Episode #42: Surviving & Thriving After a Layoff
Layoffs are a fact of life if you work in marketing or advertising. Marketing leadership coach and consultant Elizabeth Coluby shares her personal experience and tips on how to survive and thrive after a layoff.
Surviving & Thriving After a Layoff Episode Recap
In this episode, we explore the different paths employees can take if they have been laid off, what to do next, and how to grow even stronger in your next career path or position.
40% of Americans have been laid off or terminated from a job at least once. 28% of Americans had been laid off in the last two years alone, and the advertising industry ranks the worst out of all industries at handling layoffs at 83%. Nearly half of employed Americans suffer from layoff anxiety. This generates a lot of stress in the workplace right now.
After 30 years in corporate leadership roles at top US banks and tech companies, special guest ElizabethColuby was laid off earlier this year and is now a business coach and consultant. Elizabeth highlights her journey in corporate leadership and how she survived two layoffs during her career and found success exploring alternative career paths.
One of the driving factors that has led Elizabeth to her business coaching career has been adapting to change. Elizabeth discusses how she has moved around the world on numerous occasions, which has made her more resilient and open to pivots during her career path.
Elizabeth’s version of work life balance is the balanced definition of a musical instrument. Some parts of the orchestra are working really hard, and some parts of the orchestra are not working hard. At that point, they balance each other. But as long as everything is flowing, there’s balance, and everything is working together. That means that sometimes you have to lean into your career, and sometimes you have to lean into your family. But as long as it’s flowing, and you are not pushing it to happen, then you are balanced.
Advice on how to survive and thrive after a layoff includes assessing your finances, accepting your emotions, finding your support system, staying positive and healthy, evaluating your skills and interests, updating your resume and online presence, building and leveraging your network, and seeking continuous learning.
Ultimately, you need to be positive and take a layoff as an opportunity. Try something and new stretch yourself. Figure out what the blessing is and take advantage of it. You will get through this!
Surviving & Thriving After a Layoff Episode Transcript
Kelly Callahan
Welcome to the Two Marketing Moms Podcast. Today’s episode is called Surviving and Thriving after a layoff with Elizabeth Coluby. After 30 years in corporate leadership roles at top US banks and tech companies, Elizabeth was laid off earlier this year and is now a business coach and consultant. Her superpower is operating at the intersection of strategy leadership, marketing and digital transformation translating vision and goals into executable action plans to help businesses grow. Welcome, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Coluby
Thank you for having me, I appreciate this.
Kelly
I’m happy to have this kind of conversation right now because it’s impacted me, and it impacts many people around the country. I want to talk for a minute about some basic statistics about layoffs, because I kind of had to look some of this law up because I was a little surprised at how much it impacts people. I’ve found that 40% of Americans have been laid off or terminated from a job at least once. 28% of Americans had been laid off in the last two years alone, and that the advertising industry, of course, ranks the worst at layoffs at 83%. The other thing that you found was a recent article in Forbes, which stated that layoffs are up to 2% year after year. Beyond that, nearly half of employed Americans, about 48%, suffer from layoff anxiety. There is a lot of stress in the workplace right now, don’t you think?
Elizabeth
Oh, absolutely. Especially, I mean, and the people who weren’t laid off are stressed. If you get laid off, you must look for a new job, if you don’t get laid off, they say they’re going to reduce the amount of work, but I’ve never seen that happen. It’s always about trying to get it all done with people. There’s stress all over. But being laid off and not knowing what your next role is, is, impactful to the whole family and the economy.
Kelly
Well, speaking of that, how many times have you been laid off in your career? And can you tell me a little bit about your initial reaction to being laid off and how you coped with that situation emotionally, because there’s an initial gut punch there.
Elizabeth
This is my second time being laid off. The first time was back in 2001, and it was a very interesting period. I was working in the Silicon Valley, and I survived five rounds of layoffs, which was great over my pregnancy. From January to September, there were five rounds of layoffs as I was getting larger and larger. On Tuesday, I was laid off. On Friday, my son was born, and on Monday, the company declared bankruptcy. I survived the bankruptcy, which was fantastic, but it was also two weeks after 9/11. We’re in a lot, the economy was already having some struggles earlier in the year, and it was hard to find a job. I was unemployed for 13 months with a newborn, trying to figure out my next role in job. That was one very emotional experience all over the place. My second time was just recently, it was in March of this year. I know you know; I had survived many, many reorganizations between those two events, and always was the one of “Elizabeth will figure it out, let’s put her in this situation where she doesn’t know anything about that, but she’ll figure it out.” This time I wasn’t. And this time, I got to notice. My first major emotion was disappointment, because I felt like I’m a good worker, I’m a good employee, I contribute, I have value. I felt like it wasn’t being seen this time. I happen to already has been working with a mindset coach about a three-year plan, knowing that I was approaching retirement, and that I’m getting older, and what would that look like? I called her up and said, that three-year plan just became a two-month plan, and we’re doing it now. As we’ll talk about later, I have had transitions my entire life. That’s my attitude. Like, let’s take this as an opportunity. Let’s figure out how to make this the best opportunity, the best situation we can and then go from there.
Kelly
That makes a lot of sense. You talk about transition and career transition. You also talked about moving a lot. You’ve lived in 30 places around the world, can you talk about how the latest layoff impacted your career in terms of transitioning, and then of course, how moving around, kind of makes you a lot more resilient in terms of having to face a lot of personal challenges over the years and kind of always being the new kid?
Elizabeth
Exactly. The most recent reorganization, layoff, whatever you want to call it, I’m staying put, I’m not physically moving right now, we will probably eventually. It really changed the dynamics, and the good thing was COVID. I got used to having an office set up at home, and I just sort of took it over, as my own business to go from corporate to entrepreneurship, spending a lot of time with other people who are going through a similar situation to network and guide, because I’ve had my own business once in my career. It was a physical, retail store type of business, and I had to shut that down because it just wasn’t getting enough revenue. I have some experience with entrepreneurship, but not a lot. Most of my career has been with large US banks and tech companies, like you said, transitions apart of change that is inevitable. It’s a part of everybody’s life. You can’t fight it all. Sometimes you can fight it a little bit, but you really accept it, take the opportunity, and move on. As you mentioned, this is my 30th home in my life. I’ve moved quite a bit by the average American lives. I’m in house number 30, and we’re not done yet. All those transitions really started when I was eight years old to my mid 30s. That made me open to change and trying new things and accepting risks, but also knowing resiliency, and bouncing back to figure out what it is you can do best. A little bit ago, I talked about a situation where they put me in a new job where I had no experience. My background is targeted marketing, and then I went into marketing strategy. In one of the reorders, I’ve always been in banking on the checking side of the business. As one of the rewards, the leadership came to me and said, “Hey, Elizabeth, why don’t you take over sales support for Merrill Edge investments?” I’m like, “never done sales support, and I know nothing about investments, but okay, how?” Then I went in there saying, “Okay, this team has been around for 10 years. They know the product; I can’t out product market them. What can I do?” Well, Merrill Edge and Merrill Lynch had recently been acquired by Bank of America. Part of my focus was explaining and helping them understand how to do the business and get things done within Bank of America, as well, we had just launched a new human era type of our brand, meaning talking shoulder to shoulder, not across the table, being human in our language. One of the projects we did was we simplified the marketing and the sales assets. One piece was a four-page text document about mutual funds. We took that to a one-page infographic by eliminating information that wasn’t relevant to this audience. that was redundant, which was just too detailed. We were able to be very successful. That was the one I was most proud of, because it was the most extreme thing that we were able to do.
Kelly
You win in your job when you transition from your last position to work. What you’re doing today to being a coach, talk to me about that transition, and how did you decide to literally change careers?
Elizabeth
True. I had always thought about coaching and consulting board work for when I retired. That’s why last November, I started working with the leaders, the mindset coach and saying, ‘let’s put together a three-year plan.” I had moved from Charlotte, North Carolina to Cleveland, Ohio for my last job five years ago. When I left Charlotte, I was guest lecturing. I was on nonprofits. I was doing things like that and immunity, moved up to Cleveland, with a brand-new job, at a brand-new company, with a pretty intense boss, and COVID hit. I look back on those five years and I’m like, wow, I’ve taken a step back because I’m not doing any of that prep work. I engaged with a coach of my own to build a plan. It was somebody I had known and worked with at the last role. She understood where I was coming from and was saying okay, how do I plan for this transition? That started in November, and we were working together come February, when I noticed that I was going to be laid off. I was lucky I got a month’s notice, that I was being laid off. I was able to work with her in transition and said, “Okay, let’s go do this. I mean, I got a decent severance package that allowed me to do this. How do I make it work? How do I start?” The first actual thought I had was I wanted to do teaching at a university level, and then decided coaching was better because it was more coming for me, and I got more control. I started working in networking and building my repertoire, taking a couple of online coaching classes. They have these $49 classes that are for five-day challenges, just to see what was going on. I like coaching, consulting, and trying to use my expertise. Then I also worked to get on a board of a nonprofit here in Cleveland. Just accelerating all those things, I had planned some little pivots along the way, to make this happen. That is what I’m doing right now. I am promoting it and working with clients and having a lot more fun than I had when I had to work within the political structure of the bank.
Kelly
To a certain extent, you being laid off, led you to what you were meant to do, or what you felt like was more of your passion anyway, to say.
Elizabeth
Yes, I think is has always been my passion. I love mentoring. I loved mentoring and coaching my team and other individuals within the extended team. I love coming in and solving a problem. One of the things I did, was transition during this, and most of my career was in marketing. When it came to this new bank, it came to the product side. P&L responsibility, which I’d done before, but again, P&L responsibility of working with marketing and sales, setting goals, and about how to grow and then actually growing the business. Then I had the opportunity to move over to software development and digital transformation. That actually the last two years, I was doing digital transformation, building the apps to open the accounts, clients, opening clients, or bankers opening the accounts at the bank. When I was doing one of the things I did when I was transitioning and going through the first couple of months as processes, I did a lot of retrospective work, and decided I really like marketing the most. That’s what I want to go back to. I like marketing because it has the problem solving and the creativity, and it has a short timeframe to it. While I problem solved and launch things and was coming up creative solutions for digital transformation, or new product development, those are two-to-three-year timeframes; marketing, especially campaigns and programs could be a lot quicker than a year. I’m an adrenaline junkie, I like figuring this out and being creative and, and really taking it from a perspective of as I said, my mark, my background is direct mail, and I started in Citibank with credit cards, solicitations, and for opening checking credit cards. The ugliest creative works, you keep it, and you keep doing the champion challenger, but if it works, it works. That’s the whole purpose in my mind of what marketing is. I have people saying that marketing only works when the marketing assets resonate with the client and motivate them to act. It doesn’t matter if it’s pretty, it’s whether it connects and then invites them to take the action we want them to take. That’s been my guiding light and my philosophy, my entire career in marketing.
Kelly
That’s wonderful. The change that you made obviously involves a lot of risk, but you seem to be used to a lot of risk having moved a lot. Let’s talk a little bit about the importance of risk taking and hoe did be laid off make you more of a risk taker or were you already a risk taker?
Elizabeth
I have been a risk taker my entire life, but it’s all about risk mitigation. How do you minimize the risk or understand what risks are out there, so you can quickly identify them and counteract them when they do come up? I’ve always been a risk taker. I find that I’m a little less of a risk taker now because I have a family now. I took a lot more risks when I was single when it was just me. I used to live in two military dictatorships. Under Pinochet, I was in Chile, and went to human rights protests because my friends were protesting, and the cotton tear gassed. I knew that was a risk. I didn’t quite prepare for it as well as I should have, but it was an experience I had, and I can look back on and feel that it makes me unique because I do things I mean. I’ve been to lots of places as we said I lived in 30 places, five countries and eight US states. I like really getting in and exploring the place more in the details than just a trip just visiting for vacation. One of my goals and one of the goals of making this transition is to really be able to explore and have geographical freedom working for a US Bank. I couldn’t log in unless I was within the United States border, because of security reasons, so it makes sense. I want to be able to travel and live in other places. With this business, I’m creating it so I can have geographical freedom. My ideal is that I will go to a country, one country a year, changing every year, for two to three months to be able to run my business, and really have time to explore the area. I have my list of 12 different places I want to live. From, Sydney to Singapore to Frankfurt, but really be able to explore because those one- or two-week vacations just weren’t enough for me. As part of that I’ve also committed to the year before I go anywhere, I said in the language. I just was studying Italian for an upcoming trip that we’re hoping to make to Italy. As well as I speak Spanish, Portuguese, and a little bit of Mandarin Chinese, because when I was growing up, I went to junior high school in Taiwan. That was really the first place I lived outside the United States was Taiwan.
Kelly
That has really inspired me, I may be changing my personal and professional goals with that new geographic freedom idea. That’s what I hadn’t considered. I absolutely love it. That leads me to the next question, which we always talk about in the podcast. As women, we always talk about this idea of work life balance. You had a little bit of a different perspective on what work life balance is, could you give me what your perspective is?
Elizabeth
A lot of people think that work life balance is like a seesaw definition where it must be redone. I had an executive career early on and have had a conversation with a group of us. She suggested to not define it as a seesaw of equality. Think of it as the balanced definition in a musical instrument in an orchestra. Some parts of the orchestra are working hard. Some parts of the orchestra are not working hard. At that point, they balance each other, but if everything is flowing, there’s balance, everything is working together. I take that definition and say, sometimes I must lean into my career, sometimes I have to lean into my family. As long as it’s flowing, I’m not stressed and having to push it to happen, then it is balance.
Kelly
Your balance is kind of symphonic. I love that. You and I have a mutual friend, that is Aneta Kuzma. Aneta and I did a podcast together called tools to avoid burnout. We talked about work life balance, and her definition of work life balance is the following, and I really love this definition. She said that when our daily life choices do not align with the things that we say, are most important and valuable to us, we are out of balance. That was a big wow, for me. What it means to me is that we’re each responsible for how we spend our time. Not just our time, from nine to five, but there’s a lot of time outside of nine to five, and we start making choices and directing our lives to the things that we say are important to us, we do find the balance that we’re looking for. That really resonated with me in terms of her definition. I think both definitions work well.
Let’s jump into the insights, advice. What sort of advice would you give to other people that are in a similar situation, that are about to be laid off, or have just been laid off? What are some things that that you think were helpful to you, and then we’ll go through a list of some additional ones.
Elizabeth
I mean, the first thing is to network, don’t go in there and go into a cocoon, make sure your network knows what’s going on, not the negative or emotional way. I’m in a new situation, I’m open to work, this is what I’m looking for, and really leverage that. Unfortunately, I don’t have a great network in Cleveland because I was very internally focused in my last job. What I’m struggling to work with right now, is how do I expand my network within the geography where I’m living currently, even though I want to be able to work worldwide, and I have a lot of clients in Asia, New Zealand, and Europe, but I still need to network here. Play to your strengths. Figure out what you’re good at, figure out what drives you and lights you up. I could have easily transitioned to another digital transformation software development role because that was my most recent role. When I reflected on it, I love it. I think it’s great, but it doesn’t let me up as much as marketing does, and helping businesses go from frustrated to competent in their marketing. I pivoted back to marketing, because that’s most of my years’ experience, it just wasn’t my most recent one. Then trying new things. Over the last few months, I’ve been trying new things and talking to people about how they started their business, or what are their challenges were, and really figuring out where my niche was, or is, so that I can really add value. Figuring out what that you know, what you love to do, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what should be paid for. That combination is really what your mission is in life. That’s what will keep you motivated to go forward and work into the mindset of, “I’m not going to retire at 65. I want to keep active because I know my brain goes to mush if I don’t keep my brain active.” Keeping my brain active as long as possible now, probably the 5060 hours a week that we were working, is much more manageable.
Kelly
That makes a lot of sense. Let’s talk about a couple other insights and tips. You know, the first one would be assessing your finances and creating a budget and an emergency fund. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Elizabeth
When you’re working and especially if you’re going into the situation, money’s going to probably be on the top of your mind. You must pay your bills. Make sure you are as financially prudent as you can while you’re working. Pay on your debt, get your emergency fund, six months of savings is the recommended, but also put things in place like a HELOC loan. I learned this after the fact. I didn’t even think about setting up a HELOC on wall when I was still working. Then a couple months later when we were trying to set up a HELOC, my severance check was not accepted as a payment because they knew it was going to end at a certain point. We can’t get a HELOC at this point because I don’t have enough steady income yet to make it happen. It is better to have it in place and not use it, then to not have it and you have an emergency later, not when you need it most. The other thing I say to you is there are holes, now it’s been reduced. When you make a deposit at a bank, there are holes put on the money, and they’ve been reduced a lot lately over the last few years. 20 years ago, when I was laid off the first time, I took my severance check and physically walked it into the teller to be deposited on Tuesday. My friends who put it in the ATM Tuesday night, it didn’t clear before the company went into bankruptcy on Monday morning. Then they had to sue in severance court to get their separate bankruptcy court to get their severance check. Some of them took two years to get their money. If you have a big check, walking into the teller is a better option, because if the teller accepted the deposit, it has a lot lower of a risk to a bank perspective than an ATM deposited, check. They hold it for a little bit of a shorter time. I just deposited one, and it was same day because of my relationship with the bank. You don’t want to get caught in those things; you want that cash to help you, because you want that in hand cash as quickly as possible. If you have a chance, walk it in. Then of course, have a budget, eliminate unnecessary spending, look at all your subscriptions, get rid of anything, you don’t have to have to run the business because you’re going to have to invest in your business. As you make this transition and get a new computer, get new monitors, get whatever to set up your website. Eliminate some other expenses, and you can always turn Hulu back on. If you don’t have to pay for it every month, that adds up.
Kelly
That’s true. What about on the emotional coping side, because that’s a big one in terms of, accepting your emotions and finding your support system and talking to people.
Elizabeth
I would say, it’s very emotional getting laid off and feeling rejected or disappointed or whatever emotion you go through. However, try not to stay in that emotion. Try and move through it as quickly as possible. Look for those opportunities. Take this as an opportunity as I did, to try something new, to go in a new path, to accelerate your dreams, whatever it takes, process the emotions, but move on. Know that while you have the emotions from the layoff, the fears come up. You have highs and lows every day, and I find that with a net, our mutual friend, she does a lot of breath work that helps. Meditation, for instance. I did a lot of journaling at the very beginning, just trying to get things out of me. Walks in the woods, I talked about forest bathing all the time, going out in the woods and being surrounded by nature calms you down, and lets you process things. Then I find other people to talk to have a bigger network. I have a couple different people I meet on a regular basis, every couple of weeks, every month, whatever it is to talk about, how is your business going? How can we work together? Give me some advice. One of them happens to be my former boss, so he knows me well. Not the one that laid me off, the prior one, but at the same time, we can because we’ve worked together for several years. We can go deep into the conversation, we know each other’s families and things like that, or at least the details around them, that we cannot be isolated and have those connection points and just connect with other people. I have a couple of different networking groups of all of us, that are trying to be consultants and another one where they coach everyone’s approach, and I get different things from different groups. Just make sure it’s a supportive group that you’re networking with, because you don’t want anybody else pulling you down because you’re going to have enough highs and lows on your own.
Kelly
Absolutely. It’s this time that is always very important to either establish or reestablish your own personal brand. Your online presence? Do you want to say anything about that?
Elizabeth
I updated my LinkedIn, and I was lucky enough to get outplacement services. I was working with a professional who helped me rewrite my resume and update my LinkedIn and things like that. I’ve also become much more active on Facebook because that’s where I’m finding some of my clients and networking and sharing my expertise to build my brand. Then it’s just a matter of, being clear about who you are, what you provide, what you don’t provide. One of the things a different coach taught us through was, how do you profile the people you want to coach? This is a coaching program I’m in and who do you want to repel? Like do you want them to go away. What are the five characteristics of somebody you want and somebody you don’t want? That was a clarifying conversation to say, “Okay, these are the types of people I want to work with. I want them to be coachable. I want them to be positive. I want them to be open minded, and I want them to work hard and be willing to do the work, not somebody who’s lazy. I you’re not coachable, you know, short sighted things like that. It’s all part of your brand and what you want to present, but out in the world.
Kelly
We’ve covered networking, we’ve covered continuous learning, what about when you get to the job search and the application process?
Elizabeth
We haven’t done a lot this time, but I can talk about it the things I’ve done in the past, as I’m really leaning into my entrepreneurship, look for those jobs. You and I always say you are looking for a needle in a haystack, you only need one job. Look for and put yourself out there. I have often applied for a job that wasn’t quite right, but I was lucky on multiple occasions where the recruiter had a job that was perfect for me, I just didn’t see it. My background is product marketing, so we talked about when I first started at Bank of America, and then actually applied for a multicultural brand marketing role. Knowing I’m not really a brand marketer, I can do it. I really love product marketing. That’s where the recruiter said, “I have a product marketing role of the same level. It’s just you didn’t connect with it.” I’d say if it’s in the right ballpark, going back to that whole statistic of women apply for jobs when they’re 110%. Fine, but men are quiet at 70%. I try to apply at 70% or 80%. I want a job that’s going to challenge me where I’m going to learn, and where I’m going to grow. Why would I want to go to a job where I can do 110% of it? If already knew everything, that would be boring to me. That’s where I’m a risk taker. I figure out what I can figure out. If I’m smart enough, and I have enough experience, I can ask the right questions. I’ll figure it out. Now, I don’t want to be learning 90% of my job, but you must have that edge where you’re learning part of your job, or you go stagnant, I get bored.
That takes us kind of full circle back to all the other parts of your life, like staying healthy. Sometimes it is hard to stay to help us to stay healthy. When you’re really focused on your stress, right, and you’re going to stress on all these things, such as, you’ve just lost a job, you’re worried about money, but what’s even more important, right? When you focus on mindfulness, and you focus on healthy eating, mental health and, physical exercise.
Elizabeth
Absolutely. I’m lucky in that we have two dogs, and we go for walks and live in a neighborhood where they just put in sidewalks so it’s a little easier to go for walks around the neighborhood. I probably need to go to a yoga or a Pilates class for my health. That’s something I’m holding back on because the money, and I just want to make sure I spend it the right way. I do some regular yoga, stretching a lot of mindfulness, a lot of just virtual coffees with friends to connect and not feel so isolated. I call them virtual coffees because if you know; I don’t care if we’re having a drink or coffee, but it’s sort of like just non agenda conversation. If you don’t keep your mind and your body healthy during this, you’re going face more challenges. You need to be as healthy as possible. I try. I’m not saying I’m going to be perfect, but I’m keeping the hormones as a woman in regulation and trying to eat healthy and clean so that I’m not doubling down on carbs and feeling lethargic in the middle of the day, or relying on, sodas for pick me up. I haven’t had sodas in years, except a drink. Really thinking about how you show up because as an entrepreneur, I can’t rely on a nine to five job. I’m working 10-12 hours a day, but it’s on some of the things I love.
Kelly
I love that, and then staying positive right? Obviously, you’re communicating that right now. If you’re not positive, then you’re not going to attract the right things.
Elizabeth
Positive, optimistic, willing to go the extra mile to really help something come together. Those are all things that are critical. If you are a negative, Nelly, while you’re trying to start a business, there’s a reason why, almost 60% of businesses fail in the first year. If you can’t have that optimism and that positive energy keeping you going through the hard times, then how do you keep going?
Kelly
Any final parting thoughts on how to survive and thrive after a layoff?
Elizabeth
I reiterate, be positive, and take it as an opportunity. That’s what I told myself and everybody else when they were laid off on my team. Take this as an opportunity to pivot, try something new. Stretch yourself and grow. Most people look back and say, it was a blessing in disguise. I would suggest you really try and figure out what that blessing is. Take advantage of it because we all have one life to live. Let’s make it the best we can. Let’s have fun. You will get through this. Right? We’ll get through this.
Kelly
Thank you for your time, Elizabeth. I appreciate it.
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