The woman who earns double what you do is not twice as good at her job.
I know, because I sat two desks away from one for the best part of two years.
This was back in luxury fashion sales. She was a few years older than me, on roughly double my salary, and for a long time I assumed the gap was talent. She was cleverer, or better connected, or one of those people things just happen for. I had a whole story about it, and the story suited me, because if the gap was talent there was nothing I could do about it.
Then I started paying attention, and the gap wasn’t talent, but defaults.
She introduced herself to a client in one sentence, no “just”, no little laugh at the end. She said numbers out loud, in full, and then stopped talking. She left at six o’clock. When someone put a decision in front of her she said “let me have a look and come back to you”, and nobody ever minded. She didn’t apologise for anything that didn’t need an apology. She did the same job I did, in the same building, with the same hours in the week. She just ran on different settings.
Ten of them, by my count which I’ve been borrowing them ever since, and almost every one of them cost nothing.
In this issue:
Why the income follows the identity, and not the other way round
What the upgrade isn’t: the hustle version, the spending version, the pretending version
The ten habits in full, grouped by where they live: her words, her time, her money
The Identity Audit, with my own scores
The one-habit plan for this week
The income follows the identity
On Sunday I wrote about what happens when you start doing well and the people around you go quiet. Today is the other half of that: how you start doing well in the first place.
Most of us have the order the wrong way round. We’re waiting for the pay rise, the promotion or the big client to turn us into the woman who earns more. Then we’ll say the number, then we’ll stop apologising, then we’ll leave on time. The income is the permission slip.
It actually doesn’t work like that, and I think, quietly, we all know it. The woman who earns double didn’t get the salary first and the habits second. The habits came first, and the salary turned up because employers, clients and landlords were responding to them. You can’t make a pay rise appear. You can walk into the room as the person who gets one.
That’s the identity upgrade. Not a vision board and not a new personality. Ten specific things she does by default that you can start doing at your current salary, with your current CV, this week. You borrow them before the income catches up, because that is the order it happens in.
What the upgrade isn’t
Before the list, four things it isn’t, because this topic attracts nonsense.
It isn’t the hustle version. Nobody here is getting up at five, cold-plunging or calling herself a CEO. Most of the habits below involve doing less: fewer words, fewer apologies, fewer decisions made on the spot.
It isn’t spending like her.
This is the Frugal Chic® part, so I’ll say it plainly: the woman who earns double does not look like she earns double. The handbag isn’t the upgrade. If anything she spends a smaller share of her income than you do, and that is one of the ten.
It isn’t pretending. There’s no fake confidence in here, no lying about your numbers and no “act as if”. Every habit is something true that you can do now. Confidence is what you feel afterwards.
And it isn’t a personality transplant. I know introverts with all ten. Most of them are sentences, and you only have to say each one once before it stops being frightening.
The Frugal Chic® rule: Become her first. The income is the lagging indicator.
