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Pay Equity & Asking For A Raise: From Journalism to Closing the Gender Pay Gap with the Founder of PepTalkHer
117 Plays1 year ago
Update: I recently launched my newsletter, The Sheconomist, and would love for you to subscribe: sheconomist.com - I share so many tools and resources that help young, high-achieving women with radical money and career self-advocacy.
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In this episode, we sit down with Meggie Palmer, an influential founder, speaker, and journalist on a mission to close the gender pay gap through her platform, PepTalkHer. Originally from Australia, Meggie now calls New York City home, and she shares her incredible journey from her career in journalism to founding her first business.
Meggie's passion for supporting women in the workforce and promoting diversity is contagious. With PepTalkHer, Meggie and her team run corporate programming for brands including Salesforce, JP Morgan, and LinkedIn where they work in-house with companies to recruit, retain, and promote diverse talent.
Meggie shares personal anecdotes about the power of collective success, offering valuable advice on navigating challenges and societal pressures, particularly around money. She talks about the importance of pay transparency and offers advice on how to ask for a raise at work.
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Transcript
Introduction to Women's Economic Empowerment
00:00:00
Speaker
That's kind of the fun part of entrepreneurship. It's the journey. You just never know what's going to happen and you never know how you're going to fix it, but you figure it out along the way. I'm Tamina and I'm extending a heartfelt invitation to you as we join forces in reclaiming economic power for women in a world that is often structured against us.
Inspiring Female Leadership and Wealth Building
00:00:22
Speaker
We'll dive into the minds of accomplished female leaders, investors and entrepreneurs to equip you with the confidence and knowledge to build wealth for yourself and other women. So buckle up, get ready to learn and be inspired to take action.
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome back, everyone. This week, I have the pleasure of talking to a powerhouse, the one and only Maggie Palmer. Maggie Palmer is a founder, speaker and journalist and proud Aussie who now calls New York City her home.
00:00:52
Speaker
She founded PepTalkHer and is on a mission to close the gender pay gap. Maggie travels globally, speaking and helping companies with retaining female leaders and diversity. She also spent 15 years as a journalist and foreign correspondent in Europe, United States and Australia.
00:01:12
Speaker
Maggie worked for BBC World, CNBC, SBS Dateline, Channel 7, Channel 10, Sky, Vogue, Mary Claire and News Corporation. She's passionate about helping small businesses connect with and harness the media.
The Power of Female Support Systems
00:01:28
Speaker
That's why Maggie's first business was a media training and production company called Sliding Door Media.
00:01:34
Speaker
With Peptalker, she runs corporate programming for brands, including Salesforce, JP Morgan, and LinkedIn, where they work in-house with companies to recruit, retain, and promote to diverse talent. It's so good to have you on the show, Maggie. I'm excited to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me. Of course, my pleasure. This was way overdue, so I'm very, very excited to dive in today.
00:01:56
Speaker
Let's start from the top because I always like to start out with the same question for all of my guests. And as you know, this podcast is all about helping women build wealth for themselves and other women. Yeah. I always like to say a wealthy woman can walk out of almost every room. She feels uncomfortable in and create opportunities for other women along the way because financial independence equates freedom.
00:02:17
Speaker
So curious to hear from you, Maggie, what does women supporting women mean to you and how does that show up in your life? Well, I feel very lucky that I see it show up in my life all the time and I'm hoping that that's the case for your listeners. And if that's not the case, the good news is it is possible and you can find folks who will let you experience that.
00:02:36
Speaker
So I can give an example, actually last week, a friend of mine, she threw her own birthday dinner and we did this thing where we all ran around the table and said a tweet sized thing that we loved about her. And one of the women at the dinner said about my friend Nabiha, it feels like when we win, you win. Like she genuinely wants all of us to succeed, like truly. It never feels like, oh my gosh, you got that board position and I didn't, oh my gosh, your business has grown that much and mine hasn't, or oh my gosh, it always feels like
00:03:05
Speaker
There is so much pie to go around for everyone and let's just dig in and eat it because it's so much fun and there's always going to be more to be made. And that really summed up my friendship with her and certainly my experience with her and other female friends here in the United States, around the world, in Australia as well. To be honest, I haven't.
Challenges in Women's Financial Journey
00:03:23
Speaker
had too many experiences where I haven't felt uplifted and empowered by other women. I mean, listen, there's been a couple of cases professionally and candidly, often with older women, interestingly, where it has felt a little bit like it's not a collective. It's kind of all about me, me, me, but I find
00:03:41
Speaker
Increasingly, especially people of our generation, I feel like it's very much, let's pay it forward. Let's get all of us to win and succeed and share in the success that is possible because, candidly, it's really hard. You know, it can be really tough and we know that because of misogyny, because of the patriarchy, because of unconscious bias that exists.
00:04:02
Speaker
We really need to be supporting each other because the statistics tell us that we are not going to be given the same opportunities. We are not going to be offered the same amount of pay. Sadly, we've got to sort of help each other because if we don't, who will? Couldn't agree more. And I think what you just mentioned about the fact that generally you feel pretty supported, which is great to hear, but I think
00:04:25
Speaker
that also probably has something to do with the fact that you proactively choose to surround yourself with the type of people that uplift you, right? I think both you and I are at a point in our lives where we very much care about the type of people that we spend a lot of time
00:04:44
Speaker
time with, right? And we let go of those toxic people that try to bring us down because there's just no reason for allowing those type of people to stick around and rob us of our energy. So I think that's also really important. And for me, every single time I go to
00:05:01
Speaker
female founders event, for example, or similar to you, I'm assuming a couple of women's groups and networks where the sole purpose of coming together is to come together in support of one another and engage in very vulnerable and real conversations about the shared experiences of womanhood. And so I think both you and I are very, very intentional in how we spend our time and who we're going to spend our time with. So I think that's very, very important.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. And I felt like another friend of mine taught me quite early on was this was more in relation to money. I remember was when I was living in Australia and someone was having their 26th birthday or something like that. Or maybe it was their 31st birthday. I can't remember. It was like a, you know, an innocuous birthday.
00:05:46
Speaker
And it was like $150, $200 dinner sort of situation. And I was just, I was moaning to my friend. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is such bullshit. I can't afford that. This is outrageous. Like you can't, you know, how can you expect people to pay this much money? At the time I was just like, that was a lot of money for me. And my friend said to me, just say no. And I was like, what? Just like, just say no.
00:06:06
Speaker
And I've always remembered that and you know, even recently I was invited to something and I was like, I could go, but it's not really lighting my heart on fire. I love the person. I just wasn't really, it didn't, it didn't feel like the people there were really going to be the people I wanted to spend energy with. And so I was like, listen, I hope it goes really well. I'm so sorry I can't make it.
00:06:22
Speaker
Yeah. That's it. And I don't have to make excuses. I don't have to explain why I can just say no. And I think that that's actually helpful advice in terms of where you want to spend your discretionary income in terms of what you want to say to request at work, how you want to respond to recruiters who reach out or to job offers, all those kinds of things. It's actually okay.
00:06:40
Speaker
to say no and I think often we feel so obliged and also we know as women we're socialized from a young age often to be people pleasers or to sort of make folks feel comfortable and sometimes that comes at our detriment and I think it's a powerful lesson to remember that actually you get to decide. You can be very polite about it all those sorts of things even in the workplace.
00:07:01
Speaker
You're able to say no, or you're able to say, listen, I'd love to take on that project. Let me know what you'd like me to drop so that I have the capacity to really implement that properly for you. That's completely reasonable. And I love that you point that out because to your point as women, we're so used to continuously overextend ourselves because that's what everyone around us is always expecting from us because someone's saying no and being assertive, those are
00:07:26
Speaker
traits that are historically associated with men, right? So when you as a woman start showing up assertively and setting your boundaries, a lot of people cannot connect that because there is that lack of gender role congruity, right? But I do think it's important to set boundaries in order to protect your sanity and your mental and physical health and to just be able to live a life that is more aligned with your priorities and values at the end of the day.
Maggie Palmer's Entrepreneurial Insights
00:07:56
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it's so true. Maggie, you started out as a journalist and today you are a serial entrepreneur. Tell us a little bit more about how you ended up catching the founder bug. Well, it was funny actually. I was researching, I was doing sort of foreign affairs documentaries in and out of, you know, a variety of different countries. I was in Syria, I was in Zimbabwe, I was in the Philippines covering natural disasters, interviewing world leaders and stuff like that.
00:08:23
Speaker
And one of the stories I was working on was about Australian success in Silicon Valley in San Francisco. And so I started doing research and I started to realize these folks who were having huge success in the tech industry weren't necessarily coders. They weren't necessarily engineers. And I was like, Oh, cause I sort of thought like, I don't know. I was a bit naive. I just thought, well, I don't, you know.
00:08:43
Speaker
I'm not really good with computers or whatever, so that's really not for me. And I guess that kind of debunked the idea that you had to have all of the skills and all of the answers to start a business. And so it was from there that I sort of just had a bit of an idea, and it took me probably another five years after that to start Peptalker properly. I went to build and launch our app, which is free by the way that all of your listeners can download. And the app is kind of like a Fitbit.
00:09:07
Speaker
but it's for your career. Or like a period tracker, except it tracks your wins at work. That's how we like to think about the app. And it just kind of helps you keep all of those successes and those wins that you have in the workplace front of mind. Because otherwise, we've got so much going on. Who can remember when their cousin's birthday is, let alone what they had for dinner last week, let alone what they did at work a quarter ago, right? So keeping those wins front of mind is really important if you want to be earning more money and getting promoted more quickly.
00:09:35
Speaker
And so what's funny is through research in journalism that the idea for the pep talker app was born and I just kind of figured it out along the way. And I think for anyone listening who thinks, well, I couldn't do that because I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to start a business because I don't know how to do it. Here's the good news. No one knows how to do it.
00:09:51
Speaker
Everyone's making it up and everything is Googleable and it still sucks. Everything is researchable. You can ring people. You can find either of us on LinkedIn and send us a DM. We're both on Instagram, you know, at pep talker, definitely say hi and ask us questions. There are folks out there that can help you and you can figure it out. And to me, that's kind of the fun part of entrepreneurship. It's the journey. You just never know what's going to happen and you never know how you're going to fix it, but you figure it out along the way.
00:10:17
Speaker
I think it's awesome that you address that specifically because I do think there are a lot of people out there, you know, our audience members are mainly young women in their mid 20s to early 30s. And I have a lot of conversations with them all the time. A lot of them are working in corporate, but a lot of them also have passions on the side or they feel like they're not
00:10:41
Speaker
100% fulfilled by their corporate 9 to 5, so they're looking to potentially pivot or start something on the side. The one piece of advice that I always share with them is, first of all, you don't have to have it all figured out. Nobody really does. People who are 10, 20, 30 years our age, they just figure it out along the way.
00:11:01
Speaker
But you just got to start
Exploring Personal Strengths and Team Dynamics
00:11:02
Speaker
out with something, lean into one of your passions, lean into one of those statistics or whatever it is that you encounter in your daily work and try to just be open-minded and curious and it will develop.
00:11:17
Speaker
its own life from there, at least that's how I've always experienced it. As an entrepreneur at heart, I definitely have something that I refer to as shiny new object syndrome, where when I learn about something, I'm like, oh my goodness, I need to learn everything there is to know about this and let me do this and that. And obviously there's not enough time to pursue everything seriously, but I do think it's a great way to kind of like train your brain to be always curious in that specific entrepreneurial
00:11:46
Speaker
business context and not everything is going to work out, but maybe out of those 20 ideas that you might have one or two have a lot of potential and you just have to go for it and have enough confidence in your own character and abilities that, well, I might not be able to know the answers to all of these questions that I have right now, but I do know that I'm able to figure it out myself.
00:12:10
Speaker
Or over time. So I love it. And you mentioned, you know, you mentioned Shiny Object Sick Syndrome. So I would expect, have you done Gallop Strengthfinders? Have you done? Yes. Okay. And so I think that's something for listeners. It's kind of like an assessment, almost like a personality quiz, but a little different. It's called Gallop Strengthfinders. It's like 20 US dollars. They'll try and upsell you on the $60 one. You don't have to just do the $20 one if you're interested. And basically what it says is that we are all made up of, I think it's 35 different strengths.
00:12:38
Speaker
And it gives you your top five. And so I'm going to make a guess if you've got shiny object syndrome, probably you have activator in your top five to 10. Yeah. And so do I, right? And so what that means is as activators, we love to get things started and oh my gosh, this is so great. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yes. Let's do it. Let's move quickly. Yes. And it means that maybe we're not the best people.
00:12:57
Speaker
to run organisations for 30-year time periods, right? Because we'll probably get bored. And that's okay if we know that, right? Because if you're thinking about starting a business with someone else, you can have them take the assessment and say, well, hang on, are we the same person? Do we have different strengths? Because if you do, that's a really great thing because you need someone who can execute. You need someone who can build relationships. You need all of these different qualities. So it's really helpful when you're building a team to have an understanding of where are these strengths? Why does this person hate that?
00:13:26
Speaker
How come they love that so much and I can't do that? And then you realize, well, it's not that I'm useless. It's just that that's their strength. And I hate it because it's one of my weaknesses, right? And so when I left journalism, one of the things I did, I spent like maybe six to 12 months. It was like a self-exploration journey. I was working. I had a media training company on the side. I was kind of working, but I was really just figuring out like, who am I?
00:13:48
Speaker
What do I love? What do I hate? What am I good at? Which kind of seems obvious, but I didn't really know because I'd been indoctrinated as a journalist for like 15 years. And sometimes when you're in any career for that period of time, you don't know what you don't know. And you think all I can do is finance or all I can do is news and current affairs or all I can do is psychology. But you forget that actually there are transferable skills and people will pay you for things that you think are normal and boring and easy. But for other people, they're very, very challenging.
00:14:17
Speaker
So when I had my media training company, I thought, well, everyone knows how to create key messages and reach out to journalists and do great live interviews. And I realized there's actually a really random skill that can be taught, but some people really want to learn that and they're happy to pay a lot of money for that, right? And then I thought everyone knew how to negotiate their salary really well. And I know now with PepTalk, we've got 60,000 women in our community and a lot of them didn't know how to do that.
00:14:43
Speaker
before they engaged with us or before they used one of our free resources or went through our paid programs, right? For me, it's because it's what I've lived and breathed for so long. It's like, I'm so good at it. It's my zone of genius. And I would say to everyone listening, you also have a zone of genius, right? And you won't necessarily know what it is like now after this podcast.
00:15:03
Speaker
But there are steps that you can take to better understand that. And I really think Gallup Strengthfinders is a great place to start, honestly. And the other one you can do that's free is called 16personalities.com. I think it's like a version of Maya's Briggs, I think, personality test-wise. And I know some people hate them. And that's fine. You don't have to take it as gospel. But what you can do is go through these assessments and just pick and choose what resonates. Because sometimes it will give you language.
00:15:28
Speaker
to describe why you have shiny object syndrome or why you hate working in teams. All of those things doesn't mean that you're weird or unusual. It just means that you're you, which is wonderful because no one else can replicate that. So I think really leaning into what makes you different and unusual is so powerful in business or indeed if you're working in a corporate structure as well. I love that you brought that up, Megan, because I think this is very, very
00:15:54
Speaker
actionable advice and we'll definitely make sure to link to all of these resources in our show notes. Our listeners can go back and revisit those, but a hundred percent agreed. I actually knew business idea one of many because I feel idea almost every single day, certainly at least once a week, but this was one of those.
00:16:11
Speaker
business ideas where this is actually one of those that I would want to pursue seriously. So then I started to think about, okay, would I do this on my own or should I maybe look for a co-founder in the future once I figured out some of the details and how I would want to approach this. And one of the first things I was thinking about was exactly what you just referred to. How could I find someone who complements my strengths? Because if there's two Taminas,
00:16:40
Speaker
We're just like, okay, let's be self starters. Let's start creating. I mean, that can work out, but I feel like you have a much higher chance of success if you have someone who is like me, but then you have that counterbalance. That is more about now let's actually bring it across the finish line and be consistent about it. Who can build up processes behind the scenes, which is very boring to me. I don't know, building nails or something, but something exactly.
00:17:05
Speaker
Some people love it and it's their zone of genius and then together it's magic, right? So I love that you brought that up. Yeah. As humans, we have a bias and unconscious bias to surround ourselves with people who are like us. So we love hanging out with other people who also have shiny object syndrome or other people who also love processes and are very rigid. If that's how we are, we naturally attract those people. And so one of the biggest mistakes that I've made as an entrepreneur is hiring. I am a terrible hirer.
00:17:32
Speaker
I love people and so you would think that I would be great at hiring. I'm actually not. I'm terrible at hiring because I hire people who are like me and that's great, but then we all just do the same thing and then the stuff that I hired them to do doesn't get done, right? And so that's something that I've had to learn and I've had a lot of coaching to help me realize that. And so now I have a better process and I have other folks that are involved in our hiring process because it's not my zone of genius. I'm happy to be involved. It's not where I should be spending a lot of my time and I should question
00:18:01
Speaker
when I do it on my own because nine times out of 10, it's not great when I hire by myself, which isn't to say that my teams are amazing. It's just that I've had to make a lot of mistakes to get to where we are now. And I used to think as well, my friends used to call me Cyclone Palmer.
00:18:16
Speaker
And they called me that with love, right? They were like, you're so cyclonic. And I kind of thought it was a bit of an insult. Like they love me and it was just, they would just sort of look at me and they'd be like, she's starting another business. And they are not entrepreneurs and they probably never will be entrepreneurs because it's not their own genius. They love stability. They love to do a nine to five job, et cetera, et cetera, which is awesome, but that's not me.
00:18:36
Speaker
And so they were looking at me thinking like, whoa, she's so out there. And I was hearing that thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so weird. I'm such a weirdo. Like, why am I so weird? And then when I did all this coaching and these assessments, I realized that I seem cyclonic to others because ideas come so quickly and naturally to me. And that's not the case for everyone.
00:18:54
Speaker
And I just thought everyone did that. I didn't realize that that was unique. And so it's very powerful to understand the things that make you unique are actually really cool. You shouldn't feel that you're weird. I couldn't be a business owner because I'm an introvert. You are 100% candy, right? You don't have to be an extrovert to start a business. You don't have to love numbers.
00:19:13
Speaker
You don't have to want to be doing podcast interviews to start a business. That's not true. You can start a business in so many different ways. You can start it with a co-founder. You can start it on your own. You get to choose your own adventure in business. And it's so exciting to me.
Business as a Tool for Freedom and Change
00:19:27
Speaker
And to your earlier point, earlier in the podcast, business creates money, which creates impact and it creates opportunity.
00:19:34
Speaker
Ultimately, it creates freedom, which is the highest value that really drives me in the sense of I'm looking for geographic freedom, I'm looking for financial freedom, so that I can make choices to better suit my family, sure, but also to re-funnel that distribution of wealth towards the impact causes that I'm interested in, which is supporting women in the professional world, supporting women in the political realm, supporting folks of color to have more opportunities.
00:19:58
Speaker
that are not currently being provided to them, right? Because I think when we talk about wealth, the wealth gap, the pay gap, it is terrible for everyone and it is a thousand times worse for women of color, right? And for people from marginalized groups. And so it's important that we don't forget that and that actually all of us listening today in some capacity have privilege and opportunity that we can use to pay it forward.
00:20:22
Speaker
I have capacity to create change in the work that I do. You listening have capacity as well. If you see something at work that is wrong, that is biased, that is inappropriate, you have the capacity to do something. You can call it out. You can text that friend and check in on them. You can have a quiet off the record conversation with the leader. You can have a very on the record conversation and raise it to HR. We all have responsibility to create change. I think that's what business
00:20:49
Speaker
allows us to do, but also we can all be agents of change within companies. We don't have to leave to create change. You can make change in multinational companies. You can make change in very small businesses, just in the terms of like how you show up and how you exhibit your values in a work sense as well.
00:21:06
Speaker
You're speaking my love language there. Specifically, you're mentioning about money just being a tool for freedom. I had a conversation with one of my best friends about exactly that. I am helping out with her personal finances and getting started investing in all of that.
00:21:22
Speaker
She's also a female founder, very, very successful, but hasn't really focused that much on focusing on her own personal finance success. So working on that together. And I told her exactly that look like both you and I, we're not money driven, but we're freedom driven.
00:21:37
Speaker
And we're leveraging our passions and our interests for women's advancement and women's rights specifically to help get there and promote positive systemic change along the way.
Global Perspectives on Gender Inequality
00:21:49
Speaker
So love, love, love that. And I think what you just pointed out about the importance of intersectionality, that's very, very real and leads me to my next question, Maggie, obviously you've lived and worked in many different parts of the world. You've seen a lot of things across Australia, Europe, the US.
00:22:06
Speaker
other parts of the APEC region. I'm curious to hear how have these experiences shaped your understanding of gender inequality on a global scale. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm a Tory Burch fellow, and if anyone listening is an entrepreneur, I really encourage you to apply. Basically, it's like a program where Tory Burch, who's a large fashion entrepreneur, has a foundation, and she gives you a small grant, but she also puts you through a 12-month program with 50 other female identifying fellows.
00:22:33
Speaker
Kind of like a mini business MBA, I would say. And as part of that, they give you the opportunity to apply for this loan, which is called Kiva. Some of your listeners might have heard of it. K-I-V-A dot org. And it's a micro lending platform. And basically, they give you cash flow. You have to apply and whatever. You send it out and all these sorts of things. People essentially crowdfund money, basically, and they give you a loan. It can be $1,000. It can be $25,000. They give you this loan that is interest free and then you pay it back.
00:23:01
Speaker
I have had two of these loans, and it's purely for cash flow reasons. It allows us to have that cash flow in the business, and then we pay it off over a two-year period. Tori Bertschbellers, I think, have a 99.7% rate of paying back these loans. But it's for women all around the world. What we know is that there can be people in third-world countries that are getting access to $500, $2,000, whatever.
00:23:23
Speaker
to allow them to seed capital in a business or to start a business or to buy the produce that they need to start a market stand or to buy fabric that they need to start a cushion company or whatever because they're seamstresses, whatever the case may be. And this capital is so powerful, right? Because when we give money and capital and opportunity to women in their businesses, we know
00:23:45
Speaker
that that does amazing things and it has huge ripple effects in their lives and indeed their communities. Even if we look at venture funding, it is disgusting how little money women businesses get. And yet when we give them money to those female-founded businesses, they return a higher return on investment than male founders.
00:24:03
Speaker
The stuff that I've seen around the world, like being a journalist is such a privilege because you are there with folks when they win Olympic medals, when they win elections, and you're also there interviewing them when they lose their homes, when they lose family members, the saddest, lowest period in their entire life. And so what I've seen throughout those experiences of traveling around the world for different networks is women are nine times out of 10 the linchpin of a community. They are the crocs.
00:24:28
Speaker
of the family, of the community, of that network, and what happens if people congregate to women in those times. We are storytellers, we are connectors, we are compassionate beings, and we pay that forward in so many different realms. The same thing, there's parallels when it comes to business. When you give women opportunities in business, they hire other women, they hire people locally, they spend with local businesses. They're more likely to
00:24:56
Speaker
sow that money in their local community, right? Which has those huge, huge ripple effects. It's so powerful. Pay is very important to the work that we do at Pep Talker, but when it comes to business as well, investing in female businesses is powerful.
00:25:10
Speaker
I'm an angel investor. I know that's something that you're interested in too. Some of your listeners may be. And even if you're not an angel investor, you can invest today in women businesses because you can choose when you're buying flowers for a friend's birthday. You can choose to buy them with a female-owned florist. When you're buying a gift basket, you can choose to buy from a women-owned gift basket store when you're hiring a coach.
00:25:33
Speaker
You can choose to use an executive coach from a women owned firm. These are small things that everyone can do today. It might not seem like much, but that $50 bunch of flowers or that $2,000 coaching contract will go a long way in that business, right? In terms of them being able to impact other women.
00:25:49
Speaker
But I also want to touch on something you said earlier about you said I'm not driven by money. I also want to just to flip that on its head. I'm the same as you. Like I am money driven in the sense that I want freedom. I don't need a Porsche or whatever. But also I think we need to kind of redefine that. Why can't we be money driven? Why can't we want a Porsche? I don't. But why can't we? Because actually I feel
00:26:10
Speaker
Again, we've been socialised to think, oh, if we have money, we need to give it to charity, which is a great thing to do. And that's something that I do. And I know a lot of your listeners probably want to do that and do that as well. And how can we think so differently to maybe our brothers or our male cousins or the guys we sit with in the workplace? They probably think very differently. And I think that's something interesting to unpack.
00:26:31
Speaker
And just to say that it's okay if you want to be uber wealthy. It's okay if you want to be rich AF. That's okay. I don't care what you do with that money. If you want to buy a Porsche, go your hardest. If you want to give it to your mom to pay off her mortgage, that's great.
Financial Planning and Empowerment for Women
00:26:44
Speaker
If you want to give it to your favorite charity, but I just want to put it out there that let's rethink this idea that it's bad or icky or not appropriate to want to be wealthy. To your point, yeah, wealth gives us choice and opportunity. And to me, that's really exciting.
00:26:59
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. I 100% agree with that, Maggie, and I'm glad you pointed that out. I think specifically when we compare shaming between men and women, it's totally normalized in our society that men spend, I don't know how much golf clubs are, but they're ridiculously expensive.
00:27:17
Speaker
Right. Or tickets to the Super Bowl or other sporting events. If we stick to that generalized male personnel, then women are being shamed into buying expensive shoes or expensive handbags. And similar to what you were just sharing, I might not want to Porsche, but if someone
00:27:33
Speaker
is obsessed with cars and they've worked really hard to earn that money, why shame them for buying a Porsche or buying that Chanel bag? I personally wouldn't necessarily want to do that, at least not where I'm at financially right now. Let's have this conversation again in 10 years. I love beautiful handbags and beautiful shoes as well, but that's not how
00:27:55
Speaker
I decide to spend my money right now. So definitely think that's very important to point out as well, the way I always like to think about it. And obviously this can evolve over time, but I like to spend the vast majority of my money across my top three.
00:28:10
Speaker
three or four expense categories where I allow myself to splurge. So for me, that is food. I just really enjoy creating memories like that. But other people that might not be their top priority and that's totally okay because at the end of the day, all of us are different and it's good that we all have different priorities. Otherwise life would be way too boring.
00:28:33
Speaker
Well, I think everyone listening is of course at a different stage in their wealth journey. And I think one of the most boring and important things you can do is think about your retirement. And it's so boring. I can hear everyone going, oh, I'm going to stop the podcast now, but barely really. Because in Australia, where I'm originally from, women over the age of 55 are the fastest growing group of homelessness.
00:28:55
Speaker
Right. And so the statistics are not dissimilar in other developed countries around the world. And that's because of the impact of divorce and, you know, 50% of marriages end in divorce. Let's be realistic. But also because women are more likely to have time out of the workforce, we typically don't have as much in savings for retirement.
00:29:12
Speaker
So if that's 401k, if that's a pension, superannuation, whatever you call it in your country, I know it's tedious, but truly starting to think about that now, even if you think, oh my gosh, I can't afford it. Could you put $500 in this year? Could you do that? Because if you can, we know that that's going to compound over time and that has power. You know, speaking about freedom, whether that looks like a Porsche, whether that looks like paying off a mortgage, getting a mortgage, whether that looks like a great holiday to you, supporting your parents, whatever.
00:29:39
Speaker
I want to share with you a story of a woman who went through one of our paid programs. We have a program called the Career Level Up that we run twice a year for people who want to make a big change in terms of salary or promotion, right? They're really looking to make a jump. And a woman came in our program and candidly, she was one of the lowest earning people we'd ever had in the program. Most people are not normally earning a hundred thousand ish, maybe a little bit more. Some people are earning a lot more. This woman was maybe earning like 50 or $60,000.
00:30:05
Speaker
And I said to her, I was like, listen, I'm excited to have you in the program. Are you sure this is the best investment for you right now? And she's like, no, I really want to do this course. I'm so excited. I was like, okay, that's great. Anyway, as we went through the 10 week program together, I got to know a little bit more about her. Turns out she was living in a very remote rural community in a very abusive marriage. And all she wanted to do was to get a job that paid her six figures. It was like something that she never thought was possible and that was her goal.
00:30:32
Speaker
Anyway, about four weeks after she graduated from the program, she lands 105, I think it was 106, something like that, $1,000 job. Amazing. Very exciting. That's great. So happy for you, whatever. Anyway, three or four months later, she lets me know because of that money and because of the job and because of the new confidence that she had from the community and the program and the work that she'd done on herself, she was able to afford and financially go through the process of leaving that marriage, right?
00:30:57
Speaker
So, she now lives in an urban area. She's left that marriage. This was about 18 months ago. Anyway, she texted me maybe two days ago to say she's now got a new partner. And I just think, wow, money does so many things and it does different things for all of us. And for her, that shifted her life in such a fundamental way. It wasn't about the restaurants that she could now afford to eat at or how much she can now invest in shares. That is truly life-changing, right, at the core of it.
00:31:23
Speaker
I want to share that, that story with you. I hope that none of your listeners are in that situation, but if you are, there is hope and please reach out to us for support. But also to say that this is what I mean about money changes people's lives. They now have choice and capacity to create freedom and to create safety for them and their families. And that's why I love talking about this. I love normalizing it. So let's give a call to action to everyone listening. Have a conversation with your best friend about money this week.
00:31:49
Speaker
jump on a Zoom call, call them on WhatsApp, go for coffee, and I just want you to have a conversation about money. It might be super awkward, but just do it. Then in a month, you can do it again and it'll get less awkward. Then in six months, you can host a dinner party and everyone can share maybe a money story or something because really we don't talk about this enough openly and it's just such a powerful tool that can change lives. That's why I know you and I are so passionate about this topic. Again, I love how you connect all the dots because this is exactly what I want our listeners who are mostly
00:32:18
Speaker
at the start of the career i want them to understand exactly that both from a micro level and from a macro level perspective right as a woman when you have asked financial resources you can leave that abusive relationship you can leave that toxic job you can delay both wanted and unwanted pregnancy right it just gives you more options
00:32:39
Speaker
On a macro level, you already pointed that out as well earlier. Women are more likely to invest and put their money into causes and organizations that they believe will benefit their children, their communities, and our planet as a whole. So think about the global ripple effect that that would have if you just give money.
00:32:56
Speaker
to one woman, it would benefit her entire community. It's mind blowing. So from, I know we both feel very strongly about this, but we cannot achieve gender equality until we haven't achieved financial equality. So, so important. And Maggie, I would love to talk a little bit more about macro level circumstances and situations.
Addressing Gender Pay Gap and Diversity in Leadership
00:33:17
Speaker
Because I know that you work with large corporations and help them to implement more inclusive practices, which is awesome and much needed. And most of us are probably familiar with how those non inclusive practices manifest themselves and impact individual employees, for example, in the form of.
00:33:34
Speaker
gender and racial pay gaps, lack of diversity in leadership, lack of parental leave policies and so on. But I'm curious to find out what happens behind the scenes. When you have fewer women or people of color in leadership, that's usually pretty visible. But when it comes to pay discrimination, for example, that's not always so obvious, especially seeing how talking about salaries and money is often still stigmatized and concerted.
00:34:00
Speaker
taboo, which only benefits the corporations and white men at the end of the day. Maggie, what must be done on an organizational level in order to increase pay transparency and ultimately close those pay gaps?
00:34:11
Speaker
Yeah, so when we look at the gender pay gap, and I know that we've got people from all around the world listening, so it sits at between 13 and 20% is the gap in terms of on average earnings between men and women, right? And there's a bunch of different reasons for that. There's three major reasons. One is the types of jobs that women and girls are socialized to want to go into. So for example, from a young age, probably a lot of our listeners were told stories about teaching or nursing and things like that, that are typically female jobs, female majority jobs, right?
00:34:41
Speaker
Whereas perhaps our brothers or our male cousins or our male friends were maybe told different stories, right? And so we know that when there is an overwhelming majority of women in a certain industry, the pay is less. And when they're on the flip side, the pay is more in male dominated industries. So that's one part of the pay gap. The other part of the gap is caring responsibilities. So women are more likely to have time off or child caring responsibilities or elder care responsibilities, things like that. So that has an impact on your career and in terms of your earning capacity as well.
00:35:10
Speaker
But even when we account for both of those data points, there is still a gap, right? When you look at the numbers, when you crunch the numbers. And that gap, researchers attribute to unconscious bias and discrimination, right? And so in most countries, it is illegal to pay people less for doing the same job. So if I'm an analyst and you're an analyst and we both do the same job, in theory, we have to be paid the same.
00:35:31
Speaker
In reality, that's not always the case. I personally experienced the gender pay gap when I was a journalist, so we know that that's not always the case. But in theory, that's supposed to be paid the same. But what happens is we know that men are promoted at a much faster rate than women. And as you get promoted, of course, your salary goes up.
00:35:48
Speaker
And so that's the part of the gap that's very interesting too, right? Coming in at the grad program level is normally not too bad. There is still a gap, typically tiny, but there is still a gap even at that level, but it gets bigger and bigger as you go through the system, basically. And so most of our corporate clients that we work with.
00:36:03
Speaker
They're employers of choice. They're often Fortune 500, ASX 200 type companies. And what they see is they're doing okay at the grad level. They're retaining people at okay rates until five to eight years of experience. And then they see a huge drop off in terms of female identifying talent.
00:36:20
Speaker
And the problem is when you're wanting to have a diverse leadership team and executive team, if you haven't got the pipeline to promote, what do you do? And so what companies often do is parachute people in. They do external hires and they poach people, which is great for those folks, but it's terrible for the people lower down the food chain because they're like, well, why would I bother staying?
00:36:39
Speaker
Because you're not going to promote me anyway, you're just going to hire someone fancier from outside. And so again, that increases the propensity of those people to drop off out of the industry, out of the company, right? And so where we help companies is really that how do you retain people through those meet to senior roles into those very senior roles. And so we have a bunch of different programs that we run for them, high potential programs, emerging leadership programs, and we pair
00:37:02
Speaker
senior folks with sponsors internally and with executive coaches to support them to stay in the company, to keep that internal information and all those relationships so that they can progress into those senior roles. Because what we're seeing is, for example, in California, certain states in the United States are starting to mandate diversity at the board level. And we would expect to see that flow to the corporate level soon as well. And so companies know that, firstly, they want to have diversity now because when they do, their decision making is better.
00:37:32
Speaker
and they're more likely to handle challenges better, they're more likely to have a higher profit return for shareholders, and they're going to be ahead of the curve as and when this legislation seeps down, such that companies are going to have to have quotas. It's not a matter of if, but when, right? Like whether it's five years or 15 years, there will be quotas at the corporate level soon. And that's a good thing because that gives us something to work towards, right? Because if we can't measure it, we're not going to change it.
00:37:58
Speaker
And so I'm very in favor of this because I think actually that will create a situation where companies will actively look for diverse talent. And previously they just haven't been looking. It's not that we've not been there available, we just haven't been the first choice. Right? And so that's a lot of what we do on the corporate side, but it's exciting that that change is going, but it takes a long time to turn a big shift, as they say. And so.
00:38:20
Speaker
This isn't going to change overnight, but progress is being made and hopefully we can truncate the timeframe that the UN's given us, which is one to 200 years. I reckon we can do that a bit sooner, hopefully with everyone's support. You basically just answered my next question, which was all about if there was one policy or strategy that companies would have to adopt universally in order to improve gender equity, what would that be? And I believe it would be applying those quotas in order to really force companies to be
00:38:47
Speaker
more diverse. I'm just curious because we've had these numbers for a few years now that we know companies who have more diverse board members, but also more diverse senior leadership, they outperform companies
00:39:03
Speaker
that are not as diverse. And yet companies all over the world are still so slow to make progress. So I always wonder, is it really always about the money? Because if you look at the data, the numbers show you would be better off financially if you promoted more women into senior leadership positions and yet it is not
00:39:26
Speaker
So that to me then sends that signal, it's not just always about the money, but it's also about power and people with privilege, aka oftentimes white straight men, not wanting to let go of that inherent power that they were born with. Of course. And again, all of us, everyone listening, including folks in power, folks with a little bit of power, folks with no power, we all have unconscious bias.
00:39:51
Speaker
We're born that way. We can work hard to fight against that, but the reality is we all have unconscious bias. And so because we have a world in which men hold most of the powerful position, they have most of the capacity to hire and create change and pay people, etc., because of that, it's not equal yet, right? That's because they're having to learn and understand that this is actually a capitalist issue.
00:40:12
Speaker
I believe that equality is the moral and right and ethical thing to do, but put that to one side. If you're a blatant capitalist, no shame if you are, like I own shares, et cetera, I invest. If you are a capitalist, you should care about this because you will earn more dividends. Your share price will rise higher and your retirement funds going to look a hell of a lot better, right? If you are investing in companies that take you seriously and if the companies that you're already investing in take it seriously.
00:40:38
Speaker
Because otherwise, you're going to get a lower return. And we know that from so many different studies. So it's not put the morals to one side. This is an issue of money. And if you care about making more money, you should care about equality of all sorts, because you will see more as an investor in terms of return.
00:40:54
Speaker
So it's just taking people time to come to terms with this. Misogyny, patriarchy, racism all comes into this, right? Whether it's conscious or unconscious, that's a conversation for another day. But of course, that is all coming into the fact that this pace of change is not quick enough. And we were raised a certain way. There's been three studies in three separate countries that show that little girls earn less allowance
00:41:18
Speaker
or less pocket money, which is what we called it in Australia. They earn less allowance than little boys of the same age. So that gender pay gap and that unconscious bias creeps in at the age of seven. And so we can't expect, sadly, everyone just click their fingers and be done with it and be like, well, I've bought like this for 40 years. Oh, well, I'll just throw it out the window. Unfortunately, our brains don't work like that.
00:41:39
Speaker
We incrementally have to shift our perspective and our mindset towards this. That's why legislation is so important because it mandates it. Business policy is important because again, it starts to turn us in the right direction and shift policies and behavior in the right way. For example, one of the most important things that companies can do if they don't have quotas in place, quotas in terms of interviewing. If you're going to interview six candidates, let's make sure that three identifies women and three identifies men, and that there's diversity from a cultural background too.
00:42:06
Speaker
I'm not saying who you have to hire. I just want you to interview people from different backgrounds because given the chance, once they're in the interviewing room, let's see what happens. That can shift behavior too. So policies like this make a difference. So again, we can't just click our fingers. I wish we could, but that's just not how humans work. That's not how change management works.
00:42:24
Speaker
And you know, it's funny, it comes full circle to the pep talker app as well. Like our app is not about fixing your confidence and your ability to understand your power and your zone of genius tomorrow. It's not going to do that. This podcast is not going to change your life overall today. It's not going to. But if you listen to this podcast, if you use the pep talker app,
00:42:43
Speaker
every week. If you start to follow both of us on Instagram at pep talker and find Tamina on Instagram too, if you do that, you'll start to get small signals and it's called the nudge theory, right? If we can nudge our brains with tiny, tiny incremental change over time, different perspectives, different ideas, multiple touch points, then we will truly shift our behavior in a big way through those tiny little nudges. And we know that's the best way to change human behavior.
00:43:10
Speaker
So I wish we could blow it all up and just rip it all down and change it tomorrow. But I also know if we want it to be sustainable and if we want to bring people with us, then actually human behavior and history tells us that this is actually what we're going to need to do in the long term. So unfortunately patience is important, which I don't have a lot on sadly, but it's my hope that everyone listening today has made a couple of nudges in the direction to shift your perception about yourself and your worth and also about how you think about wealth. I think that's really exciting.
00:43:38
Speaker
Absolutely. And similar to financial success, societal success and progress compounds over time.
Personal Financial Milestones and Empowerment
00:43:46
Speaker
I think that's a big takeaway from today's conversation. Maggie, let's close it out with one final question because I'm curious to hear from you. What is a financial milestone that you have achieved that you are most proud of? Great question.
00:44:00
Speaker
You know, I remember when I was really young, I was a young journalist, I was 22, 23. I invested $10,000 and at the time that was so much money. And I went to my parents' financial advisor for advice and he told me to put it in this managed fund. And that was the most terrible thing I ever did. I think that $10,000 15 years ago was still worth maybe like $10,500 because of the fees. And I was just dumb and naive and I didn't know, I didn't understand the fees. I'm proud of myself that I started then though, because that mistake means that I've learned so much and I would never do that again.
00:44:29
Speaker
So I guess that's like a mistake milestone, I suppose. We bought a house, a beach house a year ago. I'm really proud that my partner and I were able to do that. I think also, you know, one of the big milestones for me was saving up. I think it was 50 or $60,000. I wanted that saved when I left journalism because I knew that even if I didn't earn a dollar in a year, I could pay my rent and figure it out.
00:44:47
Speaker
So that was a big milestone for me, having that financial cushion. I have bigger milestones as well in terms of where I want the business to get to, in terms of turnover, the salary that I would love to take for a business. I'm not there yet. I do take a salary though. And I would say to anyone who has a business, pay yourself first. You have to take money out of the business for yourself because you're worth it. And also it sends us a clear message to the business. If you are into the universe, all that kind of stuff, it sends a message that actually my time and input is valuable.
00:45:16
Speaker
And that has a monetary dollar amount. And for a long time, I didn't take a salary. My coach was like, you have to. And I was like, I can't afford it. I have to pay my staff and I have subscriptions to software and accountants. And she's like, nah. And it's funny, as soon as I started paying that salary, of course, the business started growing more exponentially. So paying yourself first is a really great piece of advice that I'd love to pay forward to everyone listening as well.
00:45:38
Speaker
And I couldn't imagine better words to end with today. Thank you so much, Maggie. This was such a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for showing up with so much energy and passion. As always, you always do that in all of our conversation, but I'm so glad that our listeners are able to benefit from your voice and from your experience and from all the incredible work that you do. So thank you so much for joining me today.
00:46:02
Speaker
Such a pleasure. I'm so happy to be here. Don't be a stranger. Anyone listening, please send me a DM at peptalkher. And also if you're wanting to earn more money or figure out how to negotiate your salary that exists in a way that you can start to earn more, we have a free resource that you can download. It's peptalkher.com forward slash pay me more. So check that out. That's totally free. And that'll give you a bunch of cool strategies. And of course the pep talker app will help you with those nudges too, so that we can get all of you getting that financial freedom that you're really craving as well. Amazing. Love it.
00:46:34
Speaker
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00:46:58
Speaker
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