How to remain highly paid in your 40s, 50s and 60s (and avoid "The Squeeze")
Summer of 1986. Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" was playing everywhere.
Aged 15, that song tugged at my desire for - anything different - than the dullsville of Northern Ireland.
The bongo beats, salsa rhythm and acoustic guitar were a combo my ears had never encountered before.
From the very first second, I could almost smell the intoxicating, sun-soaked perfumes of the Spanish dancers wafting into my bored and stale nostrils. It was so radically different from all the other music. That it jolted me away from my dreary, non-exotic, damp-jumpered, desperately-dull and wet Northern Irish smallsville life.
How come some songs instantly grab your attention? And jolt you away the plentitude of samey songs that blend into the background.
And can Madonna teach you a trick or two, to give you longevity in your career? AND keep you doing well-paid work - for as long as you want to?
Read on.
This cripples high salaries and career longevity
I've noticed a phenomenon experienced by professionals in their 40s, 50s and 60s that hamstrings their earning and reduces their career longevity. And that’s before we even begin to thing about work satisfaction!
I call it "The Squeeze".
You need to know about it - if you want to be paid well and do highly valued work for the remainder of your work-life.
THE SQUEEZE: When an professionals' skills/talents become commoditised. Usually resulting in an inability to earn as much as they used to.
What is The Squeeze?
[Definition] THE SQUEEZE: When an professionals' skills/talents become commoditised by the market.
[Results]: £££ >>> ££ >>> £
How to recognise IF you’re experiencing The Squeeze
Your skills/talents are perceived by others as "not-unique enough" to warrant premium pricing.
Your results are not wowing others - and if you are being brutally honest - they probably haven't for a little while.
You can be heard using generalised terms like: Consulting, leadership, governance, strategy, finance, marketing or freelancer - when describing what you do. Instead of presenting your wow factor.
You struggle to nail down your unique offer, with convincing desirable outcomes - that can be both quantified and qualified.
Your CV or proposals don’t make people sit up and listen.
You feel forced to apply for roles or pitch for business that is being paid less than your normal salary / fee.
You’re very simply getting paid less than you were - even though you're doing similar quality work.
Are you experiencing “The Squeeze”? If you are, you’re not alone.
Who experiences The Squeeze?
I've have direct evidence that The Squeeze is happening in the following industries: Pharmaceutical, Consulting, Fin Tech, FMCG, Leisure, Banking, Retail, Academia, Publishing, Big Tech, Agriculture, Manufacturing and Law firms. This might suggest that it's happening everywhere.
My direct experience has shown me this.
There are three common situations where The Squeeze phenomenon is rife.
Small business owners:
Who have not nailed down the unique problem they solve and therefore exactly who is experiencing this problem.
This means they can't explain how they/their methods solve the big problem for their potential clients. In ways that differentiate them from the crowd.
Which means they can’t charge handsomely for their services.
Generalists:
Those who offer generic business consulting, coaching, marketing, HR, finance or legal services for a potential list of non-ultra-specific clients with non-ultra-specific problems.
If you’ve ever heard anyone say anything like this “I can do [marketing/HR/Finance etc] for any product business”, you now know that they are not charging highly for their services.
The world doesn’t need any more people managers or mid-layered management who can turn their hand to everything and anything.
The world needs specialists who solve specific problems in specific ways that bring specific provable results.
Leadership/Management:
Those whose specialist skills/knowledge/talents were dumped in the past as they've moved up the corporate leadership ladder.
For this group, specific wins seem impossible to tie down or make tangible. So they can't convince new employers of their unique fit for the unique problems the company is facing.
The Squeeze: Common results
Your lack of uniqueness finds you competing with people half your age - with less than half of your years of experience - for the same roles.
You can't charge what you believe to be your worth. And unless you learn new ways to do this, you won't be able to charge your worth for the remainder of your career.
You find yourself constantly trawling Linkedin and other job sites and applying cold for jobs that you have less and less chance of being "picked" for. This impacts your mood. Your sense of self. And your optimism for your future career. And if it continues for long, it seeps into other areas of life.
All of your amazingly valuable work in the past seems to fade into the background as you begin to question the relevance of your skills and the way forward. Your identity as a valuable X blurs in your memory - and in the memory of others. You may reflect on the old days with rose-tinted glasses.
If this continues long, you may become tainted with bitterness and negativity - about the job market, companies, peers and your prospects. These low feelings then begin to seep into your life beyond work. (Life and work are not two separate things - hey?)
Why don't more people talk about this?
Often individuals who experience The Squeeze blame the market - to begin with.
Over time, they begin to point the finger of blame at themselves.
And sooner or later they begin to feel shame about any/all of the following:
getting older, not wiser;
letting their specialise skills die;
not investing in themselves to learn new stuff (years ago);
becoming less valuable;
becoming less in demand;
being out of touch with their market;
not really knowing who their target market is;
not being able to communicate valuably with their target market
If this goes on for long, shame begins to shroud their perception of themselves.
Shame is not an action-taking emotion. It’s a shutting down emotion.
Shame is the biggest reason why we’re not talking about this. We can blame ageism or corporate groupthink or any other version of “them” but we need to take control of how we position ourselves - uniquely - in order to combat The Squeeze.
Shame is not something, as a society, we enjoy talking about in public. Yet, it’s powerful enough to drive behaviour that stunts our career longevity by keeping us stuck.
I want professionals of our age to come out fighting.
I want to you figure out what you need to do to discover your uniqueness. And package in ways that both excite you and drive you to learn what you need to learn. To live the work-life and life-life that you deserve.
For many of us, that means earning our worth, working less time at higher value, doing work that is valued and lets us feel valuable. And enjoy our life beyond work to the max.
Is The Squeeze a negative experience for everyone?
Of course not. There’s one major winner in The Squeeze game.
When processes and systems have been simplified, it makes complete sense that companies don't pay top dollar for lower value work. Doesn’t it?
No business or business-minded individual chooses to pay highly for easy work. Outsourced providers have grabbed this high volume, low value market with both hands and run with it.
But when work is complex, nuanced, requires specialist knowledge or skills, involves messy human relationships, behavioural and/or cultural change, then it's defined as high-value or high-risk work.
When we have a high-value or high-risk problem, why would we give it to someone who can't - or hasn't yet - presented themselves or their offer as a high-value/high-reward solution?
If everyone looks the same, we business-minded humans default to price differentiation.
Uniqueness is not required. Appreciated. Or valued.
Examples of professionals experiencing The Squeeze
RORY: Pricing pain & competing with 30-year olds
Rory (not his real name) is good at what he does. Good enough to say "cheerio" to corporate life, to become a consultant.
By the end of year two, he’d entirely replaced his earnings (including enough to cover family dental medical insurance, glamourpus holidays and private school fees). He'd nailed this consulting lark…or so he thought.
But two years later, he found himself competing with people half his age for the same work. Again and again.
So much so, that the big-ticket holidays had to be put on hold. And the private school fees are now causing him concern. And he's got 5 more years before his youngest child heads to to university.
Right now, Rory is simply not unique enough to charge what he needs to charge - for his lifestyle to work.
He's now working with me on my one-to-one programme to discover the three or four things that he does uniquely in the world and to decide which problems in the business world he is best placed and excited to solve.
So that he can package his offering very differently. And reposition the rest of his career to get paid his value. And get those kids through university.
CIARAN: The "50, white male" issue
Ciaran, (not his real name) and I worked together back in 2018. He then secured a role in a smaller company where his grey-haired experience was required to help young founders grow. Then Covid hit and the young founders didn't have deep enough pockets to make it through.
Ciaran returned to big corporate life - the lure of the big bucks proved attractive so that he could replenish his freedom fund.
Two years in and he's had two separate conversations with Divisional CEOs who have, off the record, told him that his demographic (white, 50s, male) is not going to be their attraction/retention focus going forward. And therefore he will not be positioned as a high-value solution.
Ouch!
Shocking as it is to hear this message, Ciaran already understands his uniqueness entirely - from our work in 2018. And we're working now working together to reposition the final chapter of his work-life.
Discovering and communicating your uniqueness is the most enduring way to avoid The Squeeze in your professional career.
Uniqueness - the most enduring way to avoid The Squeeze in your 40s, 50s and 60s.
If you can't say the three or four things you do uniquely well, better than most, with tangible, provable results from your past, you haven't got a hope in hell of being paid well for the remainder of your career.
And even if being paid well isn't interesting to you - because you just want to work a few days a month to pay for the fuel for the yacht - doing value-adding, valuable work is interesting to most humans.
Let's leave the low-value, commoditised, generalised, boring work to AI solutions.
So, what does Madonna's La Isla Bonita teach us about getting paid well for as long as we want?
In order to jolt potential employers/customers to notice and value us highly, we have to do what the Spanish vibe in La Isla Bonita did.
It jolted me from the dreariness of the rest of the songs on the radio in 1986.
Those bongo beats, acoustic guitar and images of sultry mysterious dancers.
It's almost three decades since I the first time I heard that song. My ears still prick up every time I hear it.
I can recognise it's uniqueness in the first few bars of the song - from a mile away.
And our midlife careers need that degree of uniqueness.
How to avoid The Squeeze
If you’ve ever read anything of mine - you’ll know I never say career design after 40 is easy. And I avoid the ubiquitous “3 simple steps to career happiness” because we all know that’s nonsense, don’t we?
So below are the three separate strategies that will allow you to be highly-paid in your 40s, 50s and 60s. None are simple.
Discover and pitch your personal Superpowers (the 3/4 things that you do - that allow you to wipe the floor with your competition, regardless of age, experience or price)
Be totally excited by the very specific problems in the world that you want to and can solve (the result of a deliberate analytical selection process not guesswork)
Communicate the tangible, specific and unique value you offer (in compelling enough ways to attract £££) to a target audience that you care about.
By doing these three things you will stand out from the crowd and take control of your positioning in a crowded market.
They all take time, energy and effort to discover. Then more time, energy and effort to implement.
But you’re worth the investment.
What now? What’s the next step for you?
These are just three of the things that midlife professionals discover how to do within The Fierce Emporium: One Year to Redesign your career programme. This is a DIY career design programme with extraordinary group support.
And, you're impatient for results, want someone to do the heavy-lifting and have deeper pockets, talk to me about my one-to-one programme.
Book in HERE NOW to chat through which of these programmes will suit you and your uniuqe situation best.
