The Power of the Ask

Community, Courage, and Compensation: Reimagining Your Value and the Power of the Ask

• Season 2 • Episode 5

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In this episode of the Power of the Ask podcast, hosts Lisa Zeiderman and Precious Williams reconnect with investor, writer, and facilitator Nirupa Umapathy. Nirupa explores the significance of embracing life’s transitions and advocating for your financial value. Discover how learning to say “no” and understanding your financial landscape can empower you to ask for and receive what you truly need.

Key Takeaways:

  • Community is Crucial: In times of chaos and division, the strength of your network and the people around you is paramount for support and growth.
  • Seven-Year Cycles of Change: Recognize and embrace the natural rhythms of significant shifts and evolutions in your life and career.
  • Advocate for Your Worth: Never undervalue yourself or index your expectations to the lowest baseline; aim for compensation and recognition that reflect your true value.
  • Financial Literacy is Foundational: Understand your cost of living, liabilities, and the levers you can control in your financial life.
  • Timing and Context in Asking: Be mindful of when and how you make an ask, always considering the context and the other person’s perspective.
  • Become a Champion Receiver: Recognize and actively work against societal conditioning that may prioritize giving over receiving, particularly for women.

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About Nirupa:

Nirupa Umapathy is an independent SG-focused investor, writer, facilitator, and classical Pilates teacher. A former Managing Director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Whitebox Advisors, she was known for executing complex deals in structured credit markets. After leaving finance in 2017, she redesigned her life around joy and creativity. 

Nirupa founded Salons for Life, a community fostering connection through unstructured play, and writes on empowered transitions. She also curates a unique alternatives portfolio, drawing on her financial expertise. Nirupa holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Economics from Smith College.

Important Links:
Savvy Ladies
Precious Williams' LinkedIn
Lisa Zeiderman's LinkedIn
Nirupa Umapathy LinkedIn 


Lisa Zeiderman (00:06.398)
Hello everyone, welcome to the Power of the Ass podcast, which helps you get what you need financially and personally. We are so glad that you're here today. My name is Lisa Ziderman. I am managing partner at Miller Ziderman and I am one of the co-hosts with my dear friend, Precious Williams. Hello, Precious.

Precious LaTonia Williams (00:25.079)
Hey Queen Lisa, I am Precious Williams, prop founder and CEO of the Perfect Pitch Group and known as the Killer Pitch Master.

Precious LaTonia Williams (00:36.665)
Queens, can I start over because something just flashed on my screen and I don't know what it was.

Lisa Zeiderman (00:40.22)
I saw that too.

Lisa Zeiderman (00:44.39)
It is covering words, yes.

Precious LaTonia Williams (00:45.452)
Okay.

Precious LaTonia Williams (00:49.741)
Okay, my part,

Lisa Zeiderman (00:51.442)
Yeah, but still very low. Is nobody else hearing that she's low?

But it's not like her usual sound.

Precious LaTonia Williams (00:56.909)
Ahem.

Cause I'm usually not on, I'm usually not on microphone. I'm usually at my house. I just, yeah. And so I'll try to project queen. Okay.

Nirupa Umapathy (00:59.756)
Yes, I just put on my loyalty.

Lisa Zeiderman (01:02.44)
Okay.

Okay.

Precious LaTonia Williams (01:10.755)
Yes. Thank you, Queen Lisa. My name is Precious Williams. I'm the proud founder and CEO of the Perfect Pitch Group and also affectionately known as the Killer Pitch Master. Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back. This week we're excited to reintroduce you to Narupa Umapathy. We're so excited to have her again. And so I'm just going to give you a little tea on her before she introduces herself and we get the Power of the Ask podcast going.

Narupo Umapathy is an independent SG Focus investor, writer, facilitator, and classical Pilates teacher. I'm gonna need a little of that. A former managing director at Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and White Box Advisors, she was known for executing complex deals and structured credit markets. After leaving finance in 2017, she reduced...

Precious LaTonia Williams (02:06.127)
After leaving finance in 2017, she redesigned her life around joy and creativity. Narupa founded Salons for Life, a community fostering connections through unstructured play and rights on empowered transitions. She also curates a unique alternatives portfolio drawing on her financial expertise. Narupa holds a BA in anthropology and economics from Smith College.

It is such a pleasure to have you here with us again, Narupa. Why don't you share with the audience a little bit more about Salons for Life, what it is, and what led you here today.

Nirupa Umapathy (02:46.414)
Hi, Precious. So good to see you. And hi, Lisa. Such a delight. Thank you so much for having me here. Yeah, what? I mean, I don't know, maybe what, like five months since we spoke last and we were speaking at a very critical time back then. And I feel like the time has gotten more critical since the last time we spoke. So, yeah, you know, great question on Salons for Life. It is a joy project that I founded in April of 2018 in earnest.

Lisa Zeiderman (02:52.99)
Delighted to have you.

Precious LaTonia Williams (02:54.371)
Hey, you know, you know this.

Nirupa Umapathy (03:15.042)
And as your introduction so succinctly described, it's really a learning community for adults, a learning and a storytelling community for adults, where we engage in anywhere from 19 minutes to three to five hours of immersive, all I can say is living room type conversations with a purpose.

And the reason why I don't call it a company, I don't call Salons for Life a company is because we do not incorporate as actually an LLC until very recently. We were originally three co-founders and one of our co-founders, Kate, will always be a founder emeritus because that's the way we do companies in Salons for Life.

she went on to doing bigger and better things with her acting career and she had to start her own production company. And so it's now, it's a two-legged stool, which sounds very imbalanced, but we do balance each other really well. It's my friend, Sybil, who I met at the yoga studio in 2019 and it was friendship at first sight. And so Sybil and I continue on into the next leg of this journey for Salons. And what I will say,

in a one sentence elevator pitch back then, which doesn't apply anymore, is that it was actually built on a fairly radical mission, which was the power to gather and the right to gather is inherently the fundamental tenet of democracy. And while I never advertised it in any of our pitch materials, that had always been the founding tenet of salons and was based off the inspiration was the French Enlightenment salons of the 19th century.

which were really the backbone of the, not only the French Revolution, but it was a Republic of letters in many ways. And why was that the inspiration? Because it was a uniquely women-driven movement. Women gathered philosophers, thinkers, writers, and philosophes, as they called it, in the living room and made that a real life university. Now that was the first generation of the salons.

Nirupa Umapathy (05:27.682)
And we attempted to do the same thing with it for the last, from April, April, 2018 to the last salon was November, 2024. So we ended the chapter there, where essentially there was a huge cornerstone around learning through the community. So it was a very shared hierarchy. No one was the expert. And we learned, when I say we learned, we did experiential learning. So it was somatic. It was financial acuity, which I know we will talk a lot about.

and it was about creative capital. So actually it's what I call the three currencies. And for me, actually the three currencies have been the power to my own journey of liberation, if you will. And if I may just add one more point, because I don't want to leave it hanging there. The new chapter of the salons is going to look like experiential retreats building on the three currencies. So we will go from doing micro events, which were

two to four hours long, so now we'll go to like two to four day retreats or two to three day retreats. Yeah. The curriculum is going to be the same basically. Creative capital, somatic. And Lisa, I don't know about financial acuity and I need to talk to you about this offline because it is teaching personal finance and a retreat also feels so loaded with liability in the US market. So I'm still like thinking through it.

Lisa Zeiderman (06:49.648)
It is all about being careful about liability, I will say that. It's always good to keep that in mind.

Nirupa Umapathy (06:51.938)
Yes, yes. Exactly, I knew I'd have to talk to you as a lawyer for like liability discussions. But the reason I bring it up precious is because, you know, I never really looked at salons as a business model or a money making project was truly a love project for me. We always broke even, meaning we always paid our artists a very fair trade wage.

But the founders necessarily, Sibyl and I weren't in it to pay for our living wages, if you will. And we can talk about it more because I the conversation is going to unfold in this direction anyway.

Lisa Zeiderman (07:34.974)
All right, so Narupa, we saw you, what, like six months ago, we had this great conversation on the power of the ask course. And here's my question, what key insights, shifts, changes have influenced your approach since you were last on with us to your leadership, to decision making, to even finding your joy? Because you know, this for you,

Nirupa Umapathy (07:39.616)
Yep.

Lisa Zeiderman (08:03.398)
has been a lot about finding your joy. Your journey has been about finding your joy.

Nirupa Umapathy (08:08.8)
Yeah, I mean, great question, Lisa. I actually had to reflect on this question a bit because I literally feel like we've traveled from one planet to the next since we last spoke, to be honest. And what joy means to each one of us at a moment in time can probably be hour by hour, day by day. You know what I mean? It's so case by case. In terms of my joy vitamins, what I would say is I haven't changed my opinion on this, which is

Community is queen and the power of your company, and by this I mean the people that surround you, is very essential at this time of great chaos and polarization and divide and conquer, as I like to call it. That's one. I haven't changed my view on being a mission-based founder of things.

What I mean by that is Lisa, I don't have any plans on returning back to Wall Street anytime soon. I don't even know if I'll be employable, but you know what I mean, even theoretically speaking, to go back to an explicit for-profit model as an employee. So that has not changed. My thesis still remains.

What has changed, and I know that we will talk about this here, which is as much as I think out of the last seven years to give you perspective, five of the years I was pro bono, only two years I got paid. As much as I think my setup in life allowed for me to do that, it actually ended up burning me out massively.

And I intend to do a complete 180 on that in the next chapter. So let me draw a parallel with the salons. The first phase of evolution for the salons in the beginning was just testing out a product and a prototype and understanding who we were serving. So that was really something where we just did it on the kindness of all the collaborators. Like we weren't paying anyone anything and people just showed up because they wanted to be part of the project. They just loved it. And so we continued on like that for a year.

Nirupa Umapathy (10:19.382)
The second year would be basically Sybil and I made a decision that we're going to pay the artists first because artists don't get paid a fair living wage in the US and we wanted to support them. So the second year, what we started doing was every time we would have like this kitchen room community, kitchens and community, every event we passed through everything that we were raising from the community, it was extremely accessible, meaning anyone could walk in, you didn't have the money to pay for it, you come in free if you wanted to donate, you paid.

the sliding donation model. Then the third year, then this was the pandemic. And Sibola and I decided that we wanted to, we had no operating budget. Like Savvy Ladies is a ginormous operating budget. We were a tiny little scrappy organization, which is super grassroots, grown in living rooms, really. Funded by its community, a sweat equity of its community, we decided that we were going to...

raise money and donate all of it to community organizations. So that year our focus was only on paying our artists and our facilitators and paying out to community organizations that were doing very important work. And then from there on, so that was very much still sort of whatever you raised, you just pass through. And then we shifted the model to breaking even where we had comfortable margins.

meaning we had a reserve, we didn't have to freak out if we didn't have, like we always had one year's ramp worth of expenses, right?

As much as it was all part of the plan, it still was exhausting emotionally. And here we are, mean, both Sybil and I, and I don't want to speak for it, I can tell for myself that I clearly wouldn't be doing these kinds of things if I knew that my retirement was at risk. My retirement was not at risk. But the cost of life living across New York City, literally Lisa and precious, I was

Nirupa Umapathy (12:14.05)
Because I was so committed to mission and doing good, I shortchanged myself so much that I was living like a first-year analyst associate at times. I actually, I think the crash and burn happened last year when I woke up one day and I said, yes, I don't need to live a Wall Street lifestyle. Yes, I don't need to be in a red carpet experience all the time. Yes, I don't need to have a $300 meal to really satiate my soul, but.

I don't want to live like a first year analyst or a second year associate because no offense to first year analysts, there's a time and an age to do that. I'm 45 going on 46. I think that the time to do all of that was in my 20s. And I have experienced those times and those are wonderful times for then, not now. So I think that this is the biggest takeaway, which is.

I really am moving into this next chapter. And I like to define chapters as seven years because some weird astrological reason, my big time shifts are like seven years. I don't know what it is. Everything happens in a multiple of seven for me. And so like seven years, the next seven years, I'm moving to this theme called margin. I'm not calling it profit, I'm calling it margin. Because profit is a really bastardized and diluted word at this point. And I'm half in with...

the capitalist of Wall Street because I'm an investor, but I'm half in with the artists and the culture workers who are like, who always like to vomit when they hear the word profit. So I like to use the word margin. Yeah, that's really the biggest leadership shift that is informing, that will inform the way I do business with the world, but it'll also inform the way I'm inside out.

Lisa Zeiderman (13:58.163)
Good for you.

Precious LaTonia Williams (13:59.971)
think what is so great about what you just said is I feel like that's the life of those who love what we do. And then, you can make money from this. And then you start to shift in your mind. How do you really want to do this? How will this work out? And you talked about your seven years, the seven year cycles. I thought that was so brilliant how you said that because that's how I feel like.

Nirupa Umapathy (14:24.098)
You

Precious LaTonia Williams (14:24.225)
my life is these seven year cycles. Along with that, we know in order for you to get those into the salons of life, you have to make a compelling ask. You have to give them something valuable, something to sink their teeth into. So how do you leverage storytelling, your story or your co-founder's story?

and data that you have that you've come across to make a more compelling and persuasive ask. Period.

Nirupa Umapathy (14:57.908)
talk about the compelling ask in a couple of different contexts because the first one is going to be the easiest one for me to describe to you. So when I worked for 14 years in finance, it is a notoriously transactional industry. What I mean by this is that if I actually didn't go in before bonus time and if I was not having that advocacy conversation with my manager, I really was shooting myself in the foot.

So in a way in Wall Street, when you say they say ask for the order, they literally mean it on the trading floor. Like you ask for the order throughout the day, right? So essentially you pick up the phone and you talk to your client and there's hopefully a trade at the end of it. There's also a huge part of relationship building when you work on the trading floor, but the immediate transactional thing, which actually was the beauty of working on the trading floor, that it was never shameful to do that. And the same way with salary and comp.

you know, the annual compensation cycle, at least in the training floor was at a certain time, you know, like bonus pools were getting negotiated and every desk had its own culture. It was very manager dependent. It was very personalities dependent where there would be this sort of like lobbying and this negotiation that would go on for employees. And each one of them was effectively having some kind of a veiled or not so veiled conversation around.

what they expected to get paid versus what the firm or the bank was going to pay them. And in that, the frame was again, fairly reasonable in the sense most people I would assume if they were in VP and above in those careers or maybe even younger now, but these younger generations probably had a very good sense of their comp in the market. Like they were calling headhunters whether

you were looking to move or not. So basically when you walk into a manager's door, you at least had an idea of where you were, right? I'm making $100, $200, $300, whatever it was. And then the very audacious and the shadow boxing or the dancing across the floor happens in the negotiation where depending on the personality and the manager again, you might, you might started like, I'm expecting 300 when the manager's a low baller and they're at a hundred or you know what I mean?

Nirupa Umapathy (17:20.61)
That was the cleanest environment where I learned to develop the power of the ask. It gets very squirrely after outside that for me because remember I moved from finance into the complete diametrically opposite which is the arts where I was working with artists who had a hard time asking. Like I literally had to be like, I think for this,

You're going to be with us for 90 minutes. I think $250 is a fair trade honorarium. We can't afford to pay you more, but I think I've looked at your competitors and what they pay you. think this is fair trade. Literally. It was so weird how the market was set in that case. Like someone who comes in and tells you, uh, it's okay. Don't pay me. And then you're like, no, I think we should pay you something for your 90 minutes. And then, then I'm like looking around being like, what will they get paid if they worked at the local theater company and they did some 90 minutes?

Right, so setting the market was a very confusing time for me. The last seven years have been the most confusing time for me. And I'm taking all the two years when I was working with a consulting company where I was back in corporate and it was all like back to like the way I knew it. Working with artists and with yoga teachers and cultural workers was one of the most enlightening, illuminating, heart-expanding

mind-expanding experiences, but also I walked away from it learning a lot, but I also walked away feeling like it couldn't sustainably be part of it if I was not in a pool of people that were getting paid equitably, including myself and including my co-founder. Precious, to give you some perspective, in trading, one of the earliest tenets is like

Goat, I mean, like don't fish in an overcrowded market and definitely do not be, don't be hunting in like in a market where the payoffs are terrible. And I did exactly all of that for the last seven years. Basically no one goes into the arts to get paid in America at least. Like I'm not talking about the expensive paintings that are hanging in the Guggenheims, right? I'm talking about independent artists that don't have a platform. I mean, I know you both can understand this. Like I'm not talking about, I don't know, Lisa, can you give me like some fine, like fine art, like.

Nirupa Umapathy (19:44.706)
Some like, like the most like contemporary artists who's exactly. It's not someone who's selling their work for like millions of dollars. We're talking about people that I was working with. was a very conscious choice that were making anywhere between 30 to 60, 70, $80,000 a year. And a lot of the artists at that time were living sort of in the tri-state area, even though I was working with artists globally. Um, I really learned a shit ton.

Lisa Zeiderman (19:47.846)
It's not John Chamberlain.

Nirupa Umapathy (20:14.274)
in the last five years. Both of the expanded limits of our imagination and what the power of community can do. When you don't have the money, there's a bunch of other people that show up for you. That there is a universe, that's a benefit universe that does take care of people that are contributing in other ways. But I also learned the limits of when you are burning, when you're low on gas, you're not gonna be able to show up well to the world as well. And that was me personally, I'm not talking about any of my...

Art is friends. Yeah.

Lisa Zeiderman (20:48.488)
So, okay, so here's the thing, Nuru, but you have certainly a huge acumen for financial literacy. I mean, that was what you spent your career actually building and enhancing. And then you determined, you chose to change your life and to work with the art world where frankly, I think that there is

Nirupa Umapathy (21:12.834)
Mm-hmm.

Lisa Zeiderman (21:17.598)
less of an understanding of financial literacy. I think that there is a definite, different emphasis on what is important to an artist and also how they are going to even market what they, to your point, what they do, okay? And, you know, I am a pretty large art collector. love art, as you know, and a lot of unknown artists, but...

Nirupa Umapathy (21:40.79)
Yep. Yep.

Lisa Zeiderman (21:45.566)
I always find that that's a very big difficulty for artists is actually putting value on the work. They either put way too much value because it's just frankly insane or they don't put enough value, right? That's the problem. Either way, doesn't get them to where they wanna go financially. And so now you are in essentially this art world. And the question is, how do you...

Nirupa Umapathy (21:56.386)
Hmm.

Lisa Zeiderman (22:15.26)
does, how are you able to use your financial literacy to ask for and effectively get the resources and the support that you need to achieve your financial goals? And have, has your financial goals changed? I mean, you you talked about, I think this cutoff for you where you won't give up your retirement safety net, right? That's, that's your cutoff, but you obviously have cut out

other parts of your life, right? That $300 meal may not be what you are doing right now. So what are you doing to essentially get resources and support so that you can make sure that you are not actually sacrificing your retirement and perhaps your early retirement?

Nirupa Umapathy (22:46.462)
Wasn't cool.

Nirupa Umapathy (23:05.218)
Great question. So again, for context, I think from a retirement standpoint, I'm good. Meaning that was actually the base jumping decision. The minute I got confidence to the tune of 85 % that my retirement is taken care of. Meaning at that time when I stepped off finance, I was 37, I think. And my advisors ran a whole bunch of scenarios, but I also did some mental math on it.

because my advisors still were indexing to a cost of life of $120,000 a year or like 150. And I was very confident without any data actually that I was gonna be able to live on 60. It was just a challenge that I took on, know? And that experiment worked well for three years and then it all blew up because of where I live.

and I still have a mortgage and I've not paid down the mortgage, not because I don't want to pay it down. Talking about financial literacy, I have a low interest rate of three and an eighth. It makes no sense to let go of like close to 25 year funding financing at three and a half percent. So that's number one, which is we talk about this always Lisa, know your balance sheet, know the cost of your life, know the cost of your liabilities first, always before your assets, know what is going to like pull you down, right?

The second thing I would say is the cost of life volatility has been huge. I don't know about you or Precious. I was able to live comfortably on 50 to $60,000 from 2017 to even 2019. And I'm not talking about income tax. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah.

Precious LaTonia Williams (24:49.467)
Hashtag no lies detected. Hashtag no lies detected.

Nirupa Umapathy (24:54.37)
Exactly. I'm not talking about income taxes here, Lisa. Income taxes are a completely different beast, but that number includes property taxes. I actually now, my property taxes, and since we like to talk numbers, I'll talk numbers. I don't have any shame on talking about numbers. A two bedroom apartment back then in Jersey City, my property taxes were eight grand. Now Jersey City is going through a fiscal crisis and my property taxes in the last five years have gone to 19 grand.

So if you can look at that drift and also from a relative value standpoint, it's a terrible proposition to actually be in, for me to be living in Jersey City right now because suddenly I've gone, even though at a low mortgage rate, maintenance has been okay and insurance has been okay, but property taxes are more than doubled, right? And it makes no sense. And it looks like there's no end in sight right now.

And also Jersey City, I'm sorry to like trash talk my own city, which I absolutely love. It's got one of the worst kind of schooling records as well. So from any which way you can look at it, like I can't justify why we are where we are. Right. So, so that's the second point about my life experiment, what I've learned from, which is cost of life, which I modeled in, in 2017 and where my cost of life right now is my cost of life right now is probably, and I live, as I told you,

Very scrappily except when I travel. That's a very deliberate choice. When I travel, I mostly travel with my parents now who are old, so I have to make sure that their needs are taken care of. And I will live like a complete cheapskate for the time that I'm in the US, but when I travel, I travel like a queen. I travel both ways. Like I travel very scrappily, but I also travel like a queen, right? And the cost of life volatility has gone from 50 to 85.

Okay. And for you by absolute numbers, that probably is nothing. But if you look at it on a percentage basis, I'm almost approaching close to twice the cost of life. And that's where we're going with the U.S. right now with inflation. We talked about how food inflation is untenable before we started this call. Right. And I'm talking about and so the real decision that I'm actually for the first time, the tail is wagging the dog for me, which is the cost of life is actually

Nirupa Umapathy (27:16.276)
influencing my decision on where I choose to invest my time and my place and my community and my relationships in. And that's one aspect about financial literacy 101, right? Be very mindful of the cost of life and have a very, and we talk about this, Lisa, have a very good handle on what your cost of life is every year. And how many people do you think really know what their life really costs every year?

Lisa Zeiderman (27:40.926)
Like very few, because I see that every day, very few. It's the first question I ask during a consultation, what's the burn rate? And nobody knows the answer.

Nirupa Umapathy (27:44.768)
Blanket.

Nirupa Umapathy (27:49.602)
Exactly. I know. I didn't hear divorce, like, mean, like negotiations, like how are they like negotiating coming in thinking what the replacement cost is going to be? Right? Exactly. Right. I always tell my friends who have, there's a lot of people that have come to me asking me about how do you transition from this to this? And I always tell them that it depends on the financial load and how financially flabby you are. And I, what I mean by this, I'm so sorry. This is not a

body shaming comment at all because this is a very neutral comment. What I mean by financial flab is A, do you have any idea of what your expenses are, which is the burner that Lisa referred to? B, what is the cost of your debt? So many people do not understand and don't know what their APRs and their credit cards are and yet they're maxing out credit cards. And again, I'm not shaming anyone. I'm just saying something here because we all are in a journey. And what are your student loan rates?

What is this? What is the weighted average? Blah, blah, blah. Now all of this, Lisa, frankly, like Wall Street didn't teach me this because I didn't see, I was working with institutional investors. I wasn't dealing with personal finance literacy. Frankly, I was a terrible personal finance person when I was earning all that money because I didn't have to, I could throw money at everything. Right. Just throw money at it. Like, you know, whatever, you know, and it is only when I stopped earning money actively and I was earning money only through dividends and income and

really like eating my own humble pie financially in the last like seven years, I've really had to enforce a huge amount of discipline in this side of the balance sheet and this side of the income statement. I never looked at expenses when I was earning money as a W-2. I didn't have to. You earn and then you spend. And of course I was saving a lot because Wall Street at that time, and it probably still is, was a very high income industry that

we were saving in leaps and bounds above market norms. I don't know if, I'm sorry, I don't want to meander too much, but I can talk about the asset side in another part of this conversation, but I think until you have a good handle on this, because this you can actually control. This, the markets, you can't control. Your asset growth really at the end of the day, growth in that sense, you really can't control. have to, you can play well, but you can't control the outcomes.

Nirupa Umapathy (30:14.07)
But how much you spend on your life, yeah, you can control.

Precious LaTonia Williams (30:20.792)
I am loving where you're taking this conversation. And I also know that in your life, just in our lives together, we've heard the word no. And for most people, that's the stop. But can the word no actually be a powerful tool for growth and redirection? And have you ever had a rejection turn into an unexpected opportunity?

Nirupa Umapathy (30:49.036)
Very interesting. I like this question a lot.

Precious LaTonia Williams (30:51.78)
Me too, Queen.

Nirupa Umapathy (30:54.176)
Okay, first off as someone who's aspiring to be a published writer, hopefully at some point I will be published who knows when, but you are in the game of rejections. The odds of the writing market are such that you're literally like negative odds, Besides artists, writers are an even crazier spectrum, which is I have no idea why we wake up every morning and do all we do. If you were to just look at the odds of just being rejected in the mainstream publishing market, we will never wake up. So my rejection immunity.

from the last seven years of just being a writer is like in the, I don't know, astrosphere somewhere. Like so much better with rejections right now. I was very frail despite working in a very sort of demanding and tough industry. mean, finance definitely made me Teflon, but it was also an industry where you couldn't fail. If you failed in the trading floor, you lost money and you were fired.

So that was not an option in my old job. Your client breaking up with you was a bad failure. If your client let you go, it's not looking good for you. so finance did not actually train me, I mean, train me in how to fail. It wasn't safe to fail in finance, at least the way I knew it. I've learned to fail in the last seven years. the thing about rejection and the no's, one of the most beautiful stories I can think of is,

in 20, somewhere in the middle of my career, in my 14 years, somewhere there in my sixth year or the fifth year or seventh year, my timelines are all off right now. I was so unhappy in my job where I was in this investment bank. And being the sort of overly confident spring chicken that I was then in the middle of my career, I was like, I'm just going to go and show them that I can find a job elsewhere. And like, this headhunter had sent up an interview for me.

It was at Goldman Sachs and I went for the interview and something happened where there were two interviews. The first interview was with someone that went okay. And the second interview was a main interview and the person was not able to interview me. And as a result of which I never ended up meeting this person and I didn't get the job either. And look at it like three or four years later, I think my timeline is completely off, but let's just go with this.

Nirupa Umapathy (33:20.62)
Four years later, this woman ends up becoming my boss. She actually was hired in to the last investment bank that I worked in. And literally for me, she was probably the best boss of my career. What I mean by that is this woman single-handedly, think within a year of taking on this new team, she was walking into a new investment bank, she was running this new group, new mandate, everything, everything was new.

You know, and she looks at me and she didn't know me from Adam. She probably read my production numbers and she probably knew that I was a top producer, but she knew me from, she didn't know anything about me. And as she says, and you know, like after our first ever meeting where the group is meeting her, you know, I bump into her somewhere and she's like, she looks at me straight and she said that we'll work on getting you promoted. No one does that. Like that kind of like.

placing a bet on someone and with that kind of conviction and sharpness and then sticking to it, you know, needless to say, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to this woman that'll always be in my life. And she ended up being my last manager and I call her my last manager because she was the person to whom I resigned to when I ended the investment bank. So that was an example of when

an implicit rejection, meaning she didn't get to interview me many years ago. And I'm so glad that she didn't because that product, I wouldn't have even known what to do with it. She was in a very different product. And then to come and lead this team and my career thrived and flourished under her. was like, a great example, I think of, I don't know, a rejection that turned into something beautiful, like a blooming flower in some garden, you know?

Lisa Zeiderman (35:07.326)
Naruba, so I'm going to ask you something in terms of timing. When it comes to making the ask, how important is the timing and how do you recognize the right moment? And I'm going to tie it to something. Okay. So my husband and I always talk about luck versus good fortune. Okay. And people often say, you know, I'm very lucky or you're very lucky or we always say it's good fortune.

Nirupa Umapathy (35:21.504)
Mm-hmm.

Nirupa Umapathy (35:28.002)
Mmm.

Lisa Zeiderman (35:36.86)
Because it wasn't luck, it didn't just happen, right? We made it happen.

I think about that when I'm asking you about timing, because I think that there is, I see it certainly in the courtroom, that timing is really everything. When you're going to state something, when you're gonna hold back, when you're going to wait for the other person to make their argument, all of those things, right? It's a strategy. Very often I'll have somebody with me, another partner or associate, they'll be writing something and they'll say, you know, to tell me to say this. And I'm like, no, not yet.

right? Okay? And it's all about the strategy of timing. And I am and and how do you know when the right moment is? How did you how do you recognize the right moment to make your ask? And you made your ask every day according to you. So how do you how do you do it?

Nirupa Umapathy (36:34.966)
Well, so on the training floor, mean, the context, let's just say it is with, with calm cycles, there was a cadence, you kind of knew it. You didn't want to start this conversation too early. Let's say that bonuses got paid in January, February. I don't know when they are paid now. I don't remember now, but you're not going to start the conversation in September. I mean, like in May, because then they want to call you needy or they're to call you completely clueless and out of tune, right?

So there's a very tight window where you don't want to be outside of where your peers are having these advocacy conversations, that's one. But that is the direct ask. The indirect ask is always no ask. It's planting of seeds of how am I creating value for you? So if Lisa were my boss, this is the way it would play out. Like, yes, let's say that Lisa is paying me a bonus in January, I am going to be in Lisa's office.

in November or whenever after she's had, we need to have a very good sense of the timeline when the partners have had their conversation, we know what the bonus pool is, blah, blah, blah, we go in. But then there's two layers beneath that, which is advocating for my value and what I'm bringing to Lisa first as a boss, and then what I'm bringing to the partnership, which is a bigger strategic thing that you need to add. As an employee, if I were working for Lisa, my eye has to be on that price first.

in any conversation, it's really, and this is something in writing as well, or in a presentation, it's about what is it for me, stupid? mean, it's really that. It's really what is in it for Precious, what is in it for Lisa, right? So those conversations can be planted, those seeds can be planted indirectly without there being any ask. In fact, I would say don't ask throughout the year. You are just doing your internal branding. This is the storytelling.

This is the adding value and let's not be disingenuous about it. I mean, everything about what I do now is authentic, which is that I'm not asking you to put a plug-in if you don't, if your heart's not fully in it. So Lisa, think that the direct, be very mindful of the direct ask and the timing where the timing is very like, it's finely tuned, but the indirect ask can be something that comes from your own sense of calibration. And obviously I'm not going to be asking Lisa for something as she's going into like some kind of high stressful like courtroom.

Nirupa Umapathy (38:58.026)
like, you know, like proceeding. mean, that would be the worst timing to be asking Lisa for a bonus as I'm carrying a folder, right? Like, so, yes. And I think also Lisa, more than timing, I think it's really the most valuable skill here is to be able to read context and read. People call it read the room. I'm an anthropologist, but it's context. If Precious is going to be presenting at a keynote in Atlanta tomorrow and her flight is at like four in the morning, right?

If I have that context, I'm not going to be yamming in our year at 6 p.m. the previous day even, to be honest.

Lisa Zeiderman (39:34.206)
Exactly. It's reading that room. like 100 % agree.

Nirupa Umapathy (39:35.468)
Haunted

Nirupa Umapathy (39:41.27)
That and empathy, I think to always put the other person first. Your needs will always be served, I think when you learn, because you are my client, Precious is my client. Thinking of it as who's my client at that moment in time and putting yourself next. You are also your own client. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make myself subservient to your needs, but a client facing, this is my salesperson coming up, which is...

know what the client needs, do what the client asks, and at the same time, always be able to, as a writer, I say that weave in the narrative of how your needs are not mutually exclusive from mine.

Precious LaTonia Williams (40:20.378)
First of all, if that is not the best question in terms of timing, I wish more people thought like that. I really, really wish that they did. But also in terms of timing, when we think about financial empowerment and negotiation skills, in addition to timing, when we think about all of these together, it's still about the power of the ask and how do you get there?

So for women and underrepresented groups, how do they kind of mesh that together? The financial power and negotiations, especially negotiation skills, because there people who will send something to something to you and you get the feeling they want you to say yes. And when you say, I'm going to do a counter offer. But most won't. So so how does that work? The great negotiation skills.

Nirupa Umapathy (41:03.298)
Mm.

Nirupa Umapathy (41:11.424)
Hmm. So interesting.

Precious LaTonia Williams (41:18.39)
in financial empowerment and using the power of timing.

Nirupa Umapathy (41:22.892)
So interesting, Precious. I think I was so blessed to have worked on the trading floor. My entire job was to negotiate prices. I was basically the person in between the trader and the client. That negotiation was just something that just was so naturally built into me, functionally and professionally. But yet I think even I failed many times negotiating for myself. I was not the first person standing outside my manager's room saying this what I want to get paid.

So I suffered and struggled with that a lot. would if I had to wager I probably Was number 10 if my other peers were like one two and three on and I think I got a little bit better with it over time The financial crisis the 08 crisis really dug the nails into the coffin on that one. We were just getting People were not getting paid anything even before the financial crisis started where I was working so

And Wall Street was a very bonus based business at that time. Like the base salaries were not that high yet. Now the base salaries are much higher and they can be very comfortable living wages. But I worked during a time before the financial crisis where if you didn't get your bonus, you're not going to really make ends meet. And I remember the one time when the bank slashed and said no bonuses one year before, talking about timing, one year before the rest of the street was like peddling down on bonuses.

And that was the first time I learned to go in and basically get a counter offer. And I went in and I said, this is the offer. I'm going to leave. That was actually not a smart thing to do, but I did. I was young and I did it. And guess what? They matched the offer. I actually think back on that and it honestly could have been played many different ways. I wouldn't recommend that it be done. But then two years later, it gave me the courage to go.

and I was an employee in this bank and I was doing well. And the next level of it was, I didn't say I want to get paid this. I was still too bashful to ask for that. Instead I said, I will be very upset if I don't get paid this. So I floored the comp and effectively that's what I got paid, right? So my point is, even though I worked in the business, I was actually not as good compared to a lot of the people that I thought that were really good. But then again,

Nirupa Umapathy (43:44.642)
If you ask my second to last manager, he would say that I was a royal pain in the ask. So I probably was doing a good job negotiating with him because I think I was the only person that you really had to like deal with with this. it was very annoying, I'm sure for him, especially coming from this Brown woman from India. like, Oh my God, there she is again asking. My point being. I didn't, even though I worked in finance, I had to fumble my way through it. No one was coaching me on how to do this.

I am able to tell people how to negotiate for salaries so much better for the last seven years because I have that zoomed out perspective where the stakes, I'm not the person that I'm advocating for. I think Lisa and Precious, I would be better, I don't play poker, but I'm using it as a metaphor. I would be so much better at sitting at a poker table and taking someone's money very comfortably because that is part of the game than

Lisa Zeiderman (44:27.656)
Mm-hmm.

Nirupa Umapathy (44:42.996)
If I again had to walk into your office, Lisa, be like, Lisa, I demand that you pay me million dollars this year. saying like, I think that that will just not come out of my mouth the same way. And I know that I'm not offering a very clear solution to this question, but I want to lead from a place of empathy for all of us. Even the best negotiators, I think struggle when they're negotiating for themselves. So a level of distance is needed. One.

You have to de-risk the stakes for yourself. Second, you have to practice and you can do this as scripts and role-play with your friends or whoever is your best negotiation coach. It doesn't have to be a salary coach, by the way. It can actually be an artful negotiator. But going through that script like four times and then practicing in front of the mirror, being like, and then I'm able to embody it. I'm able to embody. I'm going to walk in, Lisa, I deserve a million dollars. And not only that,

I think that that is the baseline of what I think I should get paid. should be getting paid more. For me to say that straight to you, Lisa, I think for me, it'll take a few iterations.

Lisa Zeiderman (45:47.738)
But I think that that is part of every ask that you make is that you have to think it out strategically and probably rehearse it. It doesn't just come out. And if it's an important ask, you should be going through the rehearsal. I think that you need to actually go through the rehearsal and make sure that you've got essentially your pitch and precious knows this better than anyone, your pitch down.

and that you can get yourself through all of the resistance that there may be to your ask.

Nirupa Umapathy (46:28.626)
100%. And also once you do that, I can go and let's say that I work at the next firm. I'm not so attached to my boss. I'm very attached to Lisa. Loyalty is getting in the way of me asking. Next boss, I don't care. Guess what? It's going to be a million and a half. I'm just making it up here, but you know what I mean? Or 350 versus like 500. I'm like, you know what? I'm not, Lisa is my, also is my mentor, my rabbi. She's been like taking care of me for the last 15 years. Oh God, I feel so terrible. I don't want to ask her.

Lisa Zeiderman (46:44.242)
Right, no.

Nirupa Umapathy (46:56.684)
But then another person, would actually be very good at it, dispassionately. And Lisa, the other thing I want to say to Precious's question about women of color, I am obviously Indian. I think your role models of how you get paid should be role models of the highest paid.

Lisa Zeiderman (47:15.559)
sense.

Nirupa Umapathy (47:16.374)
don't index yourself to the lowest baseline at all ever. I mean, honestly, like I will give another example of where this was. This is again, like really silly and very arrogant. But I look back on it. Somehow like after my first internship on Wall Street, I looked at this white MD from Harvard who worked in municipals at that time.

And I came back that summer to my boyfriend and I said, I want to make MD just like him at 27. Of course, no clue, no realism, like in my expectations, assumptions, no idea that I was Indian, blah, But guess what? That audacious goal of 27, I made MD probably at 32 or 33. And in between, I also happened to meet this amazing woman that was my boss who made MD at 27 actually, and she was Asian. So be very careful on who your role models are. Don't burn yourself out by shooting for the moon like,

kind of just without any discretion obviously have some thought and heart in it. Like that goal of 27MD was actually, it burned me out. I wouldn't recommend that, but make sure that your baselines are diverse. You're looking at comp structures of everyone and not just women, you know what I mean?

Lisa Zeiderman (48:30.372)
Such great advice. That is just such great advice for all of our listeners. I really, I take that to heart and I think it's really good, Narupa, and it's why we do these podcasts. So, all right, so what's the next step for you? What are we looking forward to? What are we gonna hear about in six months to a year?

Nirupa Umapathy (48:41.196)
Thank you, Lisa.

Nirupa Umapathy (48:52.674)
Actually, you know what? will say this. I'm going to put a shameless plug. I would love to come back in six months to a year and talk about mentorship and sponsorship as well and advocacy. For me personally, in my life right now, the next seven years, moving transmuting the salons into the next chapter and we'll be a business that makes profit, even though I said profit was a bad word, margins, and really looking forward to developing a product that works.

for the audience and a product that works for the audience and in a market and actually has a price, it'll work. You know what I mean? When those two meet, it works. The second, looking forward to dedicating more time to my writing career and being very serious about it. And then the third is investing. The biggest thing about investing is I am going to put a hold for this entire year and not add anything to my alternatives portfolio.

Lisa Zeiderman (49:29.662)
Yes.

Nirupa Umapathy (49:49.898)
And this is called a holding period where I have to re-evaluate and monitor the portfolio, learn from my mistakes, learn from my victories over the last seven years. I've made some big mistakes and I've also had some great gains. So investing has been very binary for me and I don't, in what I invest in, not the stock market or bonds, but I want that to be less bimodal for the next seven years. I want the curve to be smoother and the quality of returns to be better.

And the last thing I think the biggest change that will happen in my life will be where I live. Yeah. I mean, I already alluded to it. Like it makes no sense for me to be living here for all the reasons. Yeah. Yeah.

Lisa Zeiderman (50:20.83)
Where you live. Yeah.

Lisa Zeiderman (50:28.99)
Good for you, good for you. All right, so here's the big question, the question we ask all of our guests, and we asked you this before, so we're gonna see how this actually jives with your last answer. Why is the power of the S crucial to women, especially financially? Narupa.

Nirupa Umapathy (50:50.678)
First off, I'll answer it like a writer. Women for centuries and beyond have been givers that we need to reset the balance and be receivers. And asking equals receiving as far as I'm concerned.

And that's philosophical, but I think that from a mindset standpoint, I think we need to shift that toggle in our brain. We are going to be champion receivers as we have been champion givers. In fact, right sides of balance. The second on the power of the ask financially. I come from a country where the goddess of wealth is revered in every household, Lakshmi. Money is not a bad word in India.

India is also a very poor country where money is a very important currency and it's not vilified like it is here. So for every woman that has a stumbling or twisting of words on asking for money, I just want you to flip the switch and think about the goddess Lakshmi from India sitting next to you.

and welcome in money as an energy flow that is sacred and that is life-giving, not just for you, but for your family and your larger family and your community and for an equitable world.

Lisa Zeiderman (52:22.083)
I that. I love that. Okay, I'm gonna look up this goddess. I was just gonna ask you for a picture because we're gonna put it on social media for savvy ladies.

Nirupa Umapathy (52:27.028)
I will send you a picture you can see on there.

Nirupa Umapathy (52:33.684)
I will send you that picture. Actually, Lakshmi needs to be celebrated because I think we need one of the first projects, Lisa, for us is we need to de vilify this. It's been really a very patriarchal construct has been pushed down. That money is evil. It's been pushed on and classes of people that have not had access to it. We need to turn the flip the equation on that.

Lisa Zeiderman (52:56.07)
in with you on this. Send me the picture, we're gonna get it posted. I really wanna get it posted. So, Nuruppa, as always, Precious and I thank you so much for coming to chat with us and doing the Power of the Ask podcast as you did before. We love having you. And for all of our listeners, please keep listening and subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, and comment and...

review and tell us what else you would love to hear about and just keep listening and tell a friend, tell a friend, tell a friend. So thank you all.

Nirupa Umapathy (53:32.62)
Thank you so much, Lisa and Precious.

Lisa Zeiderman (53:35.486)
Thank you.