Working Seat
$150
15 seats
A seat at a table of six to eight, a table lead, The Receipt, hors d'oeuvres and drinks, and four hours of work on your own number.
For experienced Black women in Raleigh with a comp review, promotion case, offer, rate reset, board seat, or exit coming.
Where Your Price Breaks, Before Someone Across the Table Finds It
The Invoice Number™
An in-person working session · Thursday, December 3, 2026 · 4:00 to 8:00 pm · Raleigh · 25 seats
Between now and the end of January, someone decides your 2027 pay, your title, or your rate. They will do it with a number. The question is whose number.
Right now you can describe your work. "I led the vendor consolidation." You cannot yet prove its price. Same woman, same work. One version gets thanked. One version gets paid.
The person across the table has a budget, a benchmark, and a replacement-cost estimate for you. They came with math. On December 3 you find out where yours breaks.
What happens in the room
I talk for fifteen minutes. You work for the rest.
You arrive and write one thing you did in 2026 on a card. Then you sit down with a table lead and write that card as a line item: outcome × benchmark = range, logic shown. You will get further than you expect. You will also hit a wall.
- The benchmark.
You can state the outcome. You cannot source the number that converts it to dollars. If you write a guess, your table lead will ask you to label it "guess." She will not supply a number. That is the rule.
- The skeptic.
You swap worksheets with the woman next to you, and she asks three questions: What year is that benchmark? What industry? What would make this number wrong? Most numbers do not survive.
- The volume.
You did one line in forty-five minutes with a table lead beside you. You have twelve months of these.
Then one volunteer types her outcome into an AI in front of the room and asks it to put a dollar figure on it, with the math shown. It answers in forty seconds. Confident, formatted, fluent. Then it gets the same three questions. Watch what happens before you bet January on it.
What you leave with
The Receipt. One page. Your outcome, correctly stated. One honest blank where the benchmark goes. The three questions a skeptic will ask, printed on the back.
That is real, and it is not enough. The blank is the point.
Who's running it
Cynthia Barnes, Founder and Principal Analyst, Black Women’s Wealth Lab®
1,513 compensation conversations on record. Contracts negotiated with 41 named enterprise organizations. Before I knew how to run a Value Audit™ on myself, I set my own consulting rate by naming a number with nothing underneath it. I know what the blank looks like from the inside.
Two ways to sit
VIP Table
$300
10 seats · one reserved table
Everything in the working seat, plus a seat at the reserved VIP table and a short one-on-one pricing look with me after the event, scheduled and virtual. My rate is $750 an hour. This is the only way to get time with me for less than that.
Reserve your seat
No refunds.
Questions
Will I leave with a dollar figure?
No. You'll leave knowing exactly which input is missing and the three questions your number has to survive. No one's work gets valued in the room.
Do I need to prepare anything?
Come with one thing you did in 2026 that mattered. That's it.
Should I bring my phone?
Yes. Keep it out; you'll need it.
Is there food?
Hors d'oeuvres and drinks, passed and stationed so you can stay at your worksheet. It is not a sit-down dinner.
Where is it?
Forum IV, 8529 Six Forks Road, Raleigh, NC. Full details go out by email after you register.
Is it recorded?
No.
You can keep hoping the number you walk in with holds. Hope is not a strategy. Twenty-five seats, December 3.