February 2025 hit different.

After 20-plus years in corporate communications, an MBA and a stack of “exceeds expectations” reviews that could wallpaper a small office, I got laid off. Not because I wasn’t good enough. Not because I didn’t deliver. But because budgets shifted and I became a line item that needed to disappear.

If you’ve been there, you know the feeling. That gut-punch moment when loyalty and performance mean absolutely nothing against a spreadsheet.

But here’s what I didn’t do: panic-apply to 47 jobs while refreshing LinkedIn every 12 minutes.

Instead, I did something I should have done years earlier. Something that would have made that layoff feel less like a crisis and more like an inconvenience.

I built a backup plan.

Not someday. Not “when I have more time.” Right then. And honestly? I wish I’d started the day I got my first performance review instead of waiting until I had no choice.

The Thing Nobody Tells You About Layoffs

Job loss doesn’t just mess with your bank account. It messes with your identity.

You go from “Senior Director of Whatever” to “person Googling ‘how to update LinkedIn headline’ at 3 a.m.” Your entire sense of stability evaporates because you’ve spent your whole career believing the myth: work hard, stay loyal, and you’ll be fine.

Spoiler: you won’t always be fine.

I’d already seen this play out in January 2020 when my employer cut more than 300 directors in a single afternoon. They called it “performance calibration.” It was brutal, efficient and proof that no amount of talent or tenure protects you when the business decides it’s time to restructure.

So when it happened to me five years later, I knew better than to believe the fairytale that my next corporate job would be any different.

What I Did Differently This Time

I didn’t wait for permission. I didn’t wait for the “right time” or the “perfect idea.” I just started building.

Here’s what that actually looked like:

I stopped treating income like a single-source problem.

For years, I’d dabbled in side projects: consulting gigs, a travel franchise partnership, a resale business. But I’d always treated them like hobbies instead of legitimate income streams. After the layoff, I got serious. I stopped saying “someday I’ll scale this” and started asking “what’s the next $500 coming from and when?”

I mapped my reality first.

No fantasies. No “I’ll just work 80 hours a week until this takes off.” I looked at my actual time, energy, skills, capital and risk tolerance. I was honest about what I could reasonably sustain without burning out or tanking my personal life. That clarity made everything easier because I stopped chasing opportunities that didn’t fit.

I validated small wins before scaling anything.

I didn’t build a massive course, launch a full-scale consulting practice or invest in inventory I couldn’t afford. Instead, I tested tiny offers to see what people actually wanted. A $600 website project. A small batch of resale inventory. Proof-of-concept work that generated income fast without requiring a business plan the size of a novel.

I engineered systems so nothing lived only in my head.

Templates. Checklists. Dashboards. Light automation. I built my income streams to run in less than an hour a day because I knew I’d eventually want my time back. Systems aren’t sexy but they’re the difference between “side hustle that owns your weekends” and “income stream that quietly compounds while you sleep.”

I gave myself permission to cut losses fast.

Not everything worked. My 2014 Etsy shop selling digital prints? Total flop. But I didn’t spend two years trying to force it. I killed it, learned what I could and moved on. That ability to pivot without ego made room for things that actually had traction.

What I Wish I’d Done Sooner

If I could go back and talk to myself in 2013 when I earned my first $600 outside corporate, here’s what I’d say:

Stop waiting for a crisis to take this seriously.

Building a backup plan while you still have a paycheck is infinitely easier than scrambling after a layoff. You have cash flow. You have stability. You can test ideas without desperation driving every decision. Waiting until you’re laid off to start is like waiting until your house is on fire to buy insurance.

Treat your income streams like real businesses, not hobbies.

I spent years half-committing. A little consulting here. A small resale project there. But I never built the infrastructure to make any of it sustainable. No SOPs. No dashboards. No systems. Just vibes and hustle. That approach doesn’t scale and it definitely doesn’t create optionality.

Stop underestimating how fast things can shift.

Five years passed between watching 300 people get laid off and experiencing it myself. Five years where I could have been building, testing and systemizing. Instead, I told myself I was “safe” because I was performing well. Lesson learned: safety is an illusion and optionality is the only real security.

Give yourself credit for small wins.

Every $500 matters. Every validated offer matters. Every system you build matters. You don’t need to replace your income overnight. You just need to prove to yourself that you can generate money outside your paycheck. That confidence shift changes everything.

If You’re In the Same Storm

Maybe you haven’t been laid off yet. Maybe you’re reading this while you’re still employed, feeling that low-grade anxiety every time your company announces “restructuring” or your boss schedules an unexpected one-on-one.

Or maybe you’re already in it: updating resumes, fielding recruiter calls and wondering how the hell you’re supposed to stand out in a market flooded with people who have the exact same credentials you do.

Either way, here’s what I know for sure: depending on one paycheck is the riskiest financial strategy you can have.

Not because you’re bad at your job. Not because you’re disloyal or uncommitted. But because the rules changed and no one bothered to update the employee handbook.

Building a backup plan isn’t rebellious. It’s responsible. And the best time to start isn’t after the layoff. It’s right now, while you still have the stability to test, learn and build without desperation driving every choice.

Ready to Stop Waiting?

I built the Financial Vulnerability Assessment because I needed it myself: a gut-check tool that shows you exactly how exposed you are if your paycheck disappeared tomorrow and where to start fixing it without getting overwhelmed.

It’s not scary. It’s clarifying. And it’s the first step toward replacing paycheck fragility with real optionality.

Take the Financial Vulnerability Assessment here

Because the best time to build a backup plan was five years ago. The second-best time is today.