How to Turn Your Layoff Into a Massive Opportunity

Hello, welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup. Thank you for tuning in. What's new in the world of entrepreneurship? Layoffs. Have you been laid off, or are you seeing signals and hearing whispers that could you be next? I know the feeling. It's gut-wrenching, and I speak from experience. Back in 2003, I was laid off. I was a VP at a cutting-edge Silicon Valley startup. We were building this amazing infrastructure software for voice over IP, and we raised— we had raised $96 million, but sales and revenue did not materialize fast enough. And then I still remember to this day, I remember that dreaded Thursday afternoon Where the CEO, he walked into my office and closed the door and asked if I had a few minutes. And then he said, Feras, tomorrow we have a layoff and you're impacted. It was one of the most difficult days in my professional career. But what if I told you that this was also the best thing that has ever happened to me? And a layoff could also be the best thing that could happen for your own career. Now, in this episode, I'll show you— I want to share that yes, you're going through a tough moment. I get it. I've been there. But I want you— and I want to walk you through things you can do to turn this very tough, very difficult moment into a launch pad for starting your own consulting or professional services business. And even if you're not thinking of starting a business now and you're looking for another job, I still think you can benefit from being aware of what's out there for you to start your own business. And it will give you some options to think of, to think about as you are submitting resumes and as you're looking for your next career move. All right, so before we dive in, a couple of housekeeping items. One is that if you're watching or listening in live or maybe tuning in later, I'd love to hear from you. Leave me a comment, send me an email. I want to hear about your big wins. I want to hear about your struggles. If you have any questions related to business, email them our way, comment, direct message me, whatever platform that works for you. I'd love to hear from you because I take that input and we turn that into articles on our website, videos on our YouTube channel, And this, uh, we cover— we answer these questions in these episodes as well. And remember that for those of you who are watching live, it's on Thursdays at 3 PM Eastern, 6 PM— sorry, 6 PM Eastern, 3 PM Pacific. And then for those of you who are listening to this recording later, um, make sure you sign up, uh, and make sure you, uh— Also, if you're liking this content, we'd appreciate a like. And a 5-star review. So, so that's enough on the housekeeping items. Now let's jump into, uh, to get back into it. So when it comes to layoffs and whether it's you're impacted or you're hearing about— you're here, you're hearing the whispers in the office— there's, there's a, there's an emotional impact to this. There's, there's a psychological impact to that. And it is something we have to acknowledge, these difficult life events. You know, we go through these feelings that, in the case of the layoff, the fear of the unknown, the fear of the unknown, the uncertainty. I'm used to a certain routine. I get up in the morning, I go to work, paycheck, benefits, 401, all that good stuff. So there's a whole lot of uncertainty, that loss of, in a way, identity, or that questioning one's self-worth. Why me? Why now? What did I do wrong? Am I worth it? That self-adequacy. So these feelings are there, they're real. I remember in my own experience, when When I— when the CEO went, walked into my office and talked to me, when he mentioned that I was impacted, I felt the earth shattering under my feet. My stomach dropped. I felt like the blood was coming out of my veins. It was, it was all— and all these emotions, like all these thoughts going through my mind. I had a family, young family, 3 children at the time. So I, I get it. I understand. It's, it's really, really difficult. And I think it is okay to go through these emotions and these feelings. It's okay to mourn and to maybe vent and go through, you know, talk it through with your life partner or maybe with your close friends. But I really, I don't want you to be stuck down. I don't want you to be staying in that place because it won't serve you well. And, and this is not the end. You— I know this might sound, uh, harsh maybe, but you know, if, if someone is laid off, this is— they're not the first one nor the last one who has been laid off. As a matter of fact, 40% of Americans have been laid off or terminated. So, so it is important to think of it as an experience, a difficult experience, a challenging experience, something that I've seen hit hard, hit some people really hard, and to the extent that they could hardly recover from it. And I know it's easier said than done, but I've been there and I can relate. And my goal here at Startup with Feras is to help people do better, to help you learn from my mistakes, is to help you learn from the mistakes of the founders and those who are going through tough times in business. And, and I want you to acknowledge again these emotions, acknowledge that it's difficult, but also I want you to not stay in that space, in that place for a long time. I want you to think about things you can do. The layoffs happen You didn't have a lot of control over it. It's about what we do. It's about the next step. The next move is what, what it's all about. So, so, so, and before I get into specific actions one can take to recover and pivot, I want to talk about why layoffs happen. And I covered this in a post last year and I got a lot of, a lot of traction, and it's still, still valid. But I think there are 2 main reasons why layoffs— there are a number of reasons why layoffs happen, why layoffs happen, and there are some different types of them. But, but, you know, you hear CEOs saying we're about to get into an intense year. You hear things restructuring, we have to optimize our operations. All of these are, are keywords, things to be aware of. These are potentially signals that layoffs are around the corner. So, um, this is not just only in tech. You, you see some economic trends, you see automation, you see AI disruptions. Whenever there is— you see business consolidation, consolidations, you see mergers and acquisitions, and many other factors. So, so that is something that has happened. We had, we had big waves of, of layoffs a couple years ago. It sort of slowed down, and now we're seeing this again. I don't think it's going to end anytime soon. It might not be— the waves of layoffs might not be as drastic, as maybe significant in terms of the sheer volume, as what we saw a couple years ago, but they are still happening. So, so if, you know, as, as as of why these things happen. It looked like we had a technical glitch here, so, uh, let me just make sure. Forgot where we— well, I can't tell where we stopped, but I think streaming was stopped for a minute, so let me just double-check on where I'm gonna, I'm gonna just recap here what I was discussing earlier. Sorry about this, technical glitches, technical glitches do happen even in Silicon Valley. So, um, sorry about that. But what I was, what I was summarizing earlier is that due to a number of economic trends, you'll see, we have seen, we have seen layoffs in 2024. We're seeing announcements about layoffs in 2025, and it's only been a couple years into the new year. And you see also the, the trends around automation, about AI disruptions, also business consolidations and mergers and acquisitions. So all of those economic trends contribute to companies doing these layoffs. Um, and, and there are 2 types. There's the, I would say, the restructuring type, where a company decides not to invest in a product and a service line, or a company decides that they don't want to work in another market anymore, or they want to significantly reduce their presence in a specific market. And they would have a sort of a top-down, okay, we are cutting off this entire business unit or this our service line. So that's one type. The second type, and this is the harder one to speak about, it is the performance-based layoff. So it's a, it's a, it's a, you know, companies do this very often. Um, they take this time, this layoff, as an opportunity to shed off the bottom 5%, 10%. I've seen 20%. I was in a company way back then in my Florida days where 50% of the company was laid off. I was spared at the time. It's fortunate. So, so when it comes to this scenario, it's performance-based. It's very difficult to talk about, especially if you were part of that group that was let go and it was mentioned that was— it was due to performance. I, I do want you— I know it's personal, I know it's difficult, but I want you to also at the end of the day think of it as, as this was a business decision by the company, not a personal failure. And I want you to assess your own experience and assess it objectively. So if you got the, the hint, and sometimes you don't because companies don't want to get into legal trouble, they don't give a lot of details, but if you, if, if you think it was due to, to be a performance issue This is the time to think of it as an opportunity for growth. I mean, was it due to maybe apathy? People typically get disengaged from work or disengage from work for many reasons. Maybe there's a toxic environment, difficult colleagues, poor leadership. A lot of backdoor politics. This can drain people's motivation to do good work. It could be bureaucracy, endless committees and layers of approval and a whole lot of red tape that also can make even simple tasks feel impossible. Also could be boredom. You've sort of outgrown your position. There are, there are no opportunities to maybe move on. Um, the organ— the, the, the role become monotonous. You've simply just outgrown your current responsibilities and you've hit a ceiling. So all of these toxic— a toxic environment, bureaucracy, boredom, and also maybe diffused focus Maybe you're busy during your nights and weekends working on a side hustle, and that's exciting you more than your day job. And then focus on one of them, um, would be better before you burn both. So, so assess. I think it's hard. It's hard to do when after we're hit with a layoff, but it is— if you want to pivot, you want to recover, if you want to move on beyond this difficult situation, you have to assess what led to this event. Again, I talked about sometimes these things happen to top performers, sometimes they happen and they are performance-based. And, you know, another thing, again, these are hard things for me to say, but if someone hasn't been performing and they have been given the opportunity, the opportunity and the coaching and the support but they're still not focused on their career, not pulling their weight. Companies and leaders have, have fiscal responsibilities, and they have to do what's best for the business. So again, this— it could have been me. I was very close to getting laid off way back then, earlier, early on in my career. And that was a wake-up call to now work beyond the 9 to 5 And learn and advance and raise my hand to take on initiatives. So do your own assessment. Look at your last performance review. Ask close friends. Ask your life partners. Ask your spouses. Ask them to give you honest feedback and take it in. It's hard. It's hard to take in harsh or difficult feedback, but take it. And if you feel stuck, If you feel stuck, take all these signs and, and learn from that past, that past experience that is now behind us before it's too late. Which is— which brings me to the other point I want to talk about, and it is on starting your business, especially a services business, a consulting business, after LAR. So in terms of the mindset and the assessment mindset assessment, taking on initiatives— that applies to any business. But if you want to start a services business, especially if you work in tech and B2B, you don't have to be developing a product to be a business owner, to be an entrepreneur. You don't have to be in Silicon Valley and raise funds and raise millions of dollars from VCs to be, to be an entrepreneur. 70% of the U.S. economy is driven by professional services, consulting services and consulting. So, so you can start your own business even if you have a technical, technical background. You can provide training, you can provide strategy, you can provide hands-on implementation, you can do a whole lot of things even if you come from a technical background. You don't have, you don't have to be developing technical products or household products or, or, or any type of product. If you could, you could start your own consulting business. And the reason why that's what we focus a lot on in our content here at Startup with Feras, but also it's much easier to start a services business from a, from a financial perspective than, than a product business. And we had, we had, we did a livestream, an episode on comparing product and business service and service businesses. So if that's of interest, you can let me know and we can, we can send you a link. We can add the link to the description. But in terms of the, you know, the benefits of starting a business, a consulting business, after a difficult period is, is a number of things. One is when you, when you are your own boss, you have the freedom to do your own work. Uh, you You can focus on, on the skill that you've acquired, you've accumulated over the last 5, 10 years, 10+ years, and turn those skills into an offer. I talked about lower startup costs, and also it's difficult these days to, to make a living. It's difficult for especially the younger generation to, to save money and put a down payment on a house. So if you're ready to, to take some risk, some calculated risk, and if you are ready to put some time and effort and energy and put— dedicate a season of your life to build something that is going to turn into a strong business, a sustainable business, then you have a potential. There's the potential upside and the potential path to financial freedom. So all of these are, in my mind, great reasons why you can— you, you— I don't want to say should— you can. You have the option to start a business after a layoff. And the one thing that you have, the one thing that you have on your side when— if you have a layoff, you've been laid off— is that you have time. So prior to the layoff, if you were maybe doing some side hustle, you know, you have a few hours at night, you have some time on the weekend, but now you have the entire day, you have the entire, you know, the whole weekend, you don't have a job, so you have the time. So you can use that time to vet your idea, you can use that time to go out to the marketplace and see who else is offering what you have in mind. and see, learn about the competitors. And I'll show you, I have the templates for you here. I'll share with you in a second. But there's a lot of things you can do in that time. And even if you're still undecided about starting your own business, the advice I give to these want-to-be entrepreneurs is you can dedicate 3 to 4 hours a day to look for a job and then dedicate maybe 4 to 6 hours a day to vet an idea, come up with an idea to match your skills with a need in the marketplace. So, so these are all good reasons on why you can— why in my mind, if you're— if you wanna do something that, that's been on your mind for all these years and you wanna, you wanna have a potential path to financial freedom, there's no reason why you don't leverage this time of being, um, with— without a job to turn that into again, the launch pad for your next business. And for those of you with us here, if you have a question, if you have a comment, if you also love to hear from you about your own experience, how you, how you've managed this, this period when you hear whispers that there will be layoffs, or that there are announcements by the CEO that there are layoffs, and, and, and, and you're not sure if you'll be impacted or not, or if you've gone through a layoff and, and you've managed to it's— you struggled with it, I'd love to hear from you. Also, if you manage to turn it into something very positive, whether finding a, a job in a different sector or maybe a different role, or maybe you use that time to hone your skills and, and then pivot into something different, I'd just love to hear from you on your experience, or maybe some of the things you're hearing from others in your network and how they're dealing with this, uh, with layoffs and life post-layoffs. So that was on why consider starting a business. Now, in terms of what you want to do next, and these are things I want you to think about right away as soon as you think you'll be impacted by, by a layoff, or if, if you've already— you're already hit by a layoff, is I want you to build a financial runway. Now Depending on our financial situation, on how disciplined we were before the layoff, um, you can cut expenses. I mean, some of us might be doing— having to do 2 jobs to survive. I hear you. I was washing dishes for a long time, going to school full-time with a family and washing dishes. I hear you. But in the event that you have expenses to say you have expenses to, to cut, this is the time to do so. Cut your expenses anywhere from 20 to 50%. If you're doing maybe that gym membership, maybe that trip that you're planning, maybe all those subscriptions that I have, maybe the nice car I was about to, to buy. So, so see how you can cut your expenses by anywhere from 20 to 50%. And then I want you to build a runway, a financial runway, and I want to show you it. For those of you who are watching, um, I, I have a runway, a financial runway that I want you to build. This way you have, you have some peace of mind when you're looking to, to launch your new business. So Uh, let me, let me share this on my screen here for those of you who are watching. And for those who are not, we will leave the link in the description so you can— in the show notes, this way you can see it later. So here, one second, should be coming up. Here we go. One second. Sorry about that. All right. So you see in this financial runway, it's it's a bit of a calculator and a runway. Basically. The first tab, I want you to list all your expenses, and this is all editable. You can have this link, make your own copy, and then you can edit. So I have some sample data about all the personal expenses: food, childcare, medical, housing, transportation, common expenses. That will give you the total. Then I have what, what I called here individualized expenses. So if you have a loan elderly care for maybe your aging parents, any hobbies, recreations, travel, vacations, gifts, donations. Maybe, maybe you're putting money into your savings account. So also add all those expenses that are maybe specific to you. So at the end of this, you'll come up with the annual personal expenses, and then you have to divide by 12, you get the monthly. In this case, again, I have some sample data. Let's say it's about $4,200. Okay, so that is the, the, what, what it's costing you today to live the life you're living. If you can cut this down by, I don't know, by 30%, maybe by 50%, no hobbies for, for a few months, that's okay. Um, uh, maybe we can delay that vacation, as I said earlier, that trip. So to the extent that you can save money, I want you to do that. And then you take that number, and again, I won't go into a lot of details here, but the idea here is that you come up with— sorry— with this plan that this is what it costs me to live and survive, and then I will have in this what you've seen on your screen, I have 6 months where I can survive without having to maybe do, do additional cuts or tap into my, my 401k. So in, in someone's case, it might be a 2-month runway. In someone else's case, it might be a 6-month runway. But you have— I think once you have that defined, it gives you some peace of mind that I can— I'm surviving, my, my financial situation is in order, and now I'm going to focus on this idea that I want to start. So that is on, on the financial runway. And, and if you have any questions about it, let me know, but we'll leave a link in the, in the description. The next thing is then, uh, of course, if you have— depending on the state you're in, look for unemployment benefits. Hopefully the company that has laid you off or about you, they have a, a reasonable severance package. So add all of that up into what will give you that peace of mind of having, having a financial runway. So that's number one. Number 2, uh, packaging your skills. So if you haven't had— if you haven't started a business before, you don't know what's involved, you don't know what to do. At the end of it, the essence of starting a business, you have a certain— the essence of starting a consulting business, a services business, is that you have some skills that are addressing the needs of a segment of the population. Someone who has a small business that needs help with IT, they want to install their software, the computers, they want to get they don't want to be hacked. You're an IT consultant, you know how to do this. You have experience in elderly care, you want to start an elderly care facility, one of them, one of the most, um, actually growing, um, sectors. Let's say you are a coach, you want to start offering workshops, you want to offer training services. So all of those skills that you have, whatever those are, you want to put those skills together and document that. And then I want you to use the 10+5 rule, one of our, one of our Startup Affairs rules, uh, templates, and, and first talk to 10 people who are likely to buy that service, or they buy similar services to what you're thinking of offering. And then also list 5 competitors. And we have a pretty simple spreadsheet here. I'll show it here on the screen. For those of you who are watching with us, basically you go here to the first tab, talk to them people. So I want you to list those ten people. It's homework. You got to do it. List their association. Do they have? Do they are using a current supplier of the service that you're offering? Ask them how they hired this person. What made them hire this consultant or this service provider? Is there something missing that this other supplier is not offering? So to the extent that you can find out about how your potential target audience, how they're buying that service that you are planning on offering, and also what issues they have with the current service providers. Because maybe these service providers are too expensive, maybe they're too slow in delivering services, maybe the quality is not there, and you can pick any one of these and differentiate your offer based on maybe better responsiveness, higher quality, less expensive, and then you'll stand out and get business. So that's number one. The number, the number one thing in terms of packaging your skills is to talk to people, 10 people. That's your homework. And then the second thing is research 5 competitors, 5 competitors, local, regional, doesn't matter depending on the service you are planning on offering. and talk to them if you can at industry events. You can check, check out their websites, their reviews online, whatever you can. Whatever information that you can get about these competitors is going to be gold because then you want to differentiate. You want to do things better than these, these, um, these competitors. So again, we'll make this, um, the sheet available, um, both the financial runway sheet as well as the 10+5 template. So make piece of it. And as you go through this process— and I don't want you to take months to do this— within a week, I want you to be thinking, documenting your skills, researching the competition, talking to them, people who are likely to buy the service. And that's, that's basically what will help you. That whole process will help you create a compelling offer. And again, if you're struggling with some of these ideas, you're very new to business, you haven't started your own business, you can check out our site blackbeltstartup.com, and we have a free course. You can finish it in 1 hour about starting a business. So, so a lot of the people who reach out, laid off or otherwise, they're amazing technical experts in whichever area that is technical, as in IT consulting, as a programmer, also as in a coach, as someone who is an accountant, they want to do their own accounting company. So if you have some subject matter expertise, that's the core, that's, that's the essence of, of what you offer. You have to do some market research, as I discussed earlier, and then you are ready to create that compelling offer to go out and, and build that business around that offer. Now, the third step here is finding— it's about finding your first client. And for those of us who don't have any sales background, and to be exact, it's about 70% of all new business owners who start a business, they have that technical skill, that technical expertise, but they don't have background in marketing and sales. And I'm here to tell you, that's me 21 years ago when I was laid off. I had zero sales experience. So sales, marketing, building a business— all of these are muscles you can build. And when it comes to getting that first client, we're not looking for perfection. We're not looking for the most amazing logo we can get. Initially, we want to be out there telling the world about that, that we started a business and that here, here's what we are, here's what we're offering, and here's why people should buy from us, because we're amazing people who have these skill sets and we can offer these services cheaper, higher quality, and faster. Again, whatever your differentiator is. So, so there's a whole lot of process to, to, to sell, of course, and we have a lot of content on our YouTube channel and also on our website. You can go to startupaffairs.com/salestools to learn how to pitch. Most people who haven't done sales before, they don't know how to pitch. What, what is a sales pitch? What is it? How do I tell strangers that I want their money? Right? So there's a process to do this. So it could be— it is intimidating for most of us. It, it is overwhelming. But just think, I, I talk to anywhere from 100 to 150 entrepreneurs every year, and a lot of them come to me with no sales background. I do talk to some more established entrepreneurs, people who want to grow, scale, go to 8 figures. They want to sell their businesses. that's different. But for the, the early stage entrepreneur, someone who's thinking to start a business, or someone who has started and they're struggling, all these difficult things that you have to do as a business owner, think of them as the first time you rode the bike, the first time you were thrown in the water, you got in the water to swim, the first time you drove a vehicle. Just think about those times. They were very difficult. You're probably driving like this, very tense. And if someone was talking in, in the backseat, you were screaming at them. And if they asked you to turn on the volume or turn up the volume or turn down the volume or turn the radio on, you'd scream at them because you're so tense and so focused just on what's, what, what's ahead. And the same thing in business. There is no magic formula. There is no overnight success. It's building these reps about marketing, being out there, leveraging your network. Each one of us who has worked in corporate or has done, you know, has been working for a little bit of time, we have a network and we have people who are there to help us because a lot of people help us. Those of us who have, let's say, made it, you know that no one made it alone. A lot of help. We all got a whole lot of help. Along the way. And many of us who've been there, already there, are ready to help others. So you don't have to initially seek the help of a, of a paid consultant. There's a lot of free content there. Check out our content on YouTube and also on our websites. But I want you to know that it's not that difficult to get that first client, and it will be— at least it was for me— one of the sweetest event or a moment in my professional career when after, after when I got my first sale, the first day we went out to sell, my partner and I, my business partner and I, we went to 5 restaurants. And I've mentioned the story before, and these people knew us. We go and eat at their places, their local restaurants, all the time. And I went and I spoke. I mustered whatever courage I had to go and tell these business owners that, hey, we're here, we build websites for you. That was, that was cutting edge back in 2003. The first day we went out there to 5 restaurants and we got 5 rejections. It was hard, it was difficult. We, we thought we were not gonna recover, but several weeks down the road we ended up closing that first deal to the restaurant. And again, that was the sweetest, one of the sweetest moments in my professional career because I, you know, I had that affirmation, the confirmation that, you know, whatever I've been working hard on for the last so many weeks, I can now sell. It sort of validates every, every, every effort and every ounce of energy and all the time and all the days and all the nights I, I put behind, you know, getting myself ready to start that business. So, so it is difficult to sell, it is difficult to market initially, But you can take specific steps to learn how to network, to learn how to pitch, to learn how to listen to the needs of your potential target audience, and then go back and then, and then present to them and share with them how you can be of value to them. See, business is not charity. You're exchanging value for money. You're asking them for money, but you're also helping them address their pain points maybe reach their aspirations. Whatever concerns they have, whatever hassle they have, you are helping them overcome those challenges. And you, as a consultant, as a service provider, in turn getting, getting paid for that amazing work that you've done. So that is, you know, that's what's involved in, in terms of turning this very difficult challenge, this difficult moment, situation in our lives when we are laid off, or maybe we are thinking that we would be laid off, we would be impacted because of the whispers and because of maybe certain signs. But it is the time. If you have not been laid off, the best time to prepare for it and prepare to launch a business is when you're employed, because you have the benefits, you have the salary. It does take extra time on, on the weekends, extra, extra few hours a night, but, but this is the time to do it. And if you were impacted by a layoff, then this is a time to, I think, do that financial runway and then start— do an inventory of your skills, soft skills, hard skills, and then find an offer, go out and, and talk to others about it, and then start going after getting that very first client. So, so, so it's not easy, uh, but nothing worthwhile in life is easy. So I hope this is useful in terms of turning a very difficult situation into something productive because remember, you didn't choose the layoff. It's not something that you wanted to do, but you can choose what happens next. So build a financial runway, package your skills, and then go out and find your first client. Good stuff. If you have any questions or comments, let me know. For those of you live, would love to hear your questions or comments. And for those of you listening later or watching later, again, feel free to reach out to us anytime on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram, you name it, on YouTube, we're there. And I do wanna just share a couple things on our Black Belt Startup program. For those of you watching, we have, again, the free course, no obligation. It's 1 hour, 12 modules. You can finish it in 1 hour about all things to do with entrepreneurship. And then we also have our YouTube channel at startupwithferas.com. Feras spelled F-E-R-A-S. So, so let us know if you have any questions, and if not, we will see you next time. Thank you for tuning in. Bye-bye. Thank you.