YFS Magazine: Former VP of Marketing Turns Layoff Into Multimillion Dollar Deal With Former Employer

I’m blessed to have been honored with a piece in YFS Magazine (Young, Fabulous & Self-Employed) on my new music tech startup ChazBo Music.

Excerpt:

Many young professionals have been faced with unexpected layoffs.

A rising number of unemployed professionals contribute to an over-qualified workforce struggling to cope with a new economic landscape.

The United States unemployment rate is still more than 8 percent; which creates a highly competitive job market. Global youth unemployment echoes the trend and is expected to rise globally to 12.9 percent by 2017 as more young people leave the workforce and the euro crisis spreads to emerging economies.

Faced with staggeringly high unemployment rates and dwindling conventional work options, many young professionals turn to entrepreneurship. Former VP of Marketing for a national urban retail chain, turned entrepreneur, Dae Bogan is one of them.

After being laid off, Dae Bogan decided to take a promising business concept he’d been working on while employed and sell it back to his former boss.

“I was laid off in April, after nearly 4 years with the company, as a  part of several middle management cutbacks prior to fully developing the concept (a new in-store music video platform) and implementing it,” says Bogan.

After being laid off, he launched the first free cloud-based music video, digital signage solution for retail businesses — including music video distribution and promotional platforms for artists.

Realizing that his newly created business model would solve problems for his former employer and other companies he launched his entrepreneurial venture — sooner than expected. “I turned my idea, as an employee of the retailer, into a music tech startup. My former employer became our first customer, giving ChazBo Music the rights to 150 locations nationwide.”

Learn how Dae Bogan launched his tech music startup and why you should never burn bridges.

Read the full article here.