Episode 05: She Never Negotiated Against Herself

You have spent four episodes building the language for what you have earned. You have named it, priced it, and practiced asking for it. This time, you'll hear what it sounds like from a woman who's done it through every transition of her career.

In the fifth episode of Earned Equity, Angelia Williams Graves sits down with Dr. Ruth Jones Nichols, C-Suite executive, President of the IAMRUTH Foundation, and Founder and Principal of IAMRUTH LLC, a strategic advisory consulting firm. Dr. Jones Nichols has walked into rooms where the job market would have named her, priced her, and shelved her. She declined that offer every single time.

Jones Nichols starts with the conversation she has with herself before she has it with anyone else, and the questions she asks in every season of her career. She walks through the moment an offer was built around what she earned in her last job instead of the job she was being hired to do, and what she did next. She explains how she responds when a salary conversation starts treating experience as a ceiling, and how she uses an organization's own pay structures to keep the conversation about the work.

She also talks about the mentor who would not let her stop short of her PhD, the meaning behind the name her mother gave her, the faith that has carried her through rooms where she's had to reintroduce herself, and a homecoming that brought her career full circle.

Then Williams Graves draws the conversation into a principle any woman can carry into her next transition, whatever her title.

In this episode:

• The questions she asks herself before every career transition
• Why your next offer should be priced on the job you are stepping into, not the one you are leaving
• How to respond when a salary conversation treats your experience as a ceiling
• What to negotiate when the salary will not move
• Why preparation is what makes courage possible in the room
• The mentors who show you the way, and why women have to build those relationships on purpose
• Three specific actions to take in the next two weeks

Get your free Episode 5 worksheet at YourEarnedEquity.com/worksheets. Click Worksheets, and it is yours right away.

Episode 6, "When the Manager Half Your Age Asks Why You Have Not Pivoted," drops October 20.

Your earned equity is rare. And rare is valuable. Don't forget it.

New episodes every other Tuesday. YourEarnedEquity.com

Earned Equity is hosted by Angelia Williams Graves, Virginia State Senator, founder of Plinth Advisors, and real estate entrepreneur. New episodes every other Tuesday. Visit YourEarnedEquity.com to access episode worksheets and learn more about the show.

Episode 04: The Ask

If you picked up all three episodes on launch day, you have spent the last two weeks naming what you have built. You have done the inventories. And somewhere in those two weeks, a conversation probably surfaced. A number you have been circling. A room you are about to walk into.

Here is the part nobody tells you: knowing exactly what you are worth and actually asking for it are two completely different skills.

In the fourth episode of Earned Equity, Angelia Williams Graves introduces Vivian. She has been with her organization for 11 years and is running a function with three official titles above her. She trains the people who get promoted past her. She knows her number. She knows her case. And she has been putting off the conversation for 14 months.

Vivian does not lack information. What stops her is the story she has been told about what asking means, and about what kind of woman makes demands versus what kind of woman earns her way. That story is not hers. But she is carrying it, and it is costing her more than any negotiation ever would.

Williams Graves draws on her years as a Realtor, sitting across from sellers who wanted her to discount her fee, to reframe the ask as information rather than aggression. She names the three barriers that most often stop women from asking and lays out what making the ask actually looks like.

In this episode:

• Why knowing your worth and asking for it are two different skills
• The three barriers that stop the ask, and why none of them are weaknesses
• Why the ask is information, not a demand
• The three parts of a clear, grounded ask
• Three specific actions to take in the next two weeks

New here? Welcome. This episode stands on its own, and Episodes 1 through 3 are waiting for you at YourEarnedEquity.com whenever you are ready.

Get your free Episode 4 worksheet at YourEarnedEquity.com/worksheets. Click Worksheets and it is yours right away.

Episode 5 drops October 6, and Williams Graves is bringing in Dr. Ruth Jones Nichols, C-Suite executive and Founder and Executive Director of the IAMRUTH Foundation.

Your earned equity is rare. And rare is valuable. Don't forget it.

New episodes every other Tuesday. YourEarnedEquity.com

Earned Equity is hosted by Angelia Williams Graves, Virginia State Senator, founder of Plinth Advisors, and real estate entrepreneur. New episodes every other Tuesday. Visit YourEarnedEquity.com to access episode worksheets and learn more about the show.

Episode 02: The Skill You Have Been Underselling for Years

Some of you wrote the sentence. Some of you thought about writing it. Some of you closed your phone and went back to a meeting you did not want to be in, in the first place.

And almost all of you are still calling the thing you do best by the wrong name.

In the second episode of Earned Equity, Angelia Williams Graves introduces Denise. Denise is not one person. She is every woman who is so consistently excellent that her excellence has become invisible. She has 17 years with her company. She is a senior manager. Not a vice president. Not a chief anything. Because what Denise does, her leadership team calls "reliable," and reliable does not come with a price tag.

Three different bosses have called her the same thing: the glue. Glue holds everything together. Glue is invisible until it fails. Glue is taken for granted right up until something falls apart and everyone starts asking where it went.

Follow-through is not a personality trait. It is risk reduction and revenue protection, and it has a real number attached to it. Williams Graves puts that number on the table, explains why the job market has been filing it under words it cannot price, and makes the case that the woman who finishes things is not the glue. She is the prevention strategy.

In this episode:

Why "reliable" and "dependable" are not compliments
What turnover actually costs a company, and who has been quietly preventing it
What AI can flag, and what only you can see
Three specific actions to take in the next two weeks

Get your free Episode 2 worksheet at YourEarnedEquity.com. Click Worksheets, and it is yours right away.

This is the second of three episodes releasing on launch day. Episode 3, "How to Tell a Hiring Manager You Have Read the Room," is already waiting for you.

Statistics referenced in this episode are sourced from Gallup and the Work Institute. The 42 percent preventable-turnover figure and the 200 percent leadership replacement cost come from Gallup: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/646538/employee-turnover-preventable-often-ignored.aspx and https://www.gallup.com/workplace/247391/fixable-problem-costs-businesses-trillion.aspx. The 33 percent replacement cost comes from the Work Institute: https://workinstitute.com/turnover/

Your earned equity is rare. And rare is valuable. Don't forget it.

New episodes every other Tuesday. YourEarnedEquity.com

Earned Equity is hosted by Angelia Williams Graves, Virginia State Senator, founder of Plinth Advisors, and real estate entrepreneur. New episodes every other Tuesday. Visit YourEarnedEquity.com to access episode worksheets and learn more about the show.