How To Double Your PM Salary (with Dr. Nancy Li)

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Hannah Clark: I know, you’re not supposed to talk about money at work—and that’s exactly why I’m going to do it for you. Let’s be real, I don’t care how passionate you are about product management—none of us are doing it for free. Whether you’re a founder at a pre-revenue startup or you’re vying for a senior PM role at an established company, all of us are trying to make as much money as we can as soon as possible. And why shouldn’t we? Life’s expensive, you’re awesome, and this industry is loaded with untapped potential.

Speaking of untapped potential, our guest today is a master of helping product managers finesse their salary negotiations. Dr. Nancy Li is the founder of the Product Management Accelerator, the host of the Product Insider Podcast, and has been featured in Forbes. Her career journey alone is insanely impressive, but today she’s turning her attention to helping you get your bag. We’ll talk negotiation tactics, the right time to ask for a raise, and some great advice for overcoming discomfort when talking about money. We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s jump in.

Welcome back to The CPO Club Podcast.

Dr. Nancy Li, thank you so much for joining us today.

Nancy Li: Thank you for having me, Hannah. I’ve been a big fan for your podcast for a while.

Hannah Clark: Oh, wonderful! We’ll start off the way we always kick it off. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up where you are today?

Nancy Li: Yes. So I am Dr. Nancy Li, a director of product and feature in Forbes. I’ve helped thousands of people land their dream PM job offer in fan companies and unicorn startups, and continue to get promoted as a product leader. I’m also the host of Product Insider Podcast, which a brand new podcast where we feature VP of product of Google, those kinds of very senior leaders, and share with those different kinds of product management inside and also AI product management.

I started my journey as an immigrant with $800 moving to the U.S. And within four years, I became a director product. And lots of people started to watch my free content on YouTube, which already had over 1 million views through my YouTube channel and also funding my Product Management Accelerator, help people continue to grow their career.

And last year, I’m also very proud to find my own nonprofit, which is the prime management training for free to people who couldn’t afford it.

Hannah Clark: That’s such an incredibly impressive resume. Very, very honored to have you on today.

So today we’re going to dive into a topic that I think everyone has been waiting for, which is getting more money. So to start us off, what do you think are the key challenges that PMs are struggling with in terms of settling on the right salary these days?

Nancy Li: Great question. I believe there’s three key challenges. Number one, for lots of product managers today, we always feel like, which is mindset, that we couldn’t make more, or they are scared, they’re afraid of asking for more. And that leading to lots of product managers always getting mediocre salary, but looking at other friends or co-workers, or other people who already get promoted much faster and getting paid significant more. I think number one thing is the fear.

So number two thing with the head is they don’t know what’s on the other side of the table. So when you negotiate, sorry, if you had known, wow, this company has a lot of budget. Of course, ask for more salary, but because lacking of information, people are missing the opportunities to ask for more.

And the third challenges they have is they don’t know how to sell themselves. I created literally my own quote, which is ‘people will pay you what you sell them, not pay you what you deserve.’ You sell them what your value is, not what you deserve. You think you deserve this much. You have this kind of contribution to the company, but people don’t see it.

So you need to sell yourself in the interview so they’re going to pay you more. And same thing as when you’re in the company, sell yourself day to day, so that your manager is going to give you a better promotion and bigger bonus as well.

Hannah Clark: That’s a really interesting way to frame it.

And that’s actually a great segue into our first topic, which is negotiation. What are some of the biggest mistakes that PMs are making when negotiating salaries when accepting their first offer letters?

Nancy Li: I believe the biggest mistake, which happened to myself, is not to ask for more. And you may be thinking, well, people will definitely ask for more. No, no. If the first time you negotiate a salary or your beginning of your career, lots of people do not ask.

They didn’t even know. Yes, you can. And negotiation salaries actually has many components, many different I call this art of dance goes into it. But your ceiling is only what you can expect. If you think you only deserve this much, it’s, Oh, I’m lucky. I have a job offer. Maybe it’s okay. Maybe I shouldn’t ask. No, that was wrong.

For example, when I started my career, my very first job working for Shell oil as the systems engineer, I didn’t ask at all. At the time, they pay me like almost 100k fresh out of my PhD program. And I was like, wow, I was lucky I land a job with H1B sponsorship that was post 2008 recession. Oh, that kind of just aged myself. Yes, kind of.

And then I was like, I landed a job offer that was like during a recession, there’s no job and they sponsor my H1B and they also pay me almost 100K fresh on my PhD. I was like, Oh my goodness, this is amazing. Let me just accept the offer. Guess what? A few months into the company, my male co-worker was getting paid $5,000 more in terms of base salary and another $5,000 more in terms of sign on bonus, just because I didn’t ask, because I thought I was lucky I can have one.

So that’s the number one biggest mistake, which is you didn’t ask because of fear. So second biggest mistake during negotiation is you’re too greedy, which you need to find a balance, right? So which can burn the offer as very obvious, right? So what I’ve seen people ask for too much and companies turn them off starting the first round interviews. Oh, you’re way exceeding our budget.

The third mistake, which is usually when people ask, they don’t know what the right language to ask, even if you don’t have competing offers, this happened to many of my students who getting paid over $300,000 per year as salary. They do not have competing offers, only have one offer. But when you ask, if you say things in the wrong way and people feel like, oh, you’re too arrogant, or you don’t know how to sell your value to the company, people take it in a different way, just feel like you just want for money. You’re not have a right motivation to join our company.

So many different things involved in the art of negotiation.

Hannah Clark: Can you walk me through the advice that you give your clients when they’re negotiating remuneration with a new employer?

Nancy Li: Yeah, great question. So let me go through different steps and also use some real life examples so it’s easier for people to apply the strategies right away after this podcast.

And number one thing is you must have the right mindset. As I mentioned earlier, that your ceiling is how much you can imagine. If you only think you can achieve this much, you cannot do that. And for fun fact, there is a research article by Stanford. They did a comparison between both men and women. Of course, in that situation, they separate based on gender, but you can separate based on any kind of ways, or maybe like mixed up all different kind of like men, women, different gender or different kind of background.

So in their research, they put man and woman, and they told the woman side, saying that, oh, you know what, all the women are amazing negotiator because women in general would pay close attention to detail. We’re very good at building report, building relationship, make people trust that, make people help us out. So usually when women negotiate, we’re going to have long term success, eventually getting more money out of negotiation.

So when they told this to those group of people and then they put it, okay, you guys negotiate with this mindset shift. Then they come back, women are able to negotiate 15% higher salary compared with men. And they did another experiment with the same group of people, and they told them that historically speaking, men are better negotiators.

They are tough, they are aggressive. They look like they can do better. You know, they sounds like they’re so confident. Men can do better in negotiation. Okay. After they told the audience and the audience go out for negotiation and men negotiate 15% higher, which means that there is no difference between men or women or senior, not senior experience, no experience.

The key factor is what do you think you can reach as a number one factor? If you don’t think you can reach high, you will never reach high. Number one thing is mindset. The second thing is to understand what’s on the other side of the table. As I talk about the mistakes earlier, right? So people, if you ask too much, you burn your offer.

And if you ask too little, you end up underpaid. So understanding what’s on the other side of the table is very critical. For example, one of the real life story, one of my students interviewing for TikTok, and she brought an offer back to me, and she was, that number is already very high. But when I saw the numbers, the numbers already close to $300,000 per year was in TikTok. And with her background, she only had two years experience and she also was immigrant from Canada.

She never worked in the U.S. to get a job offer to work in the U.S. And then when she saw a job offer, she’s like, well, I accept, right? It’s really good. And then I was like, I know they can pay you more because I’m negotiating salary with other students. I know there’s more money left on the table. Let’s push it through.

So you need to understand what’s on the other side of the table. And sometimes what’s on the other side of the table is not the money. Sometimes it could be the timing. For example, they want you to get started right away. Sometime could also be because your competition, for example, there’s another insider news, which is within Amazon is crazy.

So, you know, lots of gen AI and lots of AI activities happening in the industry. All the companies have formal effects, same thing as Amazon. So in one department of Amazon, which I know which one at here, let me remove all the confidential information. One department of Amazon, they had the new VP and also new director.

And then all of a sudden they start to put the old prime managers on PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) one by one and then MPL the position and then start to hire lots of very senior prime managers to work on generative AI or AI as a product as a whole. So when they bring people into this new opportunities, they have so much funding.

They also want people already has some type of experience. They also want people to get started early. So the more insider information you can get, the more likely you’re able to land a high job paying offers. For example, when they bring people into Amazon, they’re doing like L7 type of role. So as I’m busy, you can get over 400K if your L7 was in Amazon.

So no, with those insider informations, Oh, they want people with AI background. They want to get started right away. They have a lot of funding. And then, because of politics reasons, they want to switch product managers within that specific department. So with that, if you’re the right candidate, and you quote, you sell yourself well during the interview, you can ask for a lot of money.

As an example, right? So this is also one. I know this through one of my students, and also landing this offer, and also insider information was in Amazon to put all the pieces of information together, right? So those, like, knowing what’s on the other side of the table can help you significantly. The third step is when you ask, ‘what would you say?’ For example, in the Amazon example, they have lots of funding, lots of budget, but you cannot just go in like I’m there like bullish about myself and I know inside the information so I can be very like mean or talking a different way.

Now, in contrast, instead of focusing on the money, we should focus on the value you can add to the company. For example, when you go in to talk to Amazon, when you get started, the, all the conversation should get started about your value can add to the company, for example, regarding, Oh, I have worked on AI for a couple of years. I know ABCD different kind of models, I can do this and this, this, and work with engineering team and add value starting from day one.

And also regarding your connections was the interviewer regarding how much is the culture fit going to help you to work smoothly with a new company as well. The third thing when people need to think about when negotiate is also understand what are the competitions out there. So that really depends. Not everybody has this option, but if you do have other competing offers like many of students they have more than one offer, and then you need to really figure out how to quote, play them against each other, but in a nice way.

And this had lots of details goes into it in terms of one is the numbers, whoever give you more money. And the second time is timing, because some companies that play a tactic, they want to accept the offer within a week or two days or very short amount of time, because this is true they have interviewed for many candidates. You’re number one. Once you find the right fit, they want to accept the offer soon. But what if you are at the final round stage with another company and that company still need to talk to many candidates, what would you do, right?

So in this situation, I recommend everybody to use negotiation tactics to throw down the decision making process and push the other company to make decision faster when they slow down, basically, for example, it could be, Oh, I think the really good offer so let me discuss with my significant others or husband and other people and come back, talk about the details, small things of offer number one.

Once you have lots of time, hopefully by the time offer number two already give you some numbers and then you can bring the number to the table talking about how much more the other company paying you and potentially want to match the offer.

Hannah Clark: I like this idea and I’ve heard this before of leveraging one offer against the other. I didn’t think about it in terms of managing the timeline of both. That’s an interesting tactic.

I really like that we’re focusing a little bit on getting more money out of our offer letters, but then there’s also the matter of getting more money with a company that we’re already working for. So what are some of the tactics that PMs can try when negotiating a pay increase internally, whether through a promotion or raise following an annual performance review?

Nancy Li: Great question. And 99% of people, including myself, made a mistake when we asked for more money during the performance review, because the decision was made when you went into the annual performance review, it’s too late. They already knew how much I’m going to pay you, what the bonus could be. And usually during the performance review, they just tell you what the number could be, or they already give you a rating, five stars or whatever, perform like underperform, different ratings.

I didn’t learn this until I became a director myself. Earlier, I always thought annual performance review is when we ask for more money. So I have all the agenda. I wrote the essay, top five bullet point, everything. Well, timing is off. Number one thing is timing. So when I became a director, I had suddenly getting access to insider information with a company regarding how budget was allocated. Because it’s really based on the entire company, how the next year’s budget is allocated and which of the bonus is coming from what type of categories of budget.

And then when they decide budget, and then you need to talk about your promotion or increase of your salary way ahead of time, before the decision was made. For example, in one of the Fortune 500 companies I worked at, I discovered that at least from a direct level, we are talking about next year’s budget in around like November, regarding how much money like million stars we can have and use for next year.

But in November, we already kind of know how much money we’re getting. And then among all the allocated money we receive from the motherhood, we also know what percentage can go into bonus, what percentage go into the base salary increase. And then after we know the total amount of pool of money, we also need to allocate based on each department. I’m just talking about all the leadership because I know the entire from VP leadership on everything come up, okay?

And then the VP has several directors. And then they will figure out so which department is going to get more money in terms of like this year’s performance, maybe some department performing very well, and the entire department pool money that pool money increased significantly compared with another pool money.

So these decision usually is made around November. If you want to ask for compensation increase, you need to ask before November, ideally in September way ahead of time. Okay in September, you start bringing up this conversation regarding your contribution, your value can add to the company and any kind of testimonial from the customers and saying that you did so well.

So you start to talk about you want to get paid more ahead of time. And so we put things in the head. And then in the middle of the conversation around November, when they need to really allocate the budget, they already know, Oh, I should put some budget on the side for Nancy, because she has been demonstrating her achievement.

She had been asking for it for a while, so I should put some of the budget ahead of time. So when they allocate in November, they already allocate a bunch of budget for myself, for my department. So that’s what everybody on the meet getting paid more in general. So you always talk about it ahead of time.

And of course, it’s like, a quality performance review season is a different type of performance review and at different stages you need to ask in the performance review season and throughout the entire year. Actually, you should really plan out throughout the entire year and I have a free bonus for all of you guys where I told you the decision making process and each quarter, each month, what each company is doing budget planning and when you should ask those questions based on their internal budget planning cycle.

So you guys can directly go to my website, www.drnancyli.com/salarydecision, and to download those free internal guides so you can use it as a timeline for you to negotiate upcoming salary. And at the same time, I’m also going to give these notes for Hannah for you guys to distribute later on as well. This is a free bonus for everybody who is listening to today’s show.

Hannah Clark: Okay, so that covers timing. So then what’s the next step?

Nancy Li: So when you ask for internal promotion, the next step is you need to build your internal branding before you even go ask a promotion. That’s why I talk about in the free resource, free download, and you guys have the entire year’s timing.

So actually at the beginning of the year, you should start build your personal brand. For example, do not ask for money, which I told you when to ask money was September, right? So before you ask for money, you let people know about who you are and your achievement. Now, let me be specific. For example, when I was a product manager and launching the first AI smart cities product, and that product actually received the Mayor’s Best Practice Award in 2016.

So, as soon as I achieved the award, I told everybody in the company and I also give presentation about my award winning product to everybody in the company. And people love listening because they want to share and information also want to learn from each other. And I also started to give those like a training to our sales team and there was a situation that there’s a group of five product managers all in the smart city domain, all my co-workers.

Everybody is giving the training of your product to a team of 100 salesperson and everyone have that. I have not worked on my product, but after I finished my presentation of product, I have a huge line of salesperson lining up trying to shake my hand saying that, Hey, Nancy, I’m so excited about your product.

I’m so ready to sell this and then bring to the hands of customers. So it was because I really did a great job during the presentation and impress them. Guess what happened afterwards? All those salespeople, they started inviting me to executive presentation, was in Verizon at the time. So in Verizon, something called executive briefing center, we bring all the executives from like all the tier one companies, just like all the big ones you can imagine.

So whenever you do collaboration or you want to talk about innovation within the industry, they bring executives to have a conversation with our executives. But when you have a conversation with our executives, they always want to show you any kind of award winning product or any kind of new things.

Because AI in 2016 was brand new. It’s not as hard as right now. So that’s why very few people knows AI and all the salesperson who build relationship with those executives was in different company just thought about name all the time. Oh, Nancy is very good giving presentation. We love her product.

Maybe you can bring her into this conversation with those executives and using those like snowball effect at building my branding and being able to demonstrate my capabilities and value to the company. And then they bring me to executives presentation, the executives likes me. And then I illustrate every single month I give presentation to executives of all the tier one companies out there.

So it’s a snowball effect. So therefore, when I need to ask for salary increase in September, my manager was like, Oh, it makes lots of sense. Yeah, she deserves it. I already tried to convince them throughout the entire year. And of course, as I mentioned, timing is very important. Even if I convince them throughout the entire year, if I ask in December, it’s too late. Money’s gone.

So, identify the right time to ask is very critical and also build your personal brand is very critical. And the moment, let’s say, September when you search that, September when you walk into the negotiation, right, you need to do the following. During the meeting, you should tell your manager ahead of time, do not be like cold turkey, when in September, who asks for money in September, right?

But you would, so therefore tell them ahead of time saying, Hey, I’d like to discuss my performance in our September meeting. Tell your manager ahead of time, so it’s not cold turkey. Your manager, Oh, okay. And then your manager start to think about your performance ahead of time, so that it won’t be like cold turkey during the meeting.

So once we went into the meeting, you have all your evidence regarding your contribution to the company, and especially with those kind of customer testimony regarding customers really love what you had and all the email and from my salesperson saying that I did great job and presenting my product and also all the award I have achieved and everything was part of the proof that I present in front of manager and then ask for more. And when you ask for more, also, I recommend people to give a number instead of saying more, then your manager didn’t know how much is more. And I have something very funny. I was always a all-star performer and the first time I asked for more money.

So I knew I was underpaid. I told you guys earlier, right? I knew I was underpaying my first job and then I knew I can ask for more money. And then when I went to in the performance review, I said, I think I need to get paid more. Guess how much more I got?

Hannah Clark: Was it like $500?

Nancy Li: It’s like 1%, almost $500, literally 1%. It’s lower than inflation. It’s crazy, right? So they didn’t know what is more. They thought someone like me speaking with accent and doesn’t know anything at the beginning of my career, one percent, a few hundred dollars, maybe a few thousand dollars is a lot for me, which was, but I deserve more. Therefore, give them a number, a reasonable number, and so that they understand what your expectation. But as long as your number is not, let me double my salary.

If you don’t give it to me, I’m going to leave that. No, no, that kind of tone doesn’t work. So it’s always understand what’s on the outside of the table, which is your competition, which is your co-workers in the space and how much the budget allocation timeline and how your entire team is doing to know what the right number to ask. They’re going to give you what you ask for.

Hannah Clark: Okay, these are really interesting tactics.

So I’m curious now, so you kind of mentioned a little bit about researching, you know, what’s on the other side of the table. So do you have any tricks for researching the pay threshold for specific product roles at specific companies?

Nancy Li: Yes. So the several tricks is number one, if you know somebody inside a company who recently received an offer, let’s say it could be your MBA classmate, could be any, your, our alumni was in PM Accelerator, right? So my students, we share information or you directly ask somebody who negotiates salary for other people like me.

So I literally know hundreds people salary. That’s why I feel very comfortable talking money all the time. I know each level and the latest salary this month in which company, how much you’re getting paid right now. And so getting information from people inside a company or someone negotiate salary for other people before is a big tip you can use right away.

Of course, not everybody have access to me or you have friends all of a sudden working for like Amazon, Google. So, and the next trick you can use is directly go to websites such as teamblind.com, which I personally like, and it’s mainly focused on tech. So teamblind.com has lots of like salary information, the latest information of how much people are getting paid.

And you should also go to level FYI, which give you the range. Level FYI in general is mainly focused on tier one companies, which lots of our students are actually working for tier one companies. That’s why it’s perfect for our audience. So when people go to Level FYI, this website, they are going to select a specific company’s name with different title, different kind of bracket, the range.

It’s helped you significantly to understand, okay, I’m already at lower tier of this L5 or L6 or L7. So this is how much I expect. So using those information, guess what? It’s crazy. So our high students are going to pay the $800,000 per year working for Meta, Meta L7. And immediately when he told me in regarding the relative band and I just look up level FYI and also look up my internal connections because I already have people working for Meta.

I also have like some VP of product for also my students. So I just know the salary. I was like, I think can get $100k and he did.

Hannah Clark: So since we’re talking about money and negotiation, I think it’s important to address this topic can be a little bit trickier for women and people of color. So having worked with people of different backgrounds and identities, have you noticed any patterns with regards to the different challenges that marginalized people are dealing with in terms of salary negotiation?

And do you have any recommendations for remedies that you found to be successful in overcoming these challenges?

Nancy Li: Yes, a lot of these. So, number one thing is really deal with your own imposter syndrome. Surprisingly, everybody has imposter syndrome. You might be thinking imposter syndrome is only for entry level people.

No, no, no, I guarantee you, it happens in all levels. For example, one of my speaker on my product manager, on my Product Insider Podcast, Lupin Campos, and she was the Senior Director of Growth at Stash. And she was actually only one of the few female directors and also one of the few Latino directors. And the way she speak is different because the style she usually speak longer and also more passionate given her Latino background.

She felt like she had to impose a syndrome as well. So she, the podcast we had is five lessons I learned as an imposter and turned into a director of product growth. And then one of the imposter syndrome she talked about earlier was that it’s funny. So her manager want her to meet in person in New York office.

So she flew all the way from Atlanta to New York. She went in and said, Oh my goodness, I’m getting fired. Oh my goodness, I’m getting fired. Something’s wrong. Oh, I never really want to meet me in person. You know what? I’m getting ready to submit my resume, brush up my resume right now. When she went into the meeting and her manager basically like, you did a fantastic job, we should talk about your specific performance within the company and also giving you more opportunities to grow within the company and have you to manage more account for the company as well.

So she was like, ‘Oh, you’re not gonna fire me?’ And he was like, ‘No, you did a fantastic job.’ So number one thing is a lot of women or minorities or lots of people like us, we had imposter syndrome. We didn’t think we’re doing well enough. So that’s the biggest hurdle we are facing, the number one thing. So therefore a number one thing is, if you think you’re a woman, you’re a minority, you don’t deserve more, you cannot get more.

So therefore, moving forward, I encourage everybody, especially people with very diverse background, do not think about you’re diverse, that’s why you do not need to get paid more. Start to think about your unique value proposition you can add to the company. And the second thing is, if you come from a diverse background, I recommend everybody to really use your strengths.

For example, if you speak with an accent, just like me, English is not your first language. I think it’s applicable for lots of people working in tech right now. Then we need to learn how to speak in a short and concise way. Instead of giving people a lot of opportunity to poke holes when we speak, why don’t we speak fewer words, fewer sentences, but each sentence is trying to hit the bull’s eye on a target.

So that you can show off that you have strong leadership skills. You’re able to summarize and also talk about key important things and actually the executives really, really like you. And then the second thing is you also need to run your 30 seconds elevator pitch. So think about this. In the day to day work, you probably only had fewer limited opportunity, meaning people from different backgrounds.

And then when you go talk about your experience, your achievement, you must be able to sell yourself within 30 seconds. So you have those 30 seconds at a bit of pitch ready, regardless you’re woman or you’re minorities and this is wholly independent. And actually on my YouTube channel, I have one of my most popular YouTube video about how to create a perfect 30 seconds elevator pitch is works like a charm and everything to learn it.

And the third step is, if you are minorities, I really want you to really also think about your unique competitive advantage and start building those. For example, I choose public speaking as my unique competitive advantage, but I didn’t start from someone speaking very well. Not at all. I was very bad.

You say you can go to my YouTube channel and years ago, like 10 years ago, I have really bad videos of me speaking. I just like horrible and embarrassing. I don’t even want to watch my old videos myself. But one day, when you identify this is your core strengths, you start work on it and you start to use your core strengths to gain more resources within the company.

And then you’re able to create a lot of new opportunities for yourself. So therefore, number one thing, forget about you’re a woman, whatever to tell you, maybe tell yourself in the heart of the woman usually negotiate more like the first day Harvard, a Stanford exam, are you women negotiate better than men? Oh, yeah, maybe just tell yourself that maybe it can do better.

Yeah, really focus on your strengths and also learn how to use specific strategies really hide your shortcomings as well. And then the rest of negotiation tactic is the same for everybody. We’re mainly working on the disadvantage that put us in a corner and focus on that part. So it’s a combination of those strategies going to help both men and women, people with different kind of like, ethnicity backgrounds and we can all get paid more for sure.

Hannah Clark: Yeah, and that’s always the goal.

So before we wrap up, I do want to talk a little bit about the fear that we discussed around talking about money. What are some of the tips that you have for folks to overcome the fear and discomfort around talking about money so that they can better advocate for themselves?

Nancy Li: Three things. Number one, you must find a role model. This is number one thing. So I personally have a role model as well. Everybody should have your role model. Role model doesn’t have to be the CEO of Google. Could be anybody who inspire you in a day to day basis. Ideally, somebody with the same challenges, but one or two or three steps ahead of you. So each time when you even feel like I have fear, I’m not able to ask for more money, and then you can think of why this person with the same background like me, just two years ahead of me, but it’s like 10 times better and 10 times more advanced in their career?

So when you think about your role model, what will your role model do in this situation? For example, my role model is Jamie Kern Lima, and she is the ex CEO of Estee Lauder. And she also has her makeup brand, IT Cosmetics to Estee Lauder as well as the only, and the first female CEO of a makeup brand in the U.S. in the world.

Right? So whenever I see challenges regarding, Oh, I’m afraid to ask him more. And if I knew I deserve more, I’ll be like, well, Jamie going to just not say anything when she realized that there was no female CEOs in Estee Lauder as one of the largest makeup brand in the world. She’s going to step out to say something.

Well, you can get it, not get it. It’s different story. You may, may not get promoted, but if you do not stand up for yourself, nobody will stand up for you. So always think about number one, what would your role model do? So number two, regarding your fear. Lots of time, when you start to take smaller steps, fear will gradually go away.

Make sure ask yourself, so why do I have fear when I ask for more money, maybe ask for more promotion, maybe afraid of losing the job offer? So you ask yourself this question, what’s the best way to really verify how much money they’re willing to pay? Oh, I can collect insider information just like how Dr. Nancy Li said earlier in the podcast, by talking to people in the company, by researching on level FYI, all different kinds of resources. And have solutions to what your fear and ask you, are those fear something can be solved and can be supported by data? Or it just mentally, you feel like you have fear?

And the third step, when you have fear to ask for more money in this situation, I want to give a range. This is also a very important trick. For example, like I really wanted to ask for this much money. I did research. I deserve this much because Dr. Nancy told me that like, for example, the real story, I have someone land a job offer from Amazon with $330,000 per year.

That was an MBA background. When she brought this number to me, I was, I think he asked for more. She’s like, it’s only very high, Nancy. I was like, I think you can do more. I think go for $350k. Then she has fear, right? So in this situation, give a range. Instead of just like go 150, they say, oh, Nancy said 150.

What if I cannot really get that? Then they withdraw my offer, right? Give a range. So you can, oh, I believe I deserve something between 340 to 350. This is going to make your fear become like maybe a concern, no longer a fear anymore. So therefore there’s a many different kind of mindset people need to train.

I talk a lot on my YouTube channel and also podcast regarding mindset, which is number one thing people need to understand and then use the strategies that I teach you on my YouTube channels and also all the podcast and you’re going to have great success in getting paid more.

Hannah Clark: Speaking of your YouTube channels and podcast, where can people follow your work online? And thank you so much for sharing all this. This has been so, so helpful.

Nancy Li: Yeah, totally. My pleasure. And you can find me by go to my YouTube channel and search Dr. Nancy Li, director of product. For my podcast, you can search Product Insider with Dr. Nancy Li. So you should be able to find it is on Apple podcast and Spotify and all different kinds of your favorite podcast platforms.

You can also go to my website, drnancyli.com and find all the information over there and make sure to go to the drnancyli.com/salarydecision to download your own free bonuses so that you can be the one who get paid what you deserve.

Hannah Clark: Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Nancy Li. I am very excited to hear back from our listeners to see what they’ve managed to do with those resources.

Nancy Li: Yeah, please let me know. I love to hear how you guys negotiate salary and how much more you get paid. Thank you for having me.

Hannah Clark: Thank you for joining us.

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