Interview with Aeric Meredith-Goujon: How to Negotiate and Coach Relationships

If you're a human being in, wanting to be in, or who just got out of a relationship, you won't want to miss this interview with relationship coach Aeric Meredithgoujon. 

Aeric is a visual artist, musician and relationship coach. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two kids.

In this conversation, Aeric and I explored 
- How getting married is an exercise in interest-based negotiation 
- How relationships can have a purpose
- The difference between healthy and unhealthy conflict
- How different orientations can cause misunderstanding and, what to do about it

You can learn more about Aeric here: aeric.nyc 

You can sign up for my upcoming webinars here:
www.jamieleecoach.com/free-coaching-live

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello! Welcome to Episode 47 of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee.  I’m your host and coach, Jamie Lee.

How are you thriving this holiday festive season?

My go-to greeting is Happy Merry Everything.

Happy Merry Everything!

Today I have a special conversation that I’d love to share with you with a relationship coach.

And if you are a human being, you are in, you are wanting to be in, or you may be just gotten out of a relationship. And in this season of merry-making, relationships come to the forefront of our minds because we are reconnecting with loved ones, with family, friends, lovers.

My life-partner and I have been together for 11 years and our relationship continues to evolve and our relationship continues to support me so that I can thrive and show up and coach and do the things that I love.

Aeric Meredith-Goujon is a visual artist, a musician, and a relationship coach. I met him at coach training and I was fascinated by what he does and immediately wanted to have this conversation with him to learn more about what it means to negotiate and coach relationships.

Because we do that all the time, we just don’t call it that.

Aeric lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two kids and in this conversation, Aeric and I explored how getting married is an exercise in interspace negotiation, how relationships can have a purpose, and the difference between healthy and unhealthy conflict, as well as how people have different orientations around speaking or communicating, and how those differences can cause misunderstanding, and what to do about those misunderstandings.

I have to say, this has been one of the most useful conversations. What I learned from Aeric I applied to my life and my relationship and immediately saw an improvement.

So I hope you will enjoy this conversation and I will talk to you soon.

Have a Merry Happy Everything until then.

Jamie: Hello, Aeric!

Aeric: Hey! How are you doing?

Jamie: How are you?

Aeric: Good.

Jamie: Awesome. Thanks so much for joining the Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee podcast.

Aeric: Thanks so much for inviting me.

Jamie: Yeah. So, here’s a question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast: I’d love to hear about a negotiation in your life or career that had the biggest impact on you.

Aeric: Yeah. I was thinking about this question and something that occurs to me is that I think it’s true that when it comes to very important decisions, especially ones that have to do with other people or other parties, negotiation actually isn’t my default. It’s more, I try to actually be more in a consultation framework or headspace when it comes to things that are actually very important, and so…

Jamie: Can I just interject here...?

Aeric: Sure.

Jamie:...And share that I define negotiation as simply a conversation where you’re trying to reach an agreement but in reality everyone has the right to say no. So, yeah, a consultation approach definitely makes sense, especially when you’re trying to engage in a conversation, trying to understand what people want and help them reach an agreement. So, do you feel that you’ve done something like that?

Aeric: Oh, sure, sure. It’s funny, the first thing that pops into my mind is actually the decision to get married.

Jamie: Ooooh, that’s a good one!

Aeric: Right? And the thing that I recall most about it is that there was no proposal dynamic going on. It was very much a mutual decision that we arrived at together after evaluating ourselves and our goals and our situation and our lives at the time. And it was a very, kind of, I guess systematic is the word, approach to evaluating whether this was going to be something we were going to do or not, whether this was a…

Jamie: Let me ask you this: When did it click for both of you? When was it that you were both like, yeah, we’re gonna get married, it’s a no-brainer?

Aeric: Um. It was almost...not instantaneous but it didn’t actually take very long to get there. We hadn't actually even known each other for very long. I think the subject first came up after we had been going out for maybe three weeks or so.

Jamie: Wow!

Aeric: And I think that’s because, at least for my part, that was always my orientation. That was the purpose of any relationship that I would be having, right? So, I just wanted to be up-front about that from the get-go and it was probably about three months in when it became clear that this was actually where it was going.

So we already had a framework in place from the beginning of our relationship that this was the umbrella, like this was the sphere in which this relationship existed. And then once it became kind of clear that we were basically on the same page about things like values and goals and guiding principles, from then on that was how we kind of evaluate each stage in our relationship, whether it was going on kind of according to these values and principles.

Jamie: That’s really interesting you say that because the way I teach negotiation is about getting clear on each side’s shared values and interests and that’s exactly what you’re saying. You’re saying you realized you shared interests and values and a sense of purpose with your partner and so then getting married became a no-brainer.

Aeric: Yeah.

Jamie: Getting to yes became a no-brainer for you.

Aeric: Right.

Jamie: So, yeah, that’s like a very classic example of mutual benefit, interspace negotiation.

Aeric: Right, right.

Jamie: It doesn’t sound romantic and yet, you know, I imagine it’s very fulfilling.

Aeric: Mmhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean there’s a lot that’s, I guess you could say inherently unfulfilling about romance. I mean there’s a difference between thrilling and fulfilling, you know.

Jamie: So what did you learn from that?

Aeric: You mean what did I learn from that experience of the very beginning of a relationship?

Jamie: That’s right.

Aeric: Hmmm. What did I learn? I learned the value of understanding one’s values.

Jamie: The value of understanding one’s values.

Aeric: Yeah.

Jamie: Absolutely. So, you are a relationship coach among many other things, like a musician, a photographer, and I’m really curious to learn how you coach couples, how you coach relationships. How is that possible? How do you do that?

Aeric: Well, it starts with having clarity on the fact that the client is the relationship.

Jamie: Oh!

Aeric: Rather than being the individuals in the relationship. There’s a difference. So we set things up with the discussion of that being the framework, with that being the orientation. And so that means we are treating the relationship as a living entity in and of itself.

Jamie: That’s fascinating, that a relationship has life.

Aeric: Right. It has life, it has goals, it has interests. It needs nourishment, it needs feeding, it needs education, it needs training. All the things that an individual needs to function in a healthy way, a relationship also needs. And the two parties in the relationship are the parents of this little life.

Jamie: Huh.

Aeric: Yeah.

Jamie: Wow. And so, I’d imagine that when there is conflict, when there is perceived conflict between two people, that’s when people have the perception that oh, this relationship is at risk.

Aeric: Right.

Jamie: And I’d imagine that you have a way of differentiating between healthy and unhealthy conflict.

Aeric: Yeah, yeah. One of the things that helps to navigate that is, going back to this idea of understanding values. And so, for the individuals in the relationship, I encourage them to really take a look at the things that are important to them - what their goals are, what their values are, what their guiding principles in life [are]. And from there, once those things are identified and articulated, then the two people can see where there are areas of overlap, where there are areas where they have ways of mutually assisting one another in the realization of those goals and that’s where the relationship lives.

And so when conflict comes up, it can be much easier to resolve or at least figure out how to address those conflicts when you’re looking at them through the lens of principle, of guiding fundamental baseline principle and goals. And you can ask questions like: Is what’s happening in furtherance of our purpose or not? And if there are agreed upon purposes to begin with, then you can start to answer questions about what are we going to do about it? Or how important is this point of conflict?

Because there’s some points of conflict which actually aren’t as important as they seem once you look at them through the lense of the ultimate goal, the ultimate purpose or result or value?

Jamie: Can you give us an example of that? Like what would be healthy conflict? What would be unhealthy conflict?

Aeric: Hmm. Healthy conflict. Um. Let’s take...I’m trying to think of a good example here...Sorry for all the dead air...

Jamie: Like have you seen an example where two people had conflict that actually brought them together as opposed to further apart?

Aeric: Right. Oh, there might be, like the areas I guess that tend to be most volatile or most impactful are things like child-rearing or money or sexuality. Things that are fundamentally tied to our sense of ultimate security, right? So, let’s say we’re trying to decide where we want to live, where we want to buy a house, assuming that buying a house is something that is already an established goal.

One way to address that is to ask the question: What do we want our life to actually be? And while one party might be drawn to living in the suburbs, definitely, one partner might be drawn to living in the city, just as a matter of personal taste, or familiarity, where they grew up or whatever. It could be easy for the conflict to live there, like, well, this is what I want and this is what you want.

But if you say, well, what is it that we want our relationship to achieve in the world? If it is something like, I don’t know, a certain kind of service to the community or maybe it is focused primarily on a certain kind of environment for children. Then, the personal tastes can take a backseat to the ultimate goals, right?

And if part of what you want in your education of your children are things like exposure to culture, exposure to different kinds of people, I don’t know, vibrant and ready access to arts and museums and music and things like that, it might be that you decide, well, we’re going to live in the city because we value these things more than we value our personal tastes.

Or if you value space, a certain amount of quiet, a certain amount of regularity and predictability and distance from the stimulation of the city, you might come down to well, that’s the thing that we value and so we’re going to make our home someplace that has those qualities. And again, irrespective of personal tastes, it might come down to that being the decision. And so the conflict is sort of mitigated by paying more attention to big-value things than small-value things.

Jamie: I find this idea very fascinating that a relationship can have a purpose. It’s a relationship, like you said, has life, it needs nourishment and it can also have a purpose. As coaches, you and I help people clarify their sense of purpose and at the same time, a relationship can have a purpose. That’s a really fascinating idea. And what I’m hearing is that’s how, once you’re clear on the purpose of the relationship, that can help mitigate conflict and help bring people together. So, how do you help couples clarify the purpose of their relationship?

Aeric: Yeah. Well, the first thing is to introduce the idea of purpose in the first place because in my experience it’s not something that people really are in the habit of thinking about when it comes to relationships. Like most of the time, I think…

Jamie: Or even their lives. People don’t even think, we just think oh, we do the things we’re told to do and we have to do.

Aeric: Right.

Jamie: What is my purpose? I don’t know!

Aeric: Yeah, but even then, we’re growing more familiar with the idea of life having a purpose. Like, that’s not a strange concept. Even if an individual hasn’t necessarily thought about that for themselves, it’s not too difficult to wrap your head around the question: What is the purpose of your life?

But when it comes to relationships, most of the time, people experience it kind of, almost in a passive way. It’s something that is a result of feelings. Like I have a strong feeling about this other person. I want to be with them. And a relationship results from that, right?

But I think that it is possible and even good, healthy and productive to think about the relationship as something that is more active than passive. Like, what is the purpose of it? What can it do? Not just what can it provide for me as far as a receptacle for my feelings or an environment for my feelings to exist in. But what can it do?

And some examples I give to sort of help people start to think about this is, like, the obvious one is family and child-rearing. Like, the purpose of the relationship can be an environment for raising children. Or the purpose of a relationship can be as an engine of service to the community and it can be a vehicle for our mutual development as a way for the two parties to assist each other in their emotional, psychological, spiritual development and then part of the purpose of the relationship can be an active engagement in that endeavor, in that process.

Jamie: Yeah. If you don’t mind my asking, I’m curious, what do you feel is the purpose of your relationship?

Aeric: Well, those examples that I just gave, because those are the things that we’ve kind of identified as the core elements, the core purposes. So, when we are making decisions about things, or we are at a crossroads in terms of deciding things or in a place of conflict, we can look at those three things and ask what action would be in furtherance of those purposes?

Jamie: Yeah. And what was the process of you two, you and your wife, getting clear on that sense of purpose?

Aeric: Oh, gosh. It’s been...I think...hmmm. We’ve been married for 26 years, so it’s been kind of a long, steady evolution towards this understanding.

Jamie: Yeah.

Aeric: And one of the main elements in helping to guide us to this point has been our faith, our religious orientation, which is the Baha’i religion, and there are many things in the scripture of the Baha’i faith about the question of purpose and about marriage and family life which act as very useful guideposts in kind of evaluating these kinds of questions, so that’s a big thing.

And it’s also kind of an almost daily reflection on our marriage as this living entity. And being in the habit of looking at it like it’s our first child I think gives us a certain orientation towards evaluating it and kind of drawing a picture of what we think it should look like, of what our process should be.

Jamie: This is really interesting to me because I’ve been with my life partner for almost 11 years and sometimes I feel like we can be each other’s child but I hadn’t thought about the perspective of treating the relationship that he and I share as our offspring, so this is really interesting to me.

And I’d imagine that throughout this process of you reflecting and using, well, not using, but being inspired by your shared religion that there were a lot of conversations, that there was a lot of open communication and you and I know that communication between two people in a relationship can be thorny sometimes.

Sometimes it’s like the person who is closest to you you feel like you’re not getting through to because we’re not so accustomed to them being right next to us and yet we feel like they are the ones who are not listening or somehow we’re not getting through to them even though they’re always there for us.

And so I wonder if you have some advice, some tips that you can share with me and my audience who are really interested in improving their communication skills and, you know, my perspective is that communication really is the language of leadership even in our personal relationships. Is there a myth about good communication between two people in a relationship that you’d like to dispel for us?

Aeric: Well, I...hmm. One thing that we discovered, and it was probably 15 years into our marriage before we figured this out, we were having a very common kind of communication issue, I mean like you were just saying where you’re talking to the person but you don’t really seem to be hearing each other correctly.

Jamie: Yeah.

Aeric: And it’s funny how we think of that as a communication problem even though the people involved are actually very good communicators. My wife is a lawyer and I’m an artist and communicating is what we both do as our jobs, right? So we’re not bad communicators. And yet there was something awry in our ability to make ourselves understood to each other. And through a lot of trial and, I don’t even know if it was error so much as a lack of true understanding of a certain truth about ourselves, we figured out that the thing that was happening was that we have a different orientation towards speaking, towards the act of speaking.

Jamie: Interesting!

Aeric: And this was not something that I was even aware existed. Like, nobody told us that this was ever a thing. But it turns out, we were able to figure out that, for her, speaking to another person is a way of processing thoughts and for me, speaking to another person, specifically her, is a way of relaying already-processed thoughts, see?

So, we would have conversations about stuff and at the end of the conversation, I would think that we were finished because for me internally, that’s how it works. I think about things and when I’m done thinking about them, I speak. But for her, the end of the conversation wouldn’t be the end of the conversation, so the next day she would sort of start in again on this thing that I thought was concluded.

And that was very, very confusing to me because I didn’t understand that she was doing externally what I naturally do internally, right? And because [broken] she would perceive that I was not engaged or not interested or not paying attention because I wouldn’t be saying anything in the course of the conversation about this issue that we were having, which she read as not being present or being…

Jamie: Not caring even.

Aeric: Not caring, yeah. And so what was happening was that we were actually misreading each other’s behavior and interpreting through our own lens of what’s natural for us, right?

Jamie: Yeah.

Aeric: And so once we figured out that this was what was going on, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to change how we do things, but it does change our understanding of what the other person is doing. So that means that, going forward, I can have the presence of mind to say, “I know I’m not saying anything right now, but I am listening to you and I’m processing all of this and I’ll get back to you with my thoughts when I have any.” So, you know, I’m addressing my understanding of her reality so that she can be assured that I am there, I am present even though I’m not saying anything, right?

Jamie: This is such a good conversation and I really appreciate your perspective, your male perspective, because as a woman in a heterosexual relationship myself, I encounter very similar frustrations and dynamic where I think I’m just kind of thinking out loud and expecting somebody to…

Aeric: To like engage and...

Jamie: To help process.

Aeric: Yeah, yeah.

Jamie: My partner sometimes is impatient, why haven’t you already decided?

Aeric: Right, right.

Jamie: What haven’t you already made up your mind and told me what your decision is?

Aeric: It’s funny how people with these different orientations often wind up together.

Jamie: Yeah, yeah. And I want to make sure I’m not making some sort of gender assumptions, not every woman, not every man is like this.

Aeric: Yeah. Certainly there are patterns to it but I certainly have come across couples where it is the opposite, where the man is the out-loud thinker and the woman is the internal processor, so I have seen that too, yeah.

Jamie: Ah. Interesting. Well, this is really good information, I think, for all of us who have to communicate with people who process information differently, who have a different communication orientation, so I appreciate that. So, Aeric, where can people learn more about you and the work that you do?

Aeric: Well, I have a site, or I will very soon. It’s aeric.nyc, so you’ll be able to reach me there and learn a little bit about my coaching from there.

Jamie: Excellent! Aeric.nyc, it’s coming soon!

Aeric: Coming soon, yeah.

Jamie: Excellent, excellent. Well, Aeric, thank you so much for your time and your expertise and I hope you have a wonderful day.

Aeric: You too. And thank you so, so much. I really appreciate this.

Jamie: Okay! Bye bye.

Aeric: Take care, bye bye.

Jamie: Bye!

Five Minute Exercise for Speaking Your Value

I share a quick and fun exercise for crafting your unique value statement so you can negotiate with power and poise. I also offer my free script “How To Ask For A Big Pay Raise”.

Click here to download the free script.

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Full Podcast Transcript: 

Hello! Welcome to the tenth episode of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I am your host, Jamie Lee. I work as a coach, speaker, trainer and I believe that we are all born to thrive. And I want to help you thrive. I want to help you close your wage gap.

If you write me an email at jamie@jamieleecoach.com, I will send you my script on how to ask for a big pay raise. This script is based on a real life scenario. I will call my client Karina for the purpose of this podcast. And Karina, she used this script, a version of this script, to ask and get a 44% increase in her salary with stock options. So this script worked for her, and if you are somebody who contributes undeniable value at work but is underpaid for the value you bring, I think this script can help you. So please write me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com (or click here to download the script).

Lately, I’ve been working on my own website. I was working with She Negotiates for the past year and a half, and I have decided to strike out on my own as a leadership and negotiation coach for ambitious women.

So, today I’ve been working on crafting my own unique value statements. If you listened to the previous episode, you would know that articulating your unique value is the first key practice for negotiation success.

What is your unique value?

Today I had to ask that to myself many times over, and I just come back to this over and over again: that I am here to help other people maximize their potential so that they can thrive. So that other people can thrive.

I really believe in serving others. I believe in making a contribution. I believe in doing work that has meaning, that is bigger than myself, and I’m really excited to do the work that I do, and I hope that you are excited, too. If you want to work on your unique value proposition statement, I have a really quick and fun exercise that I shared with Smith College alums on Monday night that I’d love to share with you.

So, here’s the exercise: Grab a piece of paper and pen. I’ll wait. If you have a piece of paper or if you are on your smartphone, if you can open your Notes app while you’re listening to this, do it. You’re going to make some very simple lists, and then at the end of it, you’re going to distill what you learn from this exercise into a succinct and cogent statement of your unique value. 

So, here’s the first list: What are you most proud of? What are you most proud of accomplishing in the past year, past month, past quarter? Don’t think too hard about this, just whatever comes up, write it down. Write as many as you can fit. And try to be specific, and if you have facts and figures, all the better. 

Then the second list is: What do you stand for? What are your values? And if you do have a specific negotiation conversation, and for the purpose of clarity, negotiation is simply a conversation where you’re trying to reach an agreement. So if you’re trying to get somebody to agree with you, and if you know them, what do they stand for? And what do they stand against? And what do you stand against? If you stand for something, then you’re definitely against some other things, right? So, just write those things, and compare your list against the things that you know the other side, your negotiation counterpart, also stands for or also stands against. In other words, find where you share values. So, that’s a list. 

And then the third list is where you can go really crazy. Crazy imaginative. What are you capable of? What is your future potential?

In the last episode, we talked briefly about how us women, we don’t always get rewarded for our future potential as much as men do.

This is something that Dr. Johanna Barsh found out in her gender research, and something that Sheryl Sandberg also talked about in her book, Lean In.

What is your future potential? What are you capable of? What’s possible? Be as imaginative as you can be. Don’t hold yourself back by the voice of the Itty Bitty Shouldy Committee that tells you, “Who do you think you are?!” If you can quiet that voice down, and just let yourself imagine all the things that you can do, what’s possible?

Okay, so now you have three lists.

The first is things that you are proud of having accomplished.

Second is the list of your values, and if you have a negotiation counterpart, and you do know them, and if you do know what they stand for or what they stand against, then you also know where you share values with the other side. So this is really important and useful.

Third, you have a list of your potential, your future potential. What can you do? What kind of leader can you be?

And finally, now that you have drawn this exhaustive list, I want you to distill the common themes, the key themes, the things that just keep popping up over and over again in terms of your proud accomplishments, your values, and what you are capable of and want to achieve. 

You’re going to distill this into one specific statement that goes like this: I _______________ , and this blank is an active verb, so that _____________________. 

I drive partnerships so that we can exceed our goals.
I connect the dots for our donors so that they can see the tremendous value that we deliver to our constituents.
I teach negotiation skills so that women can lead, influence and thrive. 

So those were three specific examples. I’d love to know what you come up with when you do this exercise. This was really fun to do in person earlier this week, when I led a negotiation workshop in Philadelphia. When people did this exercise and they got to share it with each other, there was this great sense of empowerment. They were like, “Yeah! This is what I’m capable of, and this is my unique value!”

And then, the second part to this is dovetailing it with your reasonably ambitious ask. So the unique value statement, if it is cogent, if it is to the point, if it is relevant to the listener, then what you accomplish by speaking your unique value statement is framing for mutual benefit. And then you can dovetail it with your ask by saying, “And that’s why I believe I deserve the high end of the going market rates, and that is $150,000.” Or whatever you want to ask for.

So to wrap this up, I hope that this quick and fun exercise helps you clarify your unique value, and helps you negotiate with confidence and power so that you can thrive. Thank you!
 

Articulating Your Value for a Big Pay Raise

How do you articulate your value at the #negotiation table, so that you can ask for a big pay 💰 raise?

How do you craft a compelling unique value proposition statement that captures your accomplishments, values, and potential? 

Here's the link to download the script I mention in this episode. 

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Full Episode Transcript:

Hello! Welcome to the ninth episode of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I am your host, Jamie Lee. Tonight, I have the awesome privilege of hosting a negotiation workshop for Smith Alums in Philadelphia, and in about twenty minutes, I have to go catch the train to Philadelphia, so this is going to be a quick but powerful one. I believe that negotiation skills are leadership skills, and that we are all born to lead, influence and thrive. 

We’re talking about the five key practices for negotiation success, the first of which is articulating your value. How do you articulate your unique value so that it is compelling to your negotiation partner? I think it’s really important to think about it in three concrete ways.

• The first: What is the worth of your contributions, your strengths, your skills?
• Number two: What do you stand for?
• Number three: What is your potential?

A really compelling, unique value proposition captures all three of these. The worth of your contributions, what you stand for, and your future potential.

Number one: What is the worth of your contributions? 

Take for example, my recent client. I’m going to call her Karina for this example. She works in digital marketing, and she has contributed undeniable value to her employer. It’s undeniable because she exceeded the revenue goals for her department, and the revenue goals were $10 million and she brought in $12 million. So, that’s value, right? That has undeniable worth.

And yet, she was being compensated below going market averages, and she wasn’t even making six figures. And so, we came up with a negotiation strategy, and it centered around her unique value proposition, which is, “Hey, I want to be compensated according to the value I contribute to this employer, and I’m contributing and I’m exceeding the targets and yet my compensation is not even 1% of the value, the $12 million  that I brought in. So, could we have a conversation about bringing me up to market, so that I’m being compensated for the value I bring?”

You might be listening to this and you think well, I don’t work in sales, I don’t work in a capacity where it’s tied to revenue or figures like that. I don’t know how to articulate my value.

So, think about not just what you do, but how does your employer benefit from what you do? I talked about this in the second episode, Salary Negotiation FAQs.

It’s not just because you do your job that they hire you, they hire you for the end benefit. Because you do your job, there is more security. Because you do your job, there is consistency. Because you do your job, there is smooth operation, happy customers, returning customers, etc.

So, if you’re not sure how to articulate your value, the worth of your contributions, strengths and talents, think about all the things that you do contribute.

In fact, I would strongly suggest you list them. Make a list on paper or in a Google Doc. What have you done? What have you accomplished?

And ask, so what? Because you did this, they benefited by X, Y, Z. Think about, I generated the reports, so they have visibility into operations, and because they have visibility into operations, they can make decisions faster, and because they are making decisions faster, we are more profitable.  

Number two: What do you stand for?

So in other words, I’m asking about your values, not just what is your value. What are your values? What do you stand for? Most of my coaching clients, they stand for serving others.

I had a client who worked in the government contractor industry, and for this person, it was the value of serving the needs of others that really shone through, that was really important for him.

He was doing his job, not just so that he can say he did a great job, he did his job so that other people’s lives improved. And so he articulated that in his unique value proposition. "I’m here to serve others. I’m here to serve the mission and goal of this organization, because the goal and mission of this organization is to improve the lives of those we serve." That’s kind of a circular statement, but you understand what I’m saying. 

Finally: What is your potential?

What can you accomplish? I think this is so important for women negotiators, because we tend to be rewarded for the work we have done, not necessarily for the potential that we bring. Not everyone sees our leadership potential unless we have already done all the work and exceeded targets.

So, it behooves us to articulate what that potential is. What can you do? What can you contribute? We think about potential, and we think about all the great things we can be doing, and sometimes instead of having this become an inspiration or a motivator, it can become a de-motivator for some people.

It can be like, oh, I’m not living up to my potential. But here’s the definition of potential: potential is doing what you can. What can you do? I think that potential is probably tied to your sense of purpose. Why are you here? What are you serving? What are the values you’re honoring? So it’s really closely tied to your values. 

For me, when I do this exercise, I see that my potential is to help unlock other people’s potential so that they can thrive. And when I see that because of the work I do, women are closing their gender wage gaps, people are asking for what they want, people are making decisions that are self-empowered and give them a sense of greater joy, fulfillment and happiness, I see that I am doing my job. I see that I am living up to my potential.

And that’s why this podcast is called Born to Thrive, because I believe that we are all born to lead, influence and thrive, and learning negotiation skills can help us achieve that purpose. 

I’ve written a script that outlines the process that Karina went through, what her negotiation conversation was like so that you can see for yourself what it is like to articulate for your value, and to respond to pushback, to excuses like oh, we don’t have the money in the budget or whatever, if you are negotiating for bigger pay, promotion etc.

And I would like to share this script with you. If you email me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com - and I spell my name J-A-M-I-E - jamieleecoach.com, I will send the script to you because I believe it is my purpose to help other people live up to their potential, and if it helps you, if it contributes value to your negotiation to see how this one successful negotiation went, then that’s great!

I love that. I’d love to help you close your wage gap. I’d love to help you live up to your potential. So, feel free to write me at jamie@jamieleecoach.com to get this free script on how to ask for a big pay raise. Thank you, and I hope that this helps you thrive. Bye!

Where I'm From, What I do, and What It Means For You

If you're reading this, you might be wondering, who is this Jamie Lee? Where does she come from? What's her story?

If so, then you've come to the right place. 

In this episode, I get personal and tell you where I'm from (South Korea), how I made the decision to become a coach for women, and what it means for you. 

Then I wrap it up with some baller ladybrags. Enjoy! 

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Full episode transcript: 

Hello! Welcome to the seventh episode of Born to Thrive with Jamie Lee. I am your host, Jamie. I work as a coach, speaker, trainer. I believe that we are all born to thrive. No matter where you were born, what color, what creed, what sexual orientation, what gender orientation, we are all born to thrive.

I work primarily with women, and yesterday I did a post about the fear of seeming like bragging too much that a lot of women clients tell me they have, and I shared the Bullish Society culture of bragging. Bullish Society tweeted back at me, and they were kind to let me know that the official name for this is called “baller ladybrags.” I love that. Baller ladybrag. What is your baller ladybrag today? I will share mine at the end of the podcast episode.

Today I want to talk to you about me. I want to tell you a little bit about me. Why do I do this? Where do I come from? And what does it mean for you?

I was born in South Korea. I’m 36, so I was born in South Korea 36 years ago, and my mother had three daughters. This had the unfortunate consequence of causing suffering, because Korea is very much a patrilineal society. It’s a fancy word for meaning they prioritize sons over girls, because sons get to inherit the wealth of the family, the family line, the family name. Girls don’t. Girls get married off. 

My mother suffered. She literally suffered. She was beat up a few times by my father’s family. She was not treated well. When I was eight, we immigrated to America, and then my mother basically raised the three of us by herself after she divorced my father in America. 

She ran a nail salon, and she managed to put a roof over our heads, she managed to put all three of us through college. She speaks English a little bit worse than Margaret Cho’s mother. I’m not really good at accents, but if you’re familiar with Margaret Cho, it’s a thick accent. But she did it. All by herself. 

When I was growing up, my mother always complained about money. If you grew up in a single-parent home where money was kind of tight, you probably know what I’m talking about. It’s rough, and you make do with what you have. And children absorb all of this. I absorbed all of this. My response to this was, “Well, you know what? I don’t like money. You’re always complaining about money. You don’t care about me. You’re not here for me. It’s just money, money, money, money, money. I don’t want money!” I remember saying that out loud to my mother. It hurt her so, so much. 

And now I work as a negotiation coach helping women become bolder, braver and better paid. Because this experience taught me a really valuable lesson: that women are capable of doing great things. We support families, we support networks, we support communities. In fact, the Clinton Global Institute does global-wide research, and they found that when women make money, they invest 90% of their income back into their families and communities, whereas men only invest 45%. So my mother was a classic example of that.

And then I went to Smith College, where it’s all women, and I again saw that women are so capable. Women are able to do all the things that we want to do if we put our minds to it, if we come together and support each other. That was the big lesson that I learned. I remember carrying furniture up four flights of stairs with four other Smith women. We didn’t need men to help us move furniture or do hard things. Smith College is one of the very first, I think it is the only women’s college to have a women’s only engineering department. So, yeah, it had a really big impact on me, and it really instilled the feminist ideals inside of me, you could say that. 

Then I got into the real world after college, and then I was hit with the reality of what it is to work for a patriarchal society that is still here in America. So, my very first job, I worked as a receptionist at a government organization.

It was an international government organization that was going to build a nuclear power plant in North* Korea (*In the podcast, I made the mistake of saying "South Korea." My bad). For reals. For peace, not for war. This was something that was agreed upon during President Clinton’s administration. It’s called KEDO. It’s now defunct, no surprise there, right?

In any case, I went there, and I was so full of hope and ideals, as I still am, but all the diplomats were men. All the support staff were women. One of the things that the Korean diplomats asked me to do - he saw this Korean girl - and he’s like, “Oh, you’re gonna come support me, and every day I want you to bring me a cup of coffee diluted with hot water.”

And I remember walking, going from the kitchen to the South Korean diplomat’s office with this coffee in my hand and hating it. Really hating it, I mean. That was an interesting experience. Again I saw, wait, all the power, all the decision-making powers are with men here. And that didn’t really sit well with me.

And then the next job I worked for a South Korean company, because I speak Korean, and I had some experience with this organization that was going to build a power plant in North Korea. This is a really big South Korean conglomerate called Doosan, and they build power plants, desalination plants, that are big infrastructure that turn saltwater into drinkable water.

Again, all the managers, men. Flown in from South Korea. And the South Korean flavor of patriarchy is like this: if he’s the older male, it means that he knows best. He just does. And he just deserves all your respect. You obey. You submit. I hate using that word, but it’s true. I lasted about ten months there.

It was not a good fit for me, as you can imagine, and it really hit home for me that I had to leave when one day I was working late, filing all these papers. I was working as a buyer, negotiating with American vendors on behalf of the Korean company. And then one day, out of the blue, I get a call. It’s 5pm. I get a call from a South Korean manager, and he just rings up my phone and then he says “What the hell are you doing?! You’re doing a terrible job!” And then, click. He hangs up.

To this day, I don’t know who this man was, I just know that he was from South Korea, so he was probably a manager. And I don’t know what needed improvement. There was no dialogue, there was no discussion. It was just like, “You’re bad.” Click. And that kind of really drove home for me that this was not a good culture fit for me.

I had another job where I worked for a women-founded American company, and I realized, “Wow! The culture is so much better. I really like this! It’s a great fit.” But I kind of stalled in learning and growing, so I worked at a hedge fund.

Again, this hedge fund was founded by a Korean guy. I think the common theme here is, for me, don’t work for companies founded by Korean patriarchs. But in any case, again, I encountered kind of a toxic experience where all the men made the decisions. I was the only woman at the trading desk.

What is the definition of toxic? I gave a talk on this at The Wing the other week.  It’s self-poisoning. And I started to feel the poisoning emotionally, mentally, physically, going there and listening to these guys talk and joke and not having a voice, not being respected. I had to go. I just had to go. 

One day I read this article in The New York Times about this group of women investors who invest only in women-founded companies. They saw the problem: women-founded startups don’t get VC funding, even to this day. It was only about like 6% of women-founded companies, in the latest article I saw, only 6% get VC funding.

There’s a great need for funding for these women-founded companies, and this company, this little company called Golden Seeds, decided to provide the solution. They were a group of women accredited investors, and they decided to pull together and do due diligence and do angel investing only in women-founded startups.

When I read about them I thought, “Wow. This is the group that I want to be aligned with. This is the kind of people I want to be associated with. This is who I want to become. Because I know the pain of being the woman, the only woman, in a male-dominated workplace. I know the pain of being a girl in patriarchy. I know the pain of being overlooked, ignored, discriminated against. And I want to be part of the solution. I don’t want to sit and be a victim anymore.”

So I wrote to them. They didn’t have the wherewithal to pay me a salary, but I did an unpaid internship, and it changed my life. It gave me connections to other women investors who later gave me job opportunities, and the job opportunities led to me working for startups, and then when I started working at startups that’s when I started thinking, “Hey! You know, I have some entrepreneurial ideas. I can teach. I can speak. I love to give back to the community.” And then when I thought about what is the thing that I can give back, it’s what I’m doing now. It’s helping women find their voice. It’s helping women shine. It’s helping women thrive on their own terms. And it’s helping women advocate for the value they bring.

What does this mean for you? The lesson that I am trying to live through my work is to walk the talk I give. I talk about confidence. I talk about advocacy. I talk about believing in ourselves. I talk about being proactive. I talk about leading by example. I talk about speaking and acting from a sense of purpose.

And I try to live this every day. It’s important because we need change, right? We need to press for progress. Time is up. Those are all the trendy hashtags lately around this topic of women and gender equality. We need to close the gender wage gap.

But it starts with you. That’s when I realized that it starts with me, and I needed to take action and live what I wanted to see in the world that things started to change, things started to turn around for me. For you, that means it starts with you. It’s not enough for us to wait around, be angry. It’s time for us to live the change, to walk the talk that we give.

This is kind of a long episode and I should wrap this up with a baller ladybrag. I love that. Baller. Ladybrag. It’s confusing. Baller? Isn’t that masculine? Ladybrag? Does that even make sense? I don’t care. We’re doing it. Baller ladybrag.

I have three! Number one: A recent client of mine, I helped her negotiate her salary. She just got promoted to director level, but her salary, they were like “Oh, our budget is small, blah blah blah.” They were giving her these passive-aggressive excuses. So, we worked on a custom strategy/action-plan/script. Her result: 44% increase in salary. 44%. That’s nearly double what she was making.

And on top of that, she got equity, and she found out that not all directors get equity. So she got an even more fluffier icing on the cake, if you will. I just made that up.

Number two: I wrote a script based on this experience to share with more people. I thought there was just so much value I couldn’t keep it to myself. It’s called “How to Ask For A Big Pay Raise.” And I shared it with my network. Somebody used it to negotiate a pay raise, and her result? She got a 9% increase in salary. That’s pretty baller. 9%. It’s like double of the cost of living adjustment which is about, or less than 5%. So that’s pretty baller. I love it.

Number three: I told you I gave a speaker’s workshop at the UN, and I just got feedback that the women that I coached over the weekend got to give their speeches at the UN, and their speeches were better. You could see the impact of our work together. So this makes me really proud, this really makes me feel good, and this gives me more drive to continue to grow, to continue to thrive.

So, I wish you well today, and I wish you a thriving day. See you tomorrow!