Speaker #0We are living through a time of record corporate layoffs. And if you've just been through that, I really don't think you need an episode about reworking your CV or suddenly becoming a content creator so that you can activate your LinkedIn network. I want to talk today about something more structural because a layoff forces you to decide what kind of relationship you want to have with your work going forward. In this episode, I'm going to describe three paths that lie ahead of you and help you to decide which is right for you, and then give you concrete actions so that you can move forward. If your career looks great on paper but feels wrong in your bones, you're not alone. Welcome to From Corporate to Calling, your lifeline into meaningful work. I'm Melissa Murphy, a regenerative business mentor and former startup CEO. who walked away from corporate systems to create work that brings life. Each week, I share stories, reflections, and provocations to help you recognize the signs of burnout and make a career change with purpose. If work looks good but feels wrong, this is your invitation to get out of corporate and into your calling. I could record many episodes about the dynamics behind the layoffs that we're seeing, particularly how these are being handled by corporate. But instead, I want to focus on you and what you do next. So this episode is for you if you are one of those people whose role was eliminated, and that's not my word, unexpectedly, or perhaps you are clinging on, nervously waiting to see whether you're next. Maybe you've survived multiple restructures and you just don't want to live through this again. Or maybe the worst has happened and now you are applying for jobs from a place of panic. I understand the pressure, but it's important to balance responding quickly with choosing consciously. And you do get to make a choice here. Before anything else, I need to say that the financial implications are real. Income matters. mortgage payments, school fees, healthcare. I understand all of that and nothing that I'm about to say overrides that. In fact, if the financial imperative is first and foremost for you, you don't need to listen to this episode. You know, you need to get out there and do whatever you can to get a job and to get that income again. And I'm actually not the best place to help you. But there are many people who don't have that immediate imperative, who have been fortunate enough to build up some financial cushion, or perhaps the layoff comes with a redundancy payment or some kind of other payout. And actually, there is a window of opportunity here. And for those people, I want to talk a little bit more deeply about you what a layoff is actually disrupting. Because what makes it so destabilizing isn't just the loss of salary, it's that something more complex gets disrupted at the same time. Losing your job, particularly when it is sudden, unexpected and delivered in an extremely cold way, it really shakes your identity. You know, you probably thought you had years more at that company, or that that promotion conversation was just around the corner, or maybe that the long-term incentive plan would vest, you thought that stability was implied. A part of your identity was tied to the role that you were doing, and when that disappears, maybe even in an email or a text at 3am, you find yourself questioning, was your loyalty? misplaced? Did you invest all of that time in something that was never going to give back to you? And those are valid questions. And it doesn't mean that you failed. It means that most organizations are designed to preserve themselves, whatever the implications for their people. So yes, replacing income matters, but this moment is rarely just about income. It's about the way that you see your future. And the question becomes, do you want to structure it? in the same way again. So for most people the default reaction here is kind of laced with panic. You know you rewrite your CV, you get back in touch with those recruiters, you do a lot of kind of wild and wide applications, perhaps you even lower your expectations down because you're just thinking I really just need something for now and hopefully that you move will restore your income. But it also restores the same dependency that you were locked into before. It puts you back in the same position where someone else can upend your identity overnight. Now, not everyone has choice at this point, but for those who do, for those who that abrupt ending has come with some kind of cushion, this can be a really powerful decision point. and a moment where you choose a different kind of trajectory for your career. The real decision isn't actually which company hires you next, it's whether you want your career structured the same way it was before. So I've mentioned that word structured a couple of times, let's look into that. What do I mean by structure? I mean ask yourself, are you comfortable with a situation where One employer controls your income, where one employer controls your time, when one employer controls termination. You know all about that last one. And where that single employer is purely focused on profit, growth, protecting their margin, pleasing shareholders, winning in the marketplace. If that does not sit well with you. And if your experience has brought perhaps some underlying discomfort with who you worked for or the way that work was set up for you, then this is an opportunity to really think about what you want. And I think there are two paths that you can consider if you already know. that you are not willing to keep making that trade-off at this point in your life. The first route that you can consider taking, if the idea of ceding control over your income and your time and your purpose, not to mention the values and culture of how you work, if you're done with that, there are two options to explore. Number one, a structured pause. How did the word pause just make you feel? Because for most people it sets them into a state of panic. The thought of actively choosing to step back, to actually even step out of the world of work for a limited period of time to deeply reassess what it is that you want is, well to be honest it's kind of a power move, but it's one that A lot of people just simply don't have the courage to take. If this is the path for you, I applaud you for your courage. There are only two things that I suggest you do to really make this happen and to maximise the investment that you're making in that pause. The first thing is calculate your financial runway so that you can fully relax into this period instead of Constantly battling with worries and doubts and feeling like you're being irresponsible and burning through your savings. Instead, do this consciously and from a place of empowerment. As I said, invest in yourself. And the second thing is, and this is really, really important. Switch off. No job boards. No LinkedIn. No WhatsApp groups. of former colleagues, whatever it is that will distract you and get you thinking that you're getting behind or that you're getting off track, anything where comparison comes up, just do not let it take up space for you right now. This really is a once in a lifetime opportunity to truly reflect on who you are outside of those roles that have previously defined you. Distractions and comparisons will utterly spoil that. This is a time to simply be, to slow down your decision making, to detox from the corporate structures that have controlled you and probably shaped and limited your thinking and even your potential. And I have seen people do this and I have seen them emerge from these periods with such clarity and energy, feeling clear and ready for their next step. And I believe that is possible for you. And you know what else? Often when people step back, there's this kind of alchemical, energetic magic that happens, that when they return, opportunities start showing themselves. I don't know why that is, but I've seen it happen too many times to think that it's a coincidence. So you If this is right for you, really, really invest. Do this consciously. Do it from a place of empowerment. This is your time to rediscover who you are and what you want next. And there's a second path. And this path is all about reclaiming agency over those things that we discussed. So your time, your income, your effort, your values. You've just experienced what it feels like when you don't have control over your income and when someone else gets to decide to withdraw it. This path is all about ensuring that you don't go back to that level of dependency again. And this does not need to be a kind of death-defying leap into the unknown. I know that most people who have spent their lives as an employee and who have had perhaps a career path that has always seemed laid out for them and thought very strategically about each next step and done all the right things and achieved everything that they were supposed to, ticked all the boxes. I know that for those people, the idea of stepping out there on your own is understandably really Thank you. quite scary. So this is about taking things slowly. It's about taking back control one little step at a time. The priority here is to reclaim agency. With time, you can use that agency to move your work life towards the things that you feel truly passionate about, where you feel that you can make a meaningful contribution. But you don't need to leap to that right now. What I am suggesting is that right now you focus on taking control of the value that you already know how to create. I think that's a really mature and manageable approach. So look, you were let go from a structure you didn't control, but that doesn't reduce your capability. It just exposes who had the control. Building agency means taking the... expertise you already have, the problems you already know how to solve, and offering that yourself on your terms. You know that you have led complex projects, you've managed difficult stakeholders, you have consistently delivered under pressure, you've improved systems, you have built teams, you have embedded cultures. None of that disappears. just because someone got to take your title away. So what does this look like in practice, this process that I'm describing of reclaiming agency slowly and manageably? It might look like consulting on a specific problem that you have solved many times before. It might look like going after contract work in your particular domain. It might look like doing you fractional work for smaller organisations in the same space where you used to work. It might look like some kind of paid advisory where you're really leveraging your expertise and experience or retained specialist support. There are a lot of different options out there and this isn't about you needing to become an entrepreneur overnight. It's about, as I said, taking small steps and about monetizing what you already know how to do. Stay in your zone of genius. Stay where you know you can deliver value. And let me say again, you are highly accomplished. You're not starting from scratch. You are building from your experience. At the same time, it's important to acknowledge that you may be taking your first steps into structuring work on your own terms. And that's scary for many people. And it's a skill that you build. I will always remember a conversation that I had with an investor that I'd worked with for many years who was very highly respected right at the top of his field. You know, someone that I'd always kind of looked up to and been kind of slightly in awe of because of the depth of his expertise and his kind of strategic thinking and, you know, the kind of rigor with which he could make difficult decisions. And he called me one day out of the blue and he asked for my advice because he was moving country and for various kind of... employment, legal employment reasons that I don't fully understand to do with the country he was moving to, he needed, he was continuing with the fund that he was working with, but he needed to do so as an independent. And he needed to also build a portfolio of work in addition to his main role with the fund. And this person that I had always thought was kind of quite brilliant, who was quite brilliant, is quite brilliant, and also, you know, a little bit intimidating. said to me Alyssa I don't know how to do this I have never worked for myself I've never not had that salary coming in I'm scared can you help me and first of all what wonderful vulnerability but I'm sharing this story so that you know you are not alone I have never worked for someone else this is natural to me I have never had the luxury of knowing that a salary was guaranteed at the end of the month. And that is why I am able to help people to make this transition because I know what it's like to need to generate your own income, find your own opportunities. You don't know that yet but you are taking steps in the right direction and what I can tell you is that the freedom that it brings you or more specifically actually the sense of ownership that it brings you is absolutely worth. the kind of shaky feelings about taking a new path. So what is the actual shift you're making here? It's actually, as I said before, it's simple and it's a structural one. In corporate roles, you apply for jobs. In independent work, you define offers. That's it. That's all you have to do, define your offer. So how do you do that? Break it into two steps. Number one, what is it that you do have to offer? Think about you What problems have I solved repeatedly? What outcomes have I delivered? What am I just uniquely good at? What do people always seem to come to me for? What do I end up doing whether or not it's in my job description? Or a question I really love is, what are the things that feel really easy to me that others seem to struggle with? That's a really sweet spot to build an offer from. And then once you have your... description of an offer. The second question is who needs that right now? What type of organization? What size are they? What stage are they at? Who within the organization would be the right person to approach? And that's it. Then you know your what and you know your who. And that is a really good foundation to build from. And you don't need to get carried away. Let me say this. You are not becoming an entrepreneur overnight. You do not need to invest in branding. You do not need to spend a long time developing a website or redefining your identity or making big announcements on LinkedIn about this new path that you're taking. That's actually really not what I'm suggesting. It may well come with time, but right now, use the opportunities that are right in front of you. You know, reach out to your network. Go back to contacts that you have built up. over your career. Do the next step that's right in front of you rather than trying to leap ahead where you just get out of your depth and overwhelmed and I guarantee if you go too far you're going to end up right back on those job boards longing for the security or the perceived security of that employed job. But remember you made a decision that you do not want to go back to that and give up control in that way again. So once you have your offer and you know who needs it, then the last piece really is just thinking about what is the model that you're going to offer. Hourly consulting, project-based work, fractional leadership, short-term contracts, or maybe right now it's a mix of all of those things and you're quite happy to be flexible. You know, know what your rate is, know what you're worth, go out there and make this happen for yourself. This journey of reclaiming authority in work and then eventually using that authority to move your work in a very meaningful direction where your work becomes truly aligned with your values and the kind of future that you want to create. This is the work I specialize in. I work with highly capable professionals and translate their experience into independent income without pretending that they are maverick entrepreneurs if that doesn't feel true to them. The mistake most people make is rushing this or over complicating it. They try to reinvent themselves instead of monetizing what already works and this reclaiming agency stage is really important. I don't recommend that you skip it. So I've already given you quite a little bit of homework here so let's just break this down into some concrete actions that you can do maybe even this week. Why not write down five problems that you have solved more than once? Then write down three types of organizations that you know are struggling with those problems. Then go out there and have two informal conversations with people in that space and learn about their experience. Okay, you're not pitching, you're not trying to sell to them, you're simply validating an idea. And from there you can define the simplest way that you can get paid. to help those people. This path that you are choosing, it's not dramatic, it's deliberate. It starts with control over how you earn and over time that control can evolve into work that feels aligned, intentional and perhaps a little bit more like your calling. A layoff doesn't force reinvention, it forces a decision about the structure of your career and I think that can be a beautiful opportunity for change. I work with people who decide they don't want their income entirely dependent on a single employer again. And if you've listened this far in the episode, I think that's you, because you've experienced what that dependency costs. Now, most of people in your situation, they don't feel ready at first, they feel cautious, and that is normal. But if you suspect that your next chapter isn't written entirely inside of corporate, the approach that I've outlined today. will help you to leave that structure behind and move towards a meaningful work life. I'm going to suggest that you go deeper with the help of this podcast. So here are some episode suggestions for you to listen to next, depending on which piece of this you really want to strengthen. So I recently did an interview where I went into some detail on taking an ecosystem. approach to your career and what those first steps out of corporate actually look like. That's episode 67. Alternatively, if you are just done with this shitty job market and you really want work on your own terms, then 58 is a really punchy one for you. And if you're feeling the identity impact piece of what we've talked about here today, and you're really feeling shaken by having that. job identity taken away from you, that's something that I explore in more detail in episode 53. All three of those episodes will be in the show notes, scroll down to the bottom and they'll be linked there for you to go and listen. And don't forget to follow the podcast so you don't miss future episodes as well. I'm going to leave you with this, layoffs are not a personal failure, they can be a powerful question. You can choose to rebuild the same structure that you had before, or you can design something more resilient and more meaningful for yourself. Whatever you choose, decide consciously, and please know that I'm rooting for you. If this episode of From Corporate to Calling was helpful or inspiring, follow the show so you don't miss an episode. And if you know someone who's questioning their career, send them this podcast. Lifelines are meant to be shared. Remember, you don't have to tolerate burnout or misalignment. You can redirect your skills into meaningful work that that brings back life to you and to the world around you.
