Have you ever wondered if you’re being paid what you’re truly worth?
Well today’s guest is trying to help you uncover just that by removing the secrecy and stigma around sharing salaries. Hannah Williams is the creator of Salary Transparent Street. You might have seen her videos where she asks strangers about their salaries, and in this episode, we’re talking all about her work to close wage gaps and make sure everyone is paid fairly.
We’ll hear Hannah’s story of going from being underpaid to becoming a successful content creator. We’ll cover salary transparency, laws aimed at ensuring fair pay, and practical tips for negotiating better salaries. We’ll also talk about the challenges of being in the public eye, the importance of emergency funds, and dealing with online criticism. This episode is full of inspiring stories and helpful advice for anyone who cares about financial empowerment. Tune in and learn how you can advocate for your worth in the job market.
Key takeaways:
- Why salary transparency matters: Hannah’s platform, Salary Transparent Street, highlights the need for salary transparency to combat discriminatory pay practices and close wage gaps. By asking strangers about their salaries, she brings attention to the significant wage gaps affecting women, people of color, LGBTQ+ individuals, and workers with disabilities. Her work aims to foster an environment where everyone can understand their true market value and demand fair compensation.
- What fueled her advocacy: Hannah’s mission was sparked by a personal revelation — she was underpaid by $25,000 compared to her peers. This eye-opening experience drove her to create content around salary transparency, educating others on how to recognize their worth and negotiate for better pay. Her journey underscores the power of personal experience in driving impactful advocacy.
- The impact of pay transparency laws: Pay transparency laws in states like Colorado and California have set a precedent for fair compensation practices. Hannah has actively supported similar legislative efforts in DC, Virginia, and Maryland, underscoring the necessity of legal frameworks to ensure equitable pay. These laws require companies to list pay ranges in job postings, helping to close wage gaps and empower workers with crucial salary information.
- The realities of being a content creator: Tori and Hannah discuss the often overlooked mental health challenges of being public figures. The constant influx of feedback, especially negative comments, can be overwhelming and mentally taxing. Their conversation highlights the emotional toll that comes with maintaining a public persona and the importance of addressing mental health issues in the realm of content creation.
- The power of support systems and financial planning: Having a robust support network and financial safety nets, like emergency funds, is essential for navigating the uncertainties of self-employment and content creation. Tori and Hannah emphasize the importance of these safeguards in providing stability and peace of mind, allowing them to take risks and pursue their passions without undue financial stress.
Notable quotes
“What we are up against is really well paid lobbyists that are repping private corporations, that it helps their bottom line to underpay people. And so what we need to do is use our voice. Using your voice and talking to your legally elected representatives is the best way to have an impact in your own community.”
“We all need to realize that our battle is not with the 99% of which most of us are all in on. I make $200k and I’m still part of the middle class in my area. I don’t make jack shit.”
“We need to understand that our fight is not with one another, it is with our employers and the ones who set our rates. Don’t be mad at the person making X. Be excited and eager to learn what negotiating strategy worked for them. What did they ask for? What kind of skills or experience did they have that I should get so that I can ask for the same? That’s what I hope our videos instigate.”
Episode at-a-glance:
≫ 00:56 Introduction and championing salary transparency
≫ 01:44 The birth of Salary Transparent Street
≫ 06:34 The viral success and Hannah’s personal journey
≫ 19:34 The impact of pay transparency on different demographics
≫ 29:43 The gender pay gap and career compensation
≫ 31:22 Navigating online criticism and mental health
≫ 45:39 Challenges of content creation
≫ 54:50 Advocating for pay transparency laws
Hannah’s Links:
Find Hannah on Instagram
Add your salary to the Salary Transparent Street database
Special thanks to our sponsors:
Thrive Causemetics: Get an exclusive 10% off your first order at thrivecausemetics.com/FFPOD
Masterclass: Get an extra 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/FFPOD
Squarespace: Go to www.squarespace.com/FFPOD to save 10% off your first website or domain purchase.
Hill House: Visit hillhousehome.com and use the discount code TORI at check out for 15% off.
Bossbabe: Subscribe to The Bossbabe Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform to level up your business this year.
RESOURCES:
Feeling Overwhelmed? Start here!
Behind the Scenes and Extended Clips on Youtube
Leave Financial Feminist a Voicemail
Financial Feminist on Instagram
Take our FREE Money Personality Quiz
Meet Hannah
Hannah Williams is a 27-year-old content creator and former senior data analyst in the Washington, D.C. metro area tackling a major issue: salary transparency. With her viral series, Salary Transparent Street, Hannah encourages strangers to share what they do and how much they make. She’s inspired to combat discriminatory tendencies in employment and close pay gaps that affect women, POC, workers with disabilities, and the LGBTQ+ community. Hannah uses her platform to educate her community on market research, salary negotiation, laws to understand workers’ rights, and finance 101. With this knowledge, she hopes to help workers grow professionally and build wealth.
Transcript:
Hannah Williams::
There’s a reason that especially women of color miss out on millions of dollars over their lifetime. And it’s because of things like this where that $10,000, maybe it doesn’t sound like a lot right now, but over your lifetime, it adds up. And $10,000 is money that should be in your pocket. Probably a little less after taxes, but shoot, $2,000. I don’t know anybody that couldn’t make something good happen with $2,000, whether it’s paying down debt, building your emergency fund, paying off credit cards. It goes a long way.
Tori Dunlap:
Hi, Financial Feminist, welcome to the show. Every time we do one of these, I don’t know how to start it, but this is how we’re starting it today. You know the drill, you can subscribe. You can go back to our over 150 episode back catalog and listen to more. You can also buy my book, Financial Feminist if you want step-by-step guidance around how to be good with money. And if you don’t want to do any of those things, keep listening. Hi, happy to have you back.
Okay, today’s episode is a really fun one with a friend of mine who’s another fellow finance content creator, Hannah Williams:, and you have seen her videos. If you follow us, you have seen her videos, undoubtedly. Hannah Williams: is a 27-year-old content creator and former senior data analyst in the Washington, DC, metro area, tackling a major issue, salary transparency.
With her viral series, Salary Transparent Street, Hannah encourages strangers to share what they do and how much they make. She’s inspired to combat discriminatory tendencies in employment and close pay gaps that affect women, people of color, workers with disabilities, and the LGBTQ+ community. Hannah uses her platform to educate her community on market research, salary negotiation, laws to understand workers’ rights, and finance 101. With this knowledge, she hopes to help workers grow professionally and build wealth.
We talked about salary transparency, duh, how to be more transparent within your own community and your workplace, and how to advocate for more salary transparency at a federal level. We discuss Hannah’s journey into building Salary Transparent Street, and what she’s learned by going viral, interviewing hundreds of people about their salaries. We also discuss advocating for yourself when it comes to what you earn and how to learn more about what other people in your field are actually getting paid. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and get into it, but first a word from our sponsors.
You’re still DC outside, right?
Hannah Williams::
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Outside DC?
Hannah Williams::
Mm-hmm.
Tori Dunlap:
Cool.
Hannah Williams::
Alexandria.
Tori Dunlap:
Where is that? That’s Virginia, yes?
Hannah Williams::
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay.
Hannah Williams::
So actually Arlington and Alexandria were part of DC. It used to be a square, and then right where the river cuts off is where they just cut it off. So it’s frustrating because yeah, I’m in Virginia, but technically a lot of us consider that we live in DC. But if say you live in DC, you get called out for it, so we say DMV.
Tori Dunlap:
Can you not go to DC anymore with your microphone? Have you tapped out that city? You’re like, “I can’t go in. I’ve done enough DC interviews, I can’t go back”?
Hannah Williams::
It’s two-sided because yes and no. Part of me, yes, because I get recognized, so it makes it so easy. I don’t even have to tell them what I’m doing interviews for. They either tell me yes or no from across the street. But then the other side of it is I am so tired of interviewing contractors and government. They all do the same job, so it’s boring after a while. I want a little bit more diversity.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally. Well, and that’s why I love seeing you pop up in different cities. You’ve done a couple in Seattle, you pop up and I’m like, “Oh, cool, okay. I get to know what everybody else is making.”
Hannah Williams::
I need to come back out to the West Coast.
Tori Dunlap:
I know. We love having money experts who come on the show answer a question, which is what is their first money memory? What is the first time you remember thinking about money?
Hannah Williams::
The first thing that popped into my head right away was a Nintendo DS. When I was probably nine or 10 years old that was the hot electronic to get followed by the Wii. But I remember wanting it so bad and all the kids in my class had one. And I mean, I didn’t come from a not-well-off family. I was upper middle class, but my parents are penny pinchers. You have to talk them into it. It has to be on sale. If it’s 300 bucks, what is this bringing to your life? And my parents were so against technology making me a zombie.
So I remember wanting it really bad and my parents telling me that it was too expensive and that was the number one thing was expensive. And I think I spent the next year on eBay and looking for any sale or item of this that was on sale and trying not to get scammed on the internet. And eventually my parents got it for me a year later for Christmas. But yeah, I learned pretty quickly budgeting and value of money from my parents’ perspective.
Tori Dunlap:
I love even the conversation of what is this bringing to your life? How many parents are sitting down and being like, “All right, before we purchase this for you, we need to dive into the philosophical, what is this actually going to do for you at a higher level?”
Hannah Williams::
Oh yeah, my parents were so strict if it didn’t have an educational component. And I remember when they got it for me, I had to save up allowance to get the games that I wanted, which was Animal Crossing and Mario Kart, but they got me Sudoku and the Brain Game things. So they were like, “Here are the games we’ll get you.” I had to find other ways to get the ones I wanted.
Tori Dunlap:
It was really interesting growing up in my house where my parents were strict, a different version of it though, where I actually didn’t get an allowance. They were like, “You are a contributing member to this family. I don’t get paid for housework, so you’re not getting paid either.” And so there’s pros and cons I see to all of that of I think allowance helps you manage money, it helps you earn money, all of that, and then there’s the flip side of it too. So yeah, it’s just always interesting to ask that question and figure out what did you learn about money growing up? What did you maybe not learn about money growing up? And then how do all of those things affect how you manage money now?
Hannah Williams::
Huge. I mean, I think that the relationships that we have with money are so influenced by the relationships with our family members and what they’ve taught us about money. It’s all rooted in that experience and it carries over. So it is so important.
Tori Dunlap:
I personally know a bit about your story, but I would love to hear, and I’m sure listeners would love to hear, where your idea for Salary Transparent Street came from. You found out you were being underpaid, right? So tell me more about that.
Hannah Williams::
I’ll try to explain it where it’s not long-winded because there’s so many curves and twists to the story, but essentially I found out that I was underpaid. I used to be a senior data analyst supporting government contracts in Washington, DC. In 2021, I had been two years out of college, graduated in 2019. So pretty young in my career, still somewhat entry level, mid-level. And I had gotten promoted to a senior data analyst role at another company making $90,000 a year, found out that …
And for anyone who hears that and sees sticker shock, “Wow, that’s a lot of money, what are you complaining about?” this is in Washington, DC, which has arguably competitive cost of living to New York and Los Angeles. So it doesn’t go as far, but I was very grateful for it. And the key here is that I was fresh out of school. I did not know how to negotiate my salary or how to do market research. So when I saw that and it was more money than I’d ever seen in my life, I accepted it without any hesitation. I said, “Yes, sign me up. I want to do this.”
Soon after found out that I was actually underpaid about $25,000 compared to people doing the exact same job at different companies. And when I asked for a raise at my company, and I was a great employee. The contractor, the client loved me, brought so much to the contract. So it’s not like I was asking without just cause, they told me that I had just started. So I had to be there at least a year before I even qualified for a raise. And even then they didn’t give out raises of more than 3 to 5% at any one time.
So I either had to sit in my spot and be patient and constantly chase my market rate because I would never catch up to it essentially, or I could go look for another job. And so that’s what I started doing. And in my first interview with a recruiter, I give her so much credit because she was really the inspiration here is she asked me what my salary requirements were, standard question in an interview. I’d gotten so used to it, but in that moment I decided to take a risk and ask her what the budget was.
I had done my market research at that point. I learned what to do, and I knew that my rate was between 100 and $120,000. I had been prepared to ask for 105. I was like, “Okay, if I’m making 15 K more than I’m making now, I think that’s good.” I feel like, looking back now, I still should have asked for more, but what’s important here is when I asked her what the budget was, she told me it was 115, no hesitation. I told her that was great. That was right in line with my expectations, which it was, but that was $10,000 more than I’d planned to ask.
And in that moment, this culmination of events, I realized pay transparency had undercut me $25,000. Then it had also had the potential to undercut me by another $10,000. And I’m a white woman, I have so much more privilege than a lot of different groups of workers. And so I accepted that job offer shortly after, started my job, but I just couldn’t shake the experience. I was like, “Wow, I figured this out, but the system is unchanged. People are still going through this every single day, and there’s a reason that the pay gap exists. There’s a reason of pay secrecy.”
So I decided I’m going to create a TikTok, I’m going to start talking about the money I made. And when I did that, it resonated with people. It started performing really well. I’ve never been a creator. I’ve never dreamed of being one, but talking to people online and finding that community and sharing my message was so meaningful to me. It brought me a lot of value, so I kept going. People really liked the topic of transparency, so I was like, “How do I take this a step further?”
We need companies to make the change, but I don’t have the power to call up Elon Musk and tell him, “Hey, you might lose money. It’s expensive to pay people well, but it’s the right thing to do.” I knew though that there’s power in people and especially social movements on social media. I graduated basically right into the Great Resignation and I saw how people can have an impact in greater movements.
And so I was like, “Simple concept, let me just go on the streets in Washington, DC, and ask people, what do you do and how much do you make?” And maybe some people sharing will reach someone in Idaho who is unsure if they’re well-compensated or not. I brought my husband out with me and we went out. Posted the video the same day we filmed it on April 16th, 2021, which is so cool because we’re about to be two years old now, shortly. But yeah, it went viral overnight. Three weeks later, quit my job. My husband followed me a month later. It’s just been so crazy, the rollercoaster and how fast everything happened, but that is the series of events in a nutshell.
Tori Dunlap:
I have so many followups to that. Did you say three weeks after you posted your first video? Did I hear that right?
Hannah Williams::
Mm-hmm. Three weeks, I really jumped off that cliff, didn’t I?
Tori Dunlap:
Were you making money at that point yourself?
Hannah Williams::
No.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay. That was my first question. I was like, “If you were already getting brand deals three weeks in, first of all, incredible.” But yeah, it sounded like you took the leap and was like, “Okay, I’m going to figure this out.”
Hannah Williams::
Yeah. And people always ask, at what point do I quit my job to pursue this full time? What was the reason for you? And like I said, I wasn’t making money. I didn’t sign my first brand deal until September, and we started in April. I quit in May, so several months of not having a contract, so not even guaranteed pay. I didn’t get paid until probably October. The real reason that I decided to take the risk, first of all, I had savings. My husband and I had that little nest egg. We knew that we could go about six months with everything that we had, to pay the mortgage, and that’s what we had.
But when we posted that video and it went mega viral overnight, I had been on TikTok for two or three months with my personal account. And in that amount of time every day, posting every day, three videos a day, lots of work into this, I gained 50,000 followers in three months. When I posted that video on a blank profile, no followers, no videos, overnight I gained 50 K. And so I was looking at it and I was like, “If I don’t find a way to monetize this, I’m an idiot. There’s got to be a way.”
Tori Dunlap:
The exact same thing happened to me. I spent three years posting every single day on Instagram, and then our fifth TikTok went crazy viral. I was actually looking at the numbers the other day. I think we did 80 to 120,000 followers in a few days from that one video.
Hannah Williams::
Crazy. So when you’ve got that momentum, you have a moment to monetize and to really grasp it. And I’m young, I was 26 or 25 at the time. I’m 27 now. I’m trying to do the math, but I was in my early 20s. My husband and I don’t have children of our own. We were in that moment in our careers where we were like, “Let’s do it.”
Tori Dunlap:
Got to bet on yourself.
Hannah Williams::
You got to bet on yourself. And we’ve always dreamed of working for ourselves. Whatever we do, that’s the goal. And so having that freedom, the opportunity too, it was something that we couldn’t resist and thankfully it worked out. I understand that there’s a lot of privilege that comes with taking that leap, but I think that having that savings was so critical to giving us the security to be like, “Okay, we have to make something happen, but also we can continue for six months.” And luckily we turned it around.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. I wanted to call that out of the power of the emergency fund, right?
Hannah Williams::
Huge.
Tori Dunlap:
Or the power of having savings. We talk about on Her First $100K all the time that when you have money, you have options. And that’s the truth is it’s like, okay, I can take six months and see if this thing has legs. And if it doesn’t, okay, I go back to my job. I go back to the corporate and that’s fine, or if I hate it or whatever happens, but you don’t know unless you try. But money gives you the safety net to be able to try, even to have the option to try.
Hannah Williams::
And failing is also not the worst thing.
Tori Dunlap:
No, no.
Hannah Williams::
Like I said, I was young. When I quit my job, my manager was like, “Call us if things don’t work out.” I had a great reputation. I knew that there were opportunities for me outside of this, but also there were opportunities that I could create for myself by trying. Maybe I wouldn’t succeed at that, but I would find something else. And that risk to me was so worth it.
Tori Dunlap:
The other thing I want to call out that you said too, which is something that I preach and that is so important, and in that whole story, it was very easy to gloss over, something that is so crucial for anybody listening. When somebody calls you up and is trying to talk to you about a new job, when you’re on a job interview, when you’re talking to a recruiter and they say something like, “What is your desired salary?” or, “What are your salary expectations?” you almost never want to give a number first because of something like what Hannah was just talking about where you undercut yourself because you don’t understand the full scope of the role.
So if you can ask, “Literally, I don’t understand the full scope of the role at this time in the process, but would love to know your budget,” nine times out of 10, they are going to tell you their budget so you don’t undercut yourself.
Hannah Williams::
Absolutely. And I think that’s something I probably learned from watching your videos, honestly. I was like, “Let me just ask about the budget,” and it worked. You have nothing to lose by asking. If they say, “Oh, well, we can’t share the budget,” then okay, you go to plan B. But you’re missing out by not just trying to test the waters and ask.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, and we’re seeing a lot, and we’ll talk about this a little later too, a lot of legislation around posting the salary range in the job description or the other common questions, like what is your current salary? Fun fact, that’s illegal in, you probably know better than me, I think it was 20 states last time I checked. I think it’s higher than that now.
Hannah Williams::
22 I think now.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, so that’s the other question that I think trips a lot of people up. You never have to answer a question in a job interview that you don’t want to answer, but especially something as bullshit as what is your current salary? You don’t have to answer that question.
Hannah Williams::
But the reason you don’t want to answer that question is because if you are currently not being fairly compensated according to your market rate and they ask you how much you’re currently making, they’re going to use that number that you give them. There’s no other reason that they would ask is other than to use that number to determine what they’ll compensate you next.
I mean, imagine if you’re a mom that took a year off to raise your newborn, you come back to the workforce and they ask you, how much are you making? It could be either zero or what you were making a year ago, and that’s less than what you should be making now. There’s so many reasons that that question is illegal. So if you’re not sure if your state has that law, just double check really quick because if a company asks you, it’s a great opportunity to educate them on your state’s workers’ rights laws and also that you shouldn’t answer it.
Tori Dunlap:
Couldn’t agree more. You gave us so much meat even into your introduction that I want to call out one last point, which is you said, okay, if I would’ve just said this is my budget and I wouldn’t have been able to understand that their budget actually started 10 K more than what I was willing to take, yes, you get the money then, which is huge, right? You get the increase in salary that makes a real life impact on your day to day, on your ability to save or pay off debt in real time.
But let’s talk about, to your point of, okay, if I would’ve taken 105 instead of 115, well your next job would’ve been 115 as opposed to something like 130 and the potential to invest that money, you would’ve lost out on that too. So something I always remind people of when they negotiate is, yes, it’s about the money right now because we want to be compensated and we want more of that money right now, but it’s also about what are your career earnings for the rest of your life, for the rest of your career? And also what is the impact of putting that money in even a high-yield savings account or something that is even more fruitful, like investing in the stock market?
Hannah Williams::
Yeah, I mean, there’s a reason that especially women of color miss out on millions of dollars over their lifetime. And it’s because of things like this where that $10,000, maybe it doesn’t sound like a lot right now, but over your lifetime, it adds up. And $10,000 is money that should be in your pocket. Probably a little less after taxes, but shoot, $2,000. I don’t know anybody that couldn’t make something good happen with $2,000, whether it’s paying down debt, building your emergency fund, paying off credit cards. It goes a long way.
Tori Dunlap:
One of the things I’ve always wondered, and I think people can wonder watching your videos, how scary and weird is it going up to somebody on the street? First of all, just that. That’s scary enough of, “Hi, can I interview you for this thing?” And then asking them the most taboo topic of all time, right? We’ll talk about sex, death, politics, religion before we’ll talk about money. So what is that process like, actually going up and asking somebody? What happens when they say no? What happens when they say yes? I would just love to know more.
Hannah Williams::
It’s interesting. I think that it’s helped me with my people skills because I used to hate awkward moments and awkward pauses, and now I embrace it. So it’s really taught me a lot about social interaction. But one thing I think people wouldn’t guess about me is that I’m introverted and shy. So making the decision to go out and interview strangers on the street was very difficult for me to wrap my head around. But I think ultimately I was just so motivated by, I knew that it would have such an impact on people just because of how it has impacted me and what I’d heard on the internet. So the drive there was what kept me going to do it and conquer my fear.
It’s incredibly awkward though. I’ve gotten so many different responses and reactions to it. I’ve got people who give me double takes. I’ve heard, “What do you want next, my social security number?” I’ve heard, “Why are you doing this? Why do you need to know? What are you selling?” And I think that when I started the page, I knew that there was going to be a level of skepticism and concern and rightfully so. If a stranger asks you how much you’re making, you better understand why before you answer.
And so I think I had that understanding before we started, and because of that, I put a lot of energy towards our branding and making sure that people took us seriously. So if you go back to our first video, I actually had the idea for Salary Transparent Street a month before we did it, but I was waiting on A, getting a logo done and B, getting the T-shirt with the logo done before going out to do it, because I knew that having that on my shirt and saying I have an account, I have a name, I have a T-shirt with a logo, would give me this professionalism and people would take me seriously.
I still have people tell me they think I’m a college student doing this for a project and they pity me, but I will take the pity. I’m okay with that. I’m totally fine as long as they embrace the reason for what we’re doing and hopefully contribute as well. But I also think it’s a real testament to Gen Z and millennials and their embrace of the pay transparency movement. It’s a full 360 from our parents, Gen X and boomers, and I see that in the amount of people who say yes and no.
The demographic split is always women and workers of color are more likely to share than white men statistically. But in recent months, I’ve actually seen that changing. And I think that that’s a testament also to pay transparency laws and the movement becoming more normalized that white men are now seeing, “Oh, I actually make the most, let me help everyone else out and pull them up and take them to the penthouse with me.” And those are allies that I give so much credit to.
The reason that my page is successful and what I do is successful because I wouldn’t have a page without them. So I’m really just grateful to everyone that wants to share. But I unfortunately have found that the majority of people that embrace the movement have been victims of secrecy themselves. So we’re all traumatized together and trying to move forward.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, Hannah, what a testament to your work though, because I have a feeling the data’s not entirely trackable, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the pay transparency is more likely and things are shifting because of the work that you’re doing. It’s like it’s normalizing conversations that again, feel weird. And actually, you literally answered the followup question we had, which is do you feel like some people are more likely to share versus some people are less likely to share? So it sounds like there is a gender, racial, as well as age divide. Is that probably accurate?
Hannah Williams::
Absolutely. It’s so easy to see depending on who you approach. If they seem a little older, that’s where the skepticism comes out and they have questions. When they’re younger, they are like, “Sure, I totally support this. Me and my colleagues helped each other get a pay raise by talking about pay.” They almost always have a story and that’s why they support it.
But gosh, it is kind of frustrating because I do think that our page has had an impact on the movement as a whole, but like you said, how do you track the data there? We have a billion views on our videos, so that is probably my strongest data point that a billion people saw this and thought it was a great thing. But I’m just glad that we have helped spur this movement along.
I think it’s probably my greatest accomplishment and might be my greatest to date and ever, because we’re really helping people make more money, and that is helping them get out of debt. It’s helping them buy a home, buy a car for their kid, go to college, pursue opportunities that they didn’t see for themselves before. And gosh, that is, I could do that for free.
Tori Dunlap:
Have you ever had somebody in real time realize that they are being under-compensated?
Hannah Williams::
Yes. And you know what’s so frustrating about that? The time that happened, I don’t have the clip because we used to be using this old microphone that was really cheap and janky. We were on a bridge, and I think that there was some interference with the mic and the bridge and all the audio cut out of that video.
But in that interview, I approached three young Asian students, young Asian men from Austin, Texas in Austin, Texas. They were all engineers, had just graduated, all had just gotten jobs. So they are on level playing field. They have the same degree, same years of experience, same college. In real time, they talk about how much they’re making, and one found out he was making significantly less than the others. And in real time he’s like, “Wait, why am I making less?” And they had a conversation.
It was beautiful to watch because they were figuring out, well, I’m at this company and they do this, and so the industry, and they had the conversation. But he realized he had actually accepted less than his buddies, and they walked away being like, “Thank you,” grateful, but also like, “Oh, now I have to figure it out.” But at least now you know, and that’s why transparency is important.
Tori Dunlap:
So it sounds like they hadn’t talked about it with each other before. There was no conversation. Even though they were even close friends, they hadn’t talked about, “Hey, dude, what are you making? What are you making?”
Hannah Williams::
Not at all. It was I guess the first time that they had probably even talked about pay, let alone with themselves, with each other, with the group. It was so refreshing to be a part of it, but man, I’m hoping he’s making more now.
Tori Dunlap:
And what a cool gift to be able to be like, “Yeah, maybe I should talk about money more with the people around me.” Especially, you very rarely get that same data. It sounds like same age, same race, same education, same job. Anybody on my Instagram who’s like, “The pay gap isn’t real, blah, blah, blah, because …” I’m like, “No, that’s the perfect example of, okay, across the board, some people are still underpaid compared to others.”
Hannah Williams::
Yes. And gosh, the whole comment section, the sunglasses-
Tori Dunlap:
I don’t even want to talk about it unless you really feel passionate.
Hannah Williams::
No, I don’t because I don’t want to give them any energy or my time.
Tori Dunlap:
And anybody listening to this podcast knows that the pay gap is real. There’s no reason we need to educate them on why that is. So, yeah.
Hannah Williams::
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
Are there any industries or jobs that tend to get, well, actually speaking of which, we actually have a … I forgot we have a comment or I have a question about this. But from the comment section or from your audience, let’s say, is there any industries or jobs that tend to get more love or hate than others? And then why do you think that is?
Hannah Williams::
Oh my gosh, so many. I’m trying to think which ones to spotlight the most. So the jobs that I see that are the least well paid, I mean, I think that’ll help guide me, they make the least and they’re also the ones that should be making more are teachers, social workers, social services. Those are the ones that I always hear on average making under 50 K with multiple years of experience. And the comment section supports that often, that teachers are under-compensated. But then there’s always the argument of people who are like, “Well, you only work nine months a year and you just babysit. It’s not like a real job.”
I think that what it comes down to is a lot of times when there’s arguments in the comment section about whether or not a career is well compensated, a lot of times it comes down to whether or not they value the work of women. Because a lot of these jobs that are not well compensated that deserve these pay raises are usually predominantly dominated by women, the majority.
And the sad part is, is the pay gap needs to close by desegregating all industries and jobs. We need to stop holding a majority in nursing and teaching and these social services jobs because the idea that women are more nurturing and caring is a stereotype. It is not something that we are born with. And so the idea that it makes sense that more women are nurses than men is not actually rooted in any fact. It is just based on what we push women towards, and then we pay them less for it because they’re women. I think that once we get more men into female dominated career fields, we’ll stop having this problem of these careers being lesser compensated.
But other arguments about the value of work is a whole conversation, you could talk about this for hours. It’s very disheartening and sometimes I feel like the comment section and what I’ve seen has really put a damper on the work that we do and the value of sharing. Because when you share your salary on the internet, people in the comment section feel very entitled to share whether or not they feel you deserve it.
And it’s frustrating when you have a teacher making 70 K and people telling them, “You are overcompensated because I’m an electrical engineer and I make 20 K more than you and that’s not right. I do more than you.” And at the end of the day, we really need to separate the amount of money we make and our value. And I think that’s why the comment section gets riled up is because we root so much of our self-worth and our value in how much we make. And whether or not we feel like we make enough determines whether or not we value ourselves and our own work.
And at the end of the day, all of us are under-compensated. None of us are making what we should when you have the 1% making billions, and most of us are making on average about 52 K, which is not enough in most areas of this country. I’ll step off my stool here, but gosh, I could go on forever about this.
Tori Dunlap:
No, soapboxes is what we do professionally here at Her First $100K and Financial Feminist, so don’t you worry.
Hannah Williams::
Soapbox. Thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, no. The other thing too, that I think is so important in what you just said is to take the example of the teacher versus the electrical engineer. It’s like, I think that people definitely compare salaries because it feels like such an identity or such a, this is personal to me. But it’s also we see it as an us versus them. It’s not a, how do we collectively make more money and how do we start charging billionaires the taxes they should be paying? But rather just because we’re all tired and overworked and there’s so much, again, stigma around money in general, but also we take it so personally and because we’re so mad at the system that exists, it’s just very easy to take it out on another individual, even an individual making slightly more money than you.
I’ve been very open about how much money I have, and there’s shit I get all of the time on the internet of, “You have so much money.” And I’m like, “Yes, I do. I have a lot more money than the average person. There’s a ton of privilege in that.” But there is a very big difference between even a millionaire and a billionaire with a B. That’s a huge gap. And then there’s also, of course, a gap between on average $52,000 and then everything above that.
So I do feel like there is this us versus them thing that starts to happen. That’s just what the internet’s good at in general is just dunking on people. But I think that that is probably too where the hate comes from because I’ve gotten it personally over and over and over again. I see other creators in our field get it. I see people who have the audacity to be transparent, where it’s just like you’re mad at the system and you’re taking out that anger on a corrupt, unjust system on an individual. And it’s like, that’s not the point of this.
Hannah Williams::
Right. And I mean, gosh, a great example of that is nurses.
Tori Dunlap:
Right.
Hannah Williams::
I recently did a round table interview with travel nurses, well, not all of them, but there were two travel nurses on the panel and others that were RNs, and they were making 100,000 each, but the travel nurses were more around 180, 200 K in Los Angeles, in San Francisco, high cost of living areas. And the comments were, it was so disappointing because we were so excited about the episode and releasing it and hoping that nurses would see it as inspiration, and the comments just destroyed it.
They were saying, “This isn’t realistic. They’re overcompensated. This is why our medical bills are so high.” And it’s frustrating because it’s like, we all need to realize that our battle is not with the 99% of which most of us are all in on. I make 200 K and I’m still part of the middle class in my area. I don’t make jack shit. I forgot that I could swear, so I was like, “What’s my other word?”
But yeah, it’s so important to understand your cost of living and how far your money goes and how that affects other people’s salaries and that you can’t compare yourself if you are a potato farmer in Idaho making X to a registered nurse or a travel nurse in San Francisco making X. It’s not comparable.
And we need to also understand that our fight is not with one another, it is with our employers and the ones who set our rates. Don’t be mad at the person making X. Be excited and eager to learn what negotiating strategy worked for them. What did they ask for? What kind of skills or experience did they have that I should get so that I can ask for the same? That’s what I hope our videos instigate, but sometimes it does go the wrong way.
Tori Dunlap:
I just think that anytime you try to talk about anything that is just emotionally charged, and again, the internet loves this. This is what these platforms want is they want discord, they want the back and forth. And so yeah, I think it’s just always really hard to have these conversations and you hope that people show up in a way that’s supportive of other people and supportive of transparency. And I think just a lot of people haven’t gotten there yet. It’s uncomfortable to talk about for many people. And again, like you said before, it feels like a personal defect if you’re not making as much as you think you should be making compared to somebody else.
Hannah Williams::
Right. And I also want people to remember that how we react to people being transparent on the internet will also determine how the transparency movement moves ahead. If it starts getting really negative and people are scared to share how much they make because of the fear of being unfairly vilified, you can’t blame them for not wanting to be transparent. And unfortunately, that backfires on all of us. It doesn’t backfire on the companies who we should be holding accountable.
What the pay transparency movement delivers on is us all working together to share and learn from one another and have these conversations with people in similar fields so that we can get ahead in our respective fields. But if we see someone making more and start pointing the finger and are mean, I’m not seeing it as I won’t have people to interview, the pay transparency movement won’t move ahead, period.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. I’ve talked about it on the show before, but there’s a reason I’m not as transparent about my money as I used to be, and it’s because both of a threat to my safety, which is a real thing, but also just the stigma around women earning money. As a society, we don’t like women with money. We don’t like women pursuing money. We don’t feel comfortable with that, but men are worshiped who have money. So even I’ve experienced that as someone who is trying to perpetuate transparency and talking about money, I have to now put safeguards up and put boundaries up that even I don’t want to do, but because of the system and the society that exists.
Hannah Williams::
It’s really like the boy boss. If a young guy goes on the internet and he says, “I made $500,000 drop shipping,” oh my God, they are like minions at a concert. It’s like, “Oh my God, I love you. Tell me how you did it.” But if I say I made a million dollars and I made 200 K, they’re like, “You’re lying. I need to see your tax return because that doesn’t make sense.”
Tori Dunlap:
Right. It’s daddy’s money, it’s your husband’s money.
Hannah Williams::
A hundred percent.
Tori Dunlap:
Why aren’t you donating more, which is my favorite one. You should just be doing this for free because you love it.
Hannah Williams::
Right. And I also do want to say though, sharing your salary obviously is a wonderful thing, but there are valid reasons to not want to share it. And I’ve ran into people on the street who will tell me I fully support pay transparency. I will tell anybody directly in my friend group or network how much I make, but I don’t want to go on the internet with it. And there’s privacy reasons for that, but there’s also that people might be negotiating, and that’s why pay secrecy laws exist. You don’t want the recruiter to know how much you’re making and then use that against you.
So I’m not vilifying anyone that doesn’t want to share, but I do want to stress that we need to encourage people to share. And if you’re able to even anonymously, it goes so far. I call it paying it forward literally and figuratively, and I think it’s something we all should do.
Tori Dunlap:
Are there any standout interviews or people you’ve spoken to and what makes them memorable?
Hannah Williams::
Ooh, great question. It’s so interesting. I can see an image of a person, and I always remember what they do. I just have it ingrained in my memory. And some of my favorite interviews were probably with small business owners, like entrepreneurs because they just have such great stories and they just have so much to share, so many lessons learned. I’m so tired of people telling me, pursue your dreams and take the risk. But sometimes when they say it, you actually feel like it’s valid.
I interviewed a hot dog stand owner in Indiana, and he was posted up right outside their capitol building, so in downtown Indiana. So if you ever go, hopefully you can swing by and he’ll still be there. But he was previously incarcerated, had gotten out of jail, and while he was in jail, he had come up with a plan to turn his life around and start his hot dog stand. And he’d been doing it for I think two years then and was making good money.
And gosh, he was just the nicest guy. We hadn’t even planned on asking him because he was working. There were people trying to order hot dogs while we were doing the interview, and I didn’t want to stop his business. He’s an entrepreneur, and he was like, “I’ll do the interview while I’m doing this if you can work around me.” And I was like, “Sure thing. Let’s do this quick, in and out, get you back to your customers.”
But he was so willing to share about his story, and I think those people, especially in communities, are so impactful to the youth and sharing that there’s other opportunities than what most of us learn in school, which is pretty standard, finance, tech. I feel like people don’t know about a lot of different career opportunities like the hot dog stand and making a good living. If you think that making 50 K as an assistant is okay, you can also make 50 K as a hot dog stand owner. There’s so many things you can do differently to make the same amount.
Other people that I’ve interviewed that I really look back on, I interviewed, I forget her exact title, but it was an optical therapist. She worked in assisting the blind and especially blind students in schools with navigating their environments and teaching them about the tools and resources that they can use. And I guess that this is something that a lot of students need, but they don’t have access to, or adults need. She was blind and had joined the program, and so that story was just so inspiring and really sweet, and for her to reach out and want to willingly talk about it was really meaningful.
I also interviewed a water vendor outside the White House who was making $4,000 I think a month or a week, and I believe it because he was selling his water bottles for a dollar a bottle. And in the interview he sold like six while we were talking, because if you’ve ever been to DC in the summer, it gets fricking hot and humid, like 100% humidity, not enough water to cool you down. And these families, if you’ve got a family of four, they’re buying eight waters. That’s eight bucks right there in 10 seconds.
So the people that say, “Cap, he’s lying,” no, he’s not, and we should applaud him for seeing this as a great venture. He also had a team on every single block. So it’s something that I think it’s really remarkable when you see people work with their community and build their team to all bring back a bag and bring other people with them instead of just keeping it all to themselves.
Tori Dunlap:
That hustle is real, man. That’s great. That’s so smart.
Hannah Williams::
Yeah, seriously. But yeah, just being scrappy. There’s so many things that you can do. My job right now is made up. I have a made up job. I created my job where I ask strangers on the street what they do for a living and how much they make, and I make 200 K doing it. There’s other things that you can do that sound just as crazy, just as silly, but if you see an opportunity out there or a way to fix something, there’s almost always a way that you can turn a business out of it. But really, having an impact and having meaning in your work just makes it so much more enjoyable and fun and life more meaningful as well.
Tori Dunlap:
Speaking of 200 K, you’re paying yourself less than when you started and you’ve had all of this growth. I would love to know why you made that decision and then some of the financial safeguards you’re putting into place that help your business and help you as well.
Hannah Williams::
Absolutely. Actually, I’m back up. I did bring my salary down. I was making 200 K mid last year, and then I brought it down to 125 K for the end of the year because I wanted to make room in the business. We haven’t solidified our revenue yet. And when you work in content creation, you’ll learn very quickly that when you sign a contract does not mean when you get paid. Usually you get paid like 90 days after if that’s upon contract signature. Sometimes it’s 60 days after the video is posted.
So it’s tough to predict your revenue, especially when you spend months navigating and negotiating brand deals and sometimes they fall through. So I brought my salary down from 200 K to 125 K so that we had a little bit more flexibility that we weren’t really tight. And I mean, I was making 200 K before bringing me back down 125 K. When I quit my job, I was making 115. So I didn’t see it as a negative.
It’s not like I had immediately gone out and bought a nice car. I didn’t change my budget or my means of living when I quit my job. And I think that’s very intelligent and I’m glad I did. Didn’t actually, I’m glad I didn’t change how I live because when I went back down to 125 K, I had nothing to worry about, nothing where I was scrambling or needed to get into my savings.
Now we’re in a really great place. We have brought on new team members that are part-time. We’ve really navigated a lot of brand partnerships that are more long-term. So I’m back up to 200 K. I honestly, hot take, think I’m underpaid because my business makes over a million dollars, last year made over a million. We’re on track this year to make the same amount. So it’s probably going to be more at the end of the year, at least I’m hoping.
But it’s all about making a long-term investment in the business. I work like 60 hours a week completely willingly with love, but it’s a lot of work. And anyone that would do my job at a standard corporate private organization would probably be making like 500 K. I know that that is in my future, and I’m okay with waiting because life is good and I can’t complain.
Tori Dunlap:
There’s also something to be said that I wish more people would talk about, and I don’t want to spend too much time talking about it because we’ve touched on it a little bit, but the emotional toll that a comment section can have. I don’t think we can put a price on it, but I would love to put a price on it, and it’s way more than people think it is.
Most people’s jobs are done in an internal way with no external feedback. Internally, it’s like, does my boss think I’m doing a good job? Am I doing a good job for myself and my team? Great. I am doing my job well. But when you are a public person, content creator, an entrepreneur with a following, you answer … Now, of course we don’t because we have standards and because fuck the trolls, but we answer to millions of people on a day-to-day basis.
And as much as we can all say, “Oh yeah, men being mean online, we don’t pay attention to them.” People screaming about, “Oh, this is stupid,” okay, fine. But the emotional and physical toll that that takes over and over and over again on literally in second by second, not day to day, but second to second, minute by minute, hour to hour basis, that’s fucking crazy. And I think we’re only just starting to talk about the mental toll that you have to deal with in addition to keeping the lights on, creating the things that you’re trying to create, to make sure you’re managing your team members, writing back emails, all of the rest of that.
Hannah Williams::
Oh gosh, literally mic drop on everything you said. I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s frustrating sometimes because I think that as content creators we’re told to-
Tori Dunlap:
Suck it up.
Hannah Williams::
… sit down, shut up, suck it up. And I believe that there is some truth to that when people say, “Well, you chose to do this,” you’re not wrong. I did choose-
Tori Dunlap:
Kim, people are dying. There’s a genocide happening.
Hannah Williams::
Kim, people are dying. Exactly, and I get it. I’ve done the hard jobs. I wasn’t a content creator my entire life. I’ve only been doing this two years. I used to have the shitty jobs. I used to be a telemarketer. I used to work at a gym. I used to wake up really early. I used to commute. I used to take the metro. I’ve been there. So I understand where people are saying, “Well, you have a really easy job.”
And I agree, I have the easiest job on the planet, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t come with some cons. And unfortunately, those cons aren’t physically difficult. They can be depending on how it impacts your mental health, but they are mentally difficult. And gosh, I wish that my job came with guaranteed therapy because it’s a lot of work.
And also when you become a content creator, and I’m not whining at all, I’m just letting people be aware that when you choose to do this, you do sign away your privacy and your security. I loved being incognito. I didn’t realize that it was so wonderful to walk down the street back in the day, and no one would stop and talk to me because I’m an introvert. I get very nervous when people come talk to me, but now, I expect it every time I leave the house.
And if I have a bad day, I can’t show up that way with somebody that wants to come talk to me because that is the impression that I’ll leave with them. And people don’t understand that sometimes I had a bad day, sometimes I got bad news. You’re really held to a pedestal that sometimes is impossible to please. I’m making 200 K, so a lot of people might not resonate with that, but there’s a lot that goes into it, that mental health, it has its impacts, and I’ve felt it.
Also, the work-life balance is tough. The hamster wheel of the internet never turning off. It’s impossible almost to take a vacation because even when you’re scrolling when you’re on your break, you’re still doing research, you’re still seeing what’s out there. And because you’re on your phone, you get notifications all the time of different people pinging you. So there’s trade-offs, and it’s just important to be aware of that before you decide to go all in.
The last thing I’ll add is that, like you said, you answered to one person, maybe five people in your 9:00 to 5:00 when you’re working, your boss and your colleagues. Like you said, we answer to millions of people every single day with our content. And everybody has an opinion, which is great, I love to hear it. But at the same time, when you open yourself up to that, it can be really hard to figure out the way to move. And so from a business perspective, it can be really loud, and so it’s hard to navigate next steps in your strategy.
But also, I don’t have an HR department. This is the only job where it’s legally expected and allowed to be bullied horrifically, or stalked. I go on the street to ask people what they do for a living and how much they make to help people get paid. I didn’t ask for your opinion on my tattoos. I didn’t ask for your opinion on my weight. I didn’t ask for your opinion on my hairline. All of these things are completely unrelated, but I get them on a daily basis, and so it does get very loud.
Tori Dunlap:
The metaphor I’ve come up with to best explain this experience to somebody who isn’t a public person, who isn’t online. Imagine you’re in your home and someone comes and knocks on your door every two seconds and expects to be let in. And let’s say you let them into your home, and then they decide to tell you that you’re fat and unlovable and that no person would ever desire you or want you, or that your advice is stupid and bad and you should just shut up, or that actually this other person that they follow is way better. Why aren’t you more like them? What would you do? You would kick them out of your home.
Hannah Williams::
Absolutely.
Tori Dunlap:
If you invited somebody into your home and said, hey, I’m inviting you over for dinner, and in this example, you’re coming onto my Instagram, you’re coming onto my TikTok, that’s my home, and then you yell at me and you tell me I’m too fat and too ugly and never going to be anything, what am I going to do? I’m not going to let you stay.
Hannah Williams::
No, yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
And then the other version of this too is it’s just like I think about … Because a lot of the feedback you and I get is lovely and-
Hannah Williams::
Oh gosh, the majority is great.
Tori Dunlap:
… we get messages that we change people’s lives. Right. But that’s still overwhelming because again, other metaphor I use, if I’m walking down the street and 100 people yell at me and 95 of them say, “You changed my life. I love you. This is great,” but five of them are awful, it’s still overwhelming. It’s still overwhelming to get that much feedback and opinions from people.
That’s what I have tried to convey to people who this is not your industry, this is not what you’re doing. Yes, do we have cushy jobs? Do we get to sit at home? Yeah, we do. There’s a lot of privilege to that. And also, I cannot tell you that I’m in a better place now, but over the past two years, my mental health has been awful.
Hannah Williams::
Oh, I’m in the thick of it.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. I’ve had physical symptoms from the stress of people’s opinions and people’s feedback. You want to let it roll off your back, nobody’s wired that way.
Hannah Williams::
No, and you’re lying if you say that you aren’t because we’re all human. You’re lying if you say that you’re not affected by five comments, four positive and one negative. You’re going to think about that one negative. Now, imagine you’re a content creator and you get five or 10 of those a day, they stick with you. It is difficult. It’s like golden handcuffs. And so it’s just important to be aware of the cons and have strategies in place to handle it.
I think the most important thing is having really great people around you and a great support system. My husband is everything to me. I will tell him about a comment and he makes me always feel better about it. And if you don’t have that in place, it can be a very tough job and have those impacts. I have had so many bouts of depression and burnout in the past two years that is important to talk about, that is accompaniment to the jobs that we have.
Tori Dunlap:
And not to harp too much, we’ll move on in a second, but to your point about feeding the beast, that’s the other thing is it’s like our jobs are never done. There’s no task you can check off. It’s like, “I posted my three TikToks today and I got to post them again tomorrow and the day after that and for the foreseeable future, for forever. If I don’t post three TikToks, guess what happens, is the business suffers.
And it’s something that I’ve had to learn to be okay with is that okay, all right, we’re not going to post on TikTok today, that’s fine. I can see a direct impact on the business when I don’t, but I have other things to do or I need to take a vacation or I just don’t want to be online today. I don’t want to show my face. I don’t want to look at my face today.
Hannah Williams::
I feel that. There’s so many days where I’m like, “God, I don’t want to film today.” Or I’ve been in back to back calls and I still have to edit. I still have to go film. It’s never done. It’s the hamster wheel. So it’s like groundhog day every day.
Tori Dunlap:
I want to transition us because I mentioned at the beginning of this interview, I’d love to talk about some of the transparency laws that are happening right now. So current state of affairs on federal pay transparency laws. What does this mean? Tell me what’s in the pipeline.
Hannah Williams::
Lots of exciting movement with pay transparency laws. I think the launch of our page, timing was so perfect because right when we launched was when this momentum started moving with these pay transparency laws. It really started with Colorado and California. They were some of the first states to have these really all-inclusive pay transparency laws, which means that companies that qualify more often than not, they have to have five or 10 employees. Each state is different. So please check your state’s language to see who qualifies.
But the gist of it is that companies have to list the pay range, a fair range for internal and external job postings, promotions, and transfers. It differs per state I’ll say again, so please check your state’s laws. But these are really monumental laws that are going to help workers understand how much is this job actually paying and how do I compare, how do I position myself in the best place to make what I’m worth? And it also helps close that pay gap that we’re already seeing the results of that in Colorado and California.
So we have 15 states, I believe, now have pay transparency laws either signed or in the works. I’ve been involved, luckily. I’m so grateful to organizations that have reached out to me because I am not a lawyer. I don’t have a legal background, and some of this really is hard for me to keep up with. And so organizations like the ACLU, the National Women’s Law Center have tapped me and been like, “Hey, this is what’s happening. Can you come testify?”
And thankfully, I’ve been able to so far testify in support of DC, Virginia, and Maryland pay transparency laws, which I live in the DMV. So it really goes so much further for me to feel like I’m helping my fellow constituents in my state. Unfortunately, Virginia’s governor vetoed our pay transparency law very recently, and so we are probably going to have to appeal, go back to the books, wait for a different governor and try again.
I don’t know the exact roadmap ahead, but I’m going to be working closely with organizations to make sure that we can get this for Virginia constituents. The Maryland pay transparency law is on the governor’s desk and it is expected to go into signature and that it’ll be signed. So hopefully in a couple of weeks the news will come out there that it’ll go into effect.
And DC’s pay range act passed and it is going to go into effect this June, so very exciting. And lots of other states like Massachusetts, Illinois, they have pay transparency laws in the works. They are moving through the legislature, the steps of becoming a law. So we’re on the up and the momentum is really in our favor.
Tori Dunlap:
I imagine if anybody listening wants to support those laws, they can call their legislation in their states and advocate for them?
Hannah Williams::
Absolutely.
Tori Dunlap:
Okay, cool.
Hannah Williams::
Yes, please. If you are listening and your state does not have one or has one in the works, it means so much for you to use your voice because what we are up against is really well paid lobbyists that are repping private corporations, that it helps their bottom line to underpay people. And so what we need to do is use our voice just like how we’re using a social platform like TikTok and Instagram to share this information and create momentum. But using your voice and talking to your legally elected representatives is the best way to have an impact in your own community.
Tori Dunlap:
Hannah, if I can ever lend my voice to any of those, please let me know. I will fly out. We’ll make it happen.
Hannah Williams::
Good to know. Awesome. Yeah, we’re going to make big things happen I think in the next few years, like all of these, not just you and me, but financial influencers and content creators as a whole that are really involved in social impact movements. And that’s probably why they’re trying to ban TikTok, but we won’t be phased.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s a whole other thing.
Hannah Williams::
That’s a whole other topic.
Tori Dunlap:
Whole other topic. Hannah, I am so thankful for your work. I’m so thankful for your friendship and your collaboration. It’s hard out there for financial creators who are women, but we are banding together and doing the best we can. So I would love to know where people can find you and learn more about your work.
Hannah Williams::
Thank you so much, Tori. This has been an absolute pleasure. I’m so honored. As a listener of your podcast, I’m like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m here.” I’m patting myself on the back, super excited. But if anyone is interested in what I do, you can follow us @salarytransparentstreet. We’re on all platforms. I had to get on all platforms so my dad could watch it because he doesn’t have TikTok or Instagram.
So if you don’t have TikTok or Instagram, we’re also on YouTube, we’re on Facebook, we’re on LinkedIn, we’re on Twitter. You can find us on all those platforms. And if you want to contribute your salary anonymously, you can go to salarytransparentstreet.com. We have an anonymous salary database there that you can use for your own market research as well.
Tori Dunlap:
I love it. We’ll link it down below too. Thank you. Thank you.
Hannah Williams::
Thank you, thank you.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you so much to Hannah for joining us. You can follow her @salarytransparentstreet on TikTok or Instagram. Transparentstreet.com is a great place to go for her resources. She has a bunch of incredible salary resources, salary aggregators. You can see what other people in your industry are getting paid. She’s just doing incredible work around advocating for not only transparency at the individual level, but at the policy level too. Thank you as always for joining us, Financial Feminists. We appreciate you. We appreciate you listening to the show, and we’ll talk to you later. Go talk to somebody about your salary, I dare you. Okay, bye.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, associate Producer Tamisha Grant. Research by Arielle Johnson. Audio and Video Engineering by Alyssa Midcalf.
Marketing and Operations by Karina Patel, Amanda Leffew, Elizabeth McCumber, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Taylor Chou, Kailyn Sprinkle, Sasha Bonar, Claire Kurronen, and Daryl Ann Ingman.
Promotional Graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolf. And theme music by Jonah Cohen. A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K team and community for supporting this show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
