How I avoided a pay cut in my 6 figure career move

When I moved from clinician to industry one of my biggest concerns was..

"Will I have to take a pay cut?"

I was worried I'd have to start from scratch, re-train, and essentially become a medical student equivalent again… not feeling like I knew much, and studying relentlessly to feel like I was of any value.

So how did I REALLY avoid a pay cut in my move? Well.. I simply did these 3 things:

1. I Decided I Wasn't Going to Take a Pay Cut

Sounds simple, right?

Well.. this is perhaps the most important step.

I decided I was going to go for a higher salary and nothing below that was acceptable.
This drastically changed my approach and shaped which opportunities I went for and how I was perceived by others.

2. I Learned how to position myself as a high value candidate

If I want to be paid highly, I have to be perceived as high value.

If I want to be perceived as high value, I have to treat myself as high value.

In practical terms, this meant choosing a very specific niche where my competition was relatively low - clinically this was Occupational Medicine, and in business, I focused on alternative careers for doctors - something that nobody was really committing to at scale.

This also meant SHOWING UP regularly and providing the best value I could possibly offer to the audience that mattered the most to me - doctors.

My goal was to be relatively irreplaceable and indispensable, it would be difficult for someone else to jump in and do the same the way that I did it.

Therefore I leant on several unique elements of myself which included being a black woman, doctor, worked in South Africa, with diverse experiences and a vast network filled with industry leaders in healthtech, pharma, consulting, workplace health and more.

3. I Made Myself VISIBLE

This was key and the area that 99.9% of doctors shy away from - because we're trained to stay humble and not put ourselves out there.

The problem with that is, historically, it benefited the institutions that we worked in, nobody knew we were about so they couldn't poach us.

That combined with the narrative that we're only valuable for clinical work, kept us where we were.

However now, in a time of social selling, where you can make money doing pretty much ANYTHING - there's really no excuse not to put yourself out there if you're genuinely passionate about helping a group of people.

I realised that if I didn't TELL people what I did, again and again and again and again, I would have little chance of actually serving the community that needed to hear my story and could benefit from my support.

I'd also be drowned out by those that didn't benefit them or didn't support them in achieving them what they needed.

Visibility involved social media, but this wasn't the case in the beginning, and isn't necessary to start with.

I just talked to people I knew .. a LOT. My family, those I worked with, medics, non-medics.. and TIME being the key factor so people knew I was SERIOUS about my mission.

It also helped me to uncover new connections, and paid opportunities, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Just to be clear - it wasn't easy doing it on my own and I made lots of mistakes.

This is why I'm sharing everything I know with you, my fellows and more today at 7pm UK Time, as the start of our LIVE Challenge on How to Uncover Non-Clinical Opportunities in 7 Days!

See you there

Warm wishes,

Abeyna