Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:20):
choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helenan believes that certainly applies
to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W
four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com and
now your host, Kevin Helena.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Thanks everybody for joining in today. I am Kevin Hallan,
and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on
W four cy dot com. We're streaming live on Talk
the Number four talkfour tv dot com, and we're streaming
streaming live on Facebook and at Winning Business at at
Winning Business Radio, and of course we're available in podcasts
(01:16):
after the Lime Live show. While I can't talk today
wherever you get your podcast content, that's YouTube, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple.
The mission of Winning Business radio and TV, as regular
viewers and listeners know, is really to offer insights and
advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others, to
learn best practices.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
Those are the how tos, the what.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Tos, the what not tos, to be challenged and hopefully
to be inspired by the successes of others. Who are
those others consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and owners, entrepreneurs,
people with expertise. But you know, virtually every successful person
I've ever talked to has had some form of failure
in their lives and careers. As I say every time,
(02:01):
while we all have to get our knees skinned once
in a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from
needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so
we don't repeat it. I've spent the better part of
my career equipping businesses to grow from solopreneurs to small
and medium sized companies all the way up to the
Fortune fifty. I've seen some of those companies win, and
to varying degrees, I've seen some fail, and I've had
(02:22):
the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the highest
performing people around and with some who probably should have
found other professions. And in my own businesses, I've had
lots of success, but some failures too. I like to
think I've learned a lot from those experiences. So yeah,
you'll hear from me, but mostly you're going to hear
from our guests, those experts, consultants, coaches, advisors, etc.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
And today is no exception.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
My guest today's John Gates pay negotiation, negotiation expert, keynote speaker,
and best selling author of Act Your Wage. Here's his bio.
John Gates is an international best selling author and Egotian
expert negotiation expert who has overseen more than seventy five
thousand not a typo job offers during his thirty year
(03:08):
career in corporate recruiting. As a former head of global
recruiting for multiple Fortune five hundred companies, he trained hiring
teams on how to negotiate, giving him rare insider insight
into what actually works.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Now.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
The creator of the salary Coach method, John helps executives
and job seekers confidently navigate offer conversations without risking the deal.
His sessions blend sharp strategy with a calming, practical tone
that audiences love and apply immediately. John's a mission driven
speaker who loves leaves professionals saying why didn't anyone teach
(03:41):
me this sooner? He's the international best selling author of
Act Your Wage, What to Say and How to Say
It to get the best possible salary package. He holds
a bachelor's in Management and Finance, a double major from
the University of Oregon. He resides in Medford, Oregon, and
has five kids, two boys and three girls. With an
interesting story, but we'll get to that in a moment. John,
(04:02):
Welcome to Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
Thanks so much Kevin for having me. I was so
excited to hear about your show, and now that I'm here,
I am absolutely thrilled. It's going to be a fun
ride today.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
I agree. I agree.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
And before we're done, John, we're going to promo a
second appearance, which is a little unusual, but we're going
to do it.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
So tell us about your kids.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
So I have five children. Two of them, excuse me,
two of them are biological. They're both boys, and the
three girls are all adopted and adopted them when they
were older. Children like most people who expand through adoption
adopt when they are you know, children are very young.
They do that for specific personal reasons. But you know,
(04:47):
I wanted to impact the lives of people that were
already somewhat formed and so on, and so I adopted
two girls from Columbia, South America when they were ten
and seven, and now they're about thirty and twenty seven,
so they've come a long way. And adopted another girl
(05:08):
from Alabama. Met her through the foster care system when
she was sixteen, actually adopted her when she was in
her mid to late twenties, and now she is thirty seven.
So most people have no idea why you would adopt
a child, or anyone for that matter, who's older than
(05:30):
age eighteen. But over the years, I built a very
personal relationship with this person, she had been involved in
the family. I'd become a primary advisor for her in
a lot of ways of her life. And I know
that people who grow up without a family identity are
(05:53):
at risk in a lot of ways. Like I think,
you need to know where you belong to who you are.
That's really foundational life for any person.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
So and I know in today's you know, in today's world,
it's controversial to even say a father figure, but I
believe people I think you do too, need both a
mother and a dad.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
Yeah, absolutely true, and people who don't have that have
a really hard time making good choices. Children who age
out of foster care are significantly higher for criminal backgrounds,
for single motherhood, single fatherhood. Basically, they make less desirable
(06:40):
decisions throughout their life. Data bears this out. If you
look at the prison population of the United States, a
very large portion of those folks are people who aged
out of the foster system without any sort of meaningful
family connection. And if you think about it this way,
this is kind of how it works. Like I don't
know about you, Kevin, but when I was growing up,
(07:02):
a lot of the reasons why I didn't do certain
things is because Grandma would have been ashamed if I
had been caught doing or I would have disappointed my
mother or something like that kind of acts as a
curb on your behavior. It enhances your conscience in those situations.
But if you're growing up in a group home, which
(07:24):
is where most foster teens live, who are your influencers, Well,
they're usually going to be state employees or other foster
kids that you're in that group home with, who are
equally like untethered. And I think that's why bad choice
(07:46):
is life altering decisions. You know, the face tattoo or
something like that happens to you when you're in that situation.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
It's funny you were saying that, and I remember my grandmother,
My mom's maiden name was Rachuti Italian, and she would
my grandmother always say, would always say, make sure they
know you're a rachutee. I mean, she was really about
reputation and good choices. But you just reminded me of that.
So now you grew up in Oregon as well.
Speaker 5 (08:16):
Yeah, I did. I was born here, raised here, lived
in Portland and Eugene, graduated from the University of Oregon
in Eugene, and then sometime around nineteen ninety eight I
left Oregon to chase the Fortune five hundred career. I
ended up moving to Richmond, Virginia, which is about as
(08:36):
far away from Oregon as you can get and still
be in the continental US. And after that I went
to Birmingham, Alabama, then to Fort Wayne, Indiana, then to
Saint Louis, Missouri, then to Houston, Texas and now back
in Oregon. So I've lived in a lot of places.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Yeah, we're going to talk about some of those positions.
What were your early interests though, before college?
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Before college? A great question. So when I was in
middle school, I wanted to be an astronaut, and that
was no like casual interest either. I actually reverse engineered
the path I would need to take in seventh grade.
I did this on my own figure out well, all right,
I thought about, how do most people get to become astronauts,
(09:27):
and typically they are navy pilots something like that. And
so how do you become a naval aviator, top gun
guy something like that. Well, you need to have an
appointment to the Naval Academy. How do you get that?
You need the you know, a sponsor, like a senator
(09:49):
or somebody like that usually to get you into the
naval academy. That's very helpful. So I was thinking about
this stuff at the age of I don't know, twelve
or twelve years old. I was really good. What I
was going to do was really inspired. It was a
huge goal of mine to become an astronaut. A little
(10:10):
later on in life, though, I switched over to wanting
to be a scientist, and then I figured, well, you know,
all the scientists of the world, they work for business people,
and so then I decided to shift over into a
business focus and always had a strong interest in owning
my own company one day, so I majored in management
(10:31):
and finance, thinking that that would help me toward owning
my own company one day.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Here, I am, what was behind your decision to go
to your organ.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
I lived there at the time. Actually thought about getting
into a university in California called Harvey Mud University, which
a lot of people don't know about Harvey Mud, but
it's like an mi I on the West Coast, very niche.
(11:04):
The best science nerds of the universe go to Harvey Mutt.
I actually didn't get in. It was a shock. I
was one of these people. It was used to achieving everything.
Took five advanced placement courses as a senior in high
school science, languages, and music, so I was very very
(11:24):
well rounded and active in the community, and I still
didn't get in, very very selective. So it was after
that that I sort of did some rediscovery and decided
just to attend the University of Oregon because it was local.
I was going to fund all of my own university costs.
My family weren't in any position to help me at
(11:46):
the time, so I ended up figuring out the most
efficient path to completing university with the smallest investment possible. Man.
Back in those days, they would charge you full time
tuition for twelve or more credits in a term, and
(12:06):
I took advantage of that, taking eighteen to twenty one
credits a term, oh Man to to reduce the cost
per class basically, And that was that was the way
I was thinking about things. I guess I've always been
a little bit of a logical pathfinder in those ways.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yeah. I remember my student loan payment was fifty five
dollars a month, I mean, and I thought that was
a lot.
Speaker 4 (12:34):
You know.
Speaker 5 (12:35):
I worked my way through college. Like Besides that sort
of heavy courseload, I worked thirty hours a week at
Domino's Pizza Oh wow, Yeah, slinging pizza and try not
to speed because back then there was a thirty minute guarantee.
They had to do away with that eventually, But that
made working at domino Is exciting and fun. It was
(12:56):
a place I.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Can challenge every delivery, right Yeah, yeah, So how did
you I mean kind of a big answer here, just
maybe the last question before our first commercial break, But
how did you get to recruiting and talent management at
such a high level.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
Well, the first part of that is how did I
get into it at all? Like I wanted to be
a financial analyst and got an offer while I was
in college to join a big tech company in Portland,
Oregon to be a financial analyst. And three weeks before
I got that I was supposed to start, they sent
(13:39):
me a message, a letter saying We're so sorry, but
we're rescinding all offers for anyone who hasn't started yet.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
So I had that happen to me once.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
Yeah, too bad, So sad you're laid off before you
even start. And so I was in a position where
I was newly married, had a son on the way
he wasn't born yet, my first son, and terrified. So
I ended up just networking like crazy. It took me
three months in a poor economy in the Pacific Northwest
(14:12):
to find my job after college, and I ended up
recruiting for a temporary agency in Portland. They hired me
because I had a degree and I could speak Spanish,
and I looked good in a suit, and that was
the criteria. They wanted me to go open a new
office in Hillsboro, which and that was heavily hispanic at
(14:36):
the time, and they wanted someone who could recruit that population,
translate all the testing and application materials, and then dispatch
people on temporary assignment. And that's how I got my job,
first job in recruiting, and I've been there ever since.
Five years later, I decided to join corporate recruiting, leave
the temporary agency industry behind, and very quickly rose into leadership.
(15:03):
So I think by the time two thousand and two
came around, I was leading a recruiting function, building one
from scratch, and then went into leadership in the Fortune
five hundred.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Well, all right, hold that thought, everybody.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
We're going to come right back with John Gates in
about a minute after this break.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
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Speaker 2 (16:57):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin hell Man,
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helena.
Speaker 4 (17:17):
Welcome back.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
We are with John Gates, pay negotiation expert, best selling
international best selling author and keynote speaker. You you're judging
from I use LinkedIn as a source document. Of course,
you joined it T which is a company that I
(17:38):
haven't heard a lot about, even though they're giant. I
was in the private career school business and I of
course remember it T Tech and knew some people that.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Worked there as a divisional recruiting leader. Tell us about
that role.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
And we'll get into some of the others as well.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
That was interesting, actually, he takeaways yet.
Speaker 5 (17:58):
Yeah, I started that job actually as a response to
the two thousand and seven two thousand and eight financial
crisis that we all know about. Before that, I actually
took a chance and started my own recruiting business the
first time, hung out my own shingle and decided to
(18:19):
specialize in the mining sector because that was what I
was just coming out of talent acquisition in the mining sector.
Was going to do a lot of headhunting in that.
And then I sensed the economic headwinds of the two
thousand Starting in two thousand and seven, I didn't know
if I had the right financial depth to weather a
significant storm, and I didn't know if this was going
(18:41):
to be a blip or a tsunami. So I decided
to shutter the business, and I took this job in
Fort Wayne, Indiana. And this ITT at the time was
a conglomerate company they controlled. It was a lot of
technology and so on. At one time in the past,
(19:02):
I think the IT Technical Institute was part of their holdings,
but they divested that and still now people when they
hear the name, they think of the technical school. But
this in Fort Wayne, Indiana, they were making battlefield radios
for the US Army, so all the radio units that
(19:23):
slide into a hum vy or fit into a tank
or something like that. They were also doing satellite navigation equipment,
things that would give surveillance advantage to troops on the ground.
But it was a defense company and for the last
twenty five or thirty years they'd been operating that facility
(19:45):
producing this kind of technical equipment for the military, And
so I thought, Hey, this will be a nice safe
place to go and be and if I like it,
I can stay there. Two and a half three years later,
I got laid off because the defense industry just got
hammered with massive budget cuts in the federal government. And
(20:09):
I had this was the most advanced sort of talent
acquisition job that was available in the small community of
Fort Wayne, Indiana at the time. So I was pretty
sure I was going to have to relocate if I
was going to continue my career in ta and that's
what then moved me to Saint Louis, Missouri, and that
(20:30):
was Pebety Energy YEP. Worked for Peabody Energy for four years.
Global Mining Powerhouse. What a fun company to work for.
Some of the best people I've ever met in my
professional life worked at Peabody Energy and they had mining
operations all over the planet, and I was ahead of
(20:51):
recruiting there, so I was responsible directly for all recruiting
in the US and dotted line responsibility for all Australia
and China and any other markets that they wanted to
expand into. They were toying with the idea of launching
a mine in Mongolia, in southern Mongolia, and I had
(21:14):
the responsibility to figure out the staffing plan for that mine,
and that was really really fun. How are you going
to staff it? You need hundreds and hundreds of people
where no people live. I saw pictures of the Gobi
Desert in Mongolia and it looked like Mars Kevin. It
was like red sand. No trees, just rocks and sand
(21:37):
and everything from hundreds of miles around. After I got
far down the path of figuring out how are we
going to staff that, the company ended up curtailing that
investment because they couldn't come to terms with the Chinese government.
And you would imagine that what is China have to
(22:01):
say about what happens in southern Mongolia. It has to
do with flight evacuations. If somebody gets hurt at the mindsight,
you want to be able to evacuate the wounded person.
And Peabody else has always had a gold plated philosophy
around safety. That was something that I truly loved about
(22:25):
representing them as a recruiter. They were always much more
concerned about safety than a lot of other mining companies,
and they couldn't get clear like flying that close to
the border of China, if you have an uncleared flight
plan or something like that, you're just going to get
(22:47):
shot down. So we couldn't resolve that issue, and so
decided to scuttle the whole idea of doing this based
on that. Until that could be fixed, there was just
no way they would commit to building something there that
was going to last for one hundred and forty years, So.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
That would have been almost like generating or creating a
city or town.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like picture of the old fashioned company
town where you would have told build a town with
all the infrastructure of a town, a fire department, a
police department, housing for people, place for them to get food,
and entertainment, everything else. Yes, schools are kids, and then
(23:37):
training infrastructure, like how are you going to teach the
rural Mongolian population who doesn't know how to drive a
car to drive a four hundred ton rock truck safely?
And you've probably seen these giant mining rigs where the
tires are twice the size of a man. You could
run over an f one point fifty and not even
(23:59):
know you've done it in one of those. So there
was a lot and we were imagining that this would
be a multi generational situation where you would recruit Mongolian
nationals to staff most of the mind. You would bring
in initially international expats to lead and train and do
(24:20):
all that with a period of time where you're going
to hand over and train up to Mongolian nationals over
the course of several years, eventually just handing the whole
thing off to mostly local people, and then you would
probably employ their children and then maybe even their grandchildren.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
So sorry, it reminds me of visiting the Hoover Dam
and they built Boulder City.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
M That sort of idea doesn't exist often in today's economy,
But in the mining business I learned that it's geologic time. Really,
it takes years to create to go from greenfield project
to actual revenue production. So you have to be looking
(25:10):
at the price of commodities and be pretty sure that
three four or five years from now, when you're starting
to get the money recouped from your investments, that the
commodity price is going to justify actually operating the thing.
So every mining project has break even point, just like
(25:31):
anything else. I learned this in the oil business as well.
You might have a price per ton of I don't
know for coal, maybe it's twenty dollars a ton or something.
It's like that. Well, if it costs you twenty two
dollars a ton to get it out of the ground,
you're not gonna You're just gonna shutterer the thing until
(25:52):
the economy or the price of that commodity shifts to
where it's favorable. And there was an old say in
that industry that you've got to make You've got to
make hay while the sun is shining. So if the
commodity prices go way up and you have an operating asset,
you're going to try to double staff, triple staff, you know,
(26:14):
do what you can to produce, to expand production during
that window, because there will come a time. Sure is
anything a few years down the road where the commodity
price goes below what it costs you to get it out,
and then you're laying people off, you're slowing things down,
you're waiting for the market to return.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
So after that, you made it to Marathon Oil head
of talent acquisition mm hmm yep.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
I moved out of Saint Louis down to Houston, Texas
to take on the head of talent acquisition for Marathon Oil.
And that was a terrific job. I reported to a
challenging personality there. That was fun. And for those listening,
you probably have also had times when you had great
(27:10):
bosses and difficult bosses to work for. And so three
months after joining Marathon Oil, the price of oil dropped
from ninety five dollars a barrow to sixty five dollars
a barrel. Huge, yep, and their break even point was
somewhere in the forties. And then over the next few
(27:33):
months after that it went from sixty five down to
a low of twenty six dollars a barrel. So that
was a shock. They were underwater. And this has been
the case throughout my career. When you are the head
of town acquisition or you work in corporate recruiting. As
(27:54):
soon as the company you work for decides it's time
to get smaller, the people who make the company bigger
are pretty easy targets for layoff packages stuff for that.
So I helped Marathon Oil go through four rounds of layoffs,
you know, having the conversations, escorting people out of the building,
(28:15):
doing all that until the fun part. Yeah, it was
finally down to me and an ACE recruiter that I
had selected and hired. We were the only survivors of
the talent acquisition team at that point and more cutting
had to be made. So they decided to cut the
(28:35):
expensive head of the function and take the ACE recruiter
and fold her under another HR leader. That was something
they felt they could do at the time, so I
took a layoff package and hung out my shingle again.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
So yeah, Recruiting Transformations tell us about that company.
Speaker 5 (28:54):
Yeah. So, Recruiting Transformations is a company where I help
manufact acting businesses mainly to fix their broken recruiting process.
So if they takes too long to hire people, or
they're spending too much money on search agencies, or their
internal recruiting function has a bad reputation, or they seem
(29:16):
unresponsive or something needs to be done and they don't
know how to fix that problem, then I can go
in and help them fix it. And sometimes I act
as an interim leader if they've just fired their head
of recruiting or somebody is on a maternity leave or
something like that. I love those interim leadership gigs. Those
(29:39):
are a lot of fun. But I did that for
several years before starting Salary Coach.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Can you give us a couple of highlights?
Speaker 5 (29:49):
Yeah, so, I guess the best highlight of that time
with Recruiting Transformations is a company called DLL, which is
a financial services company based in the Netherlands. Their head
of recruiting was going to go on maternity leave and
(30:09):
so they reached out to me to ask me if
I would cover during that time. But also the head
of HR wanted to know if there was anything that
could be done to improve the function. So while I
was going to be there for three months holding down
the fort, she wanted me to do my typical analysis
(30:29):
and diagnosis of what could be improved and build a
roadmap for that, so when the current TA leader came back,
she would have a list of action items and things
to pursue. Well, she came back for about a week
and then decided that she didn't want to come back
after all, and then they extended me. I ended up
(30:50):
doing that for a year. It was completely remote and
so it was all during the pandemic and travel restrictions.
Nobody was traveling anywhere, so I was in zoom calls
all day long working on stuff, fixing stuff, rolling out
new process. That was an absolute blast, and I left
(31:14):
there on extremely good terms. I missed the team very much.
In fact, behind me somewhere here, I've got a picture
of me with the team. We finally were allowed to
gather face to face nice to finally build a global
recruiting process. So that company they were operating in like
twenty seven to thirty countries worldwide, and each country had
(31:39):
its own recruiting process, and so that was a big
thing where we're trying to achieve together was to create
a uniform global recruiting process that everyone could agree to.
We needed to get there so that we could share
recruiting resources. So say the Germany recruiter was slow, it
(32:00):
would be very difficult for them to help out the
recruiter in Southern Europe because the processes were completely different. Now,
with a uniform process, we could share resources across boundaries
much easier that way, So that's one. I also was
interim head of HR for a company called Analogic, and
(32:24):
Analogic is in Boston. They make the stuff that scans
your bags at the airport for explosives and things that
shouldn't be there. Very interesting. I love technology companies. I
relate really well to engineers and just love the talent
(32:45):
issues with engineering heavy companies. So that was an interesting situation.
Lasted about seven months and it was really sort of like,
I don't know, it was nebulous. It was one of
these things that wasn't scoped really well. They wanted the
improvement roadmap. I was acting like an interim head, but
(33:10):
didn't have that formal title, so it was it was
just a little bit squishy here and there, a lot
of political nuance within that company. I really enjoyed the
time there. Ultimately helped them to select and hire a
new permanent head of HR. And she's been phenomenal in
(33:32):
terms of taking what I started and finishing it with
her own set of priorities and so on. So I
like doing that kind of work.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
All right, We're going to take another break right here
for about a minute. Everybody will be back in just
a minute with John Gates.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.
Don't go way. More helpful information is coming right up
right here on Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
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Speaker 2 (35:20):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene,
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helene.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
We are back again with John Gates. So tell us
take us from a sante or santy I think in
healthcare and then to salary coach in twenty one.
Speaker 5 (35:51):
Yep, yep, okay, so excuse me. So, after a while
of consulting I decided it was time to come back
to Oregon, and I had an opportunity to join a
company which is a significant healthcare provider in southern Oregon,
and they were going to pay for my relocation and
(36:13):
everything back to Oregon. So I thought, well, Okay, maybe
it's time for me to dive back into the corporate world.
I was really aligning with a mission of Assante. It's
a regional healthcare company, so they have three hospitals and
over fifty medical clinics throughout southern Oregon. And I never
(36:36):
lived in Southern Oregon. It sounds like a really cool opportunity,
and I loved the people of this place, so it
was a great chance for me to come and do that.
And just like a lot of opportunities though, you start
working and you have this dream boss that you're working for,
(36:56):
and people listening might be able to relate to this.
You join a company because there's such amazing alignment between
what you want to do and what your boss wants
you to do. And so there was a CEO shift
a couple of years into my tenure with Assante. The
(37:18):
old CEO retired, they brought in a new CEO, and
the new CEO fired my boss, so he fired a
couple of people actually, and the new boss, the new
head of HR, had conflicts with me and what I
(37:40):
wanted to do. So I performed best with a boss
who says, I don't know a lot about recruiting. John,
I'm hiring you because you know a lot about it,
So please go solve these problems. Just tell me how
you're going to go about it, and then I'll provide
you some political cover bridge and the budget that you
(38:01):
need and everything else. So the new head of HR
was an absolute micromanager, and I die under that kind
of leadership. I can't handle it. The days grew from
(38:23):
ten hour days to fourteen plus hour days trying to
please the micromanaging nature of playing bows and that was tough.
So I thought, well, you know, it's time for me
to leave and to go back to being independent because
that's what I truly love doing. So I got back
(38:46):
into recruiting transformations. And then sometime during the you know,
following the Great Resignation, I don't know if you remember, Yeah,
there was a period of time where during the pandemic
where everyone was quitting their jobs and companies were hiring
lots of people, and it was a very favorable recruiting environment.
(39:09):
Sometime during that then, the FED started to raise interest rates,
and I knew from all the previous shifts in my
career that and rapid increases of the interest rate is
going to cool the hiring economy quite a bit. I
knew that was coming, and so I started thinking, Well,
(39:31):
if recruiting nationwide or even internationally hits the skids, what
is it that I'm going to do? And I started
thinking about all the things that I was good at.
What could I offer? And that's how I came up
with salary coach. Because for years and years I had
helped friends and family to negotiate their pay. I knew
(39:53):
a lot about how to do that safely because I
was the guy on the other side of the negotiating
table or my whole career. I knew what mistakes look like.
I knew what annoyance. I knew what would annoy me,
what would annoy hiring managers, what would introduce risks? I
knew what would be the safe path forward, And so
(40:16):
I just took some time and I developed a salary
coach method. I wrote Act your Wage, I launched Salary coach.
But before I did any of that, I did a
pilot program a few years ago, maybe four years ago now.
I went out to LinkedIn and I found some job
seekers and I said, I'm thinking about launching this as
(40:38):
a product line, but I want to test if I
can work effectively with people that I don't know, that
aren't members of my inner circle. So I'll do this
for you for free. I'll be your advisor. I'll tell
you how to navigate the upcoming offer process or the
money conversations at every step, I'll walk you through that
(41:01):
as a silent advisor, and let's measure the results together.
And if you want to do this, I'll do it
for free. I just wanted to test it. And every
single one of I did that with ten people, every
single one of them had a gain. The lowest gain
was nine thousand, and the highest was in the low fifties.
I think it was fifty two to fifty four thousand
(41:22):
gain in the package. And then as soon as I
finished that, I knew I had a business that could
be win win, that would be helpful to the people
that need that help. And I really started realizing just
how many people leave money on the table I tracked
this when I was ahead of recruiting. I started doing
(41:45):
that when I worked for Capital one Financial around y
two K because i'd, you know, just been I'd already
been laid off a couple of times. I wanted the
self defense of data, and so I started tracking it.
I set a goal, Kevin, to cover my annual salary
every month in negotiation savings. So I knew how much
(42:10):
money people were leaving on the table, and I achieved
that that goal ten months out of twelve. Typically. It
was something that I felt would insulate me from future layoffs.
So I started tracking it. And it is shocking how
much money people leave on the table and they don't
(42:32):
know they're doing it. The typical experienced professional is probably
leaving five figures on the table. Somebody who's senior it
could well be six figures. I just closed a deal
out today with a six figure game, nearly two hundred
thousand dollars in the package.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
So you talk about mindsets, sorry to interrupting. Mindset's being critical,
and fear is one of those mindsets, right, absolutely a
little bit.
Speaker 5 (43:02):
Yeah, So fear is when I was writing Actor Wage,
I asked, I interviewed one hundred people, men and women,
and I asked them, do you negotiate? Do you not negotiate?
Do you do? You? Kind of pick at it, poke
at it. I ended up concluding that my statistics were
still right. Eighty percent of people don't negotiate at all,
(43:27):
or it's just a very very light approach to negotiating.
I'd say, of the remaining twenty percent, ten percent screw
it up phenomenally bad, and the other ten percent do
it effectively. And what happens, though, is you apply to
a job you want, right you go through the application process,
(43:51):
and then the phone rings. It's a job you want,
and somebody like me will say, hey, Kevin, what's your
salary expectation? And you know it's a screening question. You
know you don't have much leverage right now because nobody
knows about you except for the screener. You really want
to interview with a hiring manager, and there's this gatekeeper
(44:12):
you have to get by. So you're afraid that if
you answer this question wrong, you're going to lose the
chance to interview and move forward, and that fear pushes
you into a corner. Really, you tend to low ball
yourself right at this point, or you do the opposite
and you give a number that's way too large, thinking
(44:34):
you have leverage that you don't, and then you get
screened out, and those both of those things happen. You
know that there's high stakes, you know, when you are
interviewing for a job, especially if you're unemployed, the fear
is better because the stakes are there. Right, you've already
(44:54):
figured out when you become homeless because you don't have
a salary or an come. You might have a severance
package or something like that, and so the pressure is
on to get something and get it fast. And because
of that pressure, you'll settle, settle for less. You just
want to get rid of this uncertainty in your life.
(45:17):
And this happens at the offer stage too. That's why
people don't negotiate. They get the offer that they see
the they see the promised land of stable employment and
an income returned and benefits, health insurance. All these things
are things they cannot afford to risk letting go stock
(45:40):
hostro Yeah, and they're worried that if they push it,
they will lose the chance to move forward, and or
they'll have their offer yanked away and then they'll have
to explain to their entourage of people that depend upon them, Yeah,
that they you know, screwed it up at the finish line,
and they don't want that to happen, so so they
play it except excessively safe. And so, like I'm in
(46:06):
a my whole practice is built around how to minimize
the risk of these conversations while maximizing the offer. And
there are ways to do that. Most people just don't
know how, and that's what I offer.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Can you give a summary, I mean without revealing too much,
because I'm sure it's a proprietary process that people pay for,
but can you give us a generalization of it's a
five step process, right.
Speaker 5 (46:32):
Yeah, there's a salary coach method. And so the first
thing you have to do is satisfy the screener who's
going to ask you that first pay question with an
answer that's going to help you get the interview without
destroying your ability to negotiate later. You can't paint yourself
(46:53):
into a corner right there, just to you know, you
can't sell your future offer cheap just to get the interview.
And this happens all the time. So there's that. And
then once you get the interview, you have to climb
up the value ladder in the interview. So you have
to learn to answer interview questions in a way that
(47:14):
frames you as a high value person because what comes
next is the offer approval process. This is very political sometimes.
So let's say you were the hiring manager Kevin, and
you decide that you're going to hire me. There are
people above you that have to sign off on the
(47:37):
offer typically, and you have to go to them and
justify why you want that much money or that title
or all that stuff. And so the best strategy is
to get the highest value in the mind of Kevin,
the hiring manager, so that he can go with bat
for you and justify a high offer initially. Then in
(48:01):
the offer and counteroffer process, we're only tweaking instead of
having to rebuild. You know, if that initial offer comes
in thirty percent low, it is intensely difficult to go
back and adjust that they've already decided that you're in
that sort of lower tier. They've already made that case.
(48:23):
With approvers, it's going to be really difficult to go back.
This is where the insider information that I have comes
into play and really helps people to get it right
the first time and so then there's you're going to
get an offer and here's a key that I'll give
away for free. Don't accept the offer immediately, even if
(48:46):
you love it. That is a massive mistake that most
people make. There's almost always extra money on the table somewhere.
So what I do, which is proprietary, is I help
people with the process to discover what's still on the
table without putting the offer at risk and then creating
(49:07):
a counter offer proposal that also does not create a
lot of risk for you.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
And people you focus.
Speaker 5 (49:18):
Sorry, go ahead, Sorry, yeah, I was going to say.
Most people think negotiation like this is a high stakes
game of Chicken, where you put out an ultimatum. You know,
here's what I want, take it or leave it. That's
a very high risk strategy that we don't do at
Salary Coach.
Speaker 3 (49:35):
So I know you focus, excuse me, on the total compensation,
not just salary.
Speaker 5 (49:41):
Correct, that's correct.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
So there could be stock options or additional stock options,
sign on bonus as you mentioned that in the book.
Speaker 5 (49:49):
Oh yeah, there's probably a dozen or more different ways
that you can get value into the package. So one
of the things that happened in today's Steele is I
happen to, and I can notice things that the average
person doesn't notice. When you get an offer letter, for example,
I can look at it and say, there's something big
(50:11):
that's missing here that might be included in an offer
at your level. A lot of companies will include it.
So let's go after that and see if it's there.
This example was.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
Severans so interesting.
Speaker 5 (50:28):
The hiring company was a private equity firm. And in
case you don't know this, private equity firms they buy
and sell companies just like house flippers buy and sell houses.
They will buy a company that they think is undervalued,
they'll fix the things that are wrong with that company,
and then they'll go back to the market in a
three to five year window usually and sell that business.
(50:51):
They might buy it for two hundred million with a
goal that in three years they're going to sell that
for six hundred million, and that's how they make their money.
So that was this situation. Private equity company owned this business,
and this was a C suite, you know, sea level
position within that private that firm that they owned, that
(51:18):
asset that they owned. We knew through the interview process
that they're selling. They're they're selling the business timeline was
two years. They're going to sell this in two years. Well,
what happens to the c suite and a company that
gets sold to another business? Sometimes they keep their jobs,
sometimes they do not. And so you want to have
(51:45):
an equity stake so that when that business is sold
there's a significant financial windfall for you. But also you
have depending on your age and stage, like if you
were fifty eight or sixty years old or something like that. Yeah,
and the sale is happening when you're sixty two, how
hard is it going to be to get the next gig?
(52:07):
How much longer is it going to take? Realism?
Speaker 4 (52:10):
That happens so many times.
Speaker 5 (52:12):
Agism is a real problem, real problem. Once you round
the corner of fifty, you will start to realize that
it's not as easy to land as it used to be.
And the harder, the more weird the employment market, that
the longer it's going to take you to land.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
John, we have to wrap this up. I just noticed
the time. How do people reach out? What's the best
way for them to contact you if they want more information?
Speaker 5 (52:40):
All right, thank you, Kevin. The very best way is
probably to hit me at John at salary dot Coach perfect.
It's not dot com, it's dot coach. That's the best way,
John at Salary dot coach, and you can ask me
any question and we can see if it might be
right to work together. Perfect.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
Now, this is something I mentioned at the beginning that
I don't do very often. I've already invited John back
next month. It's going to be March twenty third. He's
going to share on a different topic. And the promo
is this, what if starting a consulting business isn't reckless
but a faithful, well aligned next step, John will introduce
(53:18):
the Crossroads, which is a proven faith aligned path that
helps Christian corporate leaders launch their first consulting business in
just six weeks without burning bridges, underpricing themselves, or wandering
in uncertainty. And I'm really looking forward to that, and
we will have another good conversation at that time.
Speaker 4 (53:38):
John, thank you so much for being here. We really
appreciate it.
Speaker 5 (53:41):
Thank you, Kevin. I'm looking forward to to It's going
to be a blast, just like this was.
Speaker 4 (53:45):
All right one more time, John at Salary dot coach.
Speaker 5 (53:49):
Correct, Thank you, Kevin. Perfect, and thanks.
Speaker 3 (53:51):
Everybody for watching and listening. This is a show about
business and business challenges. If you've got concerns about the
sales effectiveness of your company, whether you're sales team, is
you or small or large, feel free to reach out
to me on Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning Business Radio
or drop me a note one of my many email
addresses Kevin at Winning Business Radio dot com. Thank you
(54:13):
to producer and engineer one for another job well done.
Be sure to join us again next week. That's Monday,
February ninth. We're going to do it all over again.
Until then, this is Kevin Hallanan.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host,
Kevin Halenan. If you missed any part of this episode,
the podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio.
For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune
in again next week and every Monday at four pm
Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on
(54:47):
W four CY Radio W fourcy dot com. Until then,
let's succeed where others have failed and win in business
with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio
Speaker 3 (55:00):
James