The TikTok phenomenon Salary Transparent Street (STS) hinges on a classic formula: Hannah Williams, a cheery and approachable 26-year-old, stops people on the street in various cities and asks them what they do and how much they make.
Less than two years into its existence, STS has clearly hit on the zeitgeist, amassing 1.3 million TikTok followers and nearly 32 million likes across each of Williams’ short-form videos. She also sends out a newsletter, keeps a running database of salaries in different jobs across the U.S., and has published negotiation guides and interview pointers.
This week, Williams landed on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. Propelled by her commitment to normalize money conversations among all demographics—she says younger people have been more likely to share their pay than older people and women more so than men—she has, per Forbes, testified on behalf of Washington, D.C.’s Pay Range Act, which would mandate all D.C. job listings to include salaries; brought her camera crew to nearly half the country; and surpassed $1 million in brand deals.
“A lot of people don’t know how to price themselves in the market…and that’s why Salary Transparent Street exists—to try to help advocate for employees to do market research to figure out what they should be asking for so employers don’t take advantage of them,” Williams told Fortune last year.
So it was worth noting when Williams, in her true-to form candor, shared with Fortune this week that she gave herself a whopping pay cut.
Given her partnership with Capital One and the jarringly high pay most influencers can command, you can imagine that Williams rakes in a hefty salary as a TikToker. When she threw herself into content creation full-time in May 2022, she says, she set her own salary at $200,000, up from the $115,000 she was previously making as a senior data analyst at CATHEXIS, a government contractor firm outside DC. Today, she’s at $125,000—a $75,000 self-imposed pay cut. (The average U.S. salaried worker earns just over $59,400.)
The big reason for paring down? “I didn’t want to hold the company back, in terms of growth, in order to pay myself more,” Williams tells Fortune.
In order to find success in the rapidly evolving creator economy, you need a long-term approach. That means eschewing any kind of “get-rich-quick” mentality, she says.
Williams understands the impulse. “When you see money coming in, it…
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