Are you layoff-proof? Do you have a plan that you've implemented to decrease your risks of a layoff? Or are you leaving it to chance and the fact that you're "a hard worker" to see you through the lean times? See why creating a side hustle may be your best insurance against being laid off.

Welcome to episode #11. My name is Jeremy Epp, and I'm here to help you set up, launch and grow a profitable business. Before we begin, do me a favor and go to JeremyEpp.com and subscribe to the show. This way you won't miss out on vital information that will help you in your journey to reach your career goals, while creating an amazing lifestyle for you and your family.

If you turn on the news today, you're going to hear a lot of talk about concerns about recession. You're going to turn onto one news cycle and you're going to hear about the indicators and the trends going down and toward a recession. On the other hand, you're going to flip on stories and you're going to hear politicians and CEOs of large corporations telling you how great and wonderful everything is and that there is no recession.

So which one is it? There's confusion, there's back and forth. Who do you believe? Well, it's been my experience over the years that the more back and forth you have, typically the more accurate it is that something bad is on the horizon. Now to what degree, nobody really knows, but I do know this. When things are trending up and the economy and the trends are showing favorable, typically people are not in conflict with the messaging.

So the louder the politicians get of how there is no recession, everybody sit tight and stay calm, the higher chances are there's probably something there that they're concerned about. They're just trying to avoid the panic. I know you've seen this too. You've been around the block. You've seen this happen on many occasions. We've seen it in the housing market crisis in the 2008 - 2010 crash and in other situations similar to that.

We're talking about layoffs today. We're talking about how to protect yourself in the event of a corporate layoff. And I want you to begin to think about how you could be proactive in building out mitigation plans and multiple streams of income to protect yourself. But first I want to ask you, have you ever experienced a layoff for yourself? Have you ever heard the concerns in the office, the rumors, the "what ifs" and the, "Hey, I heard this is going to be happening."

And you start to think about will that impact me? Will that impact my team or my larger organization? When would it happen? When would we know more about it and what would it look like? Well, I've been in that position, and in fact I've been in that position on three separate occasions. I've also been in other situations where layoffs are going around me and fortunately haven't impact my particular organization.

In fact, I was at a corporation when there was an announcement where a particular team was going to have their jobs moved from the Seattle area down to California. And the individuals that were getting impacted were told that they could reapply for their same job. However, that job would be at a lower rate and if they got the job, they would be responsible to relocate themselves down to California at their own expense.

And I sat there in this facility, watching people in their 50s literally walking around stunned, almost as if they had gotten in a car wreck and were able to get out and they were in a sense of shock. And they weren't quite coherent, but they were almost like zombies.

In fact, I heard one gentleman who was in his 50s mention that he didn't know what to do. He had always worked at this company since graduating from college. In fact, he said, "I don't even know how to apply for a job. I don't know how to complete a resume. I've never done this before. I've never needed to do this." And he was very concerned about being in his mid-50s and being looked down upon because of his age and not being rehired because of that. On the flip side, he wasn't prepared to retire either.

I heard another story of a gentleman who made the decision that he was willing to relocate his family to California at his own expense, and applied for a job that was paying less than what he was paid for doing it previously. Eventually he told me that the job that he applied for his current job, he was denied on the basis that he was overqualified, which was ironic because he had been doing that job for over eight years.

So for whatever reason, and I don't want to get into analyzing the ethics of layoffs and moving jobs around, but I want to help protect you against layoffs and give you options. So there's a couple of lessons that I've learned personally, I've watched, I've experienced them based upon various activities and events in my life, that I strongly encourage you to make it something that you apply in your life.

So the first lesson I want to talk about is acknowledge that change happens. Change is going to impact us, whether or not we believe it will. We might be able to stay in an environment, tuck ourselves back in a corner, feel like we're future-proof or untouchable. But eventually there's a high chance that we will need to change with the change around us. These might come in the wake of a recession or concerns about recession.

These might come in the wake of an event that has impacted the company and now the company has to make some tough decisions. It may come in the event of a company merger and acquisition like one of my layoffs did, or it may come in the advancement of technology to where the role that you played is no longer relevant. It's being outsourced or it is now being done by technology or it's no longer needed at all. Whatever it is, you need to acknowledge that change happens and that it's coming.

Now, not all change is bad, but not all change is good either. So the key here is understanding and be looking out or change. Pretending that change is not something that will impact you, will only make it worse. In Ken Blanchard's book, Who Moved My Cheese? it's a parable about a story of two little mice and two little men that work together and a maze. And every morning they get up and they go to a corner of the maze and there's cheese in the corner, and they enjoy the cheese for their food and they go back at the end of the day.

Well one morning they wake up and go to the corner and there's no cheese. So the two mice look at each other and they go off and search for where the cheese went, where the two men sit there and have a conversation about what they should do. And in essence they're talking about, "Well we can stay here or we should stay here because that cheese will eventually come back." And so they make that decision to stay there for many days in a row. And eventually one of the men make the decision, "No, we've got to go and search for the cheese. It has moved on." Bottom line is, the story is when hit with change, you need to be prepared to move on.

So I would encourage you to make plans for change, whether it's happening now or whether you know it may happen in the future, just have plans in your mind and be ready to take action. And that leads us to lesson number two which is take action despite your fears. It's said that 90% of the time, the fear that we feel is mentally self-imposed. We believe that something horrible will happen if you do or you do not take action. And most of the time it is not reality.

I like how Tim Ferris in his book, The 4-Hour Workweek talks about how he analyzes a situation, whether it's an opportunity or otherwise. And he'll typically what he'll do is he'll look at it and he'll analyze, okay, if I moved toward this opportunity or toward this mitigation plan, what's the worst thing that can happen to me? And he looks at the worst case scenario and he determines if he can live with it and if he can recover, if that worst case scenario does happen, and then he makes a decision to move forward toward that.

The reality is most of the time that will never come to be because it's mentally self-imposed, the worst case scenario. So the key here is to run toward what scares you, face your fear and conquer it. Realize that making no decision is still a decision. The key here is to take action despite your fear.

And the third lesson I want to talk about is when things do happen, I want you to move forward. You need to look forward and not backward. When hit with change, you've got to move on. You've got to be like the mice in the maze. You need to just implement that plan B and you need to move forward. I was involved in real estate during the housing crisis, that hit between the years of 2008 and 2010. many people in the industry didn't know what to do. Many of them try to stay in the industry and they picked up odd jobs here and there.

So I saw these folks and they were working three times as hard for less than half the pay. And when I spoke with them, their thought process was, "Hey, when the market turns, I'll be right back in it. I'll be the first one back in the game." Now my theory was I can go and leapfrog out of the industry and when the industry comes back, I can leapfrog back in and I'm actually headed the game.

So bottom line is they didn't know what to do. They were afraid to leave and try something completely different and they didn't have a plan. When you're hit with change, you need to not paralyze. Don't wait for things to return to normal. Don't sit there in the corner waiting for that cheese to show back up. It's probably not coming back and if it does come back, it's going to be moldy and it's not going to be what it used to be. You need to acknowledge that when change happens, it's the new normal.

So I'm a big believer in having mitigation plans. Plan A often fails and you need to have a plan B to roll into its place. Working in a corporate environment, you need to be thinking outside of the box. You need to be thinking about how you might be impacted. And you might say to yourself, "Hey, I am the top of my team. I'm invaluable. They would never lay me off." And you're probably right. They do not want to lay you off. But yet you must acknowledge that sometimes decisions are outside of your boss's hands and their control.

And in fact, how many times have you heard of entire organizations or branches of a specific company being sold off or closed down? Well, there are countless people, dozens, if not hundreds of good folks of good quality folks that are unable to move within the company to a different position because there's just not enough positions. And if you think that your boss or your boss's boss has got your back, you need to be prepared for the inevitability that they may have their job on the line as well. And so they're going to be scrambling for themself first before they're thinking about anybody else.

So if you think you're safe because you're top of the heap of your team, you really need to be thinking about having a stronger Plan B. What does this have to do with starting your own business? Well, many times folks need to realize that if their industry is being hit by one particular thing, that may impact their ability to go to a competitor and try to get that same job with them. First of all, there may not be a need for it. Second of all, they may be also impacted by the same situation that your company's being impacted on. And thirdly, they may just get flooded with applications and they just don't have the bandwidth to bring you on.

So what are you going to do? You got to change your skill. You're going to move something, or you can look for something outside of a corporate environment. And that is starting your own company, whether it's a side hustle and you're a consultant, or you're looking to do something where you have more control and more stability in your world. So there's great advantages to starting a side hustle to create a platform that is outside of a company. To where you can have control and you can grow it on your terms to the market that you're interested in, and add the value of how you best see it.

So what's your plan B? What are you going to do? Are you going to live in denial saying that, "I'm not going to be impacted by change"? Are you going to roll the dice and take the gamble and say, "Well, I'll deal with it when it comes, if it comes at all." Or are you going to say, "That makes sense. Change does happen. I've seen it before and I don't want to be in that same position of somebody caught off guard and not knowing what to do next."

Well, I would encourage you to make connections in other parts of your company. Build those networks now, so that you can have a place to go to, should something happen. Reach out to other companies and make connections there as well. You never know when you may need to move from one corporation to another because of a different situation that's impacting you. And I would also encourage you to strongly consider starting your own business on the side. This is something that would enable you to build it how you see fit and if done right, could eventually take over your corporate job and give you options for a different lifestyle.

If you believe there's wisdom and creating career mitigation plans, plan Bs, and want to learn more about how launching your own business would be a viable solution, then go to my website at JeremyEpp.com and subscribe to the show. Begin learning on how to set up, launch, and grow a successful business to help make you lay-off proof. I appreciate you tuning in and I thank you for your continued support, and I look forward to speaking with you on the next step.