YouSaid · the spoken record

Jacob Warwick

lines on the record: 144
first: 2026-03-15
most recent: 2026-03-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“If you were in my shoes, what else would you explore? And you start to go that route as well. The other piece is this is a collaboration, not a confrontation. So if I could give visual advice, oftentimes, this is why it also can be difficult in a Zoom. You and I are kind of face to face. We have this problem between us, right? That's an adversarial position. I want you to physically pretend that you're in the same room and I walk to your office and I put my arm around you if you're comfortable with it and I'm instead of us arguing over something we're whiteboarding a solution together. I want collaboration in that. That's how we break down walls and barriers because you're sharing information. I'm sharing information, those types of things. I think that was Ford. Maybe it was five. Another one is make it about we.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of my favorite lines. If you are in my shoes, go backwards five years in your career. That's where I'm at right now. If you were in my shoes, what would you ask for? I love that when negotiations stall also, right? Like you know what's possible here. You know what levers we have. It sounds like we're capped out here.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The emotional side is where a lot of deals get unfair. So if we understand how to tap into that, I want to say Chris, I keep mentioning Chris. But understanding those motivations and understanding how to play on that can be important. So when we talk about giving people a positive reputation, we're playing into some emotions here. So if I'm a female negotiating with another female, I might say, you know, I appreciate that you've always been an advocate for women and you support one another. Like that's something I respect about you. And then the cop comes in lower than a man's comp. Can call them out on that and say if you were in my shoes, what would you do?”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Patience is more important. Like things need to slow down. Haste equals risk. The slower you go, the more opportunity you have to collect information so that you can build a compelling case, right? That's important. I'm a big believer in Aristotle and his principles of rhetoric and ethos pathos logos. And so I've mentioned a little bit of this in their more common tone of logic credibility and emotion. Timing is another one that we don't often talk about. Kairos is important But too many executives lean on credibility and logic because we're trying to do that. We don't show emotion. We don't show the authentic side of ourselves in corporate. I think oftentimes because we're working soulless jobs that we don't believe in and we're just trying to make do and survive for our families. I think there's a greater need there.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Instead, simply ask, was that a mistake? We had discussed on target earnings that was intentional. Was that a mistake? He said, oh yeah, it must have been. Let me just tell the attorneys to fix it. Feel free to redline it. So he almost lost 90 grand just splitting the difference. If not more, right? And then turns out 12 months later he got fired and then he was able to recoup $350,000 over six months. So little things like trying to split the difference too early can be painful. So that was two points, I think. I know this is part I'm bad at. Trying to get a list of fives.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somebody says you started 100. You say 200, they come in at 150. That's lazy, right? One brief example of this. I had a chief revenue officer and they were paid $350,000 base salary, $350,000 bonus. So $700,000 cash potential each year. So that's called on target earnings. They'll make $700. When we negotiated their severance, we said we wanted six months on target earnings. It was all agreed, right? The paperwork comes back and it says six months base salary. Not on target earnings. So that means six months of base salary is like 187.5, right? So they cut his severance in half by doing that. Now his response was I'll just tell the CEO, like, let's up that 90 and it'll be down 90. He was going to split the difference to like 260 or something like that, whatever the mass out to.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you also have to know how to respond if they share the number first. I'd rather know numbers be disgusted if you're open to just waiting it out and seeing. So important pieces. So the first one is you'd never be so sure of your worth that you wouldn't accept more. I think Chris Boss quotes that quite frequently. The other one is never split the difference. And I have a good story about that. So just because...”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To change them. You understand how the PL works. That's what you do for a living. And you're telling me there's no flexibility? You built it. Humans built this. This is not concrete authority. This can be influenced. Why not try?”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In even a six to one or a five to one situation, werewolves when 60, 70% of the time, it shows the power of information. They understand everyone else is clueless. They know who's dangerous. They know who's not. And that's just an outnumbered situation. Now, these companies have significant leverage over you. They know what people make. They know what others make. They know what they'll accept. They know their budgets. They know how to change the budgets. And what I find interesting, especially with executives, they push back on this process. And I'm not going to lie, it's much easier for executives to do this than it is for middle managers or lower. So if you are hiring manager, Lenny, and you put your director hat on, like it's easy to deny somebody like that because it's a little bit easier to find another product manager, a little bit, right? If we do our job to differentiate, then we're doing better there. But executives that are afraid to push back, your job is to make these rules. You know who to influence.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reveal themselves to each other. So they say, Oh, you're a werewolf? Okay, we're werewolves, right? Then they go round by round and they politic to vote somebody off of the table, right? Only two, three people understand, right? When the werewolves reach parody with the villagers, the werewolves win, right?”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, in many cases, it can be, right? But I'm trying to open up an emotional conversation more so than logic and credibility. Because you lose. You'll always lose the logical and credible argument against a company. There's information asymmetry here. Meta negotiates thousands of times a day. You negotiate four or five times in your career. That's it. Thousands of times a day. Recruiters, thousands of times a day. You are at such a disadvantage. This should also give you confidence to negotiate in the first place. You are at such a disadvantage, right? I just wrote an article on the game of werewolf as an example about how important information is. So the game of werewolf is pretty simple. Say there's 12 people sitting in a room, two, three of them are werewolves, right? They draw a card at random, three people, two people, whatever. They get their card and they know they're werewolves. There's a day and night scene and the werewolves get to.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You check levels or you check some of these benchmarks because we all do it. We want to know, right? Maybe we call about a couple friends that are a similar level. Then you can use objective criteria against them. You're like, you know, you mentioned that you valued ICs as much as leaders, right? And I just got curious, so I did a little digging. And it looks like this is like about 30% under what a leader would make. Is that normal? I appreciate you being an advocate for me and pushing back. Can you help me understand if we could lift this to be more equitable? I'm using information I gathered for them, and I'm not just beating them up with it. I'm just saying you said we treat this fairly. Prove it. Prove to me that you lied”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess nuanced skills where you read body language and you feel comfortable saying, you know, Lenny, I saw that that maybe wasn't the right thing to say. Can you tell me more about that? Then you start getting confidence in, I say assertiveness, not aggressiveness. There's a difference. And so that comes across as confidence. And so I don't think there's a difference between being an IC and being a leader in terms of how you approach this. But I have noticed a difference in the pay, and that can be frustrating. So that means if I were working with more IC folks, I would ask questions like, it sounds like, you know, independent contributor roles are very valuable at Meta. Can you share a little bit about how they're valued compared to leaders on the team? I might ask a question like that. Because again, they can't say we value you less. I've given them a reputation where they have to say we value you. Then you get your offer.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The reason I want you to take ownership is because I can't control who you're going to get on the other side of the line. I can't control the mood they're in. I can't control their motivations. I can't, so as a coach, But you can control how you show up And we can work to navigate. And then you start to get”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the things I found frustrated about icy rolls is they're not often rewarded as well as leadership roles, which is frustrating because there are a lot of very talented ICs. Now, I have seen, specifically with Meta, I actually interviewed for a meta IC manager role, like an I-9 that was like 1.2 million a year. They were specifically hiring former CEOs, and I found that to be interesting. They hired 150 growth PMs at this I-9 level. And they were rewarding them very well. I don't think it changes. I think that whether you're a leader of people or you're a leader of process, you're still a leader. And the reason I propose taking ownership of the conversation isn't to be steamrolling or talking over people or completely, like I'm not saying Judas devoid of context. You don't just blow out and like talk over somebody and ramble, right? Which I'm one to talk, apparently. But you go into this conversation and you ebb and flow with them, right?”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is similar to selling an enterprise deal. You're building champions in the organization that love you, and they're all coaching you on how to coach to work with each other. So you're getting the inside scoop on how to navigate that. That's how you become hyper valuable. You need to create that leverage if you want to take that standard 20% we talked about and make it 40 or more. That's why it starts much sooner because if you're not doing that, if you come to me and you're like, Jacob, I have an offer. I can get you maybe 40, right? If you come to me sooner, I might have elevated that initial offer 40 without you knowing it. And then we moved it even further, right? So it's a big process that we need to be mindful of.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Saying, I'm not available again until Thursday. What's the chance that time works? So I'm building scarcity about my time. I can meet with this VP then, but I'm making myself stickier in the organization I'm getting more knowledge about what people need.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's going to make it more frictionless, right? Now, I also want to put you in a position to be a coach because coaches want their players to succeed. So, if I'm having you coach me psychologically, you're going to go talk to Mark and you're going to say, hey, Mark, you're going to have to talk to Jacob for all these reasons. Then when I talk to Mark, I get to say, you know, Lenny Sheron that I should talk about X, Y, and Z thing. Is that really what you care about? I'm making it frictionless across the process, and I'm closing the next part of the conversation, regardless of whether you wanted me to introduce me to those other people or not. So you might say, let's say you're interviewing for product role. I suspect you want me to talk to the head of engineering. I suspect you want me to talk to Clay, the VP of Marketing. And I suspect you want me to talk to Catherine, the VP of sales, right? What would you like me to say to them? What's the message you want me to share? And they may not have had them in the interview process, in the cycle, but I'm putting them in the cycle. Like I'm making it easier for you to know who to introduce me to next. And then I'll even go as far.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why I had that framework I was talking about earlier, why am I here? What are the problems you have? I suspect it's this. What have you done about it? What would it look like if we solved it? Now I'm taking so much of the pressure off of you. I'm controlling the narrative and I'm collecting more information while revealing not about my Comp expectations. And what I'm focused on is creating as much value as possible. Now there are situations where companies don't have the budget, right? Like this isn't a miracle drug kind of thing, but I'm making it frictionless to at least get to the part where they want you. That's the first step. They have to want you for you to have any leverage, right? Then even in the interview processes, I might say, hey, Lenny, I suspect the next person I talk to from your ecosystem is Mark Andreessen, right? Can you give me some advice on how I should work with Mark? I want you to coach me on how to deal with Mark.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The part I don't want to gloss over is making it frictionless. Interviewing is a skill on both sides. Most people don't know how to interview very well. Tell me about yourself. Like, tell me about this product you built. Tell me about that, how that looked. You don't get anywhere talking about the past. You might build credibility and all that great. You don't start solving problems in that process. So they're like, okay, well, I saw that. Now you're going to go on to the next person. They're going to do the same crap, right? Same thing, same thing, same thing. So you repeat your story, ad nauseum, and you never learn anything and you never grow. So how do we make this frictionless? Well, I want to make it cognitively easier for you to have a conversation with me by leading.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you already know. You know how to do this in product, design it for your career. And you remember the early days of writing PRDs and how rough it was. Remember how rough it was to go back to the engineering team and just little by little get product sprints out where the product is just moving a little bit at a time. Remember how hard that was? The early days of managing your career like this will feel like that too. But you also know that if you're 10 years in your career, this stuff becomes second nature, right? So I want to reframe to the experiences that you already know and that will develop confidence.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're doing it for a company, you know which customers to interview you know how to do that. Well, you need to interview lots of CEOs. You need to interview lots of salespeople who are trying to solve this growth problem or lots of AI side. And again, it's not just product, right? So you're now interviewing your customers. You're understanding their needs. Now you're designing solutions for their needs. Now, how do you make it as frictionless as possible so it's a no-brainer and they go through your user flow as easy as possible? So for product folks, instead of thinking, wow, this stuff sounds like Machiavellian manipulation and it sounds like a power trip and it sounds like something I could never do because I'm not, maybe I'm not as gregarious and maybe I'm not a six foot three tall white dude in California who's got the sales persona and he's got that extroversion. I'm not that. Don't be me. Don't be Jacob Light. Be you. Your authentic you apply it to”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're in product in your orchestrating a PRD, right? It's the same thing. You're understanding the user's demands. You're creating for those demands. How does that look in your job search? Well, what does the customer want? Who's your buyer? The buyer is the hiring manager. Maybe it's the chief product officer. Maybe it's the CEO. What do they care about?”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of my hat, I'm hype man You got to be a hype man to a degree. And I work with some of the most privileged and successful people in the world. Right. It's not that hard to say, look at your life and look at your choices. Most of the things you've done have been good, right? At least financially, right? We could debate about the ethics of the companies they work for and those things, right? Now most of the decisions that you've made in your career have made you a top tenth of a percentile of the earners on the planet. Don't tell me you're not confident. Like you can't pull that. Another thing that I do is that I put it, I reframe everything in a language I understand. So if I'm working with a sales leader, a job search process is an enterprise sales process. Like if you understand enterprise sales, you understand how to do this. You just don't know how to do it for yourself. If you're in marketing, you should know about positioning and market research. That's the same thing as going into a job market and understanding what to do. You understand that an inbound lead is much easier to close than an outbound lead.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even try to ask the questions to understand what the deeper problem is. And this going back also to why founders might be frustrated with my talk track, I'm not asking for you to take your pie and give them a bigger slice. I'm asking for you to work with somebody to expand the pie so everybody gets bigger slices. That's the plan. And if you train your candidates and you're more revealing and if their performance is tied to it, naturally they need to ask more questions to understand how to make it true. That's what we want. That's putting companies up into the right.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Longer we can drag out, the hiring process, and this sounds like pulling teeth, especially when you're unemployed. I just want the pain to be over. I'm asking you to slow it down. The more you slow down the process, the more you fight back about the manufactured urgency of us needing to get into that role sooner, the more information you're going to understand about that company and how you could really help. So you could say, you know, Lenny, I hear that you want to fix the onboarding flow. I hear that. I hear this. But it sounds like that product might be deprecated anyway in this wave of AI. Is that a possibility? What I don't want to do is prioritize something that the team's going to cut, right? That's going to hurt the P&L or whatever. Now, I can only ask that question if I've truly asked the right questions to understand, right? So you may come in, this is the same concept as never be so sure of your worth that you wouldn't accept more. You're so sure of the job description that they need these three things that you don't.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It sounds like if this guy can't deliver. Not going to happen, or if this gal can't deliver, that's frustrating, right? I'm not suggesting go so far outside of your comfort zone that you feel like you can't deliver, right? Because that reputation will haunt you, right? You have to really understand. And I would also add that I wouldn't be so sure that I'm going to fix the onboarding flow. I wouldn't be so sure that I'm not so sure that you know that's the problem yet.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The other candidates excelled that you wish I showed more of. I want to understand where those gaps are so I have an opportunity to address them. And then if I didn't make the mark and say, I'd love to have a conversation with you next Thursday to talk through that in more detail. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. If you close the next conversation, you don't give up necessarily. That was another monologue, but that was a little bit inside the mine now. I think about these things.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Control that to some capacity and improve the likelihood of you moving forward. So we already do this. We just have to integrate it into some everyday conversations and you can better control outcomes. It's the same interview process. When you go back to your committee, are you going to say, Jacob solved XYZ and we're excited? Like slam dunk. Let's move forward. And I like really quickly, slam dunk, right? Easy to remember. Or are you going to say there's a couple gaps here in some of the competitors that we have or some of the competition seems more fulfilling? And I want to ask for that feedback while I'm still on the call with you. I want to wait for an email to say, I'm sorry, you're not a fit. And then you ask for feedback and you don't get any. I have to do it while we're live in person because you can't deny me in that moment without it being awkward. So what are you going to say? Is this a slam dunk? What's one thing I should have asked that I didn't? What are some areas that...”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would hope that in the comment section, you say, Lenny, this was such a refreshing and energetic podcast. Like, this is what we want more of. This is exciting. We've done a lot of stuff in AI. This was very cool and different, right? So I'm suggesting if you felt that way, share something like that below, right? Too many YouTube videos are like, oh, like and subscribe. That's all they do, right? Which does trigger action. It's a very simple thing. But when it comes to navigating your net worth and negotiating for power, these executives at the top control what every other person is saying. Naturally, they know when somebody's talking about them, when they're not in the room, and they not only know about it, but they know what they said about them. Similar to when somebody's like, oh, Lenny, we're going to do a reference checks on you. What's the first thing you do? You call all those references and you say, what are you going to say about me? Ideally, you can.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things that we can do is that we plant what you want someone to say in that conversation as well. So when I'm talking to the executives and I'm making the introductions, sometimes I'll ask or an introductions come to me. I'll be curious, like when you go back and you share with a friend, what are you going to say about me? Are you going to say Jacob was really helpful? Or are you going to say that Jacob was an asshole, right? I'm curious. And sometimes I just make a complete reframe. So there's no other option, right? Well, I'm obviously not going to say you're an asshole. So I'm going to say you're the great thing that I want you to say.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's where we go. In this instance, if you want to role play with me for a second, something that'd be really exciting, like Lenny, I want to understand what's exciting to you. If today's podcast was the best podcast, the highest performing podcast that had ever happened, right? What would that mean to you? And also, what did we do to make it so successful? What are the comments that people had to put down below? What are the things they said to make you feel like my conversation with Jacob was the best conversation I had all year? What would that look like to you?”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'll sometimes do two or three introductions right then and there, and they see the value before I'm even off the phone. What I've also done is I've given three different touch points where I can make sure that that person is following through. I can get a 360 degree view of that person. I can ask one of those people to prompt them to close with me if I need to sell a deal. I'm getting a reciprocity imbalance. So what I want to do is show that I have the resources to support them, whether they sign a contract or not.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the tricks of my business is I can plant seeds with my clients really easily because I'm on the phone with somebody and I'm understanding who they need to connect with. And so they might say, oh, I've been interested in getting to Google or whatever. Let's say they're in product. I said, oh, I have somebody in product at Google. Let me make a text for you real quick. And I'll just do it while I'm on the phone. Just hold on a second. Hold on. And then what happens is they get the beep. That's reciprocity. Like I'm triggering a reciprocity imbalance. And then I'm making another one for them.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Film production, what better meeting to have, right? So for the other agencies, they're like, we're the greatest thing. Like, we represented this director that did this media tour and we did that. They lost because we sold a vacation and we made it a reality right then and there. And the value was clear.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Make the schedule the appointment already. Work with the assistant, schedule the appointment, right? With whoever it is it needs to be. It needs to be a big name person. So we go into that interview and inevitably the conversation goes, why should I sign your agency? And so my client says, what are you doing on Friday? I cleared a lunch with your assistant. And he says, well, I guess I'm going to lunch. And she's like, great, I'll have you meet Stephen. And he said, Stephen, who? And she said, Stephen Spielberg. And then some form after that, it was where do I sign? Because the meeting was already set with Stephen Spielberg for somebody who wants to get into”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You already had it. The deal is already signed. So put yourself in the position that you're already doing the job. That's why an interview process, if you treat it like you're consulting, you're doing a value exchange and you're increasing your value and you're asking the right questions. If you feel like you're on the outside and you're having to say, well, look, Lenny, I did this and I did that. Did you see I have three million words written? Like, why wouldn't you want to be the guest? Like, I don't care about what you've done. I care about what you'll provide my audience, right? So in this deal, we get into the meeting. It's a big day. right and i said”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We need to sell the future and own the emotion. And so she just asked me, how do we close this deal? And to me, this was very simple. I said, If you already have the job, who would you introduce him to?”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a very famous musician who was born the same year as me for those super sleuths out there, who had a tour, a billion dollar tour, and a documentary. And the director of said tour was a hot commodity in Hollywood. Every agency wanted to sign this director. This director didn't want to just do movie documentaries, wanted to start producing actual movies. Like that's the dream, right? So every agency wanted to sign this hot director who just did this billion dollar deal with people already know who it is, right? And so my client, the agent, asked me, like, we got to sign this. It would be stupid to go to any other agency, right? We've done this. We've done that. We've represented Julia Roberts and Matt Damon and all these, just naming, name dropping, right? Now, this is actually a problem because if we're leaning on logic and credibility, we're losing.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It could be tricky to understand where your value is, right? Because you're so close to it. You just do this every day. And for product folks that only listen to product folks and are in the product ecosystem in your bubble, Lenny, they're not seeing the impact on marketing. They're not having those conversations necessarily. So it's so ingrained in everything that you do that you can functionally be excellent. But in order to break these boundaries, you have to be cross-functionally understanding how it impacts others and the motivations of others. That's when things really start to unlock. And that's where just understanding a little perspective can be helpful in that outside influence there.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when it comes to your competition, there is no competition, I'm the only person who walked you into a vacation that you want to be in, looking forward to your head held high in a board meeting that's usually stressful but instead Then all of a sudden, when it comes to the offer stage, there may be five other PMs, but I can only imagine working with Jacob. And so when I push back, the likelihood that I break the rules is significantly higher than if I hadn't done that.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We get to sell the vacation right then we get to say look all right so fast forward six months from now and we're working on this problem together and we've solved the churn and the engineering department or in the design department or whatever we've solved that and we've got two product launches under our belt You head into that board meeting next. How can we ensure that your head is held high? So, what I'm doing is, I'm psychologically walking them to a position of like a painless position. I've removed the friction and the pain from their shoulders and I force them to visualize a utopian situation and who is right next to them doing that”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we do that as a PMO. Sounds like now we move to labeling. It sounds like you have a challenge with this product line. It sounds like we need to move or ship product faster. It sounds like AI has been a problem and we need to shift towards native AI. Is there anything that I missed, right? Then they're revealing information. You take control of that conversation. And then we want to share, what have you done about it? Like how big of a problem is this in the organization? This is basically a SWAT analysis. What are some of the things you've done well? What are some of the areas that the team failed? What are some of the things we should be doing that were not? And what are some of the things we absolutely shouldn't touch? So I want to add, I want to ask all these discovery questions. They're like, oh, look, it's a $10 million problem where we've gone through five different PMs in six months and you're starting to understand where the dirty laundry in the company is.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the first step. Typically, they say, yeah, that sounds way better than me trying to drill you with questions. So let me ask you, like, what are some of the things that you're excited about? I imagine, Lenny, you're excited to talk to me because I can help some of your audience negotiate. You've seen proof where dozens of your subscribers have made more money with the article we wrote together. You've even seen that some of your guests, unknowingly, have been negotiated against with some of the work that I've done. Is there anything that I missed what's exciting to you? So I want to clarify why I'm in the room with you.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can create for each of those people so that they can advocate for you. You don't come in and pitch them the price right off the bat. You need to understand the value. So through the process, it's a discovery process. Why am I here? Gets you excited about me, right? That's how we start a conversation too many interviews start with, tell me about yourself. Tell me about this stuff in the past. If you're talking about your past, you're on the back foot and you're losing that conversation. You're the one revealing information. You're not getting anything. We instead want to have a conversation and say, look, Of the best interviews I've always had felt a little bit more like consultations or brainstorming sessions. Are you open to having a chat like that today?”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then you say, okay, well, this looks like a director role. I want X. And they say, But you said you only wanted one forty. Now they're using a number against you and it's very awkward to come back from that. And so that's why we don't want to anchor too early. We want to understand. And so this is one thing I wish, especially product engineers, designers, that side of the product stack. I would love for you to treat more of these like a sales conversation. You are an enterprise solution, a consulting solution that is several hundred thousand dollars, if not millions of dollars a year. If you were to sell that product into an organization, think enterprise B2B deals, and I know I'm getting a little buzzwordy here, think an enterprise B2B deal to Salesforce and you're going to sell a million and a half dollar product, it would take you 18 months to develop the relationships and close that deal. You have to develop champions in the organization. You have to understand what value is.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anchoring to a number too early is tough because you anchor to, oh, this is fair for a senior PM role, right? This is fair. Then you go through the process of the interviewing, it's very clear that it's a director poll. You're going to lead five people. They scoop another team under you. Oh, we're going to put a product-led growth motion under you too. There's a whole engineering pod and there's this and there's this. All of a sudden, that's called scope creep, right? So they scope creep the role, they talk about how they want to senior hire. They're excited about you. They get you excited about it. And then they give you the offer and it's actually 20% under the number you originally shared.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this really comes down to having curiosity and showing curiosity about the actual problem. Because usually, if I'm speaking to Aroma 400 people, which I'll occasionally do with some communities, I'll ask them, who is actually doing the job that's on their job description? Nobody will raise their hand. It's not like you have your job description right there, and that's what you do, right? There's always so much more that's not documented, right? Now, when you're going into a position and you see a JD, you're like, yeah, I could do all those things, but there's so much more. This is another reason that.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was my first realm into VP. The initial offer was for content manager. It was a long negotiation, but these things can happen if you don't say no too quickly.”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Alternatively, if you feel bad about, oh, I wasted their time because I was too much for what they needed, make recommendations for them. So when the offer comes in in usage, it gave us a senior PM role and what you realized is the JD and all of the work that you did is actually a director role, but they're not going to pay for a director role. How often does that happen? You get to say, look, this role isn't in alignment with where we're headed, right? Would you like me to make an introduction to somebody that's a better fit? So you still get to help them. You remove yourself. And then sometimes they say, no, actually, we do want the role to be more senior. We're going to extend for you. My first VP role came out of turning down a content manager position for 70,000. And six months later, I landed a VP for a quarter million”
2026-03-15 · Lenny's Podcast · The tactical playbook for getting 20-40% more comp (without sounding greedy) | Jacob Warwick (Executive Negotiator) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source