718: The $300,000 Trap: What It Really Costs to Stay in a Career That No Longer Fits (Identity Loss) | Executive Series Part 3

[00:00:00] Scott Anthony Barlow: What does it actually cost to stay in a career that doesn't fit you? That's the math most people never run. They look at what leaving would cost them, the income, the title, the security they've spent 15 or 20 years building, but they almost never look at what staying is already costing them. The salary stops being something that is paying you and becomes something you've been paying for.

[00:00:24] Katie Hyskell: At the end of the day, you're the only person that has to wake up and live in your life. Being miserable for 40 or 60 hours a week, is that what you want to look back on?

[00:00:34] Scott Anthony Barlow: That's Katie, who had spent many years in director and VP-level sales roles in tech. But after finally looking at the real math, she made a change. We mentioned Katie's story in the previous episode of our three-part series on executive career change.

[00:00:49] In this episode, we'll dive deep into her and other stories about what staying is actually costing, not just the opportunity cost, but the actual dollars, and what the data shows about what comes after.

[00:01:02] And also, the three questions that surface the truth for almost every executive and high-income earner we've worked with. I'm Scott Anthony Barlow, and this is part three of our executive career change series.

[00:01:14] In part one, we walked you through what makes it different at an executive level or when you're a high-income earner, and how is that a fundamentally different problem. And also, we've walked you through the trap that most executives sit inside without recognizing it.

[00:01:29] And then part two, you heard from Hayley and Katie, two real executives who ended up making changes to work that actually fits them, and you got to see what it looked like from the inside out. But today, this episode is about actual numbers, because one of the biggest reasons people stay stuck is the math, or I should say the feeling of the math. It feels safe, or how leaving feels risky.

[00:01:52] Once you run the real numbers on both sides, the entire calculation begins to look a little bit different. The compensation's the first thing that you point to when you think about leaving, and it's the number and set of numbers that tends to overshadow everything else in the decision.

[00:02:07] So you protect it year after year and decision after decision, often without realizing that at some point, the salary stops being something that's paying you and something that becomes, well, something you've been paying for. In a moment, you're gonna meet Dan. He described what that trap actually looked like from inside, before he stepped outside into a role that actually fit.

[00:02:27] Dan Ruley: I have so much experience, and I've been doing this for a long time. But ultimately, it doesn't really matter. You know, titles don't matter. Your happiness with what you're doing is what really matters. And, you know, interestingly enough, I now make almost three times what I made before as a director of sales with a smaller title. So I can't complain about financial compensation at all, and the title doesn't matter because I'm doing something that I really like doing.

[00:02:55] Scott Anthony Barlow: Now, this is the math that nobody is ever taught to run. When you're staying in a situation that is causing you to get better at something that you don't want to spend your time doing, well, then it has an impact, and it catches up eventually with almost every single executive who stays one year too long or many years too long.

[00:03:15] In fact, there are four specific costs that almost nobody ever counts before they decide to stay an additional 12 months. The first of which is your health. The research on chronic work-related stress at the executive level is unambiguous. A landmark study of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that employees in what researchers call high-strain jobs, which those are defined as high demands combined with low control, which in a non-fit executive role or a misaligned senior leadership role, that can be very much the exact definition.

[00:03:53] Okay, now, those people have significantly higher rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, immune dysfunction comparable to executives in well-matched roles. At this level, though, there's an additional layer that a lot of research doesn't capture, which is what researchers call identity role conflict. Now, the stress that comes specifically from performing a professional identity that doesn't match with your values 8 to 12 hours a day for many years, well, the physiological signature of that kind of stress is distinct, it's persistent, and it's very costly because every extra year you spend inside it compounds a health cost that doesn't fully reverse when you finally leave.

[00:04:38] Now, what we're talking about is a measurable health risk with a measurable timeline, and most executives that are misaligned with their work don't see that bill until well after they've been charged.

[00:04:51] But let's shift to a different cost, relationships. The research on work-to-home spillover at the executive level, it's extensive. But what gets less attention is the specific mechanism that operates at this level, which is the combination of high-status work, long hours, identity investment, and then the way that that strain shows up at home as emotional unavailability, sometimes irritability, as a kind of diffuse disengagement that your partner, your spouse, your kids, and the people closest to you can feel even when you can't name it for them.

[00:05:27] Katie described what that weight looked like once it lifted. Her relationships at home got noticeably easier. Her capacity to be present came back, and the thing that surprised her the most was how much of what she'd been carrying she had assumed was just who she was. Turns out it wasn't, but it was the accumulated cost of too many years in the wrong place, and that continued to show up at home long after she had clocked out from work for that particular day or stopped or put down the laptop.

[00:05:55] Now, of course, the relationship cost of staying doesn't appear on any spreadsheet. It's very real. It can be significant for many people that are in that misaligned situation, and it compounds in ways that are very difficult to reverse. But that's not the only two costs.

[00:06:12] Here's another one. Cost number three is the compounding identity loss. This is by far the most abstract of the four costs we're gonna talk about. In some ways, it's the most devastating, 'cause here's what happens to your sense of self when you spend years performing a professional identity that doesn't actually fit. You gradually lose access to the version of yourself that knows what you want, your authentic preferences, the genuine enthusiasms, the things that used to feel like you before the career took over.

[00:06:44] All of it gets, you know, less, a lot less sometimes. Suppressed. You start making more decisions from what's practical and fewer decisions from what actually matters. And then the distance between your public professional self and your private sense of self grows, and most people don't notice it happening until they look back at themselves from 5 or 10 years ago and barely recognize the person that they were. Kristen describes what that erosion felt like from the inside.

[00:07:10] Kristen Rocco: I was just so focused on getting through every day, and then trying to power myself up for the next day that I really didn't spend enough time thinking about what I wanted.

[00:07:23] Scott Anthony Barlow: Okay, so I think that sentence is one of the most accurate descriptions of what compounding identity loss feels like. What makes it so devastating is how slowly it happens. Many people who are in those misaligned executive roles or high-income earners that are not in a fit situation with their work, well, they'll normalize the erosion long before they notice that it's really happening to them. Now, people who reverse this almost universally describe the experience as a recovery of self, not a reinvention, a recovery, meaning the person that they used to be accessible again. Katie put it like this when she described what she would and wouldn't accept in her next role.

[00:08:05] Katie Hyskell: If I'm gonna go back into this world, I'm gonna go back in as, like, a fully integrated person and they either accept it or they don't. And if they don't, it's not the right culture, or it's not the right environment

[00:08:17] Scott Anthony Barlow: I think it's important to point out, though, that it requires a significant amount of work that's removed from the situation that's not a fit in order to really understand where you're trying to go and what creates a much higher degree of match and fit for you.

[00:08:34] And that's what Katie had experienced. She did that work. We'll link up Katie's entire story in the show notes, so you can just click into that if you're interested in the longer version of her story.

[00:08:44] However, let's move on to cost number four, the narrowing window. Now, this is the most practical of the four costs we've talked about, and it's also one that many of us have thought about the least.

[00:08:56] Senior opportunities in adjacent fields or lateral transitions that are a potential fit are most accessible inside a specific window, and that window isn't infinite. The factors that determine your success to new fields include the recency of your last significant pivot, the flexibility signals you send through your professional profile, the age at which you're making a move relative to the senior cohort in your target field.

[00:09:22] Okay, so let's pull back for a second. None of this means that it becomes impossible, and I want to be really clear that, like, on our team, we work with people, we work with executives all the times in their late 50s or 60s or even 70s making successful transitions. It does mean, though, that depending on, you know, how much you bypass this window, it can become more difficult, not necessarily easier.

[00:09:48] The social proof you might need to build might take longer when the senior cohort in your target field is younger than you. Or in certain cases, the relationship building and network bridging might require more deliberate work. But let's think about it much more simply. The sooner you stop delaying starting a change, the sooner you can get to working on your change in a way that's most likely going to be beneficial for you. It typically gets harder, not easier. So why wait? Hayley named the version of this that she wished she'd recognized sooner.

[00:10:20] Hayley Lowe: There's real power in recognizing early when something doesn't fit and being really honest about that.

[00:10:27] Scott Anthony Barlow: Every year you delay is a year that that window is slightly narrower. Not closed, just narrower. It's almost never a calculation people are running when they decide to wait another month or another year or, you know, three years.

[00:10:40] Now let's shift gears for just a moment. Let's come back to the compensation number, the income. Now, this is where a lot of people have fears, and specific fears. You know, if I'm going to make a career change, job shift, career shift, career pivot, whatever, then that equates to I'm gonna make significantly less money, possibly forever, and I'll have sacrificed the financial security that I spent 20 years building.

[00:11:08] Okay, so here's what the research actually shows. A study from Wharton's Business School tracking senior-level career transitions found that professionals who executed structured career changes with deliberate positioning and networking rather than reactive job searches, well, they experienced a median income dip of not 50%, not even 40%, 11% in the transition year. What's really interesting about this is the recovery to pre-transition income happened within 18 to 24 months, and income that exceeded prior earnings happened within three to five years.

[00:11:46] Okay, so let me say what that actually means. 11% for two years is the floor, and this is what shows up in the broader research, at least when you're making a structured move or a much more intentional move. And this is without incredibly dedicated support that, like, our team might provide, as an example.

[00:12:06] So it's a recoverable dip followed by a climb, not a permanent reduction, and that's an important point here. The recovery timeline is shorter than almost anybody anticipates when they start out on this journey. Okay, but here's what we see when we're working hand in hand with executives and high-income earners.

[00:12:26] We see that the majority of our clients don't take that 11% dip. They land at compensation comparable to where they were, and, you know, not significantly different. And also, a portion of those people actually land at compensation that's higher than where they were. So if you remember Dan, who you got to meet earlier, well, his change, he increased significantly.

[00:12:51] So what this means is the Wharton number is what happens when an executive does well on their own and is very, very intentional, spread over often a long period of time, making that change. The version with the right support is usually far better than that. Now, what does this mean practically for you?

[00:13:07] Well, let's just run through some math here. Let's say that you're earning $300,000 a year USD, and you go through a structured transition, and the realistic scenario looks like you're earning $265,000 to $280,000 in year one of the new role, and then back to $300,000 in year two or three, and then above $300,000 within three to five years.

[00:13:30] Now, the version with the right structure and the right support is usually a better case than that. Either way, this is often far better than what most people anticipate. Most people don't anticipate such a small dip or the fact that you might be able to make an increase, but moving to work that actually fits.

[00:13:48] Pretty crazy, right? Now, compare that to staying in a misaligned role. Okay, well, what's the income trajectory in a position where your engagement is declining, your health costs are rising, and the internal promotions are probably gonna go to people that actually wanna be there? Well, that's not a static number.

[00:14:04] Probably a declining one, especially when you start to factor in rising costs of inflation and other numbers that we haven't even talked about here. The income math is staying is not safe. It's a slow leak. The income math of a structured transition is a dip followed by a climb, and most executives never run that comparison honestly.

[00:14:26] Now, I wanna give you three questions that we will often use to help high-income earners, executives, senior leaders, to surface what's actually going on here. And the most useful thing that you can do as you hear is just pay attention. Notice what comes up when you ask yourself these questions.

[00:14:42] Question one, if we just pushed money completely aside, it was off the table, meaning you had already secured the income that you need in, you know, whatever version of the role. Let's say that, you know, that was completely taken care of. The money was not an issue, and I'm not talking about, like, a slightly better version of this company.

[00:15:00] Would you stay in your current situation? Would you stay in your organization? You know, would you stay in your specific job function? You know, the specific domain. Would you choose each of those?

[00:15:14] Here's another question. When you imagine doing this type of work for another 5 or 10 or 15 years, what do you feel? Not what should you feel, not what you think you'll probably feel, not what you think other people think you should feel, but what do you actually feel when you pay attention to it?

[00:15:29] Now, here's another question. I love this one. Let's pretend that you're going to make a change to work that fits or that you've already made a change to work that fits. To be able to have that happen, what would you have to believe is true about yourself or about what's possible in order to take the first step towards making that change? Now, I think the reason that one can be powerful, along with the others, is it can help you begin to diagnose what's going on that's keeping you exactly where you are.

[00:15:56] But here's what I'd love for you to walk away from this entire series knowing. The first real move here it's not the resignation. It's not, you know, moving on to something else. It is not the announcement. It's not even the plan to be able to do that, honestly. The first step forward is the decision to do it differently, to commit to finding what actually fits you, and often using unconventional but systematic pathways to make it work.

[00:16:25] And we haven't talked about this a lot, but our secret mission is to get enough people to work that fits particularly people that are in roles of influence, people who are in leadership roles, so that once you're there, once you've learned what work actually fits you [00:16:40] and what that looks like and what it even means for you, then when you're in your new situation in a far, far better, a much improved situation that truly is aligned with what you're looking for, well, then you're in a very, very different position.

[00:16:54] You can now help us change what work can become for others from inside your new organization. That is our secret mission. So if you'd like our help, then here's what I would suggest. Just drop me an email, scott@happentoyourcareer.com. Put 'Conversation' in the subject line, and I will make sure that I get you to the right member of my team so that you can have a conversation.

[00:17:16] We can ask you enough questions to help you build a plan and figure out the very best way that we can support you. This is what we do. It's what we love to do. But I think here's what's really important. Having a conversation with somebody else about something like this that really can be life-changing, it does something very different than what most people expect.

[00:17:36] It begins to make the possible visible, especially what feels impossible for so many different reasons that you've heard, not just in this series, but on the Happen To Your Career podcast. The more that we can give you exposure to what could be possible for you, the more it can become reality. It turns it from an abstract situation that might be possible into something that you can begin to move forward on one step at a time.

[00:18:01] Every person that we featured in this series that you've heard along the way, well, they didn't start with a plan. They didn't start with having it all figured out. They started simply with a conversation. Thanks for listening to Happen To Your Career. I hope you enjoyed this series. If you would love to hear more like this, don't hesitate to let us know. Until next time, I'm Scott Anthony Barlow. I'm out. Adios.