SO, YOU'VE BEEN LAID OFF...

NOW WHAT?

Welcome back to Layoff Season Peaceniks. Let’s see what we can do about it.

Last week, Paramount laid off 1,000 employees - with 1,000 more soon to come.

This, despite the value of the company (nearly) doubling since (The Ellison Family’s backroom deal with The White House to fire Colbert in exchange for) the FCC approval of Skydance’s acquisition.

That pink-slip-athon coincided with Amazon’s 14,000 layoffs - which was straight outta Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic,” because in the very next breath, Amazon reported 3Q earnings that beat Wall Street estimates across the board, with net income up 54% year-on-year.

On their earnings call, Amazon’s Andy Jassy CEO-splained that those thousands of firings are, in fact, “not really financially driven” and “not really AI-driven,” but rather the mass career killing was due to (checks notes) “culture.”

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery (aka Disco Bros), the dumpster fire that Zaslav built, has splayed itself across a card table on Hollywood Boulevard, in one of the most embarrassing garage sales in Media History. This, after Zas all-but destroyed this once great suite of entertainment brands, costing more than three thousand people their livelihoods.

Nearly 100,000 Media professionals have been laid off since the start of 2022 (40,000 in LA county alone). Another 500,000 jobs have been eliminated in Big Tech.

Unfortunately, countless of those shitcanned these last three years are finding it hard (if not impossible) to reboot their Media careers and find a new normal. That’s because Traditional Media in the midst of a systemic collapse. This is not hyperbole. This is reality. And, mark my words, we are not even close to the end of this horrendous ride.

The supernaturally-compensated CEOs of these companies have repeatedly proven these last few years that they do not see the people behind the pink slips - they only see columns on spreadsheets - like bunkered drone operators bombing dots on the ground beneath them. It is this mindset that leads WBD to pay Zaslav $155 million as he lays waste to WBD (Zas gets half-a-billion more if he sells the company); the motivation that gives Nepo Kid Ellison and Jeff Shell $100 million each over the next five years in the bloody wake of their two-thousand-head “Kill List;” the system that paid Jassy $151 million since 2022, as he eliminated 27,000 Amazon employees.

Wall Street gives even fewer fucks about the businesses they “analyze.” They’re driven exclusively by their year-end bonuses. Which is precisely why they keep convincing their clients to “Merge! Acquire! Sell!” despite all the evidence of just how destructive these transactions have been to the industry and the people who actually built it.

Here is me, expanding on that, on the last episode of my podcast.

That said, I will not waste any more time today looking back on the avarice-tinged stupidity rife in Media C-Suites that drove us into the Media Apocalypse.

Instead, the rest of this piece is entirely about what you can or should do if you find yourself on the short end of the layoff shit-stick.

If you’re like me, and see your career as central to your identity, losing a job can feel like losing a limb. When I got fired from Participant Media, I thought my career was over. When I got shitcanned from NBCU, I thought it would destroy me. Neither were true. We all need to make money. We all need to feed our families. BUT, it turns out, if you tie your entire self-worth to a title, a paycheck, or a company, then you cede all your value to them. Life, as I found out these last few years, is just too fucking short for that.

I know what it’s like to lose a job. It sucks, hard. I know precisely how it feels to be the main earner in your home, forced to tell your partner you’re not earning and aren’t sure when you’ll earn again. I understand the anger and the sadness - the sense of loss. It is natural to feel those things. But, unless you’re one of those aforementioned bubble-living C-Suite suits, the self-inflicted Big Media collapse is not your fault. If you are out of a gig, or facing a layoff, the worst thing you can do right now is blame yourself. The best thing you can do is to direct that very (anxious) energy into finding yourself and by extension finding a new, satisfying, sustainable path for your career. It’s really hard to do that from inside a cage of rage and self-blame. So, stop it.

Let me be perfectly clear: Pivoting your career in the midst an industrial nuclear meltdown will not be easy. The cartel of colluding sycophantic billionaire oligarchs will not make it any easier. To survive the current Tech and Media cataclysm, you will need to work hard to find work, you must stay diligent about staying ahead of the curve, and you will need to grow a thick fucking skin to weather the shitstorm that’s still to come.

So, with that said - based on my own hard-earned personal experiences, and hundreds of real-life case studies from people I’ve coached - here are…

ESHAP’s Seven Top Tips for Pivoting Your Career Without Losing Your Mind:

1. CHANNEL THE CHURN IN YOUR GUT INTO AN ACTUAL STRATEGY. You lay awake. You replay the years of your career and imagine what you might have done differently. You spray and pray your resume to every job opening and headhunter you can find. You get discouraged by every ghosting or rejection. You rinse and repeat until you’re exhausted by the futility of it all. I’ve been there. Stop it. Seriously. This doom loop will not get you anywhere. Take a step back and look at the world through a strategic lens. You’re a professional person. With skills and experience. If someone came to you at work with a similar crisis, what would you? You’d set a meeting, get all the information, write a brief, develop a plan, do all your analysis, and then set out to execute, adapting as you go, based on new information. It’s time for you to treat yourself like the most important client you’ve ever had. Because you are. Start with your resume and LinkedIn profile. What kind of shape are they in? If you’re like many of those who come to me for advice, your CV and LinkedIn are likely somewhere between woefully out of date and incredibly “meh.” Move onto research. What are the latest trends in the industry? Where are new jobs, and new companies, actually being created? What companies have cultures that actually suit you? Where are the people doing cool things that inspire you (remember inspiration)? Who are the people in your community that appreciate you for who are, who can truly help you? Make lists - companies that are growing where you’d want to work and where you’d be a value-add; people who owe you favors; events where the industry gathers and where you should be. Time block specific hours every single day for this work. Treat finding a new career path like a job. Because it literally is. Channel your anxiety into intentional action. Rinse. Repeat. Do NOT get discouraged. Keep going. This constant, deliberate action accomplishes numerous things: It distracts you from the negative voices in your head; it gives your metabolism the constant daily progress it craves (IMHO, crossing things off a list is one of the most satisfying things in life); and that progress, that constant accountability to yourself, will eventually morph into the momentum you want and need (I promise). Of all the things you need to do right now, creating constant, daily, strategic movement is the most important. It changes your outlook, it changes your posture. It puts you ahead of the curve, not behind it. Try it. Do it for sixty days. Tell me what happens.

2. ANSWER THIS: WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT? Many, if not most, of the people who come to me for advice cannot articulate their specific top three professional priorities - because they haven’t asked themselves what they are. If making money is your highest priority right now, admit that! It will offer clarity. If you have some runway and feel burnt out, then your top priority might be peace of mind. If you’ve been dissatisfied by your gig the last few years then entering a new industry or discipline might be most important. Understanding specific, near-and-long-term goals is always the first step to achieving them. Meet with yourself (your most important client) and force yourself to clearly articulate what TF you want, need, and expect. Turn those priorities into an RFP for yourself.

3. ANSWER THIS: WHAT VALUE DO YOU ADD? What have you done? Really - specifically - what can you say that you have actually accomplished? What value did you add to the successes of which you’ve been a part? You must name your superpower - the thing that is expressly you. Surviving this moment will likely involve transferring your talents to another discipline or a whole new industry. You can only do that if you can tell people, explicitly, what those talents are. This is another area where many people fall short. It’s not that they don’t have superpowers, it’s that they never really saw them that way. In corporate environments, so much time is spent on everything BUT the actual work, that we lose track of our individual part in it. This is not accidental by the way. Corporate culture has evolved to value the company first, the employee last. That way, the corporation and its C-Suite always take precedence. Break that chain. Go back and look at what you have actually done. Build a narrative around your demonstrable contributions. Develop an elevator pitch for your superpowers. You will never get what you truly deserve, unless you can tell people why you truly deserve it. It’s a writing exercise, but more importantly, it is a journey of self-discovery. Talk to others who know you. Ask them to describe you to you. Take notes. Look for common threads in your career accomplishments. This is not as easy at it may sound. (Imagine the process I had to go through to wind up as Media Cartographer!) To get past this Media meltdown moment, it is absolutely crucial that you understand how to differentiate and make yourself stand out.

4. MOVE ON. I’m not going to lie - Big Media is toast. Many of the major Media companies at the center of the entertainment industry will continue to melt like ice cubes, get subsumed by big tech, and disappear entirely. Consolidation and contraction will eliminate even more jobs in the next year. Meanwhile, new sectors and companies are emerging. There are new opportunities out there, I swear. But to find them you will need to journey beyond the boundaries of your own experience. The Creator Economy is rife with new energy, opportunity, and money. Creators are not just influencers - they are studios, production companies, and marketing firms. There’s a whole infrastructure that operates this new ecosystem. I’ve mapped it here - with a comprehensive list of places to explore. Brands are now morphing into Media companies. Under Armor just launched a studio. Dick’s Sporting Goods has its own content platform. There are 130,000 start ups created everyday. There are more than a million start ups in the US - more than 150 million worldwide. Not all will make it. For that reason, many are looking for “grown-ups,” with transferable experience, to help guide them. Based on my experience, start ups are amazing places to learn - about the business and about yourself. This could be the perfect time to bet on yourself and the upside of getting in on the ground floor.

5. INVEST IN YOU. If you belong to gym, or cycle, or run, or hike, or do yoga, then you understand the importance of investing in your own well-being. The need case is identical for your career. Look at hiring a coach. Investigate membership organizations like FMC or HRTS. Look at the year ahead for important industry events (in your current industry or others) like CES, SXSW, MIPCOM London, or StreamTV - then make a plan to go to some and make the utmost out of them. Reach out and volunteer to put together a kick-ass panel; dig through the speaker and attendee lists and reach out for meetings. Yes, this will cost money, at a time when money might be tight. But “spending money to make money” is only a cliche because it’s true. This is NOT the time to disappear. In fact, it’s just the opposite. This is the precise time to invest in yourself. And it doesn’t just apply to spending cash on conference passes. It also means putting your reputational skin in the game - putting yourself out there. Showing up IRL is important. Having a presence online is an imperative. It’s vital that you put in time and effort on LinkedIn and other digital forums. You don’t have to be as vocal as I am, but you do need to find your voice. Opportunity cannot find you, if it doesn’t know you’re looking for it. Study up on best practices for LinkedIn. After you’ve honed your superpower narrative, develop a content strategy around it for social media. Write or post video regularly about your category expertise. Participate in the conversation happening in your community and build a brand around your talent. When you help drive the daily conversation, the flow of opportunity points your way, more each day. Being “of interest” is the best way I’ve found to generate inbound interest. You may not like “being out there” on social media. So don’t think of it that way. Imagine LinkedIn as the biggest job fair mixer on earth, put on your best digital fit, and put your best self out there. Or don’t… and then you can deal with the consequences that follow.

6. THE SMALL WINS ADD UP - TAKE THEM. The best next chapter of your career could very well be as a fractional executive (either out of desire or necessity). The aforementioned layoffs have eliminated thousands of jobs, but not all the work they did. One of the most effective ways I’ve found that people find their next great job, is by dating a number of companies before committing fully to any of them. Of those million-plus American start-ups I mentioned, many will not have the resources to hire you full-time. But that doesn’t mean there’s not opportunity there. Despite all the current consolidation mishegas, all my research shows that the opportunity for fractional executives and strategic consultants growing - particularly in the areas of digital transformation, retail media, monetization strategies, operational efficiency, social marketing, and AI. The problem with many personal searches is that the average candidate looks only to sell the full keg of their experience, when the real opportunity is to sell their expertise by the bottle. The truth is that the jobs you’re looking for might not exist right now, at least not at the salary you need. Conversely, all this means that a lot of the opportunity you might grasp right now can’t be found in a job listings or interviews, but rather in one-off projects that managers desperately need managed. I am not saying that everyone needs to go out and start consultancies. I am saying that if you look at the landscape from a new point of view, there’s a different kind of work out there to be gotten.

7. REWIRE YOUR NETWORK. When you get laid off, you truly find out who your friends are. Now is a good time to take stock and convert your “network” into a community - one you can rely on in times just like these. Look through your contact list on LinkedIn. When was the last time you reached out to any of those folks for no other reason but to say hi, or share an article, or see how they are doing? When was the last time you had real conversations about real things with this collection of humans you’ve collected over the course of your career? These tumultuous last few years have shown that far too many of our collective business relationships are purely transactional. You can fix that. Do not limit yourself to looking for a job. Look for community. Look for kinship. Look for a tribe - one that is disconnected from a single company or any one industry. As I started this strange chapter of my career, one big investment I made was in time - meeting with folks “just because,” with an open mind and no expectations. This is now a standard part of every week. I’ve learned a ton. I’ve made new friends. I even found a podcasting partner! Most importantly, I’ve become a part of a community. This community is now, by far, my greatest strength and asset. It powers everything I do. It’s the organic fuel for all my opportunity. Recasting your “network” into your community ensures that, even during challenging times, you’re never alone. And if you are reading this, please know, you are not alone.

I hate writing pieces like this. But over the last four years, circumstances have demanded it - over and over and over. The main cause? There’s no vision left in Mainstream Media. It’s been replaced, wholesale, by CFO culture, M&A activity, and CEO bonus targets. This is exactly why individual Creators have become the gravitational center of the global culture and why many of the traditional Media giants will soon be relegated to the dustbin of history. That does not mean you have to give up on this business. But it does mean that it’s time to reinvent.

The most common reason people don’t start down this path is their attachment to what’s in their past and the fear of the new unknown. The secret to making a successful pivot is letting go of both.

It’s daunting, I know. The world is huge. The challenges are real. But if you start now - doing the hard work to figure out what you want, articulating your true value, exploring new worlds, finding your tribe, and building an indelible community - you will get where you want to go, even if you don’t know where that is yet.

Let me know if this is helpful, if you have any questions, or if I can be of help. As I said, if you’re reading this, I promise you, you are not alone.

Enjoy the week.

ESHAP