Episode 24: How Negotiation Skills Shape Your Long-Term Financial Plan
How much is one skipped negotiation actually costing you?
A missed $10,000 raise does not stay a $10,000 problem. It resets the base that every future increase is calculated from, shrinks the employer match, and removes years of compounding from the retirement number. Compensation decisions are financial planning decisions, even when they feel like career decisions.
Stacy Jackson, executive coach and founder of SBJ Consulting, works with leaders on understanding total compensation as a leadership skill. She breaks down which parts of an offer are genuinely negotiable, where people undervalue themselves without realizing it, and what the research shows about the motherhood penalty and the fatherhood premium.
Listen in as Stacy explains how to anchor your number to the market instead of your current pay, how to ask direct questions without being labeled difficult, and what to protect during a career break so re-entry starts from a stronger position.
What You’ll Learn:
Why base salary is often the least flexible part of a compensation package.
Where to find credible market data before entering a negotiation.
Why anchoring your ask to your current salary limits lifetime earnings.
How the motherhood penalty and fatherhood premium appear in pay research.
How mitigating language weakens a request before it is made.
Why equity, vesting schedules, and benefits belong in the total compensation math.
What to maintain during a career break to protect future earning power.
How workplace proximity and mentorship affect early-career pay outcomes.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
"You should never anchor your base salary number off what you're currently making. That's another huge mistake." - Stacy Jackson
"If you haven't been compensated the way you want in the past, why is that? It's not necessarily because you didn't deserve it. It's because you didn't advocate for it." - Stacy Jackson
"All you need is somebody to answer one question, and you're off and running, because the next question will give you the next question, will give you the next question." - Stacy Jackson
Resources:
Stacy Jackson: Website | LinkedIn | stacy@sbjconsultinginc.com
About Our Guest:
Stacy Jackson, ICF-PCC, SHRM-SCP, SPHR, M.Ed, is a certified executive leadership coach and the founder of SBJ Consulting, Inc., a boutique leadership coaching and consulting firm based in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. With more than 20 years in human resources and human capital, including director-level talent development roles at Saks Fifth Avenue, she coaches individual leaders, company-sponsored executives, and large organizations. Her work focuses on leadership presence, communication, and helping clients understand and negotiate their full compensation package. SBJ Consulting is a certified Women-Owned Business.
Connect with Us:
If you're ready to stop avoiding your finances and start building the future you deserve, schedule a free call with me at pelicanfinancialplanning.com and let’s create your personalized financial plan together.
And if you want ongoing guidance, clarity, and confidence as you grow your wealth, subscribe to our newsletter for financial insights delivered right to your inbox.
Share the Love:
If you like The Wealth Development Studio...
Never miss an episode by subscribing via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or by RSS!
Read the Transcript:
Stacy Jackson: If you're a father, you benefit from a fatherhood premium because look at all of the things that this man does, and he's a father. That's research done by Cornell and Harvard, so it's not like we're making it up.
Welcome to The Wealth Development Studio. I'm your host, Genevieve George, Senior Financial Advisor and Founder of Pelican Financial Planning & Wealth. Our goal for this episode is to provide clarity about today's financial topic, inspire you to be brave with your questions, and gain confidence in your financial future. So take a deep breath, grab your favorite cup of coffee, and step into the studio. Your dose of financial empowerment begins now.
Genevieve George: Every negotiation you don't have, every year you step out of the workplace, every bonus structure you don't fully understand has a number attached to it. Not just a paycheck number, but a retirement number for when you stop working. How much risk do I need to take with my portfolio to catch up that number?
Today, we're talking about the financial planning consequences of decisions that often don't feel financial at all, things like staying quiet in a negotiation, stepping back from a promotion, taking time out of the workplace for caregiving. These choices ripple through comp, through time in the market, through compounding that makes or breaks a long-term plan.
To help me unpack this, I'm joined by my dear friend Stacy Jackson with SBJ Consulting. Stacy is an executive coach and a thought partner who works with leaders navigating exactly these moments of doubt, self-criticism, and second-guessing their paths. Stacy, thank you so much for being here.
Stacy Jackson: Oh, thanks, Gen.
It's a pleasure to be here, and I love your introduction because I talk with leaders and I coach leaders around financial literacy and their total compensation being a leadership skill. So fantastic introduction. We're gonna talk a lot about that today.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. And I love that because, what does that financial literacy really mean to you with the people that you're working with?
Stacy Jackson: So with my highly compensated executive leaders, we're talking about holistic package. It's very little focus, honestly, on their base salary. That's actually a misnomer, I think, that people have, that their base salary is widely negotiable and widely flexible. It's often the least flexible in a total compensation package.
So we wanna talk about stocks. We wanna talk about equity. We wanna make sure there's an understanding about the vesting schedule. We want to really clarify those non-quantitative perks around flexibility to their schedule. There's a lot of different metrics: retirement planning, their company match.
There's a lot of different metrics that go into that holistic plan to make sure that they're being accurately compensated for the level and the position that they have.
Genevieve George: And I think so many people just go into that conversation, whether it's with their existing employer or maybe considering a new employer, and they're really focused on that base, and maybe a bonus structure.
But not really asking the questions on the other things. And you said comprehensive in package, and I think that's immensely powerful because in my own job changes over time, I was being paid well at one place, and the next place said, "Okay, we'll match that." But when I looked at the benefits, the health insurance benefits were not the same, and it was a big difference, $20,000.
Stacy Jackson: Huge difference.
Genevieve George: But if I had not asked, right?
Stacy Jackson: Yeah. And I'll tell you, it disproportionately affects women and people of color. And I think it's really important to understand that framing, that if you don't have that understanding in your background or whatever, don't worry.
Just equip yourself with a financial planner, equip yourself with an executive coach, people that can help you ask those questions. There's probably four or five questions that, when asked appropriately and at the right time, can maximize your current earning potential, but your future earning potential.
Genevieve George: And do you see people holding themselves back in that too? 'Cause even if they were working with you or myself and then we're saying, "Okay, you gotta ask about the health insurance, you gotta ask about this, you gotta ask about that," that they're like worried that they're not gonna get the job.
Stacy Jackson: Oh
Genevieve George: Because they've asked too many questions, right?
Stacy Jackson: 100%. And there's actually research unfortunately, that shows that again, women in particular suffer from something, a bit of a double bind. So they ask, they're trying to be proactive. They have maybe equipped themselves with people in their camp that know this information, and so they're prepared to go in.
They have their talking points, their data, they're ready to go. And what research has told us is they are viewed then as challenging or inflexible to work with. And so then they suffer, like I said, from that double bind where they're trying to do the right thing that's right for themselves and just generally to fit into a structure that wasn't necessarily built for them, and now they're being viewed adversely for that.
Genevieve George: Yeah, so it's maybe not... It's a feeling that I've had myself, right? Oh, I don't know if I wanna ask that. I don't wanna step on anybody's toes. But then if I ask it, I'm stepping on the toes either way, right?
Stacy Jackson: Right. And I'm viewed in a way that, “Oh, she's difficult to work with.”
Genevieve George: And then so how do you coach that with the individuals that you're working with?
Stacy Jackson: Yep. With clarity. Like you gotta really watch your language. You cannot use mitigating words like just, “I just wanna ask this question.” You've already set yourself back.
You start with, "For clarity, I wanna make sure I understand."
So you're already like setting yourself up with the clarity of your communication, and it also comes down to being confident in what you say. And oftentimes we'll see people, and we'll look at them, and they'll communicate so strongly, and we'll say, "Oh my gosh, they have so much confidence." And we assume that they just innately have that.
They've been working on that. Chances are they've written it down.
Genevieve George: Yeah. They've practiced it. Yeah.
Stacy Jackson: You better believe it. They've written it down. They have their comp statements, they have their gap statements. They know what they're doing, and they practice it, and they rehearse it.
Just like actors. They don't just go on the screen and say the lines, and it's perfect. They practice, and they practice. And then they deliver it with confidence. So a lot of that is equipping yourself with the research, getting to the data, which we can also talk about, like where they find their number or what they should anchor their number to, for example.
But it's equipping yourself with the information and then practicing to get that clarity and that confidence in order to have…
Genevieve George: Yeah, and you used a particular word, not like downing what I have to say before I've even started. What you said, like I don't know what to call that, but.
Stacy Jackson: Well, we mitigate ourselves. And so we automatically diminish our statements by using words like just or I'm sorry. There's so many I'm sorrys. A whole lot of... No, I'm sorry, I just wanna ask. Do not be sorry.
Genevieve George: Yes. Yeah, well, and I say that to people about their personal finances too, right?
Stacy Jackson: Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure.
Genevieve George: Because I've been in so many rooms where people are talking. You watch somebody glaze over, right? And so you want them to say, "You know what? I did not understand what you just said. Can you please explain it another way?" And, like, when we're talking about sitting at a table where they're talking to you about your finances, you should not have any shame asking that question. And that's what we're talking about here. This is all related. That your compensation at that new job or at your existing job flow into the bigger plan.
Stacy Jackson: Huge.
Genevieve George: And you should feel empowered to have all the information available to you about what that looks like, and that's what you're talking about here.
Stacy Jackson: Absolutely. And to go back to what you said about just comparing health insurance, like when you sit there and you compare things apple to apple, the categories, whatever it might be—annual bonus, signing bonus, all of that—it has compounding effects over time. And the same thing, we talked about just the data, and I said, "Where do you get your number?"
So even if you wanted to talk about base salary number, you should never anchor your base salary number off what you're currently making. That's another huge mistake. Because you may be undercompensated in the market. And just because you've been at that firm or you've been wherever you've been for 15 years, I guarantee you're undercompensated in the market.
So if you anchor your next position at what you're currently making, you're gonna look at that and go, "Oh, well, I'm gonna make 30 grand more than what I'm making now." But if you're undercompensated by 30 grand now, you've done nothing to level yourself up as you compound through your—
Genevieve George: And that new employer is certainly not the one coming to you and saying…
Stacy Jackson: Absolutely not.
Genevieve George: You’re undervaluing yourself. They’re like, "Hell yeah, I'm gonna get a price break on this person."
Stacy Jackson: You better believe it. And any time you know, any time you go in with a range, you're also undervaluing yourself. Don't go in with a range.
Genevieve George: Well, like when you interview prior to working for myself, right? Now I know all the numbers. When you interview for somebody else, they ask you straight up, ”What are you currently being paid?" And it's like you can't not answer that. Right? So how do you navigate that? 'Cause I wanna know what you're offering to pay me.
But I don't want you to anchor, like I don't wanna anchor it on my current, and I don't want you to either.
Stacy Jackson: Correct. So I'm currently make... I don't love to be cagey, we'll say that. I like my clients to be transparent. I'm transparent. I don't hang out with people that aren't transparent.
So I think there's no reason to be cagey. So I would say, "I'm currently making X. I know I'm grossly undercompensated for my role and for the marketplace." "I'm looking to be compensated at a level in the marketplace for the skills that I have for the title that I'm going for."
Genevieve George: Oh, I love that.
Stacy Jackson: And then you put it right back on them to say what they want. And the other piece of this is we have to not be afraid. I know sometimes I'm more expensive than other coaches, and I know that oftentimes I lose accounts, but I understand the value that I bring. So you have to have some confidence in saying, "This is what my value is, and if I don't get it from this employer, I'm gonna get it from another employer."
And we don't tend to do that, right? Because we wanna get out of our situation possibly, or we need to make more money immediately, whatever the case is. And so we lose sight of why we're really trying to make a move. And we have to continue to have someone either help us remember why we're doing that, or we have to have that confidence in ourselves that says, "If they don't compensate me how I feel fairly is for the role and my skills, then I need to continue to look."
That's hard.
Genevieve George: You talk a lot about this, you sort of, the knowledge gap. Like, how do we get that information on what would be a fair compensation for that role? And it's so hard because titles and skills and all this are different from one company to the next. But I'm just so curious 'cause you work with individuals, but you also work with companies helping their leadership grow.
So, like, how much of it really is negotiable or set? Like, when they go out and say, "We need a new VP of X, Y, and Z,” who's got the flexibility, right?
Stacy Jackson: Yeah. Yeah. That's a phenomenal question. I think it comes down again to equipping yourself. So where do you get the information? As a individual seeker of that information, you can get that information on Glassdoor.
You can get that on LinkedIn salary. You can pay. There's sites that will pay to give you aggregate data for your level of experience or credentials. The marketplace in which you live. If you live in California, it's going to be different than if you live in Alabama, right?
So you need to equip yourself of that information and that data, and sometimes you need to pay in order to get it. Sometimes it's free. So from that perspective, I would say that's worth an investment as an individual to have that. From the corporate perspective, it's a business, and they want the best people, and…
Genevieve George: The lowest price.
Stacy Jackson: Well, I mean, I didn't wanna say that. I didn't wanna say that because I do work for companies also. But I think they wanna compensate fairly, but they always wanna be able to show as much profit as possible. So they're gonna comp fairly, but they're not gonna give away the farm.
Genevieve George: Yeah. As Bo says, they are still also looking to get a deal.
Stacy Jackson: 100%.
Genevieve George: Because it affects their bottom line.
Stacy Jackson: Of course it does. And they want the best person, and oftentimes, again, when you speak about yourself, you speak about why you are the best person and why that comes with a premium.
Genevieve George: Yeah. And it does take coaching for that. Because, I mean, you and I have been friends for a long time. We've had these conversations, right? Yeah. And it's so hard to go into that and be like, "I am definitely guilty of anchoring my salary on what I was making," right?
Absolutely. This is gonna be better because it's more than what I was making, but it's not necessarily that I went in with what am I actually valued at, like from a market standpoint. Not specific to me, but I did some math on that this morning.
Stacy Jackson: I love math. Great. I love the math.
Genevieve George: So, follow along for a minute, but if you have a starting salary of $150,000, but there was a missed raise or a signing bonus or not a signing bonus, but a missed raise or you could have negotiated for more, so we could have been at 160, right? And then we just make some assumptions that your salary only goes up 3% every single year after that.
20 years in, that $10,000 is a $17,000 difference, and that's huge, right? Because that's what your base… your base salary increase is going off of. If your bonus is based on a percentage, that's different. If you're getting an employer match, that is different.
And then, if you make a further assumption that you took that $10,000 and you actually invested it, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars difference.
Stacy Jackson: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Genevieve George: And it's so huge, and when I'm hitting on a bunch of different topics here, but that $10,000 in the moment doesn't seem like, okay, it's better than what I was at, and it's okay and I'll make it up over time. But not making it, not having it happen in that first year, has this compounding in effect.
And then you compound that with the fact that women in particular spend more time out of the workforce. And so it's more important to me always felt like this extra pressure I need to make it and I need to make it sooner than my male counterparts, because they can just sit here at their desk for an extended period of time where we might have to leave the workforce for caretaking, either our children, our parents, whatever the case may be. And so it's like this pressure to get there faster, and that lack of negotiation on the front end has such a big impact on that.
Stacy Jackson: Huge. And can I add one more little specific to layer on top of that? You and I are both mothers, so this affects us, but mothers are generally paid 7% less than non-mothers, females that have no children. Let me just say that. So women that have children are paid 7% less than women that do not have children.
Genevieve George: Wow.
Stacy Jackson: Right? It's amazing. And can I throw on one more?
Genevieve George: Please.
Stacy Jackson: If you're a father, you benefit from a fatherhood premium because look at all of the things that this man does, and he's a father. And that's research done by Cornell and Harvard. So it's not like we're making it up.
So how about that? Yes. So compound that. So if you're a mom, understand you're actually making less than a woman with no children, and child or no child.
Genevieve George: Even more less than a male counterpart.
Stacy Jackson: Correct. That's correct. Correct. And if there's a father in the picture and you're going, all three of you are going for the same job, all three of you are going for the same job, there's a fatherhood premium, an unspoken fatherhood premium, which amounts to about $11,000 on top of the woman with no children. So I don't know the math on what it would be with the woman with the child.
That's also something that we don't talk about.
Genevieve George: So there's a significant pay difference there. Yeah, that's interesting 'cause we talk a lot about men versus women being paid.
But the non-childbearing woman versus the childbearing woman is a difference that I have not really studied. And that's really interesting and something to keep in mind when you're going into these negotiations.
Stacy Jackson: It's huge. And besides that data that's coming out of the research, there is that bias.
And I know I've faced it. I'm sure that you have faced it too, that there's an assumption that women with children are less committed to their job, less committed to their role. They have to... I even was coaching a client the other day, and they said, "Oh, well, so and so had to leave to go pick up their child."
And I said, "Can I just help you reframe that for others who may hear you? You can just say so and so had to leave."
Genevieve George: Yep.
Stacy Jackson: They were like, "Why?" And I said, "Let's talk about it. Let me explain the perception of that."
Genevieve George: Yeah. And as a woman who has children that does work, I wasn't working any less or any less committed than my male counterparts or my counterparts that did not have children.
Stacy Jackson: Of course not.
Genevieve George: I didn't even go in there asking for a flexible schedule, right? It's crazy. I get it if you're asking for something, but I was very much, I spent most of my career trying not to play the sex card.
And trying to just show up exactly the same as my counterparts and still not treated the same.
Stacy Jackson: It's there. Yeah.
Genevieve George: So it's a bias that's there. It doesn't matter what the picture looks like.
Stacy Jackson: It is. It is. And unless we use our language try to continue to counterbalance that, like that leader really was like, “Why?” Honestly out of curiosity, why? And I said, "Well, here's why we don't wanna say that." Like they just left. Nobody needs to know why. They could need to have a tooth extraction. It doesn't matter. At which point you wouldn't be able to say because you're violating HIPAA, right?
So just don't say. So it's just an opportunity for all of us, right? To just…
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah.
Stacy Jackson: It's up to what we say and how we say it and how we think about it.
Genevieve George: And how we think about it is huge, right? And I'm sure that person left and thought that they were being transparent in saying, "This is why I'm leaving," and over-explaining the way we just talked about with. “I’m so sorry I have to ask you this,” I'm totally guilty of that, like over-explaining to show up fully transparent and provide better data, like I think, right? But the reality is that's working against me.
Stacy Jackson: Absolutely. But it is what it is.
Genevieve George: Well, I love that you're teaching the leadership to do it differently. Now, we've been talking a lot about the difference in how we negotiate. So do you feel like you can articulate like a reason why we don't always negotiate, particularly as women?
Stacy Jackson: Yeah, I think... Well, first of all, I feel, and I hesitate to use this, but I have a good friend of mine who wrote a book called The Imposter Monster. And so I feel like women suffer from imposter syndrome more than men do. And I'll say more, because men have it also. And really, what does that mean?
We throw that out, imposter syndrome. If you distill that down, it's basically a tiny little voice in your head that gives you unproductive messages. So if you don't like imposter syndrome or you don't, whatever you have a hang-up with the word…
Genevieve George: My internal gremlin.
Stacy Jackson: It is. It's this little voice inside yourself that provides you unhelpful information, because none of the information that it gives you propels you forward.
It's messages like, "Why do you think you can ask for that? You've never gotten that in the past." "You don't deserve it. If you make this leap, what if you fail?" It's never, "If you make this leap, what if you succeed?"
Because cognitively, we're wired to have a negativity bias. It's just how we think.
So to try to combat that, it’s a worthless pursuit. So you have to be able to say to yourself, "This isn't accurate information. I need to sort of ignore this." But it's easier said than done. So once you kind of equip yourself with someone to help you with that, whether it's a financial planner and if, in terms of finances or an executive coach, a therapist, whoever it doesn't really matter, you need to be able to take a look at your true value, and that's where the peace comes in.
If you haven't been compensated the way you want in the past, why is that? It's not necessarily because you didn't deserve it. It's because you didn't advocate for it. So how are you going to change it? So if things were different today, what would it look like?
How would you change it?
Genevieve George: And do you see, like in the group that you work with, do you see that the confidence to have those internal discussions becomes more over time, right?
Like I'm imagining myself in my 20s. I didn't negotiate anything.
Stacy Jackson: Of course not.
Genevieve George: Nothing. I'm like this, oh, thank you so much for paying me. Of course. I'm happy to talk. I'm so glad to be here. In my 40s, I feel a lot differently. A lot differently. So how do we get that younger group? Because we just talked about it, right? Not getting paid your value earlier has a compounding effect. It has a compounding effect on how you feel at work and your career trajectory as well as your personal finances.
So how do we get those younger groups to talk themselves out of that imposter syndrome earlier?
Stacy Jackson: It's honestly, one of the things that I really work alongside my female executive leaders, it's about providing either mentor relationships or counseling relationships, or being able to not only equip themselves with this information, because you can't mentor people on something you're not doing yourself, right?
Genevieve George: You should definitely negotiate this, but I just took what they offered.
Stacy Jackson: Correct. That's not how we want this to play out. Ideally, we want those firms who have the resources to have financial planning services or executive leadership coaching, those folks that are availing themselves of that, to be able to work with those younger, more junior, I will say, more junior folks in their careers.
It's important. Representation is a thing, and it's a thing for women; it's a thing of people of color. It's a thing. And so we need to make sure that we're in rooms where people are talking about the things that are important to us and are going to be important to us. So, it's very important that if you're coming into your career, right?
Let's just talk to that group right now for a second. You're coming into your career. Who do you know in your workplace that you're like, "They're pretty sharp. I might wanna create some type of relationship with them"? Or even, I shudder to say this because we think about our parents, and now we're gainfully employed, and we're out of college, and we're getting our...
We don't wanna go back to our parents. But whom of your parents' friends do you feel like you can talk with and have conversations with? It's extremely important to not only have your network where you work, but to have your network in various stages of their careers.
Genevieve George: Yeah.
Stacy Jackson: And I don't see that a lot.
And I see, honestly, everyone wants to work from home. I work from home. It's fantastic. But what we're seeing now is those that are more junior in their career are really getting disadvantaged from those, really…
Genevieve George: 'Cause they can't see. They can't see.
Stacy Jackson: They don't have that...
Genevieve George: And feel how those other people are working.
Stacy Jackson: Absolutely. They're missing out on... When I coach with leaders, I talk about the connective tissue. They're missing out on those connective tissue opportunities where they're seeing leaders, they're working with them, they're seeing them in the office, they're having those organic conversations. And working from home is wonderful, 'cause it allows you to walk your dog or do whatever else you need to do, but for that younger generation, they're really struggling.
And this is one instance of it that's going to affect them, I think.
Genevieve George: I mean, even just down to water cooler talk.
Stacy Jackson: Absolutely.
Genevieve George: Right? Like you're not building relationships with your... Because you're hopping on maybe a team meeting but there's no social component to it.
No. It's like, "What are we here for? Let's get going. Like-" So there's no, no, unlike that connective tissue, no relationship building in there.
Stacy Jackson: No. And proximity to the people you want to be around is a real thing. And when you disconnect that, they’re losing. They're losing.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's really powerful. And yeah, I encourage people hearing this to find that person for themselves, whether it's inside their work or outside their work in their network, right?
Stacy Jackson: Now, the flip side of that is interesting to talk about. So those are people less tenured in their career, more junior in their career, looking for these escalating opportunities.
Say, you've got people that are in their 50s and 60s. Well, they don't wanna come to work. So I have a client who is trying to get her team to come into the office, and it's been a real struggle. And she happens to have a lot of junior or a lot of senior people, and they're not necessarily looking for career opportunities or advancement.
They're maybe three to five years from retirement. And so that knowledge is sitting in their own homes when it could be being dispersed…
Genevieve George: And that's like a leadership discussion too, right? 'Cause what is the succession plan for those people if they're not spending time grooming that next generation?
Stacy Jackson: It's a real focus. It's a real focus. And so these are conversations that we're having daily
Genevieve George: I love that. And I think that is... I think there isn't a lack of younger people looking for that mentor, but to your side of it is that mentor being want- wanting to actually come to the office or spend time training and teaching these things, right? And it's so important and powerful, so.
Stacy Jackson: Thank you.
Genevieve George: I know you do it, I know I do it, but we need to make sure other people that are willing to share their experience. And I'm, like, so much… we talked about this.
The 20-year-old Jen didn't negotiate anything.
No confidence, whatever, total imposter syndrome. And 40-something Gen, I'm like I'm watching it happen with younger people, and I'm like, "Oh my God, get out." Are you looking for permission to look for another job? Here I am to tell you that you have permission, like please go.
Stacy Jackson: Yeah.
Genevieve George: Because I can see it, right? But when I was in it, I didn't see what was happening around me. And when somebody else is talking to you about it, it's so much easier to see and be like, "Oh my God, please don't repeat all the mistakes that I made.” Like let me help you.
Stacy Jackson: Absolutely. And we always have that fear, right? We always say, if I jump, what if I fall?" Not, "If I jump…
Genevieve George: What if it's great?
Stacy Jackson: You're always gonna fall, you're never gonna land. But that's not true. But you can't discount it either because it's a real feeling.
But to your point though about aging and I talk about this too a lot. A lot of confidence comes from repetition. It's having been there before. It's even that colloquial phrase people are like, "Act like you've been here before." Well, there's something to be said about that because when you've been there before, you're like, "Oh, I've seen this play out. I know about this." Or just even seeing other people, you're like, "Oh, wow, they're paying you $14,000 more than me. Oh, that's interesting. Huh."
Genevieve George: Yeah.
Stacy Jackson: Okay. So, but again, if you are isolated, if you're in a silo, if you're not in a workplace environment, like, all of these things sort of counteract.
Genevieve George: And in your working with individuals, both men and women, you're talking to them about building this confidence and coming with the right questions, negotiating their salary, really, really understanding their compensation structure and understanding, like where there is flexibility to particularly ask for more.
Stacy Jackson: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Genevieve George: And then, you may come across a client where they're doing all the things that you're saying, and they're just sort of hitting this ceiling. What do you tell them to do?
Stacy Jackson: That's a great question. It's interesting because it's actually, we gotta step back a little bit further because why now are they noticing that? Like, why now? What is important about the fact that they're asking that question right now?
Because if something didn't shift, there'd be no reason for them to either have that realization or have that desire for more or different or so what is it? So really, we can get to try to answer that question, but we gotta pull down the veil a little bit to be like “What is it that brought you to this point?" Maybe it's not even salary at all.
Genevieve George: 100 little things that just broke over time.
Or one major conversation that just opened your eyes or whatever the case may be. But understanding what it is that changed their drive.
Stacy Jackson: Correct. Because you don't wanna solve the wrong problem. And you don't wanna go after solving the wrong problem. So if whatever it is that has you now questioning or internally looking, if it's you hate your work schedule, then what if you took less money to work from home? Would that solve that itch? What's the problem, right?
But if that was indeed the problem and you jumped to go make more money somewhere, but you're still not working from home, you didn't solve the problem.
Genevieve George: You're just gonna circle back to same issue, yeah.
Stacy Jackson: And online shop more because now you have more money, but you're still dissatisfied, so you're gonna chase it somewhere else, right?
Genevieve George: But I'll be there when Amazon shows up every day.
Stacy Jackson: No, you won't, 'cause you didn't solve your problem of working from home. Or remotely.
Genevieve George: Yes.
Stacy Jackson: Well, yeah. That's a great... It's actually a really great question, and one that, we can't answer until we really figure out what it is that's heightened your awareness.
Genevieve George: And that's, I mean, I think that's probably There's some alignment in what you do and what I do in that no two people are the same.
Their goals, their path, it's different, even if you're working with two people at the same level at the same company. Like somebody may really be driven and want to go, and somebody may have other desires to just sort of status quo
Stacy Jackson: And that changes over time. Again, just like knowledge gives you a new base and a new framework, your life changes over time, and what we think at 20-year-old Gen, what she thinks her life is gonna be, 20, 25 years down the road, who knows?
Genevieve George: It’s wildly different.
Stacy Jackson: It's wildly different. And then when you get into your 50s, it changes again. Then it changes again. So, it's actually interesting that this is where our conversation has taken us because I also think that it's imperative for us to stop at certain milestones, if you will, like, and say to ask ourselves these questions of "Is this where I wanna be? Is this the job I wanna be doing? Is this the income I wanna be making?"
And there's, I think, a real value to doing that as well because often our life just sort of takes us in an inertia, and we wake up one day and we're like, "Oh, I guess I'm in this position. I guess I'm in this role."
And maybe that's the role you wanna be in, and maybe it's not. And so I don't know that we've done a phenomenal job in our work history of kind of stopping at some of those milestone points and asking ourselves those questions until it gets to be, like, a burning disaster, and it's like a dumpster fire.
Personal finance here.
Genevieve George: Well, and I think that applies on the financial planning side, too. Absolutely. He- head in the sand for too long. Basically, if I actually take my head out of the sand and look around, well, going back to the workplace, oh my God, I'm not where I wanna be.
But I was just sort of doing the daily tasks and surviving, not thriving, right? And so if you have to take a get your head out of the sand and take a look at the whole picture, whether that's your financial picture or your career picture, it might not be what you want it to be, but you can't make it what you want it to be until you've looked at it.
Stacy Jackson: Correct. Absolutely. You're 100%... And what if you think you're doing great? What if you're contributing the minimum to your 401(k) or whatever, and you've got that on automation, and you feel good about it, but nobody's having that conversation with you of "Hey, man, that 4% or whatever…
Genevieve George: Is not enough…
Stacy Jackson: It's not enough.
Genevieve George: …to make the world go round. Depends on your budget, but yes. But nobody's talking to you about it, yeah.
Stacy Jackson: Like knowing that you're having the conversation, you feel good. You feel like you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. Yeah, I'm contributing to my company's 401(k).
Genevieve George: Yep. Just while we're on the 401(k) piece, that was part of what we had talked about, too, is like with the individuals and the companies that you work with, helping people to fully understand their full benefit package. What is the full picture, which is like can be your base and salary, but there might be stock options- investing schedules that you need to understand and what are the things that you can participate in, and what are the things that you need to do something else to participate in.
Like equity in the business, like those are really powerful pieces that impact probably how you feel about where you work and your stickiness to the job as well as the long-term financial picture.
Stacy Jackson: Absolutely. And one of the... we kind of give working from home, we kind of give it a bad rap a little bit with the younger population, but I just wanna make note, there's real value in the flexibility also.
So sometimes people will say, "Oh, I can make so much more someplace else." Maybe, absolutely, but if flexibility in your schedule is important to you, you have to figure out what that dollar amount is because that goes into that total comp.
Genevieve George: Having it as a part of the trade-offs that…
Stacy Jackson: Absolutely. Yeah.
Genevieve George: Yeah. I mean, these are not uncomplicated things, right? Particularly when you start talking about things outside of straight compensation and bonus compensation. Some of these things get really complicated. And I have had clients where I'm sitting down, I'm talking to them about their employer stock schedule.
And these are things, like, from the employer side, you're usually just been given a package of paper, and like not a lot of guidance.
Stacy Jackson: Talk to HR about it. And they won't know.
Genevieve George: They do not.
Stacy Jackson: I will say, "Talk to HR." My background is HR, I'm certified through SHRM. No, I wouldn't be the person to be talking to you about this.
Genevieve George: Yeah, and really understanding how they work. ‘Cause it's what happens at work, but then what happens when they vest, and they go into a different account, and all these things.
But it has a big impact on how bought into the company you are, because you've got these, in this case, like stock options associated with the company, but you need to understand like the tax implications of that as well. But nobody is there explaining it.
They're just handing you this piece of paper, and I just own this, I say this all the time, but like even just my own 401(k), I went to college, and I came out, and I had my first job, and they just plopped down paperwork in front of me, and here you go.
Stacy Jackson: And I signed up. I signed up.
Genevieve George: And I'm 22 years old, and they say "Aggressive, moderate, or conservative?"
Stacy Jackson: I don't know.
Genevieve George: 22-year-old Gen did not identify as being an aggressive person. 40-something Gen really does.
Stacy Jackson: Yeah, that's right.
Genevieve George: Both financially and in my personality.
Stacy Jackson: I want all of my… How quickly can I get the money? But you can get the money as quickly at 40-plus as you could at 20-plus, because you're losing those compounding years, right?
Genevieve George: But nobody is explaining it, and that’s the point there too, is like nobody... Somebody should have been over my shoulder saying, "Oh my God, participate in this.
Do this more." "Do it at this level." And it applies to those other benefits that people don't really understand what it is. It's just paperwork put in front of them, and like you start talking about stock options, and deferred compensation, and like all these things, and they just get overwhelmed, and they're like, "Oh, that doesn't feel like that's for me."
But the reality is there's huge benefits to that, and they need somebody to talk to about it.
Stacy Jackson: Absolutely. And if you told... if you had the opportunity to talk to somebody and say, "But to your point of the math, you're losing hundreds of thousands of dollars over the length of your career, would that be important to you?”
Genevieve George: Yeah. But it's getting them to a point where they can just feel like they have somebody to ask those questions and that's the piece that's missing. Go to HR, like HR may or may not be helpful.
Stacy Jackson: No.
Genevieve George: No. I tell people, "There is an advisor for everybody, even if it's your first day, and you have $1."
Like there is somebody that is willing to help you, that will want to help you, and that will help you- send you in the right direction or give you the right information. It doesn't have to be me. There's somebody out there that will help you. Agreed. And there was some. Like, I just didn't know to seek that.
Stacy Jackson: Well, and that's the thing, right? Like, where are our sort of where are our people, yeah. Where are our people that are helping this younger group come along? And so it's really important that now that we do have that information, that we are sort of reaching out when we have those opportunities to do so, because I think I do feel like it's incumbent upon us.
And honestly, people may disagree with me, but I do feel like it's incumbent upon us as women to ensure that our learnings do not just go with us.
Genevieve George: Die with us.
Stacy Jackson: Yeah.
Genevieve George: Yes. Yeah, we wanna hand it down and educate other people so that, and other women that are coming up so that they're not running into these same roadblocks.
Stacy Jackson: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's difficult. I think in your introduction you talked about re-entering the workforce. That's something else that's unique, again, to mostly women. I mean, I'm not gonna say that men don't step out of the workforce and take care of maybe elderly parents or whatever the situation is, because obviously that happens.
But when we talk about the motherhood tax, and when we talk about things like that, more often it is women stepping out of the workforce to take care of younger children, aging parents, whatever the situation may be. I will say that what we're seeing in my world is work gaps on resumes since the pandemic are really not as m- much of a focus as they were pre-pandemic, which- yay for that. That's a victory for women. Progress. That's progress. That's progress for us out, because now we don't have to explain so many things. But the gap, though, in terms of a financial perspective, the gap is super important because, again, anchoring your re-entry to the workforce should not be anchored based on what you were compensated for 10 years ago when you left the workforce.
Again, what can people do about that? What can women do about that? So two things can be true at the same time, right? There could be a, a ceiling that people find themselves hitting, but there also could be... And that's just structural. But there's also things that we can do. So what do we do?
If we step out of the workforce, what do we do? It's super important to maintain your professional connections. Super important. It's wildly important to continue to maintain those professional certifications.
Genevieve George: Designations, certifications. Yes. Yeah.
Stacy Jackson: All those letters that come behind your name, it's significant to continue to keep those up, regardless of whether you're in the workforce or not.
And oftentimes it's just taking classes or doing something online, or whatever it is. Do not ever let your distinctions and qualifications expire, whatever you do.
Genevieve George: Right
Stacy Jackson: I don’t care if you think you're never coming back to work. Please never do that. Always keep yourself active on whatever platform serves you.
So if it's LinkedIn, keep your active profile on LinkedIn. These are just little things that will help you re-relaunch into the workplace when you need to.
Genevieve George: Right. Yeah. The certifications, that one weighs really heavily on me, and I haven't left the workforce, but for a short maternity leave, but even that I don't wanna add to the pressure of going back iif I have to also retest or re- recertify somewhere. That just is like one more hurdle to like going into an already challenging thing, where you’re coming back into the workforce.
Stacy Jackson: It is. It is. Exactly. Like I said, two things can be true at once. It's already challenging. Do not make it more challenging on yourself.
Keep yourself up to speed. Keep yourself professionally relevant.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Now, in that piece, like leaving the workforce you and I both are in what is beautifully called the sandwich generation, right? We're raising kids, but we have to have in our mind what our parents might need, right?
And so I carry that, and I'm an only child, so I carry that only on me. And one of the things that I feel like I have put on myself throughout my career is that I need to get there, and I need to get there quicker because there might be time later that I have to come out of the workforce, and that might not be what the picture looks like, but that is something that I have carried around with me.
So, where is that line between healthy urgency and anxiety-driven decision-making?
Stacy Jackson: Yeah, I think that's a perfect question to ask, because in reality, that could be an added pressure that you are putting on yourself for reasons unknown. And so when we come back to that voice in your head that is providing unhelpful information, in that instance, I might challenge you and say, "Okay, Gen, well, what would that look like?
If you didn't carry that, what would that look like?" And maybe your answer is, "Well, it would just continue to be doing what I'm doing." Then I'd say, "Then just continue doing what you're doing, but leave that unhelpful information."
Genevieve George: Yeah. But at the same time, it's something like, it's such a balance, right?
Yeah. I see it with other people, so that's why I carry it too. But it's such a balance because it shouldn't weigh heavily on me right now, 'cause it's not an issue right now. But if it were to become an issue, I don't want it to be in the format of crisis planning.
Does that make sense? So it's such a balance.
Stacy Jackson: How does it inform your decision today? How does it inform your decision today? If it happened right now today, what would you need to do? I'd need to look for a new job. Okay, then maybe that's what you need to do, is start looking for a new job. So how does that impact you today?
The fact that you're asking that question, or the fact that you even have that in your mind this could be a reality for me, you're already sort of halfway there. So chances are good if I asked you that question of okay, what would that need to change today if that were a reality for you?
Chances are you're not this far apart, right? You're just this far.
Genevieve George: But I think I see in other instances, not my own, of course, but 'cause I do think about it and plan for it, but I think that's a piece for our sandwich generation where we know it might be out there, we haven't planned for it, and that causes crisis.
Stacy Jackson: Yeah. And I think it's a great question. I think it's a great question if your client is not asking that question of themselves, I think it's a great question to ask them. Like, "Hey, if something changed tomorrow, are you in place for that?” And then have that conversation. Say, "Okay. Well, don't stress about it, but here's some changes that we can make today for possibly that situation.
We're not saying it's happening. We're not borrowing from the future to pay the price today." "But we are gonna look at that." And I think that's a phenomenal question for clients who aren't thinking like that.
Genevieve George: Now, we've covered a whole heck of a lot of things. And focusing a lot on women.
So if there is a woman listening and she is feeling like, oh, behind maybe. Whether it's financially or just hasn't ever negotiated or has... what should that person do?
Stacy Jackson: Well, they should call you or I.
Genevieve George: Yes. That's number one. Yeah. Number one. But number two.
Stacy Jackson: They need to look for resources.
They're out there. We're here. Honestly, one of the things that we'll get positive feedback or negative feedback, but there's so much information out there at our fingertips now more than ever. In the past, a lot of comp information has been gatekept.
Not necessarily these days. You've got access to AI. You've got access to different learning, large learning models that can get you information. I will say this much, vet it. Go to like two, three, four credible sources. Seriously, two, three, four credible sources.
Look at your LinkedIn network. Look at people that you may have had a relationship... The funny thing is whenever we talk or whenever I talk with people that are maybe looking for a change or look at... they're like, "I don't know where to start." I'm like, "Start with people you know.” “Yeah, but nobody in the…”
You don't know until you actually start to look, and you start to look at the people that you have in your network. And you start to think, "Oh, I wonder if they could answer a question." All you need is somebody to answer one question, and you're off and running because the next question will give you the next question, will give you the next question.
So it's an overwhelming task when you take it on like a mountain. But when you take it on as one question, one question, one question, you start to create a picture of information that you can then use to make yourself, to equip yourself with more data.
Genevieve George: Well, and I really liked your, I kept saying head out of the sand, but your analysis.
Like, where are you at right now?
And I just think that is something I'm guilty of it myself. That so many people don't do, right? You're just caught up in the, every day, the day-to-day tasks. It's too overwhelming to think, "I gotta take a step back and do the big picture analysis.”
But really that's what's gonna benefit you and drive those questions.
Stacy Jackson: It's the next question, and the next question, and the next question. The other thing that's, that I think sets people back, male and female, is looking at it holistically. But again, this is where our brain works against us so often.
We didn't get here in one step, right? We didn't all of a sudden blink and become 52. We get here incrementally over time, you have a bunch of initials after your name. I have a bunch of initials after my name. We didn't get them all at once. We got one, and then we got another, and then we got another.
So it does a complete disservice to ourselves looking at it like that. We have to look at it as, what's the first step? What's the next step? What's the first initial? Then I'll get the second initial.
Genevieve George: And so how do people find you? What is a working relationship with SBJ Consulting look like?
Stacy Jackson: Excellent question. So the easiest way to find me, the easiest way to find me is at my website. It's sbjconsultinginc.com, and you can find me there. You can sign up for my Thought Partner Friday, which is a newsletter that I send out every Friday morning, and it's got a leadership tip and a leadership learning.
And I hope to send this out one day on a Friday. But that's the best way to find me. You can also email me directly at stacy@sbjconsultinginc.com. You can find me on LinkedIn, Stacy Berg Jackson. So those are all the avenues that we can connect. And I work with individuals, I work with individuals sponsored by companies, and I work with large organizations.
So I've got a model for all, and I work primarily... Honestly, the bulk of my clients are male, and I have a very strong sector of female clients, which I love to pieces. I love my male clients to pieces also, but that's another interesting thing that we didn't really talk about a lot, which is professional development, and asking for professional development, and asking for services from your organization.
Men ask in a disproportionate amount than women ask.
I've got a lot of male clients because they ask for it.
Genevieve George: Yeah. And they're asking for executive coaching outside of their company, right? You know asking for resources for not necessarily that you aren't engaged by the company, but, like somebody that can give you, like outside perspective.
Stacy Jackson: But how they find me, Gen, just for clarity is some folks just contract with me completely separate from their organization. Some folks go to their organization and have their organization contract me.
So either way.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And so we just need more women to ask and go get-
Stacy Jackson: We just need more women to ask ... yes. Yep. Yep.
Genevieve George: Yeah. I think that's been a general theme. And we want you to ask all the questions.
Stacy Jackson: Go ask. All the questions. Yes. Because again, you'll feel that, that weight or you'll feel that double bind going, "If I ask, then I'm gonna be viewed as."
At this point, it's on you to ensure that you're doing the right thing for yourself.
Genevieve George: And from a cadence standpoint when you're working with an individual, whether they're, they've worked with you through their company or directly h- how often are you meeting? What is the time commitment that they should expect?
Stacy Jackson: Yeah. That's great. So typically we'll meet every other week for, I always joke, it's 50 minutes except we go an hour. So it's a one-week for an hour essentially. And when I work with individual clients that can be for as long as they want, right? When I work with organizations, we usually work on contracts.
We work on a six-month contract or a year contract, and then we'll renew accordingly. But for individuals, I have some individuals that have been with me for years and years. And then I have some individuals that are like, "Here's what I need right now" and we'll work on that, and then they kind of go away, and then they'll come back, a year or two later and say, "Okay, here's what I wanna talk about now."
Genevieve George: Yeah. And I know that I have personally worked with you for some of my organizational work too. Oh, yep. Just trying to help get boards organized and strategic planning underway, so I know you have some expertise in that area as well, so. Yep. Yeah. But it was a wonderful experience.
Stacy Jackson: Thank you. It's always helpful to have a third party, like a third person whose sole job is to help you.
And I think that's the secret sauce to either a financial advisement relationship or a coaching relationship. My client, regardless really, if I'm contracted by the company or not, my client is the person in front of me.
So it is my so- I have no other agenda than to see them reach their goals, whatever their goal happens to be, and I'm fully invested in that. And to have someone, I think, that is unbiased is huge. Yeah. And I think in your world as well, same thing, because you have people that maybe have, familial opinions about what people should do with their money and that kind of thing.
But you solely invested in that person's success and future I think should hold a little more weight than someone else that maybe has another viewpoint for whatever reason they do.
Genevieve George: Well, I love that. Well, thank you so much for being on. And I'm so excited for all the additional people that you're gonna help from this.
Stacy Jackson: Yes. I'm so excited. This was wonderful. Thank you for having me and giving me a little of your time.
Genevieve George: Yeah. Yeah, I love it.
That's it for today's episode of The Wealth Development Studio. Remember, financial clarity is powerful. Do you need help with your financial plan? Go to pelicanfinancialplanning.com to schedule a call with me. Until next time.
