Know Your Worth with Dr. Cynthia Coy

What does it really mean to know your worth?

In this episode, Dr. Cynthia Coy joins us for an honest and empowering conversation about self-worth, confidence, boundaries, and the inner work it takes to fully recognize your value.

Too often, people look for outside validation to define who they are. But true worth is not based on applause, titles, relationships, or approval from others. It comes from knowing who you are, what you bring, and what you deserve.

In EP 98, we explore how understanding your worth affects every area of life — from relationships and career choices to healing, growth, and the standards you set for yourself. This episode is a reminder that your value is not something you have to earn. It is something you have to believe, protect, and walk in.

If you’ve ever questioned yourself, played small, or accepted less than you deserve, this conversation is for you.

Listen now and be reminded to stand confidently in who you are.

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Transcript

Introduction | Know Your Worth with Dr. Cynthia Coy

Claude F 0:00

Have you ever known you deserved more but still found yourself second-guessing the ask? Today we are talking about why asking for what you're worth is not just about confidence. Sometimes it's about burnout, boundaries, and whether you're leading from clarity or survival. Dr.

Jess K 0:17

Cynthia Coy is here to help us unpack how high-achieving women move from overwhelmed to overflow and why knowing your worth has to show up in your money decisions, your leadership, and your voice.

Claude F 0:29

Stay with us because by the end, we are giving you a simple way to check whether you are negotiating from alignment or from exhaustion. Hi, I'm Clude. And I'm Jess. We are corporate employees by day, entrepreneurs by night, and work besties for life.

Jess K 0:48

Join us as we explore how work besties lift each other up, laugh through the chaos, and thrive together in every industry. Work besties. Work besties, welcome back. This month is all about money, power, and negotiation.

What It Means to Know Your Worth

Claude F 1:05

Really asking for what you're worth. And today we are looking at a part of that conversation that matters more than people realize. The connection between self-worth, boundaries, and how women show up in high-pressure leadership spaces.

Jess K 1:21

Because a lot of women are not under-asking because they're unqualified. They're under-asking because they're exhausted, overfunctioning, and caring too much. Dr. Coy, welcome to Work Besties Podcast. You help women move from overwhelmed to overflow. And that feels so connected to the way women think about money, negotiation, and leadership. When did you first realize that success on paper and actual alignment in life are not the same thing?

Dr Cynthia Coy 1:48

That's a good opening question. For me, it might be a little different, but um the success on paper, when you look at my resume in my corporate um corporate and military careers that I had, you looked at the salary, it sounded like she's all great. But it was not in alignment with who I was and who I wanted to be. Um and I for me, it was like I was doing something that while I had the technical expertise to do, and I went to school, I had an experience in it. However, my personal growth journey has been going on for a while now, and I've changed, right? Like I wanted to show up and who it is that my well wanted to be. And it started my entrepreneur journey because I was not in alignment with what I was doing. Basically, about 13 years ago, I thought, well, okay, where do I really want to be? And that's how I started on Cage Solutions, my business. And while I worked alongside my corporate, I eventually transitioned out to do executive coaching and um leadership development for organizations because that's more so Cynthia, you hit on your background, right?

Jess K 2:59

You were in the Air Force, your corporate leadership, and it sounds like you had other kind of behavioral science elements in there too. How did those experiences shape the way you think about power, performance, and pressure?

Why Self-Worth Matters

Dr Cynthia Coy 3:19

Wow. Well, so in an organization when you are high level, there's power that comes by position, right? That type of authority I always say you have to be careful about because you know, you never want to never want people to feel like they're coerced to do something just because you're in charge. From a personal perspective, though, there is a pressure because you are at that level. It's like, okay, well, you have to do it really well because all eyes are on you. And especially for me in my experience, I'm a minority by being a woman or ethnic ethnicity-wise. So there were lots of times I was the only one, either only woman in the room or only a person of color in the room. So everything that I said the way I thought was going to be scrutinized. So there's that pressure from there too. And so the the pressure to perform in a power role is is pretty high. And it could become very stressful because you don't want to make a mistake, right? Because if if you do, then whatever preconceived notions people had about how you were going to perform in the first place, all of a sudden start to um, I'm not gonna say be spoken out loud, but you start to see it in people's nonverbals and their behavior sometime. And so there's a lot of pressure, regardless of how much you know, how confident you are in your your job, it feels like you're always under a microscope being evaluated.

Jess K 4:53

Yeah, I agree with you. I think there's an element where people already have preconceived notions of you because of who you are and what you represent. So from the leadership perspective, the person who's in that role, how do you help them balance being okay with you still gonna make mistakes? So, what's that balance or that idea that you have to help them through that?

Stop Settling for Less

Dr Cynthia Coy 5:15

Well, first I I I took the word balance out the vocabulary for me. Okay. I know it works for some people, but not for me, right? Um, and just because when I think of balance, I think of a C-song. So that that means somebody has to be on the other end in order for it to stay balanced, right? Um, so I use the word harmony in it instead. And harmony for me is more about that alignment. The example often about um one of the things I love to do is go hear a symphony orchestra, right? So the music, violin, one of my favorite um instruments, is beautiful by itself. Flutes are beautiful. You have your percussion, your woodwinds, parts of the orchestra. And while alone they sound okay and even nice, when you put them together, it makes this right beautiful, breathtaking sound. Um, and that's that harmony. That's the alignment that you know you're looking for in your in your leadership. You can be confident in what you do and competent in what you do, right? But it's like, how do you how do you block out the noise, right? Because here goes the thing. Our our thoughts are always telling us stories sometimes. That may not be actually true, right? They're telling us stories, and regardless of how good you are at your job and your your position, people might even give you accolades for it. There is always something that you're you're striving for to make sure that, you know, we're gonna make mistakes, yes, to try to make sure there's no room or little room for um any any negative feedback or criticism that you're gonna get in in that leadership role. And so it goes to a lot of things. Um that's that's why the overwhelm happens because not only are you in this leadership role at work, you have this leadership role at home. And we look at the different roles that women play. You know, I love that we can seem like Wonder Women. At what cost are we that? So it's like you're so fragmented because it's like in leadership at work, I mean leadership at home, especially I think about whether you are a full-time stay-at-home mom or you're a working mom, but or even a working single person, you know, like um, I'll say the single person. Even if you're like uh even if you are um married but you don't have children at home, there's still this leadership that you're having, right? So it's like you're you're trying to be the best wife, or you're trying to be the best mom, or you're trying to be the best caregiver to your parents, or or whatever.

Jess K 8:04

And your community.

Dr Cynthia Coy 8:06

Yeah, and it's just all of these pulls that are happening. And so it's like, how do I make sure I'm in alignment? So that's that's kind of like how I had developed that fresh framework. It's like the different aspects of your life because it's so multi-layered, right? Like, how do you make sure that you are able to manage your time and your energy, right? To make sure you are in alignment to be the best version of yourself or for you first before you are trying to be everybody's everything.

Jess K 8:40

So you brought up something that um our viewers might not know about the fresh framework. Would you mind explaining what that is and providing some ideas for our work best to community?

Confidence and Self-Respect

Dr Cynthia Coy 8:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I've seen over and over again is that you have a lot of high-achieving women who are losing themselves. They might be paid well, or at least maybe paid well, maybe not. Who knows? Hopefully. It just depends. But um, they they are losing themselves because again, they're trying to be all things to all people. They are depleting themselves dry and not showing up for themselves. They are literally drowning in overwhelm. And so this fresh framework that I came up with stands for financial, relational, emotional, spiritual, holistic. Holistic is more of the integrator, right? It's being able to check out how you are showing up financially. You have people who are making six figures who can't afford to do something that might seem so basic because they don't know how to manage money well, right? Um, you have um people who are not successful in relationships because they don't know how to set boundaries, right? You have people who don't know how to manage their emotional responses. They're not even emotionally aware. So you that part is not where it should be, and it's starting to impact your relationships and your finances, right? And then you have the aspect of spiritual awareness and your journey spiritually, regardless of what you believe in or maybe what you don't believe in, um, I hope that most people understand that there is something bigger than you, right? And even when you look at your purpose that is bigger than you, um, there's something that should be anchoring you and guiding you in how you make decisions every day. Um and then when you look at your age, which is the holistic integration of it, it's looking at how do I make sure that I'm not giving too much energy or too much time in one area and neglecting another area. So that alignment, that harmony, the fresh framework, number one, takes a lot of intention and a lot of reflection and a lot of time for you to just say, okay, pause. Pause. Especially from the emotional side. I think our emotions really are the tell of how how well we're doing, right? They're like, you can feel when you have a tightness in your chest or um tightness in your gut, but if you're not listening to it, you start ignoring it, and then that's how you suppress it. And eventually it's that one little thing that has nothing to do with really anything, right? It it like explodes. So that fresh framework is is a call for you to really pause, think about where am I in these different areas of my life? Is that where I want to be, and how do I get to where I want to be?

Claude F 11:52

I would love for you to talk about the financial portion of fresh in a deeper way. What does financial alignment look like for a woman who wants more, but also wants peace, sustainability, and warm to breathe?

Dr Cynthia Coy 12:06

The first area you need to really reflect on is your worthiness. We as women, I just want something that's fair. I'm afraid to ask for too much. I don't want to ask too much, you know, because you're afraid of this rejection, right? But if you don't understand your worthiness, if you don't know the value that you're bringing to the organization, then you are going to let the organization define your worth instead of you defining your worth, right? You should be walking into that conversation knowing a few things. Um, one, research, know what the market range is, right? You also need to know where you fall into that range, right? And then you ought to be able to see and articulate why do I belong at the top? A lot of times we think in terms of what do I need to, what's the amount of money I need to ask for in other in order for us to maintain the lifestyle that we currently have versus dreaming bigger and thinking bigger. And so you're you're looking at that from a scarcity mindset versus an abundance mindset. The value that you bring, what is that worth? Society, you know, has pod used this. Be quiet, shrink. But why? Because when you've about when you put a value on your time, that that should change the game, right? For you. Another mistake that we make when we go into interviews or negotiations for salary is you're as much interviewing this organization as they are interviewing you. You're wanting to make sure that this is a good fit, that this is in alignment with not just what your worth is, but also who you are in the role that you're gonna be in.

Jess K 13:51

A couple of things that I would love to double-click into. Your comments coming with a mindset of scarcity versus abundance. That's game changer. And it's such a unique perspective to think about, especially when you're coming to your research side of where you think you land as far as knowing your worth. Talk to me a little bit more about that. What do you mean?

Healthy Boundaries and Knowing Your Value

Dr Cynthia Coy 14:13

Who we are at this moment, right, obviously has been shaped by experiences that we have had in our past. And so, regardless of where you are on the financial spectrum, is obviously informed by our past experiences. It's also informed by our thoughts for the future.

Jess K 14:29

Right.

Dr Cynthia Coy 14:30

And I think we just have grown up in a lot of scarcity mindsets. I think the difference between a scarcity and an abundance mindset comes down to the language that you speak. I'm not talking about foreign languages, I'm talking about saying we, the words that we say sounds great. I know, like for myself, I have taken certain words out of my vocabulary. Like, I don't say try, you know, I don't say I think I'm gonna do this. No, you're you're doing it. Intention is so important. And when you're looking at abundance, you always have to be future forward looking, right? And so when you go into a meeting to negotiate your salary, you should not just be looking at this is based on what I've done. You think about it based on what I know I will do in this role. When I was in the Air Force, when we get promoted as officers or enlisted into the next rank, they always say our rank promotion is based on our potential, not, oh, you did a great job as a second lieutenant. So we think you should be a first lieutenant. No, it's you are performing at that next level. We see that you can perform well at that next level. And so that is what we're going to promote you to. That's what we're going to give you opportunity for. When you are uh going into looking for another position, professionally speaking, that's what you should be looking for, is thinking about what I am going to do in this position. Now, granted, you don't know until you get there and you see what challenges might be there, but you know what you bring and you can dream. Do your research, not just on the what the market has for this salary range, but you know, if you had that title and you thought about what could I really do with that dream, start thinking future focus.

Claude F 16:26

It sounds like boundaries are not separate from negotiation, right? They teach people how to value your time, your leadership, and your labor before the Monday conversation even starts.

Outside Validation vs Inner Worth

Dr Cynthia Coy 16:40

This is where a lot of high-achieving women we get tripped up. We try to make it very personal and you have to stop doing that. I get it. You don't want to come off as aggressive, you don't want to come off um trying to mess up a relationship with your boss who might be the hiring manager. Negotiation is not about having a conflict with the person that you're engaging with, it's totally about collaboration. So you're not going to the table asking for permission. You're not saying, can I do this? No, this is what I need. This is what I want. And knowing that you can deliver what that number is asking for. So on the relationship side, and even like when you look at communication, right? Um, for the relationships that you're having in the in that space is we do make it so personal. So you might feel like people are attacking you, but it's really not. It could be jealousy, it could be intimidation. Um, people are not secure in themselves when they are around secure people. That's just a fact. When you think about energy, right? The energy you bring when you walk in that room can command a room, right? When you're around certain people, they can become intimidated or jealous about you. Not that you're given an air of arrogance or anything like that, but it's just because you're very confident in who you are. Your posture, it all, it all adds to it, right? Your posture, keeping your head down, your your shoulders are back, your head is up. When you speak, you're not a mouse. You're not also being super loud and very confident in what I have to bring to the table. I'll say this really quick because one of the things on the relational side is the people pleasing. We have to stop. We are so um taught to be people pleasing. From the time we're a kid, right? I get it, as the time we're a kid, you want to please your parents because you don't want to get in trouble, you don't want to have those kind of consequences. But as we get older, we still are acting like, you know, the 10-year-old that is like so, so obsessed with um not disappointing our parents or not disappointing our friends that we start to sacrifice and not draw those boundaries. Because boundaries are about you protecting your peace and protecting your joy by not letting people overstep and basically get you into a position where you're stressed out and overwhelmed, where you're not able to be in your flow and be in the space where you are in full alignment with who you're called to be.

Jess K 19:22

I agree wholeheartedly. People pleasing, setting the boundaries is really more about us because though others will listen, and you're the ones that have to set those boundaries and explain it and state it. And if you don't, they're gonna keep pushing. It's a good point, like just like the boundaries.

Dr Cynthia Coy 19:37

You can try to communicate. Oh, you know, don't yell at me. Okay. What are you gonna do if I do? What is your enforcement? What is the consequence of somebody yelling at you?

Jess K 19:49

I'm not gonna support whatever you're asking me to do. It's just not gonna get done.

Dr Cynthia Coy 19:54

Or I'm not gonna say anything. I'm just gonna sit in silence or walk away myself in that situation and leave you there by yourself. Your enforcement of your boundaries is critical to you maintaining your alignment. And people will figure it out really quick. She doesn't play that. Let me not do that again.

Jess K 20:13

That's true. That's really great advice for people. Do you think there's a connection between the overachiever who's overfunctioning and not quite finding that alignment yet, and under-earning, meaning they are not getting paid what they they really should be?

Dr Cynthia Coy 20:29

I I would say, yeah, there's I I think there can be a correlation.

Jess K 20:34

Okay.

Dr Cynthia Coy 20:34

You also cannot, right? One of the things that comes to mind is if I'm being if I'm overworking and not being paid enough, then I'm I'm striving to prove something like I should be worth more. But they're not gonna pay you more if you're doing what they're paying you for doing less. Because here's the thing, it's like human nature. If you go above and beyond what you're worth, and don't give me, I'm not saying don't ever do it, but I'm just saying you're consistently overworking, you're consistently staying late, coming in early, working on weekends when you should be at home, um, focused on yourself or your family or whoever, then people are like, oh, let her do that. Let her do it, she'll do it.

Jess K 21:24

Yeah, she'll do it.

Healing and Personal Growth

Dr Cynthia Coy 21:25

Yeah, the one that if we said, hey, you know, just I I need you to work this weekend, regardless of if you have that gut feeling like, okay, what am I? I'm gonna have to cancel taking my my kid to their soccer game or whatever, you you're gonna do it, but for what? Instead of us being confident in knowing our work and say, Oh, okay, you need me to work the weekend. Okay, let's negotiate what that's gonna look like. Okay, I'm gonna need it, I'm gonna need this, that, and the other. Negotiate um your work. At that point.

Jess K 22:01

Yeah. Then they can rethink that.

Dr Cynthia Coy 22:03

You know, say like right.

Jess K 22:05

So they can know that that it is, it is leaning in and asking for more. I love that. That's like, how do you establish being more collaborative versus just being chronically available for people?

Claude F 22:16

Exactly. What is a good question a work bestie can ask when she can tell someone is shrinking herself in a money or leadership conversation? A really good question.

Dr Cynthia Coy 22:32

First of all, when you have a work bestie, I hope they are the type of people that you're surrounding yourself with who are not afraid to be honest with you, right? Who can tell you what you may not want to hear, but you need to hear. And I think one of the most powerful coaching questions that I have used is when people are shrinking or maybe not feeling like they're having their best day and feeling worthy is um what is the story you're telling yourself right now? What is the story you're telling yourself? Now there's a difference between the stories we tell ourselves and the facts as they are. And that's that has a lot to do with um your beliefs that you have are influencing your mindset. But the the question is like, where do those beliefs come from? If somebody tells you, you're never, you're never gonna get that job, or you're never gonna get that position, or you're never gonna do this, you're never gonna do that. The thing is, our brain is so wonderful and powerful, what it hears, what it starts to process, becomes the story that that it's gonna be on repeat in your mind. So when you feel like, hey, yeah, maybe I should try this, that, and the other, these neural pathways that you have in your brain are telling you, no, no, no, no, because this we have been taught this is not what we do. And that's basically a pattern, right? But when you have those work besties that are um encouraging you and challenging you to figure out is that the story that you've been telling yourself, where does that come from, versus what is the fact, right? Um, a lot of times we have fears based on things we've never even tried. We have fears just based off of what people have said, and um, we aren't willing to to change that into a different story, right? Because it's a story like story time, which we kiss, but but the truth, the fact is you never know until you do it. And again, when you try something new, it is always a learning opportunity. So it's never, you know, failure. We hear failure is like sometimes people have a some negative connotation to it, but it's like, no, it's it's an experiment, and that's the way I live my life is it's a living laboratory. My life is a living laboratory. I'm just experimenting with things, and some things work, some things don't work. And I learned from both both of them.

Recognizing When You’re Accepting Less

Claude F 25:04

That's fantastic. And for the woman who knows she has been overgiving, under asking, or quietly running out, what is one small step she can take this week to begin leading fresh?

Dr Cynthia Coy 25:19

Seriously, just I I would say just pause. Um that can be some of the one of the scariest things people can do. I don't know about you, but like sometimes if you are just quiet and you're not doing, but you're just being, so we're human beings, but like if you're just being in a space where you're really um not trying to be misfix it, evaluating what's happening, what's going right, what's going wrong, doing a lot of reflection. Is this what I want? And then filling that gap. Okay, so how am I gonna move from here to here? That might involve you needing to hire a coach or talk to your work best. Once you figure out where your gaps are, ask for help. Ask for help. Do not try to be like, I can do this by myself. But then I have a coach, right? And I'm coached, but it's like asking for help because while the answer is always within you. That's one thing I love about coaching. The answer is actually always within you. And you know, when you ask those good questions, you have to really think about it and reflect. And the answer is, well, I I could do this or I can do that. You just never have done it. You've never sat still enough to ask yourself those questions or have those questions asked to you. So I would say that's the biggest thing is just stop. Because you continuing to keep going and doing the same thing that you're been doing. I think somebody says that's the definition of insanity. You're so right.

Jess K 26:46

It's not gonna be if I say, here's the five things you should go fix, they're gonna be like, I don't, I don't know.

Dr Cynthia Coy 26:51

Yeah, I'll say one more quick thing about that too. If you made a list of all the stuff you're doing, I guarantee you don't need to be doing all this stuff. Really knowing what your priorities are, what is most important to you will help alleviate some of that overwhelm that you're experiencing, letting go.

Jess K 27:10

Cynthia, before before we started this podcast, you were talking about some exciting news that you have. Would you mind sharing with our work bestie community?

Dr Cynthia Coy 27:18

Okay, so I um started last year writing the book. And I actually have the proof uh right here, like the proof that I've written it. Uh for me to edit somewhere. But um, it's called Overflow, The New Way to Lead, Live and Last by me. Yay. And this is uh a labor of love, um, a journey of um putting in this book. Chapters are shorts, roughly 100 pages, and it's it's um it includes reflective prompts at the end of each chapter for you to pause and think and and to make sure you're in a alignment. The book focuses on um helping you live whole instead of so fragmented, using that fresh framework as a perspective. This isn't this is written for the overachieving woman who just um needs to stop living from depletion, from overwhelm, and move into overflow. And overflow is everything, including the boundary setting, being able to know your work and being able to regulate your own emotions. It's about a lot of different things, using spirituality as your anchor and to be able to give to others without depleting yours yourself.

Jess K 28:29

That feels really on brand for the work bestie community.

Dr Cynthia Coy 28:33

The book is called The New Way to Live, Lead, Lead, Live, and Last. We have learned how to lead well, we've learned how to live well, but it's not sustainable, right? It only lasts five years, ten years, even 15. But again, you have to count the cost of what that means for you.

Jess K 28:53

Right.

Mindset Shifts for Self-Worth

Dr Cynthia Coy 28:53

What are you missing out on for you? Money is nice, it does allow us to do a lot of things, but peace is one of those things that are priceless. You can't put a price on peace. You can't put a price on your joy, you can't put a price on just knowing that I'm where I'm supposed to be purpose-wise. All of that is priceless. And at the end of the day, nobody's gonna ask you, how much money did you make? Um, you know, was all the working, you know, all the accolades you got from doing all the work. That's nice. But when you're in the next chapter of your life, are you gonna look back on those things and be like, oh yeah, that was worth it? Or can you look back on your life and say, the legacy I've built by teaching my kids things that really matter? That's the thing that's gonna sustain you. Keeping that in perspective of what really matters, keeping those priorities, that's what helps you sustain.

Jess K 29:45

Dr. Cynthia Core, you have been fantastic. How can our readers or our guests find out more about you?

Dr Cynthia Coy 29:51

You can always um check out my website, uncaged solutions.com. You can also um find me on LinkedIn. Um, and if you have a question or you want to learn more about what I do in my my coaching business, uh you can and the books, you can always um reach out to me at Cynthia at uncaged solutions.

Jess K 30:09

Thank you so much. This conversation was eye-opening, and we so appreciate your expertise.

Claude F 30:15

And that worth is not something women have to earn through exhaustion, not at all. It is something they have to remember, protect, and communicate clearly. This is the key. Because sometimes the first step towards asking for more is realizing we never supposed to lose yourself just to succeed.

Jess K 30:38

So the work basties out there, we hope you found this just as enjoyable. Please share with us what you're learning, how you're incorporating fresh into your life. And with that, keep supporting each other. Thank you.

Dr Cynthia Coy 30:50

Thank you.

Jess K 30:53

Remember, whether you're swapping snacks in the break room, rescuing each other from endless meetings, or just sending that perfectly timed meme. Having a work bestie is like having your own personal hype squad.

Claude F 31:06

So keep lifting each other up, laughing through the chaos, and of course, thriving. Until next time, stay positive, stay productive, and don't forget to keep supporting each other.

Jess K 31:20

Work besties!