CHAPTER 6

AT THE BARGAINING TABLE
Table Manners and Tactical Maneuvers

MY STORY, WITH SUZE ORMAN, CAROL BARTZ, LESLEY JANE SEYMOUR, KATE WHITE, ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, DONNY DEUTSCH, VALERIE JARRETT, TINA BROWN, HANNAH RILEY BOWLES, CAROL SMITH, NORA EPHRON, FRANK FLYNN, DONALD TRUMP, JACK WELCH, AND JOY BEHAR

NEGOTIATE LIKE A POWERFUL WOMAN

Personal-finance expert Suze Orman says the reason my attempts to get a raise failed is that I didn’t know how to “negotiate like a powerful woman.” I should have done my homework and come to the table armed with information and alternatives, not just a catalog of emotions and selfdoubt. “The problem is that fear of failure comes when you haven’t properly prepared for success,” she says. “I am sure that you went in to negotiate your salary from a place of fear, and fear is one of the main internal obstacles to wealth.”

What follows is a wealth of advice from a variety of women (and men) about what to do (and not do) when you’re asking for a raise or negotiating a job offer.

KNOW YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS AND THEIR MARKET VALUE

In her book Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny, Suze Orman gives detailed advice to women on how to protect themselves financially and get the money they deserve. She orders women who want a raise to be prepared. First, document your achievements, and put together a list of all the ways you have met and exceeded expectations. Then, “Tell your boss you want to set up a meeting to discuss your compensation. Prior to that meeting, you are to give your boss a one-page outline of your achievements. Not ten pages—one page. The idea is that you are stating in clear terms what value you have brought to the company and why now is the time for the company to show that it values your effort.”

The fact that you deserve a raise or haven’t had one in years is not a persuasive argument. What makes a persuasive argument are solid facts and figures about what you’ve done and what other people, with the same skills and experience and accomplishments, are making for the same job.

Let me say it again: You are not prepared unless you know the market value of your contributions. I can’t stress this enough. Why is it such a big secret? Seriously. What are you worth? What I’ve learned is, you should constantly be asking people about salary. Really wrap your arms around what work is worth what. The more you talk to people and the closer you get to them, the more they will tell you. Go ahead—ask. At this point I pretty much know what everybody is getting paid at MSNBC, and I think that’s part of my job, in terms of knowing my value.

For decades, companies have prohibited their employees from sharing information about their wages. In January 2009, Congress introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, which was intended to ensure that women get paid as well as men for equal work. But the legislation, which would have made it easier for women to sue employers who pay them less than men and made it illegal for employers to retaliate against workers who shared information about wage practices, was defeated by the Senate in November 2010.

Even if you’re prohibited from asking your colleagues directly about their own salaries, general information about salary ranges is widely available. This is the value of interviewing at other companies and maintaining contacts across your industry. I encourage people to talk—not just to other women in your field, who may be making less just like you, but to men as well. You can find out what people think the range is or what they think you should be making without directly asking about their salary or telling them yours. Over time, you really do learn the market rate for certain positions. I have a husband in my industry, which helps. I know what local anchors make compared with what network anchors make, what anchors make compared with what reporters make. Naturally every case is different, but you can get a sense of the range.

If you’re in an industry that uses them, agents can be a great resource on the subject of fair market value. Because agents represent more than one person, they should be able to fill you in on what others make—or at least give you a ballpark. And if they’re giving you bad information, they are not good agents. It’s their job to be in the know. So utilize them wisely. Don’t just wait for the phone to ring. Make a strategy, and then stick to it.

But it’s also just kind of instinctive. I mean, seriously. I signed a contract that I intuitively knew was not right. I knew that I was worth more. But I let fear, and the potential of being disliked, supersede my instincts.

When I started at MSNBC again, as a freelancer, I knew what I signed up for. I had no complaints about that. And by the way, punching in at the same time and punching out at the same time every day—to me that was worth my making a lot less. That was fine. But when I started on Morning Joe, when I started to become part of a brand of two people, Joe and Mika, or when we became a team of Joe, Mika, and Willie, then we were a commodity. I knew what they were making, and yet I accepted less. I would love to believe that I’m alone in that stupidity. But I fear I’m one of many.

Our survey found that men are more likely than women to know what their peers are earning.

Researchers say part of the reason why women don’t know what their peers are earning is social norms. They may not feel that discussing money is appropriate, because making a ton of money fulfills a masculine ideal, not a feminine one. Despite the fact that we’ve been in the workforce for generations, the cultural ideal of women as caregivers hasn’t shifted. Women are still expected to be more selfless than men, so even talking about money—let alone asking for it—makes us uncomfortable.

Carol Bartz says that while women will compare themselves with their colleagues, “the women don’t always find out as easily what everybody else makes. The men seem to find out somehow. And I don’t know why that is.”

These days it’s easier than ever to find out what people make. Employees share salary information on Web sites such as Vault.com and Glassdoor.com; sites like Payscale.com and Salary.com can give you an idea of salaries for comparative positions in your geographic area. But nothing beats talking with people.

More magazine editor-in-chief Lesley Jane Seymour says, “A big problem with women is that they go in not having done their homework; they don’t know what everybody else is making . . . If you do your homework, then you walk in and you present your facts and you can say, ‘Here’s what other people in this company at the same level are paid. Let me show you all the facts and figures.’ ” Seymour doesn’t think it’s easy for anyone to ask for a raise, even men, because in that situation you feel like a child asking for their allowance. Everybody struggles. Again, “The key is to do your research. The most important thing that people don’t realize, especially women, is you can’t go in there expecting people to take care of you and that they’re going to be fair. They’re going to try to get the best deal they can.”

WHEN YOU’RE ASKING FOR A RAISE, PICK YOUR MOMENT

Cosmopolitan’s Kate White offers some advice about timing: “Often women wait to deal with their raise when it’s announced to them, but by that time it’s already etched into the budget. You need to go in a month or so before you know they’re going to start giving the raises and just say, ‘Look, I know you’re probably planning the budget, and I’d just like an opportunity to tell you how much my job has expanded this year, and I hope my raise can reflect this.’ ”

AND THEN JUST DO IT

If you’re prepared—you’ve documented your achievements and you know the fair market value of your work—it should be easier to take the emotion out of asking for a raise. It’s no longer about you, it’s about the facts in front of you.

Asked to describe how they felt when asking for a raise or promotion, men used words like “cool,” “deserving,” “confident.”

Women used metaphors such as “like filing taxes,” “like I was going to vomit.”

One woman said, “I felt that the boss was a giant and I was a midget. I felt as if his/her eyes were burning a hole into my being as well as reading my mind.”

The Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington urges women to be fearless: “Really, what’s the worst that can happen? We are told no, and we’re no worse off than we were before. Just look around and you’ll see plenty of evidence that asking for what we want results not in the realization of our worst fears but in getting what we want.”

Ultimately, as Donny Deutsch says, “You have to ask for it, and that’s that.”

Here’s another thing to remember: when you realize that every raise you’ll get in the future is a percentage of what you’re already making, if you don’t push to make more money right now, the cumulative effect a few years down the line will be enormous.

“You stand in front of that mirror and you practice until you are confident. You go in there and you be an actress.”

—CAROL BARTZ

Whether you’re accepting an offer or asking for a raise, ask for more money with confidence. And if you don’t have it, fake it. Carol Bartz tells me a story about a female friend of hers. “[She] was after a senior position in a company, and she knew she was a finalist and a guy was the other finalist. She was expecting a salary of $90,000 and maybe 2,000 shares of stock or something like that. She found out that this guy was asking $125,000 and 2,000 in stock. And she called me, and she said, ‘What should I do?’ ”

Bartz instructed her friend to march in and tell them that she wanted $125,000 dollars and the stock too, but she balked. “She said, ‘Oh, I can’t do that. I couldn’t keep a straight face.’ ”

Bartz tells me her friend honestly felt that she wouldn’t have to tout her value, that it was obvious. But Bartz insisted: “I said, ‘You stand in front of that mirror and you practice until you are confident. You go in there and you be an actress.’ ”

Bartz’s friend got the job and the money.

I should add that acting should be a last resort. It’s never worked for me (and in fact led to some pretty awkward moments with Phil Griffin). At some point in your life, you have got to know your value. It’s your job to feel it and communicate it effectively. A strong sense of self-worth will serve you well in your relationship with your employer, and in any other relationship.

HOW NOT TO ASK

Many of us need to rethink the way we ask for promotions and raises, because when we do ask, often it ain’t pretty. Just listen to the answers I hear when I ask, “Are there differences in the way men and women ask you for raises and promotions?”

“‘I know you’re busy, I know you don’t have time ...’ ”

—VALERIE JARRETT

Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett has been the boss in a variety of workplaces. When I ask whether she sees a difference in approach between men and women when asking for raises and promotions, she says, “Amazingly, men are almost detached from it emotionally. They’re really comfortable . . . Women are much more timid and appreciative and polite. Men are very matter of fact, businesslike, unemotional. It isn’t really personal.”

“Women are emotional?” I ask.

“Emotional in the sense of apologetic . . . I remember one woman in particular who started with, “I know you’re busy, I know you don’t have time . . .”

“Basically saying, ‘Don’t give me the raise’?”

“She backed into it badly, is the way I would say it.” Valerie tells me.

“Apologetic” and “tentative” are two adjectives I heard over and over. The editor-in-chief of Newsweek and The Daily Beast, Tina Brown says women often start to apologize with their body language before they even open their mouth. Then they’ll begin by saying, “Well, you know, I’ve been here for a while and I’ve been thinking a lot about this . . . Men come in and they just say, ‘Hey, I’m not doing this anymore unless I get X.’ And you think, ‘Of course, of course, of course,’ you know, you must take care of Joe, Fred, whomever. But women don’t do that. They just come in and they look sad . . . And we can’t do that!”

“ ‘I didn’t really want to come to you with this . . .’ ”

—CAROL BARTZ

I ask Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, “Have you ever had a woman ask for a raise and apologize for imposing?”

“Oh, absolutely,” she says. Bartz trots out a few she’s heard: “ ‘I didn’t really want to come to you with this, but, gosh, do you think my bonus percentage could be higher?’ And, ‘Gee could you just think about it?’ When they say, ‘I don’t know if you’ll consider,’ right away they are giving you an out. Of course I wouldn’t consider, you just told me not to consider . . . when somebody gives you the reason you can say no, it just makes your job easier.”

And men?

Men will say “ ‘I believe I’m undervalued here,’ ” Bartz tells me. “And that’s always code for ‘I’m going someplace where they value me, and it’s for these reasons.’ ”

“When men ask for raises there’s always some cost,” ad exec Donny Deutsch says. “It’s always ‘because I did this’ and ‘if I don’t get the raise . . .’ There’s always [an imaginary] gun to the head, some gamesmanship. First of all, women don’t ask as much. And when they do ask, it’s not ‘Give it to me or else.’ ”

When you combine my experience with what I heard from the bosses above, I have to say we women stink at this. Just look at our best opening lines:

• “I’m sorry.”

• “I know you’re busy.”

• “I don’t know if you have the time.”

• “I don’t know if you’ll consider . . .”

• “I don’t know if this is possible . . .”

• “I hate to do this.”

• “I don’t know if there’s room for this in the budget.”

• “I’m sorry if the timing is bad.”

I think I’ve managed to use every one of those phrases in my attempts to get a raise. Of course, I used an additional strategy, too—what More editor Lesley Jane Seymour calls “playing the victim card.” Seymour says women “present their personal challenges, saying things like, ‘Well, I have this situation’ or ‘I have that burden’ or ‘My mother is ill and I have to support her’ or whatever. Women present their cause, and you have to realize it’s not a manager’s job to support your causes, whatever they might be . . . The companies can’t say, ‘Oh, I feel sorry for you.’ ”

HOW TO ASK

Professor Hannah Riley Bowles has done research that supports the idea that playing the victim card is unlikely to work, because it’s an explanation that’s all about you; a more effective argument is one that taps into the organization’s interests. You have to explain why a raise would make sense to the person you’re talking with and to the company as a whole. She says the less effective route is “going in and laying down your credit card and saying, ‘I can’t buy the shoes I want to buy.’ ”

Bowles says the smarter approach if, for instance, my request for a raise had been denied but I still wanted MSNBC to cover my hair/makeup/wardrobe costs, might have been to say something like, “I think it makes sense for this job to have an expense account.” I could have tried enlisting Phil’s support in my efforts to project a professional image because my personal presentation has a direct impact on the show.

Bowles offers another tactic: “[One executive woman] told me she found out that a couple subordinates of hers were being paid more than she was. She tried going in and basically referring to it as an error that she knew the company would want to correct. Obviously the company is not going to want subordinates paid more than superiors, right?” Bowles’s latest research shows that women are more successful when they explain the appropriateness of their request in a way that communicates their desire to maintain good relationships at work. “The trick is trying to do both of these things at the same time and in a way that feels authentic and fits within the norms of the company,” she says.

Suze Orman says the way to get what you want is to offer your boss a choice. “You should never, ever, ever ask a yes or no question. If you ask for a ten percent raise and the boss says no, what are you going to say?” Instead, she suggests giving your boss two options: slightly more than what you want and then a lower number that you actually expect to get. “So you would say, ‘I really think I deserve a ten percent or twelve percent raise. Which one would you like to give me?’ At that point the boss really doesn’t know what to say, because that’s not a yes or no question, and the power has shifted into your court. It’s very difficult for anyone to come back and say ‘Neither.’ ”

Long-time Elle publisher Carol Smith tells me that the way men do it is to take the emotion out and simply say, “I’ve earned this. I’m coming in because here’s what I’ve done over the last year, and now I’ve earned this raise.” But she’s always taken a softer approach: “I’ve often said that I don’t want to be paid more, but I never want to be paid less. I want to be paid equal to the man sitting next to me who’s bringing in the same amount of revenue.”

Nora Ephron echoes those sentiments. “The words favored nations—that’s an expression all women should know,” she says. “In other words, you always want to be paid no less than what anyone else is being paid. If you’re at all a wussy about valuing yourself, you can’t be a wussy about the words favored nations. All you’re asking for is what everyone else is making.”

Valerie Jarrett uses the same favored-nations argument, but with a different delivery. “I don’t like to negotiate salary at all, and one way I’ve compensated for that is by saying to someone, ‘I expect that you’ll be fair to me,’ and then when they’re not, I talk back. I say, ‘I know you’ll treat me fairly so you decide.’ Then I come back and tell them they can do better.”

Of course, saying “I expect you’ll be fair to me” implies that both employer and employee share an understanding of what “fair” means. If you’ve done your homework, you know what both women and men with comparable experience and skill sets are making at your level.

ASKING FOR MORE

Kate White urges women to push the envelope. “You cannot be afraid to ask for more. But you have to do it in a way that is not emotional . . . What you really have to do is make it about what your value is,” she says. “Stay very neutral and say, “I’m very happy to have the offer. It sounds like a great job. I was looking for $90,000 based on my experience and skills.” They always, almost always, have more. As a boss I know that if you really want somebody, except in a recession where sometimes your hands are tied, you can go back and get more.”

White says that after years of working in women’s magazines and publishing articles about women’s issues, she learned not to apologize and not to overexplain. But it takes practice. She says when you try to negotiate an offer, management might very well be shocked by your audacity. In which case, “You’ve got to learn to be very careful and keep it neutral and light, like a game,” White tells me. You have to walk a line between being too deferential and too aggressive, but practice makes perfect.

“Every time you have one of those conversations, you get better at it. I had a situation once where I was using a lawyer, and they were giving the lawyer a terrible time. Basically they were indicating that they were getting frustrated with me because they felt I was asking for too much. I went in myself at that point and had a conversation, and in that conversation I realized okay, I’ve got to back off a little. I said some things like, ‘I sense I’ve really frustrated the hell out of you. I’m sorry about that.’ ”

Is White really recommending that women apologize for putting a number on their worth? “I wasn’t apologizing for what I was asking. I was apologizing that the lawyer’s situation had frustrated them,” she explains. “I corrected the situation in fifteen minutes and I remember the lawyer later said to me, ‘You’re better at this than you’re giving yourself credit for.’ I think that the more you do, the more you step back and learn from the previous experiences. I try to pay attention to body language, and of course to whether I get what I want in the end, so that the next time I can take all of that into consideration.”

BE PERSISTENT

Stanford Professor Frank Flynn says that when women negotiate, they aren’t as persistent as men are. “It’s not that they don’t ask, they don’t ask ten times. And that’s often the difference I see between women and men in business. Women assume no means no in a negotiation, and the negotiation is over.” Flynn says men hear no as a signal “to take a different tack.”

Suze Orman insists that if you’re discussing a raise with your boss and you’re not getting anywhere, “No matter how uncomfortable your boss tries to make you feel, I want you to stay right in your seat and keep the conversation going. If you know the company is on shaky financial ground, then of course you have to take that into consideration. But if the company is profitable and you are in fact a contributor to that profit, then you are not to walk out empty-handed.” She suggests asking for another review in six months, and asking (and getting in writing) what raise to expect at that time. Meanwhile, ask for more vacation time or flexibility or whatever will be valuable to you. Orman says, “You must get something of value, for you are not on sale.”

I can tell you from personal experience that all is not lost if you don’t get what you deserve the first time around. Look at me: I had to go back a half dozen times! You may very well encounter resistance, even bullying, but there’s much to be gained by holding your ground when you’re presented with an offer that doesn’t benefit you.

“Women throw around the emotional thing.”

—LESLEY JANE SEYMOUR

More editor-in-chief Lesley Jane Seymour tells me a story about two female friends who recently got new jobs at the same company. They were negotiating with a senior woman at the firm. Seymour says, “When they got the job offer, they each said ‘Let me have my lawyer look at this,’ and they were told ‘Oh, that would mean starting out on the wrong foot, let’s not go down that road ... so why don’t you just sign right here.’ ” Seymour says she was appalled when her friends—two “very savvy women”—ended up signing without having their deals reviewed by an attorney.

“When I found out these two friends of mine did that, I said to them, ‘Do you mean to tell me that you signed this thing without a lawyer looking at it?’ I said, ‘Do you think the woman who did this to you would ever sign her contract without a lawyer looking at it?’ And the answer is no. . . . To me that was something that only a woman would do to a woman. Women know women respond to that. No woman would say that to a man, because a man sitting across the table would say, ‘This has nothing to do with starting out on the wrong foot, this is business . . . I’m taking it to my lawyer,’ and that would have been the end of the discussion.”

Cosmopolitan’s Kate White has a similar story about being pressured when accepting an offer. Years ago she was being pursued by Working Woman magazine. She went to talk to the owner, but at the time she wasn’t really looking for a job. But the owner made her an offer almost immediately. White was caught off guard and wanted some time to think about making a move, but her prospective employer was giving her the full-court press. He wanted to make a fast hire, so he offered to sweeten the deal by giving her some equity in the company and kept calling her the next day.

She says she found herself dodging the owner’s calls, still trying to weigh the offer’s pros and cons. “Finally I called him back and said, ‘Look, I don’t think this is right for me,’ but he really just pressured me. He was a fabulous sales guy on the phone. And I felt so guilty because I had stalled, and I couldn’t really think of the right reason I couldn’t go, so I buckled and said yes. . . . Later I wondered, ‘How did I let myself get into this?’ But I kept telling myself at least I’ve got the equity.”

Looking back, White says, she just wasn’t sufficiently comfortable in her own skin to say, “I don’t care if he’s pressuring me; I need to do what’s right for me. I should have said to him, ‘Look, you caught me off guard, offering me the job; I’m going to need a couple of days to really think this through.’ ”

IF THE ANSWER IS NO

Valerie Jarrett says her best advice comes from the lesson her parents taught her, “which is a hard lesson to learn, and that’s not to be afraid of rejection. It’s okay. Men aren’t afraid of rejection. They’re taught both personally and professionally that it’s a part of the game. It’s why men ask women on dates; they ask ten women out and if one says yes, that’s great. Women would have a very hard time with nine rejections out of ten. You wear it on your sleeve. My parents always said to me, ‘If you don’t try, you’re certainly not going to get what you want, so it’s okay to fail and learn from your failure.’ You should have enough self-confidence to pick yourself back up and get back on your feet. You have to reach high. I think women are willing to settle for a much smaller promotion. What’s wrong with asking for the bigger promotion? You think people will think less of you if you do, but they actually think more of you.”

Carol Smith was the first female ad salesperson for the Wall Street Journal at a time when women weren’t doing that job. She says she must have some male gene in her makeup because she’s “always been a very strong negotiator when it comes to salaries.” But she knows plenty of brilliant women who have a hard time being paid their value and who have an equally tough time with rejection.

“She burst into tears ... a hugely successful woman.”

—CAROL SMITH

Smith knows that emotions can handicap women at any age, and at any point in their career. She shares a story of a friend of hers who had recently taken on a great deal of additional work: “She had been doing basically three jobs in the last six months and had asked to be compensated. I knew what that job was worth because I’d had that job. So she was out to lunch with her boss and asked for the raise, and he said no. And she burst into tears.” Smith points out that her friend wasn’t a young woman, but an experienced executive. “I have known her for twenty years. She is brilliant, a hugely successful woman.

“She felt embarrassed and beaten down by this ... she was going to walk away in tears, you know, and never go back.” Smith told her friend that her boss’s ‘no’ didn’t have to be the end. Smith encouraged her to go back and work out a solution that both she and her employer could accept.

Smith tells me, “It helped me that I came out of sales. When you’re in sales you have to learn to get rejected and constantly go back. When most of my non-sales female colleagues hear ‘no,’ they take it personally, and they think, ‘Oh, I must not deserve this.’ . . . When you’re in sales, you’ve got to ask for that order over and over and over again, and you have to figure out a way to go ask for it a different way and say the same thing with a different ending.”

BE READY TO WALK

Sometimes when the answer is no, you realize you’re not going to get what you want now or possibly ever. That’s when you realize it’s time to get out. Tina Brown remembers the moment she realized it was time to leave Condé Nast. “I was editor at The New Yorker, my contract was coming up, and I wanted to play more of a role in the strategy of the magazine instead of just the editing. And the president of the company, Steve Florio, took me to lunch. I started to talk about how this was an issue in my contract. And he said to me, ‘Where are you going to go? No one’s going to give you a dress allowance like we do.’ ” Those words had her packing her bags.

Carol Bartz suggests that when push comes to shove, you better have your bags packed: “Now, what I will say to you is, you have to be ready to walk . . . I mean, when you are in a situation and you take a stand, you’ve got to be ready for the consequences. You know, when they look you in the eye and realize, ‘This crazy bitch is going to leave.’ ”

And then there are times when the worst-case scenario becomes a reality, whether you like it or not. You ask, the answer is no, and you get fired! Real estate mogul Donald Trump says you can pester your boss to the point of no return. “I’ve had some very smart aggressive women working for me, and they are not shy about asking for things. That doesn’t mean that they’re going to get them, and in some instances they’re so over the top in what they ask for that I fire them. Do you understand? I fire them. I say, ‘Listen, I don’t want to deal with this, you’re fired . . . You work for a salary, you get a lot of money, and you’re expected to make good deals.’ . . . I have guys who make deals all day long, and if they came to me every time they made a deal, I’d go crazy.”

If you deserve a raise, simply say it. But be prepared to leave and work somewhere else if management doesn’t agree.

Former GE CEO Jack Welch says that successful salary negotiations depend on your level of confidence; if you know your skills are valuable, you know you’ll find another, better job. “If you think it’s easy for a guy to go in there and ask for money, I’m not sure it is. . . . I always felt if I didn’t get what I liked, I was packing it in,” he says. “I was ready to leave the day before I became chairman. I was always ready to pack it in, because I thought I could do well elsewhere.”

Writer Nora Ephron suggests that quitting can be the best thing for your career: “You have to look at what men do. They quit, and they go somewhere else.” That’s how they improve their salaries quickly. But unless you like being unemployed, you need to be talking to other companies all the time and have an idea of where you’re headed next. “The way to do it is you say, ‘I need more money, I’m not being paid as much as so and so,’ and you have to be prepared to leave. But you have to go sneak around and find somewhere to go. That’s a very important thing, having somewhere to go when you quit,” she says.

Comedian and talk show host Joy Behar will always have somewhere to go when she quits. She maintains her independence by keeping her comedy skills sharp. “One of the things that I’ve done in my career over the years is to have many irons in the fire,” Behar tells me. “When I took The View, I did a lot of stand-up because nobody in television was going to control me. I could always make a living on the road.” Now she has both The View and her own show, but she still does stand-up just to keep her options open.

Suze Orman points out that you can take the strongest negotiating stance of all when you have your financial safety net in place. “A woman can only be powerful when she doesn’t need the money, otherwise she can’t be powerful. You can’t push somebody and say, ‘This is what I want.’ If you really need it and they let you go, what are you going to do?”

But Suze, how many women who ask for raises don’t actually need the money? Orman responds, “What I’m saying is, the time to go in and ask for a raise with confidence is not when you have credit card debt, it’s when you have an eight-month emergency fund. You also have to have a plan. Know your alternatives and come from a powerful place, not an insecure place. What gives you power? The answer is usually ‘having money to fall back on.’ You don’t have to have a lot, just enough for you to know you’ll be okay no matter what.”

Orman recommends taking into account your entire financial picture before you start talking to your boss about money: “Not just what you’re earning, but where is your money invested? How is it invested? Do you have all your wills and trusts? Do you have your insurance in place? Is everything together that creates a powerful woman? Because if it’s not, you’re walking into a negotiation powerless, and you will never be able to get the amount of money that you deserve because you’re coming from a powerless place. It really is as simple as that.”

She’s right: the fact that I was in the red at the end of every month probably gave me an air of desperation. What I needed was an air of confidence.

When I tell Donny Deutsch that I had been an idiot about negotiating, he responds, “Well, then next time you’re ready to do it, you talk to me first.” The idea that Deutsch might be a more effective advocate for me than I am for myself speaks volumes about how powerless I was to get the money I deserved. And I think if most women really would look in the mirror, they’d see they aren’t nearly as powerful as they should be either.