Being fired is the best opportunity you'll ever have—I would know

A decade ago this month, I was fired.

I didn’t deserve it, but I also didn’t handle it well. I did things I’m still embarrassed about. I’ve never fully admitted all of it, but I’m going to change that today—it’s time to come clean.

While I’m dumping skeletons from the closet, that’s not at the core of my intentions today. My goal with sharing is two fold:

• Sharing my story of getting fired normalizes layoffs and firings for others.

• It’s my hope that by highlighting this part of my journey, I can help others see how quickly they can rebound and rebuild.

In many ways, 10 years is a long time. In that time, I traveled abroad, worked my way up from blogger to Creative Director, founded a company, raised millions in capital, established three new humans, traveled the country for my company meeting with billion dollar brands, got into a world renowned business accelerator, launched exclusive partnerships with monster companies like Garmin, built the hunting social media app of the year, and perfected the gluten free chocolate banana pancake. 

I’m a different person now.

I don’t lay my achievements out to brag or to play some pseudo mind game, showing my past employer what they missed out on. I hated that place and was trying to get out—I started interviewing elsewhere just two weeks before getting canned. 

No, my goal with oversharing is to reinforce that the emotional rollercoaster after being fired or laid off is normal and short lived. It’s a chapter in the story, not the title of the book. I went through many stages of grief after my perp walk out the door—anger, fear, panic, etc. I carried that with me for a while, but now believe the fastest way to recover from these events is to realize your previous employer has only as much hold over your emotional well being as you allow. 

You’re now in charge of your future.

(Also, if I ever work for anyone else again, I’ll never have more than one plant. It was awkward making three escorted trips to my car carrying out my cacti collection minutes after getting fired.)

Boredom led to curiosity—and my pink slip

I quit photography and joined a small advertising agency in April 2011 as a Social Media Assistant, which is effectively what we today call a Community Manager. I was writing social content for a variety of brands (mostly a lousy Mexican restaurant chain and an affordable line of German wines—I still enjoy their Rieslings). I was working under a micro manager and grew bored with the role and my limited opportunities to step outside of my lane. I was happy to move to the role of Public Relations Specialist the next year. Soon after my role change the agency’s culture fell apart due to several factors, our revenue plummeted, and I grew to hate going to work.

In February 2013, I was living with imposter syndrome. I had pivoted my career from journalism to social media to PR, and I felt trapped. With my messy green résumé, I thought I needed more time in one role to make a meaningful next step in my career. I now see how naive I was, as I’ve often hired people with less who turned out to be rock stars. 

My apathy with my work combined with my propensity to ask “what if?” led me to realize that our clients were making huge bets on marketing with nearly no data. They were usually making really bad bets, actually, such as going all in on new menus because the CEO thought “skinny burritos”would be something consumers wanted; it turned out, they just wanted more fried food and queso.

I spoke to another employee, Zack Grimes, about the bad decisions our restaurant clients made. Zack and I saw an opportunity to solve this problem by building an analytics company that could use sales data to inform marketing in real-time to create better social media content, television commercials, and, eventually, even have real-time changes to their menu. What if instead of just showing Bud Lights in your commercials, you showed Sam Adams, because the data said your highest value customers enjoy that beer more? You could draw in your most ideal customers with imagery that will resonate. We even planned to use the data to help consumers be able to find times that were typically less busy, a feature now built into Google. 

The idea was a slam dunk. In fact, McDonalds bought Dynamic Yield, a company that did much of what we were trying to build in 2019 for $300M. Dynamic Yield executed. We did not.

Zack and I were young, and quite frankly had no clue what we were doing. He and I brought in a third cofounder, Jacob Knight, a fellow agency guy who I knew from college. I had done a ton of research, and we had met three or four times in noisy bars when a huge disruption to our plans happen. 

Zack was laid off after the agency entered a tailspin that winter.

To accelerate the story, the company found Zack’s personal Dropbox on his work machine, and went through all of his personal files. He asked to unsync when he was let go, and they said they were going to wipe the machine. Instead, the CEO browsed his personal files, which is just flat out unethical. They found our operating agreement, which had my name on it along with our business plan. I was fired as a result, and the agency told employees the next day I was trying to steal clients. 

That was a lie. We had screenshots of some of Zack’s projects to show Jacob what Zack was capable of, which I had explained to my boss two days before getting canned when she asked me about it. Still, the CEO gave me a brief, fiery exit.

And I was furious.

Bad decisions

It would be weeks before I realized how stupid I was for being mad over being forced out of a company I had come to resent. Still, I made dumb decisions that I couldn’t take back. I logged into my PR software and deleted a list of media contacts I had built over a span of weeks, and I emailed my clients to let them know I was gone. It would be years later before I realized this was effectively stealing—I was paid to do work, and the work was the company’s, not mine. I had no right to communicate with those clients anymore. Thankfully the company did, I believe, recover those records.

My youth and anger got the best of me. I am still embarrassed by my actions, and it’s time to admit what I did was wrong and unethical. It was childish and spiteful, and is one of my only true regrets so far in my professional career.

A chance to reinvent myself

I immediately started working on finding a new job. I reached out to everyone, and in reading through my emails now, 10 years later, there is so much resentment in my tone. But one email exchange in particular helped me start to find my way out of the fog of petulance. I emailed a college mentor to let him know what happened, and he sent me a thoughtful reply. A key excerpt:

“Look on the bright side: you found out early this wasn't the place you want to be; some people don't realize that until they have invested a lot more into an organization.”

And I suddenly saw my resume as a blank canvas—a chance to completely reinvent myself.

I was free to become whatever I wanted.

Within weeks I had a job at a new agency, OOHology. I told them up front that I was just fired for trying to start a company, and that one day, I was going to try again. They assured me they didn’t care. We hired several people away from my old agency, and we built a killer creative team. After five years at OOHology, I left to start my journey with GoWild, I had their full support. In fact, the agency’s CEO eventually invested in GoWild through his venture fund. I still get lunch and keep in touch with my old OOHology team.

Those guys mentioned in this story? They’re working with me today. Zack is my Cofounder, President, and Jacob is our Director of Strategic Partnerships. And two of my teammates from OOHology work with me, too. Donovan Sears is another cofounder, and Arica Johnson is our Director of Member Experience. I’ve now spent most of my career with Arica and Donovan.

It’s a chapter, not the title of the book

Fast forward five more years after going full time with my company, and it’s been madness. Running a startup that pivoted in the middle of a pandemic has been so challenging at times. The stress can be a lot, but no matter what, I’ve never felt like I did when I was working at that first agency (the one that fired me). I love what I do. Sure, anxiety hits me now, but I do my best to remind myself that this is a chapter, not the title of the book. 

If you ever find yourself fired or laid off, I encourage you not to worry about the hole in your resume or having to explain why you left a position. Now that I’ve hired dozens of people, I can tell you—no one cares. Instead of dwelling on the past, spend time reinvigorating the list of professionals in your life, re-evaluating the content you consume and finding the direction you want to go. 

When you get fired, it's the smallest of ticks in your life's timeline. It can be the beginning of an incredible journey, but it’s up to you to flip it from being oppressed, to being an opportunity. 

Remember, what happened to you is not who you are.

What's past is prologue.

3 tips for bouncing back from being fired or laid off

1) Keep a routine

This was Zack’s advice to me when I got fired. “I just went through this, and the best thing I did was keep my routine. I woke up at the same time, spent my day looking for work, and I quit when the work day was done.” I took his advice, and while I was pissed, I didn’t sulk. I was aggressive on tapping into my then meager network. People who fail to do this often find themselves floating without any sense of direction. 

2) Reach out to your network, and be real

There is no shame in what happened to you—even if you got fired. People make mistakes and get fired. Sometimes people get fired when it really should have been called a layoff (I’ve been told I was fired because the agency needed to cut payroll, for example). Don’t get hung up on this part. Just start reaching out to who you know, and let people know your last gig didn’t work out and define what you’re looking for in your next role. Most people will give you some leads. You can see my official process for finding a great next job here.

3) Lean into things and people you love

While you need to keep a routine to bounce back, it’s also beneficial—for your physical and mental health—to find joy in things that have nothing to do with work. If you love cooking, spend two hours one night making that complex Italian dish you didn’t have time for on most work nights. Get outside and hike, hunt or fish—nature will always find a way to heal. See friends you’ve neglected. You will never regret having some extra time for these moments. 

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Who I’m listening to: The Black Crowes

What I’m reading: “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” (I’ve finally broken the halfway point in the 56 hour audiobook)

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