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EPISODE 008 · MEDICINE → NEGOTIATION
Dr. Gloria Esoimeme on arriving with $250 and asking until the answer was yes
Dr. Gloria Esoimeme finished medical school in Nigeria, could not afford to come to the United States, and came anyway with $250 in her pocket. Inside ten years she had a master's, a PhD, a completed residency and a medical directorship. Then she left the job she loved and started over in Dubai. This episode is about asking, and about why she thinks the ability to do it is a skill rather than a personality.
What you will learn
- What she did with the $250. It is not what you would guess, and her reasoning is better than the obvious choice.
- How one raised hand changed a hospital. Every doctor in that outpatient clinic can work three days a week, at full salary, because somebody asked out loud.
- Negotiation does not start on the day you negotiate. It starts with knowing your value, and then with other people knowing it.
- The designated asker. Why the fifth of seven children learns to anticipate every objection before opening her mouth.
- What palliative care taught her about hope. It changes every single day, and it gets smaller and more precise as it does.
- If you have never failed, you are playing in the wrong field.
How did she end up in medicine?
At three years old, in kindergarten in Nigeria, she wanted to be a lawyer, and her mother was entirely fine with that. What her mother did next was not force, it was weather. You are so smart, you will be such a great doctor. You are so kind, you will be such a great doctor. Private school. A private tutor when chemistry got hard. Every single thing Gloria did came back as evidence for the same conclusion.
In Nigeria, as in most of the world outside the United States, you go into medical school straight from secondary school rather than from a four year degree. Gloria hedged. She took extra classes so that both law and medicine stayed open. Medicine won. What is striking is that she has no complaint about it at all.
“Some people have a very different narrative. They're like, oh, I never wanted to do this, my parents. No. I am forever grateful to my mother that she made me choose this career path. I have no regrets.”
Dr. Gloria Esoimeme, Women IN episode 8
What really happened with the $250?
She was not sure about America. Sondra asks what made her so certain and Gloria corrects the premise immediately: she was not certain, she just wanted more. More education, more of the world. Her older sister was already in the United States, others had studied in the United Kingdom and South Africa, and she wanted American training. She is quick to say this does not make her exceptional. Plenty of people want to be in America. She was one of them.
She got on the plane in December without an admission letter, on a visitor visa, which meant she could not work. She stayed at a sister's place in Atlanta and counted what she had. Two hundred and fifty dollars.
Then she went to Macy's and spent a hundred of it on skincare.
This is the part that makes the story, and the logic underneath it is sound. The thing she wanted was so much bigger than $250 that hoarding the $250 was never going to be the mechanism. Scholarships from Boston University covered her tuition. A student loan of forty thousand dollars across two years, co-signed by a sister in the military, covered her living expenses, and the living expenses were the only part she had to repay.
“Take the first step. You never know what's going to be next. Because I could have said, oh, I want to stay back in Nigeria to raise the tuition. I would still be there trying to raise that money up till now.”
Dr. Gloria Esoimeme, Women IN episode 8
Her framing of risk is worth writing down. Ask what the worst outcome actually is. She could have gone back to Nigeria. From Dubai now she could go back to the United States, or back to Nigeria. The worst that can happen is usually not worse than staying exactly where you are.
The meeting that changed a hospital
Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital is where she worked as a hospitalist and later as a medical director, and where she still holds a contract. The doctors in the outpatient clinic were already on four day weeks, which is good by any standard.
In a large meeting, a colleague turned to Gloria and said, why don't we ask for three? Gloria thought it sounded ridiculous. She also thought, the worst they can say is no. When the colleague's turn came to speak, she did not say it.
So Gloria raised her hand. She did not open with the ask. She opened by telling the room how much she loved working there and how good the hospital had been to her, and then wondered aloud whether they could take it one step further and make it three days a week. She fully expected laughter, and had decided she would laugh too.
They said they would think about it. And this is the part most people skip: she kept following up with the director until there was an answer. The answer was yes. Three days a week, at full time status and full salary, not a 0.8 FTE. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. She has since left, and the option is still there for every doctor in that clinic, including her if she ever goes back.
Why don't more people ask?
Gloria's answer is not fear of the no. It is the embarrassment of being seen as greedy, or as the troublemaker. Her response to that is the most quietly radical thing in the episode.
“I'm not a good girl. I don't go in there trying to be a good girl. I don't go in there trying to make people like me. Do I want people to like me? Yes, because the more people like you, the more favors you would have. But that's not my goal.”
Dr. Gloria Esoimeme, Women IN episode 8
Being liked is useful. It is not the objective. She plays by the rules until a rule collides with a value, and then she speaks, and the craft is in choosing the moment and the volume.
That craft has an origin. She is the fifth of seven children, six girls and one boy, and in a group where you have a strong personality and very little power, you learn balance or you lose every time. You cannot shout, and you cannot let yourself be flattened. She was also the family's designated asker. Her sisters sent her to their father. Their father would always want to say no and would always have reasons, so she learned to walk in with every objection already answered. He would then come back with stronger objections, and she would get better again.
Her father raised his daughters the way the neighbors raised sons. Go talk to your teacher. Go talk to your headmistress. You thought that was unjust, so go and speak up. He never came to the rescue. He died this year, at 83, and she is unambiguous that he raised her right.
What did palliative care teach her?
She answers with a patient rather than a principle. He was 37, with colon cancer, and by the time palliative care is called in the prognosis is already poor. He had been back and forth: no care, then care, then back again. He was going home with hospice, and they had got his pain under control. She was closing the door on her last visit when he looked at her and said thank you, and they both knew they would not see each other again.
What she takes from that work is a definition of hope that resizes itself.
“For someone who's healthy, hope is, you're 40, you're going to get to 80. When someone is 40 and they're really sick, the hope might be you may be able to get up from the bed tomorrow. The hope might just be, maybe you can wait a little bit to see your mom before you go.”
Dr. Gloria Esoimeme, Women IN episode 8
The second thing is a flattening one. Everyone wants the same things, regardless of who they are or where they came from. To be happy, to be loved, and to love people back.
There is negotiation in that room too, of a different order. Pros and cons with a patient about chemotherapy are really a conversation about what matters most now, and whether the treatment leaves any of it intact.
Why leave a career she loved?
Sondra asks for the logic and Gloria declines to invent any. It was the same knowing that sent her to America, and the same one now sending her to Dubai. She knew she would not be fully fulfilled only being a doctor. She has a master's and a PhD and that part of her brain had gone quiet.
She also already had the evidence. Friends were coming to her for help starting practices, sitting exams, walking through processes. She was doing the work before she named it.
“If you bring a problem to me, I may not have the answers, but you're not going to leave me the way you met me.”
Dr. Gloria Esoimeme, Women IN episode 8
Is negotiation a gift or a skill?
Sondra puts it to her that some women have it ingrained. Gloria disagrees flatly. It is not ingrained. It is practiced. She has been practicing since she was a child being sent to her father, which is why a no now lands as a question rather than a wound: did I use the wrong words, did I ask at the wrong time, am I asking the wrong person?
Her technical advice starts well before the conversation. Know your value first, and do not confuse that with proving it. Then make sure other people know what you bring, which is a separate job. She mentions what she brings as a matter of fact, empathy and knowledge, and she tells leaders when she thinks they are doing something well, because an institution is not cold walls, it is people, and the person who has spent two years telling everyone how much they hate it there has a much harder ask ahead of them.
For a woman who has never asked for more, her prescription is small and relentless. Start with your children. Ask a stranger for help. You are not asking because you are needy, you are asking because you are building the muscle. Go and ask for a hundred things. The no stops hurting, mostly, and when it does still sting it no longer invalidates anything about you.
She also names the asymmetry that research keeps finding. Women negotiate harder for other people than for themselves. Her workaround is to make the ask about the downstream beneficiaries: the hours this buys with your children, the vacation this pays for. You will type the email with a steadier hand.
On failing
Her line is that if you have never failed, you are performing below your potential, and the illustration is a runner who wins every high school race he enters. Winning constantly is not proof of excellence. It is proof you are in the wrong field, playing people who cannot push you.
She failed her first year of medical school and repeated it. She knew exactly why: freedom, and not enough study. She was terrified to tell her father. What he said was that she had two options. Leave now, on her own terms, so that she could always say she walked out. Or stay and work, knowing that if they removed her she would carry it for a long time. She stayed. Her respect for him moved to a different level that day.
The condition she attaches to all of this is the useful part, and it is what she tells the residents, interns and students she mentors.
“Anything you fail, you need to know why. Because if you don't know why, then you haven't really learned from that experience.”
Dr. Gloria Esoimeme, Women IN episode 8
What is the one thing she wants you to do this week?
Read a book. Her recommendation is Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, and the instruction matters more than the title: do not read it and then announce that you have read it. Take one thing out of it that is yours, and practice that. She has a line from a book she read years ago that has worked as a compass ever since.
Where to find Dr. Gloria Esoimeme
- LinkedIn — Gloria Esoimeme. Also on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
- Substack — where she writes about real estate investment in Dubai and the United States, including helping Americans invest in Dubai property.
- Negotiation training — a webinar running across four sessions, followed by a four week negotiation lab. Reach out to her directly for dates.
Where to listen
Listen to Women IN episode 8 with Dr. Gloria Esoimeme wherever you get your podcasts.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Dr. Gloria Esoimeme?
Dr. Gloria Esoimeme is an internal medicine physician with a master's in global health and a PhD in health service policy. She trained in medicine in Nigeria, moved to the United States with $250, studied at Boston University on scholarship, completed her residency, and worked as a hospitalist and then as a medical director in palliative care at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital. She now lives in Dubai, invests in real estate, and coaches professional women on negotiation.
How did she get a three day working week for an entire clinic?
In a meeting of primary care and internal medicine doctors, a colleague suggested asking to move from four days to three. The colleague did not raise it. Gloria did. She opened by saying how much she loved working there and how good the hospital had been to her, then asked. They said they would think about it, she followed up with the director until there was an answer, and the answer was yes. It is three days a week at full time status and full salary, and the option is still open to every doctor in that outpatient clinic.
Is negotiation a gift or a skill?
Dr. Esoimeme is emphatic that it is a skill, not a gift. She was the fifth of seven children and the family's designated asker, sent to ask her father for things, which taught her to anticipate every objection before she opened her mouth. Her advice is to practice on small, low stakes asks until a no stops landing as a verdict on your worth.
What does she mean by 'if you have never failed, you are performing below your potential'?
That winning constantly is evidence you are competing in the wrong field, not evidence you are exceptional. She failed and repeated her first year of medical school. Her condition is that failure only counts if you work out exactly why it happened, because a failure you cannot explain is one you have not learned from.
Where can I find Dr. Gloria Esoimeme?
She is on LinkedIn as Gloria Esoimeme, and on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Substack, where she writes about real estate investment in Dubai and the United States. She runs a negotiation webinar and a four week negotiation lab.