Lessons - What Nobody Tells You About Life After a $90M Exit | Anne Mahlum - [solidcore] Founder & Back on My Feet Founder

0:00 In this lessons episode, discover why aligning purpose with personal ambition is essential for long-term success. Understand how confident negotiation helps professionals advocate for their worth. Explore why high performers should never undervalue their contributions and uncover how founders can build brands with identities that extend beyond themselves. if you look at your journey, like even just describe how your purpose has changed over your life, over your career. Cause I think that's fascinating too. Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, have you heard of Tony Robbins' Six Human Needs? Yes. Okay, so you know them. So I think, let me just try to repeat them. It's security, variety, significance, love, contribution, and personal growth.

0:44 You know, and mine have always wavered between like personal growth and contribution. That's kind of always, and I would be lying if significance wasn't up there in my 20s, again, chasing love, adoration, and whatever. Yeah. But security is kind of the bottom of that one for me. And it's always been there. I would rather play the risky game than like play it safe and sit on the sidelines. So personal growth and contribution continue to set the top. I don't really know from a contribution perspective where I'm going to put that energy into quite next. I'm in what I call my white space, what I have learned. I don't really love being an advisor because I kind of feel like I'm sitting on the sidelines a little bit.

1:27 Like I, I kind of have to do my own thing, build my own. If I ever put energy into something else professionally, it needs to be my own thing. Starting whether a foundation, starting a new nonprofit, starting something else that I build and grow. Now, I can invest in things and put money in things, but I don't actually get as interested unless it's my own thing, truth be told. That's important to know that because if not, then you're kind of setting yourself up for success. For failure, excuse me. Yeah, excuse me. You're not setting yourself up for success. So when you think about like where you're going in the future and where you put your time and energy, it always has to be something that you're building yourself, that you're championing yourself. Yeah. And it has to be innovative, you know, like I really put back on my feet in solid core.

2:09 We're both innovative in their own interest industries. And so I would never do something that I'm like seven other people are already doing that. Like I would never be like, I'm starting a furniture company because I like furniture. Like that's just too difficult of a thing to compete for me. And I don't see myself ever getting passionate about that because frankly, now I don't need money. So it would have to be something so innovative that's solving things. some sort of problem that hasn't been solved yet, whether in, you know, the social impact space, right? Like I think a lot about health and fitness, you know, impoverished areas and things like that, but I'm not going to jump into that right now. I know in the future, like I shouldn't say a hundred percent, but I'm pretty confident that I will have another entrepreneurial chapter at some point in my life.

2:54 I just know that I'm not going to go chase it down right now because of the die with zero. I'm in my, I want to play as much as possible face. Okay, I have a couple last lessons that you teach that I've heard you teach on other podcasts. I think they're really great lessons. And you can go into as much depth or as little depth. You can keep it brief if you want. It doesn't matter to me. But the first one that you spoke to Gary about was the importance of women asking for more. So speak to me about what you see with women in entrepreneurship. Like what should they do more of? What are they not doing enough of that you've learned, at least from your experience? Yeah, I think women in a lot of cases, I've employed a lot of women, right?

3:37 And the negotiations with women is always different. I remember this particular instance. This woman was one of my rock stars. And it was time to sit down and like discuss her compensation. And I was waiting for her, right, to ask for something. And Scott, it was like looking down at the ground, no eye contact, you know, beating around the bush. You know, I've really done this. And like, I would really appreciate. And like, I really think that I all these filler words instead of just like the value that you bring to the company and what you've done and like how you can help forward and asking with direct eye contact to me of what you want. That's never happened with me with one woman ever. Yeah. I've always been like, you should have asked for 50 grand more than what you just asked for.

4:20 So there is a wage gap. There is a gender gap for sure. And part of that responsibility belongs on women. If you're asking to get paid $75,000 and you get paid 75K, part of that and the job is worth $130,000, you have to be confident enough to ask for $130,000, know what you're bringing to the table. I still think women step into this, I'm just grateful to be here, instead of, no, you should be grateful to have me. I am excellent at what I do, and I'm going to add this much value. And I think that women are frankly a little bit more afraid of rejection than men are, and especially in the professional world.

5:02 And they don't want to miss an opportunity, so they'll take less than and then find themselves maybe a little bit resentful for it. Yeah. I don't know. I don't have a solution to it, but I've heard like similar, I've heard similar things where if a guy has, if a guy's applying to a job and he has like maybe, you know, 70% of the things required, then he'll still apply versus if a woman's applying to a job and she doesn't have a hundred percent of the things she won't apply. And I mean, yes, all of, all of the fat, like all the, the, the wage gap is horrible, but, Obviously, I'm a huge believer in owning your own shit and taking responsibility. And I think that, I don't know, maybe it's just hearing from people like yourself that hired a lot of women, sit on the other side, and you're like, why didn't you just ask for more?

5:50 And you're coaching people through it. Not everybody's going to have a boss as great as you. So I think that they have to take that and be like, okay, so maybe my boss isn't going to tell me that I should have asked for 50 grand more. Let me negotiate. And not negotiate like... two or three grand because that also looks silly. It's like ask for a big number. And at least, I mean, at least they know what, you know that you're worth that. Yeah, I mean, back on my feet board was a lot of men back in the day, and I was negotiating my salary as the founder, right? They control my salary. And we were 50 grand apart. And this was like in my last year or something there. And I remember telling them that, listen, if you can find someone to come in here and do the job that I do at the level I do it for 50 grand less, you have a fiduciary responsibility to this organization.

6:38 You should do that. I'm not doing it. Like, I'm not doing it. Like, this is what I bring to the table. If that's not the value, enough value for you based on the results I produce, I get it. And like, obviously I got what I asked for, but there is a 10 as like, oh, you're a single woman. Like, this is a lot of money for, I'm like, stop. Like a lot of money, right. The money is what is the value of what I'm producing? What is the value of the job that I'm doing? So I always try to listen. Life isn't fair, Scott. It never has been and it never will be. And the only the best way to put yourself in a position to win is through empowerment. So we can bitch and complain about the gender gap and the wage gap within it.

7:19 It's not going to change until women continue to ask and stand up for more and demand more and negotiate more and work on their negotiation skills and explain to you, like, I produced $5 million for this organization, blah, blah. This is my compensation for me to do that. I actually love that. I love that exact line that you used with your board. I think that's fabulous. Because if I was hiring somebody, man or woman, and they said that to me, be like, the confidence this person has. Like, you know, I'm going to bet on this person because of the amount of confidence and conviction. If they take that, not just with the conversation with me, if they take that into everything they do in the company, like they're going to be a huge asset.

8:03 And Scott, how many times have we both hired people that have been like, I'll take less? And like, it never works out. That person doesn't know how he works out. So it's... Right. They don't think of themselves highly that they're even capable of doing it. And like, I remember when I hired Brian for the first time and we were 50K apart on salary and he was just unwavering. And it's just like, and like, you know, listen, this is what my salary requirements are. You know, if you can't meet them, I get it. Like, I'm not coming in there for, and it was just like, I wanted him and Brian, and I'll say this now. Brian, after a year of working to me, could have came to me at any point and asked me for another hundred. And I would have done it because he was so... good, so good at what he was doing, the revenue he was creating, the value in the business of what he was doing.

8:46 And like, if you are currently at a company and you are crushing it, trust me, your boss does not want to lose you. Trust me, your boss would rather pay you 30K more than find somebody else that they hope to cross their fingers that can match the level of performance that you have if you are a high performer. That's such a good point. And also when you, when you, when you say things like that, it shows you have options. Like nobody wants, no, I don't want to hire somebody where I'm the only person to even considering hiring you. Like, I don't, I don't want that energy in my company. No. Like if you are saying like, this is my, this is my price. take it or leave it. I'm like, shit, he's going to go somewhere else. It's almost like you give it to him. And ladies, I want to be like, sit up straight, you know, like lean forward.

9:29 Don't lean back. Like, look at me and, you know, make eye contact. Make me uncomfortable that you are so like, you're not taking your eyes off of me. That makes you feel like you were in control and you have power. And like, I mean, you see so much of this, right? Like when you're slouching into cells, you're trying to not be noticed. Yeah, no, all very good advice. The other question I had, founder-centric versus founder-influenced. What does that mean? So founder-centric means that you're building a company or a brand that's all about you. You're making me sit up more spurtier. You're building something that's all about you. And that means that probably the thing won't work without you if you don't go. I think it's really important for the founder to embody the brand of whatever you are building.

10:13 So SolidCourse tagline, create the strongest version of yourself. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody out there that wouldn't describe me as that way, right? pushing myself, challenging myself, leveling up, getting other people around me to level up. I embodied that brand, but it was important that the company did not, that the company had an identity outside of Anne, right? So that's when we start telling stories about our clients, about our coaches, who else creates the strongest version of themselves. So that brand permeates the whole entire experience, you know, from the language that we taught our coaches to be speaking about, you know, it's like, How you show up in solid core is directly correlated to how you show up outside of here.

10:55 We gave them these words that really pull the brand ethos into the company. So, yeah, that's what it means from a founder-centric perspective.