Get Paid What You're Worth with Christy Tucker

Kayleen Holt  
Hi, everyone, I'm Caitlin Holt, and I get the honor of introducing my friend Christy Tucker, who is going to be talking about getting paid what we're worth. So Christie is a former music teacher, and she's the owner of cine learning and author of the well known blog experiencing elearning, where she's been writing about instructional design and career development, and a lot of storytelling and scenario writing. Since about I think 2006. So if you follow Christy, you know, she's really big into scenario based learning, if you don't follow her, you are missing out. I myself have been following her almost since she started blogging, I think, but for most of my instructional design career, and you know, I talked in the panel yesterday about different kinds of mentorship and what mentoring can look like, and I consider Christie, one of my first mentors in this career field, she just didn't know it. She didn't know me at all.

Christy Tucker  
Young Woods has called that self mentoring. Yes. And I loved her term for that self mentoring.

Kayleen Holt  
I knew there was a term for it that you'd mentioned before. I felt like I lurked on Christy's blog for a long time before I ever started, like commenting, or, or sharing. But she really helped me out in my career, and I'm really excited to hear her talk. I'm actually I'm excited because I get to work with Christie now. And so after I got past the fan girling that was awesome. I can tell you, she's not just an extremely talented and knowledgeable learning experience designer, but she's also just a super cool, human and fellow geek, which I love. So Christy, take it away.

Christy Tucker  
All right, well, thank you very much for the lovely introduction. And I'm going to share a few slides at the beginning here. I'm glad to see so many people here and excited for this, I'm going to have a few slides at the beginning to talk about some benchmarks about for salary, and and how that so we have some numbers to share. When we can start. And so we'll start there. And then we're gonna have some questions, more open ended discussion about things. So this is all about getting paid what you're worth. So these benchmarks so we're gonna start with kind of the general salary for instructional designers anyway. Entry Level salaries seem to be around $55,000 a year. And the average salary tends to be about 80 to 85,000. And I'm going to share the sources of where I'm pulling this from, I have a blog post that has hourly rates and salaries, and that has links to all of these things. And so we'll share that later. But just so you can see that that's that's sort of what I'm seeing as the as the averages for salaries, hourly rates for full time instructional designers generally seen 35 to $40 an hour.

Freelance rates vary pretty widely. This is a really big range, right? When you see 35 an hour to 250 an hour, these are completely different rates, right. So and actually, you will see rates lower than 35 an hour out there, especially on sites like Upwork. But if you're currently working, all of my numbers, I will say are generally us specific. I think Canada's often fairly similar if you're somewhere else in the world. I don't have as good data for that. And I know one of the questions in advance was, you know, in the UK, what is this and I don't have good data for that. So I don't have good benchmarks. If you're in the US if you're a full time employee or a W two employee if you have the that full time rate and you're trying to figure out what a freelance rate should be, the quick and dirty calculation is to double whatever you were making as a full time employee. And that's the rate for your freelancing. So if you were making 35 an hour as a W two employee you should be making 70 An hour and 1099. Now, clearly, you will see that there's a little conflict between the point at the bottom of that slide. And the point at the top of that slide where I say say that there are rates of 35 an hour, especially for development only. Lighter work less experienced does, some of those freelance rates are really low and probably not sustainable for people in the US who are working full time and have experience. So but there's a lot of there is a lot of variation and there is a pretty, the upper limit can be pretty high for freelance rates.

So my sources here. I've pulled this from a bunch of different places. There are a couple of industry specific salary surveys, the learning guild did it annually until 2018. And then, because they were finding that the salaries just didn't change that much from year to year. They've done rather than doing detailed, really detailed salary surveys every year, they're doing that less frequently and doing some other discussions about salary. Att salary survey, the last one that I saw was 2019. But training mag network also has one updated in in 2020. Do learn you'll those tend to be a little more heavily instructional designers and elearning. Developers ATD and training back network, not surprisingly, are more trainers and more clout a little bit more classroom training or VLT in addition to instructional designers and elearning developers. So if you're looking for digging down into specific roles within the field, sometimes those industry specific ones are good. And I will say that even though the Link Learning Guild and ATT numbers haven't been updated in a couple of years, they're probably I think they're still useful data. Then there's a bunch of other general sites where you can find salary info. The last one, I will point out there is the GSA calculator that's for calculating the rates for federal contracts and the rates that they will pay for things and you can see what our actual rates that have gotten paid on contracts and see what's out there. And I do think that that's a good benchmark. Anytime you're trying to look at salary, you can never just use one point of data. For these sorts of benchmarks, you have to end up using a couple of different ones and make sure because there are some outliers, I've definitely seen some that are will be much lower, or much higher. So that link at the bottom that see Tucker learning.com/id pay, that link will redirect you to the post that has links to all of the sites. So that and and a little bit more detail on these benchmarks. And so I do suggest that you go dig into those if you're kind of look for these things. And the reason I'm starting with this is that I think that having the data and the benchmarks is the first step in knowing how, you know, if you can't get paid what you're worth, if you don't know what you're worth. So you've got to have some of that data. And it's really hard to try and go to an employer or to a client, and ask them for more money, if you don't know if you don't have some benchmarks to compare to. So let's talk about the gender pay gap with some specific data. Because the learning guild, in their research reports, did actually find that there is about a 13% pay gap between men and women in the US and about 10% worldwide. And this is from their 2018 report, I will say and this is specific to elearning I will say that they they they there's actually quite a bit in the learning guild archives. Their research, if you want to dig into like the trends in in the pay gap and which by the way, I do recommend that everybody has at least a free membership in the learning guild. And because you can go access this these research reports and dig into the data if you are a as nerdy as me and like going and reading research reports. So here are some of the summaries of of this. The gap in pain is not improving over time, the learning guild did multiple years worth of stuff. And it was pretty stable like this 10 to 13%, gap 10 to 15%, maybe was pretty stable over time. There's little, you know, there's some noise in the data, but it's not really getting better. They saw the learning, they saw the gap and pain across all job levels, all jobs, all experience levels. They did see that people who were new to the field people in their 20s, it was a smaller gap. So it so a just entry level jobs was like a 6% gap. So right from the beginning, women are starting behind. Over time, that gap actually increased to be more like a 20% gap above age 60. So it is that women start behind and they get further behind as they progress in their career. And I think McKenzie asked question of wonder if women and men fill different roles in l&d And if they're distributed the same across developer manager, Trainer ID roles. So there, there is certainly the I think Caitlin's response is correct. There are fewer women leaders in l&d for all that the field as a whole does is more heavily women. As you go up in the ranks. That doesn't, that doesn't always translate. But literally, in the learning guild, researchers are comparing position to position not just overall salaries, and you can see the learning gap in instructional designer positions and trainer positions, and LMS admin positions. And you can see it, even when you're comparing direct roles. And so, there's some good writing Petey shank did some writing for the learning guild digging into this pay gap a little bit more. And so looking at the alternative theories to explain the pay gap, and then to kind of double gap and then you know, love the is a different is a different hours, you know, are women just working fewer hours because women have all the caretaking responsibilities in addition, and that's what accounts for the pay gap? Or is it all of these other things? And essentially, most of the conclusion seems to be the yes, there are potentially some of these other effects going on. But also, there is just a gap in what women get paid. Right? That's why when it's entry level, and we're not looking at people with experience, there's still a 6% gap. That's not due to experience that's not due to people having different jobs. It's just, that's what it is. So that's kind of where we're we are for the starting point. And then I am going to stop sharing my screen. And we'll have some questions. Now that I've gotten everybody riled up, and you shouldn't be riled up, I want you to be kind of riled up.

Unknown Speaker  
Okay, this is Lenay, calmly, and I've been working behind the scenes monitoring everything. And I also will be looking for questions to feed those to Christie. And we have a few here already. You were talking, actually, I'm just going to follow on actually about the whole the gap that you were just talking about. There's been a lot of talk lately about pay transparency, and what effect that might have on closing the gender gap. And I was just curious to know, what's your positions on that? Because is it that maybe men are just more inclined to negotiate higher salaries even at an entry level? And what effect would pay transparency maybe have on that?

Christy Tucker  
So looking in the data across all fields, and I will say I'm relying very heavily on template Smolen and Petit Shanks research into this. They did a lot of research translation, so I'm relying on their work. So yes, there is something to men do more negotiation. Also, when women negotiate for salary, they get penalized for being too aggressive. They don't necessarily get rewarded the same way, even for doing the same things that men do. So like I'm just gonna put out there that that yes, that's part of it. So pay transparency is one of the things that we that I do think is a systemic improvement. And that's why I started with all these benchmarks. That's why I have this blog post to put it out there. Because I think that We should, more pay transparency makes it easier for everybody to negotiate, makes it easier for men to know when they're getting paid way more than their women colleagues, which is also part of the deal. We are going to talk about more individual things that we can do to help with this. But ultimately, I think the pay gap is a systemic problem that requires systemic solutions. And I think that if you are in a position as an as a hiring manager, or to make decisions at an organizational level, that putting the pay in the job description, is already one of the things that we can do to really make a difference in closing that gap. Pay transparency really is one of the important things that we have to have, it isn't going to fix all of the problems on its own. But I do think it's one of the critical pieces of the puzzle, it is necessary but not sufficient, it is a necessary step, it isn't going to be the solution all on its own.

Unknown Speaker  
So now let's well talk about some of those more specific things that you were talking about that everyone can do. So just what advice in general do you have in just starting that conversation either with a client or your boss in negotiating the salary that you deserve?

Christy Tucker  
So I think that you when you're talking about this as a, as a full time employee, hey, doing your research and knowing those benchmarks, the good news is, all of these sites are out there, there's so much more data available about what pay should be, then, you know, when I became an instructional designer in 2004, some of this existed, but there's a ton more right now. So, use the stuff and go in there with the data. I think it Alright, we're going to be honest about like the stereotypes. And what happens. The stereotype of course, is that women are more emotional. And men are more rational, data driven. And sometimes playing against that stereotype, it is stupid, but you have to play the game. Having the benchmarks and having the data to back things up, can sometimes get you past that the game? And really and truly, then, you know, it is easier if you're a manager, you're looking at it and seeing that oh, well, you know, most things. If if most things really are much higher than this, then we should adjust the pay. And in sometimes it really is that people don't know what a position is supposed to be worth. And so yeah, I'm seeing discussions about the this. And I think that you do have to start out with that, that data, teachers who have switched to instructional design. I know I as a teacher never negotiated any salary. And so when I got my first I actually started in standup classroom training rather than directly and instructional design, but I had no idea how to negotiate a salary. Because it had always been done by a union contract before. So I didn't know. And so I did manage in that case. I did manage to sort of I had, I actually took a pay cut when I left teaching, which is what I did with with the understanding that I was starting at a lower salary and then getting myself back up and didn't quite get to that. So um, so there is so there's some of that right knowing knowing that the data, I'm going to put a link in the chat because I think that this is actually a bit more of a if you're a full time employee, I have been out of the full time employment thing for 10 years. But I'm going to put this link from asked manager which is specifically a guide to asking for a raise, which again includes thinking about your timing thing about catching your manager at a good time. Having the data being able to explain your own accomplishments, all those things happen. Now, freelance side because I know that we've got people on the freelance side as well. I think when you're on the freelance side, so when I started freelancing, I started at a pretty low rate, especially with my sub contracting, which was the first step I did was all sub contracting. I I've increased my rate every year for the first few years. Every time I got in, and I just kind of decided, okay, well, this year, I'm going to, like bump my rate up another 10 or $15 an hour for every new client that comes in. And it is always easier with new clients to increase your rate. existing clients, I often kind of left at the previous rate, I gave myself a raise every year until I started getting pushback. And I will say, there was a big cut off for me and $100 an hour. That was when all of a sudden I was starting to get a lot of nose. I was surprised as a freelancer. Like, oh, okay, you know, I've been at 65 an hour, I'm gonna bump this up to 75 an hour and just ask for it and put it on my proposals and see what happens. And people just accept it. And, and then I'm like, Cool. I wonder if I can do 85 an hour? Sure enough people, people signed agreements for that, too, right? So it, even if you don't bump up your older clients, which is your existing clients? And so, you know, there's some of that, after I hit $100 an hour, there's a question here about hourly billing, or value based billing or project based billing, I will say, when I hit the $100 an hour rate, there was definitely people kind of bulking at that. And so it was much more effective for me to say project based billing. And then to just say, okay, like, this is what it is for the whole project. And the fact that I'm a fast writer, means they're just looking at the total amount. And so that was, you know, so and then it was fine. And so I, I personally have projects where I still do hourly billing, if I'm doing LMS transition work, it is all hourly, because I can never actually get the scope done, and figure it out. But so that's the the easy road to doing that. And I'm seeing some more discussion here. Is there any other questions when I about?

Unknown Speaker  
Yes? You like when we were asked a question you hit on the one about recommendations for value based pricing or charging a rate that reflects? Well, actually, not that one. Okay. I'm gonna do that the pushback one, because you were talking about you will get pushed back? Well, what do you do when you get pushed back?

Christy Tucker  
No. Okay, so, um, so when I had decided that it was that $100 an hour, that, that was the point where all of a sudden, like, everything up until that point, I pretty much was getting more yeses, the nose at the point, I was writing a proposal. And then at $100 an hour, I got people going, like, Okay, well, I gotta do something. Um, so to some extent, so with some of that resistance, people just rejected the project. And I didn't, and I didn't get it. And so I didn't get those projects. And so that was the feedback on things. So I wasn't necessarily doing more. What I changed them to do that was to switch how I was pricing, I don't do straight. Strictly speaking, it's not value based pricing of what I do, it's probably more value anchored press pricing. Because it's, it's complicated to prove ROI in our field. But most of the time, it's not truly value based, but it's at least a project based pricing. If you can shift yourself up to kind of a bigger price. So instead of you turning, in the micromanaging of every hour that you are working, if you can do I'm going to, you know, it's billing essentially at the milestone of creating, doing the analysis and creating a storyboard so that they don't see how the sausage is made and how many hours you're spending on it. That that can be part of it. I also worked on getting better in my proposals that explaining what the value is that I'm bringing, because that's part of what I found I needed at that above $100 an hour if I wanted to get paid that I had to be better at explaining my value. So my proposals now start with a essentially a where you are now and what's the problem and where you want to be. Which I write in a very conversational way but of the you are doing this, here's what you have. Here's the problem. What you want is a course that does this and this and you're looking for, you'll know if you're successful if you have this outcome. And I have basically a paragraph for each of those in my proposals. And then if I can do sort of a project based pricing or some sort of some sort of anchor I think it's it does, like I said, it's not necessarily truly value based where I can definitely say you're doing, you know, you're gonna have this amount of revenue, because honestly, the people who asked me for stuff, do not always know those numbers to have to anchor to, like for all that that's, like what it is. And what you'll see the advice for I, I still kind of struggle with getting those numbers from clients, but I can at least anchor it to this is the outcome you want. And so that's the piece that that helps me with that.

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, I think that we had two questions that were really touching on how you explain your value and pricing and the overall impact it has. But then one has a follow on, how would you respond with some if if you refusing to give an hourly quote, how would you present that to a client? If they are insistent on you providing an hourly quote, or something that's more than average? Yeah.

Christy Tucker  
So if somebody really wants an hourly quote from me, I will say, I am pretty flexible on the method of billing. If a client is really like their system is really set up to do all hourly, that's fine. And then you're going to pay my hourly rate, which now I will say I did decide to give myself a raise this year. So I'm going to charge more than $100 An hour this year, at least for new contracts. Partly because if you saw at some point last year, Tim Slade was talking about rates and said that $150 An hour was a typical rate for an elearning developer. And I loved him. I respect him. I think he's I agree with him most of the time. I don't agree that $150 An hour is a typical rate. My only issues that were typical, I don't think most people are actually making 150 an hour. But I did decide after that conversation, it's like, okay, I haven't actually raised my rate in a couple of years. And I probably am due to do so again. And so. So yeah, I do. So So yes, I would, if somebody really wants my hourly rate and wants to do it hourly, I actually will. I know that that's not necessarily what everybody wants to do. And there's always a danger in there. I'm a really fast writer. And so I do get penalized if I'm writing at its hourly. But if somebody really wants it, I will. And then I'm going to tell them that my rate is, as of this year, 120 an hour. And they can either pay it or not. And if they don't, I will walk away. I have enough business at this point that I don't need to chase after clients who are used to Upwork rates. And, and I will just, it's I walk away. I had a, I had a prospective client, who maybe did a small project for her to try to scope some things out, I'd written a big proposal, and it came back way higher than she wanted. So she went and she found somebody else to do stuff much cheaper. So she outsourced, she got some development done in the Philippines in India and got some stuff down. And she hated it. And so she came back to me. And I'm like, Cool, my price is still this. Um, and ultimately, we didn't end up working together because she didn't she, she had priced it based on rates outside of the US and wanted the work at a different level than she was able to find. And it is not my responsibility to fix her poor business decision.

Unknown Speaker  
That is a very good insight and useful. We've talked a lot about getting what you're worth. But is there ever a time or a situation where maybe you might take on something that's less than what you're worth, or even maybe do it for free?

Christy Tucker  
So, so for all of it, like in that particular case, there are a for profit business. It was clear that there was going to be challenges working with him. And I did say no, and I do walk away from things. So there's a couple of things sometimes. If their budgets really small, sometimes you can help somebody by reducing the scope of what you will do to fit their budget. So I had somebody who came to me looking for help improving some existing contracts and some courses and It was cool it and I sort of gave them the menu of like to do the things that you want would cost this 1000s of dollars, but and they're like, oh, but we have $150 per module to pay, like, okay, at $150 per module, they were 15 minute modules or something, I'm like, I can review it and give you a list of things to improve for every, for every one of these, I'll be happy to so so I gave them something that matched their budget. And sometimes that really is a viable solution. Right? that the answer is that they don't have that they really don't have the budget, there's no more money for them to find. And so you give them what you can within that scope. And so you just make the scope smaller, make sure you really clearly define exactly what you're doing and how many revisions you're doing. Because that's always where you get stuck on scope. So you can that I think that's a reasonable thing. I have taken lower rates for nonprofits, I have sometimes taken slightly lower rates for projects where I'm going to be learning something in that. And so for example, I've been trying to when I was starting to learn how to do VR, and I did, my effective hourly rate on that is not actually great, partly because I'm learning VR, and at the same time as I'm doing the videos, and so therefore, but again, you scale out of it. And so to me, that was worth it to take a slightly lower than my usual hourly rate, you do have to be cautious about that. And this, that's going to be a really personal decision. And you may be able to do more or less of that, depending on your availability and where you are in your life. And every time you take something at a lower rate, there is an opportunity cost there, too. If you take something in a lower rate, you can't take something at a higher rate if it comes in. So you are missing that potential opportunity. So you didn't have to think about that. And then the the second part of the question was about doing things for free. Right. Was that? Is that correct?

Yes. Yes, free.

So yes, there are times to do things for free. Everybody who's working on this event is doing it for free, right, we're all we're all volunteering our time. I think that they are there, there are definitely times when we should give our work away for free. We are in a field where lots of people are generous with their time and and I've gotten I've benefited from lots of people's help. For myself, I have set some boundaries around what I will do for free. For a for most of the time, I will do free stuff that is one to many. So like this, where I can talk and as one person for an app for half an hour, 45 minutes. And there are a bunch of people who are listening and there were more people who will listen on the on the YouTube on the recording later. This makes sense to me, right? This is something that I can spend some time on and help a bunch of people while keeping some limits to how much time I'm spending. If it is a one to one request for help, we're this is the general advice if you want advice specifically on how to revise your resume your LinkedIn, your portfolio and present yourself better in order and and make your plan of how you're, you know, plan out your message to your manager on how to do your raise. That's one on one personalized and I am going to charge you for that right I charged for one on one coaching. And so that said $150 an hour now and with a discount for larger banks of ours. So if it's one to one and it's personalized, that is not for free. I do a lot of presentations, podcast, interviews, my blog. I give away a ton of stuff for free. Frankly, I actually will answer I also wonder one when I have people asked me for advice. I actually will often answer questions over email or LinkedIn message for free because generally speaking, a call costs me a lot more energy than answering emails. And that's the other piece of it for me is that protecting my energy and setting some boundaries around? doing one on one calls is not free for me answering some questions via email, especially if you have specific questions, it will see people who send me general questions like how do I get into and how do I get into ID, then I'm going to not spend very much time on that email I my boundary on that will be to give you here's, here's the link to my blog where I have a bunch of instructional design careers posts. And you can read that. And if you have some specific questions come back to me. But this is, so that's that's sort of where my line is. And so that's the, that's the line that works for me. Early on in my career, I did a lot more like resume reviews and portfolio reviews for people for free. I have now hit a point in my career where I just can't do all of those for free. And honestly, there are dozens of people who can review resumes and portfolios, and they don't need to come to me for that. I do try to be generous with my time. And I know that people get upset sometimes. And I think there's been I know, there's been some discussions in the chat and in other sessions about that desire to make people happy. And to be polite. And you want to be seen as a good person who is generous. But you can set boundaries for that of where your line is of what you will do for free and what you want.

Unknown Speaker  
And I think that actually goes along well, with one of the discussions we had yesterday about boundaries, know your boundaries and set your boundaries. Yeah, I'm gonna say

Christy Tucker  
this is this is very much that like set the boundaries for yourself, like I can be very generous. And there still a point where I am going to charge for my advice. We talked about this, I'm in a group of freelancers, that online network of independent learning professionals, and I know several of you are in that group. We just talked about this, because there's somebody in that group who I did a bunch of, like, advice with him. And we had talked on on our group calls, because again, that's that one to many conversation, I had done private messages. And then he had asked me for a one hour call to go through some things in detail. And I set the boundary with them. And he brought that up of like, how glad he actually was to have had me set that boundary for him to actually take a step back and say, oh, yeah, you're right, I'm probably actually taking up a lot of Christie's time, maybe I should, like, rethink this. And so I want you all to know that. Okay, so sometimes, you're going to set a boundary, and somebody's gonna get mad at you. Right? This is this is this is very much tied to yesterday's boundaries talk, right? So sometimes you are gonna set a boundary, and somebody's gonna get mad at you. I've had people get pretty mad that I won't do free stuff for them. But in that particular case, that that person was really actually glad that I set that boundary. And then he was also able to rethink that for himself of like, oh, maybe? Do I need to have boundaries? And also, am I being respectful of other people that I'm going to, to ask them for free labor? I think that there's definitely that question with free labor. I do think that women do get asked for free labor. I think women of color get asked for free labor more. I think there is always the hates Black History Month, who can we find who's black who can do stuff for free? Right, like there's a lot of free labor asked for Oh, Black History Month or Hispanic Heritage Month or Native American Heritage Month, right? Like there's like, like, I get a fair amount of us as a white woman. And I know it is not anywhere near what black women and women of color are. So I think that there's also that so again, you have to figure out what your boundary is of, yes, you want. Of course, you want to help with the DEI things. Also, you should get paid for your expertise.

Unknown Speaker  
We have a few more questions in the chat. And actually one of them is not specific to boundaries, but I could see how there's a boundaries angle. A lot of times when you're negotiating a job, you might notice that the title and the job description aren't they don't match. They're not the same. Like they're the example they give is instructional designer as the title, but it's also blatantly for a Curriculum Manager for a global organization. So what what do you how do you negotiate that mismatch?

Christy Tucker  
So, titles are so squishy in our field. I mean, like there just is, no, there really isn't consistency in our field. So I think you could, you certainly could try and negotiate a more accurate title. In a job, I do think that you really, you really cannot know what a job is just by the just by the title. You can, you really do have to read the description, because instructional designer could mean a whole bunch of different things. What that looks like in higher ed is going to look very different from corporate, but also just within different organizations. And I know people who have called themselves instructional designers, who were strictly multimedia developers. Right. So yes, I think you can ask I think you. But I will say that that's, I wish I had an easy button for this. And I don't, I don't know that I have a great answer. I think looking at the descriptions, trying to look at maybe some of those other some of those job sites that I had, that maybe have general descriptions of things, I would say maybe going back to some of those job sites and saying, okay, it seems like this one really fits this other thing. And coming to it with data lake some of the advice about arrays going when going when, you know, looking, having your data, having some emotional intelligence about how you ask, maybe applies to titles as well. So

Unknown Speaker  
well, we're getting close to time, but we do have some questions about, for example, what are the resources that you use to find your freelancing work? And this is just asking for reassurance that there are resources that will be shared for w two employees who want to aim for a raise. So I guess, making sure that we we've been talking a lot about we haven't talked yet, obviously, obviously, there was a question about wanting to find it, but then I am seeing that there is a need that people do want to know about, you know, how to do so think about, you know, overall advice, I guess, for this for this audience,

Christy Tucker  
yes. Okay. So, so for this stuff, I know, there's been stuff about the online network of independent learning professionals. I think the ID Lance community, I think networking with other freelancers is part of it. So much of the work in freelance comes through referrals, and then repeat business. So networking with other people, but that only network of independent learning professionals, I think it was, there was a link posted in there. I know Bridgette, and Kayleen, and Tristan are all in here. You can ask Petey Bryant for an invitation to the Slack community, which is where we post opportunities, there's a lot of referring work to each other in there. I know from hearing from other people I know in the ID Lance community, but I have heard from other people, that that also has been a supportive network of other freelancers. I know people, we're sharing LinkedIn, profile links, and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn as well. Because again, like being findable on LinkedIn, and doing all that we talk in the NLP group quite a bit about how to find work. And I actually have a presentation on YouTube about how I find clients, if you want that. Connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me or contact me through my blog. And I will be happy to send you the link to that I have a whole presentation on how do you find clients? As far as w two? I would say that the resources are those PE benchmarks that I shared earlier. And the Ask A manager how to ask for a raise. I think those are the two key things for w two employees. Is that there is some of that. I know that there was also some questions about recent trends. I will say that the training mag network survey did find that salaries went up about 4% in 2022, which is not the message that I'm seeing from people griping on LinkedIn. Right that it's all Oh, all the teachers who have switched instructional design have depressed rates and there definitely is some more at the low end. But overall the pay rates do seem to have gone up a bit. So you just discussion here about like attending professional organizations, your your local ATD chapter if you have a local ATD chapter that is active, that can be really helpful as well. Good. Good suggestion, Caroline.

Unknown Speaker  
Well, we are just about at time. So is there any last words of wisdom you'd like to share and we'll conclude the session then.

Christy Tucker  
So I think that the big one big message is yes, use those benchmarks and look at stuff and if you are getting paid way less than what those benchmarks saying that you are worth it. And you can ask for a raise, or give yourself a raise, if you're a freelancer and and start doing that, and, and working on getting yourself paid what you're worth knowing that this is still a systemic problem. And there are parts of this that you are not gonna be able to fix as an individual. But still try and get paid at least what you are as an individual worth.

Linnea Conely  
That is great advice. And thank you so much, Christy, for spending this time for free to share your expertise with us. And we'll end this this session and there are many more great sessions to come later today.

Christy Tucker  
Thank you very much, everybody. And yes, connect with me on LinkedIn. And if I didn't get to your question today, contact me and as I said, I will answer questions for free on LinkedIn as follow up

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