The hidden cost of staying too long

What no one tells high-achieving women about waiting for the “perfect time” to leave corporate life

You know the drill.

“I’ll do it after the bonus lands.”
“Let’s see how the restructure plays out.”
“Maybe next year. When things settle down. When I feel more ready.”
“When the timing is right.”

If you’ve been saying some version of that for months (or, if we’re being honest, years), you’re not alone.

But you’re also not doing yourself any favours.

Because while you wait for the stars to align, something far more insidious is happening behind the scenes.

Waiting has a cost. And it’s not just internal. It’s emotional, professional, financial and cumulative.

Let’s break it down.

The confidence erosion

The longer you stay in a role that doesn’t light you up, the more your self-belief starts to erode.

You’re still performing, of course. Still seen as the safe pair of hands, the go-to, the calm in the chaos. But inside? You’re questioning yourself.

•  “Maybe I’m too old to start over.”
  
•  “What if no one pays for what I know?”
  
•  “Maybe I’m just burned out, not ready.”
  

That internal friction creates doubt. Not because you're not capable, but because staying stuck dulls your edge.

The relevance decay

Corporate life moves fast. And while you’re still in it, you may feel current. But you’re not building visibility in the spaces that matter for your next chapter.

You're not publishing. Not testing offers. Not showing up as the expert outside the brand name on your payslip.

The longer you delay repositioning yourself, the longer it takes to gain traction when you finally do.

The energy leak

You’re exhausted. Not from doing too much, but from doing too little of what feels meaningful.

That kind of fatigue is deceptive. It tells you you’re not ready. But what you really are is disconnected. And the longer you sit in that grey zone, over it but not out of it, the harder it is to remember what energised you in the first place.

The financial cost

Here’s where it gets even more real.

If you’re earning $250K a year in corporate, that’s roughly $20K a month. If you were running a consulting or coaching business with just two premium clients, you could be earning the same, and potentially working fewer hours with far more control.

Every quarter you delay is another $60K of opportunity cost.
Every year is $250K not earned in your own business.

Even if you start smaller, with $5–10K packages or a simple advisory model, you could be matching your income faster than you think. But only if you start.

The time cost

Let’s do some quick maths.

If you’re 48 now, and you wait two more years “until things settle down,” you’ll be 50 when you start. That’s two full years lost, not to a lack of ability, but to hesitation.

Now imagine if you’d spent that time building assets: a digital product, a client base, a platform, a reputation as the go-to expert in your field.

That’s the real cost of waiting. It’s not the comfort of safety. It’s the compounding effect of standing still.

So why do we do it?

Because we were trained to.

Gen X women were raised for security. Climb the ladder. Stay loyal. Don’t rock the boat.
So we wait. We rationalise. We stay just a bit longer.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: staying too long often causes more damage than leaving too soon.

What if you didn’t need perfect timing?

You don’t need a grand exit or a TED Talk moment. You need momentum. A micro move. A decision. Then another.

•  Write the LinkedIn post that repositions you
  
•  Sketch your first service offering
  
•  Start talking about the problems you know how to solve
  

Build while you’re still in the system, or build as you exit. But build. The timing won’t be perfect. But the opportunity is real.

Next up
In the next article, I’ll show you how to spot your most valuable offer -  the one hiding in plain sight, shaped by years of experience you’ve probably been undercharging for.

Because you don’t need another qualification. You just need a sharper lens on what you already know.

Stay tuned.