Getting laid off didn't end my career It forced me to build the job nobody was w
By Steven Pope · May 26, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Getting laid off didn't end my career
It forced me to build the job nobody was willing to hand me
At 30, I was stuck on one brutal question
Who is going to pay me $200,000?
Then the decision got made for me
I got laid off
I had just moved to Atlanta
bought a house
helped grow a company from $100K a month to $500K a month
Their thank you "We're going in a different direction"
For 48 hours
I wandered
Stewed
Questioned everything I thought I knew
Then I wrote one LinkedIn post
I'm going to do some consulting while I figure out my life
48 hours after that
I signed my first client
That client is still with me 8 years later
We took them from $4K a month to $1M a month
The lesson is simple
The market does not owe you the job you think you earned
Sometimes you have to manufacture it yourself
Waiting to get picked is the slowest path forward
Betting on yourself is the scary one
It is also the only move that ever changed anything for me
I did not get the job I wanted
So I built the company instead
That basement consulting gig now manages over $1.4 billion in Amazon GMV