Executive Deep Dive
What is the point of looking at the ridiculously high salaries of executives? Is the Zen Career Coach trying to put you in a very un-Zen place by reminding you of corporate greed? Is the point to remind us how low our current salaries are?
No, the point of this, like the point of so many things, is to raise your vibration. Focus on being happy and satisfied with what you have, while setting big, beefy, audacious goals, and telling yourself that you are HAPPY and GRATEFUL that your goals are coming to you.
The universe wants amazing things for you. The universe is holding out a sketch pad, and it’s waiting for you to be brave enough to pick up your pen and start sketching out the life you want. So do the universe a favor and pick up the pen. Decide what you want, and start taking joyful action to get there.
It is helpful to look at the journeys of others, to help us learn what our paths could look like. How does one make $15 million per year? Here’s a secret: the people who make that amount of money had to start somewhere. They may have been sitting right where you are today, wondering where they were going to go. Let’s read about someone who makes big money.
Judith Marks is the CEO of Otis elevator company. The next time you’re on an elevator, look for a label - there is a good chance it’s an Otis. And Judy runs the whole place. Judy made $14,477,875 in total compensation as Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer at Otis Worldwide Corp in 2022. That’s14.4 MILLION dollars. What’s the breakdown? That gets a little less exciting. More than $10 million was in equity (meaning Judy would have to sell stock to get the money, which is a bad look for a CEO), and she got $3.9 million in cash. The rest of the money was pension and other benefits.
But HOW did she get there? Let’s deep dive.
Judy started her career as an electrical engineer. She got her BS in electrical engineering in 1984. According to Lehigh’s Website – For the first fifteen years of her career, Marks was in entry-level and mid-level management - working in areas such as program management, engineering management, and even marketing. She then started moving up the ladder, into roles like VP and president of various divisions at various companies.
Here are her next steps, in bullet points –
-President and CEO at Seimens Government Technologies (4 years)
-Exec VP → CEO at Dresser Rand (2 years)
-President → President/CEO at OTIS - (4 years)
Judy’s father owned a department store, and she would work the cash register as a child. She has said in various interviews that her father’s focus on customer service has stayed with her throughout her career. She always thinks of ‘the person on the other side of the table’ during contract negotiations, or other dealings.
“I still remember that people do business with people. It’s still a personal business, and my main priority and focus is serving the customer.” - Judy Marks
Our take-aways from Judy’s career –
-She did the unsexy work. Do you want to be an electrical engineer? Me neither. But she learned the basics, and got good at something, and pulled that string to move to the top of a ladder.
-She got shit done – if you want to make big money, you’re going to have to learn how to get big results.
-She stayed hyper-focused on her value of serving the customer. The ‘what’ of your work will never sustain you. It is very difficult to keep making widgets day after day - but the ‘why’ of your work will keep you going. For Judy Marks, it seems that her ‘Why’ is serving the customer, and by staying dedicated to that value, she sustained a successful career.
In 2023, Otis saw net sales of $14.21 Billion, and saw a profit of $4.193B, which was a 7% increase from 2022.
