Laid Off? Rebuild Your Power in 7 Steps

If you are laid off and it feels like the floor just dropped out from beneath you, I want you to hear this clearly. There's nothing wrong for feeling like this is such a devastating event because it is. I mean, a layoff doesn't just take your job. It robs you of your sense of continuity and a shocks or nervous system. So in this video, what I want to talk about is a sequence to go from layoff to liftoff. And it's a really positioning for leaders who want to rebuild their sense of identity who want to regain their authority and enter the market as an asset. Let's go. You're listening to Career Revisionist. The podcast where ambitious professionals pursue mastery, breakthrough invisible ceilings and accelerate into leadership. And now to guide you on the journey. Dr. Grace Lee, neuroscientist, executive mentor, and your trusted voice in career leadership. There are seven ours in my sequence and the first ours stands for reframe. So what does it mean? It means to reframe the event. The layoff was a singular event and sometimes it's necessary to take a step back to look at the big picture of the event in the environment and in your whole life so that you can get a different perspective. Because here's the thing about a layoff. You lost your job, but you did not lose your leadership. This part is really important. When you are working inside of a company or an organization, the company is the container in which you had deployed your leadership. But just because you were laid off and you exited the company and you left your job or that role, you take your leadership with you because your leadership is you, you're the asset. And what you're doing is you're looking for another system to deploy that leadership and it's important to shift your mindset this way. Shifting your mindset this way is going to give you a different perspective. When you step back and you look at the event of the layoff in on text in the proper bigger picture context, you no longer see it as a debilitating event and you no longer see it as a setback. In fact, you can start to see it as a set up for your lift off. And that's why I'm talking to you about from layoff to lift up because this doesn't have to be a setback. It depends on how you reframe the event. The second r is reposition. You are repositioning the conclusion. Most professionals, soon after a layoff, it feels like the end of a life. It feels like the end of your finances. It feels like a black mark on your resume. It feels like the end. And this is important to understand because when you go back to the first step of reframe the event, you see that this is really a set up for a comeback. But now it's time to reposition the conclusion. Instead of seeing it as the end of life, this is what you're noticing is that now that you've been laid off, you have freed up a lot of your time. Because think about it. When you had a job and when you were inside of that company, most of your days, you can calculate the percentage yourself. But percentage your day was dedicated to the company, to the responsibility, to the rule itself. And now that you have exited, how much time do you now have back in your own hands? So use the time to get to your next level. Because here's a reposition to the conclusion. I'm giving it to you so you can borrow it. The conclusion is not that it's not the end of your finances, it's not the end of your life. It is a set up for a comeback and it's the end of your old level. And it's the beginning of your next level. So then the conclusion, if that's your conclusion, you see it frees up your mental capacity. And instead of being dissolved in emotionality of it, you now have the creativity and the executive decision to use the time that you've now freed up to pursue the things you didn't had time to pursue before. And hopefully you're using the time to pursue things that are going to increase your productive value. That's going to increase your market value as an asset. And that can only happen if you reposition the conclusion. The third R is to remove. Remove the verdict. Now it's not a personal verdict. Unless, of course, unless you did something that was seriously offensive, it had serious repercussions and it was premeditated. Or if your actions repeated the over time cost the company dearly, then that's a different story. But assuming that's not the case, then it's not a personal verdict. The layoff is not a personal verdict. It's simply a market event. A lot of professionals, when they get laid off and it really wasn't a personal thing that they did, they can secretly start to assume and start to create meaning that, oh, this was a moral evaluation. And when it really isn't. So remove the false assumptions. Remove that negative meaning to it. Because oftentimes when layoff decisions are made, it's as a result of strategic business decisions. For example, an MNA is occurring and they were assessing cost structures and org chart and reporting. And as a result of that, the decision they made was to lay off certain individuals or a cohort of individuals. It could be because it's math, right? Business math, they have to look at full-time equivalents. They have to look at the costs and the expense of running a team of management and so on. So it could be a strategic mathematical decision. And as a result of that, oftentimes layoffs are not a moral evaluation, but they're simply just market events. Business events that happen when senior leaders are making strategic decisions based on having financial and business acumen. Now, I'm not suggesting that you remove the verdict. If indeed you did something that was offensive and had significant repercussions, then I'm not suggesting that you need to remove the verdict. If that was you and it was something you committed, or ownership is always the best way to go and having transparency of and self-awareness of how your actions really did cause repercussions and what it costs the company. There's importance to take ownership of your partner. But if that's not what happened, then it is important to remove the verdict because it's really difficult to rebuild your career and to rebuild and regain your authority. If you're thinking that it was a moral evaluation, it's hard to rebuild if you thought that it's because of you or if there was something wrong with you, then it's very difficult to rebuild from that mindset. The fourth R is to regulate. Regulate your nervous system because let's face it, a layoff really is a devastating event. And as a result of that, it was a shock to the nervous system and moving from that, if you're not regulating it, you can build up a lot of pressure and noise from within. And it really is your body's threat response. And if you don't deal with it, if you don't calm the nervous system and regulate it, then moving forward, you can always be in the state of reactive hypervigilance where you're looking for situations and you're looking for future threats that might cost you your job or that might people that might, you might interpret it at the group's actions of morally evaluating you or it might just that trauma will continue forward and it will be this cost constant background noise of cortisol spiking stress response, fight or flight and so on. And I don't want that for you. So this is your moment. If you are, if now that you have the time back, one of the things that is worthwhile to pursue are methods to reduce your stresses from your nervous system, methods to be able to regulate it, re-regulated. And it's not about trying to forget it because on this face of how can you forget something significant of a event like that in your life, but it's also not about minimizing it. What it really did happen and it really is a shock to your system. It could be a shock to your financial structures as well, your sense of continuity and so on. So it's not about minimizing it, but it is about regulating the nervous system and to be able to see the other side of it. I mentioned all the way back to the first R is to be able to reframe it. So when you start to reframe the event, not as the end of life and the end of your finances or black check on your resume, then that already starts the process of regulating your nervous system from here. Now, allow yourself the time to grieve. Allow yourself the time to feel sad and devastated and maybe leave it a little bit angry. But don't let that continue. And what I tell my clients in these situations is, well, one thing you can do is you can introduce a lot more activity in your life. And when I say activity, I don't mean like hobbies and sports. Well, you can, but I don't mean that. I mean, activity being inaction. It could be being inaction mentally, making constantly making, be making decisions, constantly be reflecting on your leadership, constantly be reframing and readjusting what you see the conclusion to be. That is the process of regulating a nervous system, but it's not minimizing it. And set a timer on that. Right. If you're going to be sad, if you're if you're grieving, set a timer on that. Don't be grieving for days and days on end. Right. Maybe you might say, okay, I'm going to have 15 minutes in a state of grief where I'm going to be journaling. And I'm going to be or maybe I'm going to be talking with someone I trust about it and express and being transparent about the grief that I feel. But when that 15 minutes is up, I'm going to move on to being inactive, inactivity, something that's productive, something that improves my life, something that improves my mindset, something that improves my perspectives and how I'm seeing the big picture of my current situation. Right. So it's a process. It's a process when the feeling and the event is still fresh, like for example, the day after the layoff, then I understand maybe 15 minutes is not enough time, but give yourself a time limit, a reasonable time limit where those feelings don't drawn on and cause you to be in a state of inactivity. Until you stabilize that internal state and regulate your nervous system, the decisions you make following will be one that is acting out of reactivity and not strategy. And this is why it's wise to regulate your nervous system without an unregulated or dysregulated nervous system. is constantly in fight or flight. And that's a reactive mode. When you're in reactive mode, you see more threats, you see more negative outcomes, you project the negative outcomes more, the pessimistic outcomes more than the other side of it. And you're going to be, with confirmation bias, you're gonna be proving your point and digging deeper and being more entrenched in that mindset in those beliefs and thinking. And that is a reactive loop. And as a result of that, on the health front of it, your nervous system is gonna be hyper reactive and keep on producing cortisol in your bloodstream and that constant stress, chronic stress could lead to ill health as well. So this is a really important decision for you to make in terms of regulating your nervous system and making it a routine to bring yourself back to centeredness so that your decisions can be more strategic. The fifth R is Reckon. Reckon with the costs. Because let's face it, a layoff really is expensive. I mean, there's a loss of income, there's a loss of benefits, there are a loss of loss of tenure-based perks that you might be receiving. And it's very costly to you, your family, the people that are depending on your income. So this is, hear me out. This is financial wealth building principles. Financial mastery is number one, to calculate your runway. So what's a runway? A runway is how much time do you have left before your savings run out, before your financial resources run out? And it is calculatable. I'm an invented that word. It is possible to, it's math. So go into all of your financial statements. Go into your credit cards, your bank accounts, anywhere where you are paying for things and calculate the sum total of all of your monthly expenses. Even the one time expenses, the one-off purchases that you make. Calculate those and do it for the past 12 months. And then bring an average, because sometimes you have some months where you spend more, like maybe around Christmas or around anniversaries and birthdays, right? So you want the last 12 months, calculate that and you can look at the history of all your statements, your credit cards and all that, download all those statements and just enter it into a spreadsheet, calculate. What is, and then average it out. What's the average monthly spend of the household, right? 'Cause it's a board, you gotta look at the whole household. And then now look at the sum total of all your financial assets. So your savings account, you gotta subtract the liabilities. If you have credit card debt, you gotta subtract that. Take a look at some of your investments in there. If you have a 401k, some of your, if you're in Canadian, then RSP, look at all of the, where you have money and you calculate the sum total of your assets, your financial assets, and you divide it between which ones are liquid and which ones are not. And now you can see the total of your financial resources and compare that with the expenses. Now, you're gonna be able to see quickly well how many months is it, let's say for example, your runway is three months. I have three months to figure something out without income and we could still survive exactly the way and things still stay the same for three months and then we run out of financial resources, right? If your number is three months versus if your number is three years, can you see how three years constitutes greater financial wealth? And the outcome of greater financial wealth is greater financial mastery. So you can see this is an important principle, is wealth financial wealth is measured more in terms of time. The one who has three years or more or five years to go without an income has greater financial wealth. So calculate your runway. And this financially prudent to do so because it gives you a real time data of your financial situation of your whole household 'cause so you can ensure that you're not just your present time is protected but your future is protected too. So now, let's say you calculated your runway and the number turns out to be six months. I'm just an example. This is now an opportunity for you to look at once again, the itemized expenses 'cause you went and you researched that for the Pile Trust 12 months. Recategorize them into which ones were one time expenses only, like birthday presents, one time only versus monthly recurring. And it could be a monthly recurring could be rent and more gorgeous monthly recurring. If you have car payments, it's monthly recurring, that Netflix subscription, that's monthly recurring, things like that, look at what are the monthly recurring ones? And now it's a time to really come at it through the lens of financial mastery and say, how can we live below our means? Because it's possible that when you look at your runway, that it's important now to make a decision to start to look at some expenses that are no longer serving us and just start to manage and start to reallocate resources where you're making more prudent investments that give you a return. For example, a Netflix subscription while entertaining and fun for the family doesn't give you a financial return, right? And you might say, well, I'm using it for educational purposes. And the chances are what percentage of the time are you using it for educational purposes? A Netflix account. And if you're watching documentaries, then how are you using what you learn from documentaries to translate that into further income or is it just knowledge for the sake of knowledge? So that's really important to think from that lens and start to look at living beneath your means. Number one, like second step. You calculate, first step was you calculated your runway. Second is to look at how you can live beneath your means. And the third step is to look at how can we have an emergency fund? If you haven't had one already, now is the time to start. And yes, you can start even after a layoff to start to say, how much can we set aside right now? And that's emergency fund. And then when you regain your authority and you get your next position, you start resuming your income again. Now every time, every month, allocate some of it, a portion of it, to your emergency fund. But start the habit now so the habit will continue when you get your next role. One of the most important topic areas that I teach all of my clients is financial mastery and building financial wealth. It doesn't matter what problem they want me to solve. Some of my clients come to me and they join my mentorship because they want help getting that promotion or they want help to increase their communication skills or they want help to position themselves strongly or regain confidence. No matter what problem they want me to solve for them, I still give them teaching and training on financial mastery because that's how important it is. And it's especially important in a layoff because you don't want to be caught in a situation where you're making next career decisions and you make it with a bad fit just because you're financially desperate. Right, that's not a good situation to be in. If you are looking for job postings, if you're interviewing and you accept a position that really isn't the right fit for you, but it's out of the mindset that, well, we need a job, we need the income now. You see, it has longer repercussions, short term gain, but longer repercussions and it's very difficult to be. It's a very difficult place to be in. So I'm telling you this now, it doesn't matter if you've been laid off recently or if you haven't been laid off, but you are just watching this video, spend time in building your financial prudence to your financial mastery and learn how to build a financial wealth. The sixth R is retool. Retooling means to level up. We are currently in the AI era where things are happening real fast and the whole world changes in the matter of months, not in the matter of years but months. If you think about it, it's an incredible pace of change. Way back in the agricultural era, centuries ago, right before electricity was invented. If you think about it, it took centuries before the world changed. And then electricity and then the industrial era came in when they invented steam engines and then factor the first factories of the world came into play. And even then, it took decades for change to happen in the world, right? A long time. Now the era that we live in, you don't have years. You may not even have one year. In the matter of a month, the whole world can change. The way companies operate, the way decisions are being made, the way money is being circulated, think about it, how many people are able to find ways of making a massive amount of money using the internet, the ways that never existed before this whole movement. So as a result of that, the people who will learn the right things, the fastest, are going to be the most valuable in this era, in this marketplace, which is why, if you're thinking about re-skilling and upskilling, I know that that term is very common in the corporate world, upskill. And a lot of professionals are still thinking upskilling is, they got to go back and get more credentials. And a credential means to get another college degree. And if your college degree is like two years, four years, my PhD was five years, and by the time you graduate and you get your degree, what you learned on the first year of that degree is already obsolete, and it's already common knowledge because of how quick information is passed around now, in an instant, and accessible it is. So you don't even have years. And this is why it's important to start to look at your education in a completely different way, your education in terms of retooling. This is your opportunity. If you've been laid off, and now you've had all this time to free up, free up because you don't have the role you've exited, use the time that you freed up to retool. If you haven't been laid off, and you're just watching this video, dedicate some time to retool. In the corporate world, what they value and they still value this, they value years of experience. You know, when you go to a job interview, they say, "Well, we want somebody with this and this and this, these are requirements, these are responsibilities, and preferably we want someone with, you know, five years of experience, eight years of experience. I'm going to give you a different lens to look at years of experience, right? HR writes the job description years of experience. But if you look at your lived experience, your personal experience, now sometimes you might say, well, I have eight years of experience, let's say, for example, writing code for companies to develop these systems that companies use. Well, sometimes if you look at that, how long did it take you to learn how to write code that way? Let's say, two years maybe, two and a half, three years, four years, right? And if you, if that's what you do and that's what you've been doing in the company, in the workforce, then it's not that you have eight years of experience. You have those four years of experience repeated over and over again. So this is a different lens. Years of experience doesn't constitute how many years you've been doing this. Years of experience constitutes, well, how many years did it take for you to gather enough wisdom that you've applied with insights and foresight, that specialized knowledge? How many years it take you to amass that specialized knowledge that you can exchange for a salary? That's years of experience. And then as you apply that, if you don't expand on that specialized knowledge and it's the same specialized knowledge, and that's what you do repeatedly for decades, then you can't add that and say, well, I have 25 years of experience because it's the same year of experience over and over again. So different way of looking at it. Now, if you look at it that way instead, it will, with data, it will bring to your awareness some gaps that you can fill and a personalized development plan that you can develop for yourself. Being laid off can really give you the time to develop better tools for yourself, and I strongly advise you to do so. Take this time to develop your proclivities and your proficiencies, but don't just learn about the things, right? Develop mastery in it. What is mastery? I keep telling you my definition. Mastery is the ability to execute effortlessly without the use of conscious resources. Focus on mastering it. Don't just focus on learning about it. And when you develop your proclivities and your proficiencies in that way, you develop them, then you deploy them in the marketplace. The seventh r is to redefine. Redefine your value narrative. I'm going to give it to you directly. You can't control the layoff decisions, but there's one very powerful thing that you can control. It's what you focus on and what it means to you. Let's face it, as human beings with our logical mind and our emotional mind, we are extremely good at telling ourselves stories about everything. We tell ourselves after a layoff, "Oh, people don't value me because I'm a woman working in a man's world or people don't value me because I'm too old or people don't value me because I'm Asian." And not to mention, we're also really good at telling ourselves stories about other people's intentions. "Oh, they must not like me because of so-and-so. Oh, they must be assuming this about me. They must be out to get me and fill in the blanks. We're so good at telling ourselves stories." And then what we do is we tell ourselves these stories and we project that out into the world and the world is reflecting that story right back at us and is solidifying our belief in the story that we just told ourselves. So this is an opportunity to reflect on, "Well, when in it, what has my focus been on? What's my narrative? And is it really true? How do I know it's true? Where did it come from? What assumption did I end up in that? And dead in that in those stories?" Answer those questions. And be honest, there's no shame in it. You don't have to share that with anyone if you don't want to. That reflective exercise is important because it's a human quality self-protection coming from our nervous system, our imbalanced nervous system, our fight-of-flight because we're looking for threats. We are hypervigilant, so then making these negative assumptions and telling us these stories is a protective mechanism, but at some point it no longer serves you, especially when you are advancing to your next level. Don't just define your losses. You've got to define your launchens, too, which means that everything that is set back will come with it, the positives and the negatives. Everything that is a success will also come with it as positives and negatives. So if you are sitting here in the layoff or in the impending layoff and you're defining all the losses, which is the negatives, then there's a whole other side of it that you're missing, which is, "What are the launches? What are, how is this setting you up for success? What are the positives involved in this? What are the advantages to you? How is it serving you?" And chances are, we don't focus our attention there because we don't dare to do that. It just feels so wrong. It just feels so inauthentic. And what I'm telling you is that if you don't, based on that feeling that I don't dare do that, then what's it costing you to stay here? What's it costing you to have this mindset counting your losses? What's it doing to your action? What's it doing to your nervous system? And how is it limiting the decisions and the interpretation that you can possibly gain if you see either side as well? Let me give you a very simple framework to redefine so that you can re-enter the workforce and it's this, clarify your value, which means that you identify the mindset, the skill sets, and the tool sets that are going to make you valuable in the marketplace. Let's start with mindset, shall we? Mindset is simply what your mind is predisposed to, the thoughts and the beliefs that your mind is predisposed to. And it really creates and shapes and influences how you interpret situations and how you make decisions. Let me give you a concrete example. As you're listening to this, your mind may be predisposed to see all the losses first. It's a predisposition. You weren't born that way. It's a learned predisposition. Or you might be someone where your mind and you see an event happening, your mind may be predisposed to assume that people have negative intent, harmful intent, right? And it's really important to set your mind to something that creates a higher degree of productivity and a higher degree of self-awareness and a higher degree of desired outcomes. Because your mind is what your mindset is what makes you valuable. Think about it. Now, a lot of my clients come to me because I have the frameworks and I have all the data from being an executive coach for more than 10 years. And I have really clear, scientifically backed data and frameworks on how to solve real life problems in the workforce, including financial mastery. But the reason why people resonate with me, my clients resonate with me, is because I have a mindset. The mindset that I have is different from the majority. And it's the mindset that makes you valuable. And you have a mindset in everything. What's your mindset in terms of your career? What's your mindset in terms of your relationships? Start with mindset. Identify the mindset that makes you valuable in the marketplace. Next, let's go to skill set where your mindset is what makes you valuable in the marketplace. Your skill set is what makes you irreplaceable. Your skill set is what you can do. Generally, what you can do. It is, or what outcome can you produce for the people that you serve? What problems can you solve? What risks can you dissolve? All of that, what can you do? Now, doing, when I talk about doing, there's different levels of doing. There's the tactical level doing, and there's a higher strategic level of doing that involves a higher altitude of thinking. Now, I encourage you, if your professional goal is advancement and greater responsibility, bigger opportunity, if that's your goal, then aim for strategic level of doing where you are elevating your altitude of thinking. But that is building your skill set. And now, if you've been laid off and you have this time-free-up, spend time on building your financial wealth and your financial mastery, and number two on building up your mindset and your skill set. And the third part is talking about the tool set. I mentioned earlier in terms of retooling, but tools is what makes you versatile. And when I think about versatility, I'm thinking about what makes you fast or modern or adaptable. And this is important because tools, it's where you really develop scalability, where you can scale your output. It's where you can create greatest amount of leverage in your contributions and in your legacy. And as a result of all of this in retooling, you can gain greater confidence in yourself, confidence in your ability to navigate layoffs, and confidence in your ability to navigate other events that you may not have control over. Once you have incorporated all seven Rs into your layoff to lift off sequence, now you can reenter. You can reenter as an asset. Reenter with authority. Reenter with with terms and on-your-own terms, because the old mindset that I encourage you to shed is the one that says, "Well, I need a company to take me back in." The new mindset is where you're the CEO of your own company and that company is your career. Your business is the career and you're the CEO of that business. That mindset says, "I am the resource and the company is merely the container in which I deploy my resourcefulness and my role is that container as well." Totally different mindset. When you're the CEO of your own business, which is your career, then you no longer depend on a company for your deployment, you no longer depend on them for your identity and you no longer depend on them for your trajectory. Instead, you write your own path on your own terms and with terms as well. And this is where you have maximal creativity to really deploy your resourcefulness because you took the time to retool and you took the time to develop your mindset and your tool set and your skill set. And now you come in and you know very clearly what you have to offer because you've elevated your value in the marketplace and your expertise has clear market value. That's when you know you're an asset. Now finally, I'll give you four CEO-level moves and then we'll close out the training for today. The first move is independent authority. A CEO does not depend on external organizations or external systems. They're an independent. So as an independent, you also don't depend on a company to take you back in. You don't depend on a company to be able to deploy your resourcefulness. You decide who you are. You decide what problems you solve. You decide the standards in which you operate and you decide your trajectory and what your destiny is gonna look like. And as a result of that, you really position yourself as an authority in your domain and you can focus on the higher level strategy to elevate your market, your value in the marketplace and to do the right things and focus on the right things to increase your productive value. The second CEO-level move is strategic de-risking. If you think about it, a good CEO does not build his business based on one client or one account. So similarly, the parallel is that you do not build your life based on one employer. Optionality is gonna become your new benefits package. Now, when I say this, I don't mean go job hopping and change jobs every few months or every couple of years. That's not what I mean. Optionality simply means that your life does not depend on one employer, your whole life and your career is not your whole life. Your life constitutes also your financial wealth. It also constitutes your physical wealth and well-being. It also constitutes your social life and your network. Your family, the people you love and care about, your spirituality, your own faith and what you believe in. It also constitutes your knowledge, your mentality, your intellect. Great, that's your whole life. So I'm saying your whole life does not depend on one employer. Now it's time to build yourself some options. What are other options in your life to enrich it? What are other options in your life that you need to fortify, to build foundations upon and fortify so that you have the life that you want to live, not just the career that you want to have? And how can you protect yourself so that your financial wealth does not depend on one paycheck? Because if you desire to be a leader, hear me out. If you desire to be your leader and you're fearful of losing your next paycheck, it is going to be so difficult to make leadership level decisions with that type of fear. It just is. And knowing that business has operate because there is a financial ecosystem, if you're immensely fearful of losing your next paycheck or not knowing where the next paycheck is going to come from, then if you ever need to be in that position, it's going to be very difficult to be prudent in making business decisions for the company because your own personal financials are not in order. So this is really important that your whole life does not depend on that one company. It's not built from that one company, but you have all the pieces in place. So you're building up your tools, your mindset, skill set, and your tool set, you're building up that mastery in all the right areas and you're seeing the bigger picture of your life because your career is not your whole life. The third CEO level move is to now start stepping into rooms that you would have never stepped into before. And a great CEO is the face of the company. They go and they talk to people. They build the right strategic partnerships. They go and they challenge their own thinking. They challenge their own assumptions in conversations with people. And they look for people who are doing much bigger things than they are smarter than they are, more financially successful than they are. They search out these rooms. So now is your time to look for these rooms, these opportunities to be a part of a community like this, to be a part of a mentorship, to be a part of a mastermind, to be a part to look for individuals who might run it. Now it could be me, you could join my mentorship, or it could be anyone. And this is really important because there was a time when you had your job, if you've been laid off, there was a time where you wanted so badly to be invited into rooms, decision making rooms or board rooms and you weren't. But now remember, your new mindset, CEO mindset, is you don't depend on one employer for your whole life. So now find your way in to rooms where conversations challenge you in rooms that you would never have thought of entering. And finally, the fourth CEO move is perceived expert status. I mean, this basic, in hiring decisions when you're interviewing for a role, when you are interviewing for your position, a lot of it is perception. Do they perceive you as an expert? Do they perceive you as an authority in this domain? So now that you have your time back, if you've been laid off, it's important to start to spend that time to develop your intellectual property. Become a thought leader. Even if you're watching this and you haven't been laid off, spend, allocate some of that time, thinking, dedicate some thinking time to developing your intellectual property and make it absolutely unique with your unique insights. Because now, when you go out and you reenter or if you're in a company and you're offering your expertise, now you can earn based on your internal capabilities and your internal intellect instead of believing that your value only comes from being employed by someone else.