Getting the Compensation You Deserve | Sonja Price

Want to get the compensation you deserve for your talents and skills?

Sonja Price is here to share the strategies you need to know…

Sonja is a top career strategist, salary advisor, and leadership coach for mid-level corporate professionals.

Her mission is to help career seekers have greater meaning, better work-life balance, and significantly higher pay—in this episode, she’ll show you how.

We’ll cover:

• Why it’s beneficial to switch jobs every few years
• How to research compensation in your industry
• The best ways to prepare for an interview
• Crafting a resume and LinkedIn profile to land high-salary roles
• And more

Mentioned in this episode:

• Dynamo Careers’ website
• Sonja’s free assessment
• Dynamo Careers on Twitter
• Dynamo Careers’ Facebook page 
• Sonja on LinkedIn

Transcript

Sonja Price: In competition with the 200 to 400 other people that have applied for the same role, you have to be number one. And so the more clear that you are on your messaging, the easier that is going to be for you to get to that top status.

Voiceover: You’re listening to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast with professional speaker, coach and consultant Nicole Greer.

Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer and they call me the vibrant coach and I have a delightful guest on the show today. I have Ms Sonja, don’t miss this in quotes “Dynamo” Price. And her last name is price, and just wait a minute, hold on everybody. You’re gonna be able to raise your price. Meaning you’re gonna get paid more money by the time me and Sonja get done with you. 

So Sonja Price is a top career strategist. She’s a salary advisor. See that’s where the price comes in and a leadership coach for mid level corporate professionals. Her mission in life is to support career seekers to have greater meaning. Wouldn’t that be fantastic, listen to this, better work life balance, and dot dot dot significantly higher pay. 

She’s a world renowned speaker and has spoken on many stages all over the world, including the Women’s Economic Forum in New Delhi, India, oh I want to hear about that, where she won an Honorable Woman of Excellence Award and was featured inside of Business World. She has spoken on many stages, podcasts, she’s on the best one today, I’ll just say that. And radio shows including the Project Management Institute, General Assembly, the Career Catalyst Group, and is a regular guest on iHeartRadio. 

So she has two books. I promise to let her say something after I talk about her books. Two books, The Pivot Point System: Five Keys to Transform Your Career, Health and Wealth and The Infinite Leader: How to Increase Your Influence and Expand Your Impact. Welcome to the show. Sonja I’m so glad you’re here, I’m tripping over my words.

Sonja: Thank you, Nicole. I’m so excited to be here with you and have a really meaningful conversation today.

Nicole: So everyone wants to know, first of all, how do I raise my price tag. You told me, Nicole, I’m mainly a career coach, I do all this leadership stuff too. But what I really need to do is help people move up in their career. So we talk a little bit about how you started doing that and what you do to help people?

Sonja: Yeah, absolutely. Well, how I got started doing career coaching, career and leadership coaching, is really just my own professional career journey. You know, many years ago, when I was first starting my professional career, I worked in a startup and wasn’t making much money at the time, but I got a lot of really valuable experience. And so I was able to get myself promoted a number of different times while I was working in this very small organization. 

And I also learned a lot more about how to negotiate my salary. And then I carried that forward with me when I went on to other organizations, and pretty much each and every time that I have, you know, made a jump in my career, you know, transitioned into a new organization or a higher level role, I have made pretty significant jumps in my income at the same time. 

And first I had friends and family who were kind of watching and paying attention to my career. And they were like, hey, wait a second, like, how exactly did you do that? Like, you know, how much money are you making right now? You know, you’re never supposed to ask that question. But I was getting that question. And so first, I just started helping people for fun on the side. And I was, you know, by that point in time in my career, I was already doing leadership consulting, and change management consulting. 

And but you know, I love the coaching aspect of things. So I was just kind of doing that on the side. And then, you know, over time, I just realized I really liked the coaching aspect better. And I really love that one-on-one interaction, and really helping people identify, like, what is it about their career that they can find meaningful and engaging and fulfilling. And then how do we help them find something doing that, both in terms of the right title, the right level, the right organization, the right compensation. 

And we also look at a wide range of other decision making criteria just to make sure that for each individual that they truly are in a role that is really, you know, fitting for them. And that they’re working in an organization that is respectful and honoring of the value that they bring and the contributions that they that they provide for the organization. So, you know, in doing this, like, how the heck do you make more money? 

Well, part of it is in actually knowing what does the market pay for specific roles with specific organizations. So part of that is doing your research to know you know, what are you currently making right now? And then how does that compare to the market rate for the same thing that you’re doing in your industry or in a different industry or in a different organization? And or like what else are you capable of? And could you either get promoted in your same company where you’re working right now? 

Or if you were to jump ship and go somewhere else could you potentially make even more? And I actually usually advise for people to change jobs every two to three years. Now, this does kind of depend upon where you’re at in your overall career. You know, early career, maybe you can change jobs every year, once a year, mid career, probably two to three, maybe even five years. And if you’re later stage career, you know, maybe you might want to like stick with an organization for a period of time. 

But generally, the more that you switch, the more that your earnings will keep pace with the market rate. So you never want to stay with an organization for so long, that your pay begins to lag behind what the current market rate is for your current level, your current title. And I could talk about this all day, but I will pause and take a breath and kind of check in and see, you know, is this the right direction? Are we headed in the right space here?

Nicole: Yeah, we’re in the right direction. And I think what you’re saying is so valid, but when you said, you know, change your job every year, every two years, every three years. There might be some folks listening, going, well, my mama and daddy told me, you know, get a good job, get benefits. Stay where you are. 

But really, what we need to do is we’ve got to realize that our skills, our talents, our unique ability, our collateral, that once you go to work for this organization, they’re putting you to work and you’ve got to own those skill sets just as much as the company owns them. So I love what you’re saying. And here’s the thing, the company that has you right now, they can certainly counteroffer and keep you right there snuggled in real tight, you know, right where they are.

Sonja: Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. Sometimes I’ve even worked with clients to help them achieve what’s called a retention bonus. And so here’s the deal is that sometimes your same existing company, like even if you’re asking for a raise, they may or may not take you seriously until you have an offer on the table from another organization. And it’s really frustrating. And it’s totally disappointing, because why shouldn’t our organizations value us for the loyalty that we bring to them? 

And hopefully they do, right? If you’re asking for a raise, you’re asking for more opportunity. Hopefully, they’re giving you that career growth trajectory with where you’re at right now. But what I found time and time and time again, with many clients that I’ve worked with is that an organization will usually not take them seriously in leveling up their compensation, and especially leveling it up to the market pay rate. Like you might get a percentage increase. 

But if you’re looking to, you know, level up by a good, you know, 10, 20, $50,000, or whatever, it might end up being, maybe even more, to get up to the market rate. Usually, they’ll take you more seriously, if you have an offer in place with another organization, you can use that as leverage to do what they call a leveling exercise. So I know it’s a little frustrating, because you might have to, like actually get involved in the job search to be able to make that happen. But you never know what you might find. 

Like, you may actually find better opportunities elsewhere, that will give you more career growth or more strategic opportunities, or you know, get you in a role where you may be in a more influential position or be able to have you know, greater impact and also have higher level compensation as well.

Nicole: 100 percent. So just to go back to the beginning, you said, it’s really about doing your market research. And then you just said this very clear thing, and I don’t want anybody to miss it, Sonja.  You said, you will have to get involved in the career search. And for whatever reason, sometimes people are just really, I don’t know, it’s like a fear. Like they’re scared to go look. It’s like nobody’s watching you at your computer. Don’t do this while you’re at work. You have to do it at night. Am I right, Sonja? 

On nights and the weekends. You don’t do it on your work computer, you have to buy your own computer, and you begin to do it and you do this market survey. So you know, I’m an old marketing gal. And you know, I used to be in the apartment business. And we used to do this thing called a market survey. We’d call around, see what our competitors were charging for one bedroom apartments and two bedroom apartments and three bedroom apartments. 

And it was very eye opening. It helped us really gain a lot of confidence. And I bet you that’s what happens to people once they do this market survey. So how does one go about figuring out what the current position they have pays? Like you said, in what industry, in what companies? How do they do that? Where do they go to find that information?

Sonja: There’s a number of really great sites available today that have tons of great data. You know, some of the ones that I refer to the most would be Glassdoor. I also really like PayScale. Salary.com can give some valuable information as well. The things that I like about Glassdoor and PayScale is that they do actually show this salary data by organization. So the hard part is, is that if you go out there and you look to say like, oh, what does a product director make? You know, you’re going to see the range, and there’s going to be a really wide range. 

And you’re like, well, where do I fall inside that range? If you continue to scroll down that page, you’ll start to see what different organizations pay for that particular role. And oftentimes, I find that, you know, I work mostly with folks in tech. Tech companies usually pay more. And if you start to look at the different organizations, you can see, okay, what does Salesforce pay versus Amazon versus Microsoft versus Google versus whatever. Whatever you know, organization that you end up working in. 

Doesn’t have to be a tech company. But you do want to find either what your organization has paid people for that role, or find what your competitors pay for that role. Because you can look at it very broadly across all industries, you could start to narrow it down to your specific industry. And you can narrow it down even further to your specific competitors. Because, you know, the competitors are usually going to have similar amounts of resources. 

And so if it’s a very well funded company, they’re probably going to pay their employees more than the market average. And if it’s not as well funded, or it’s a nonprofit, or governmental organization or whatnot, you know, it might pay on the lower end of that range. So you definitely want to get really clear about the competitive research. And then, you know, another thing that you said that I wanted to point to, you know, you talked about, you know, searching for a job. 

Yes, sometimes that can become like a part time job unto itself, right. And, you know, most of the folks that I work with are pretty busy professionals. And so we recently launched a whole new service offering where we actually can do the job search for our clients. And it takes a lot of that really hard, laborious work out of like, you know, sitting down and filling out application after application. 

And we can help kind of kickstart your networking activities as well. So we provide a lot of guidance and a lot of like, done for you services there, too. So if you’re like, hey, I want to see what’s out there. I want to see what’s available. But I don’t want to like pick up a part time job on the side to get this process going. There are resources available.

Nicole: I need to run my marathon next month, yeah.

Sonja: So you know, if that’s of interest, we can definitely help support with that.

Nicole: Okay, that’s fantastic. All right. So I sit down. And I would just say this, too. What do you think about this? This is what I’ve shared with clients sometimes is I say, you know, just go to Indeed. Go to the websites where the jobs are. Not every job tells you what it pays. But many, many people just throw it right up on there. You know, in the recruiting that we do at Vibrant Recruiting, we just put the, I always post what the position pays, because I don’t want anybody to go through a whole, you know, series of questions and phone calls, and whatever, and then find out it’s not what they thought it was going to be, right. You want the right people applying for the job.

Sonja: Yeah, such a great point. Thank you for bringing that up. That’s another great way that you can do research as well, is like just, you know, go look up the job title of what you’re interested in applying to, and see what companies are hiring. Most companies are now starting to post the compensation for the roll with it. And if they’re not doing it, then you know, Indeed or Glassdoor are oftentimes giving an estimate. 

So you can’t always rely on the estimate, unless the company has actually posted the range. But you can start to get a really good idea just by doing some basic online research to have a sense of like, you know, what you’re currently getting paid? Are you even in the ballpark? Or are you super far behind? Are you mid range? Are you high range? And ultimately, when you accept a new position, you want to try to land in the upper quadrant of that pay range, because then that gives you some staying power. 

So that if you are with that organization for a number of years, you know, generally the new higher market rate outpaces the existing employee pay rate, which is really frustrating. But that’s generally just kind of the way that things go. And so if you want to stay on par with what’s happening, you know, don’t let the market outpace you. Make sure that you get hired in the upper quadrant, so that you have a little bit of time and effort, you know, with that organization to kind of stay, you know, stay on top of of where you’re at. 

And then when you get cost of living increases, you know, you always want your cost of living increase to like compound and accumulate on top of what you’re already making. So the more you make when you first start, the more that you’re going to make over time too.

Nicole: That’s right, that’s right. Oh, such good math lessons we’re getting. This is fantastic. All right. So let’s say that you’re working with a client and you’ve kind of done the market research, and you’re like, okay, this person, let’s keep using the product manager person that you made up just a second ago. So product management person, we’ve done the market research. 

We say okay, you know, Susan, your client you’re working with she’s making, I don’t know 100, but we think we can get her way up higher because we’ve looked at the market and the market says 130, or something like that. Alright, so how do you? What does Susan need to do? Let’s say we’re working with her, what does she need to do to make sure she gets this opportunity to interview? 

How do you prep somebody? You know, I find Sonja, people have blind spots about what they know. They forget what they’ve experienced. They need a good coach like you to say, okay, tell me everything you’ve ever done. You forget, like the 14 projects you had in 2014, that you were epic on, you know.

Sonja: For sure. For sure. Here is what I have seen, you know, with most professionals. Most professionals are so incredibly skilled at what they do day in and day out. And they like, you know, just having like those big projects, you know, or they just want the like, heads down, work to do day in and day out, and they get to cause the results and make things happen. 

Then when you think about getting a job, getting a new job, or getting promoted, you know, like, we have to start to think about yourself as a brand. And if you were the product, how do you market and sell yourself? How do you market and sell your own brand? And you know, unless you’ve ever worked in marketing, and you understand all the nuances of how do you market a specific product? And how do you market it to different avatars, like a marketing avatar, or aka your customer? 

Now, we need to think about it from that job search perspective of like, who is your customer? Who is your buyer? Well, it’s your potential employer. So now we want to think about okay, well, who are the potential employers that you want to work with? What are your targets? And how can you get really, you know, narrow? How can you narrow your scope so that you know exactly what level? What title? What compensation? What types of organizations? 

Like, where do you want to be, because the more clear that you are on where you want to be, the more clear that you can be in your own messaging. So sometimes I have clients who come to me and they’re like, I just want a new job, you know, or I just, I just want, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be a project manager or a program manager. Okay. What kind of project manager? 

Do you want to be a technical project manager? Do you want to be a marketing project manager? Do you want to be this? Do you want to be this? You know, and these are just some real high level examples. But it’s like, you know, and then what’s the type of organization you’re going to work with, and what’s the product or service offering that they have. 

And the reason that I’m going to so much detail on this is because the more clear that you are on that, then when you put your marketing materials together, aka resume, LinkedIn profile, cover networking letter, thank you letter, you know, all the different things that you’re going to utilize to communicate with the employer going through your interviews as well, like you want your messaging to be so spot on, that when they engage with you, they’re like, this is my number one pick. 

This is the number one candidate for this role. In, you know, in competition with the 200 to 400 other people that have applied for the same role, you have to be number one. And so the more clear that you are on your messaging, the easier that it’s going to be for you to get to that top status. And so, you know, you want to understand what are the key words? What are the key phrasing? What are the key things that’s going to really speak to these target audiences? 

And, you know, if it’s an organization that’s focused around cybersecurity, you need to make sure you’re mentioning cybersecurity in all your materials. Or AI or ML or, you know, maybe you’re not in tech. So then it’s like, what are the keywords for other industries or other types of organizations and what’s going to when they look at your resume, you know, and, by the way, the first decision maker in the entire process is the computer bot. An ATS system applicant tracking system. 

So when you apply for a job online, or you put your LinkedIn profile out there, the first decision maker is a search algorithm. So you need to make sure that all of your materials are well prepared for search algorithms. They have the right keywords, the right key phrasing. And then you’re gonna make it past that mark, because you already have put all the right keywords in there. 

And then when a human being actually looks at your profile, if you give yourself a seven second test, like if you look at your own resume or your own LinkedIn profile, and you scan seven seconds, because that’s what the data shows. That’s what a recruiter or hiring manager that’s the average amount of time that they look at someone’s profile the first time. The first time that they look at your profile. 

And they will literally make a decision about whether they should call you for an interview or bring you in again, based on a seven second scan. So you need to be real clear on what are the things that pop off the page about you, to help them make a meaningful decision on whether they should progress to the next level with you.

Nicole: Okay, she is speaking the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us both, God. I mean, it is absolutely true. And it’s the same thing that I tell folks is like, you know, I can tell when, again, as a recruiter, when I get these resumes, like this person is just taking this one resume and going like a BB gun and just hitting every single, whatever out there. Like sometimes it’ll be like, this is a customer service position. 

And this person has never been in customer service in their life. And maybe even they’ve got an old fashion objective on there that says something else. So what she’s saying is that you’ve got to really spend some time and energy if you want to bump the salary up. If you want to get that promotion. So it’s a lot of attention and intention is what I’m hearing you say. Don’t miss her drinking out of her Vibrant Coaching cup.

Sonja: Yes, look at this beautiful mug right here. And if you’re listening to this, you just have to know that I am holding Nicole’s amazingly branded Yeti mug that she sent me in the mail. And I was so pleased when I got to open the package. And it was like, Build a Vibrant Culture with Nicole Greer. Talk about branding. Nicole has her banding spot on, for sure.

Nicole: That’s fantastic. All right. Thanks for the shout out. All right. So keywords is what I heard you say. So everybody write this down. Okay, you got to have your keywords figured out. And then you got to have your marketing materials. Now you ran through that list of marketing materials lickety split. It’s the resume, it’s the cover letter, it’s the thank you note.

Sonja: Your LinkedIn profile. 

Nicole: Yes. Okay, keep going. 

Sonja: And then also, I mean, how you present yourself through networking and interviewing conversations. So you know, you need to think about how you’re positioning yourself in an interview as well. And you need to be really clear on how well do you know the problems that this organization is looking for you to solve. Like, if they hire you, they’re looking for you to solve specific problems for them. And the job description doesn’t necessarily encapsulate the entirety of the job that you’ll be doing on a day to day basis. 

That job description is usually written by someone in HR, who interviewed the hiring manager and said, what are you looking for? And they tried to jot down a list of of core skills of what they’re going to recruit for. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that that job description very clearly articulates what they actually need you to do. And so, you know, if you’re networking or interviewing with an organization, you really want to try to approach those conversations more as a consultant. 

And I think oftentimes, we kind of fall into this default mode of like, you know, they ask the question, you answer. They ask the question, you answer. And it’s kind of like this call and response type of method. And there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that. Because, you know, they do want answers to their questions. So you need to make sure you’re answering their questions. 

But it’s also a really great idea for you to be asking questions throughout the entire interview process, so that you’re really clear on, what are they actually looking for? And are you proactively addressing all of their questions? Even the questions that they’re not asking, but they’re probably thinking in the back of their mind is like, how are you approaching these conversations. 

More as a consultant so that you can really help kind of tease out what are the problems that they need solved? And how can you showcase that you’re the perfect person, you’re the only person that can help them solve those problems? Or you’re the number one candidate to help them solve those problems. And why should they choose you versus anybody else that they may also be talking to?

Nicole: Right. Absolutely. Okay. So I’m going to start from the top just in case you need me to. So first thing, you do your market survey, okay. And you figure out where you want to be, what industry, what title, where you want to be and what it’s paying, right. And then in order to justify the fact that you deserve the big money, you’re gonna have to do this job search. 

And so if you don’t want to do the job search, you can call Sonja and she’ll do like a little mini get you started job search thing, to let you know what’s out there. Oh, my gosh, I think that that would be so freeing to people. So we’re gonna give you her contact information right here at the end, don’t worry. And also, of course, it’s in the show notes. 

So you’re gonna figure out your level, your title, your compensation, then you’re going to figure out your keywords. And then you’re gonna get your marketing materials together. And then you are going to come to this with knowing the problems you can solve for this client as if you are a consultant. See, and that will blow their socks off. Of course, you’re gonna get the top of the range.

Sonja: Yes, it works. It really, really, really works.

Nicole: So I love all that. Okay, so what about prepping your resume in terms of, you know, getting all the right things on there, leaving the right things off. You know, I think that’s a big struggle for people. What to put on, what to put off. I’ve always been impressed when people have like numbers. You know, like, I moved the needle on this, or I got this thing accomplished. And it took this long, which was under budget and under timeframe or whatever. Talk a little bit about how people might put things on their resume, so they can get the top of the salary range.

Sonja: Yeah, absolutely. So you know, when you’re pulling a resume together, you want to make sure that, and your LinkedIn profile, same thing too, right. And LinkedIn profiles, great, because you want people to actively pursue you. If they find you on LinkedIn, you didn’t have to apply for the job. It’s always nice to be pursued. So you want to understand, okay, what is the language of business? 

The language of business is core skills and results. You know, so do you have the capabilities, and can you cause the results? And so you do want to think back through all of your past projects, and you want to document. They’re looking for XYZ skills. I have XYZ skills and here’s the results that I produced utilizing them. And the human eye is drawn to numbers. So when someone’s eye is doing that seven second scan, on the resume or your LinkedIn profile, what is the human eye drawn to? 

It’s drawn to numbers, percentages, dollar signs, things like that, right. And so you want to be thinking through what are all the key metrics of different results that you’ve produced, you know, and the more numbers, the better. So you do want to think through, you can think of, like, get really creative, and how you position the things on your resume, because, quite honestly, like, when someone reads your resume, they’re not going to understand all of the, you know, all the ins and outs of the key initiative that you were a part of, or whatnot. 

They’re just gonna see, you know, increased efficiency by 43%. Or, managed a consulting project of $3 million, you know. $3,000,000 and 13 team members, or whatever, you know, whatever your specific results might be. But be thinking about how many people were impacted, the number of dollars made, the number of dollars saved, efficiency gains, in terms of percentages. 

Number of steps saved, you know, and depending upon who you are, and what part of the organization that you’re in, you know, bugs resolved, outages saved, you know, whatever, whatever it is for you. Lines of code written. Budget, if you manage a budget, make sure you talk about it. 

Nicole: Gosh, put that in there.

Sonja: The amount of budget, or the number of people managed, or, you know, and if you manage people make sure that you are doing that comprehensively. Because sometimes people will only count their direct reports, but then if they also have, like, contractors that work for them, count that. You know, and you can phrase it in different ways to make it work for you. But it’s like, I’ve worked with a number of leaders that they’re like, you know, well, I have zero direct reports, but I manage an entire team of contractors in India. 

Okay, well, that’s you managing a team of people, you know. And by the way, like, what else is that team accomplishing? And how can you help include that in your results, language as well? So those are the things. Keywords, key phrases, results. Results, results, results. Like get your results down.

Nicole: Did you write that down everybody? Results she said.

Sonja: And then you also want to make sure for scan ability, because I think sometimes people just jam pack so much information on a piece of paper, that then when you go to scan the page, your eye doesn’t even know where to fall. So I use a lot of bullet points. And I recommend using a lot of bullet points and make them very easy and digestible. 

So, you know, like, you’re gonna have all of your different professional experience, and maybe you’re listing your core responsibilities and your results under each of those areas. But at the top, I almost always have, you know, bullet points of what are the core skills, specifically in correlation with the job that you’re applying for, because get those keywords in there. 

But also make it really easy to scan the page so that if someone’s like, I need a Salesforce implementation expert, great. Salesforce implementation is one of your bullet points there. You know, whatever it is that you know that this particular job is looking for, make sure that you’re finding easy ways to make your resume and your LinkedIn profile be more usable. 

Is it a user-friendly piece of information? Is it easy for someone to read, and very quickly be able to tell a comprehensive story about like, oh, who are you as a professional. So in seven seconds or less, they should have a really clear understanding of like, who are you, what types of work have you done in the past, and how well is it aligned to the job that you are applying for?

Nicole: Yeah, It’s almost like the answers to what should be on the resume are in the job placement ad. But to your point earlier, I loved what you said about, it’s not going to be completely comprehensive in terms of what that job might entail. So you know, you might, you know, check out your network. And let’s go back to LinkedIn for a hot second. I know Sonja can keep up with me, I know you listeners can keep up with me. 

You have to have an excellent LinkedIn. You can’t be one of the, you can’t play the game Sonja wants you to play if you don’t have connections, you don’t have people putting their testimonies on your site. You’ve got to get in there and play the LinkedIn game to do this. That’s the first thing I do when I get a resume. I go to LinkedIn to see if they’re there. And then I go to see what’s this look like over here? You know, like, if you want the big money, you got to look like you’re trying. That’s all I got to say about that.

Sonja: Absolutely. Oh, and let me throw in one real quick pro tip.

Nicole: Pro tip, people. Write it down.

Sonja: I see so many people who on their social media profiles, that they are like, I only connect with people that I know. And you can do that on Facebook and Instagram and wherever you want to be right. But on LinkedIn, it actually pays for you to have the more connections, the better. Because that actually feeds into the search algorithms. And they have very complex algorithms. 

And they can look to see like how many connections you have, and how many like minded connections you have, and how many endorsements that you have by like minded connections, and how many recommendations that you have by like minded connections. And so the more people that, you know, the better. And the more people that you know, that are like you that are in your industry, and in your same types of roles, the better as well. So, you know, if you are one of those people who you know, nothing, again, nothing wrong with it. 

But if you’re like, I don’t know, Joe Smith, or we only worked together for like, five minutes. Don’t be afraid of it. Accept the connection, and send out as many connection requests as you can as well. And be active on there. Actually make some posts on LinkedIn from time to time like that actually helps you show up higher in the search results. And you want to be pursued. So be active on LinkedIn and let people find you.

Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. And when she says, post something on LinkedIn, if you’re sitting there going, what would I post? Okay, very simple. Go find a great article on Forbes, put up the you know, the top three things you learned from the project, you were just on. You know, like, be nice to people, you know, that’s a good tip on a process. You know time management tips for, you know, people who are project managers, you know. Just throw up six things that you do, right? So you don’t have to overthink it. You don’t have to create a whole process.

Sonja: Or put something funny. Find a video clip from The Office and post that. People love those kinds of videos. And you’ll get all kinds of likes and comments. And think about keywords too. If you put keywords in your post that can help too.

Nicole: She’s hot for the key words. Has everybody written down key words? Okay. All right. Fantastic. All right. Well, we only have a few minutes left. And so I’m so happy for you. You won this amazing award. While you were in India, and you may not know this, Sonja, but I have wanderlust. I’m trying to get everywhere before I pop off the planet. I wouldn’t pop all over the planet before I pop off the planet. So what was the best thing you saw in India? What was the best thing you ate in India?

Sonja: Oh, boy. Wow. Well, I was there for a month when I was there. So it was quite a while. Yeah. And the original draw for me to go was that I was invited to speak at the Women’s Economic Forum, which was quite the honor.

Nicole: Congratulations. Can we watch that? Did that get videotaped? Is that on YouTube?

Sonja: It is recorded. I should like, I know it’s recorded. I know it’s on YouTube. I should probably like connect it with my YouTube account. Thanks for the idea, Nicole. 

Nicole: Always trying to help.

Sonja: It was such such an amazing trip. So that conference, the Women’s Economic Forum, that was one week out of the whole month that I was there. But because I was flying all the way there, I was like, and I’d never been to India, I was like I have to see the country. So wow, it was a life changing experience. 

Nicole: I bet.

Sonja: Just the people and the culture and the sights and the sounds and the smells and like you know everything was amazing. I definitely went to the Taj Mahal. I went to Varanasi, which is where a number of Hindus go to die. It’s right along the Ganges River, the Mother Ganga as the natives refer to it. And it’s really a very, very, very, very incredible place. Varanasi was cool. I went to Rishikesh, which is up at the base of the Ganges River. It’s the base of the Himalayas and where the Ganges starts. 

And also went to oh my gosh, now I’m going to draw a blank on it. Why? Because I’m on a recording and I can’t think of it. Well, Jaipur, went to Jaipur. And then also Amritsar is what I was thinking of. Amritsar which is, there’s a golden temple there. It’s like, you could look that up on Google. It’s like, just very ornate, beautiful, beautiful temple. You know, people come from all over the world to come and like pay homage to this temple. 

We went to the border crossing between India and Pakistan, that was fascinating. At the end of every day, when they close the border, they kind of do this whole, like pomp and circumstance about it. And it’s kind of funny, because the two countries kind of, like, show off a little bit. It’s like, oh, this is our country. And this is our country. And so they have like music and dancing and all kinds of there’s this whole like, you know, they do like military marches. 

And they do like different things to like, close down the border for the evening. The food is amazing. I ate Indian food for like, a month straight. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. And there’s so many different temples and mosques and churches. And you know, it’s a very, very diverse country as far as religion and spiritual beliefs go so there’s just so much to see. And it’s a very colorful country.

Nicole: Did you ride in the tuk tuk and almost get killed? Was it crazy? Every time I watch the amazing race, I’m like, oh my God they’re getting in the tuk tuk.

Sonja: Being on the roads there is an adventure. Yes.

Nicole: Well, a woman who can survive all that excitement can certainly help you get paid more. So will you just share a little bit about how people can find you?

Sonja: Thank you so much. My name is Sonja Price. Just to say it again. My company is Dynamo Careers. I love helping people find more fulfilling roles, getting promoted, moving, you know, transitioning into something bigger and better and more fulfilling. Making more money. And, you know, potentially having better work life balance. That’s also something that I’ve worked on with clients as well. 

So, to find me, you can come to my website, dynamocareers.com. And I actually have a free gift that I’d love to offer everyone. It’s called Does Your Work Work For You? It’s a career assessment. You can access it for free. And you just want to go to dynamocareers.com/assessment. And Dynamo is d y n a m a careers c a r e e r s.com/assessment. 

And if you take that free assessment, it’ll help you understand all of the different things that you should be looking out for. Like if you’re considering a career change, or you just want to evaluate where you’re at right now, and how meaningful or fulfilling is your career right now. It will tell you. And we have personalized results. 

And then that will also sign up for my mailing list and I’m pretty active in sending out lots of valuable tips. So we’d love to have you join the mailing list and if I can be of help to you. You can find me through my website or I’m also very active on LinkedIn. So you can look up Sonja Price. S o n j a p r i c e and I would love to connect with you there as well.

Nicole: Oh, that is so fantastic. All right. So everybody go get your assessment. Okay, dynamocareers.com/assessment. So go check that out. It’ll all be in the show notes. Sonja, a delight to be with you. We have downloaded so many good things. Listen, people get your research done. You are a brand. We can help you figure out where you want to go. 

Then we get your marketing materials i.e. your resume, etc. Figure out the problems you solve, get your core skills, your results and get some numbers in your resume. That’s a lot you have to do. We have to go so you can get started. Sonja, it’s been so good to be with you.

Sonja: Thank you so much. It’s been an honor to be here. Thanks, Nicole.

Voiceover: Ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her strategies, systems and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Your organization will get lit from within. Email Nicole@nicolegreer.com. And be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at nicolegreer.com.