I didn’t expect to be laid off. The shock was hard, yet it showed me why I must invest in myself

The news arrived on a normal March morning. A team member pinged me to say she had just been let go. I asked if she was joking. She was not. A short video call later, I was out too. I was thirty five and it was the biggest career setback I had ever faced.

I had grown up on a clean corporate progression story. Work hard, earn promotions, ride a few strategic hops to better pay and benefits, then settle into a stable role until retirement. That script worked for people who started their careers in a different cycle. It looked rational because the system around them was more predictable. What felt like a personal plan was really a macro plan in disguise.

By 2024, the hits kept coming across the headlines. Dyson trimmed teams. Samsung cut roles. The pattern felt chillingly familiar. In my own case, I had led effective teams, shipped results, and survived three previous rounds of cuts elsewhere. None of that mattered when the business struggled with product market fit and marketing became a cost center instead of a growth lever. Two weeks before the decision, leaders said jobs were safe. That gap between message and reality was the hardest part to digest.

Shock arrived first. Then loss. Then the quiet voice that asks if you were ever good enough. I had no roadmap and few people in my circle who had been through a retrenchment. So I did something I had avoided when I felt strong. I hired a career coach. I cried in front of someone who was not family. Naming the fear made it smaller. The math and the options came into focus.

There were sensible choices on the table. Run the corporate playbook again. Polish the resume. Aim for an adjacent role. Upskill into a fresh function and try to reenter on a higher slope. Those moves were safe on paper. They also put my life on a track that had failed me once already. I kept circling a third door that always felt like a fantasy when things were smooth. Start something of my own.

I had told myself many times that I would consider a venture when the moment was perfect. The moment never arrived because there is always a reason to wait. You have children. You have a mortgage. You have a title that looks good on LinkedIn. What I finally understood is simple. The corporate ladder is a single platform dependency. You are a vendor with one customer. The value you create is real, yet your control over timing and tradeoffs is limited. That misalignment is small when markets are calm. It turns brutal when a product swap or a budget freeze hits your function.

I chose to build. I called it OtterHalf. I wore every hat in the first months. Delivery, sales, billing, operations, hiring decisions that kept me up at night, parenting two young daughters while relearning what work could look like. It was messy and tiring. It also felt more honest than any job I had held in years. In those eighteen months I learned more about business than I had in four years of a formal degree. The lessons were not tucked inside case studies. They were attached to invoices, client expectations, and the reality of my own energy.

In March 2024, we closed our first year with six figure revenue. That number did not make me rich. It did something more important. It confirmed that the model could stand on its own legs. It proved that the business had a right to exist. It gave me data I could trust because I had lived every part of it.

The biggest shift was not financial. It was the goals I used to measure progress. For years I had believed that playing by the rules would deliver stability, fulfillment, and more control over my time. That belief kept me loyal to systems that did not owe me the same loyalty. It is not bitterness to say there are no guarantees. It is clarity. If there are no guarantees, why not direct your risk toward outcomes you care about. Why not accept uncertainty in service of a life you actually want.

I still do not have outsized monetary rewards to show off. The business might not make it over the long arc. That is the statistical truth of entrepreneurship. Here is the other truth that matters to me. I am working for myself and for the people who put their trust in me. I am building with clients who want to make a difference. I am surrounded by team members who chose to stay when it would have been easier to leave. The scoreboard looks different when the game is your own.

Time became the most valuable line item. Being my own boss let me design a schedule that starts with my daughters. I can drop them at school. I can be there when they return home. Work never ends, and it still stretches into night during a crunch. The difference is intention. This season with them will not come back. I want a career that honors that reality, not one that treats it as a scheduling error.

If this sounds like a pitch for everyone to quit, it is not. Corporate roles can be meaningful. They can fund dreams. They can teach skills that a founder will need later. What I am questioning is the default script that treats employment as the safest choice and entrepreneurship as reckless. Safety is not a function of structure. Safety is a function of agency, adaptability, and savings that buy you time to make adjustments. The moment a company decides to pivot away from your function, the perceived safety flips. Your risk was there all along. It was just invisible while the graph pointed up.

The founder lens helped me reframe my own career. Think of it as a product with a model. The product is your skill stack and your energy. The model is how value converts into money, autonomy, and time. In a large company, the conversion is mediated by budget cycles, politics, and strategy swings that you do not control. In your own venture, the conversion depends on clients, service quality, and relentless simplicity in how you operate. One path is not morally better. One path gave me levers I could touch with my own hands.

People sometimes ask for a tidy lesson. I have only this. Bet selection matters more than effort once you are already a hard worker. Had I kept sprinting on the same track, I might have earned another title and then watched a fourth round of cuts. By switching to a track with higher personal agency, I accepted fresh risk in exchange for clearer feedback. When OtterHalf wins or loses, I see the cause. I can respond without waiting for permission. That trade is worth it to me.

If you are reading this while sitting in uncertainty, I am not going to sell you a fantasy. The first quarter might pay you less than your previous paycheck. The tenth invoice might take longer to collect than you want. You will second guess your decision and you will question your identity. You will also notice that you own more of your hours and more of your attention. You will set boundaries that a past version of you only pretended to hold. You will find a different kind of stability in the habit of solving real problems for real customers.

Here is the sentence I wish someone had handed me on that March morning. You can rebuild your career as a system that serves your life, not the other way around. If you do it, keep your costs honest, keep your promises simple, and keep your time aligned with your values. The rest is iteration.

There are no guarantees. That is still true. If I must place a chip, I will place it on myself. I will place it on the people who chose to build with me. I will place it on work that lets me be present with my family and proud of what I ship. That is how I choose to bet on myself after layoff.