The Secret To Asking For A Pay Raise (Mika Brzezinski)

0:08Hello and welcome to my brand new series Doing It Anyway. I'm Katty Kay. I've been fascinated by the subject of confidence ever since I first realized how much a lack of it was holding me back in my work and in my personal life. I've spent years studying the science and the art of confidence, writing books about how we can close the confidence gap between men and women and talking to younger women about how to pass it on. I've wanted to do this series for a long time because one of the things I found is that confidence means taking a risk, getting outside of your comfort zone, acknowledging your fears and doing it anyway.

0:49In this series, I'm going to be speaking to psychologists, business executives and female leaders to unpack how you can grow your confidence and ultimately change your life. Today, I'm joined by my friend and colleague, Mika Brzezinski, who's best known for anchoring MS Now's weekly morning show, Morning Joe. Mika and I are old friends and colleagues, and we've both written books about women and that whole thorny world of work. And I've always seen Mika as somebody who's never afraid to ask hard questions. Things like, why is it so embarrassing to ask for a pay raise? What do I do when I have a setback at work?

1:25And why do I have that niggling feeling that I'm undervalued by the people around me and perhaps even by myself? If those are the kinds of things you wrestle with, stay with us. This conversation is for you. This episode is presented by Vanguard. When it comes to investing, many of us feel totally out of our depth and we just don't know where to start. And we can't be blamed for that. a lot of us simply don't have the time or the confidence to take the first steps. And that's where Vanguard can help. With their managed ISA, Vanguard's experts do the hard work for you. They'll match you to an investment plan that feels right for you, and then they'll handle the rest.

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3:27In some cases, it may be linked to a minor injury or repeated injuries during sex or other physical activity. The good news is, PD is treatable. If you notice a curve with a bump, a trusted urology specialist can help diagnose it and walk you through your options, including non-surgical treatment. To learn more about Peyronie's disease, visit TalkAboutPD.com. Mika, I'm so glad to be having this conversation with you. It's so great to be here. Katty, Katty's been like, well, we're just really OGs. I'm just saying that before these messages were out there, we were screaming from the rooftops. You were screaming bank confidence and I was screaming, know your value.

4:13and stop apologizing. And we're still at it some 20 years later, and there's still a lot of work to do. Right. I mean, I sometimes think, wow, has it really been my first book came out in 2008? Your book, Know Your Value, Women, Money, and Getting What You're Worth was published in 2011. And sometimes I think, have we really not fixed all of this yet? Do we still need to be putting these messages out? But I really think we do. We do, and I feel like actually we were making headway, and then there's been some backsliding. And a lot of it has to do with the landscape that, at least in the states and the state of the world, even the political landscape, Roe, all these things that impact our sense of value have, I think, kind of impacted confidence and the sense of knowing our own value.

5:07So I'm actually blaming others. And I think you're right. I think this is actually a conversation that is now needed more, perhaps, than it was even a few years ago. So let's start at the beginning when you wrote Know Your Value, which then launched a whole global movement for women about understanding their value in the workplace. What was it, Mika, that made you want to write that book and put those thoughts out there? Well, I mean, for me, I was restarting my career after a pretty successful career that ended in being fired. Unsuccessful end, but a really good career and a fulfilling one. And Morning Joe had started, and I thought I was pretty good at my job.

5:56But you know what? Part of the job is being able to get a great deal for yourself. And I kept contracting that out to other people. And then maybe trying to be the ringer, but not doing a great job on it. And when you are working in a certain industry, your job is not just to do the job well, but to make sure you take care of yourself just as well. And I didn't get that part of the equation. and I remember I was given a contract to host Morning Joe. I was a year out from having been fired and looking for work for a year, so my confidence was low. I didn't use the skills that you teach in the confidence code and now that I teach in Know Your Value.

6:42That is that you still have to know your value even when your stock is down. You have to have something to say. Actually, at the point that I was at in signing the Morning Joe contract, the show was really taking off and they needed us. That includes me. And why would I get any less than anyone else on the show? And why would I settle for that? And I didn't know my moment to take it. And I think a lot of women often underestimate themselves. They feel so lucky to be there. They sign at the first, you know, piece of paper that's handed to them because they just want that stability and they want the uncomfortable part to go away.

7:22And that uncomfortable part, it is your job to drag that uncomfortable part as long as you can. Drag it out as long as you can to get the most that you can out of negotiation. And I just didn't know to do that. Had you never had to do it before? Was it that you came in with your confidence low? You had two young kids. You were just that feeling, I think that so many women have had is like, I'm just lucky to be there. I don't want to rock the boat because I'm there by the grace and favor of these employees. God forbid that I ask for anything else. How quickly can I sign? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, that was me.

8:01And I had that. The thing was, that was really a trigger to like write the book and figure this out and then share it with everyone. The trigger was when I signed the Morning Joe contract and it was far less than everyone else. And quite frankly, I had no one to blame but myself. No, I worked for a great guy who needed me to kick his butt and to hold him to it. But what company is going to say, hey, listen, you don't know your value. Let me remind you and pay you tons more. That's not how it works. Please let us pay you more money. That's not how it works. They're not going to be nice. They're not going to say, oh, she's so great.

8:40I've noticed she's working so hard. No one's going to be watching you. You have to look at what you're doing. You have to make sure you keep track of the data about yourself, what it is that you bring to the table. You have to be sure you can articulate it effectively and stand by those words. I realized way back then that I had done it again. I had signed a contract too soon. I had, you know, lurched for stability as opposed to waiting for the moment to be right because it was my moment to ask for more and I missed it. And so I thought, my gosh, if I can't do this. I grew up with multilingual parents who came here as refugees.

9:25One became the National Security Advisor of the United States of America and the other became a globally renowned sculptor, artist, who makes pieces that are two to three stories high and several tons. I love your mom's work. My mom worked with a chainsaw on her art. She's so cool. What is it about me that I can't do my job fully, which includes the part of taking care of myself? And so, I set out to find out more about this. And when I wrote that first book, you wouldn't believe. I had the former chair of the FDIC. I interviewed women from the highest heights in every industry, and they all struggled with it.

10:10I realized I was really tapping into something that was quite universal across all ages, stages, places in life, women who have made it despite themselves, women who can't get in the door. This book was for everyone and still is. And I did it because I wanted to figure it out for myself and I wanted to pay it forward for other women. Because once I did figure it out, I was like, my God, these are simple techniques that take confidence to put these skills into play. But once you do, the results are magnificent. Do you always get the money you're asking for? No. But you get that muscle and then you ultimately will get that money.

10:53And the more you put yourself through it, the easier it is. It's a muscle. It's like building, it's like going to the gym. It's kind of boring. You have to do it and you have to develop that muscle. You know your value in the context of a pay raise, Mika, but do you think there is, when you started doing the research for the book and talking to people, is there a broader value discrepancy, do you think, that women and perhaps particularly younger women have compared to young men? Does it reach beyond money? I love this question because I really want to focus on how know your value at this point, as we have grown and developed on a number of levels here in the United States, but also abroad.

11:39It is not just about your career. The career is really just the example. Knowing your value and the skills that you use to get value back at your job can be transferred literally to every relationship in your life. Getting value back, whether it is a spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, your kids. Every single relationship in your life, you need to know your value. And if you don't, they will own you, okay? Those kids are going to own you and they'll see it in your eyes. And I struggled with that with my girls as well because I didn't know my value all around. I was dancing for everybody and trying to be the person who made everyone feel good in the room.

12:28I was trying to make sure everyone knew I was nice. I had all my priorities wrong because I wasn't commanding in my relationships, respect back, value back. And that's why Know Your Value is about way more than careers. It's about living a full life and being fulfilled by your relationships, getting that value back and knowing that you deserve it and knowing that it is a standard that you have for yourself, commanding respect, not fighting about it. It's just there. And that was something that I really struggled with. And I realized a lot of other women did too. And that it's something you really have to work on with yourself every single day.

13:14If you're apologizing your way into conversations, if you're undermining, if you're being self-deprecating, if you can't look in the mirror and say, you know what, I'm looking pretty good today. then you've got to really think about that because you can't live your days and nights feeling like you're less than. And there are ways that I talk about how women can practice that. And some of them are really technical. And like how to do a good Zoom interview or a Zoom conversation or how to shake hands or how to walk into a room and immediately command respect. All of it is, it's not just the words you use, the data you know, but it's your physical presence.

14:00And it's useful. And it's important. And it's effective if you want to be a good parent, if you want to be a good spouse, which I wasn't. You know what, Katty, what I found out? Part of knowing your value is communicating what you need and what you want, communicating effectively. People can't read minds. Right. They don't know what you want unless you say it. And so many years I had a hard time saying what I wanted or what I needed. And then you're left unfulfilled. And then you don't express what you need in the right way because you're unfulfilled for so long. It goes back to at work. work.

14:37If you're paid less than your colleagues and you know you're being treated badly or you know you're behind and then you let it go and you don't verbalize it and you don't communicate effectively, then you either explode or you're kind of not pleasant to be with. And then ultimately, it kind of becomes this recurring phenomenon in your life. You and I have both been through divorces and I know a lot of what you're saying about in relationships and how this is not just a career issue, but I think it is true. How can you expect even the person you live with to read your mind if you don't say what you want.

15:11That issue of value, where do you think it comes from, Mika? I mean, I have thoughts about it where why is it that, and I see it still in when I'm coaching or mentoring younger women, I still see this issue of slightly of apologizing. I mean, a lot of the things that you talk about of not wanting to take up space, not wanting to ask for too much, wanting always to be a good girl. Did you come to conclusions about where that all comes from? Absolutely. I think we're, you know, in a way, there's a lot of work out there that's far more articulate than I am at this. But obviously, the socialization of girls versus boys has a huge impact on that.

15:52We still treat them differently. Yeah. In my family dynamic, I was the youngest and the only girl. So I was in a different category from the get-go. The expectations felt different. Now, my parents really were frustrated at how difficult I was to educate. I had some sort of learning disability, had Adderall been around, maybe things would have been different, but it wasn't. And I really, really suffered in school. So then there was this intellectual difference. You were in a very intellectual family. I was in a very intellectual family. And it was heartbreaking at times how I felt when I disappointed my parents on that front.

16:34It was really because I love them and I revered them. And they are, as you know, you knew my parents, but you also know how much I love them and how the entire way that I look at my life is framed by their example. They had such a profound impact in terms of what I want for myself and what they were able to do, come into this country with nothing, fleeing, quite frankly, for their lives and able to build from nothing this incredibly fascinating, multidynamic and intellectual atmosphere that we could grow up in. Was there pressure on you to kind of please people in a way that perhaps there wasn't on your brothers?

17:25So that that dynamic was interesting. Yes. But it was it came from a different place. Like we would have one of my brothers, Ian, he's a Republican, Mark's a Democrat. My dad would do these family debates at dinner. My mom would end up on wherever. She's an artist. So you never know where they're going to land. But I always found that because I didn't intellectually measure up, my brothers are both literally brilliant. And their knowledge of history and their ability to retain information matched my father's. And I see my dad in both of them when I hear them talking. and I knew at a very young age that was never going to be me, that my skills as a student were bad.

18:13And I think today, perhaps they would have been better because we have more ability to figure out how to teach kids who maybe learn differently. But back then, it was just the wild west and I was a real failure. And so, as a result, I had to find a different way to survive been this dynamic. And in these family conversations, I found that when things got really tense, I found that my space ended up being like the person who cracked the joke at a moment that would maybe bust the tension or, you know, help my mom feel better about the argument. You were the people pleaser. The people pleaser, the mediator, the comic, the comic genius.

19:00And, you know, there's actually I did start to realize that that's actually a talent that's actually important. I mean, because to have a civil conversation, you have to be able to laugh and you need someone to help connect one side to the other. I love that example because you take something that somebody could see as rather disempowering and you make it empowering. And let's talk about that, how we go from being good girls to empowered women. Because actually, if you look at the stats of what women are up against, I think it's easy for us to forget the barriers. You look at only half of American businesses considered women's career progression a priority in 2025.

19:4220 % of companies are now placing low or no priority on women's advancement. That number rises to 30 % for women of color. Women are less likely to receive emotional support. Only 50 % say that they've had regular check-ins with their managers compared to men. And I wonder if we, when you look at all the kind of obstacles that we face, how do we take what you took, which could have been this good girl, people pleasing, not knowing your value and flip it and overcome the hurdles that we face, which are manifold in the business world and become women who are empowered? How do we get there? You know, first of all, you have to look at what your skills are and value them for yourself.

20:25You're not, you know, there would be no Brzezinski family without Mika Brzezinski. You know what I mean? Instead of the way I looked at it when I was a lot younger is, how do I fit in this family? You know, I realized that… I'm the loser. I'm the one that's the weakest link. Yes. And stop doing that. Like, none of that thinking and talking. Now, let me just be completely bored with that because it's boring to be negative. It is boring to vote against yourself. It is absolutely done. It is unsuccessful, and it is completely destructive, and it's the go-to for so many of us. Cut it out. Cut it out.

21:07What is it that makes you great? You've got to be able to say it, and you've got to know it. If you can't put it into words, you really can't expect anyone else to because you're the one who has to speak for you. And I don't mean to sound like I'm sort of like angry or anything like that. I'm just saying, come on. So those meetings with the managers, if they're not coming to you, how can you get to them? How can you get some weekly meetings or monthly quick lunches? Maybe start out by meeting with a manager and not asking for anything, just being delightful, you know, and connecting and getting to know this person.

21:47Having the relationship. Having a relationship, knowing what it is going on in their life, finding out what they need, looking for voids to fill. Grab opportunities by looking for them, by making those relationships and putting yourself out there. I'll tell you, my events across the country, the one thing I learned is that women really struggle with putting themselves out there, putting themselves in uncomfortable positions and pushing through that so they learn how to do it better next time. Is that what you mean when you talk about the good girl trap? Yeah. Well, we want to stay in a box, follow the rules.

22:25Here's the line, it's straight. Here's the line, it's straight. There's another here and here. And we like this. And sometimes that is not exactly what, I mean, I don't know one successful man who plays by the rules, who's waiting for his opportunities and looks at the documentation and says, I shouldn't be looking for this until this time. There are no rules. Make relationships and find your way forward by putting yourself out there and seeing what works. Also, it's okay to fail. Those failures are, I mean, you can talk a little bit about this because in Confidence Code, Katty, you talk about how failures are like, in a way, they're unbelievable lessons that stick with you.

23:13Yeah. And by the way, we're all going to fail. You failed. I failed. Our bosses have failed. Our spouses have failed. It's like a really annoying bit of the human species. We're going to fail. It's like a design flaw. It's a feature, not a bug. Okay, Mika, we're going to take a quick break. I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox, on a botulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor.

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25:17Welcome back. I'm here with Mika Brzezinski. So that trap of being the good girl, can you talk about that a bit more? because one of the things I found super interesting when we wrote our book on power was that women have this tendency in the workplace to do things called non-promotable tasks. And I think it's a little bit ties into this. We do these things that, you know, it's organizing the lunches, it's onboarding the interns, it's sending out the birthday cards. It's all of the things we do to facilitate a bit like what you did around the Brzezinski dinner table. It's facilitating a good work environment.

25:52I think actually they're very useful things and probably companies should value them more, but they don't. You're never going to get promoted because you sent out the birthday cards. Right. But the backlash, what I'm interested in is how do we say, having recognized that we do those things and that they're not going to get us promoted and that they do take up some of our time. how do we handle the backlash that comes our way when we don't play to type when we're not so agreeable when we're not the good girl when we're not the person that organizes the brown bag lunches or you know sends out the leaving card invitation whatever it is because we do get backlash when we don't do those things when we don't play to type when we don't be the good girl we get backlash.

26:37How do we handle that? Well, I mean, first of all, if you walk into a job and everyone just turns to you and says, you should be doing the birthday cards, they don't know a thing about you and it's just they're assuming it, that's not a good fit. But if you develop into that because you have offered or have taken the opportunity to do those things, now listen, And if you like doing those things, some people really like, I tend to like doing that stuff, but you got to do it because you enjoy it, the extra stuff. Or you should be doing other extra stuff that you enjoy that's going to get you where you want to go.

27:22So, I personally wouldn't take on those roles. I mean, if they are outside of the job, if it's not what you want to be doing. Just say no. Well, I mean, I wouldn't be like, no. I'd be like, good, I've got, you know, I'm doing this. How can we do this together? Or gosh, I'm trying to think I'm going to be working late on project A and project B. Can we find someone else who can be like the point person on this? I just want to make sure that it gets done. It's so important. There's got to be a way to deflect it. Well, you know who'd be really good at this? Richard would be really good at this because this is such a good field of expertise for him.