Child Life Wild Life
Jessica Lewin, CCLS & The Child Life Mentor, sits down with Certified Child Life Specialists, students, and professionals to talk about topics surrounding the field of child life. Come and gain tangible next steps and confidence as you learn how to use your child life skills, protect your mental health, and glean inspiration, hope, and ideas. I'm so happy you're here!
Child Life Wild Life
The Wild Life of Mastering Salary Negotiations and Self-Advocacy with Rachel Calvert and Nicole Boik
Certified Child Life Specialist, Jessica Lewin, talks with friends and CCLSs, Rachel Calvert and Nicole Boik, about navigating salary discussions, counter-offering, and gauging organization's culture in order to be navigate compensation
Are you ready to master the art of salary negotiations and self-advocacy in the child life profession? Nicole Boik and Rachel Calvert, both seasoned child life specialists, join us to shed light on this essential topic. They share their unique experiences and perspectives on navigating salary discussions, counter-offering, and gauging an organization's culture. You can expect to gain practical strategies that will empower you to tackle challenging conversations and maintain your mental health.
As we journey with Nicole and Rachel through their diverse careers, expect a wealth of knowledge on self-advocacy, leadership, and physician advocacy in shaping a thriving pediatric oncology program. We also delve into the importance of transparency in compensation discussions and the nuances of the pay augmentation hierarchy system.
From negotiating job offers to understanding child life compensation and market ranges, Nicole and Rachel’s experiences offer invaluable insights. We explore the best time to ask for a pay increase, the power of professional relationships, and how to use them to unlock opportunities. We end on a high note, discussing how to use your child life skills in various roles and why you should never underestimate the art of networking. Tune in for this thought-provoking conversation and learn how to effectively stand up for yourself and the child life profession.
You can connect with Rachel via email at rachel.calvert@fairview.org.
Nicole can be found on Instagram as @childlifemilsolife.
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I think it's something we need to get more comfortable talking about amongst each other too, because it's really easy to kind of stay to yourself and get so almost like self-conscious, like oh is this something I should talk about? But really there's no one telling you that you can't talk about it, there's no one telling you that you shouldn't talk about it. It's just, I feel like a kind of a culture shift that we're seeing, or one of many culture shifts we're seeing, is talking about what is a fair wage. What does that look like? And I think we should be doing the same.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Child Life Wildlife Podcast, a platform dedicated to sharing the honest ends and outs and vulnerable truths about the child life profession. With your host, jessica Luhann, come and gain tangible next steps and confidence as you learn how to use your child life skills, protect your mental health and glean inspiration, hope and ideas from fellow certified child life specialists, students and professionals. And now here's your host, jessica Luhann.
Speaker 3:Hello and welcome to the Child Life Wildlife Podcast. Today I have Nicole Boyk and Rachel Calvert joining me to talk a little bit about salary and self-advocacy in child life. I think this topic is really super important. They both come at this from very different parts of their child life career. Rachel has been a child life specialist since 2007 and has moved up into leadership roles in 2015,. And she's worked more at a large children's hospital. And then you have Nicole, who has been a child life specialist for six years, but she's had a lot of experience advocating for herself and her salary as she has gone through several different facilities and learned a little bit about what it's like to be in the hot seat and negotiate your salary with HR or the child life team.
Speaker 3:And I had to stop halfway through the episode and be like is it okay if we're going over an hour? Because truly, I could have talked to both of them for a very long time. I feel like this felt like I was listening to a podcast that I didn't have a lot of experience in. I think so often I get people on the podcast where I kind of know where the conversation is going and I kind of understand because I'm asking the questions, but this conversation really pushed me to a place that I was reflecting back on my life and the things that I've negotiated or had to do in my career and times where I was kind of like kicking myself because I was like I should have used this tactic. Had I known four years ago, I could have done this. So I just really hope that this can be used as a tool and for other child life specialists to just have really really great conversations and hopefully we can all take something from this conversation and move forward in child life, being able to advocate for ourselves, advocate for our profession and, at the end of the day, get paid a decent salary to be able to do this.
Speaker 3:So, without further ado, here is my conversation with Nicole Boyk and Rachel Calvert on salary negotiations and self advocacy in child life. Hi, nicole and Rachel, thank you so much for joining me on the Child Life Wildlife podcast. Thanks for having us. Yay, yeah, thanks. I'm so excited to hear from both of you about kind of this discussion of self advocacy in child life and learning how to negotiate salary and all of that good stuff. Before we get to any of that I would love for both of you to take a second and just tell me in my listeners who you are, how long you've been a child life specialist, some fun facts or really anything you'd like for all of us to hear about you.
Speaker 4:Sure I can jump in. My name is Rachel Calvert and I have been a child life specialist since 2007. So quite a while here it doesn't feel like it was that long but was a child life specialist to start in a one person program at a community hospital in Minnesota and I have since worked at an academic medical center as a child life specialist in a variety of locations and then also at a separate free standing children's hospital all within Minnesota. So I'm a Minnesota girl born and raised and I moved into leadership positions in 2015. So I've served as a child life supervisor and then child life manager now at two different programs, and so really excited to be here today and talk about self advocacy and things that I found have been helpful, but, most importantly, the things I found not helpful, with the hopes that people can maybe not make some of the same mistakes that I did.
Speaker 1:I love that I'm Nicole. I currently work at a children's hospital, in an adult hospital. I've been a child life specialist for about six years. I worked in a couple other places before this, but pretty much all of it has been, you know, in with oncology patients in some capacity. Let's see a fun fact oh, I'm a military spouse, which is always interesting being in this field, because everyone thinks, oh my gosh, you've lived so many places, you must have been looking for a job. No, I just moved because I'm attached to somebody that moves. And then I have a wonderful almost three year old that is super, super wild and super super talkative nowadays, which is really fun.
Speaker 3:Awesome. So let's dive in a little bit to what has your experience looked like leading up to where you are now. Rachel, I know you touched on that just a little bit, but could you go into more depth about what units you've covered or roles you've held before you've ended up where you are?
Speaker 4:today. Absolutely Like I said, I started in a one percent program at a community hospital and so really provided services to a pediatric inpatient unit. There was a pediatric intensive care unit and step down unit that were also part of that system, as well as an outpatient infusion center, and so that's really where I feel like I refined a lot of my clinical skills. I was there for about eight years and then relocated where I worked at a university-affiliated children's hospital, covering evening weekend, and so for those of you out there that have worked and covered an entire house, I know exactly what that can feel like, sometimes as the only child life specialist in the building, but really continue to refine my practice, working with some diagnosis and specialties I hadn't had previous experience with, like a bone marrow transplant unit and other solid organ transplants.
Speaker 4:And then I worked in the emergency department and another organization here in Minnesota before moving into a child life supervisor role, which was a new for that hospital position. So that was a pretty exciting to be able to semi develop that into what I thought it could and should be. So learned a lot but had really great mentorship from the Child Life Manager that was there at the time, which led me to taking a Child Life Manager position then at the Academic Medical Center. I had worked up before, and so I worked there as the leader of Child Life Specialists and then again transitioned back. If you can't tell, I've had a music and.
Speaker 4:Zags in my career back to where I had been a supervisor then as the manager when that manager retired, and so that opportunity really gave me a broader scope of roles that I supervised, so they had Child Life Associates, child Life Specialists. I also had the honor of leading the music therapy team and at the end there's some bereavement services, and so really got to learn how to develop my leadership to be able to represent disciplines that I had not clinically trained as, and then now I'm back leading a Child Life team and have added different roles here where I'm at now, including a therapy to gaming and technology specialist and some facility dogs. So really really love Child Life and really love kind of growing programs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's huge. You have a huge team, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:I like to start kind of pre-internship, because I had a little bit of a unique experience because I was a practicum student, a Child Life Assistant and an intern, all at the same place, and then I worked PR in that same facility right after my internship and that experience really helps me to see what I felt like was a thriving team, oriented really like transformational culture within a Child Life team. And I've taken a lot of those things that I've seen and I'm like, oh, maybe like well, we could do that or I want to do that one day, or things that really have stuck with me and I hope will, I think will continue to stick with me. I only worked PR in per month. Very much relate to what Rachel said about covering a whole house as a brand new, fresh out of internship Child Life Specialist. I was mortified, I was stressed out. I think I lost the tablet right before I left.
Speaker 1:And then I moved to Florida, where I'm originally from, because I had moved away for all of my schooling and my student experiences and in that facility I was one of three Child Life Specialists within a massive adult healthcare system. So it was new position, new kind of treatment they were offering for children with cancer and it was really like spearheaded by the physician. So I like to like think of that places like I had three bosses. I had the physician that really advocated for my position, I had the person that did my PTO and did my payroll, and then I had other people that were focused on you know how do we make this, this new pediatric oncology treatment program thrive. And that was really eye opening because I had never encountered a physician that worked so closely with Child Life and was such a strong advocate. I think I needed he was there for and I think I've carried a lot of that with me as well, because that's not something you see every day. And having this person who has so much knowledge, have so much confidence in your expertise and your knowledge is really eye opening. Kind of gave me the confidence moving forward, because I was still I mean, I had only been a Child Life Specialist for a month stepping into that role. So having someone at that point in my career have that kind of confidence in me was really really empowering.
Speaker 1:And then moving on to where I am now, like I said, it's a children's hospital within an adult hospital. We're a small team, there's only a handful of us. So it's, yes, I'm covering my, my HEMOC unit, but I'm also cross covering NICU. I'm helping out on general Peds. When needed, I'm helping out. You know, I follow my patients when they go to our PICU.
Speaker 1:And then there's all the other areas of the hospital that don't have Child Life. We're constantly being called for needs and radiology and surgery and renowned them in the ED just to kind of fulfill those needs that haven't yet been, you know, fulfilled with a, with a staffed Child Life position. And I think in all of these different roles I've had the challenge, but also the opportunity, to figure out how to advocate for myself, because it's never since, you know, I moved from away from that parent position at that, you know, awesome, slightly bigger team, I've had to do a lot of the advocating for myself and that's really helped me grow in that regard and kind of helps me, you know, feel comfortable even talking about salary and the things we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's so interesting to hear you both have very different experiences on how you've learned how to advocate for yourself one at a very large children's hospital with a big team, and then one at a smaller children's hospital within an adult hospital. I'm really excited for both of your perspectives on this. So let's move into. When looking at the ACLP salary survey, as three educated Child Life specialists sitting here today, what could somebody take away from this information? I know for me, when I originally looked at it, it was misleading to me. I I felt from my personal experience it didn't fit or align with what I had experienced as my salary. But how could somebody use this tool to serve them?
Speaker 1:So I am. In the past have just used a salary survey more for personal use. So, with with bouncing around kind of a lot to follow my husband and his military career, I've had the opportunity to negotiate salary and one of the things I use is the salary survey. So I'm not using it so much to advocate for myself once I'm already in a position. I'm using it to advocate for myself before I'm even committing to a position and I use, you know, the different averages and things like that, the data that they've pulled from the survey, to say, hey, like this is the average for this region or this is the average based on this type of setting, and it's going to vary based on you know, where I'm, where I'm moving in my career, what kind of facility I'm stepping into and what region that facility is in.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I would echo that. I do think I've used that primarily for my own personal use too. I think, jessica, as you mentioned, it hasn't always aligned with my personal experience of job offers. I, in my description of where I've worked, have definitely moved into different roles at different organizations, all within the same geographical region, but have had significant different offers made for a similar position, so a childlike specialist in one.
Speaker 4:Definitely the offers varied, and so I think with the ECLP salary survey really is is again that summary of self-reported salaries, and so I had to, I think, reframe that for myself in terms of what am I actually looking at? It's based on who actually completed the survey and so there's quite a wide range and variety in who participated in the survey. But again, I think can be really useful, at least as a benchmark for people that are exploring a new position to see you can get a lot of information about cost of living in certain areas or other kinds of expenses that you might have as you're trying to decide whether or not a job is a good fit for you. That I think the ACLP salary survey can be helpful, just as one piece of that exploration to decide am I gonna be able to make it work in this area or in this with my years of experience or with the degrees that I have.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's such a good point to draw towards the ACLP salary survey is that it was self-reported. I really wish that they could have just tapped into actual hospitals to say, like, provide us with your salaries, because self-reported, I think can somebody might be putting in their net versus their gross income and that could skew things. Or, like you said, it's self-reported. So when I got that and I felt like I was being underpaid, I was like, oh, let me put my numbers in here, because I was frustrated and people who may be getting paid well may not have put their numbers in there and that could absolutely skew things too.
Speaker 4:For sure. One other note about that and I might be jumping ahead to where we're gonna. We're gonna get to today, but in my rules. Another point about the self-reporting piece of the salary survey is my organizations have not recognized that as a valid tool. So again the reason I think we're using it as it's really helpful in your personal exploration.
Speaker 4:Organizations I've worked in have their own compensation strategy and so I have for sure brought the ACLP salary survey to then, as part of my negotiation tactics, that have been met with some resistance in terms of using it because of the nature of the survey. And, again, most large organizations at minimum have some sort of compensation strategy and they haven't considered things like self-reported salary surveys as something that would influence their decisions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's fair. That does bring us to our next question here. So what other means or tools could Child Life Specialists use to negotiate their salary?
Speaker 4:I feel like your most important salary negotiation is when you accept a job, and so, again, I have a lot of thoughts on this topic. But I think it's really important for each individual person to understand first what is important to them, and so there's a lot more to compensation than just your base rate of pay. I think that's what we're here to talk about today, so we'll absolutely help you figure out strategies to do that. But one personal example that I have is that I actually took a pay cut when I relocated with my family because I wanted a better schedule and I didn't wanna pay for daycare, and so I was willing at that point to take a slightly lower base rate of pay because I felt like there were enough kind of non-monetary benefits of that position at that season of life. Now, what I wanna do that today probably not, but I think, again, that's probably a really great first step before you even start negotiating is to really understand what is important to me, if you can take an actual position that's in front of you out of that first. And so, again, even if you're looking for jobs, or before you look for jobs, if you can have that kind of list of things made that might be helpful in your negotiation, because you're first negotiating with yourself on whether or not you want to even apply or interview somewhere, and then, when you get to the point of receiving an offer, then you really want to negotiate that salary to make sure that you're starting off on the right foot.
Speaker 4:It's very difficult to change rates of pay once someone has accepted it, and so, again, I think, out of the entire podcast today, I think that's an important learning, because, while there's a lot of strategies you can use to negotiate, that first acceptance of that first rate of pay really is setting the stage on what even your leader can do to help continue to grow you as a person and you as you're what you're making. So I always tell everyone to please counter offer. So that's probably my best piece of advice that first offer I would always counter Again. The worst they can do is they know, but I have, again, as a leader, I expect that, and so that's something that I like to share broadly with people. It is standard practice in many other industries, and so, again, I think, as child life specialists, sometimes we are very frugal or we don't want to like hurt someone's feelings or come off as rude or whatever our stories are, that we tell ourselves. That is probably the best advice I could give to someone is to at least make a counter offer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think some of the experiences I've heard other child life specialists upon like getting their first job, they're worried to do that because they're like what if they take the position away from me? And I've not? First of all, I've never heard of that happening. But I think, especially with like at one point in time it was hard to come by child life jobs and so I think, like when you got the job, you were kind of like well, I just wanna make sure this all works out, like I checked the boxes so that I can move forward, because I don't know when another job is gonna open up, whereas right now we're kind of in a place where there's a lot of job openings but it still doesn't take away from, especially if it's your first child life job, that can be a super scary thing to do to counter offer because there is weirdly that fear that they're gonna say, nevermind, our next person wouldn't do this.
Speaker 1:Gosh, I'm like so excited that we're talking about this. I have so many things I definitely so much agree with counter offer, counter offer, counter offer. My first full-time position. Again, I had only a month of experience. I counter offered. I still got the job no one took it away from me.
Speaker 1:They only gave me 25 cents more, but I was okay with that and I think something. We had conversations with our interns that just finished about a month ago now around this topic and I encouraged them to counter offer. It was like I mean for lack of a better phrase it's kind of like a buyer's market right now in terms of our profession.
Speaker 1:You can really dive into what a team's culture is, you can really be picky with the salary and I think Rachel makes great points as far as going in and they're like what are some things that are not negotiables, what are things that you're like? Okay, I could sacrifice this to get this. I think it's great to go in with a plan, but also going in and expecting you know this is I am at the advantage right now I can go look for another job potentially.
Speaker 1:So, I think it's important to kind of see that value in yourself first and foremost and know that you know, maybe, if I've never heard of it, just like you ladies are saying, I've never heard of anyone rescinding an offer because they negotiated a pay. But if they did, what does that tell you about the culture of that organization? Like, if they did like that sends a big message. Right, there Is that a place that you wanna be, and I think going into it with that mindset, knowing what you wanna say and having a plan, helps a lot.
Speaker 1:So, coming to my current position, I had just had my daughter. I was home with her for the first 15 months of her little life and I looked at how much daycare was gonna cost. And you know we had been surviving on one salary, being frugal definitely. But I was like, okay, so I wanna make at least this much to be able to justify being away from my baby and paying for childcare. So, being super transparent, because I think our field needs a little bit more transparency around this topic they offered me $22 an hour and I said, no, I want 25. And they were like, well, that's not average for this area. And I was like, well, it's like this area does not have high quality pediatric healthcare like the rest of the United States, and I also compared it to averages in other metropolitan areas in the state and I said this is what the average salary is using Google, using the salary survey, and they said okay, we'll call you back. They called me back the same day.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 1:It wasn't a long process. I was the only applicant. It was fine. No one ever mentioned it again.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'll say too, speaking from someone from a smaller program a little bit different than Rachel, we have positions open right now and me having like a decent following on Instagram, I just like put out a simple poll with salary ranges. You know what would you be comfortable with starting out in a facility? And I think I did like 22 to 24, 25, 27, something like that. And then the top one was like 29 and up. Yeah, most people wanted like 25, $26 to start and the advantage of us being in a smaller, like smaller program kind of smaller, still growing hospital. I screenshoted those and we showed them and our positions now have higher starting base rates because of that.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 1:Because they were such a growing hospital. They're like, no, we need people, we're in a place that no one wants to move to. So they recognize that need. And then that's in addition to offering relocation, because again we're like we're telling people listen, like there's so many jobs, no one's going to want to move here, they can live somewhere else. So, yeah, so many different tools that we can use to our advantage. But of course, you have to know yourself and be confident in yourself and what you need.
Speaker 3:Yeah, what state is that again, texas, texas. Okay, that's awesome. What are your thoughts on how somebody should handle pushback?
Speaker 4:I guess I usually expect it. I feel like I've learned that for the years. I think that's again what I call negotiation. It's not if you just got offered something amazing that'd be great, but I think you should expect it.
Speaker 4:I think, again, too, as we're describing like you should always count on or offer, there's a super respectful way to do that. You can express that you are very interested in the position. You can call out specific things about it that you really loved, that you learned about during your interview or a site visit, or what you know about the program. Again to solidify to them. Like, this is a dance. We both want to be here and so really like, highlight that you're interested, but then again, if you have some concrete points, that's going to be the easiest sell.
Speaker 4:So, again, I work in a large metro area. We have to pay to park here. So typically, honestly, the negotiation that people will come to me with is they like, it's going to cost me this much a year to pay for parking, where if I took a spot somewhere else, I wouldn't have to pay for that, and we're like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so, again, if you can think about specific examples of how you could benefit from your salary increase that you're requesting, I think, again, this is a total personal experience, but those are things that resonate with me where I think I'm making a fair offer when I decide an offer, but I do also expect them to come back with a request for something else, and so it is easier to have a respectful dialogue if there is like rationale or if there's something like I can tell that you really thought through.
Speaker 4:I've also done that when I've accepted positions in terms of looking at there are things that organizations can change and there are things that you can't. And there's things that are within the scope of the hiring leader and there are things that aren't. And again you can ask for additional education days, or you could ask for things again that would fall within the scope of the hiring leader. Those are those things to be creative about. If they do indeed come back with a really sorry, you're at the $22 an hour or whatever that initial offer was, but there is still always room for negotiation and I just think the respectful dialogue is actually expected and appreciated.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with that very much and I think too.
Speaker 1:you know, a lot of us have have friends in our field you know, even if you're a new child, a specialist, chances are someone you went to school with is also starting out. So I think it's. I think it's something we need to get more comfortable talking about amongst each other too, because it's really easy to kind of stay to yourself and get so almost like self conscious, like oh, is this something I should talk about? But really there's no one telling you that you can't talk about it, there's no one telling you that you shouldn't talk about it. It's just, I feel like a kind of a culture shift that we're seeing. One of many culture shifts we're seeing is talking about what is a fair wage? What does that look like? And I think we should be doing this same.
Speaker 1:So one of my again one of my interns had just left. She got a job offer. She texted me. She's like is this fair? What do I do? How do I do this? And I gave her some tips and I was happy to talk about it with her. But I think using your resources and relying on each other is really helpful. I've had people message me about pay. I had someone last year message me that was getting a job in East Texas and I'm in West Texas and I was happy to talk about it. So I think it's something we just have to get comfortable talking about and helping out each other too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that leads me to perfectly to my Instagram page, where I don't totally feel qualified to talk about salary as beautifully as both of you are doing right now. I'm really glad I was able to put on my Instagram story kind of a Q and A of like if you got to ask people anything that you want to ask about salary, what would you want to know? So actually, going right into that goes perfectly with a little bit of what Rachel was talking about. If you're told no to a higher salary, is it appropriate to ask for something different? And their example was like more PTO to a crew. Or I liked what you mentioned of like paying for my parking. Is that appropriate to ask for?
Speaker 4:Again, I'm kind of in the camp of it doesn't hurt to ask and the worst they can say is no. So I think you should know in advance what your deal breakers are right.
Speaker 4:Like is that going to be a deal breaker? But I think absolutely. I feel like it's very appropriate to ask, like, what is within the scope of what the hiring leader can change? So, for example, my organization, pto Cruel, is a set rate, like they're not doing any variation by role or by department or even location. That's a set rate. But I have some discretionary funding that I use as a manager but I can't spend on salaries. I can't give people more money, but I can send them to conferences. I guarantee that everybody on my team can have access to the ACLP program membership.
Speaker 4:So there are things that I can fit into my budget that are still. I wouldn't necessarily call them compensation, but I know that people would have to pay for them out of pocket if I didn't offer them. So I try to add as many of those things as benefits to my team members to be able to do that. Things like additional certifications, I think, is something that most organizations have some sort of process for. So, again, that's something if you're interested in going back to school, ask about tuition reimbursement or ask about you know what kind of support there is for other interests of yours to are just some examples of like different kinds of things that organizations might have available.
Speaker 4:The other thing is benefit packages, very so much. And so, again, as you're moving jobs especially for those that have child life experience and you think about where you want to go and because the field has a lot of openings right now, those are those things where, if you have flexibility in terms of what you're pursuing, I think that's something you should ask like pretty far up front in the process to determine whether or not it's going to meet your needs. And so, again there's you know the things you typically think about about medical and dental insurance and that kind of stuff or benefits. But the PTO approval rates have varied significantly where?
Speaker 3:I've worked.
Speaker 4:Even the time off, like process, like how you can use your PTO or your sick days included in that, or those separate, like those kinds of things. The more information you have, the more you're going to be able to make a decision on. Again, it all adds up in the end and so again our organization would call it the total compensation package that you're getting. Everybody really cares about what they're taking home after taxes and at the end of the week, but they, that organization, thinks about it as a total package, and so there may be things that you aren't aware of that actually are really meaningful to you, even if the rate of pay is mediocre or something.
Speaker 1:From talking with new professionals. I do think it's important to point out, like some of the questions you ask the child life team and some of the questions you ask HR. So HR is going to be doing the offer. Hr is going to be the person you're negotiating with. You're not negotiating with your child life manager, your team leader or your director.
Speaker 1:So I think some of the things like Rachel's mentioning about like conferences, different, like professional opportunities that are kind of more niche related to child life HR probably is not going to have any clue what you're talking about. So it's going to be important to say, okay, like when you're stepping into that interview and there's that opportunity for questions, ask your questions and if those things are important or if those things are going to contribute to whether or not you accept a position, if it's to be offered, ask those questions at that time. You know what does it look like when you know the conference time comes around, are we able to go? Is it paid for? How do I collect PDUs? Rachel mentioned tuition reimbursement. Ask if that's an opportunity within the team. And then, when it comes to HR, that's going to be a different set of questions when you're negotiating paying, like the PTO approval, relocation bonus, those different things that are kind of more global topics that aren't specific to child life.
Speaker 3:That's a really, that's a really good point. That actually leads me into another question of is there a way to gracefully counter a higher salary when HR says sorry, everyone starts at the same salary, even if you may have additional education.
Speaker 4:So bachelors or masters or PhD, yeah, I love that question because I've asked that question to multiple compensation teams. I would say I have spiced, spicy conversations with my compensation partners. They're wonderful. I think two things about that. One, just as child life professionals, we want people to assume that we are doing our very best job at what we are being tasked to do. It's been super helpful for me to go into those meetings understanding that that's also what our HR partners or our compensation analysts are intending to do. So that's the first kind of caveat to that. I do think that if you're negotiating and you get an immediate no, I think you can always ask why. That's something that I encourage people to do, because it could be that the timing is wrong.
Speaker 4:So for example I have, financial climates of healthcare organizations are not the same at any given point in time. So we have a whole bunch of children's hospitals in my area. That does not mean the financial climate at each of those is the same, and so my ability to request a higher salary today at one may be received differently than it would six months from now or even today at a different organization. And so I think being able to ask for a little bit more clarification on that, like, is that an across the board thing? Is there something else that's fueling that? That can help the message sit differently if you are getting a straight across the board answer. I think, again, there's definitely a balance between the gracefully I like that gracefully word in there. I think there is a. There is a line between gracefully and pushy, and so, again, being able to advocate for yourself and say, oh, I was really hoping to have a salary closer to this point for all of these reasons, rather than I think I'm worth this, I think that that comes across differently, even though you probably are worth that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and so the one other thing to compensation from my experience, nicole I'd love to hear your experience of this has always been based on responsibilities, not education, and so that is like a hard thing to hear as a master's prepared, child life specialist. And so, again, those are the questions to ask about organizations. So like, how do you do your increases? Is it a merit based increase? Do you do cost of living adjustments? Do you do technical adjustments? Where does education fall into this? Because I've had so many of my colleagues where they will get their masters and expect to get a raise at that point in time and they don't, because the job responsibilities that they're functioning in according to their job description haven't changed. And so that is probably, again I should have mentioned it earlier in the means of negotiating, like talk about the job responsibilities that you have that should influence a higher salary, and that's been my experience as for unfortunate, it feels so far I know where I worked previously.
Speaker 1:When I countered, I did counter under the premise I know I'm a new child specialist, but I do have a master's degree and my understanding from, like, my side of things just getting you know the responses from HR was okay, okay, yeah, we'll give you 25 more cents. That was it. So I wouldn't be surprised. I was like, okay, fine, she just wants a little bit more. Coming to where I work now, I honestly am not sure if they took into consideration my degree. I will say, as far as what Rachel mentioned, as far as, like their compensation structure stepping into this role, I was like, oh, like, because we were merit based. So I have. I had a raise every year where I previously worked. So I started around $18, worked there two and a half years. At the end of that two and a half years I was already at 22. So I was like I was pretty happy with that.
Speaker 1:I felt like that was a pretty fast.
Speaker 3:That is very fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like that was a good process. You live and you learn. I moved here and I was like oh, this is not merit based but, I didn't think to ask that in the beginning, so had I known that when I was negotiating, I honestly would have asked for more than 25, because now I'm here, I have all these responsibilities, I have a child life coordinator that's been here for several years, and then I'm the person with the next most experience after her.
Speaker 1:So I'm helping train the child life assistants, I'm helping train the new child life specialists, and then all of our student program. I'm helping coordinate that and I'm supervising students and I'm like this is a lot, yeah. So I think that's an important thing. That Rachel brought up is asking okay, like you know what is the compensation structure? And maybe, looking back now, I probably would have asked that question before I even gave my counter.
Speaker 3:Yeah, talk a little bit about what that means to somebody who maybe doesn't understand that, aka me. Yeah, if I were to ask like, what is the, like you said, merit pay, what's the versus like? Merit pay versus what?
Speaker 4:So I would say okay. First caveat is what the voice that's not represented here today is, anyone that is union represented. And so there are Charlie specialists that have union contracts. I can't talk about that at all, but that for sure influences compensation.
Speaker 4:Yeah, at nonprofit healthcare delivery systems typically like compensation strategies, so annual increases that people expect to your annual raise Can be designed differently. So a merit-based increase is you did a really great job this year. You met all of the expectations. You're gonna get a 3% raise. That could be one thing when within a department, leader may have some flexibility in saying you exceeded expectations, you met expectations, you didn't need expectations and allocate kind of annual raises based on performance. And so I would say Quite a few organizations use that as like an employee engagement tool to like motivate people and so like you work really hard, you're probably gonna get a bigger raise. So that's that would be merit-based. And then some other ways. Sometimes Organizations just do like across the board raises so they might just say like every year you're gonna get a 2% raise and that's our compensation strategy. And then you know when you get hired every year I'm gonna get 2% and I probably don't have a lot of room for negotiation.
Speaker 4:The other ways that, like face pay, can be influenced are through Cost of living adjustments, which is actually what I think most people think about their annual raise is, and so cost of living Adjustments are where they're looking at, kind of your local landscape and how much it costs to live there and they may realize that certain job codes in the system Should get bumped up to meet some like minimum wage requirements or some other types of things, and so they'll make a cost of living Adjustment. Those again are typically a percentage across the board to get people to where they can like financially be viable in their local landscape. And Then technical adjustments are my little trick that I would love for people to hear that phrase because you can ask your leader About technical adjustments. That's what I have been the most successful with as a leader In getting where I can make either changes to job descriptions or I can say that there should be some sort of pay augmentation To get an employee or a group of an employee is to be more equitable within a team, and so over years if you're doing merit-based adjustments, you're gonna have a wide variation of salaries on your team.
Speaker 4:That should be the way it is, if it's true, merit-based, because you want to reward people that are really exceeding expectations and you want to, like, continue to support the people that you're that are continuing to but develop. But if you end up having someone that maybe took off, they took your first offer and they didn't counter you In your land like I really wish they would have countered, because I can't bump them up now every year very much over time if the gap between employees or a gap between a certain number of employees is Pretty significant, you can go to your compensation team and say, hey, would you take a look at these and see if they would qualify for technical adjustment, because it seems like there might be Kind of off base to what the market is, or these are the additional responsibilities, and so that's the really the only off cycle Adjustment I've ever been able to get made as a as a program leader. I've never personally received one of those, so I I can't say how to advocate for, necessarily, other than to ask your leader.
Speaker 4:Mm-hmm, but use that phrase technical adjustment and talk about Looking at the kind of local landscape. The other phrase I threw out there was the market range. This is my spicy conversation with compensation. Market ranges are how organizations make their decision about what they're gonna offer you at the time of hire. So you're gonna have a child. I specialist makes this to this Mm-hmm, that's your market range. The. The way they get that information is they're comparing market ranges to other similar roles, systems, etc.
Speaker 4:Now, child life is not large enough for there to be a wealth of Market range data out there. There is some, so it can happen. And so those are the things you want to ask what what they're using for their market ranges. I Will tell you the biggest argument I have is the range doesn't change very often because my hospital is Reading this is our range. The hospital down the street is reporting this is our range. Hospital down far away this is the range. They're like yep, nothing changed looks the same. They're all paying this. We're good, we don't need to make any adjustments now.
Speaker 4:The range is a range and then when you get made make offers, the offer is gonna fall somewhere in there.
Speaker 4:So right now, because of the climate of our field, we're making offers for new grads at Pretty close to the top of our range Wow. And so that's not the actual. It doesn't reflect the actuals that people are getting paid, and so what we wish would happen is that people would be able to share actuals or that ranges would kind of get reviewed more frequently, because what gets compressed is maybe we don't have anybody at the bottom of our market range, which is wonderful, but the top of our range is super compressed. So if you've been a child specialist for a few years and you hear your leader talking about how you're at the top of your range. It's because the top of the range hasn't changed a whole lot, and so that, honestly, I think is one of my personal Hopes and dreams to be able to change the market rate, market ranges for child life in my local area. Yeah, to increase that top part of the range, because that is really where people are getting stuck.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that was helpful. Yeah, it was very much so, thank you. What is your opinion on the success of hierarchy systems, so like child life, specialist one, two, three. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 4:I love them. I think it is helpful. My opinion may or may not be, it's not the most popular. I think that people use clinical ladders to get to a certain rate and then they kind of camp out, and so I am a fan of clinical ladder models where it is actually tied to, like your actual responsibilities, and so I like pay augmentation Hierarchy systems where, like, you get to decide do I have the energy to do student training and I should get paid more for that? I'm gonna do that, but then if I'm not doing that again, then I'm back down.
Speaker 3:So that's like okay, not popular, no, but that's interesting because you could work really hard to become a child life specialist two or three, and then kick back.
Speaker 4:Yep, like, and again, people go through different seasons of life. Yeah, like I started having my kids and I'm like I want to work part-time, I want to do evening, weekend and I'm probably not gonna like be charging ahead with, you know, the organization pain control new initiative, which is fine, like we absolutely want really skilled clinicians at the bedside. But I think we should recognize that your compensation from an organization's perspective is actually tied to what you're contributing and bringing to the organization, which, again, that is or is not people's preference on how they get paid.
Speaker 3:Yeah, are we allowed to ask for pay increase at any time, or should we wait for our annual review?
Speaker 4:I think that probably depends on where you work, mm-hmm, most Most of the compensation strategy conversations will happen actually at budgeting time. So I do you need to understand what your organization's fiscal year is. So ours is January through December. So we actually start the budgeting process of leaders in like August and September.
Speaker 4:So I was gonna make some Significant changes to how much I'm paying my team. Where there would be like an impact on the overall budget for my department, I would have to build that in in August or September. So I think that there is no harm in asking for a pay increase at any time. I think it should be with the caveat that it might not happen right away, but it is helpful to remind people to be thinking about it. So if it's on your mind, it's probably on other people's mind and it may or may not be on your directly First mine, and so again, I think planning seeds along the way is for sure gonna be not a bad strategy. It's not gonna happen if you don't ask about it, if you're told I actually can't make any adjustments until your annual review.
Speaker 4:I think that probably isn't the most appropriate time to continue negotiating just because there actually is none, no opportunity for that at that moment, mm-hmm. But you could ask for a pay increase. I love the idea of highlighting those additional responsibilities. So if you did take on something else, or, even better yet, before you take on something else, ask some questions about if there would be any opportunity for a pay increase. There again, those pay augmentations are things where it can be time sensitive. So I have pay augmentation, for example, set up with our facility dog handlers. So if their facility I there, there's a little bit of a pay bump to beat us since it's a lifestyle change. But if someone came to us and they were like I can't be the hammer anymore, I'm still gonna do great clinical work as a child life specialist, that's fine and I would use that augmentation and then and give that to the new hammer. And so there are again. If there's additional responsibilities, that's a great time to ask. But for sure that you know review time is the best time to.
Speaker 3:I love the idea of thinking about or finding out when your hospital's fiscal year is, because I think you know directors and our supervisors and stuff have so much on their plate every day that when it comes around budget time like you said for you, august, september is when they're probably thinking that way. That would be a nice, nice trial run to kind of sprinkle it in and be like hey, thoughts on blah, blah, blah, because their mind is already gonna be there, whereas if you're asking more so when, like, the budget has already been set for the year, like immediately afterward, that's probably not the best time to ask. So having an idea of when People are gonna be thinking about those things would probably be a good idea too. Next question I have is how To advocate if the manager is not a child life specialist, or if your manager flat out tells you they're not willing to advocate because it will be more work for them each year.
Speaker 1:So I personally like this question because, being someone that has, you know, spent majority of my career in smaller programs, you don't always have what you feel like is someone that can really like they may have your best interests at heart, but they just may not really know how to advocate for you. So I think a big thing that you can do is kind of like follow you know who is your boss's boss or what is you know. Can just HR kind of have like an open door policy? I will say there's a caveat to that you shouldn't go to HR ever thinking they're not going to tell anybody because they're going to tell your boss. So you have to be comfortable with that. But I think it's appropriate. I mean to advocate for yourself, like as Rachel has been mentioning throughout this time is like gracefully, respectfully, professionally of course, but you can still be all of those things and say, hey, like I have these needs. You know we've talked about it being like a buyer's market right now.
Speaker 1:I had an experience where, when I was leaving my previous job you know, because we're military, we had ample notice and I had the luxury of hiring my replacement. During the interview process we had somebody that we really liked and we maxed out the possible salary for that individual because she had so much experience. She was from the area. They were kind of focusing on the fact that they were going to have like position security from their point of view, like they weren't going to have to go through the hiring process again. Shortly after I left, that kind of thing, and she turned around the offer and I'm like sitting there wondering myself. I'm like I wonder if she went back to her facility and said I'm looking for a job, I now have an offer and this is what they offered me. So I mean that's okay too. It is. I've never done it.
Speaker 1:I could imagine how uncomfortable it would be, but at the end of the day, I think it's important for everyone to remember like this is your life, it's nobody else's life. You know, we all love our patients and families. We all love our feel. We do this profession for a reason, but you have to live your life and have to have a life outside of this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think management and you know higher-ups they can be kind of sneaky with their money because they're like well, but you're not gonna leave. When I was at the hospital, I was in an area where, I mean, there was no other hospital in driving distance for you to go to. So it was like if they knew that they hired you and you lived locally, it was kind of like, well, you don't need to pay you more because where you gonna go, you're here, you're doing school, you have a house, like you're here. And I had made a proposal to go from part-time to full-time and they just looked at me and they were like we just don't have that kind of money.
Speaker 3:And I looked at them very honestly and I was like I just want you to know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna look for something else. And they were like, okay, and two or three weeks later I came back with an offer and it was five hours away from home. But I said, hey, I'm looking at taking this and I just wanted to let you know before I accept the offer tomorrow. And my director went back to her higher-up and came back an hour later and put me to full-time. So it's like sometimes you do have to play the game in order for them to be like well, actually we do have the money now that you're threatening to leave and I know it's gonna be hard to find a child by specialist in this area. We do have it actually. So it's kind of a risky game to play, but it can pay off 100%.
Speaker 4:When I describe spicy conversations, my spicy conversation is what you're telling me if I need someone to come with another offer from a different place to be able to make adjustments to their salary. And they're like, yeah, well, no, we don't want them to be looking. And I'm like, well, they're going to be looking, so it would be great to invest in the people that we had, but I don't think that's a strategy that should be left unsaid, even though it feels terrible to do it and it feels awful for us program leaders. I think, if you can, I really feel for whoever asked this question about manager being caught on top.
Speaker 4:They're not willing to advocate. That feels really unfortunate and I hope that everyone listening to this will add supportive leadership on your list of non-negotiables and you're looking at new jobs, because that really will set the stage for so much of your career and really that is what I think people do deserve. So that's very unfortunate. I think, again, figuring out what's in here's my other strategy. With that, I think, figuring out what's important either to that manager or to your organization.
Speaker 4:One strategy that I did that was wildly successful was I tied a new program to an organization initiative around diversity, equity and inclusion, and so was able to build a paid internship program for a child life specialist with the intention of continuing to find ways to invest in the next generation of child life specialists. It's amazing, especially people that are coming from different backgrounds that maybe aren't resourced to be able to do unpaid internships. So again, I think that was only successful because my organization really cared about DEI and actually doing things instead of just saying that and so that is just a strategy. If you can find pieces that are tied to core values of your organization and run with those, that might be something when you get a know to be like well, how about this? And just kind of be creative. We're super creative people, right, so be creative about how we make our asks.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the last Q&A question I have is how do you move up in the child life field successfully or what additional training do you wish that?
Speaker 4:you had. I have an unpopular and I hope no one on my team is listening to this podcast answer, but I think, as I was describing my career journey, I have left and come back to the same organization three times Wow, and honestly, it's always been the right next step, and so being able to leave a job well for something that's going to help you continue to grow is not a bad thing. Again, I think with what I started with, like you need to know what is important to you from what you need so that you can show up and be amazing at work. So I've always wanted to do that, and so I'm not going to show up at work for my daughter. I'm not going to show up at work where I can't offer something to patient families or now my teens, where I'm not 100% and so and I also love learning so I do want to continue growing as a professional and as a person, and so it's not bad to seek out new opportunities.
Speaker 4:If you feel like there's something out there, you should also seek out opportunities and then not take them. So, again, I think that there are values in terms of like exploring what's out there, and it might just change your perspective on where you're at currently, or it might show you some new options. That could be this little thing that you never thought you would do. Jessica, I can imagine that's how you're feeling the things you never thought you'd be doing for sure. Or maybe you did, but again, like it's so wonderful.
Speaker 4:And so again, I think that the advice that you can leave well is what I tell everybody. I care about my team members as actual people first, so like if they come and they're gonna turn in their notice, like I'm super bummed and my job as a leader is like I gotta fill this position and I gotta figure this out, but if that's the right, best thing for them, like I am their number one champion that way, and I feel like I'm proof of being able to leave well, maintain relationships so that you can come back. Like you never know. I never have taken any of my positions expecting to leave.
Speaker 4:It's purely been now because I've zigzagged enough times where people are like, hey, we're gonna try to be doing this new big thing, Like where I'm at now. They wanted to systemize child life, where it had been pretty fragmented between campuses and locations, and they're like I think we could be a system team. I'm like I can do that that sounds great, and so came back to be able to do that, but I was welcomed back to everyone here with open arms because of how I left before.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 4:I talk every day with my old colleagues where I left to. So I think again just being super intentional about how you have those relationships. So, even if you are leaving a job burnt out or something like that, I think being super intentional about still maintaining those relationships, because our child life field is so amazing, yeah, how we can reconnect with people after we haven't seen them for so long or we, you know, just need to know about some policy If someone's gonna send you with their policy, and so being able to really continue to build those relationships, I feel like, honestly, that's the only way that I can talk about moving up in the child life field from personal experience.
Speaker 1:I think that's more my kind of realm. I've never. I've never been a leader within a child life program like at work, but I've been an executive board for a regional child life group I'm part of, like leading Child Life United. We just submitted a research paper and it's with child life specialists, some working in the hospital, some not working at all, and they're from, you know, from Puerto Rico, from Georgia, from all kinds of places, and to me like that's more meaningful than even even like the phrase moving up, like I'm networking and these people are my friends now.
Speaker 3:You know, they're.
Speaker 1:You know, yes, we don't, none of us live in the same zip code, but I can call them and I could talk to them about work stuff, about child life, stuff about my personal life and I'm learning new things with them as I'm going. And I think kind of a fun, a fun story is my research projects that we just kind of wrapped up. It's not mine, we shared it, of course, but stemmed from me seeing a thread happening on Instagram. I messaged it was from Child Life. Confidential messaged her and was like hey, I think this is a cool research study. I don't know a lot about research, but would you want to do it? She said. She said no, that's fine. I was like do you care if I run with it? She's like no, go ahead. Message Lauren who is?
Speaker 1:from your Child Life Coach. It's like hey, you know a lot about students, you want to do this. She's like I don't know anything about research, but sure we were working with someone from UGA for a little bit. That fell through. We ended up working with Sherwood Burns-Nader from University of Alabama. That was amazing. But then Lauren's like hey, I'm doing Child Life United, do you want to come? Oh, hey, like I have this student that we need a different perspective. Do you want to do this?
Speaker 1:And then I go to conference and she's doing some mentoring session they had for students and she's like hey, any more mentors, do you want to come? And it's just like this one relationship has now turned into someone that I will probably be a lifelong friend, but someone that, like we bounce ideas off of each other and it feels like we're both kind of inching each other along in this field, doing it together, and I think that's my favorite part of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's something special about moving up like you said that phrase moving up the networking and like the relationships you can build with people who pull you along is almost just as amazing as and you never know what that could look like Like that could pay you money one day.
Speaker 4:Butter brister. One thing I do want to say about this land, too, is I was a child life specialist and I got a Child Life supervisor job. I think I use my child life skills on my team all the time. Like I think I probably had said that we're reframing today like four times in this hour, because we are doing that with people, so we're helping people understand, like what is important to me in this moment and then, as the other person, like what is my role in here and how can I help empower you to be successful. So I think, if you can develop that and understand how your child life skills translate to other types of roles or other types of environments, like again I'm thinking of traditional child life leadership track like how do I move up? Like consider how you know how you're leading a project or how you're doing something that you feel like will translate into those leadership tasks.
Speaker 4:I didn't have any formal leadership training before I took my first leadership position. I feel like I have learned everything on the job, which doesn't have to be the way that has to go. And so, again, if there are things like I've never seen a budget right before I become a child life supervisor. I want to be able to ask and get familiar with that before I take a child life manager job. I'm not saying you have to, but I'm saying it would set you up differently.
Speaker 4:And so if there are, if you have career goals, it is super helpful to be able to find a mentor, or even your current leader or other people in your department that are in informal leadership positions. Be like, I think I really need to learn about this. Take a look at child life leadership job postings as they get, as they pop up. That's honestly why I applied for the first manager job I ever took. I looked at it and I was like guys, I actually think I could do this, like I have examples for everything that's on this job description, and so Take a look at that and see what are those areas you want to keep developing, even while you're doing your clinical child life work, because that's going to help give you a interview content but B really actually help you be successful as you do consider you know what that next job or next step looks like for you.
Speaker 3:This has been amazing. I think we're ready for our last three closing questions that I ask everybody. So the first one is if someone's listening today and they're really resonating with what you're saying about negotiating pay for possibly the first time, what's one tangible action step that they could take to get them on the right path?
Speaker 1:I would say just do your homework, go in with the plan.
Speaker 3:Simple, yep.
Speaker 4:And again always counter so again, especially if it's your negotiating pay for the first time. Like you need to do that. You need to ask because I feel like the conversations I have with people are. I've been thinking about this for six months now and I think I might be ready to ask like that's great.
Speaker 4:But you might have just missed out on six, six months of two extra dollars an hour or something. If you have asked, you know at the beginning. Just know that it's not, it's not frowned upon, it's. It's fine, you can do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's good, let's normalize that. It's not? Yeah, you can counter offer Yep. The second question is I have a lot of students that follow along and listen to this podcast, so what's one thing that you'd say to them directly as a tip for moving through this profession as a whole?
Speaker 4:I love this question. I think probably the best tip I could give is to figure out what fuels you and make sure that everything that you're considering doing, you have that as one component of it. So during COVID, I asked my team members that and I think what I would typically hear is like well, I really love outpatient work, or I really love the ED, or I really love inpatient, or I love this and I think that people thought that that was what they loved about their job.
Speaker 4:But when we really broke it down, there were other things that were like the things that really kept people coming back to work every day.
Speaker 4:And so, like, if you can, like take it one level deeper, like, what do you actually love about child life? You're going to be super successful and you're going to be able to find that in every day, so you should be able to leave every day Like I'm super proud of this. Yeah, and that will probably be the thing that you find is what's energizing to and feels you yeah that's great.
Speaker 1:I'm actually going to steal mine from something I just heard at conference a couple weeks ago, and it was. Someone said a similar question and someone said find something you love doing that has nothing to do with child life, Under the kind of premise that our field can be so demanding and it really is demanding of students just trying to get into the field, or require so much that if you step into it and you've lost yourself in the process, you're not going to want to keep doing it. So I think that's like the best advice I can give you know, considering the current climate we're in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's so good, because I think it's so easy to just deep dive child life and forget that you enjoy other things outside of child life. The last question I have is, if child life is a wildlife, what has been the wildest part of your experience so far?
Speaker 4:I have met people I never would have imagined meeting in my child life career, both like the most amazing kids in the entire world to like providers whose brains think so differently than me. But they're brilliant and phenomenal and you know, the community partners or celebrities that are like the wildest ones are the people who you feel like. Your life experience is so different than mine, but in this moment you need me to have you. So I had a professional hockey player. I asked him to read a doctor's Seuss book to a group of kids and he was nervous.
Speaker 4:You guys he was like I don't know if I can do this. And so again, I think the wildest part about child life is that we are able to see people and walk with them in things that they're uncomfortable with, and it's not always the people we think we're actually helping are there to help. I think that's the best for me.
Speaker 1:I think it's all of the things that I've said yes to or that I've stepped in that I never, I never wanted to do. Yep, it's like I hated my research class in grad school. Yeah, I was like research sounds fun.
Speaker 1:I would never guess that and like, yeah, yeah, now like with my Instagram and I mean I'm teaching other people in my unit how to use I can't use a game system, but I can use, can, but I don't know. Just just crazy things. I know how to do that. I never thought I would know how to do for sure.
Speaker 3:This has been such a refreshing conversation. Thank you so much for educating me and also educating all the people that are going to listen to this episode. I'm sure people have gained at least one thing from hearing both of your experiences and your wisdom. So thank you so much for being on the show. It's been such a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thank you Well yeah, thank you for having us Awesome.