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I don't know about you, but I learned this one thing really, really early on. To be agreeable, be easy, don't make waves. And I was good at it. I was the easy one. I was the one who didn't ask for much. I was complacent. And what nobody told me in that time is that I thought it was keeping me safe. And it wasn't. It was keeping me stuck. Hey, it's Renee, and welcome to the into the Wild podcast. Each week I'll unravel growth, mindset methods, authority building techniques, and the secrets to living an integrated life. Plus chat with expert guests to teach you the fearlessness needed to step into your greatness. Are you ready for it? Let's get wild. This podcast is a Martell Media production. Hey, you wild thing. Are you ready to start asking for what you want? That's what today's podcast episode is all about. Because as I reflected through certain parts of my life, I realized, hmm, I was a people pleaser. And maybe this sounds like you. You'd rather just do the thing or not get paid as much or take on all the tasks because you're so worried about stepping on other people's toes and upsetting them. If you make less than the men in your industry, if you work more hours than your business partner for the same equity split, or maybe you carry the full mental load at home while your partner asks, what's for dinner? I need you to hear this. You didn't end up here by accident. You subconsciously trained people to just keep treating you like that. Maybe you knew it, maybe you didn't, and maybe you just thought, well, this just is the way it is and so we'll just keep going this way. And it's not because you're weak or because you lack ambition, but because every time you didn't ask for the thing that you wanted, every time you accepted less than what you deserved, every time you made yourself smaller to make someone else comfortable, you sent a signal out like a flag and they listened. What we aren't talking about these days is that this is not a one time negotiation. It's a pattern. And the women who ask for less, whether or not they know they're doing it, don't just get less once. They get less every single time. In their pricing, in their partnerships, in their relationships, in the opportunities that come their way. Because the world doesn't give you what you deserve. It gives you what you've trained it to believe you'll accept. And here's the part that makes Me the most upset. We've been told the problem is confidence. That if we just believed in ourselves more, we'd ask for more. That's not it. The problem isn't belief. It's behavior. You spent years conditioning the people around you to expect less from you, and now you're wondering why they're not offering more. An idolist. All too well. Because I lived it. I built a million dollar PR agency while pregnant, had two babies in the same year, grew a team of 10 up to 12, and still spent years undercharging over, delivering and convincing myself that was just what we're supposed to do. This is what hard work actually looked like. It wasn't until I stopped making myself smaller that I realized the problem was never my capacity. The problem was what we'd been willing to accept and what I'd been willing to accept because it was just normal. Today we're going to dismantle that pattern. I'm not here to tell you to lean in or to speak up or any of the surface level advice. I want to show you exactly how under asking has shaped your reality and what changes the moment you stop. Number one is the invisible tax you're paying every single day. It's like, such a cliched word these days. It's such an overused word, but it's true. It's like you. You're paying for something you don't know you're paying for. Let's start with what under asking actually costs you. Because I don't think we talk about this enough, and especially in my circle of friends, we're just starting to talk about what this actually means and what this looks like. It's not just the money you didn't make on the deal that you underpriced. It's not just the promotion you didn't get because you didn't put your name forward. It's not the compound effect of a thousand small moments where you made yourself smaller and the world adjusted accordingly. Think about the last time you didn't ask for what you wanted. Maybe it was a price increase you've been sitting on for like, six months because you kept telling yourself, next quarter or next sale. Or it could have been asking your partner to take the kids so you could work uninterrupted for two hours on a Saturday. In that moment, it felt like no big deal. But here's what actually happened. You reinforced a pattern and you told your nervous system that it's safer to stay quiet than to risk rejection. It's safer to stay Quiet so that people around you can stay comfortable. You told the people around you that you'll accept less. And you created a little bit more evidence that asking is actually dangerous. And that's on you, not on them. And now multiply that. Every day, every every week, every year you've been doing this. The cost isn't just what you didn't get in that one moment. It's the identity you've built around being someone who doesn't ask. See what I'm saying? It's the opportunities that stopped coming because people assumed you weren't interested. It's the resentment that builds when you're giving more than you're getting and nobody seems to notice. And it's the slow erosion of your own belief that you deserve more, because every time you accepted less, you handed yourself a tiny piece of evidence that maybe less is what you're worth. I had a client come to me a while back, totally burnt out. Six figure business, working 60 hours a week and still felt like she was barely keeping up. When we got under the hood, the issue wasn't her workload. It ended up being her pricing. She'd been charging the same rates for three years, even though her expertise had doubled, even though her demand had tripled, even though her testimonials and case studies were through the roof. I asked her why, and she said this. I didn't want to lose any of my clients. And I had to gently say to her, by keeping your prices low, you weren't just undervaluing your work, you were training your clients and the people you're selling to to undervalue you. You've built an entire business on top of asking for less. And now the tax was due. Guess who's paying? And that invisible task of under asking is financial. It costs your energy, it makes you emotional. It's the thing keeping you stuck, even when you know you're capable of so much more. And so imagine raising your rates but not having to do more work. Imagine using that new amount of revenue to hire the people to replace all the work that you shouldn't be doing. That's what I'm talking about. You're employing people, you're giving opportunity. And then you're able to execute on your client's work even better because you're charging more. Number two, you're not just asking for less. You're teaching them what you're worth. Here's the ship that changes everything. When you don't ask, you're not just missing out on what you could have had you're actively teaching people what to expect from you. So you're not just missing out. You're telling people, oh, this is the way that I'll allow you to treat me. So every time you accept less than you know you're worth, you're setting a precedent. Every time you don't negotiate, you're telling the other person that this is the number that you're going to take. And the wild part is this. Your clients and your customers aren't sitting around thinking about how to low ball you. They're just responding to the signals you've been sending. Your partner at home isn't deliberately ignoring your needs. Maybe sometimes they've just learned that you'll handle it even if they don't. Now, I know we can go and destruct the whole Western society, cultural, men versus women expectations at home, but this is not what this conversation is about. This conversation is about the fact that you have the opportunity to break that pattern and you're not doing it. This is where most advice falls short, and I've seen it time and time again. We're told to ask for more, but nobody explains that. Asking isn't just about getting what you want in the moment. It's about resettling and resetting the entire relationship. It's about teaching people that your worth is not up for negotiation. And it sucks the first time you do this. It's so tough. Lose sleep at night when you're like, tomorrow morning's the morning I need to get up and I can tell my husband I'm never putting out the trash again. That's his job. And this is true for business, and it's true for life and relationships. Think about the friend who always expects you to be. The one who listens but never asks how you're doing. Or the family member who assumes you'll host every holiday, handle every crisis, be the one who holds it all together. You didn't sign up for that rule. You slid into it. One unspoken yes at a time, one undefined boundary at a time. I'll give you another example of my own life. When I started that PR agency, I undercharged massively because I was just trying to prove myself. I was so grateful that anyone wanted to work with me that I just said yes to the rates I knew were too low. Those clients became my most demanding clients, not because they were bad people, but because I'd set the tone. I taught them that my time was cheap, so they treated it that way. They booked calls whenever the heck they wanted to with me because I told them that's okay. You know, those loose end deliverables, they were just scope creep galore because they could. Because I told them they could. Without telling them. I. I lowered my standards and they took advantage. Now, the shift didn't happen when I worked harder in all this. It happened when I stopped calculating my rates based on hours and started charging for the actual value I was bringing to the table. The transformation I was creating for my clients. And I was done with nickel and diming. No more taking that extra phone call. No more unnecessary meetings. No more little moments of, oh, I can handle it. I was absorbing the work that I know I should have been charging for, and yet I wasn't charging for it. And it was work that I hated. And the clients who came after that, they were all completely different. They valued my expertise because I'd finally signaled that it was valuable. They respected my boundaries because I'd actually drawn them. I didn't just change my pricing. I changed the entire dynamic of how people showed up to work with me and asking for help. That's what it really looks like. It was never about the money or the title or the actual help. It's the message you're sending about who you are and what you're worth. You set the standard, you create the boundaries, and people either say yes or no. And those are non negotiables. Number three, the belief that keeps you asking for crumbs. Here it is. So why do we do this? Seriously? Why are we women who are running businesses, raising kids, holding. Holding it all together, Showing up at school pickup with our hair done and best lipstick on. Why are we the ones consistently asking for less than we deserve? And I'm not just talking about less money. I wanna be really clear about that. Because sure, it's about the money, but it's actually about so much more. I'm talking about the help you don't ask for from your partner. The thing that you let your friend get away with because it's easier than having the conversation. The credit someone else took in that meeting because you just didn't speak up and you let it slide. I'm talking about the rest that you keep putting off. The opportunity you watched go to somebody else because you didn't say, hey, I want that matter. In fact, I am so exhausted and overwhelmed from the event that's coming up for the summit and coaching, but a beautiful overwhelm, the busy overwhelm of stuff that I signed up for, I realized I need a day off. Geez, weird. And I'm not talking about, like, a Sunday afternoon. I'm talking about a day of the week where my team can handle the things. My kids are at school and I have the house to myself. And I'm just gonna do nothing. Maybe garden, whatever. Whatever I feel like doing that day. I'm not gonna schedule anything or plan anything because I knew that I deserved this rest. And this is coming up next week, and I can't wait. I'm gonna make this a normal thing. Why I didn't choose the weekends. Cause there's soccer, there's kids, there's sleepovers, and there's planning. The kids connecting with other kids. It's not that we don't know what we're worth. Of course we know. But somewhere along the way, we picked up this story that asking makes us difficult or needy or demanding or ungrateful or too much, whatever you want to call it. We've heard it all. And so we don't push, because if we push too hard, we might lose the whole thing. The job, the relationship, the love, whatever it is. So we just take what we're offered and we tell ourselves it's fine. You know the restaurant, and they're bringing you the wrong order. Are you the type of person that just takes what they put down and they say, oh, you know what? I didn't order this, but it's fine, I'll take it. Or do you say, sorry, Lisa, this is not the dish that I ordered. I ordered the whatever. Could you replace that quickly, please? Why not ask for what you ordered to begin with? I don't know about you, but I learned this one thing really, really early on, that to be agreeable, be easy, don't make waves. And I was good at it. I was the easy one. I was the one who didn't ask for much. I was complacent. And what nobody told me in that time is that I thought it was keeping me safe. And it wasn't. It was keeping me stuck. I thought it was keeping me safe. But not saying, hey, you know what? I want this thing, or I want to go to bed earlier, or I'd like to get that car, or I don't want to do school drop off anymore. Here's what I want you to sit with in all this and, like, really reflect is if you don't believe that you deserve more, more of the time and the day that you want the things that you want, the business that you want, nobody around you is going to believe it either. Your prices, what you tolerate, what you say, yes, to when your whole body is saying no. That's all just you telling the world what you think you're worth. And the second you see that you have a choice in all of this, you can start showing yourself something different. That maybe asking actually brings you closer to the stuff you want while not even taking advantage of anybody else. Maybe the partner starts to step up because you said something and they're like oh geez, I actually do that. I'm sorry. Maybe you mentioned something to that friend who never asks about you and they start finally showing up because no one's ever mentioned it to them and they're like oh geez, I do that. I'm so sorry. Maybe it's the clients who pay you what you're worth and don't make you chase them for it. So asking isn't you being difficult, it's you being clear and aligned and in purpose and free. That's all it is. It's no different than being a man doing the same thing. Isn't that ironic? Women can ask for the same thing men want, but then all of a sudden now we're needy, we're pushy, we ask for too much. So we gotta break this pattern. The only way to break it is by step up, have the tough conversations, ask for what you want. And number four, here's what happens and changes the moment you start asking. It's everything. Not just the outcomes, but the entire energy of how you show up. And this isn't like some vague woo woo way, I mean like the actual quality of your life shifts because when you stop accepting the things that you don't want, the overdoing, the overperforming, being undervalued, you create space for more. It's the theory of abundance. When we first hired our house manager, our first one, Megan, it was really hard to delegate. She was full time and because my business, I was coaching and I wasn't working very many hours. But we needed this help cause there were so many other things that I was doing for the family. I felt guilty because if I wasn't earning the income then the first year that we had this house manager cuz I was out of my agency, shifting into something new. It was a weird period. The question I had was what value am I bringing if I'm not doing everything and I'm not getting paid? Maybe that's you, maybe that's the stay at home mom whose days aren't overly stressed out because the kids are self sufficient and then she feels guilty for asking for what she wants. Because she doesn't make an income. And society has done this beautiful way of weaving in support and providing value and contribution through only bringing in money, through only having revenue and profits. We seem to think that the only way that we contribute is in a valuable way in a household, is making money. And so because society has connected this, and men are the breadwinners in many situations, I'm not saying at all, it's like they all of a sudden have the power. They have the power to do what they want, say what they want, buy what they want, without asking the partner. Meanwhile, the partner's at home running everything, holding it all together. And there are women out there who do all this and they work and they make money and they're still contributing, but it's only at a certain percentage. It's diabolical. When you stop operating from scarcity, the feeling of competition, it melts away because you know there's enough for everybody. You don't discount or offer for cheap because you're not Walmart. And you start taking bigger chances because the bigger risk comes, bigger rewards. And you know that. You stop feeling like you have to take every opportunity that comes your way because you're afraid another one won't. You start making decisions from a place of alignment instead of desperation. I remember the first time I walked into a pitch and I stated my new price for our PR services without flinching. And it was going from 5k a month for a package where you get X, Y, Z, knowing that we were overworked, stressed out, still performing great value, to the next day, doubling that 10k a month for the exact same thing. And that client didn't flinch. They said, send over the contract. Let's get going. And that moment taught me something crucial. The women who get what they ask for aren't necessarily more qualified or more experienced. They're just more certain they've decided what they're worth and they're not negotiating anymore. And that certainty is magnetic. It changes the way people respond to you, the way they treat your time, the way they show up to the relationship, how organized they are when they're around you. Especially if you're a leader. You see, asking isn't just about getting more money or more help or more recognition. It's about reclaiming your power. It's about stepping, stepping out of the pattern of waiting to be chosen and choosing yourself first. And it starts small. It starts with the next invoice you send, the next conversation you have with your partner about splitting responsibilities. The next time someone asks you to do something that doesn't align, and you say no without over explaining or telling them why. It's one ask at a time, one boundary at a time. One moment of choosing yourself over the comfort of staying small. And that's how you break the pattern. Some people, of course they'll push back. Some clients, of course they'll say no. But the ones who stay are the ones that were always meant for you and the ones who probably saw your worth to begin with. Before I go, I want to share one last thing. I want to remind you that you're not behind. I want to remind you that you're not broken. I want to remind you that you haven't done anything wrong, especially when it comes to this topic. You've simply been operating inside a system that taught you being agreeable was safer than being honest. And that being easy was more important than being clear about what you needed. And you learned that you didn't choose it. And that thing that kept you safe as a girl thing. You know what I mean? The stories we tell ourself, it's the same thing keeping you small. Now you just have to go back and recognize that those old patterns, those old stories that you adopted since childhood, wherever you grew up, that are keeping you small. And here's what really gets me. It's not just about you anymore. If you've got a daughter, a niece, a sister, or any other women or girls in your life who watch you, who look up to you, she is learning from you right now. Not from what you tell her, but from what you accept. How you show up. She's watching what you take, what you tolerate, what you say yes to when your gut says no. And she's filing it all of the way as a blueprint for what a woman is allowed to want and how she's allowed to show up in this world. So let that sit in. If it's not gonna be for you because you don't value yourself enough, let it be for your daughter or your niece or the other women in your life. Because the women who ask for less are always going to get it. And not because the universe is rigged, although we think that our society is. Because I don't believe that God would ever pit man against woman. I think there's an opportunity and an awakening here that's happening. And even though you might be trained to ask for less and give more, the only way you can break this pattern is to start doing the things in alignment with the life you want to live. It doesn't have to Be perfect. And you're gonna stomach some knots and there's gonna be some storms. You just have to be consistent, teaching people how to treat you. So this week, do this one thing. Ask for the rate increase. Ask for help. Ask for the day off. Ask for the apology. Ask for the partner to step up. Ask for the room you've been avoiding being in. And when someone says no, don't make it mean. Don't make it think that it has anything to do with you or that you're too much, you're too loud, or you're not worth it. You just figured out who isn't your person or the timing is wrong and that's it. And it can be an actual gift because your standards don't scare the people and customers who are meant for you. They're attracted to them. The right clients, the right partners, the right opportunities. They're not looking for the smallest version of you. They're looking for the realest one. And they want to pay full price because they know that you're worth it. So stop making yourself smaller so other people can stay comfortable. And lastly, if you want to get in that room where women are blowing up, you know where it's at. July 9th and 10th in Kelowna, B.C. the summit is happening again. 450 women, incredible speakers, incredible sponsors and partners, ton of pink skirts. So if you're following me on Instagram, Renee Warren DM me the word summit and I'll send you the details. That's it for today. Go ask for the thing. Until next time, sista. Peace out. Wait. Before you go to support this show, please raise your rate and review and share it with your business besties. It means the world to me to get this message in front of more women who are also on the pursuit of greatness. Tune in wherever you subscribe to podcasts, watch us on YouTube and follow me on Instagram. Reneewarren this show is produced in partnership with Martell Media. Sam.