Hannah Williams — Salary Transparent Street, Asking About Salaries on the Street
How a street-interview series born from her own salary negotiation experience grew into a media business with brand sponsorships and free salary resources—and was acquired by NowThis.
When Hannah Williams was changing jobs, the salary she planned to ask for was $105,000. When the recruiter asked about her desired salary, Hannah instead asked how much the company had budgeted. The answer that came back was $115,000—$10,000 more than the amount she had intended to name first.
Disclosing Her Salary
There was a reason she had prepared that question. Hannah had been working as a senior data analyst in the Washington, D.C., area, earning $90,000 a year, when she learned that people doing similar work were paid $20,000 to $25,000 more than she was annually. She asked her company for a raise, but was blocked by tenure and limits on raise percentages, so she began looking for another job. A few weeks later, Hannah moved to a new job with a salary of $115,000.
Her salary had increased, but the process stayed with her. Hannah posted about her job change and salary negotiation experience on her personal TikTok account, and a video disclosing the salaries from the five jobs she had held surpassed 1 million views. As people showed interest in her story, she became curious to hear about other people's jobs and pay as well.
Turning Street Interviews Into a Career
In April 2022, Hannah went out onto the street with her then-fiancé, James Daniels. Hannah asked people what they did and how much they earned, while James filmed, and the channel they started that way was Salary Transparent Street. After posting the first video on the new account, about 50,000 followers gathered overnight.
Hannah quit her job three weeks after posting the first video. The two had savings to cover their mortgage and living expenses for about six months, and Hannah decided to use that time to find a way to make money from the channel. James left his job about a month later and joined full time.
Filming and Conversations Behind the Short Videos
To bring up salary on the street, she first had to put people at ease. Hannah wore a T-shirt bearing the channel logo, explained that she was conducting interviews to share pay information publicly, and then asked whether they wanted to take part. Telling people upfront why she was asking such questions became her way of starting conversations with strangers.
The interviews that made it on screen were short, but filming took time. According to Hannah, approaching 10 to 20 people in an hour and getting three to five to agree made for a good day. In the early days, when she packed multiple people's answers into a single video, she filmed for three to five hours to create one post, then had to return to the street for the next video. Later, she added more interviews that explored one person's career in detail, and by early 2024 she had shifted to usually doing one field shoot per week.
Viewers were curious not just about pay but also about how to enter those jobs. They wanted to know whether they could move into tech or medical roles after building a career in another field, and what education and credentials were required. Hannah asked followers almost every month which jobs they wanted to see, and she incorporated repeated requests from the comments into future interviews.
Brand Sponsorships Become the Core of Revenue
Companies began reaching out in the channel's first month. Job platforms such as Indeed, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor were the first to inquire about collaborations, and a major deal with Indeed came through an introduction from an industry contact. Hannah spoke directly with brand representatives as she developed partnerships, and Indeed and Capital One became long-term advertisers.
The collaboration with Capital One began with a connection made through Instagram contacts. The two held workshops about money at Capital One Café, encouraging people to talk openly about pay and finances. The conversation that had played out on the street and in the comments expanded into in-person events.
Hannah also set exacting criteria for selecting sponsorships. In a 2024 interview, she said she rejects about 99% of incoming offers and prefers to work with a small number of companies that are a good fit for viewers. The criteria for choosing deals were what information a company wanted to convey and how useful that content would be to people watching the channel.
Company revenue in its first year, 2022, was $458,917, and in 2023 it surpassed $1 million in annual revenue. About 97% of that year's revenue came from brand contracts, while platform payments from YouTube, Reels, TikTok, and other platforms totaled about $30,000. The job interviews the two filmed on the street had grown into a business supported by sponsorships from recruiting and financial companies.
From Videos to Free Salary Resources
People who could not stand in front of the camera also shared their salaries. As thousands of submissions collected through Google Forms and Sheets piled up, Hannah worked with production company Rare Days to create a salary database that was easy to search on mobile as well. The website also gathered resources on salary negotiation and market pay research, as well as job postings that disclosed pay. A space was created where people could directly search for and resolve the questions the videos raised, and these resources were provided for free.
As the business grew, more work was delegated to others. An outside production team wrote the newsletter, and blog writers provided articles, while Hannah participated in selecting and reviewing topics. She also adjusted her own salary to leave more money in the company. In an interview published in November 2023, Hannah said she had lowered her annual salary from $200,000 to $125,000.
The Channel and Its Two Operators Go to NowThis Together
In 2024, company revenue rose to $1.6 million. In addition to filming and editing, the two's workload kept expanding to include sponsorship negotiations, contract review, financial management, database operations, and responding to comments. Hiring people added team management to their duties as well, and Hannah and James Daniels felt they were left with less energy to dream up new content. The two began looking for a company that could take on production and operations alongside them.
In January 2026, Salary Transparent Street was acquired by media company NowThis. It was a deal in which the brand was acquired and Hannah and James joined as well. The two said the final payment would be determined by performance targets spanning multiple years, and that the amount they would receive if they met those targets was in the seven figures in US dollars. The annual salaries they disclosed after joining were $150,000 for Hannah and $100,000 for James. Hannah would continue hosting and James would continue filming, while NowThis's sales, editing, production, legal, and operations teams would help grow the channel together.