Knowing Your Value (2 page)

We marveled at all that was possible but also commiserated about the cost of our choices. The sacrifice. The determination that meeting our challenges required. I had just written a memoir, and I mentioned that I had an idea for another book, but I didn’t think my schedule would allow me to write it. I wasn’t getting enough time with my family. I could barely do any of my jobs well. I was wavering about whether this was a project I should throw myself into.

She asked what the concept was, and as I described to her my theories about women and value, I realized immediately I’d hit a nerve. She said, “You have to write this book. This is important. This is the next part of the conversation. Even more, this book is in you. You have to write it. It’s
so
important.” And then she proceeded to tell me about the White House Council on Women and Girls, and its efforts for National Equal Pay Day, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and all the studies they had underway. She told me the administration had people at every level dealing
with women’s issues, whether it be access to capital or the gender wage gap. Valerie not only urged me to write the book, she said, “I’ll help you. What can I do? We’ve gotten really far. Women run the world. But we’re not getting our value.”

She was an inspiration to me and a catalyst for this project. What really was just a casual visit had taken a dramatic turn, and I walked out of her office knowing I was going to write this book. I realized that if my story spoke to Valerie, then certainly it would speak to others.

Luckily,
Morning Joe
is a place where power players come to be a part of the national conversation. So I didn’t have to go too far to find successful women who were willing to be interviewed on the subject of knowing their value. I spoke with influential women in government such as Brooksley Born, Sheila Bair, and Elizabeth Warren; personal-finance expert Suze Orman; media entrepreneurs Arianna Huffington and Tina Brown; women’s magazine leaders like
More
magazine’s Lesley Jane Seymour and
Cosmopolitan
’s Kate White. I interviewed Nora Ephron, Joy Behar, and Susie Essman. I spoke to top researchers on the subject of gender and negotiation, such as Harvard’s Hannah Riley Bowles. For the male perspective, I asked the likes of Donald Trump, Jack Welch, and Donny Deutsch to weigh in. Some of the interviewees had been on the show; some, like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, I thought
should
be on the show.

The women I interviewed manage multibillion-dollar companies, run our government, and oversee our economy. These are women who deal day to day with challenges of
national importance, yet I was struck by how similar our psychology was as we shared our experiences in the workplace. I assumed such successful women must somehow have been smarter about their careers and their money. They must have taken a different road—we couldn’t possibly have made similar mistakes. But as I began sharing my struggles with women in a variety of fields, many of them told me of their own troubled efforts to get a raise, earn a promotion, or just to have their ideas heard in the conference room. Why are things that seem to be simple for many men so difficult for many women? Why do we undermine ourselves, often right from the start?

There are lessons to be learned from my experience, and from the experiences of a number of far more successful women I spoke with when writing this book.

How have they managed to be compensated for their true value? What have they done wrong, and what have they done
right
? Their answers were surprisingly honest and unexpectedly revealing. Apparently none of them played the game exactly the way the men did. Among other things, they taught me some important lessons about getting out of my own way, learning to speak up, negotiating from a place of power instead of fear, owning my success, and perhaps most important, getting the compensation I deserve.

After all, there’s money to be made in these lessons. And the lessons apply to everything in life. Money, in this book, is simply a metaphor. This is about being valued in the way you should be at work or anywhere. Every lesson that you will read about in this book can apply to relationships, raising children,
marriage, being in a profession, being in an industry, changing jobs ... everything. Because if you don’t demand what you’re worth and if you don’t communicate it well, you won’t be treated fairly, and the relationship will ultimately die. And if you don’t ask for what you deserve, you won’t ever find out what you’re made of, and what you truly can do. You undermine yourself by not developing your tools and learning what to do with them and what not to do with them; how to use your voice, your brain, your words, your style, your approach, your finesse, everything in your power to get your value.

It’s okay to say what you want and what you need. Because if you want a relationship to work, you’ve got to get what you want and what you need. If you don’t, you’re giving, giving, giving, and you end up with nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Ultimately, MSNBC showed me the money. I got a significant raise, but not in the way I would ever have anticipated. Mine truly was an unconventional path, and I advise you not to walk it yourself. I’ll tell you more about my experience later in the book.

To its credit, MSNBC not only made good, but it has taken up the cause. After I got this book contract I went to our boss, Phil Griffin—one of the stars in this book and the man who passed on giving me a raise until I was able to effectively communicate my value. I said to him, “Listen, I’ve got a book deal. I’m going to write about knowing my value, and I’m going to write about the mistakes I’ve made. And I want to write about mistakes I’ve made with you.” He thought about it for less than a second and said, “Absolutely.”

Then Phil raised the bar and suggested we go further. We started talking about ways we could feature the issue on the show, and MSNBC even did an online survey to provide research for the book (for details on methodology, see the copyright page). Even after reading the manuscript of this book, Phil has been on board as my biggest cheerleader. He knows a story that will resonate and, yes, sell. After all, the issue of equal pay, the gender wage gap, knowing your value—these are perennially important issues that affect women everywhere. And in the current “man-cession,” as men are losing their jobs and families are depending more heavily on women’s income, equal pay is an issue that’s more timely than ever, and truly affects everyone.

There are a variety of reasons for gender inequality in the workplace. Many of them are complicated, and some are not completely understood. But in sharing these cautionary tales and personal victories, research and anecdotal evidence, I hope women will learn something that helps them chart their own course. I don’t claim that we will eliminate the gender wage gap—not even close. But we can strategize and do much better for ourselves, and for the next generation. What I’ve learned from the women I’ve interviewed will stay with me. I want to share their wisdom with my daughters, and in this book I will share their wisdom with you.

W
hen I started at MSNBC in 2007, I was really starting over.

At the time, I had been out of work for almost a year after losing my job as a weekend anchor and a
60 Minutes
contributor at CBS News. In the wake of a scandal about a
60 Minutes
story on George Bush’s military record and a management shake-up, I was let go with hardly any notice and little financial cushion.

I spent the year that followed searching for a job with the help of an agent who arranged meetings for me with executives at the various broadcast and cable networks. Every month, my prospects went down a rung. First, my agent was
able to set up meetings with network presidents. Then I was meeting with vice presidents, then talent recruiters. Before long, I could barely get an appointment with anyone. I was nearly forty years old, and my career was in shambles—basically I was old news. My best days appeared to be behind me, and I wasn’t considered a worthy investment.

After months of fruitless searching, I realized the right strategy was to start over. I had worked at NBC’s cable division earlier in my career, and I had liked it there. The people knew me, and it had been a good fit. So I called MSNBC and begged for a job. Not a job they thought I would take given my experience, not a job they thought I would want, but whatever on-air job they had available. Reluctantly, the president of NBC News told me there was an opening for a news-reader position: someone who would read thirty-second news updates, called cut-ins, three times a night on MSNBC. He was describing a low-paying freelance position, and I grabbed onto it for dear life, like a ledge that I hoped would stop the free fall of my career.

If you looked at that MSNBC job in the context of my resume, you’d see that it was a considerable step back from my high-profile correspondent job at CBS. It was even a big step back from my job at MSNBC ten years earlier. I spent my fortieth birthday doing cut-ins, but it was fine. It was work, and I was proud of myself. My girls were watching Mommy take a huge step back in order to bring home a paycheck. There was as much value in this moment as the day I got a huge contract at CBS that included a
60 Minutes
deal. I was going to be okay. We were going to be okay.

After a year of having their mother home and with money being tight, my two daughters were ready for me to go back to work. My husband, Jim, definitely was. They were all used to me as a working mom, and they knew I enjoyed it. Work was what made me sparkle, and it was what I contributed to the household. I earned money far better than I cooked dinner. The job reading news cut-ins would be a piece of cake, and a part-time position was better than no position. I had to be realistic about my current value in the marketplace.

While I have regrets about not knowing what my compensation could and should have been at key moments in my career, I look back at the decision to take that job with great pride. Part of knowing your value is knowing when it is down and when it’s time to take steps to rebuild. My biggest challenge has been knowing when my stock is up.

My first months back at MSNBC, I worked about four hours each day. In between my thirty-second news cut-ins, I paid my bills and listened over the phone to my girls’ piano practice. After a year of unemployment, this job was just fine. It was predictable, it was good for the kids, and it was great to be back in the game, but the work was boring. Extremely boring. I felt confident of my talent, but I couldn’t do much with it in that position.

It wasn’t long before the executive producer of daytime news programming recruited me to substitute host full news hours during the day. Within weeks I was on the schedule for the cut-ins as well as the full hour at three PM on weekdays. MSNBC and NBC started to give me assignments throughout
the building, and my days became more interesting and a lot longer.

My hosting duties weren’t as high profile as the role I had played at MSNBC seven years earlier when I cohosted the women’s show
HomePage
with Ashleigh Banfield and Gina Gaston. Nor was it on the level of my lead role covering the 2000 presidential election and recount. But it was a job in the field I love.

After my first time substituting on a news hour, the word spread quickly about my performance; my new colleagues, who knew nothing of my long history in the business, were coming up to me in the halls, giving me high-fives and saying, “Wow! You’re really good!”

In this business, you are as good as your last story. On cable, apparently you are as good as your last on-air minute.

I was tapped to do an
NBC News Special Report
when Brian Williams was unavailable and no one else was around. My delivery was flawless, and once again everyone seemed pleasantly surprised. No one remembered or had any idea that I did dozens of special reports for CBS News. So here I was, suddenly an up-and-comer all over again.

Still, I smiled and accepted the compliments. I was grateful for the opportunity to show the producers what I could do. The network realized I was useful, and I was convinced that sooner or later the right job would open up for me. Three months later, it did.

In May 2007, Don Imus was pulled off the air for making offensive statements about the Rutgers women’s basketball players during his early morning show. Immediately
there was a three-hour void on the MSNBC airwaves. I remember thinking, “Oh god, I hope they don’t make me fill those hours reading news—what a miserable shift.”

Little did I know how many high-profile male television personalities were maneuvering for the spot. Filling Imus’s shoes was a very big deal.

A few days after the Imus firing, I bumped into Joe Scarborough, an MSNBC prime-time talk show host and former Florida congressman. Joe worked out of a studio in Pensacola, Florida, and he was in town to audition for the Imus slot. I had never met him, and knew his face only because when I read my news cut-ins in the network control room every evening, I would do what’s called a toss back to his news and opinion show,
Scarborough Country
, and his face would pop up on the monitors in front of me. Every night at 7:59, I’d say, “That’s a look at the news. Now back to
Scarborough Country
.” I never watched the show because I was always yanking off my microphone and hurrying back to find new ways to fill my downtime.

Joe introduced himself, and after a brief conversation I could see wheels turning in his head. He asked me if I would be interested in hosting the morning show with him. My answer was, “Why?” His question didn’t make any sense. I told him I was a forty-year-old washed-up newswoman and housewife from Westchester. His response was, “Exactly! Someone real!” He was dead serious. I was thrown off, because I was serious, too: I knew what television executives were looking for, and it wasn’t me. But Joe seemed to recognize the contribution I could make to the show. I liked that. He seemed to want me
as myself,
rather than someone acting the part of a television cohost. If he meant what he said, it would be an intriguing opportunity.