How To Bounce Back From Redundancy To A Better Place

It’s not only possible to bounce back from redundancy these days, you can turn it into a huge positive. If you might soon be laid off or have been I know from experience that you’ll find that hard to believe right now. Bear with me here though and I’ll share an opportunity you may not be aware of.

For most people, myself included, redundancy creates a nasty head spin. In no particular order you experience: Anger, fear, confusion, loneliness and self-doubt. The income has gone or soon will be. If you had a company car that’s going or gone. It can be difficult to see how you’re going to bounce back from redundancy as all the ramifications sink in.

My own redundancy from a successful 6 year business development role, came at the age of 47. In total I’d been with the company for 12 years. I had just re-mortgaged the house to finance my partner’s business and recession was biting hard. Things couldn’t really have been worse.

Turning Hell Into Heaven

But in many ways it was the ideal time to stage a bounce back from redundancy. My age and length of service and the type of role I’d been in was in some ways advantageous. I was eligible for the maximum pay off and my contract entitled me to several months of garden leave on full pay before the final settlement. I  also got to keep the company car for that period.

I was also entitled to 6 months of job seekers allowance. A pittance but worth doing as it also kept my national insurance paid up thus safeguarding my state pension. I’m in the UK and this was 5 years ago. If you are in this boat check thoroughly what’s available to you where you are. It’s well worth it as I’ll explain.

Again, things may be different where you are but in Scotland at least you can find some training and financial help via the government. For example when asked if I’d considered self-employment. I had and redundancy made me eligible for a 6 month, enhanced extension of my job seekers allowance by taking a self- employment course.

Re-positioning Yourself To Win

My original plan to bounce back from redundancy was as a consultant in my area of experience. I had been dabbling in online business in my spare time however and decided that was the direction I wanted to go in. The self- employment course provided me with a business plan, which secured me a small grant and a low interest loan.

After some up’s and downs I found a company which offered advanced internet entrepreneur training. They also had a tiered business partnership structure – similar to but more flexible than a franchise model. After watching their introductory video series (which I’ll share with you shortly) I decided to invest.

That decision has proven to be one of my best and has enabled me to bounce back from redundancy in ways I couldn’t have imagined. We’ve been able to re-locate to the seaside – a long held dream my partner and I shared but couldn’t see how to achieve.

I’ve been able to use my new digital marketing skills to build her business and mine here, and have huge levels of time freedom. Financially I’ve had months where I earn 4 times my old monthly salary. But more than all of that, I feel more free than I ever have.

Lets be honest here: One of the elements that drive you to bounce back from redundancy is probably revenge. Call it closure if you will. Yes it’s best served cold and its best done by being successful after it.

We live in times where technology is growing at an incredible rate. It’s actually the next stage of human evolution. This will see lots more traditional jobs and business models disappear. But it also provides incredible opportunity for those with the skills to leverage it.

Making Sure You Never Need To Bounce back From Redundancy Again

Re-skilling is usually essential in order to bounce back from redundancy. The skills to have are the ones most appropriate for our time and right now that means digital skills.

My advice if you are looking at ways to bounce back from redundancy is not to simply try and replace what you had. Don’t just look for a similar role in a similar industry. Those roles and that industry might be gone soon. Its far better to transition to the digital economy. Equip yourself with skills that’ll make you independent and self-reliant for the foreseeable future.

Make it the last time you ever have to bounce back from redundancy in other words. To check out the people and resources that helped me to do just that click on the image below.