Were You Fired or Freed? from LynnetteKhalfaniCox.com on Vimeo.
Transcription by Rev
Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, The Money Coach (00:02):
Hey everybody. It’s Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, The Money Coach. I want to talk to you today about your job and specifically the job you might not have. I know there’s been a lot of talk lately about layoffs, especially in the tech sector. We’ve seen so many companies heading out pink slips to people all across the country, from Upwork to PayPal, to IBM to Google, and more. We know it hurts when you get laid off from a job, and when I say we, I mean I know because I’ve been there too.
(00:34):
It was 20 years ago, back in 2003, but I got laid off from my job as a Wall Street Journal reporter for CNBC. It wasn’t just me, it was 200 other people. Frankly, they couldn’t afford us anymore, and they were like, “Sorry, you got to go.” I want to talk to you though about a vision for your future, and I want you to ask yourself one crucial question. Were you fired or were you freed? I’m going to repeat that, okay? Were you fired or were you freed?
(01:06):
Truth be told, a lot of us really didn’t want to be at the places where we were hired at and where we were working anyway. Some of y’all were complaining about your coworkers, about your crazy bosses, about being overworked and underpaid. You didn’t feel appreciated, or even if you honestly actually loved your job, and I did love my job, I’m not going to even lie. Even if you loved your job, you still may have had other interests, other pursuits, other goals, other dreams. Perhaps some of you dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Now is a great time to think about that. I don’t care if those of you have never had a side hustle or a part-time job or taken part in the gig economy, now is the time to start looking into that.
(01:54):
In fact, some of you who have been laid off might have your former client or your former business as your first client because a lot of these companies still need the brain trust and the expertise, the skillset that you have to offer. So, when I ask, “Were you fired or were you freed?” I want you to think about all of your goals in life, not just the title you had, the salary you had, the benefits you had. That stuff can be replaced.
(02:24):
Trust me, I’ve been in this for two decades now as an entrepreneur, and I make way more as a small business owner than I ever did working as a TV reporter, even though I was making a very nice six figure salary. So, I want to encourage you to think bigger, to think better, to cast a vision for yourself, and to think about what does freedom look like for me now that I’m not kind of shackled by the constraints of the job? What is it that I want to do? What would I like to do? What am I good at?
(02:58):
If you start asking yourself those questions and digging a little bit deeper, you might come up with some creative opportunities. Start networking. Start going to the people who can connect you with the right opportunities. And I’m not going to even say the right jobs because you might not want a job. You might say, “Yeah, this is the time for me to go ahead and start that X, Y, Z that I always wanted to do.” Think about it. Were you fired or were you freed?
