How to Negotiate Your Salary and Reach Financial Independence Faster | Paula Pant

23:48That allows that conversation to happen very rapidly as a leader. That's really important to have that, to have that in place. And I was guilty of sometimes of letting that go for six months and saying, come on, man, we said, this is the first thing in the hiring process you're going to do. Why aren't we here yet? What's going on? Is there a resource problem? Is there something else going in there? And that helps with these negotiations. It's clear. And it's not this kind of like, how do I approach this situation? Like, how do I bring up this feedback? It's really awkward. No, it's right there at the top of your list.

24:15What's going to happen here? And I think that's what you need to have with your employer. If you're listening to this, right? Hey, you said that I would be in great shape for that bonus, that promotion, that next raise. If I completed this activity set, I completed it. Look how high quality the outputs are in here. Anybody would agree that these are really high quality outputs. And look, the numbers moved too in the right direction. Surely that puts me in good position for this next negotiation, this raise, right? What's going on? What has changed since that last conversation? Those are all things that you can do to greatly increase your power in a negotiation setting.

24:52And I would suggest to anybody who doesn't have a scorecard, because I love the scorecard model. If your employer doesn't provide a scorecard like that, design something of your own, at least for your own role, and take it to your manager or the appropriate person in your company and say, you know, present it to them and say, let's, you know, what do you think about this? Can we evaluate my performance within this context in within the next quarter or within the next six months? And that would be a really good way for them to say, you know what, I'm looking at that activity set, and you're missing X, Y, and Z.

25:27Or I see that X, Y and Z is included here. And I don't really think that that is important. Or maybe that's a little bit outside. I know that you've been handling that, but that is technically outside of the scope of your role. And I'd rather that you focus your time on A, B, and C. So even the formation of that scorecard itself can add a lot of clarity. Yeah. And by the way, just to give it credit where it's due, I did not come up with this concept like everything else, like most other things. I read it in a book. The book is called Who? A Method for Hiring. Not to be confused in another book called Who Not How.

25:59That's a different book. Who, A Method for Hiring. It's kind of dense. It's really for someone who's hiring executives in there. But that was a read that really impacted me and really changed my life and I think allowed us to really find and manage some really great executives at BiggerPockets over the years.

26:14Mindy Jensen:Oh, that's wonderful. I've got a question for both of you. Paula, I'm going to ask you first, how do you add in intangibles into your market value? Things like, I've been here for 10 years and I wrote all the processes over the last 10 years. I know how everything works. I know you got to push this button, even though you don't know that you got to push this button. Or I haven't been here very long, but I've shown consistency in a turbulent environment. And everybody here knows that they can count on me. And I keep my word because we've all worked with the guy who doesn't. So how do you factor these in when you're talking to your boss during that negotiation for an increase in salary?

26:53Why this is a mental model? Drop the word I, because then the rule number one of negotiation is you want empathy for the counterparty. You want to be able to see things from their point of view so that you can demonstrate that their needs are being served. And this almost sounds counterintuitive, but rather than make it about yourself, begin from a position of sounds like you really value X, Y, and Z. Sounds like you are really worried about A, B, and C. Start from the position of what's on their mind, what are they concerned with, and then in the context of that, here's how we can solve this problem.

27:34Here's actually a look back on some of the things that my team and I have been involved with that have already started to address this problem. And here are some of the additional things that we can do to continue solving this problem. Do you have anything to add? I think that's a wonderful framework in there. I think that if you are one of those people that is in a position where you don't have clarity from your boss in there, that means something's wrong in a more general sense. Like there should be some level of this already in place from your manager. You could be a grading scale from one to 10, maybe you're at a two in there, but there should be some flavor of this.

28:10And I think that if your organization is really weak at performance management, at least in documentation of performance management, then you can just bring that to the table for your boss at your next one-on-one. Surely you're going to have one of those and you say, Hey, I have something to talk to you about. I'm ambitious to get ahead in my life. These are the, just use Paula's strategy. Sounds like this, this, and this. Is it okay if I come back next week with a scorecard, a written set of deliverables for next year for your review? And if I hit those, can I get some reassurances that I'll be on track for that next promotion or that next raise in there?

28:40And I think her framework is perfect for approaching that. It's about once you understand that, then documenting it and making sure that you actually do all of those things to slowly but surely increase your leverage.

28:51Mindy Jensen:Yeah, I love the word documentation, Scott. Back on episode 169 with Erin Lowry, we started talking about how to ask for a raise and she talked about documenting it. And I'm sure you have had conversations with people who are like, hey, Scott, I want a raise. And you're like, okay, why? And they're like, um, because I want more money. Like they don't have anything to back it up. One of the key things that I got from Erin's episode was she's like, keep a praise folder in your inbox. And anytime anybody sends you anything that says thank you, throw it in there. You were so great at this, throw it in there.

29:27Mindy Jensen:So when it's time to ask your boss for a raise, because you don't do it every day, when it's time to ask, you just go into the praise folder and print it all out. Then, you know, taking Paula's tips too. Thank you so much, Paula, for all these tips, because I'm like, oh yeah, I did that wrong when I asked for a raise. I did that wrong when I asked for a raise. I've done a lot of things wrong asking for raises in my past life. I got another one for you here. This is some inside baseball, but many companies, especially not small, tiny businesses, but anybody that's a fairly serious business or most of them will have some kind of annual budgeting process, right?

30:02So the number for your raise is already baked in to next year's budget, right? So you really got to start this process about a year in advance, ideally in like the September to June timeframe, because what's going to happen is your boss is going to get X amount to give you a raise in January in many cases, right? This may not be true at the very highest levels, but if you're in a big department, they're going to get four or five or whatever percentage it is for that year increase for the employee compensation pool. And so what you want to do, if that's the case, is you want to have that conversation in June, July, or September with your boss.

30:34And you want to say, what do I need to do to get a promotion next year around the same time? And then they can put that promotion into the budget, right? And now we can, everyone's happy, right? Because there's a real problem is, hey, we're trying to hit this budget that we set a year ago. And I can't do that if I have to award all these off-cycle promotions that I wasn't planning on that weren't in there. But as long as that's already in the plan for next year, then I know we can do that. And the only way I'm not going to word it is if this goes very, very poorly wrong. So that's something to think about here on these things is if you go into one of these negotiations and you're like, hey, I want to raise this year and I'm going to be all messed up about it if I don't get it, that's going to be a problem for you.

31:13But if you have a little bit longer term view with your employer and you're setting yourself up for these cadence items about a year in advance and you understand this annual cycle, that can really play to your advantage you over time because you can get in the, you can get, Hey boss, I want to set you up. I really want a promotion next September. You have that conversation now in January, it feels it's too far away. But if you have it in July of next year, okay, now, now we're, now we're cooking. Now we, now we can actually think about doing that. And they know their numbers, they need to report up the chain.

31:40And so it goes. So that's kind of some inside baseball in there. I don't know how if that's every company, but I bet you a lot of companies work in that world where, Hey, there's an annual budget. And once we start getting asking for requests outside that annual budget, things better be going really well. Because if they're not, the answer is going to be no.

31:56Mindy Jensen:What is your advice for somebody who has been underpaid for a significant period of time and feels like they've been left behind? The first thing I would ask that person is why have they allowed themselves to be underpaid for a significant period of time? So the very first question is actually internal, because it's one thing to be underpaid for six months before asking for an improvement in the position. But if you've been chronically underpaid for five years, speaking frankly, it sounds like a little bit of a you problem, right? Why have you allowed yourself to be chronically underpaid for a very long time?

32:32What is it that's stopping you from either asking for more in your current role or finding some alternative employment that might be able to provide you with more? And sometimes there are very legitimate answers. Sometimes the answer is, well, it's because I work for a very small nonprofit organization that relies on a tiny handful of donations. And I know what their budget is because I've read the IRS 990 forms, which are free and available to the public. I know the revenue of this nonprofit and it's not very big. And if I want to continue working with them, then I know that this is all they can give me.

33:08And if that's the reason, then I applaud that If you've made a conscious decision that you are going to accept a lower level of compensation because that's the type of organization that you've chosen to work for. If you're able to do that, I think that's a very valid conscious choice. But that's a very different situation than, hey, I'm just a cog in the machine at this much bigger organization. And I don't actually know what their budget is. I don't know what their numbers are. I just generally feel like chopped liver. And I've been feeling that way for a while. What do you do if your BATNA is way worse?

33:46I think another way of stating that is, and this is not the way people will feel about it, but you're overpaid, right? From the employer's perspective, you're overpaid, you know, and they could replace you with someone cheaper that could do the same job. How do you handle that? What's an action set you can do so you can lessen the blow of that problem manifesting one day? That's a really good, actually, it's a great way of framing what happens if your baton is not that good. You know, the pessimistic view is like, man, I'm stuck here. The optimistic view is, wow, I'm way overpaid. I'm never going to find anything that's quite as good as this.

34:16Then it becomes respecting how good you have it. I think what can often happen, it goes back to what I was saying earlier about the sense of indispensability. If a person is overpaid or overcompensated, and particularly in an organization where the hierarchy is flat or somewhat flat, even if it isn't overtly flat, if the relational elements of hierarchy tend to be flat, if people lead relationally rather than authoritatively, if decisions are made through conversation and explanation rather than through directive. A combination of having influence in a system, a flattened hierarchy, and a high degree of compensation, those together can often make somebody feel indispensable to a company.

35:04And where that slips into is then they feel entitled. And then they can start to adopt the feeling that this company is a vehicle that should support their life rather than this company is an employer and they provide labor to that employer in exchange for compensation. Because what happens if a sense of indispensability slips into entitlement and slips into believing that the company is there to support them and not vice versa, that's when situations arise where they end up doing the minimum possible, you know, So to quote office space, doing just enough to not get fired. Because sometimes being overcompensated can lead a person to think that they are more valuable than they are.

35:50Then ultimately they do get fired and learn the hard way that that's not the case. If you are overcompensated, goal number one is to never take it for granted. Like objective number one is to never take it for granted and to not let it go to your head and to be hyper aware of the fact that you are overcompensated. And that means that you need to over provide value as a result. I think that's really, really wise. I love the way you put that, because I think that in some of those cases that resentment can almost build because there's a lack of advancement opportunity for that person. And so they almost resent the situation that is really a gift from the employer in that situation.

36:29I think your mentality is much, much, much healthier. And even if a BATNA comes up in the future, you can leave gracefully in those situations rather than allowing that resentment to kind of build up over time. So I think that's a really wise position. I think a lot of people who are in that situation, if you're looking at your set of options and your BATNA is way worse than what you currently have it and you're feeling anger, frustration, hostility towards your employer, that may be a real risk factor brewing for you as an individual and you probably should change that and adopt a different attitude about what's going on at work because that situation may change and you may be forced to turn to one of those BATNAs.

37:06And so I think that's really, that's just more power of why this BATNA exercise. I love this. I'm going to use that for the rest of my life. I'm going to use this concept of BATNA. I know you didn't invent it, but I'm going to attribute it to you. I think that that's a really good application of it. If you're one of these folks who are kind of a little bit of this abstract, I'm not really comfortable with my work situation right now. It's just, that's the ultimate tool to figuring it out. The attribution belongs to Roger Fisher and William Urie, who are the authors of a book called Getting to Yes.

37:32I credit Paula Pant.

37:35Mindy Jensen:So let's flip that. Instead of being overcompensated, let's say you either don't have a job or you have a job where you are underpaid and you're looking for a new job. How do you negotiate when you really need the job? Because I want to frame this in terms of time, right? We remember, or many of us remember, 2008, a time when a lot of people were losing their jobs, and people would go for months without a single offer. And it truly was a desperate situation. If you're in a 2008 style situation, to a certain extent, you do need to take what you can get. Sometimes that negotiation then is not necessarily, especially if it's a smaller, small to midsize company that might have a limited budget.

38:19Sometimes that negotiation might not be in the form of compensation. It might be in the form of flexibility. You know, if it's a if it's a small company, they may not have the budget to pay you more, but they may be flexible with regard to your work hours. Does it have to be strictly nine to five? Or do you have some flexibility around when you come in and when you go? Or do you have some flexibility in terms of, you know, they give standard, you know, federal holidays off, but if you choose to work a federal holiday, do you have the optionality of making that a floating day and taking a different day instead?

38:55So those types of things that don't really cost the employer anything, but that make your life easier, particularly for smaller companies, that can sometimes be where the negotiation comes in. And then remember, 2008 doesn't last forever because 2008 quickly, you know, in the span of five years, you know, it becomes a very different economic environment with a very different set of circumstances. These things change quickly. I mean, Scott, you were just talking about the enormous power that many employees had in 2021, 2022, and how quickly that changed by 2025. Like, we have no idea what this situation is going to look like in 2028.

39:37It might flip back again, or there might be some third alternative that no one has even thought of before because there's no precedent for it. That's the situation in 2028. We don't know. I think that brings up an interesting question here because I'm thinking about my career, right? I joined BiggerPockets, I was an early employee, and I actually never asked for a raise in all those years. I did ask for the opportunity to sell, earn commission, and I did ask for equity in the company over time. And my base, I believe, my base salary remained well below that of industry peers through to my stepping down last year on that front.

40:17And I don't know, you never know how things go or how they turn out or whatever in there. But for me, there was always an instinct of doing that, not just for the greater upside that it afforded in my career, which for me paid off in various ways, but also as a de-risk, right? When times are bad, you don't get that bonus. You don't get the commissions. The equity is not worth as much or whatever, but as long as you're living off of that lower base salary and that's well within your means, everything is good to go. Do you think that there's a case for that? Because I think when people frame the negotiation conversation, it's about how much base salary can I get?

40:56You talked about flexibility, but what are your thoughts or reactions to this concept of going for more of the other stuff, the high upside equity or the commissions or the bigger bonus targets in the lower base as a way to defray these risks in the future? Or consider that in I see that as a huge green flag. As an employer, I see that as a massive green flag when somebody proposes that, because what that tells me is that they want a structure in which our incentives are aligned, that when we do better, they do better, but they're willing to accept a little bit of that risk. and they don't want to be an outsized drain on our resources when times are tough.

41:35So I actually had a conversation like that this morning. I was talking to a contractor who works for Afford Anything. She works with us on a monthly basis, but she charges a flat fee per month. And at the time that we're recording this, it's right after the holidays. She took a couple of weeks off around the holidays, but she still charged her full amount. And so I was like, okay, we're going to have to have a conversation about this. So this morning brought it up. The way that I phrased it, I didn't pinpoint this particular situation. I said, hey, as we think through the year ahead, because we were having a 2026 planning conversation, how do you want to handle time off?

42:15Because this is going to come up again, right? How do we want to structure this working agreement such that we handle time off? And so we began talking about that. And that made it a more comfortable conversation because I wasn't saying, hey, you just took two weeks off, you know, which can be a little can put somebody on the defensive. It's, hey, I want to plan how to have a good future together. Broadly, how do we want to handle this? So we began having a conversation about that. And where that led was to her proposing, hey, what do you think about a performance based bonus? And I loved that she I should have thought of it.

42:53I didn't think of it. I loved that she brought that up. Because what that told me is that not only does she is she invested in working with me for the year ahead, but also she shares my objectives, my revenue objectives, right? And she wants to see those come into fruition. and she's in a sense putting some skin in the game to make sure that those come into fruition. So yes, I love that. I think it's a massive green flag. I think structurally it will improve your, if you're willing to think about that, if you're listening to this, that it will improve your BATNA, right? Because if you're saying, hey, I'm making$130 ,000 right now at this job that's work remote and I cannot make that at another job right now.

43:31They're just not hiring for that job. And my alternative is$115 ,000 in office in my city where I have to resume commuting, that's a really tough position. That's a really weak mental position to negotiate from. You're going to have to really retrain your brain to be grateful to your employer for the situation, which may be very challenging depending on your circumstances. Or you can say, you know what? My BATNA is I can take a job for 85 out of the startup that has a really nice equity package that could pay off. That's a different BATNA, right? Then we're framing that. And that's where I think the power of this comes up in opening your mind to that.

44:06That flexibility in your strategy will create options that you didn't see before. And really, those options are first and foremost accessible to people pursuing something along the spectrum of financial independence, right? Because someone who spends$115 ,000 a year can't take that job at the startup for$85 ,000 with the equity component. It's just not an option. But somebody who spends$70 ,000 can. That's where your life and your expenses and how you manage everything comes into play at work and the opportunities that you'll receive there. It's all one board with multiple pieces on it that you have to move.

44:39Can I also, before I forget, I wanted to say something about relating back to our earlier conversation. I just mentioned what to me is a green flag from the point of view of an employer. There's also something that's a red flag, and it relates back to what we were talking about earlier. the person who's overcompensated, the person who's looking around saying, wow, my BATNA everywhere else is a lot worse, which is another way of saying I'm making more here than I could elsewhere, which is another way of saying I'm overcompensated here. When that happens and when a person begins to view a company as something that should support their life, the way that that often gets expressed is that the employee will start to cite personal living costs as the reason for asking for a raise.

45:25And it's a reflection of the mentality of this company exists to support me. Not I provide labor in exchange for compensation, but rather this company exists to support me. It's sort of, there are a lot of founders who will build quote unquote lifestyle businesses. It's an extension of that lifestyle business thinking where somebody who is not an owner, you know, who is an employee will still see it as a lifestyle business. And so, you know, I had a situation once where one of my employees, the first time that she asked for a raise, she cited an expanded scope of work, expanded responsibilities, various accomplishments that she had made within the past year.

46:03Like that was the proper way to make that request. I noticed she only did that once. And then every time that she asked for a raise after that, But she cited the fact that her costs were higher, you know, the fact that the cost, her general cost of living had gone up. And in retrospect, I didn't realize it at the time, but in retrospect, I think that was when her mindset was shifting. And she was beginning to see the company more and more as a vehicle that would fund her life goals rather than her employer. All right, we're going to take our final ad break.

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49:42Thanks for sticking with us. Would you expect the company to give you a pay decrease if cost living with down in a year? Of course not. That's not how it works. It's a market. It's a free market. It's what is the value of your skillset compared to peers who can do the same job in that environment. And I think that that inversion is really helpful. I think that's the biggest takeaway. We kind of positioned this show as how do you negotiate your salary for someone who feels that they're ready for a raise? And I think that we also wanted to talk about how you should think about that negotiation in context of a really hard job market for people with your skill set here.

50:16And I think the two things that are so powerful about the conversation you brought here are that mentality, right? This is a market. I'm not entitled to a cost of living adjustment. That's not how that works. And then if my BATNA is much worse after I perform that, being grateful, because that will just change your attitude about it and really de-risk a situation that I promise you is a ticking time bomb for you right now. And you don't even know it if that's your attitude towards your employer in this environment and you have a bad BATNA. I think that that's really, really wonderful input here.

50:47Mindy Jensen:Yeah. And just reframing it, telling people how to reframe it in their mind. It's one thing for your boss to be like, I'm not responsible for your day-to-day life. It's another thing for Paula Pan to come on and be like, hey, maybe you should start thinking about it in a different way. Since the BATNA is by definition the best alternative, the best job you could get in there, you're interviewing for a job. Can you walk me through how you spot green flags or red flags in your interview process, Paula? So our process is we will advertise a job. We get a huge slew of initial applications. From that, we narrow it down to the top 30 or so.

51:26And then we do our first phase is what's called an asynchronous interview, where we ask them to send us video replies to a series of questions. And based on that, we get a sense, especially because we're a company that requires a lot of collaboration and communication, and we have a lot of public facing elements in interacting with our community. We use the asynchronous interview to look at the top 30 or so, I guess, in terms of the alternative, right? Like that, that cohort of 30 is essentially our cohort of best alternatives, right? Like from the perspective of any one person in that basket, the other 29 people are our other potential alternatives.

52:07Based on those asynchronous interviews, we then whittle it down to the top 12 to 15 or so. We'll have a phone call with them and have a more developed out interview. And then when we narrow it down to actually something that we're about to do for the first time, when we narrow it down to the top three to five candidates. In the past, we always did Zoom interviews. we're actually stopping that. And now we're, we insist on face-to-face interviews with the top three to five. From a hiring point of view, at the time of hiring, we have a very clear picture of who the viable alternatives are because we can see the candidates as a cohort.

52:45I think where that becomes less clear is as a person's tenure at a company increases, two things happen. Number one, the scope of their job naturally changes. That just tends to happen over time as the needs of the company change. So the scope of their role changes. And related to that, the outsider external conditions that we face also changes. And what that means is that four or five, six years down the line, the role that they're in might look very different from the role they were originally hired for, and they may or may not be the best candidate for what that role has become. And it's a lot harder to see that because of the fact that it has been such a slow evolution.

53:31Running a business is so hard, right? Because from the other side of it, when you hire someone, the goal is not to fire them. The goal is not to have a layoff at some point in the future. The goal is for that person to thrive, right? And so you have to have a picture where you're going. It has to be reasonably accurate. That person has to develop. They have to be flexible enough to fit the inevitable changes to what you thought was going to happen in there. And they have to have a path that allows them to grow, especially if they're an ambitious superstar that really will push that envelope and get going in there.

54:02And all of that has to be, you know, married to a strategy and a structure that makes sense first, right? That comes before the people, right? If you try to fit people into a structure, you get a disaster. But if you take a structure that's very clear, you find the great people to fit into that. You can do that. And then you have to figure out how people map through. It's an incredibly difficult challenge that we didn't always get right at BiggerPockets for sure. where we try to do our best. And that's the challenge that I think is going on the other side across these raise negotiations and stuff that you're thinking about as an employee is what makes sense for the business.

54:38And they want their people to succeed and thrive over time. That is not, this is not like we want to, how we pay people as little as possible. It's how do we thrive? And we'd love to pay people more if they are growing and clearly contributing that much more as well. Exactly. And you know, it's funny when we talk about raises, I mean, the raise is the shiny object. The raise is the thing that grabs people's attention. But what is a raise conversation, really? It is a conversation about how do I become more valuable to this organization? And how does the organization in turn provide me with the clarity, the understanding that I need in order to become more valuable?

55:16That's why I love the scorecard concept so much is, you know, because not all organizations provide that level of clarity. And if yours doesn't, then your first job is to get clarity on what you need to do in order to be supremely valuable to your company. Because you do want to be indispensable. Like the goal is to one day be the person who they describe as, all right, that's our key man risk or that's our key person risk. What are the red flags? You're in an interview. Someone's made it pretty far. They've gotten through the basics here, the screening process here. But they're sitting down and they're one of three or four candidates you're choosing between.

55:51I mean, what are some red flags that come up that make you be like, yeah, nope, I'm going to go with the BATNA, another candidate? Anyone who tries to dictate process rather than substance. So, for example, if they insist, like I'm a big believer in synchronous meetings. If they insist on, no, no, no, I do a lot better in async, you know, and that's how I want to communicate with the team is asynchronously. or if they insist on operating in strictly in their time zone and not the time zone of the overall team. I mean, those are sort of smaller examples, but anyone who is trying to dictate process rather than substance, because I'm hiring you for the substance of your role, because I'm hiring you because you have individual expertise in a given subsidiary domain.

56:43and I want that domain expertise. But my job as the owner of the company is to provide the structure, the processes, the procedures, to provide the scaffolding under which that operates. And to the extent that that scaffolding starts to get challenged in a context in which input has not actively been invited, then that undermines the scaffolding of the organization. And that is a huge red flag. Love it. Well, Paula, this has been a really fascinating conversation. Thank you for bringing all of these insights into the fine art of negotiation, specifically as it relates to getting a raise or negotiating with an employer.

57:24But like you said, negotiation happens all day, every day in all aspects of your life. Do you have any good further resources or learning for folks if they're interested in pursuing the subject further? We have a course on negotiation where once a week we do, typically Tuesdays at 3 p.m. Eastern, we get on Zoom and do live practice calls. So every week, we will have a different mock negotiation. Some weeks, it's Halloween, and your neighbor put up a bunch of haunted house decorations. And that means that there's a big crowd, a big rowdy crowd at your neighbor's house, and you just want quiet. Sometimes it'll be that.

58:04Sometimes it'll be a landlord talking to a tenant. Sometimes it'll be an employer talking to an employee. So like we every week we have a different mock negotiation. When I talk about landlord tenant or employer employee, there's a power dynamic differential. When I talk about spouses unloading the dishwasher, right, then you've got equal pairing. So we make sure that we have a variety of those types of situations so that like people can actually practice like get do what I was talking about earlier. Like in many countries, you get that practice by negotiating for oranges at the market or buying a sweater or socks.

58:42And in the United States, we don't get that. So we've set up a way for people to actually get on Zoom with one another and practice in a simulated low stakes environment so that when it's time to actually have those difficult conversations, you have the muscle memory for it. So you can find out more affordanything.com slash your next raise. I love it.

59:07Mindy Jensen:Paula, thank you so much for your time today and all of your tips. These were really, really helpful. I could have used them several years ago. And we will talk to you soon. Thank you. All right, Scott, that was Paula with some pretty amazing tips for negotiating in all aspects of your life, but especially in your salary. What did you think of her advice? I've really enjoyed Paul's perspective on a great number of things here. And I think that if I'm distilling what we learned today down into best practices, it's one establishing a best alternative to a negotiated agreement or best alternative, your BATNA.

59:44And remembering that that BATNA does not, if you're not creative with that BATNA, you can really trap yourself mentally, right? If you're being paid 130 right now base and your BATNA is 115 and another base salary requires you to go into work, that's not a very good situation for your mental health. Your BATNA is probably something else, something that offers more creative upside, something that has different opportunities and chances. So be creative with that, understand what that looks like, and be really smart about that. And then I think using that to inform how much leverage you have going into negotiation is just wonderful advice.

1:00:16I love that we were able to dialogue back and forth and add in a written scorecard or equivalent. We are going to be building a little section of our BiggerPocketsMoney website called biggerpucketsmoney.com slash small business. And on there, I will put in some of the resources that I talked about here. They'll be written for someone who's hiring, but they can be very useful, I think, as well for someone who's negotiating a raise or wants to get better clarity from their boss about what they ought to be doing with their job and what good looks like from a KPI standpoint. I think that's really important having this in place.

1:00:49And then good documentation, doing what you said you're going to do and making sure that the numbers that are supposed to go, which you You may not be able to directly influence. You may only be able to indirectly influence them with lead indicators or lead activity. All of that's really important in the context of actually getting what you want, which is in the end, more money for yourself in the context of a negotiation with your employer around compensation.

1:01:09Mindy Jensen:I don't think it's always about more money, more flexibility, more. When I first started working at BiggerPockets, I didn't want to go into the office five days a week. So I negotiated coming into the office two days a week. And that was worth more to me than a little bit more in my salary. That was particularly rare at that point in time. So yes, there are outliers. Well, you have to be an awesome employee. We were not having that discussion with a lot of people besides Mindy back in those days. But also I brought to the table a lot of things that other people couldn't because I had lifetime experience.

1:01:47Mindy Jensen:And you can't get 20 years of lifetime experience out of a 25-year-old employee. Cindy was willing and ready to wield the ban hammer in the BiggerPockets forum. I love rules. I love following the rules. So, yeah. You enforced those rules. That's for sure. Yes, I did. Thank you. But, you know, I brought other things to the table too, Scott. Oh, like this podcast? Yeah, there's so many things. I'm also just a pretty face. But yeah, I mean, that's a good example of things that are intangible. When Josh first asked me to send him my resume, I'm like, I've been a stay-at-home mom for eight years. My resume is eight years out of date and doesn't have anything to do with anything I'm doing here.

1:02:31Mindy Jensen:So I just sent him a list of all the real estate deals I'd done instead. And he's like, oh, this is great. And I was like, well, thank goodness, because I don't know what I would do if he wanted a real resume. But it's all about solving the problem. Josh had a problem and I solved it in an amazing way, if I do say so myself. Yeah, there's a million ways to negotiate on this. This is just our take on it for today. And let us know how you've negotiated or how you've engineered pay increases or raises in your career, either at our Facebook group, facebook.com slash groups slash BP money, or here in the comments on our YouTube channel.

1:03:05Mindy Jensen:Or you can email Mindy at BiggerPocketsMoney.com or Scott at BiggerPocketsMoney.com and let us know your negotiating tips or what's worked for you or what you've asked for outside of financial compensation. All right, Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Mindy Jensen saying ciao for now, Heil and cow. I love math, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking, you know what would make this more fun? Calculating quarterly estimated taxes. But somehow, every small business owner ends up doing it.

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