It was during my fourth job, with all of three years’ working experience behind me, that I learnt my first – and probably most important – lesson about increasing my salary. I was finally happy in a position but felt I was being underpaid. I would love to claim that the assumption that I was underpaid stemmed from market research I’d conducted, or business results I’d delivered, but it came from the fact that I just could not make ends meet on my salary.
For weeks I deliberated on how to broach the subject with my boss, a kindly man named Jimmy Carter. I didn’t want Mr Carter to think I was greedy, and I certainly didn’t want to put my position with the company in jeopardy, so I was unsure of how to approach this delicate issue.
A little background. I was raised in a family with limited means, although I had no idea that this was the case. In my culture, one does not speak about money to the children, or at the dinner table, or at any other time, for that matter. As a result, I was clueless about how I should deal with the question of my raise.
Eventually I plucked up the courage and asked Mr Carter if I could speak to him. Invited into his office and asked what it was I wanted to discuss, I took a seat and blurted out that I needed more money. I started to justify why I needed the money – I was worth more, I worked hard, I wasn’t making ends meet – when Mr Carter interrupted me and asked how much I expected to earn. I had thought that a 20 per cent increase would be heaven, so that is the amount that popped out of my mouth. ‘Done,’ replied Mr Carter.
I was stunned. Could it really have been that easy? Could I have asked for more? Could I have had the increase backdated, perhaps? And so began my long quest to understand ‘The Laws of Increases’, or ‘The Laws of More’. I tested many theories, had a lot of successes and regular rejections.
My last corporate salary-increase conversation was my most interesting. I had delivered, over a four-year period, a set of excellent results for my employer. As I was on the main board of a listed company, my salary was controlled by a remuneration committee. When I presented the argument for my increase to the remuneration committee – bear in mind that I was already earning an obscene amount of money – I was told that I was the second-highest paid woman on the African continent and, as such, they were not prepared to increase my salary.
I’m not sure if this argument was true, but I was livid. So what? How did I measure against the men? Why couldn’t I be the highest-paid woman on the continent? Was I not worth every cent they were paying me?
During a self-imposed ‘cooling-off ’ period, I stumbled on a few insights. The first was a bit of a shock. My life was worth more than the money I was earning and I had, if I was completely honest with myself, been selling my soul. The second was the wonderful realisation that I had finally asked for too much money. Why was that wonderful? Because at last I knew what I was worth in the corporate market, and it was a lot! I stopped wondering if I could earn more, or if I was being short-changed. I had reached my limit.
Learning ‘The Laws of More’ has served me well. I now know how much I can charge for speaking engagements, how high I can push the price for the programmes my company offers, what I can expect as income for doing all the administration work to run our household.
And it is my intention, in this book, to share with you all the lessons, tips and techniques I have garnered along the way, so that you, too, can get what you want from your salary or contract negotiations.
Wishing you a life of wealth and reward.