5 Moves for Raising a Price or Salary You Already Set

Here's what I have now, but I need more.

That's the sentence I just couldn't say.

Well, and that's it.

That one sentence.

And if you listen to it out loud, it's not greedy.

And it's probably the most professional thing you can do because the alternative is you quietly delivering less and resenting more and more.

But why is going up seems so much scarier than just holding my number in the first place?

Yeah.

And I think, John, holding a number feels more like defense.

You're protecting what's yours.

But raising a number feels kind of like you're taking from them and reopen a thing you had already closed.

Yes.

So that little fear in your head, it says things like, You'll look greedy or you'll look like you don't know your own business or it'll say they'll say no.

And it's going to be humiliating.

So all three of those little gremlins are talking about your image, but not the actual money.

Yeah.

So I eat a grand to protect how I look.

Yeah.

You pay real dollars to avoid an imagined judgment.

But here's the mechanism, John, I think people miss is when you don't ask, you don't just lose this one.

You teach yourself that your numbers are suggestions and that your first figure is the ceiling and reality doesn't get a vote.

So that belief, unfortunately, compounds.

And the founder who eats it once tends to eat it forever.

And the employee who never asks becomes the one who's underpaid probably for the rest of their career.

You know what this reminds me of, Jake?