Courtesy of Claudia Telles"You don't get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate." That's what personal finance expert Farnoosh Torabi preaches. It helped Torabi double her salary — from $45,000 to $90,000 — at age 26 back in 2006. More recently, it helped 28-year-old Claudia Telles score a $30,000 raise at a Chicago-based hospital. What's more, Telles — who went from making $41,000 on the business-operations team to $72,000 as a quality specialist — plans to double her new compensation in the next two years, she tells Business Insider. It's more than possible, she says, thanks to a critical mindset shift. "I noticed my perception of a good salary and self-worth, career-wise, changed once I started surrounding myself with top performers," she says. "Before meeting ambitious professionals, increasing my salary by $5,000 would have made me beyond happy.