test it. And every single one of I did that with ten people, every single one of them had a gain. The lowest gain was nine thousand, and the highest was in the low fifties. I think it was fifty two to fifty four thousand gain in the package. And then as soon as I finished that, I knew I had a business that could be win win, that would be helpful to the people that need that help. And I really started realizing just how many people leave money on the table I tracked this when I was ahead of recruiting. I started doing that when I worked for Capital one Financial around y two K because i'd, you know, just been I'd already been laid off a couple of times. I wanted the self defense of data, and so I started tracking it.

42:00 I set a goal, Kevin, to cover my annual salary every month in negotiation savings. So I knew how much money people were leaving on the table, and I achieved that that goal ten months out of twelve. Typically. It was something that I felt would insulate me from future layoffs. So I started tracking it. And it is shocking how much money people leave on the table and they don't know they're doing it. The typical experienced professional is probably leaving five figures on the table. Somebody who's senior it could well be six figures. I just closed a deal out today with a six figure game, nearly two hundred thousand dollars in the package.

42:52 So you talk about mindsets, sorry to interrupting. Mindset's being critical, and fear is one of those mindsets, right, absolutely a little bit. Yeah, So fear is when I was writing Actor Wage, I asked, I interviewed one hundred people, men and women, and I asked them, do you negotiate? Do you not negotiate? Do you do? You? Kind of pick at it, poke at it. I ended up concluding that my statistics were still right. Eighty percent of people don't negotiate at all, or it's just a very very light approach to negotiating. I'd say, of the remaining twenty percent, ten percent screw it up phenomenally bad, and the other ten percent do it effectively. And what happens, though, is you apply to a job you want, right you go through the application process, and then the phone rings. It's a job you want, and somebody like me will say, hey, Kevin, what's your salary expectation? And you know it's a screening question. You know you don't have much leverage right now because nobody knows about you except for the screener. You really want to interview with a hiring manager, and there's this gatekeeper you have to get by. So you're afraid that if you answer this question wrong, you're going to lose the chance to interview and move forward, and that fear pushes

44:25 you into a corner. Really, you tend to low ball yourself right at this point, or you do the opposite and you give a number that's way too large, thinking you have leverage that you don't, and then you get screened out, and those both of those things happen. You know that there's high stakes, you know, when you are interviewing for a job, especially if you're unemployed, the fear is better because the stakes are there. Right, you've already figured out when you become homeless because you don't have a salary or an come. You might have a severance package or something like that, and so the pressure is on to get something and get it fast. And because of that pressure, you'll settle, settle for less. You just want to get rid of this uncertainty in your life.

45:17 And this happens at the offer stage too. That's why people don't negotiate. They get the offer that they see the they see the promised land of stable employment and an income returned and benefits, health insurance. All these things are things they cannot afford to risk letting go stock hostro Yeah, and they're worried that if they push it, they will lose the chance to move forward, and or they'll have their offer yanked away and then they'll have to explain to their entourage of people that depend upon them, Yeah, that they you know, screwed it up at the finish line, and they don't want that to happen, so so they play it except excessively safe. And so, like I'm in a my whole practice is built around how to minimize the risk of these conversations while maximizing the offer. And there are ways to do that. Most people just don't know how, and that's what I offer.

46:22 Can you give a summary, I mean without revealing too much, because I'm sure it's a proprietary process that people pay for, but can you give us a generalization of it's a five step process, right. Yeah, there's a salary coach method. And so the first thing you have to do is satisfy the screener who's going to ask you that first pay question with an answer that's going to help you get the interview without destroying your ability to negotiate later. You can't paint yourself into a corner right there, just to you know, you can't sell your future offer cheap just to get the interview. And this happens all the time. So there's that. And then once you get the interview, you have to climb up the value ladder in the interview. So you have to learn to answer interview questions in a way that frames you as a high value person because what comes next is the offer approval process. This is very political sometimes.

47:27 So let's say you were the hiring manager Kevin, and you decide that you're going to hire me. There are people above you that have to sign off on the offer typically, and you have to go to them and justify why you want that much money or that title or all that stuff. And so the best strategy is to get the highest value in the mind of Kevin, the hiring manager, so that he can go with bat for you and justify a high offer initially. Then in the offer and counteroffer process, we're only tweaking instead of having to rebuild. You know, if that initial offer comes in thirty percent low, it is intensely difficult to go back and adjust that they've already decided that you're in that sort of lower tier. They've already made that case.

48:23 With approvers, it's going to be really difficult to go back. This is where the insider information that I have comes into play and really helps people to get it right the first time and so then there's you're going to get an offer and here's a key that I'll give away for free. Don't accept the offer immediately, even if you love it. That is a massive mistake that most people make. There's almost always extra money on the table somewhere. So what I do, which is proprietary, is I help people with the process to discover what's still on the table without putting the offer at risk and then creating a counter offer proposal that also does not create a lot of risk for you.

49:16 And people you focus. Sorry, go ahead, Sorry, yeah, I was going to say. Most people think negotiation like this is a high stakes game of Chicken, where you put out an ultimatum. You know, here's what I want, take it or leave it. That's a very high risk strategy that we don't do at Salary Coach. So I know you focus, excuse me, on the total compensation, not just salary. Correct, that's correct. So there could be stock options or additional stock options, sign on bonus as you mentioned that in the book. Oh yeah, there's probably a dozen or more different ways that you can get value into the package. So one of the things that happened in today's Steele is I happen to, and I can notice things that the average person doesn't notice. When you get an offer letter, for example, I can look at it and say, there's something big that's missing here that might be included in an offer at your level. A lot of companies will include it.

50:19 So let's go after that and see if it's there. This example was. Severans so interesting. The hiring company was a private equity firm. And in case you don't know this, private equity firms they buy and sell companies just like house flippers buy and sell houses. They will buy a company that they think is undervalued, they'll fix the things that are wrong with that company, and then they'll go back to the market in a three to five year window usually and sell that business. They might buy it for two hundred million with a goal that in three years they're going to sell that for six hundred million, and that's how they make their money.

51:00 So that was this situation. Private equity company owned this business, and this was a C suite, you know, sea level position within that private that firm that they owned, that asset that they owned. We knew through the interview process that they're selling. They're they're selling the business timeline was two years. They're going to sell this in two years. Well, what happens to the c suite and a company that gets sold to another business? Sometimes they keep their jobs, sometimes they do not. And so you want to have an equity stake so that when that business is sold there's a significant financial windfall for you. But also you have depending on your age and stage, like if you were fifty eight or sixty years old or something like that. Yeah, and the sale is happening when you're sixty two, how hard is it going to be to get the next gig?

52:07 How much longer is it going to take? Realism? That happens so many times. Agism is a real problem, real problem. Once you round the corner of fifty, you will start to realize that it's not as easy to land as it used to be. And the harder, the more weird the employment market, that the longer it's going to take you to land. John, we have to wrap this up. I just noticed the time. How do people reach out? What's the best way for them to contact you if they want more information? All right, thank you, Kevin. The very best way is probably to hit me at John at salary dot Coach perfect. It's not dot com, it's dot coach. That's the best way, John at Salary dot coach, and you can ask me any question and we can see if it might be right to work together. Perfect.

52:57 Now, this is something I mentioned at the beginning that I don't do very often. I've already invited John back next month. It's going to be March twenty third. He's going to share on a different topic. And the promo is this, what if starting a consulting business isn't reckless but a faithful, well aligned next step, John will introduce the Crossroads, which is a proven faith aligned path that helps Christian corporate leaders launch their first consulting business in just six weeks without burning bridges, underpricing themselves, or wandering in uncertainty. And I'm really looking forward to that, and we will have another good conversation at that time.

53:38 John, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Kevin. I'm looking forward to to It's going to be a blast, just like this was. All right one more time, John at Salary dot coach. Correct, Thank you, Kevin. Perfect, and thanks. Everybody for watching and listening. This is a show about business and business challenges. If you've got concerns about the sales effectiveness of your company, whether you're sales team, is you or small or large, feel free to reach out to me on Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning Business Radio or drop me a note one of my many email addresses Kevin at Winning Business Radio dot com. Thank you to producer and engineer one for another job well done. Be sure to join us again next week. That's Monday, February ninth. We're going to do it all over again.

54:20 Until then, this is Kevin Hallanan. You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host, Kevin Halenan. If you missed any part of this episode, the podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio dot com or check us out on social media. Tune in again next week and every Monday at four pm Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on W four CY Radio W fourcy dot com. Until then, let's succeed where others have failed and win in business with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio James