John Gates has been on the inside of more salary negotiations than most of us will see in a lifetime—over 75,000 offers across industries and levels. From a scrappy upbringing in Oregon to global recruiting roles at Capital One and beyond, John learned how the game works. And now, he’s helping jobseekers stop lowballing themselves and start playing smarter. In this episode, he debunks the biggest salary myths, shares the scripts that work, and explains why salary negotiation starts long before the offer lands. For Gen Xers navigating job transitions or prepping for the next big move, this episode is both a wake-up call and a negotiation playbook.From Pizza Delivery to Pay Negotiation Powerhouse“I worked 30 hours a week at Domino’s and crammed two degrees into two and a half years.”John shares how a scrappy start built the systems thinking and urgency that now powers his work with jobseekers and executives alike.Recruiter, Interrupted“I was laid off before my first job even started.”He reflects on the early career shock that forced him into recruiting by accident—and the surprising skills he found along the way.The Capital One Lightbulb Moment“I got the offer, the bonus, the relocation bump—and still felt I’d left money on the table.”That one regret launched his obsession: learning how recruiters really build offers and how much most candidates are missing out on.The Salary Lies That Get Recycled on LinkedIn“Know your worth and demand it? That’s how you get ghosted.”John unpacks the worst advice online and explains why collaboration—not confrontation—is the smarter way to negotiate.When to Talk Money (and What to Say)“Most people wait until the offer. By then, it’s too late for the Mercedes—you’re getting the Beetle.”He reveals the step-by-step strategy that builds leverage from the first click, not the final call._____________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: John Gates --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.15 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>150,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is John Gates and what is his career background?
Thank you very much, Vince. I'm so excited to be here and eager to talk about all the secret stuff when it comes to pay negotiations, something most people want to know about. But first... You got to know about me. So that's fair. My career is an interesting one. I grew up really poor. And so I self-funded my college education working at Domino's Pizza. And I was one of these crazy guys that
I was very motivated to get through college as fast as possible. I had to earn money. I had a young family. So I ended up finishing two four-year degrees in two and a half years by taking 18 to 20 credits a term, working 30 hours a week at Domino's Pizza to self-fund it. It was a crazy actual burnout time. Young and poor and motivated and ambitious. That's the way it was for me.
So I began as a financial analyst and it was really strange. I got a job right out of college working for a high tech company as a financial analyst. But two or three weeks before that job was to start, they rescinded all the job offers. And that was a terrible event in my life because I was planning to pursue this career. I had a young family to feed and support.
And now all of a sudden I was facing unemployment before I even got started. I ended up falling into being a recruiter by mistake. And I don't think recruiting is something that most people pursue on purpose. Most of the time you fall into it by mistake. You end up doing it because it's something you're good at. And I found out that I was really good at it.
So I started climbing the corporate ladder in the Fortune 500 as a technical recruiter. Very quickly got into leadership and eventually became head of global recruiting for multiple Fortune 500s. During that process, though, of chasing the Fortune 500 career and climbing that ladder, I moved many times. I was laid off several times.
And I know how terrifying it is to be laid off or separated from a company that once loved you, but now no longer needs you. That sucks when it happens, but... I moved from Oregon, my home state, to Virginia, about as far away from Oregon as you can get. Then I moved from Virginia to Alabama to take another job. Then from Alabama to Indiana for another job. Indiana to St. Louis, Missouri. St.
Louis to Texas. And then finally, Texas back to my home state of Oregon, which is where I am today. So during all that, I became known as a recruiting process fixer. Now this is some guy who comes in and fixes the problems like a car mechanic car is sputtering. It's not running to its full potential. We need to diagnose the issue and fix it. And so that's what I became known for during that time.
And. While I was the head of global recruiting, I trained hundreds of recruiters on how to share with people. I ended up overseeing about 75,000 job offers at all levels and in multiple industries. So that's where I have been. And ultimately came the salary coach.
You are a salary coach, which I see as an evergreen profession. Whether the market is up or down, you help people maximize their compensation packages. Many entrepreneurs, coaches, and tech founders start a business because they have faced the same problem. Learn the hard way and then turn it into a product or service.
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Chapter 2: How did John Gates’ experience at Capital One shape his salary negotiation insights?
They might be pulling it from competitors that I don't compete against. So I don't care what company A offers people if I don't want to hire people out of company A. So or industry B or something like that. That demanding eye confrontation style is something that I really guide my clients against. I bring them more into a collaborative style.
When you're making an ultimatum, there's usually an off-ramp. You're saying, take it or leave it. That gives the other person the chance to say, okay, I'm leaving it. And that means it's high risk in the name of salary negotiation too. I think another big mistake that people make is they let their fear dominate them in the process.
Now, I think everybody who's listening here, you, you're yourself too Vince, probably been in transition before where you're in a spot where you don't have a job, got rent to pay, mouths to feed. You're terrified sometimes when you're in transition. Especially in a bad economy, you're worried that you might not get another offer anytime soon.
It might be eight or nine or 10 months before you get an offer. And that fear pushes you into this place where you are too conservative. You want to avoid that risk so much. You want to advance to interviews. So you lowball yourself in the phone screen. You want to put this job search uncertainty behind you.
So you take the offer that comes because it's good enough instead of poking out a little bit to see what else they might be able to do. So being dominated by your fear, I think, is one of the common mistakes that people make. Um, and this advice going out and demanding your worth doesn't acknowledge the fear that most people feel when they're in this process.
I guess the last mistake that I'd like to make or mention here is that some people think that negotiation starts when you get an offer. I think that negotiation is a process. And it's true. You begin negotiating when an offer is in your hand. However, there's a lot of positioning and prep work that goes into getting the best offer in the beginning.
I'll tell a story about a client that came to me recently and said, John, I just got a low ball offer. It's 30% less than what I thought I was going to get. And this person wasn't a client from the beginning. They called me right there at offer stage with the, with the low ball offer. And I started to explore it with this client and said, okay, tell me what you told them early in the process.
Like, how did you apply? What did you say when you applied? What did you say in the phone screen? Now tell me about your interview process. When you talked about money, how did you do that throughout all of these opportunities to discuss money and your worth and your value and the value that you're going to bring to their company?
But it turned out that he stepped on a whole bunch of landmines that he didn't even know was there. And it's the mistakes he made earlier in the process is what drove him to get this 30% lowball offer. If you get a lowball offer like that, you can make a small adjustment. You can move up a little bit, but you're probably not moving that offer up 30%.
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Chapter 3: What are the common salary negotiation myths and bad advice to avoid?
very quickly are starting to see, wow, silver bullet after silver bullet. Now I know what to put in an application and my phone actually rings. Now I know how to say the right things in a phone screen and I advance to the interview without feeling like I have to lowball myself. This builds their confidence that everything that I'm teaching them how to do is good and accurate, makes perfect sense.
So over the course of time, then that usually results in a very strong offer for them. Then when I first started this business, I did have a gain share fee model I thought was going to appeal to absolutely everybody. In other words, my deal with my early clients was I'm not going to charge you a dime to work with me.
And instead, we're going to figure out how much you think you could get on your own without my help. And then we'll figure out where we landed together. setting the mutual goal to score above that, whether it was 15,000 or 150,000. I was going to take a small percentage of the gain and give them almost all the rest. And that seemed like a fair approach.
But for a variety of reasons that failed, I think people, and I discovered this along the way Vince, a lot of people were reluctant, even though I was only taking a small percentage, they thought, what if my gain is $500,000? That bill could be really big, even though their gain was going to be several times larger.
The uncertainty of not knowing what it would cost was an obstacle for a lot of people. And I didn't really anticipate that was going to be the case. So, you know, the podcast name here is Chief Change Officer. And when you're an entrepreneur, you have to adapt to what the world is giving you.
So I made a few adjustments there and now I'm in a new model where people can know exactly what it's going to cost before they begin the relationship. I can, I can spread payments out and what I make is not tied directly to how much we gain. And that's for a few different reasons, but some of the stuff that we go after is hard to quantify.
For example, if the company we're chasing after offers stock options, it's really hard to know what a stock option is worth without going to something like a Black-Scholes model or something like this. How much is three extra weeks of vacation time worth? How can we calculate the gain? Essentially, I wanted to get aligned with the needs of my client.
Whatever their goals are, whether they're financial, otherwise, we're going to go after every single thing that is important to them and get as much as we can. At the end of it, they're assured that they got the best offer that they could get. We don't twist arms. We don't force companies to do anything uncomfortable.
We're finding the maximized comfortable offer and the employer is going to celebrate when they close you. That's our goal. We don't want to destroy relationships on the way in for the sake of a little extra money. Likewise, sometimes my clients want, they express that they want more money
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Chapter 4: Why is collaboration better than confrontation in salary negotiations?
set you up with unrealistic performance expectations that's just going to sabotage your work experience over time. We don't want that either. We want healthy, balanced, and prosperous. That's the goal at the end.
For those who may not be able to afford your services, may buy your book or listen to this episode for your insights. Can you give us a couple of pieces of actionable advice? Something they can use to help themselves ease the pressure and open up new horizons of thoughts before seeking professional help.
Oh, sure. Yeah, in fact, I think I could probably give you more than five if that's okay. It is always frustrating to me that good advice on pay negotiation is really hard to find. In fact, I think I'm unique in the world. I don't think there's anybody else that does what I do as a specialty.
So here's a bunch of things that I think people could use immediately, whether they hire me as a coach or buy my book or join the Salary Coach Academy, which is another way. But in the application, when you're filling out an application, it's gonna ask you for your salary report. Everybody knows that this is a screening question.
A recruiter's gonna be looking at that and deciding whether they're gonna call you. And this is a point of anxiety for a lot of people. First bit of advice here is do not put in open or negotiable or something like that. Put a number in the box. And the reason for that is recruiters are extremely busy. There are a lot of applicants right now for every job.
A recruiter only has time to call five or six people. And if 10, if 10 people meet all the qualification, he could call 10, but only has time to call five. He's going to call the five that he's pretty sure are going to pan out. If you put in open or negotiable in there, it's a major area where he might schedule the time to call you and then realize very quickly that was a mistake.
So putting a number in there I think is very important. The number you put in there should be on the low side of what you'd be willing to accept. This is not going to lowball you though because... Tip number two, you're going to write that down, and then when the phone rings, you're going to reframe that number into a range in that phone screen.
So you're going to back off of that number, and you're going to say, I'm actually looking at a range between A and B. They'll ask you in that phone screen to confirm your pay requirement. And if they don't, you need to bring it up. Otherwise, you might be stuck with that number you put in the application. This is really important that you shift into a range in the phone screen. So.
Tip number three here is shift away from salary and get into a total compensation conversation as quickly as possible. A lot of companies now are posting the salary range with the job. And that's a good thing, but what you don't know is the minimum to the maximum of the salary range. Is it the minimum to the midpoint of the salary range?
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Chapter 5: When should salary negotiation start during the job search process?
Thank you for coming, John. Congratulations on your new book. The title is ACT. your wage. I hope you enjoyed our interview.
It was so much fun, Vince.
Thank you so much for joining us today. If you liked what you heard, Don't forget, subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.