Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Lisa Gillette, who is with BIGSKY Coaching and Consulting. Welcome.

Lisa Gillette: Well, thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Please share a little bit about big Sky. How are you serving folks?

Lisa Gillette: So big Sky Coaching and Consulting is a company I started after I ran away from corporate America. I escaped and I called it big Sky because I believe when you can see the big picture, you’ll find the opportunity. So I’m a coach, I’m a certified coach, and I’m also an equal pay activist. So I work primarily with women who work in male dominated fields. I help them navigate the culture and negotiate fair pay.

Lee Kantor: So what were you doing in corporate America? It sounds like there might be some scar tissue around that.

Lisa Gillette: There’s always scar tissue. Come on. I was an executive in sports television for the last ten years of my 25 year career.

Lee Kantor: So you were in sports television, a male dominated field. Did you? Is this where the equal pay activism comes from?

Lisa Gillette: Well, actually, I would say it’s been there all along because I started my career in TV, in cable. And I’ll be honest, I did not negotiate my first job offer. I was so excited to have health insurance. I just said yes. But two years later, when a competitor came calling, you better believe I negotiated that offer. So yeah, it’s so it’s been part of the organic development of of my career. Yeah. To ask.

Lee Kantor: And now this is something that asking about pay is something that not everybody is comfortable with. And I think women are probably less comfortable than men when it comes to this. What made you comfortable to negotiate, even at your second opportunity?

Lisa Gillette: You know, I my father owned his own company, and so he was a great business mentor to me. And he shared with me this one statement. He said, no matter what they ask you, no matter what they tell you, when you finally get a number, always put a big smile on your face and say, I am so excited about this opportunity. But I have one question. Is there any upward movement in any of these numbers? And it works. Then you lean back and you stop talking. And as many of us know, we’re really uncomfortable with silence. We may be uncomfortable asking, but we’re super uncomfortable with silence. So it’s a great negotiating strategy to just see if you can get a little bit more.

Lee Kantor: Now, I had interviewed a woman executive coach a while ago, and she said something to me This was eye opening to me, but it’s probably not for you. She said that most women don’t negotiate. They do what you did in your very first job. They’d say thank you, and then they walk away where most men will push back and ask for something else.

Lisa Gillette: Well, that’s not really shown in the data, but I did hear 60% of all people feel really uncomfortable negotiating men and women. But something I read in Forbes, oh, this is a couple of years ago. Many men can come to a negotiation feeling like it’s a sports event. They’re going to play and they’re going to play hard. Many women feel that to negotiate is almost like a conflict. It’s like sitting in the dentist chair. You just sit there as still as you can. You wait for it to be over, and you walk out feeling like, oh my God, I got out of there. So, you know, to your point, a lot of people are uncomfortable. But one of the things that I really don’t believe is that it’s women’s fault that they don’t ask because women are asking, but they need to ask in a way where they I call it bringing the receipts. You’ve got to show your return to the bottom line. You’ve got to show how you contributed and helped the company reach its annual goals. Whether it’s a new job offer, you want to show how you did it in your last job or a current, you know, promotion and a title in your new role. You’ve got to bring the receipts and you’ve got to speak about it in a way. So it’s a conversation and you make it a win win for everybody. And I think those are the effective strategies that men and women both can use.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you made the transition from sports television to coaching, was that transition difficult or did you kind of organically leave in a way that you set yourself up for success as a coach?

Lisa Gillette: Well, what was really interesting is I was mentoring a lot when I was in corporate and the very first time that I actually mentored, and this was my big aha moment. I, um, I was at a breakfast meeting, an industry organization, and it was for women, and we were talking around the table about, hey, what are the biggest challenges and the biggest opportunities, I think. The I think the question was, what do you love about your job and what do you not like? And the woman across the table from me burst into tears. She started. She said, well, I my boss chose me and I was like, oh my God. And I jumped up. I ran to her. I put my arms around her and I said, oh, you’re not alone. And I thought for a minute I don’t recognize her. Does she work in my company? Because my boss shouts at me too. And so I realized at that point, okay, I need to figure out how to deal with difficult people. I need to figure out how to find out what people’s biggest pain point is, and understand how I can offer them a solution. And so that was one of the things that I’ve always had done, and especially when I, you know, I worked in two cable networks and one MSO before I got into sports.

Lisa Gillette: And they were not necessarily male dominated unless you went into master control. And then primarily the engineers were men. So by the time I got to sports, I had a really good idea of, okay, let me be a problem solver. I know there’s a way I can fix this, but I need to create buy in first. So one of the things I did I was especially in my last role, I pitched a lot of multi-million dollar projects, and they didn’t want to give me the money until I was able to convince them the ROI, the return on the investment by giving me, you know, $10 million. I was going to save them 20. And so that just sort of became how I started. I just realized I needed to coach. And quite honestly, Lea, when I left corporate, I bummed around. For two years, I traveled all over the world, and then my college roommate, God bless her, said Lisa. You always said you were going to go into coaching. What’s up with that girlfriend? It’s like, oh yeah, I did. And so I got certified and I realized what I’ve been doing all along was mentoring, not coaching. And so now I do both. So that that was the transition.

Lee Kantor: So how do you kind of delineate between mentoring and coaching.

Lisa Gillette: So that’s why I have coaching and consulting in my my company’s title mentoring is literally saying okay how did that work out for you. What would you do different next time? Let me give you a roadmap. I know this about your skills. Coaching is. How did that work out for you? What would you do different next time? What have you done in the past you might be able to use here to solve this problem? It’s all questioning.

Lee Kantor: So when you start providing kind of the roadmap or the here do these four things, that’s when it it’s no longer coaching.

Lisa Gillette: It’s mentoring. Yeah, that is mentoring.

Lee Kantor: And is that and is that different than consulting or is mentoring and consulting kind of similar.

Lisa Gillette: For what I do? I call it consulting, but it’s literally mentoring. And isn’t that what a consultant does? They come in, they assess the problems. They tell you, here’s what you really need to improve, here’s what you’re doing well. And if you want to get to that next level, here’s steps one, two, three, four.

Lee Kantor: Right. Well some of them do. You’re paying them to do it for you.

Lisa Gillette: Oh okay. Well that’s true but I would call that an independent contractor. So I think that’s just a difference in terms. But yeah, you could hire a consultant or a vendor to do what you need them to do to execute.

Lee Kantor: Now, sometimes when you’re working with your clients, are they looking for you to do some of the work or are they or I mean, you have to be clear upfront. That’s like, you’re going to have to do all this. I’m going to make recommendations, but ultimately it’s your life and your choices.

Lisa Gillette: So I’m a member in good standing and I want to keep it that way with the ICF, the International Coaching Federation. And they have a very clear protocol about what coaching is and is not. And so coaching really is very simply asking the empowering questions that allow the client to get a deeper perspective. Just come up one step, one step on the track, one step on the ladder, get a wider view and then understand, oh, I am good at XYZ or I’m not good at x, y, z. So I need to hire a team who is because that’s not my strength just to get that deeper perspective. So there’s a very I just got a client yesterday and we had exactly this conversation. And the first thing I always ask, what’s your experience of coaching. And from that it will lead me to either explain more or less depending on what they know.

Lee Kantor: Are most people nowadays kind of have. Have they had coaching experience or they’ve heard of coach? I’m sure everyone’s heard of coaching at this point, but have they actually been coached at some point?

Lisa Gillette: Well, I would say it’s about 50 over 50 with my clients. Um, I know that when I was working in corporate, the worst thing that could happen to you as an executive was to be assigned a coach, because that meant that you weren’t performing. And it also gave the company reason to at some point say, hey, we tried to help you. You’re just not executing. We’re not going to pick up your contract. And that’s why I really don’t work in the corporate domain, because what I really want to do is offer people coaching support so they can make the choice about, should they go work someplace else? I’m not going to drive that train. They need to. How comfortable do they feel negotiating? One of the things that I did recently was I created a negotiating framework with an online course with a playbook that’s full of strategies. And so for people who don’t necessarily want coaching, they want to learn the step by step framework to negotiate top dollar. I’ve got an online course for them. So everybody’s different. Everybody has different needs. I do have a coaching protocol that I use. And literally it is how to earn trust. So simple. How to gain respect, how to get recognized and how to ask so that you’re rewarded. And I take everybody through that. But everybody is at different places in that protocol. So it’s a very individualistic kind of coaching I do with each individual client.

Lee Kantor: Or most of your clients, kind of high level executives that are looking for more. Or are they kind of more at the earlier stage in their career and they’re aspiring to be that high level executive?

Lisa Gillette: So I have a group coaching program for people who are, you know, managers or directors. And then the prime primarily my clients are more senior and many of them are thinking, do I leave and start my own business because I’m you may have heard of the leaky leadership ladder. Boy, can I get all those L’s out. Um, many women and some men get to that role. Where I got to. I was right underneath the C-suite, and I looked at everybody in the offices, and I was like, I don’t see any skirts there. Everybody is Richard or David or Michael. And that’s when I was like, okay, time to take my coat, say goodbye and leave. So I do have some clients that are at that place. I have many clients who are trying to get from that VP to that SVP rule. I can think of three right now that I’m working with, but I do group coaching with more junior women.

Lee Kantor: Is there anything you’ve noticed is a thread that kind of, ah, signals that maybe a woman is going to be successful in their career and get to those highest levels when it comes to maybe playing sports as when they were young. Oh yeah.

Lisa Gillette: Oh, yes. That’s. You’ve done your research, haven’t you? I bet you have. Yeah. Because it teaches you how to play on a team. And what’s that expression? Boy, I heard this the first time I started managing. There’s no iron team, and you need to learn how to work with others. And that’s the thing. You’re not going to work with people who you would choose as friends. And so you have to be able to work with all sorts of different people and get the job done. So yeah, that’s one criteria. I think another criteria for women who can succeed in a male dominated field is that they’re able to shake off what I call male pattern misbehavior. There can be a lot of testing. Um, pretty early on in my career, I had the great fortune to build up three post-production facilities. And I remember the first meeting I was in with some vendors I had. I was a director at the time. I had my manager with me who happened to be a man. And every single question was directed towards him. So I just sat there and I smiled. And then at the end of the conversation, they looked at him and they said, well, are we going to sign this deal or not? And he said, you need to talk to my boss. And he pointed to me, and the expressions on the faces were priceless. Now they did not end up winning the job, but not because of that. So I think women who are able to just kind of go, okay, it’s game on, let’s go. I can handle this. I’m not a fragile little flower. And you do kind of have to have that mentality to succeed in a man’s world.

Lee Kantor: And when you’re working with these women leaders, is there something that they’re doing that is kind of self-sabotaging in your mind? Or is it something that they just didn’t learn it like? What do you think is is what’s holding them back?

Lisa Gillette: Well, I mean, can you define holding them back, not getting into the C-suite? Is that what you mean by.

Lee Kantor: Well, it’s they’re not getting to where they’d like to go. I don’t want to say something stopping them, but they obviously, if they’re hiring a coach, they want something else than what they have.

Lisa Gillette: They want another opinion and they want some expert support. And I would say one of the biggest things that holds women back is that idea that, um, do your work, keep quiet, you will be recognized and you will be rewarded. And that might work in school. But in the corporate environment, if you cannot speak to the talent, the expertise, the experience you bring to the table, no one else can or will do that for you. So many women feel very uncomfortable talking about their accomplishments. And one of the things I coach around is how to authentically speak to your past accomplishments by quantifying it, not just. I led a team of 48 people. Okay, great. You’ve had management experience. Doesn’t mean you’re a good manager. I led a team of 48 people. That was we were actually able to reach our quota every year. In fact, sometimes we reach beyond it. We achieve beyond it. We were continually successful. We had a great retention rate, we had late turnover, and we were one of the most productive divisions that everybody wanted to work with. See how I just quantified that kind of talking off the top of my head? Women feel uncomfortable doing that.

Lee Kantor: And and you have to remind your boss or your or your client of what you’re doing. Otherwise, sometimes they just take it for granted.

Lisa Gillette: Well, they just if there’s no problem, they’re not they’re going to go, okay, everything’s running fine and they’re not going to know the details. You are exactly right. Exactly right. And that can happen in a general reminder. Um, one of the things that, um, I always share with my client is, oh, you got a new boss or you got a new job. So if you had someone new working for you, what would you want them to ask you? And they normally say things like, well, do I want an email or a text or a phone call? And I say, great. How do you want them to communicate with you? So then I respond by saying, how important would it be for you to have that conversation with your boss and ask them how they want you to communicate with them? That’s the coaching protocol, right?

Lee Kantor: Mhm.

Lisa Gillette: So that I think is something that is super important for any woman is to be able to ask, to be able to communicate. And I provide a lot of what I call customizable scripts. So if you’re going to have that difficult conversation. What’s the best way to do it is to say you, you know, the other person, you say you seem to be upset or you seem to have an issue, I can I help you with this? We can figure this out together. So you immediately take the focus to the other person who’s you do. This is a coaching tool. Acknowledge and validate. Anyone in your situation who had just lost their best team member, of course, would be wondering how they’re going to replace them. That’s a legitimate response. How can I help you with that? Can I recommend some people who might be able you could hire. We can figure this out together. So that’s a really simple script that I provide. And that’s one of the things I do that I think is a little bit different than many coaches is I provide scripts that can be customized once we’ve identified what the initial obstacle is. Then I’ve got a script to navigate around that, and that’s because I had to do that. So it’s all based in past experience.

Lee Kantor: And it’s based on these are things that are going to happen in a lot of cases. So be ready for them and you can prepare ahead of time. Is it reminds me of a story my wife was doing, uh, annual review. She she worked in corporate for a long time, and she’d have an annual review. And then the first time she had an annual review kind of took her. I mean, not that it should, but it took her by surprise, and she was like, trying to remember all the stuff. And then from that point forward, she just made a folder. So whenever something happened, she just put it in the folder so that she had the receipts. Like you said at the end, she was ready. So then the annual review took her just a few minutes because she was just going through the folder that had all the receipts.

Lisa Gillette: Exactly. That’s exactly right. I call it logging your wins, because we know that the human brain, let’s face it, the human brain is not to think, create or ideate. The major reason we have brains is to keep our bodies safe, right? There’s so much that goes on in our brain behind our conscious thought. So the brain is trained to remember the bad stuff instead of the good stuff, which is why it’s critical to keep a log of wins. I help the company, uh, close this deal. I help the company reach their annual quota. Um, you know, the president of the company said. Great job on that presentation. Write it all down. Yeah. Yeah. Your wife learned very quickly. Is she coaching now?

Lee Kantor: Uh, she’s not coaching now, but she’s, uh. I mean, when she told me she was doing that. I’m like, everybody should do that. Like that.

Lisa Gillette: Exactly.

Lee Kantor: It takes all the stress out of it because it’s like you said. And there’s also a recency bias where you only remember what just happened. You know, in the last month you don’t remember ten months ago.

Lisa Gillette: Exactly. Like what did you do for me today? I’m forgetting what you did for me yesterday. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: So, um, who is that ideal client for you right now? Is it somebody that is kind of needs to negotiate? Is that kind of the point of entry? A lot of folks have when it comes when they’re coming to you because they’re in that. I gotta triage this because I don’t know, I don’t want to miss out an opportunity, so I want to negotiate properly.

Lisa Gillette: Um, I do a lot of that in my group coaching with younger women. Um, that is, I would say, the big sell. I don’t know how to start the conversation. I don’t know what to say. I feel uncomfortable saying it. Um, one of the things that I love that you said about your wife is log your wins. That’s one of the things I do in my online course, which is, you know, what are the steps to prepare? How do you do the research? Formal and informal. Um, one of the things that I think many people forget, and it’s so important is if I would say to you, Lee, I know you’re an expert in radio broadcast. I know you know how to interview. Could you give me some pointers? You’re immediately going to go to me, Lisa. Of course. I’d love to help you. So when you have to negotiate a salary, you want to have your data. You want to have your formal data. And there’s so many websites right now out there that list salary ranges. And what’s happened now in the last ten years is most job descriptions will list a salary range. That wasn’t the case so much when I was working in corporate. You really had to ask and dig. But if I wanted to go talk to a male counterpart and say to him, Bob, I don’t know why I use Bob, it just pops up. Bob, you know, Bob, I you’re really good at your job, and I know you know this industry. If I was looking at this title with this number of years of experience, do you think a range from X to Y would be fair.

Lisa Gillette: Or is that below market? Now Bob is going to go. Oh, she thinks I’m an expert. I’m going to share my opinion. And so that is a great way to do informal research. And I tell all my clients who are negotiating. You have to go talk to your male counterparts to get the real deal. I mean, here there was a study done well, maybe five years ago, I don’t. I think Pew might have done that Pew Research. I’m not sure. Don’t quote me on that. But they found out that most recruiters today working in corporate America always go a little bit higher with the salary for women versus men, for the very thing you said, because most women don’t negotiate. Now, the research says 60% of men and women don’t. But look at the cultural norm, the societal expectation. Women don’t ask. Women are supposed to be there to help. They’re not supposed to be there to execute there. They don’t ask if recruiters are thinking, well, I better give that woman like another 2000 Thousand, in the salary total because she’s not going to ask. Then you’ve got to come in with your research when you do ask. Because one thing I tell my clients, if you don’t ask, the answer is always no. So be prepared. Do your research. Have your numbers. Have your receipts. Have those quantifiable contributions to the bottom line. Document it and bring it all in. And then make the conversation a win win.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you. What is the best way to connect is that. Do you have a website? Is it through LinkedIn?

Lisa Gillette: Do you have a website? And I am on LinkedIn. So I would say one really easy way to reach me is big sky. Big sky dot. I had to get a vanity URL and a vanity email. Big Sky is my website. There’s a bunch of free stuff there, and there’s also some other stuff that if you want to spend just a little bit of money, there’s a strategies playbook. There’s also information about my online course. And you could also reach out to me on my email, which is Lisa Lisa at Big Sky Dot coach. I use the phrase big sky for my company because when you see the big picture, you find the opportunities. So Lisa at Big Sky Coach or Big Sky coach, that’s the website and you can contact me either way.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well Lisa, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Lisa Gillette: Well, thank you, Lee, for this opportunity. I really appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.