182: The Moment I Realised My Job Wasn’t Safety (What Corporate Women Must Know)

Most corporate women are sold the same story:

Get a good job, climb the ladder, earn more and you’ll be safe.

But what happens when restructures, mergers, pandemics, or one decision you didn’t make suddenly threaten your income, your identity, and your family’s security?

In this episode, I share the moment I realised my 9–5 job was not safety and what true financial resilience really looks like for corporate women.

Drawing from nearly 30 years in HR, including hiring, firing, restructuring, and my own story of quitting a 6-figure job, taking on 6-figure debt, going back to corporate, and then building side income as a freelance trainer, I walk you through:

• The illusions of job security we’re sold in our 20s and 30s
• Why higher salaries often make you more financially vulnerable, not less
• How layoffs, mergers, and pay cuts helped me see who really controls your income
• The hidden emotional cost of depending on a single paycheck, partner, or employer
• The mindset shift from “I need a stable job” to “I can create money on demand”
• Why your existing skills and lived experience are enough to start earning outside your job
• What “paying the price” really means and how to decide what’s worth it
• The 3 core truths that helped me stop acting from fear and start building safety from within

This isn’t an episode about quitting your job overnight. It’s about never again outsourcing your security to someone else’s decision.

If this resonated and you want support to build your own safety, visibility, and side income while staying employed:

1. Follow the show so you never miss an episode
2. CLICK HERE to book a free discovery call to explore working 1:1 with me

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hi there and welcome to another episode of the podcast. So today's podcast topic is all around job security. And I made this podcast because I wanted to speak to people and women, especially working in a 925 job in the corporate world. And I'm probably gonna title this podcast something around the moment I realized that my job wasn't safety. So I wanted come here to share a few key points with you around this idea that a lot of people, I think probably now more so where we see a lot of layoffs everywhere, people are starting to realize that their uh jobs are not always the most secure things. And I see a lot of um fear and insecurity, and I wanted to come here to address that, and I guess more importantly, is give you like a solution, a practical solution that you can take away at the end of today's podcast and apply it so that you can be more financially resilient. So that's really the whole point and goal of today's episode. And I hope that by sharing my own personal um experience and the insights and lessons I've drawn from it, and also sharing a little bit more of the story around why, even though I am a full-time working mom, I'm also working to build my own income streams through my own site business and how I'm doing it. And you know, I share a lot of that on my LinkedIn. So if this is a topic that you kind of can relate with, then for sure look for me on LinkedIn, follow me there, or sign up to my um weekly guides uh on my website, which is simply at my name, right? So sharensingu.com. Alright, so let's get on with today's um topic, today's podcast title topic, and that is around um how I realized that my job wasn't safety and what I feel like a lot of corporate women need to know. So the the I guess the moment that I realized that my so-called stable job wasn't actually security, uh, I was preparing for this podcast and reflecting back on my uh my my professional experience, which if you uh know who I am, then you know I've been working for a long time, almost 30 years now. And I remember my and the moment I realized that you know that that oh our jobs may not necessarily be secure, even though it didn't really impact me, was actually my first HR job. So uh I did not start off my career in HR. I trained, I did my uh bachelor's degree in economics, and I came out and worked for the government, and I was actually doing a lot of economic research, writing a lot of reports and reading a lot of reports around Asian economies, and so I did not start out in HR. But anyway, when I eventually fell into the profession of HR, I started uh my career actually in my HR career, my first in-house HR career was uh in a tech startup in London. And uh in that job, it was you probably won't know how old I am now, but if you know the tech boom and buzz of the early 2000s, that was the time when I was in this startup, and you know, we grew very, very quickly. We recruited like crazy during the boom, and then the bus came shortly after a few years later, and we also had to then retrench and let a lot of people go. And I remember as a you know, like very green, fresh in HR, I had to, and of course, you know, like I think UK employment law is is quite different from where I am now in Singapore. Uh, so there's a lot more involved when you want to make someone redundant in the UK, if you know, so but I remember talking to lawyers, and then we had to, of course, we really released people in masses, right? Because we recruited in I think at the height we were like maybe a thousand something, two thousand. I know it sounds small for it, but for a startup it was quite significant, especially when we grew from like you know, like double-digit people, founder kind of startups, to like a thousand something. It was like really a lot, and so we had to let batches of people go. And I remember people crying and a lot of consultation, a lot of talking, a lot of calling people one by one into the meeting room to give them their letters and communicate and and all of that. And so, but I was not really affected because I was very young, you know. For me, it was just like if I lost this job, I could probably easily get another job. I didn't really have kids, I didn't have responsibilities, and so that was my first exposure to wow, you know, people could just lose their jobs like that, and they were so impacted, right? Um, but then personally, when it hit me uh on a personal level was uh, of course, many years later, this was already after I had kids, and my kids were still very young. Um, when I I think out of kind of emotion, I kind of tender a resignation. Like I handed it a resignation letter, and then later on I said, you know what, I'm I'm sorry I did that, but I think, you know, can I retract that? Can I take that back? And they said no. Um, and that's when I realized, oh wow, you know, um, someone else actually is in control of your job, your salary, right? And then, of course, most most recently, you know, um, I've worked in organizations where we went through restructuring, mergers, acquisition, and then of course we had the you know the pandemic, right? The COVID uh pandemic, and that a lot of people were affected, myself as well, where I had my hours and salary cut um due to cost cutting. Uh it was kind of like both, right? The mergers and acquisitions as well as the pandemic, and so you know, I was asked to take a pay cut. Uh, and so this time I really felt it because now I was like one of the pri I was like the primary earner, and I had kids, I had family, you know, my parents were staying with us, and so there was a lot more um at stake, you know. Um, and so I really felt it very personally, and the impact was a lot bigger. And of course, over this time, right, from the early 2000s until where we are today, I've been in HR now for like I guess almost 30 years, and so part of my portfolio has always been uh around performance, and that meant also letting people go when performance wasn't up to scratch, and sometimes it's just down to a like a not the right job fit, not the right culture fit, not the right company fit, nothing at all to do with the competence of the person because I sometimes really do also kind of counsel and coach people to say this might actually be better for you, you know, like finding somewhere else that would fit better for you because then you're not going to be perceived as a low low performer, right? And so, um, but of course, you know, I'm also I've also been a messenger with hiring and firing and letting people go and seeing the like I said, right, the repercussions um of all of these things on people, real lives, you know, and their families. And so that was when I was like, okay, uh, this is not how I want to live for the rest of my life as in be dependent on the one single salary and the one job, right? And when I was a lot younger in my 20s and 30s, um, you know, I had all these illusions about what job security meant. Um, and for one thing, you know, being raised with my kind of values, Asian values, and everyone in my family, I guess, around me was in the typical traditional model where the man goes to work and um oh that was a very loud notification, uh payment due for something. But uh yeah, but um, you know, it was like the very typical um traditional model where the the man goes to work is the primary earner, and then the woman stays at home to take care, the wife stays at home to take care of the family. And so I grew up like expecting that to be life, you know, uh that someone would always support me. I would never really have to think about um making money for myself or for my family, that somehow somewhere money would just come from somewhere, right? So that was kind of the model I grew up in, the belief system I had. Um, and so I always depended depended on someone else, whether it was my father, my husband, a job, the government, something somewhere, somewhere else to take care of me financially. And um, of course, like I said, you know, when I was younger and when people are younger, you have more options, right? I mean, entry-level jobs are definitely way more than the more senior-level jobs that pay more. And so supply demand-that's my economics, basic economics coming up now. Um, but supply demand is such that it's like if you're at the lower level, the probably not as uh expensive jobs, there are more of those around. So I wasn't really thinking so much about job security or the so-called illusion of job security until, like I said, like in my 40s and definitely now in my 50s. Uh, and so that those were kind of like my early ideas of job security, right? Initially not really thinking about it, but then when actually thinking about it and being impacted by it, it was like, oh no, what to do. Um, and you know, if you do know also my backstory, you also maybe have known and have heard that in the past, um few years ago, my husband and I also like quit our jobs. I think we got kind of like also sick and tired, right, of the whole rat race. Um, and then we thought, oh, why not we um you know start our own business? And so we thought we would do a cafe together, we start a cafe together, even found a really nice property with the cafe, a shop house at where the cafe could be on the first floor, and then we had two one and a half floors above us um where it could be our residence. And so I thought that that meant like, oh, I could then now better balance my work life. My I could see my kids anytime, they would just be near me, and but you know, that I think I will need to make another podcast episode. That is not true because I had less work-life balance running my own business, brick and motor business, than I ever did in a job, right? So, um, in to a point where my daughter even commented, like, you know, we are in the same building, but I never see you. So I think these are all kind of like myths, right? That we think that if we're physically nearby, we can see our children. That's not necessarily the case, you know. Um, and so yeah, anyway, so anyway, we my husband and I decided to to quit our jobs, and for me at that time, I was really walking away from a six-figure salary. You might be asking, why did you do that? To start a cafe. So, long story short, um, you know, the job that was in was creating a lot of pressure on my marriage, and so I decided like to save the marriage. I it would be better for me to walk away from the job and then find something else to do, and we decided, you know, to do this. And I have I I think looking back now, I was definitely driven a little bit by the pressure to save the marriage, you know, at that time. Um, I prioritized that. Um, and you know, the thing is when I left, I felt immediate relief, you know, it's like this instant gratification from acting on a pressure or a fear, which I've now come to learn may not, we may not always want to act and be driven by our fears. So, but regardless, I felt this immediate relief by removing this source of stress on my marriage by leaving, right? So initially it was good. And in order to start up a cafe, you know, it's a very capital-intensive business, which meant that um we did not have the cash up front, and so we took up a business loan, and that was like a six-figure business loan. And so initially I didn't really feel it because of course I still had the influx of cash, right, from the debt, and that was like cushioning us financially, so I was kind of like, I guess, in denial, not really, not really um seeing everything clearly. And then over time, after a while, of course, you don't expect everything to immediately generate revenue when you first start up, but then after a while, it was taking a lot longer than we had projected, and so then I started to panic when we weren't generating sufficient revenue to kind of cover the debt repayment, and that's when I was, you know, I kind of like decided, okay, I'll go back to a job because that was probably the easiest and fastest way I could generate money, just like that. I mean, I never had problems making money from a job, right? I always could do well in in like corporate roles, and so I thought that makes sense for me to then go back and do that. And now, like in hindsight, I would say that my actions were at the time were um largely driven, like I said, from fear. So the first fear would be the fear of um losing, right? Fear of losing or losing whether you could say the relationship, the marriage, or whatever would have happened to me and the kids, like and also I guess it was a fear of rejection on at certain levels, right? And often that we may not associate it, but I think at the very kind of like primal level, it feels like almost like the fear of dying, like if you like it's death, you know, like re-casting out and being rejected, it feels like oh, very, very big fear, right? Big emotion. So that was how it felt like when I walked away. Walked up first initially walked away from a six-figure salary and then walked back, right? Uh went back to uh to a job, right? And so, I mean, with all of this that happened, you know, over time I was um I mean, over this, all of these things that were happening, I was learning a lot and I was really reflecting um about financial safety. And I think that uh a lot of people feel like the job security, the fear from the job security really boils down to this financial security, right? Five a sense of feeling safe financially that you can continue to provide for your kids and cover your your bills and and commitments. Um, but I think there's a there are a lot of misunderstanding around financial safety. We think that the bigger the job, the more we earn from a salary, the safer we are. But I have now come to see it is really the reverse because the more you earn, the more vulnerable you are. Because, I mean, consciously or unconsciously, you start to put more eggs in one basket, right? I mean, that's why we talk about the golden handcuffs. Like, if you are making like a quarter of a million dollars from your corporate role or even more, there's like more at stake, more to lose, right? And and so it's kind of counterintuitive. I'm thinking back now to when I was just maybe earning two, three thousand dollars a month. Um, I mean, depending on where you are, it could be a lot or little, but I know in our Singapore context, that's really like a starting salary, and so for you know, someone with, let's say, uh a degree or a diploma. And so the stakes were really low. So I didn't really have a lot of fear around like if I lost that job, and obviously no less commitments, right? Um, and the reverse is true because like when I started making a lot more money, it felt a lot scarier, and it's like the insecurity grows, right? Because you have more to lose. So I don't think that financial safety comes from earning more, which is the reason why I don't I I've been constantly saying no to promotions, not because I want to deprive myself and my family from living a better life, of course I do, but just not through a 9 to 5 because I feel like that actually would the golden handcuffs would be tighter, basically, around me, right? And that is something consciously I do, even though it's like people will be wondering, well, you know, that doesn't make sense. Um and the second thing I want to say also around this idea of financial safety and dependence is like I think financial dependence obviously is where you put your the control of your finances in the hands of something else, like a job, the government, or someone else, could be you know, a parent, um, a partner, a husband, or some someone else, right? And that is often the riskiest thing because you are it's totally not in your control. You never know when you'll lose it. And I think this idea of you never know, not this uncertainty is where it causes a lot of stress for people, right? And especially when it comes to money. Uncertainty around you know your money can cause a lot of stress for people. And so that is definitely something not uh not something that I would encourage, right? And it is really not just about how much, also it's not just about how much money you have and you save and you invest. I mean, we're talking about putting the control of money outside of yourself, um, because stock markets crash, right? You can lose money from the market, and so you might be thinking now, oh my goodness, this is like a doom and gloom episode. No, but what I'm just trying to explain and illustrate is that, you know, I think I've now come to know that financial security and safety, it it comes from your own ability to create money on demand, like out of thin air, you can make money, right? And I think that when you have that skill, then you really do become resilient because you know that no matter what happens, you could lose your job, the stock market could crash. Um, and of course, times will be hard, you know, because we are all interdependent. But ultimately, I think that if you have the skill of knowing how to make money, then in whatever situation you can always make it back, right? And so you might be wondering, well, how do I do that, right? So um this is where I think uh it's again, like I say, it's counterintuitive. I feel like a lot of life's truths are very counterintuitive, they're very simple, but they're very counterintuitive. Um, so what I want to just say is you know, your financial resilience, financial security really starts from you. And that is really good news because it means that you already have whatever you need to be financially independent today, to be financially safe today. So, what do I mean by it starts from you? It starts from your mind. How you think the decisions you make, and therefore the actions you decide to take, right? And also your experience, both professionally and your lived experience. We I think we totally um discount our lived experience. Um, and it is not so much that there is no value and nobody wants to hear about your story, it's just about how we communicate it, right? I believe that uh if you've heard my story, I I know for a fact that my experience is very valuable to me and I've learned so much. And that is also the reason why I come here, I share on a podcast, I write on LinkedIn, because I do believe that my experience can help somebody out. It's not like we will have totally exactly the same lives, but we will have very similar emotions, the emotions I shared earlier, you know, panic around money, stress, relief, and all of that around money, and that you can then take and kind of customize and modify and apply for yourself, right? So you already have everything that you need, okay. Um, and with your experience, you can take it and you can help someone else to overcome something that you have previously struggled with before. Which means to say if you can help one person, you can help two people, you can help three people, and many, many more. And so I used to have this false belief, right? That I was no good at sales, I hated sales. Sales is very sleazy. Oh, you know, it's like I don't like like cold cold um outreach. Uh it's so yucky and icky, but actually, sales is service. Um, and you may have heard this, you may have and may not have heard this, you um, but sales really is service. All sales is or all selling is is you helping to solve someone's problem that's causing them a lot of pain. Think about it, like when you go to a doctor, right? You have a massive headache, right? Or some pain in your body that just won't go away no matter what you do, and you go to the doctor and you see the doctor, the doctor immediately can tell you exactly what's happening, what you can do, and then it relieves the pain. And of course, you don't think twice about paying the doctor, right? So it's the same thing, the doctor has provided the service. So, like you taking your experience, um, helping somebody else to solve this headache, this pain, this problem that they have, and then in exchange they pay you money for it. That's a service, right? You provide it a service, and therefore, sales is service, and the money is just the tool, the most convenient tool, because everyone recognizes this currency, right? Um, and so the money is just the buy the way thing, you know, um the byproduct of the service that you provided. However, having said that, I think the problem is that a lot of people want the money without putting in the work, without providing the service. And so that is where the the where I say you already have everything you need to be financially safe and secure, it is by figuring out or deciding, actually, deciding probably, because you can figure it out after you've made the decision. Um, you you've got to be willing to pay the price for the kind of money you want, right? And when I say pay the price, I'm not talking about pay money to get money. I'm talking about putting in the work, doing the work, figuring it out, overcoming your doubt, overcoming your fears, learning something new, feeling uncomfortable from learning something new until you master it, and then putting in the repetition to practice and get better and better. And that's all like the work, right? I mean, I'm just describing a few small things about the so-called price. I'm talking about the price you have to pay to get the money you want, it's the work you need to put in. And I know that we all understand it, and yet I see so often that people complain about the work they need to do. Oh, it's not my job, you know, that I'm not gonna do this, and then they wonder why they're not getting paid the money they want. And so I'm just trying to say that when we are willing to put in the work and we've made a decision, this is what we want, and we know this is the price. I think that's I guess the step beforehand. People sometimes don't know that's the price that they have to pay, right, for the thing that they want. And then if you're not willing to pay the price, it's perfectly fine. I wasn't willing to pay the price of a promotion because I I worked out the math and it didn't compute for me, right? In terms of the increase in salary I was gonna get was not worth what the work I had to put in, the time I had to sacrifice with my family, the stress that would come with it, and the nature of the work which I didn't even enjoy. And so for me, the math didn't work out, and so I said no, you know, and so it's fine if you you you do the thing and you realize, oh, I I actually this price is um I don't value it enough to pay the price for this thing that I wanted. I'm gonna move on to something else where I am willing to pay the price because the value I get for it is very high, and I'm willing to put in the work, and that is what I'm doing with the podcast. No one's paying me to record this podcast, no one pays me to write on LinkedIn, no one pays me to put in the work to build my business, but I do it, I've been doing it for years. Why? Because the value I'm getting in return for the work I'm putting in is worth it to me.

unknown: 23:53

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 23:53

More worth it to me than the promotion from a job because I feel like with this, it's mine. It's uh it's like mine to create, and I'm in control of it to a much larger extent than someone else who's deciding for me what goes into my job, what I get to do, when I get to go off, if I have permission to take to take time off to take care of my sick family members. So for me, I weigh all of this up and I figured this is worth it for me, and so I'm willing to pay the price. And so um, I kind of digress a lot, but I'm trying to come back to the key point around this message, right? Today, is that um this idea of job security, job safety, financial resilience, independence, and security, whatever you want to call it, right? This feeling like you are powerful, you are in control of your money or yourself, your life, right? And that financial security comes from within you. So, yeah, three key points I just want to wrap up today's episode with is the first point is so important that the financial security that you are looking for, it starts from within you, not from a job, not from a husband, not from a dad, not from a government, not from anything outside of you. It starts from inside of you. And and the point two, I'm trying to do second point, key point I'm trying to say to you is that that you have the ability to create and make money from thin air. You do. I did it. I mean, like when my salary was cut, you know, I went out, I somehow or other, you know, talked to people, looked for opportunities, found a freelancing role that I must say, actually, during that time that my so-called salary was cut, I made more money than I ever did before because honestly, I was making the same amount of money outside freelancing as a trainer that and and um as compared and for like part-time hours, by the way, um, as my job. And that was when it really opened my eyes that wow, I've got skills I can monetize outside of my job that pays me even more than my job for less time. And so that's when I really got really hooked, right, on this thing, right? And so the the key is that you have the ability to create and make money from thin air. It's not gonna be easy for sure. You're gonna have to figure things out, you're gonna have to solve problems, you're gonna have to like provide a service, you're gonna have to do all these things, the work, right? But it is there, and it is um, you can create it. If you are willing and you have decided that's what you want to do, then you have to commit to it and do it, right? And you can always decide cost correct, like I did, cost correct. Nope, that's not worth it. I am going to shift my focus, I'm gonna do a cost correction here, I'm gonna adjust, right? Um, and then the third key point I want to make today is when you know this, you have this ability, um, and you know it, you know it. When I say you know it, it's like with like beyond a shadow of a doubt, right? You know it with certainty, you know it in your body, you know it. It's just like you know when you drop the ball is gonna fall to the ground because you know about the law of gravity, it's that kind of knowing that I'm talking about. But imagine you know that you are the creator of your own financial security. Then, you know, I mean, imagine if you could have this knowing, what would that mean for you? It would mean that you are no longer beholden to anybody, anything for a job, even if you got laid off, even if you had to leave, you know, even if you like me resigned and wanted to take it back and they won't take you back, um, or your whatever source of income that you have been depending on is no longer available. When you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you can land on your feet and you can make the money that you want and need for whatever it is that you want. Imagine what that does for you. And and if you knew that you could build this muscle, and it is a muscle, it is a skill. Making money is a skill, right? Just like a lot of things are skills, and skills just simply mean that you can learn it and you can get better at it if you put in the practice and repetition. And if you know that this is a skill, wouldn't it be worth it for you to invest in learning this skill? Because the the the payback of having this skill is how confident you will feel, um, how you're in control of your life, how you are never like me, you know, driven to act by fear. Um, and you know, I just think that it's an amazing place to live in because you have peace of mind, you have clarity, you have calm. And when you have all of that, life gets better and better. You know, you show up as a different person, you you know, when you work, you you don't have to really worry, you know, you're not like in fear, you you really show up as a different person in your relationships at home, as a parent, as a friend. You're not anxious, you're not stressed out, you're not scared, you're not therefore angry. A lot of times people get angry because actually they are just really scared. Um, and so just just visualize it and imagine that for a moment, right? So, to me, that is worth it, right? To me, that is worth it, and that is the reason why I continue to work out this muscle, and it is a muscle you need to work out every single day. So, um, yeah, so I hope like this episode helps you shift some perspectives around um what it means uh around job security, financial stability, security, and what what some of the things that maybe will get you started on thinking and maybe shifting and maybe you know start experimenting, start working out that muscle, the money-making skill, um, that muscle, and really start to take some first steps to work on that. Alright, then I hope today's episode was helpful as usual. Um, if you enjoyed this podcast, I would very much appreciate you uh leaving a review if you're listening on Apple Podcasts uh or share it with somebody that you think will benefit from today's episode. And uh, if you want this as a guide, like I always send out a summary of the guide, uh the key points I've made during the podcast, you can uh subscribe to my weekly guides. That's over at sharensingzedu.com. Just put in your email and subscribe, and then you will receive this podcast as a weekly guide, a summary of the key points as well as the link to the podcast if you prefer reading, and then you will always be the first one to know when you know these guides are out and the podcast is out before I even share it on LinkedIn. So um, and yeah, speaking of LinkedIn, if you want to see the the regular posts I write about these topics, then um check me out also at LinkedIn. It's also the same, sharing things to do. Um, and follow me there. All right, have a wonderful week, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Bye.