Considering leaving your 9 to 5 to grow your own business? You should negotiate quitting strategically to avoid burning bridges. Employees often limit negotiating to the idea of asking for more money. But Charreah Jackson, corporate facilitator, career coach, and author of “Boss Bride: The Powerful Woman’s Playbook for Love and Success,” says that there is more than one currency that you should be negotiating for. Here she provides tips on quitting your job to start a business
“A lot of people see their job as a roadblock to their dreams. When a lot of times, until you can afford to hire yourself in your business don’t look at that job as a roadblock, look at that job as an investment. Look at it being the financial ability to pursue that dream.” To that point Jackson says that one of the best pieces of advice that she received from her business coach was, “See yourself as a CEO and treat your job like a client. You treat it like you biggest client, but, it doesn’t have to be your only client.”
Change your perspective
Changing your perspective about where you are and how you’re investing your time and talents can help you become a better negotiator. For one, you can negotiate for more time or flexibility of your schedule.
“Depending on where you are you probably can’t leave just yet. Have you had the conversation around clarity?” says Jackson. Two questions that she says that you have to ask yourself and answer honestly. The first one being, are you killing it? Secondly, can you do it in less time?
Some of the things that can propose are working remotely; receiving comp days to recoup for time that you worked outside of your traditional work schedule; getting an assistant; receiving executive coaching; or having membership fees and conferences covered. And the list goes on.
Jackson considers all of these to be currencies.
“Yes, money is a currency. But our most precious currency is time. When you want to leave a company, I want you to be clear that you are leaving the company with those things, too.”
That is why is why she says that it important to see negotiating as an ongoing conversation opposed to a one-time ask.
Have a strategy for your vision
In addition to those conversations, Jackson says that you have to be strategic. And she wants to share her five-step strategy with you:
- Clarity – If you shift the perspective from where ever you are is stopping you from doing what you were meant to do’ to ‘this was assigned to my journey and it’s here to help me’ you can everything out of it that you were meant to get.
- Community – One of my mantras is, “Support is all around me and everyone is on my team” When you navigate and grow you have to see everyone as on your team. You can ask anyone anything but you have to earn the right to ask.
- Currency – Yes money is great but there are so many tangible and intangible currencies that you can ask for.
- Conversation – One of the reasons that negotiating seems so stressful is because we’re not having enough conversations so we let everything build up into this one conversation. Promotions and raises do not come out of one conversation. They are ongoing dialogues.
- Confirmation – One of the things that I’ve found is that too often something is said and we celebrate it but we don’t confirm it via email and months later we try to follow up and there’s no record of it. The second that someone tells you that they are going to follow up with you write them an email so that instead of it being a conversation that no one remembers there’s a record.
If you want to learn more about how you can become a better negotiator and increase your net-worth, join Charreah Jackson at the SOAR Empowerment Series in Atlanta on Saturday, April 6. Click here to secure your seat!