Why Being Made Redundant Could Be The Best Thing That Ever Happens To You

Being made redundant is not pleasant. If it’s happened to you I’m sure you’ll agree. If you’re pre-middle aged when it happens you’ll probably bounce back quicker but if you happen to be 40 + things can be tough. Finding another job like the one you’ve lost will undoubtedly be trickier. Starting again in a whole new direction might be daunting. Here’s what I did after being made redundant twice in my late forties. Being made redundant was actually the best thing that has ever happened to me and could be for you.

The first time I was made redundant was the worst but I was in a better place than many are when it happened. I’d been in the job for 12 years working my way up the corporate ladder to a business development role. I had a decent salary, company car – all the trimmings. That meant that I was entitled to a modest settlement following 3 months of paid garden leave. So I had a little breathing space.

The industry I was in at the time was hit hard by the recession and I was the last of many to go. Because it was a very niche industry I got several offers from competitors and actually got a similar job. A similar job but with less pay and far less glamorous trimmings. I hadn’t touched the settlement pay out and was technically still on garden leave.

Don’t Let FEAR Influence Your Next Move

Most lawyers will point out that contractual clauses which try and stop you from working for the competition for a period after you’re laid off are unlikely to be enforced. Your employer has taken away your livelihood after all. If your work experience has been in a particular industry it’s understandable that you will need to look for work in the same industry. Unless of course you decide to strike out in another direction entirely as I did.

Anyway, I found myself being made redundant again 18 months after taking the new job. To be honest I wasn’t too surprised. I had the feeling that they were only after whatever clients I could bring to them from my old job. That proved to be exactly what they’d had in mind. This time though there would be no garden leave and no settlement.

So at 47 I found myself, for the first time in about 30 years, at the job centre to sign on. Not that £70 a week was going to be of much help but it was an entitlement and kept my national insurance payments up to date.

Whilst there, I was asked if I’d considered self-employment. I certainly had. In fact I had used some of the redundancy settlement to invest in an Internet based business. I had been working on that in my spare time. It wasn’t a success but it was to set me on a journey that has since proven to be life changing.

Flexible Re-Skilling After Being Made Redundant

As well as self-employment – possibly as a consultant in the industry that had spat me out as an employee – I also looked at further education. I realised that I’d need to re-skill in some way whatever path I chose. Being made redundant had also made me eligible for some discounted education courses. I decided to do a 100 hour course on Teaching English as a foreign language, followed by an advanced 40 hour TEFL online course.

Although I haven’t done anything with those qualifications to date, they have been very useful in the business I ended up starting.

I found that it was good to get back to learning. Time was very much on my mind though so I wanted to learn skills that would future proof me. Being in a long term relationship and a home owner, the life of a TEFL teacher – doing short term contracts in foreign lands – wasn’t really practical. The TEFL online course just highlighted the fact that to do it from home via the Internet would require an additional skill set – online marketing.

My short-lived franchise experience had shown me what was possible with the Internet affiliate marketing model. That and the TEFL courses made it obvious that Internet marketing training was probably a better option for me. So I started looking for that.

Re-education For A New World

There were and are lots of college and Uni courses on marketing but like the TEFL online course, they are pretty far behind the times. So my research began afresh. I knew enough about the online space to see that putting all the pieces together: websites, landing pages, graphics, sales funnels, email systems, marketing materials could be expensive and time consuming. I wanted a one stop shop that provided all that plus the all important training on digital marketing.

Don’t Go back To The Economy That Got You Here!

Did I find such a place? Yes – eventually. What you will find when you start looking is overwhelm. There are a gazillion courses, experts, tutorials, membership platforms and trainers on every aspect of digital marketing. Whilst you could probably trawl through all of them and find what you need piecemeal, that would be a little like buying a jigsaw piece by piece. As the Internet landscape changes so often and so quickly, many of those pieces would be out of date almost as soon as you bought and learned them.

Avoiding Information Overload

To be honest I was ready to give up on the internet business idea when I realised this. As luck would have it though, I happened upon the “one stop shop” just before I threw in the towel. It came in the form of a company called Six Figure Mentors (a little corny sounding I know) and partner company Digital Experts Academy.

They offered a free series of videos that introduced them. I ventured my email address to receive them. Over the next 7 days I realised that this was exactly what I needed but had begun to lose hope of ever finding.

The videos not only introduced the company’s founders Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek. They also outlined the evolution of the digital economy since the late 80’s to now. They explained how these guys in their early thirties had discovered Internet marketing. As a result they turned their backs on well paid but soul destroying corporate careers. They went on to build multiple 6 and 7 figure online business in all sorts of niches.

At some point these guys met at an industry event. They hatched the idea of putting together an educational platform which reverse engineered their success. This became the one stop shop that is SFM and DEA. It provides all of the resources, tools and systems that they used. They also developed many resources that were simply not there when they were getting started. Finally they made them step by step simple to set up.

In order to build this new company they used the affiliate marketing model. This means students can earn as they learn by promoting SFM and DEA as a business.  I had no clear idea of what I wanted to sell online, so for me this ticked all the boxes.

Rebuilding Confidence After Being made Redundant

Being made redundant can certainly give your confidence a major kicking. It can even make you doubt your ability to start afresh – particularly as a 40 or 50 something. The SFM and DEA however have worked hard to make all of the so-called techie stuff very simple. If you think creating websites, writing blogs or shooting videos is beyond you for example? You’ll be pleasantly surprised if you take a look at Stuart and Jay’s intro video series. You’ll find a link to it at the end of this post.

In our current age, with technology and automation growing at the rate it is, being made redundant will be a reality for many.  Building internet businesses around our experience, passions and interests is a now a smart option. It offers the ability to become autonomous, independent individuals in an exciting new economy rather than prisoners of an old, rapidly failing system.

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By Dave Menzies