Katty Kay opens by tracing her personal journey with confidence — from recognising how a lack of it held her back, to writing books and coaching younger women on closing the gender confidence gap. She frames the series around a core idea: confidence means acknowledging fear and doing it anyway. She introduces Mika Brzezinski as a longtime friend and colleague who has been wrestling publicly with the same thorny workplace questions — pay raises, setbacks, feeling undervalued. Three sponsor reads follow: Vanguard's managed ISA for nervous investors, Sally.com's college funding tools for parents, and a public awareness message about Peyronie's disease.

The conversation opens warmly, with Mika noting that she and Katty have been 'OGs' — screaming about confidence and knowing your value from rooftops long before it became mainstream. Katty points out that her first book came out in 2008 and Mika's Know Your Value in 2011, and both wonder whether the problems have been solved yet — and agree they haven't. Mika argues there has been real backsliding, pointing specifically to the US political landscape, the erosion of Roe v. Wade, and the broader cultural forces that have chipped away at women's confidence and sense of value. Far from the conversation being obsolete, both agree it is more urgent than it has been in years.

Mika takes listeners back to the start of Morning Joe, when she was a year out of being fired and hungry for stability. She signed her hosting contract quickly — and later discovered she was being paid far less than everyone else on the show. She is emphatic that she has no one to blame but herself: no employer is going to voluntarily remind you of your worth, she says. The lesson she draws is both structural and psychological: you have to keep track of what you bring to the table, be able to articulate it, and crucially recognise your moment to ask. ^{[1] — Mika Brzezinski "Mika Brzezinski signed her Morning Joe contract for far less than her co-hosts — not because she was cheated, but because she didn't negoti…" 05:34 Play} She missed hers — and the sting of that realisation sent her on a research journey that became the Know Your Value book and movement.

Katty pushes Mika on whether the value deficit goes beyond money, and Mika seizes on the question. The career, she insists, is just the example — the skills it takes to know your value at work transfer directly to marriage, parenting, friendship. She reflects on her own history of 'dancing for everybody,' trying to make everyone feel good in the room, and failing to communicate her own needs — which eventually led to unfulfilling relationships and, she implies, her divorce. ^{[1] — Mika Brzezinski "Know Your Value was never just about salary. The same skills — communicating your needs, commanding respect, not apologising for existing —…" 11:35 Play} The antidote is not aggression but clarity: people cannot read minds, and if you don't say what you want, you won't get it — at work or at home. Mika also gets practical, touching on physical presence, Zoom etiquette, handshakes, and how to walk into a room commanding respect.

Katty asks where the impulse to undervalue oneself comes from, and Mika's answer is personal and surprisingly candid. Growing up as the youngest and only girl in a family of high achievers — her father Zbigniew Brzezinski would become National Security Adviser, her brothers were both 'literally brilliant' — Mika struggled academically, likely with an undiagnosed learning disability that Adderall might have addressed. Unable to hold her own in her father's famous dinner-table political debates, she discovered her gift was cracking jokes to defuse tension, becoming the family mediator and comic. ^{[1] — Mika Brzezinski "Mika grew up as the youngest and only girl in the famous Brzezinski family, surrounded by brilliant brothers and a father who staged politi…" 15:50 Play} Katty reframes this as a strength rather than a deficit, but also connects it to a wider cultural pattern: girls are socialised to please and facilitate, while boys are encouraged to compete and advocate. Both women agree this early conditioning has lifelong effects on professional and personal confidence.

Before turning to solutions, Katty grounds the conversation in hard data. ^{[1] — Katty Kay "Only half of American businesses prioritise women's career progression. 20% actively place low or no priority on it — rising to 30% for wom…" 19:35 Play} Only half of American businesses considered women's career progression a priority in 2025; 20% actively placed low or no priority on women's advancement, a figure that jumps to 30% for women of colour. Women are less likely to receive emotional support and only 50% report regular check-ins with their managers compared to men. Katty notes that knowing this — understanding the real-world landscape — actually makes the project of building confidence not softer but more urgent. The barriers are not imagined, and women need practical tools to navigate a genuinely unequal playing field.

Mika defines the good girl trap as the tendency to stay in a clearly defined box: follow the line, don't rock the boat, wait for your turn. She challenges this with a simple observation: she doesn't know a single successful man who plays by the rules and waits patiently for his moment. ^{[1] — Mika Brzezinski "Women are conditioned to stay in their lane, follow the rules, and wait for opportunities to be handed to them. Mika doesn't know a single …" 22:10 Play} The prescription is to make relationships, put yourself in uncomfortable positions, push through the discomfort and learn from it. When Katty raises the subject of failure, both women embrace it wholeheartedly: Katty calls it a design flaw that is actually a feature, and Mika points to The Confidence Code's framing that failures are unbelievable lessons. The message is not to fearlessly avoid failure but to stop letting its possibility keep you from acting.

The episode pauses for two brief sponsor messages: a Pepsi matchday ad and a Botox Chronic Migraine prescription drug advertisement with detailed medical disclaimers.

Katty observes that women, like the young Mika at the Brzezinski dinner table, have a habit of facilitating good environments at work — organising lunches, sending leaving cards, onboarding the interns. These are useful, but companies do not reward them with promotions. ^{[1] — Katty Kay "Women disproportionately take on tasks that keep offices running — birthday cards, intern onboarding, brown bag lunches — but these will ne…" 25:00 Play} The backlash question is important, too: what happens when women stop playing to type? Mika's first response is practical — if a job opens with an assumption that you'll do these things, it's not a good fit. But her core advice is elegant deflection: never flat-out refuse, but redirect the task to a colleague or offer to find someone better suited, immediately and before you've agreed. Above all, she warns against saying yes and then venting about it to colleagues — that is the worst of all outcomes, undermining both your reputation and your integrity.

Katty raises the persistent myth that women are risk-averse, and Mika acknowledges she does see less appetite for risk in the young people she hires — but attributes it less to gender and more to generational trauma. ^{[1] — Mika Brzezinski "Mika Brzezinski sees a generation weighed down by pandemic trauma, gun violence, and political chaos — and it's making them reluctant to se…" 30:50 Play} Young people today have been hit by a sequence of gut punches: a global pandemic, gun violence in schools, and a turbulent political landscape. The result, she argues, is a generation that lacks the hungry, eager, relentless follow-up energy that opens doors — the thank-you email, the first-thing-tomorrow availability. She worries this risk-aversion carries over into personal relationships too. And she sees it as the next challenge for the Know Your Value movement: helping young people find their fire again.

Katty opens with the statistics: 60% of women have never asked for a pay raise, fewer entry-level women than men want promotion, and when women do ask, they ask for less. She then invites Mika to role-play the conversation live. What follows is a vivid lesson in what not to do. ^{[1] — Mika Brzezinski "Mika acts out three ways she actually asked for pay raises — and failed. The apologetic approach, the personal-expenses sob story, and the …" 34:20 Play} The apologetic opener — sorry to bother you, I know everyone's cutting budgets, I'm so sorry — collapses at the first resistance. The personal expenses pitch — clothes, makeup, my mum, my dog — is promptly dismissed as 'whiny.' The aggressive male imitation — poking the boss's chest and demanding a raise — spectacularly backfired. Then Mika recounts what actually worked: calling her boss Phil a bad boyfriend, delivering a calm ultimatum with genuine humour but complete resoluteness, and being truly prepared to walk. She is clear: you cannot bluff this. The ultimatum only works when you mean it.

Katty poses the question many listeners will be asking: what if you're 27, want a raise, but aren't willing to quit? Mika's answer is practical and structured. ^{[1] — Mika Brzezinski "At 27, you will probably hear no. That's not a failure — it's the first move in a longer game. Go in with your list of accomplishments (A t…" 39:40 Play} At that stage, you are still building, and you will probably hear no — but that no is not failure, it is the opening move. The method is simple: come in with a list of accomplishments (A through G), state clearly that you know a salary increase is appropriate and this is what you're looking for, and be warm but direct. When you get the no, go back three to six months later, with the list extended (L through P now). Keep returning. If the organisation still won't move, start quietly looking elsewhere. And if you get another offer, use it — men do this without a second thought, but women often feel guilty. Mika is emphatic: getting a competing offer doesn't make you disloyal, it makes you more valuable.

Listener Evie asks how to assert her contribution when a senior colleague consistently presents their jointly developed ideas as solely his. Mika's response is direct: ^{[1] — Mika Brzezinski "When a colleague steals your ideas, act within one week or you become part of the problem. Never go to a third party first — go directly to…" 44:45 Play} if this has been going on for more than a week, Evie is now part of the problem by allowing it to continue. Address it immediately and only with the person involved — going to others first makes you look like a whiner and destroys trust. A direct conversation may reveal the colleague was simply thoughtless and will become a supporter. Listener Fatima asks how to re-enter the workplace after maternity leave without seeming like she's complaining about being sidelined. Mika offers a ready-made script: thank colleagues for their sensitivity, immediately reassure them you are ready and available, and proactively ask how you can get involved in upcoming projects — flipping what could be a defensive complaint into a confident, forward-leaning statement.

Asked for her single most important piece of advice, Mika pauses before offering what she calls the biggest thing she has ever learned — and something she only figured out in recent years, when she thought she already knew everything. ^{[1] — Mika Brzezinski "The single most important thing Mika has learned is that women have a long runway — decades to dream, pivot, reinvent, and start over. For …" 46:25 Play} It is the concept of the long runway. Women, she says, have a lifetime to achieve their dreams, to pivot, to reinvent, to find the relationship or the family or the career pivot they always wanted. She and Katty grew up with an alarm clock ticking — a constant sense of urgency that kept them from being present or savouring either the pain or the joy of their experiences. That clock, she insists, no longer exists. In her own generation, life beyond 50 was white space: it looked scary, it looked empty. Now it is so full there isn't time for everything, and that is a sea change for the generations coming behind them. Her closing message is not to rush but to slow down, take the off-ramp, enjoy the ride — because the runway has been paved by the women who came before.

Katty closes the conversation warmly, noting she has borrowed Mika's long runway phrase many times since first hearing it. She invites listeners to email the show with their own questions and dilemmas at [email protected] and promises to see them next week. A SimpliSafe home security ad follows, offering 50% off with the promo code Spotify. The episode ends with a full series trailer for Doing It Anyway with Katty Kay, teasing upcoming conversations about confidence versus competence, office politics, stolen credit, rejection, and leadership — airing every Friday.