Transcript- Expert AMA: Salary Negotiation

Expert AMA: Salary Negotiation – Transcript

by Angela McConnell

(Edited for length and clarity)

Intro

Friends, we're here today to do a quick hour-long AMA about negotiations.

I run WIMDI, I'm an executive coach for women in male-dominated industries, also an amazing negotiator.

For the last seven years, I've helped my clients get literally a million dollars in raises now, which is very exciting. And I'm excited to teach you guys all the things that I know about it.

This is one of my favourite topics. I absolutely love to talk about negotiation.

So, I'm excited to spend some nerdy time with you all, talking about how to line your pocketbooks and make sure that you all take home a slightly bigger paycheck, or maybe even a really bigger paycheck. Wouldn't that be nice?

Question #1: Should I negotiate?

I think it's pretty much always a good idea to negotiate. Because one of two things is going to happen. Well, three things.

A) You're going to get the thing that you asked for.
B) You're not going to get the thing you asked for, but you're going to get something.
C) You're going to get nothing, but you will have set a tone with your employer that you're somebody who's going to negotiate.

I think that even if you don't get something that's pretty valuable, I take a pretty long view of negotiation that even if you're not successful on this particular ask, you might be successful on upcoming negotiations.

So I think it's really valuable for you to set that groundwork, set that expectation with your boss, so that even if right now the budget isn't there, or they don't think you quite deserve the number you're asking for, having that negotiation conversation now helps you build the tools that you need and that they need to make the case for you to get the salary you're looking for later on.

I don't think there's a huge amount of value in waiting. I think negotiate as early as possible.

You don't want to do this every four minutes at work. Your boss will hate you. But I think in general, I'm on the side of negotiate early.

I know that folks get concerned about risk of backlash and that certainly does exist for women. But I think you can sort of put a price on it.

Let's say you're negotiating for $10,000. And let's imagine you go and ask for a $10,000 raise, and you get it, or you don't get it, but they go, "Oh, that's left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth because she was pushy, or she's too aggressive, or what an arrogant ask," or whatever story there's going to be about that.

I think somebody thinking I'm a little bit arrogant is a pretty good deal for $10,000. If they're just going to like me a little bit less but it gets me 10 grand, I'm okay with that.

I think the question comes down to the risk that you're going to take on by negotiating if there is that backlash. Is that going to materially impact your ability to do this job and do it well?

Or to move up within this org? And even if it's going to impact your ability to move up within the org, is staying at this org in the long-term going to help you anyway?

If you said to me, "Okay, this might make it so that they don't want to give me a promotion,"

I'll go, "Okay, so, if they don't want to give you a promotion in two years or something like that, what does that look like for you?

Does that mean you'll never get promoted? Does that mean you get promoted somewhere else? Does that mean you get to job hop and kind of get a salary bump with that anyways?"

If that's true, I kind of don't care. So I think sometimes we can take an overly intense view of what that risk looks like, and hold back on negotiating because we're worried about a consequence that we can ultimately get around.

One more thing on the notion of risk. So, a key thing when you're thinking about your negotiation is to think about as you negotiate, kind of what your BATNA is.

So BATNA is a negotiation term that stands for Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement.

It's basically your Plan B. So, if this doesn't work out, what happens then? You want to be thinking about, if I go into this negotiation, and I don't get to make the deal I want, what happens to me? What are my options? And then the person I'm negotiating with, what are their options?

Let's imagine you're taking on a new job? If you're in a new job situation, they've spent months and months interviewing people, or weeks and weeks interviewing people, and they've landed on you and they've said, "I choose you, you're the one I want."

For you, there's potentially a risk that if you negotiate, it might not pan out, you might take another job. I think that the risk is relatively small. Most employers don't pull offers.

But let's say that risk exists. So, the question you have to ask yourself about your BATNA is, "Okay, so if I don't end up taking this job, for the salary I want, what happens then? Is it easy for me to find another job? Do I have another company that I've been interviewing with already and I might get an offer in three weeks?"

If those things are true, you can afford more risk in your negotiation, you can be bolder. You can have bigger asks and you come in with more confidence and more demands, effectively.

If the best alternative to getting this negotiated deal was a really tough market, it's taken you six months to find this job, and this is the only interview you've had in a long time, then you might scale back some of your asks, you might position things a little bit softer and take on a little bit less risk in the negotiation.

But it also matters what's going on on the other side too. If the other side is in a market where there's tonnes of people vying for this job, they had hundreds of applicants, and if it's not you, they'll just go to the next one on the list, and the next one on the list, by the way, is equivalent to you.

Then we're going to take on a little less risk in the way we negotiate. We're going to soften up, right? But if you know that your particular skillset is hard to find out in the market, or there's not a lot of people like you, then you can afford to be a little bit bolder.

So, it's that combination of those two things. How easy it is for you to find work? How easy it is for them to find a replacement for you, that'll help inform how much risk you can afford to take on.

There's also other things too, like whether you're the sole income earner in your household, if you lost this job, or you didn't get it, what does that look like financially for you? Do you have a pile of money that you can sit on and work through another job search? Or is it, "Holly, I need a job today."

All of those things inform whether you negotiate, and how you negotiate. But I would say for most of my clients, the question's not so much how, or not so much "Do I?" as much as "How do I?"

Because most employers will just say no, rather than saying, I'd rather not hire you and go back to the drawing board.

Question #2: How do salary bands work?

These salary bands, at most companies, not all companies, but best practise would look like companies will participate in salary surveys. Or they'll buy salary surveys.

Quite often, it's both where they share pay information for everybody at their company with this large scale salary survey.

As part of their participation, they get access to all that data. And so, every industry has these types of salary surveys that they can get access to. And some of them are publicly available.

A lot of the ones that your employer is using are not publicly available, because you can only participate if you pay and if you give them information. Us little folks don't have 50 people's salaries to share.

But there certainly are salary surveys that big recruiting firms make available. So, Robert Half always has one. There's a whole bunch more. If you Google salary survey, industry 2024, 2025, or whatever year it is, you'll probably find some.

Professional associations, like in engineering, EGBC, or Consulting Engineers in BC, they all offer these types of things as well. And then of course there's sources like Glassdoor, or Levels.fyi in the tech industry for example.

Now, those publicly sourced things like Glassdoor and Levels.fyi, I find, are typically low. You can look at this data and employers certainly, in the best-case scenario, are looking at it.

Now, I will say there's lots of employers who are kind of, not YOLO-ing their compensation, but if they're a much smaller company, they may not be involved in those kinds of things.

Or they may be sourcing information elsewhere, or they may just frankly have out-of-date information, because they might not do this every year because of the expense or complexity, or they're just running around with their pants on fire, trying to make a business happen.

Generally speaking, these ranges are informed by those types of salary surveys. And part of the reason you see these really wide ranges is because, especially as you get more senior, you see really wide ranges, it allows them to have a pay structure and do some amount of compensation planning, while still accounting for vastly different amounts of experience.

So if you think about a typical engineering consulting company, you might have somebody who's a senior engineer who has seven years of experience. You might have somebody who's a senior engineer who's got 20 years of experience.

They'll still have the same title, and they'll still be at the same level within the organisation, but the band needs to cover that, so that they can still have some sense of progression as their skill level increases.

That's usually why you see those really, really wide bands. And it gets worse as you get more senior. Most companies, as a matter of practise, tend to operate in only half of their band.

Don't ask me why this is true. I've asked a million people, and I cannot get a straight answer. But they tend to operate in half their band. Either the bottom half, or the top half.

So if you were getting newly promoted into let's say a manager role, and you're getting up into a new band, a lot of companies will put you at the bottom, and then before you get promoted, you will have made it up to the halfway point and they would really only ever use the top half if you were like, "I'm going to be a manager for the next 15 years."

Then they've got to incrementally move you up. But a lot of companies will have a goal where you start at zero and you get to 50%, and then they just move the band up and move you up with inflation every year.

So, for anybody here who got a raise last year, that was just inflation, and you didn't get a raise. Both because of inflation, but also because you're still sitting at that exact same place in the band and there's still room for you to move up.

If your skills are increasing, part of the reason I want you all to negotiate often is because I want to see you moving up in that band, and not just moving as the band moves.

Some people use the bottom half, other people use the top half, where you start at midpoint and move up. So that's just some interesting information.

When you're sort of looking at a job posting that has a band on it, you can kind of understand that you're likely in one of those two scenarios.

Question #3: Where should I ask for if the advertised salary has a wide range?

A lot of us approach negotiation, "What am I allowed to ask for?” or "Well, what would they consider normal? Where would they like to put me?"

Ultimately you can ask for whatever the hell you want. You can ask for the top of the band, you can ask for 75% of the band. You can ask for something above the band if you want to.

The question is, how can you make that case, and then will they be likely to believe it? Then if they don't want it, are you fine with that?

I really think it's important when you're thinking about what that initial ask is, "Well, what do I want? And what's really the highest number that I feel like I could ask for?"

Because a lot of us will try to do the negotiation beforehand, in our heads, "Oh, well, I don't think they'll go for this, so I'll ask for this." And we're trying to get a yes right off the hop.

I actually want you to get a no to your first number, because then that tells me that you haven't undershot.

The worst-case scenario when you're looking for a new job is if you go to HR and they say, "We'd like to pay you $90,000 a year." And you say, "I'd like 100." And then they go, "Okay."

Because that means two things. One, that means that you asked for something that was within their level of authorization.

So if a manager or a HR person is negotiating with you, there's a set number that they're allowed to go, to give you a salary in between, outside of just the number they gave you. And that's because they expect you to negotiate. A lot of people do, right?

If they say, "I don't know, I'll have to get back to you," that's actually a really good sign. Because it means that you asked for something outside of that standard range, and they'll have to go and have a conversation. You haven't undershot.

But when they say, "Yep, we can do that," that's a sign to me that you've under-asked in terms of your potential. I don't want you to pre-do that negotiation and think, "What can I get an instant yes on?"

I want you to think, "What do I actually want? What would I be happy with?" And especially in this job market, "What would I be happy to be paid over the next three years, effectively?"

For a lot of employers, especially larger employers, it's really hard to make the case to get a raise. It's not impossible. But the amounts that you'll get in raises are often really small, unless you have a major change in responsibility.

This is more true as you get more senior. When you're in those early stages of your career where you're in the junior individual contributor, intermediate individual contributor, senior individual contributor role, it can be easier to justify increases because you're learning so quickly, you're picking up new skills, you're more employable for them, and they don't have to create a position for you.

It doesn't really matter if we have four senior engineers, and two intermediates as opposed to three intermediates and two seniors on a team. You're going to find that that's easier then, and it gets harder as you get more and more senior.

You might be in a situation where you really can, despite your best negotiating, only get cost of living increases over the next three years. So, you want to get a salary that you're going to be happy with for a while.

Coming back to that question, “What do I do with that wide range?” Take it as information. If they say, "We'll pay you between," a number that's, $30,000 range, great, ask for the top, make them tell you why.

Like I always just say, put on your cutest little face, your most employable little face, and then make them say no to you.

Sometimes they won't, sometimes they think, "I don't want to make her cry, I don't make this conversation awkward." Just don't do that part for them. Make them tell you no.

Question #4: How can I justify asking for a raise?

If it hasn't changed in scope, then it's going to be down to your ability to talk to your results, and what you're creating for the company.

I have this with clients all the time, where they haven't done a particularly good job of articulating the value that they're providing for companies. Where the work they've been doing fundamentally hasn't changed, but folks haven't understood, "Oh, you did this, it made us that much money. Oh, I get it."

I had a client who a couple years ago got a $25,000 raise, and she went and asked her boss for a $10,000 raise and he told her no, because she asked badly. He knew me, and he said, "You need to hire Holly and come back and ask me again."

We found just one example from the time that she had worked there, where this thing that she had done that was everyday optimization she did in her work, was earning the company $100,000.

When she came back and said, "I want 10 grand, and also, in three days of work, I made you 100 grand." It was really easy for him to go, "Yeah, no problem."

So, she got that, and then she also got 25K in professional development funding, which she really wanted. We made the case, "Look, give me this raise, I'll keep on producing these kinds of results. And let me do this training, and I'll be able to do this even more so."

You don't necessarily have to have had a change in responsibility. You might just have a change in how you talk about it and how you frame it. And for the people above you, they're going to have to go and justify it above their heads most of the time.

You've got to give them the ammo to make the business case for this. It's not because I want it, it's not because I'm going to buy a house, it's not because she's been here so long.

It might be, I think she'll leave, but that's a hard case for you to make without sounding like you're issuing an ultimatum. That's the case where you want to talk to somebody who knows your boss, but you don't report directly to and make slight hints to them.

Maybe they'll go talk to your boss if you're going to try to make that case. But primarily outside of that, you're talking about;

What value did you bring to the company?

How did you help retention?

How did you bring in revenue?

How did you reduce cost?

What did you innovate that made things faster?

Those kinds of things are going to be the bread and butter of how you make the case. Some positions are easier to make that case than others. If you're a salesperson, it’s super easy to say how much money you made the company.

If you are a consultant who does billable work, that's super easy as well. If you're a QA engineer who writes code for the latest release that didn't earn us new customers, but just amorphously kind of helped client retention, that's harder.

Question #5: How do I ask for a raise in my annual review?

I want to say a couple things about this. A lot of us think that when we go into our annual performance review, that's the time to start the conversation about a raise. And it's really not.

The time to start the conversation about the raise is halfway through the year, or even at your last performance review. Because the negotiation, we think about it as like the haggling portion.

It's the part where we say, "I want this," and they say, "You're going to get this." And then we go back and forth.

It's how you make the case for your value all year long. Ideally, if you're looking to get a raise now, you'd go back in time or start now for next year. Go back in time and start to make clear what your value is, and how you're producing that all through the year.

That can be in little brag moments with your boss, that can be contextualising your work as you pitch it, as you pitch ideas, and making sure that you circle back around, "Hey, we've implemented this new thing. That means, 'insert impact here'".

It's really important to start early. And that's even more so in the current environment because what's happening these days, this happens all the time, but it's particularly acute now, is by the time performance review season comes around, your boss has been given a budget by HR, and they'll say, "Okay, you get X dollars or X percentage, you can spread that out in your team, however the hell you want.”

So your boss looks at his team of five, let's say, and says, "Okay, well these two are the really high performers, this one's medium, and these two down here are less good. So, if I've got 5% total raises to hand out, well these ones are getting six, this one's getting three, and this one's getting one," or something like that.

This will all happen before performance review season. You want them to know that you are in this category as early as you can, and you want to start having proactive conversations around,

I'm looking to get to a salary of X dollars. What do you need to see from me in terms of performance to make that possible?
How can we get me those projects this year?
Hey boss, I've just gone and done the thing that you told me to do. Does that count?

Basically, you're not going to say, "Does that count?" But is that the kind of thing you were looking for? Is that going to help you make the case for that raise?

Now you might get some pushback around like, "Well, I can't guarantee the money." And, "That's okay. I get that there's budgets,"

But hurdle one is getting them to the point where they would agree, like if the money existed, yes, you'd be getting this number. Then we get to, does the money exist?

And in larger companies, you'll have less control, less ability to influence, does the money even exist. But the more you show that performance, the more you show that engagement early on, that gives your boss the ability to go,

"I really need to see some more money for Helen this year. We've been talking about this for two years. It's something she wants, she'll become a churn risk if we don't get this done, let's make it happen."

Question #6: How do I make a case for a raise to a new manager?

I think there's a couple ways you can achieve that. So, I'll say sort of the most direct way is when you get a new manager, everyone should adopt this as a general practise going forward.

When you have a new manager, it's really important that they get to know who you are, your history, what kind of work you've tended to produce, and what your career path needs to look like.

Some managers will actively seek that out, most of them don't. In the first couple of months of your manager being there, I want you to go and proactively book a meeting, where you say, "Hey, hope you've been getting situated. I want to make sure we take some time to talk about what I want my career progression to look like, but also what I've been able to deliver up until this point so you understand what my skillset looks like, and how to best deploy me."

Then you want to talk about, "Last year, I did this project, here was the result, it went really well. This year, I'm working on these things, and these are the key deliverables that are going to help the company or make your life easier."

It doesn't always have to be, how do I make money? It can also be how do I make your life suck less bad. That's sometimes a really effective way to get a negotiation.

Anytime you're negotiating, you're making a good case to the person in front of you. There's standard levers that you can pull, but there's also specific levers for that person.

I always say, my partner, Bob, we negotiate all the time in this household with each other and also every time he negotiates his own salary, it's like a sport here, right? And we have a good time.

He recently did a salary negotiation, and I was in the background, pushing him to ask for a little bit more. Something that I know about that man, is that he will do anything to go to Hawaii. If you want to pull out the trump card, it's a trip to Hawaii with Bob.

When they were in those final stages and he was feeling those familiar jitters, "Oh, I shouldn't ask for more. I don't want to push, I've already got the deal. Like, let's not go." I was saying, "You're going to go back with one more ask, and if you can get X dollars, we'll go to Hawaii."

So now I have to go to Hawaii in April, which is a good thing, fundamentally, but it's about knowing the person on the other end of it.

Can you pull out the card that is effectively Hawaii for them? It's about understanding what those levers are.

Have that conversation where you go, "Here is what I've been up to, here's what I'm working on now, and here's what the value is, and this is where I'm trying to get to."

And you should concede anything that doesn't cost you anything. You can say to them, "I know you're still getting to know me, and that you'll start to understand what my performance looks like more over time. And it's my job to make sure that that happens. But I want to understand if my goal is to get here, what do I need to show you to make that happen,"

So be proactive, be the one who leads that conversation, and then don't do this thing that we all do where we go, "Oh, well, we'll come back to it in a couple months."

Just say, "Great, I'm going to ask you about this again in two months. I'm going to check in about how I'm doing, and I'm going to put that time in our calendar now." Book it. Don't ask, don't wait for them. Just put that time in the calendar, and proactively show up and check in on it.

Make it inescapable, basically. A squeaky wheel in a good way, you know what I mean? And if you don't do that, you'll find yourself in performance review season, where previously you might've been getting five out of five ratings, and now you're going to get three out of five, "because of lack of information".

You want to make sure they've got that info and then you want to make sure you're actively reinforcing it in your meetings so they can see, "Oh, they are performing well now." Also this is part of a longer pattern.

Question #7: When is it helpful to play the "DEI" card (aka: discuss pay equity)?

I think that the "DEI card", the pay equity card, that is what we're talking about here. I think you're right to show some caution when to play that card.

Because like you mentioned, when you talk about pay equity, or even I know what other people at this company make, you bring in all kinds of red alarm bells for the person on the other side. Ideally, in a negotiation, as much as you can, you want to feel like you're both on the same team.

There's ways to bring this up, but it's very challenging, and you're really dependent on how that other person's going to hear it, in particular. It's tricky.

Have a conversation around what market value looks like. First have a conversation about your value. Then have the conversation about market value, not any of these people just out there, how much my skillset would be worth.

If that doesn't work, then you're going to get into a conversation around what pay looks like here.

Question #8: How should I prepare for my negotiation

So there's a couple things I want you to do as you're prepping for your negotiation. It works slightly differently, depending on whether you're prepping for an internal negotiation at your own company, or if you're looking externally at like with a new job situation.

So internally, we talked earlier about asking questions and information. A big part that I want you to understand, if you can, before you get into your negotiation is what does the process look like here?

People who have got raises in the past, what's been successful for them?
Do raises here only happen when you get a promotion?
What kinds of things make a successful case?
What are the timelines?
Who's involved in approving this?

It might be something where you just have to convince your boss, or it might be the kind of situation where companies will have calibration meetings. Where all the managers get in a room, and then they have to discuss, "No, Lisa's worth it, because blah, blah, blah." And then they all fight.

The process can look really different. Or it might be a situation where your boss has to make the case to this guy, and also three people beside him, you don't know very well.

So, you want to map out what that decision-making process looks like, what the timeline is, and who the decision-makers are.

Because you're going to have to not just convince the person that you're negotiating with, you want to pre-convince everybody else who's involved, and make sure that something about the process isn't going to be the thing that gets in the way.

Basically, it's about learning the rules, so that you can play by them, or play around them in a way that makes you look like you're playing by them, if that makes sense?

Step one, figure out all the information.

Step two, figure out how to talk about your work in terms of its value. Either dollars and cents, or something that matters to your boss, the "Hawaii factor" as it were. Also, it can be something that matters to your boss. It can also be something that matters to the org.

But knowing what are the big levers, or what are the big fears? What are the big concerns or initiatives as well? And if you can tie to those, that'll help you even if there's not explicit money.

You want to understand what your value is, and how you're going to position it. And then you also in advance want to understand that thing I was talking about earlier, which is what do the BATNAs look like? What happens if they say no? What happens if I say no? Where do we go from there?

That'll allow you to kind of map out what your initial ask can be, how you'll make the case, what their responses are likely to be.

Responses in negotiation language would be called an objection. Any reason that they wouldn't say "Hell, yes."

You want to pre-brainstorm what you think their arguments against you doing this or against whatever particular case you've made are.

And then go, "Okay, well how would I counter that". You want to think about all of those in advance, and start to build up the case, have the meeting before the meeting, basically, with all these folks who are involved in decision-making.

That's all prep before you even get into the conversation with your boss. Does that make sense?

On the job hunt side, this looks slightly different. The most common situation I find myself in with clients who hire me to help them negotiate is they get to the final offer stage, or maybe there are a few days before it, and they go, "Holly, I've got this new offer, help me negotiate it. We're going to do great."

And I think, "Oh, I really wish you called me three weeks ago." Because just like it is with work, remember how we talked about pre-seeding, all year long, the value that you're creating?

That's what you're doing when you're interviewing. Every time you answer one of their goofy behavioural interview questions, you have the opportunity to position yourself as somebody who's got really valuable skills, medium value skills, or skills they could take or leave.

So it's all about, negotiating in a new job offer, it's all about how well you can understand what their needs are, and make the case that you bring to the table something that will help them.

If you want to negotiate a job offer well, the key prep stages are actually asking a lot of questions throughout your interview process, not just sitting there and let them ask you questions and you answer and hope you get it right.

Get the cheat sheet from them. Ask them,

What are the biggest challenges you guys are facing right now?
If I get into this role and six months from now, you're considering me a wild success, what have I done?
What are your most important hiring criteria going into this role right now?
Why those things?
What makes those things important?

You want to start to ask these questions that help them expose their pain points, so that you can go, "Oh, you want somebody who's really good at mine design? Coincidentally, I am an expert at mine design! And I could've told you about six other things about myself, but instead I'm going to sit here and tell you all about what a good mine designer I am. Because it's the only thing that you want to buy."

So prep in a job hunt looks like deeply understanding their challenges and articulating those consistently all the way through the interview process.

You're creating a thing that they'll buy at a high value, basically, throughout the whole interview process. Then when it comes to the end, you will have already made most of that case.

And when you negotiate, you have to remind them of why that's true. I deserve to make a higher salary because I bring all these things to the table.

And the unsaid part of that negotiation is always in contrast to those other losers you could hire other than me. You want to be able to find something that's unique and that's hard to find in the rest of the candidate base.

Just like you would do with an internal negotiation, you also want to understand what does that BATNA look like? What objections am I likely to run into?

You want to know as much as you can about how their salaries work, and hell, both internally and externally, go ask cheeky conversations about their bands.

Just ask,

What is your pay range?
How do you guys run bands here?
Are you a company that tends to pay in the bottom half of the band, or the top half of the band?
What merits a top of band value?

Ask those questions. They might not answer, but if they do, you've got really good information about how to make the case and where to position yourself.

Question #9: What if I negotiate and don't get what I want?

Friends, negotiation is, it's challenging, but it's really fun, you know what I mean?

It's a game of chess, and it's really not so much about what am I allowed to do, but what can I make the case to do? How can I get to the yes that I want? And if I don't get there now, how can I get there eventually?

The thing that I'd like to leave you all with is let's imagine you get to the case where you've asked for a certain amount of money and they say, "No, we can't do that."

Or, "We can only do part of it, but you've got a gap between what you've asked for and what you want."

The thing that I always want you to do from there is to next ask a question. "Okay, great. I get that that's not possible now, what would have to happen for it to be possible in the future? When can we make that happen?"

Then start building that case for you to get what you want next. If it doesn't happen now, the next question is, "Okay, when and how?"

That's it. And if you just keep on going, "Okay, when and how? Okay, when and how?" Eventually, they're going to do it, or it's going to become clear to you that they're never going to do it, and then you're going to go do that somewhere else.

But just keep proactively driving that forward, and eventually you'll get to a place where that can be possible here or elsewhere.

Right, friends, if you want help with negotiation, I'm happy to help you. As you can tell, I love to talk about this stuff. You can find out more about working with me at wimdi.com/negotiation.

I also do 30-minute free calls with folks who are trying to figure out their negotiations. You can take up my time, and we can talk about how to strategize.

A lot of this is very specific to your situation and there's nothing I love more than breaking down those specific details to come up with the right plan to get you where you want to be.

So please leverage my time. Love to help.