Weekend Wisdom 7-20: Know Your Worth Before Asking For A Raise (Right, WNBA?!)

Happy weekend! This WNBA story gives me food for though, or at least some wisdom I've learned the hard way - before asking for that pay raise, know your monetary value to the company. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Pay us what you owe us, careful what you ask for?
WNBA players, what's up everybody who was just reading some
headlines here a little bit separate from the daily live stream,
which we'll get back to tomorrow. And I'm sure I'm
going to talk about this as well on Wicked Radio,
but Delvint would a little bit deeper. You know. I
like to take the headlines and use that as an
excuse to talk about, you know, how we can empower ourselves.

(00:24):
What's the win in all this? Right? And I thought
this WNBA story was interesting. Now the background WA players,
WNBA players all last night all got together in Unison,
which was great, good for them, and they all wore
these t shirts that said, again, pay us what you
owe us. I don't think they really understand how this
thing is going to work, even at their level. Now,

(00:46):
if you're like any one of us that works for
somebody else, in other words, you do a job and
you rely on somebody else to write your paycheck, I'm
sure you've gone through this, right. But I'm sure you
have gone through a fail where you ask for more
money and you get turned down, and maybe they give
me a reason like I got years ago when I
was just new in radio, you know, one of those
boy worm radio guys, right, and all I wanted was

(01:09):
something pathetic. I think it was like a two thousand
dollars raise or five thousand, I don't know, whatever it was.
And my jam at the time, rightly so said do
you make me two thousand dollars more money or the
five thousand it's going to take me to cover the
cost of it. Do you make me more money? And
of course I said no. Well, he was right, and
it stuck with me forever, and it was a great

(01:31):
lesson to learn. And I'm actually so gratefully and so
glad that he actually said that to me years ago,
because every time since, every time I asked somebody else
for more money, I came into it armed with what
I think the takeaway is with this WNBA story, If
you want to ask for more money, you've got to
be able to justify not that you're a nice person,

(01:52):
not that people like you, or maybe even that you
planned to make the company or the organization more money
later on. You've got to prove right now you've made
them more profitable in order to get a raise. Otherwise
you're probably not gonna get it. Now, how does this
relate to the WNBA story? Let me check. Let's go
to chet GPT. Yeah, I checked that one. I've done

(02:14):
grock just this plain old Google search. Has the WNBA
ever made money? No? Never, not once profitable? So careful
what you ask for. WNBA players, pay us what you
owe us. You keep demanding that and you might be
writing checks. It's a good lesson for everybody before you

(02:35):
ask for money. If you work for somebody or something else,
know your value, in other words, how much money you
make them, because it's all a business. Remember that one.
It's a great lesson to learn. But you know what,
there's another great takeaway on this. When you ever get
a conversation thrown back at you like that, like I
did my example, did you make me money? It makes

(02:57):
you examine and pay attention to and really determine your
self worth in an organization. It's a great process to
go through. It really is. More often than not you'll
be able to find how you're able to make them
profitable and you discover your own worth in the organization.
It gives you more confidence to go in when you
do ask for money. So know you're worth before you
ask money. Just don't wear a T shirt that says

(03:19):
pay us what you owe us. It's a bad look.
I don't know if it's gonna work out. I'll talk
to you later