#tbt #throwbackthursday

In 2012, I was abruptly laid off of my job as head of marketing and the music division of a retail chain. I had not seen it coming because the company was growing. It had acquired a smaller company and after some restructuring, they let go of some employees.

I had just signed a 3-year lease on a new car and a 1-year lease on a new apartment, and I was stuck with expenses that I could not afford at a time when I didn’t know what my next move would be. I was 27 years old and I didn’t have any savings.

I took that devastating situation as an opportunity to pivot and lean in to my passion in the music industry. I enrolled in a master’s degree program in music industry administration at California State University, Northridge; I downsized my life by finding someone to takeover the rest of my apartment lease and selling all of my belongings; and I rented a tiny 10’x12’ room (pictured) with a twin bed (which I was too big for) in a rundown house in Koreatown, Los Angeles (there were definitely roaches 🪳).

My willingness to downsize my life, after maintaining an appearance of stability and luxury for several years, allowed me to use the money I was making from doing consulting work to invest in building a music tech startup while taking out loans to pay for graduate school.

I would later go on to launch several music tech startups from research that had begun in that tiny stuffy room. Those startups were acquired and those acquisitions enabled me to pay off all my student loans and give financial gifts to my family members.

So much has happened in my life and career since this pivotal moment, but as I think about all of my friends who have been laid off from tech and music companies in recent months, my advice is to look at this time as a pivotal moment. I did not have the cushion of a severance package when I was laid off (just my final paycheck, which is difficult for someone living check-to-check with no savings), but I did have the ambition, self-determination, and willingness to make significant life changes to get to the next phase of my career—and I don’t regret any of it. I am better off because of it.