The Salary Ceiling No One Warned You About: Why Hard Work Isn’t Enough Anymore

You’ve mastered the hustle, played by the rules, and earned every title you hold. But somehow… your paycheck doesn’t reflect your value. In this eye-opening episode, Dr. Kimberly Dunlap breaks down the silent “salary ceiling” that no one talks about—the one that limits how far women of color can go, no matter how hard they work.

This isn’t just about money. It’s about power, positioning, and permission.
 Dr. Dunlap shares the mindset, strategy, and spiritual shifts that help you stop settling for incremental raises and start commanding overflow.

She reveals:

• Why traditional career advice doesn’t work for high-achieving women of color
• How to spot when you’ve outgrown your environment (and what to do next)
• The difference between working hard and working in alignment
• How spiritual identity impacts your earning potential

This episode is a must-listen for any woman who’s ever thought, “I should be further along by now.” Because you’re not crazy, Beautiful—you’ve just hit a ceiling that wasn’t meant for you to stay under.

✨ It’s time to stop asking for more and start becoming more.

🎧 Tune in, take notes, and get ready to elevate beyond the limits of your paycheck and into the overflow of your purpose.

✨ Connect & Elevate with Dr. Kimberly Dunlap

🎙️ She’s BEYOND Elevated is the unapologetic podcast for ambitious women of color who are brilliant on paper but know deep down—there’s more.

🎁 Access your 5-Day Beyond Wealth Challenge → Register Here
📩 Connect with Dr. Kimberly Dunlap → info@drkimberlydunlap.com
📲 Follow on Instagram, LinkedIn & YouTube → @DrKimberlyDunlap

🔥 Ready to go from boxed-in to BEYOND? Your elevation starts here.

#MindsetShift #WomenOfColor #SheIsBeyondElevated #CareerConfidence #PurposeDrivenLife #DrKimberlyDunlap

Transcript

0:10

Yeah. Hello, beautiful. You tuned in to She's Beyond Elevated with Dr. Kimberly Dunlap. The space where purpose meets power and faith meets execution. Here, we don't play small. We rise, we heal, and we elevate on every level. So get ready to shift your mindset, reclaim your brilliance, and step into the version of you that's been waiting to emerge. Let's get into it. Welcome back to She's Beyond Elevated, the podcast for ambitious women of color who no longer are willing to shrink, settle, or be underpaid for their brilliance. So today we're actually talking about something that's been quietly robbing women, especially women of color, for decades, right?The salary ceiling that no one really warns you about, okay?Now, let me just be clear. You're not being underpaid because you lack skill, because let's just be really transparent. African-American women especially, but women of color are the most highly educated women in the country. Race, class, right? You're being underpaid because you've been unknowinglyplaying a game that was really never designed for you to win. Now let's just talk facts. As I stated earlier,women on average earn 64 cents to every one dollar a white male makes. Latino women, even less. Asian women, still trailing, okay?And this isn't about talent, okay?It's about the systems. Most of us were raised to believe that you do the work, you get the reward. But in corporate, especially here in America, doing the work really is not enough. The reward doesn't go to the most competent. It goes to the most visible, the most vocal, the most positioned. And usually, that's not women of color. You're being measured by metrics that were never really built or designed to even see you in the space where you are. And if no one ever taught you really how to navigate that especially in the corporate space, you're going to hit a ceiling that you didn't even know was there. So, let me say this plainly. Being grateful for a job does not mean that you have to be grateful for being underpaid. And now the good girl in us all tells us that you just have to have gratitude for everything, and it's okay to be grateful. It's not okay to be grateful for being undermined and underpaid and undervalued. You don't have to be grateful for that, okay?Now, the corporate culture has taught women, especially women of color, to prioritize loyalty over leverage. So you're being told, just be patient, wait your turn, prove yourself a little more, show up a little more. So when you go into that performance evaluation and you're talking to your superior or whomever, And you express the desire to be promoted. You express the desire to earn more money. You express the desire to have a greater impact on the corporation. Because first of all, that's your hope that you're gonna be seen. That's your hope that if you show up more, okay, or you give the organization more,that they're going to magically say, you know what?We didn't see her value before, but we're going to see her value now and we're going to pay her what she's worth. You know, like I know, that's not going to happen, right? meanwhile, men half your skill set are doubling your paycheck because they know how to ask, position, and even demand what they feel they're worth. This isn't about being aggressive. It's about being strategic. To position yourself to not provide value over what you're being compensated and often as African-American women, especially we tend to Give everything we got even though we're only receiving peanutsin return, and that's throughout our lives, not just corporate, but especially, and I'm a firm believer of how you do one thing is how you do everything. So if you're over delivering, and you've been the over deliverer in your family, in your friends circle, you're always the one that they call, you're always the one that needs to plan things, you're always the one that has the extra 20 bucks when someone runs short, that is the same energy you take over into corporate. Right. And remember, I always say no one's going to give you a value higher than the value you give yourself. It just does not happen. Someone else is not going to see your worth more than what you see your worth as. Now, here's where it gets real. Before you ever break the external salary ceiling, you've got to confront the internal one. Again, no one's going to place more value on you than you've placed on you. Do you believe you're worth more?'Cause most times you don't. Deep down inside, you don't. Do you feel confident enough to ask? Because if your confidence level was there, you would have no forums about asking for what you're truly worth. Right?Do you fear being too much if you advocate for yourself?Now, that's a big one. Because often we go with the flow when it comes to corporate. We're boxed in. We are told tobe a certain way, you have to talk a certain way, you have to look a certain way, you have to wear your hair a certain way, all of these things for being accepted. Right?So because we've been conditioned inside this little box of what we need to present to the outside world, you don't want to be too much. You don't really want to rock the boat. Because again, you should just be grateful that you have a job to begin with. No, no, no, no, you shouldn't. Listen, sis, your paycheck will never outgrow your mindset. You don't get what you deserve. You get what you demand. And the demanding starts with believing that you're actually worth what you're asking for. Let's make this tangible. Okay, here are three immediate shifts that you can make. Okay, know your market value. Now, stop guessing and start researching. You on Google checking out the latest purse, the latest car, the latest concert. Check out and research what you are truly worth. There are sites like Glassdoor, Levels.fyi, which is a really cool site, and even, I think it's another one, PayScale. Yeah, that's the other one. These aren't just suggestions, right?These are tools. You can use these tools to actually research what the industry is paying for someone of your skill set, right?Number two, master your positioning. Okay, now don't just do great work, document it. Keep your receipts, okay?Quantify your wins. Speak in results, not responsibilities. Show them how you showed up and have documentation of that. And number three, stop asking for permission to grow. So what tends to happen is we goLike I said, during the performance evaluation, and oh, I'd really like to attribute more, I desire to have a position of leadership, things such as that. And so what happens is your supervisor, manager, or whomever, they take that information, and then they tell you, well, you should start volunteering for more projects, things such as that. What is that designed to do? No fuss about it. When they start positioning you and want you to ask for projects and things such as that, that's so that they get a test of your skill set before they have to compensate you forit. It's not aboutgiving you opportunity, it's about them prioritizing or them optimizing your skill set without having to compensate you monetarily or with a title. Create a raise strategy. I want you to map out your three-year salary goal. Okay, so when I say map it out in three years, if you make $50,000 a year, it's unrealistic for you to think that in that same role, in six months, you're gonna go up to $300,000. That's unrealistic. It probably will never happen. Not within the same role, okay?But map out your three-year strategy goals, okay?Then reverse engineer how you gonna get there. whether inside this position or outside of this position. I know with the economy being the way that it is you everyone is telling you oh you should not look outside just be grateful for that job but I want you to think about it in your lineage. If you are making 40 to $60,000 less per year than your skill set demands over five years. Let's just say on average you're making $50,000 less than what you should be making by staying loyal and staying in that role or in that job or with that company. Over a five-year period, you have shortchanged your family, your children, your lineage at a $250,000 in five years. Think about that. Think about is that the type of impact that you wanna make for the future generations or your future generations, okay?These are the wealth conversations that we're talking about, okay?The way to build wealth, point blank, simple, I don't care who you ask, is to make more money. If you have invested in yourself, college degrees, seminars, career coaching, all of these things, you've invested that money and time into yourself, but the return is not being maximized That is contributing to a poverty mindset. That is contributing to the lack of nothingness. Asking and demanding for what you're worth based on what you've invested in yourself helps youto build wealth consciousness. Because I don't care who you ask. You can ask Warren Buffett. You can ask, I don't know, Joe Dispenza. You can ask whomever you want to. You can ask anyone that knows what it's like to build wealth the way you buildwealth is to make more money. That's it. So here's your power prompt for today. I want you to ask yourself, in what areas of your career have you accepted less? Because you didn't know there was more available to you. Don't just think about this. I really want you to take action, okay?I really want you, the tools that I gave you, I really want you to do your research. I really want you to compare what you're being paid by your organization that you're loyal to versus what the market demands for you. And I want you to think of that. I want you to sit with that, okay? So if this episode shook something loose in your spirit, right, I want you to go now and register to be a part of my Five Day WELP Beyond Work Challenge. Now that's www.weelevateher.com/fiveday. five day challenge, and I'm gonna put the description down, I'm gonna put the link down in the description for you, okay? Inside of that, okay, we will actually unpack, right, we'll unpack five days of shifting your mindset to actually ask and demand what you're worth, okay? We're gonna give you the tools to actually command your next raise, promotion, or even make a pivot, but make it with power, with peace, and with strategy, okay?And if you're actually ready to elevate, if you know that this is something that you need to do, book your private session as well, okay?Because since your next level is not waiting, it's available. There are so many other people out here that are millionaires, building legacy, building wealth, not just making money, but building wealth that are so much less qualified than you are, okay?So again, know your worth, know what the market values you at, And don't be afraid to ask for it. Okay? Until the next time we speak, remember, this is not just about success. This is about elevation. And it's not just elevation. You're beyond. She's beyond elevated. Well, beautiful, thank you for tuning in to She's Beyond Elevated with Dr. Kimberly Dunlap. If this episode spoke to your soul, share it with another woman ready to rise. Remember, elevation isn't a destination, it's a decision. Keep shining, keep walking in purpose, and I'll see you in the next episode.