Your Career Journey

Navigating Layoffs & Building Career Resilience with Steve Jaffe

• Emma Graham

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What really happens when you’re laid off, and how do you bounce back stronger?

In this episode of Your Career Journey, I speak with Steve Jaffe, a marketing leader whose 25+ year career has taken him from advertising to client-side roles to tech startups. Along the way, he’s faced layoffs (or redundancies, depending on where you’re based) four times.

👉 The first time left him devastated.
👉 By the fourth, he sailed through.

So what changed? 

Steve shares the mindset shifts, coping strategies, and practical tools he developed. And the “framework” that helped him move from shock to growth, much like navigating the stages of grief.

We also dive into:
✨ Why identity and self-worth can’t just be tied to your job title 
✨ The role of relationships and mind-body-spirit balance in building resilience
✨ How to reframe layoffs as a chance to reset and renew 
✨ How to future-proof your career in a rapidly changing world 

Whether you’ve been impacted by a layoff, want to prepare for uncertainty, or just need inspiration for your next chapter, this conversation is packed with lessons you can use.

Details for Steve's book 'The Layoff Journey' are below:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaffesteve/
https://thestevejaffe.com/


00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:13 Steve's Career Journey
01:59 Experiencing Layoffs
02:36 Coping with Layoffs
02:48 The Layoff Journey Begins
04:19 Learning from Layoffs
05:49 Reframing the Layoff Experience
09:28 Stages of Grief in Layoffs
18:51 Building Coping Skills
22:21 Reframing and Positive Mindset
23:12 The Ship of Theseus: Identity and Change
24:30 Defining Yourself Beyond Your Job
25:55 Reconstruction and Renewal
29:49 Personal Career Pivot
33:31 Future Proofing Your Career
39:31 The Importance of Relationships


Your host, Emma Graham, Career Coach and ex-recruiter, is here to help you with:

💡 Gain clarity on what’s important to you
💡 Confidently communicate your value
💡 Build a personal brand and a strong network
💡 Take a strategic approach to your next move
💡 Navigate the job market effectively
💡 Build career confidence with a repeatable success blueprint

🌐 Explore my coaching programs and free resources:
Website: https://www.egconsulting.au/
LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/emmajgraham
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emmagrahamcareercoach/

🎁 Free Resources:
📄 CV Development Guide: https://www.egconsulting.au/cv-advice
📄 LinkedIn Profile Optimisation Guide: https://www.egconsulting.au/linkedin-profile-guide

📅 Book Your FREE Career Strategy Discovery Call:
https://calendly.com/emmagrahamconsulting/discovery-call

Emma:

Hello and welcome to Your Career Journey, the podcast designed to be your compass through the twists and turns of career development. Today I'm joined by Steve Jaffey, a seasoned advertising and marketing executive who has navigated the emotional and practical challenges of layoffs or redundancies, depending on where you're from, four times over his 25-year career. Through sharing his story, Steve offers highly practical advice and insights that have helped him not only navigate what was happening, but also come out the other side ready to embrace new chapters. So I am joined today by Steve, Steve Jaffe, all the way from California. Welcome.

Steve:

Hi, thanks for having me.

Emma:

Very, very welcome. To kick things off, Steve, I'd love to get a top-level overview of your career history and your kind of career journey to date. Talk me, talk me through it.

Steve:

Sure. All right. So my career is sort of in three acts. First act is in advertising, spent about 10 years in advertising agencies along the west coast of California. Most notably, I was in Las Vegas and worked on the Las Vegas, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas ad campaign. I was on that from the date of launch through its first five years, which was just like a rocket ship. Yeah. Yeah. And then I moved over to the client side, like most people do. So I spent a good portion on the client side doing in-house marketing, a lot of different things, but uh stayed in travel tourism and hospitality mostly. And then the the kind of third act was in technology startups, SaaS companies, product marketing, and doing a little bit of business development and sales. So a long and and successful career in advertising, marketing. And uh I I've now at the end of that, I've decided to write a book. And so the book is about a few of those experiences, most notably some of the layoff experiences.

Emma:

I really like your terminology there, talking about it in terms of acts. It's a really nice way to think of it. Because I think that's often the case, isn't it? There's there's kind of different different parts of the journey. So I might borrow that terminology in the future if you don't mind. I like that.

Steve:

You know, seasons of life.

Emma:

Exactly. Yeah, seasons is how I often think of it. But yeah, I like the actor terminology specifically. You you touched on it there, the the layoffs and redundancies for the for the English and Australian listeners. And that's something that you've experienced a number of times across your career. And really want to kind of delve into, I guess, how you've come to think of that and and how those experiences have shaped you and kind of what you've gone on to do, and and also I think most importantly, what you've learned from them and and now kind of share with others in terms of how you think about them and and the process that you've kind of developed to work through them. Um so you at a high level sort of think of the the redundancy layoff process very much like the seven stages of of grief. Talk me, talk me through that.

Steve:

Yeah, yeah. Well, let me set the stage um and give you kind of the the story arc of my layoff journey and what brought me to writing the book. I'll begin in spring of 2001. I was working in San Francisco in the very first dot-com bubble. I was working at an agency and we had a great client. We were winning awards, the the client was happy, sales were up, everybody, by all accounts, we were hitting our goals and metrics. I had just gotten married, and it was very much literally and figuratively the springtime of my life. That client ended up going bankrupt, and their budget was slashed, and the agency, therefore, then had to slash the department that was working on that account. And I found myself just in disarray. I couldn't reconcile the fact that I was working hard, I was achieving success, and yet rather than being promoted or given a raise, I was given a pink slip and asked, you know, to you know, thank you for your service. Now please leave the building. Yeah. It's vacate. Yeah. Right. And that was a really, really difficult experience for me to process. I didn't have any coping skills in place. It completely caught me completely off guard and took me a long time to recover from. Now, fast forward, it's summer 2023. I experienced my fourth layoff or the over the course of this 22-year arc. And I sail right through it. It doesn't affect me really in any way whatsoever. Um, it's like water off a duck's back. And I realize in retrospect, wow, I've learned a set of coping skills that has allowed me to not feel the same level of grief, the level of shame and embarrassment, and all these other things that go along with a layoff like I did in the first time. So that introspection then caused me to want to share that knowledge with the people that I was laid off with. I wanted to let them know look, this is going to be okay. You're going to get through this. And here's how I got through it. Now, I had always wanted to write a book, and I quickly realized this was the subject of the book that I needed to write because by writing the book, I could not only help the 20% of the people that I was laid off along with, but I could help so many more people as well. So the goal is that people discover their own resilience and they don't equate their layoff or their reduction in force with shame and embarrassment. They come to realize that it's an unfortunate part of being in business. It's not a declaration on their self-worth, and it doesn't reflect upon their own knowledge and experience and skills. It was merely a budget exercise that the employer went through to try and drive revenue to the bottom line. It's quicker to cut headcount than it is to drive sales. Therefore, some people end up on a list and end up getting cut. And it was that reframing of the experience that, okay, I'm not damaged goods. All of my skills and experience and talent I still hold, I retain those things. The job I may have lost along with the paycheck and some other important things, but I'm still whole. You know, I still have inherent skills and talents that I now bring to my next employer. So it was very much a reframing for me. And that's what I hope readers take from it, is that this is a small chapter. It's not their whole story. And they will emerge on the other side with maybe a a different life perspective and potentially renewed sense of like their career path and and what they want to do in life.

Emma:

Yeah. And I think uh particularly in the creative kind of marketing industry, like over the course of a career, almost inevitably it's it's going to happen to you at some point, at least once. And I think there's there's certain kind of verticals. HR's probably another one that's recruitment that's often kind of the the first on the list along with with marketing and creative. I think we've seen it in industries too. You mentioned in your your third act you were in kind of SaaS and tech, and that's certainly been a really affected industry kind of post post-COVID. So I think that that probably did exist at one point where where redundancy and layoff was a little bit more unusual. That time has well and truly passed.

Steve:

Right, right.

Emma:

It's it's yeah, almost, as I say, almost inevitable, I think, over the course of a a career in in this in this day and age, which I'm not sure if that's a depressing thought or a positive thought. I guess it depends on on how you look at it. But but to your point there that it's it's it's not you. It's not something that you have done. It is a reflection of business times, of you know, the economy, all of those things which are totally outside of your your control.

Steve:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think unique to marketing and the creative services within marketing, oftentimes in those exercises that companies go through when they're looking at the redundancies and who they're gonna let go, it's an equation of who's driving revenue. Yeah. And oftentimes marketing may indirectly be driving revenue, but so often marketing is actually spending budget on their marketing initiatives and whatnot, right? So if you are not directly bringing dollars to the bottom line and you are actually draining funds to drive marketing advertising campaigns, you you do tend to find yourself on that list more often than other departments and other industries.

Emma:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to to spend a little bit more time talking about the the first two of those stages, that kind of denial initially and and then the sort of pain that that comes after it, because I think for someone that's never experienced a a layoff or redundancy, it is that sort of initial shock, probably, and and and the wave of emotions that that come with that. How how have you come to think about those initial stages around the sort of the denial and and then the pain? Talk me through it.

Steve:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, for the listeners that aren't familiar with the stages of grief, let me set the table. The stages of grief were originally created by a researcher, her name is Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and she was examining terminally ill patients, and she found that this was an emotional um process that those patients went through. She also found then that friends and family of those terminally ill patients also followed a similar journey through grief. Since that time, it's been kind of widely accepted that any traumatic life experience, whether it's a divorce, certainly job loss, comes um into play that we as humans tend to process those things very similarly. So she first created the the five stages, and then in time, two more were added. And I really like the two because they allow you to find like the other side to find the light at the edge of this tunnel, and they pertain really well to a layoff. So I borrowed that framework because I found and identified with it in a way of you know my own personal experience. Now, they don't necessarily follow a linear path, and not everybody may experience all seven. Some days you may experience none, and some days you may experience all of them. You know, it's those particularly fun days. Those are days you just stay in bed.

Emma:

Yeah.

Steve:

You know, they're unique to everyone in their own life experience. But certainly the first two stages that you mentioned, denial and pain, also known as anger, are are very common. It's very easy to immediately be in a level of shock, like you mentioned. I can recall on really, I think three of my four layoffs, they came as a big surprise. So one minute you are planning an ad campaign, you're you're meeting with a vendor, you're doing business planning, you're planning for the future. And in literally minutes, yeah, that all goes away. It's all gone. And you have your your paycheck, your health insurance removed. But all of those friends, all of those colleagues, you don't really get to say goodbye to them. You're shown the door very quickly. Um, you don't get to hear, you know, accolades about your work meant so much and you did such a great job, like some people receive when they leave under different circumstances. So it's it's a period of immense shock. And and you kind of tend to shut down. You go into a, you know, like my body, I I tend to get kind of hot and sweaty. I I tend to like lose focus. I don't really hear everything that's being said. So when the HR person starts talking about the severance package and the health insurance and all of these things, it's a big blur. And and what's happening there is it's your body's way of protecting you. It's too much information to process all at once. So your body is kind of building up defenses that you need time to recover from. You're gonna find over the next couple of days that fog, right? I was talking to somebody about this. And the the day after she got let go, she was in a car accident because she was in this fog.

Emma:

Yeah.

Steve:

So the denial is real and it's it's kind of a bit of the body's self-defense mechanism. And then, you know, it's it's not uncommon and and totally acceptable to feel angry about the situation. Yeah. Um, your your livelihood, the way of kind of making sense of yourself in this world, the way you define yourself, the way you derive, you know, pleasure and enjoyment from your job, a sense of fulfillment, relationships, all of these things are gone. And that takes a minute to process. So it's really important that as you're dealing with these things, you're acknowledging what's happened and you don't ignore it or minimize it. And that you take a pause and you give yourself some time to process this. And don't jump right into doing resumes and going on job interviews. Give yourself some time to process this because if you don't, it'll manifest in a job interview when the person from HR says, Well, tell me about your last job, what happened there? And you're gonna stumble and stammer, and it's gonna be a big elephant in the room that you're just gonna want to hide from. This is where letting go of the shame and embarrassment and calling it for what it is, which is you know an unfortunate life experience, but all too common. And you know what? That really talented, really hard worker that I was before, I still am.

Emma:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's there's so much in there that I was reflecting. I'd have been made redundant once myself, but I'm probably a slightly unusual case in that I was actually really happy about it because it was somewhere that I I didn't necessarily want to want to be anymore. So but I do certainly remember that that shock because it all happens so quickly. As you say, one minute you're sitting at your desk doing your normal job, and then 10 minutes later you're walking out the door in in my case. And the the point you you touched on around that was your colleagues. Because I think you, you know, you form, spend so much time with these people, and and hopefully, you know, they're they're good friends and and they're people you like and and you formed really good bonds with them. And to just kind of have that ripped away as as well as the kind of the practical elements of, you know, your salary and your routine and and all of those kind of things, I think that really adds to that emotional sort of told of it and and can lead to I think a feeling of isolation for for people and and not necessarily kind of knowing how to deal with that or or where to where to turn.

Steve:

Right, right. Well, those people that you work with, you know, you you spend more time with them probably than your family. Yeah and you know, you're in this foxhole with them.

Emma:

Yeah.

Steve:

And when things go good at work, you turn to them and you kind of all talk and you celebrate. When things go bad at work, you all get together and you talk about it and they help prop each other up and they comfort you. And in this time now where you have a really difficult time at work, you don't have that network that you would normally turn to. That network is is kind of turned off in many instances. Yeah. So you're you're suddenly left with, well, these are my people that got me through those tough days. And here I am in a really tough day, but they've all moved on. All of that work that I had in front of me, well, guess what? They've absorbed that work and they're dealing with survivors' guilt. So they have their own stuff that they're working through. It's a difficult time. And that loss of community is also something that you you want to give yourself some time to kind of morph.

Emma:

Yeah, absolutely. The the other point you made there that I think is is so critical, and it's something that I've seen people not do a lot, actually, in my sort of previous recruitment career is that giving yourself time to to actually take a breath, to, to kind of process what's actually happened and seen multiple, multiple times, you know, someone essentially gets, you know, made redundant on the Friday, Monday morning, they're they're on the phone, they've got their CV ready to go, they're they're having conversations. I I've had conversations with with people literally in that in that time frame. And part of me, part of me understands it from the perspective of, you know, practicality, got to get out there, need a new job, you know, salary, money, all of that kind of thing. And also probably a bit of structure and routine, but you you could hear it. You it was part of the conversation that they hadn't yet sort of fully processed that. So I think even if it's even if it's a week, you know, even if you're really feeling the time pressure, some period of time to to actually go through that and and process those emotions is so important because exactly as you said, it it it leaks out into the into the process for the next thing if you haven't really dealt with that yet.

Steve:

Yeah, yeah, I agree 100%.

Emma:

And I wonder, I I wonder, given your experience and and having kind of gone through that a few times, did you find that you got much better and and quicker at that processing? I'd imagine it perhaps hit you far harder the the first time, whereas you kind of get, yeah, okay, I know what to do, I know what this feels like, and you've essentially already kind of done that mental work.

Steve:

Yeah. What I found over time was I had started to build up these coping skills and I started to build a really healthy, like mind-body, spirit balance that that gave me this baseline that I could draw from in difficult times. So, you know, I I talk a lot about like some some non-negotiables for me that set me up for success every day. And and they sound simple, but when you ladder them all up, and there's some science behind it as well, you know, you get a really good night's rest, sleep well, limit alcohol intake, have a good, healthy, well-rounded diet, exercise, get outside, develop a gratitude practice. One of the things about a a layoff or a redundancy is that you have so much loss and so much has been taken from you. Get your mind thinking about what you have and start reframing how you think about your circumstances. And and I also recommend some sort of like a meditation practice. Sitting quietly for a few minutes to examine your thoughts will really help you create some intentionality so that when you when you're faced with this, like you mentioned, you know, you may be in a uh a really toxic uh work situation. You may have a boss that's really awful. A layoff can be like a get out of jail free card. Um, it can give you the opportunity to reassess what path your career is on, if it's in alignment with your own personal values, if it's a career that you're driving joy from and fulfillment. Um if your career path, your industry is looking at contraction, you know, this is a good time to say, wow, there are a lot of jobs that are just being eliminated right now. If I stay in this field, I'm just gonna get met with another layoff. I need to pivot into doing something else. Now is the time to do that, right? So all of those things, yeah, you know, uh that that mind-body-spirit approach, I think is also what helped me by the fourth layoff, sail right through it. Because I had a lot of coping skills in place that I had developed.

Emma:

Yeah. I think the other thing that that gives you, uh and and totally agree with your points there, but I think the additional thing that it gives you is a bit of structure to your day. Because I think that's the other thing that people really struggle with, and and certainly a lot of the conversations that that I've had over the years of, you know, you you go from whether it's a nine to five, but you know, some sort of structure, and then suddenly you wake up and all that structure is gone. And I think if you're certainly if you're someone that's always been employed and you've never worked for yourself, you you've never had to design that structure for yourself, it's a real, it's a real shift. Suddenly there is this blank day in front of you, and you're thinking, okay, well, I know I need to get a job, but what else what else am I doing for the rest of the day? And I think some of those kind of wellness practices, the getting outside, the going for a walk, the sleeping well, the meditation, it it helps to kind of punctuate your day and and give you that structure. And I think that makes a huge, huge difference.

Steve:

You're exactly right. You're exactly right. Yeah, yeah.

Emma:

The uh the other thing you you mentioned at the beginning there was the uh the additional two that have kind of been added, added to the end. And I liked the way you sort of phrased that of uh, I think you said sort of reframing or the more sort of positive aspects of what what could come next. And you know, to our earlier point, I think it is a little bit of a process to to get to that positive mindset. And actually this this could be a real exciting new chapter for me. And you know, what could the future hold? You're not necessarily going to be thinking that on day two, but that kind of restructur, sorry, reconstruction and and renewal phases. Tell me about that. Tell me how you again, how you kind of worked through those in in your experience and and how you've kind of come to think about that.

Steve:

Yeah, yeah. Reconstruction and renewal. Um, there's a there's a great analogy thought exercise that I I just love in terms of doing some self-discovery. And I'll share it with you briefly. It's a it's a story called The Ship of Theseus, and this is an ancient ship in ancient Greece times, a very famous ship. It had been in a bunch of battles and won a bunch of battles, and this ship is in a museum, and they're finding that the ship is so old that in order to preserve it, they need to replace the wood planks in the ship. So one by one, they replace the the wood planks, and now that the the wood has all been removed and replaced, the question is, is it still the same ship? Yeah. Um, and then it kind of goes even deeper if those planks are used to reassemble another ship, then which, if either, is the real ship of Theseus? And what I like about this exercise is it it I explores identity, continuity, change, and it forces us to consider what makes something or someone the same over time. Now, in the face of a layoff, when you've lost that job, the important thing is to recognize you're still the same person. You still have those same skills, right? So oftentimes people will ask when you meet them, hi, so Emma, what do you do for a living? Right. That's the opening line at a at a cocktail party. And you you will say, Oh, well, I work for X, Y, and Z ad agency, or I work in marketing as you know, Clorox or something. And that becomes how you're defined. But there's difficulty there if you're laid off because you can't define yourself by that employer, right? Rather, if you say, Well, I uh I'm a uh a marketer with 25 years of experience across consumer packaged goods and you know other things, you're empowering yourself and your own skills that nobody can ever take from you. So I like that exercise. It it is a again, it's kind of a literal and figurative exercise of reconstruction, but it's something I think people struggle with with a layoff, where you wonder, well, who am I without this job? What am I without this job? You're still the same person, right? You still have inherent talents and skills. So I like that a lot. Your core essence uh it remains intact, even if the external circumstances change. So with reconstruction and renewal, it's all about regaining your footing, maybe resetting some boundaries for yourself, realigning skills. You may need to upskill at this time, and you may need to reap reprioritize or reassess your personal values and see how they're in alignment with your career. Um, but ultimately, it's about cultivating a growth mindset and viewing these obstacles as opportunities. So seeing change as an opportunity for growth and learning is really important to getting through this healthy and being on the other side of it in a way that it doesn't take you years. It takes you maybe months or weeks. W what I like about renewal is it's it's kind of about stepping into something new, um, maybe daring to dream again and rebuilding your career with a new sense of purpose. So that's why I like those two chapters to end with, and you know, that as they wrap up the stages of grief, they're very much forward-looking. Yeah. And I feel like they're very positive. Yeah. You know, to book in the first two that we talked about, denial and anger, those are difficult emotions. Those are very much like in the present, in the here and now, I'm I'm working through, you know, a difficult situation, a difficult set of circumstances. These last two are much more, I think, and forward looking.

Emma:

The the other thing I really like about them is there's a real sense of regaining control there that that you're in the driving seat. Like I say all the time, if then to use your analogy, you are the captain of your own ship. Like you're the one that actually gets to kind of, I'm gonna keep going with the analogy, chart the course for for where you for where you want to go next. I'm on fire now. Gonna keep going with that one. Do you know but I think that's so important and it's so interesting. I've seen it, gosh, so many, many times over the people that I've spoken to over the the years that have gone through redundancy and then kind of come out the other side that it almost weirdly becomes kind of like a positive experience for them because that it's it's set them on a new course that they perhaps wouldn't have got to. It's really changed their thinking about something. In some cases, they've made some really fundamental changes and and gone in quite a different direction. And sure, when it when it first happens, you're you're probably not going to be able to immediately jump to that. And to our earlier point, you probably shouldn't. You you need to kind of go through that that process. But there is actually something kind of really powerful in that time of redundancy that you you have been given time, time that you don't always get. You know, if you're working, you you maybe get, you know, what is it, two weeks in America, four weeks here, holiday a year. You you don't always get that much time to think and reflect and maybe strategize and and think differently about something. And that's actually the thing that that redundancy gives you. It it gives you that that kind of time and space to be able to think differently. And as you said, to to kind of reframe. But yeah, just this real sense. sense of of of kind of taking back control when control has very much been taken from you because your your layoff, your redundancy has happened to you, that there was nothing you could do about it. But I think that's a really important shift to to go to to claim back that that control and chart the course for where you where you want to go.

Steve:

Yeah, I totally agree. I think you're exactly right.

Emma:

And and on that sort of reconstruction and and sort of pivoting point, you had quite an interesting example of that in in your own career, I think, where you went in the sort of product marketing direction. So looking at your skills and and kind of looking at where the market was. Can you can you talk through that in a a bit more detail?

Steve:

Yeah yeah so it was after my third layoff I had started to look at all of the jobs that I was seeing on job boards. And it seemed like everything was for product marketing. And the the the job that I was in kind of like more generalist marketing seemed like it was going away. Marketing was evolving toward more specialization rather than like that that broad generalization that it had for so long. And as I read these job descriptions for product marketing I realized one, I had those skills and two, they sounded really exciting and really interesting. So I used that to make a pivot from a marketing generalist into product marketing. I was able to successfully bridge a narrative that told why I had those skills and why that opportunity excited me. And I I was able to then get a job again in relatively shorter market conditions were a little bit different back then, but I I I I lend that to and that's where the exercise of the like the self-introspection the examination and potentially a pivot like you said this is a pause that you've been given and you can you can see it as a a positive opportunity for you to like you said regain some control reexamine your path and maybe make a change if needed now what I love about this is the this can also be true you can find after you do the the work that you really love what you were doing you found it fulfilling and there's there's opportunity that you want to pursue so when you have that interview with the recruiter and you tell them why you're really energized to be in this industry it's going to come across really genuine right and and and because you've done some of that work to say you know what this is what I want to do. I want to stay on this path. And so I think it all of these things set you up for success one to manage the grief of the layoff but then two to to re-enter the job market energized and and ready for success.

Emma:

Yeah absolutely the the thing I particularly like about that example and and you use the perfect word as well was getting the narrative right of of how you tell the story of how you're transferring your skills from what you did to to what you're going to. I think that's the thing in my experience that people sometimes struggle with a little bit of well I know I've got those skills. I know they're transferable and I can see how that will work but I I just can't get that across in an interview or or to the potential new employer. But as you say it's framing that narrative of how you're telling that story and giving context and essentially joining the dots for the other person. Like here's how this works you know yeah yeah yeah yeah yes yes the other thing I wanted to to touch on Steve as it feels very relevant to to both our conversation specifically about kind of layoff and redundancy but but also kind of the broader sort of marketing and and creative climate at the moment really interested in your thoughts on future proofing it's it's a phrase that that comes up a lot a phrase that I've been asked to speak to a a couple of times as well. How do you see that kind of playing out how how do you think in in the sort of current current climate people can future proof themselves?

Steve:

What are the things that you think are important my interpretation of future proofing I think one I would make sure I have a really strong and diverse network in order to get a job in the future you're not going to be able to get one off of these job boards and competing with a thousand people. You're going to get a job based on who you know and I want to always been like that. It's going to become even more like that. So I would make sure that whatever industry I want to be in, whatever companies I want to work for, um I'm I'm networking, I'm building relationships and I'm doing it in advance so that when I do need to try and get a job there, I'm not suddenly connecting with five different people. You know I've I've done that in advance. So that would be the first thing I would do. I would also make sure I've got at a minimum six months of savings put away because it's going to take you probably six months or more to land that next job and you're going to need that cushion. But in terms of of you know more literal this is a good time to upskill and to reskill this is a good time to look at the trajectory of your industry and your career path and say is there contraction or is it growing right and there are some things that AI just won't replace yeah and there's some things that AI honestly will replace um AI has never come up with a new creative original thought. Yeah all AI does is iterate on whatever has happened already right so an example I mentioned I worked on the what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas ad campaign. AI is never going to come up with that tagline right so if I'm a copywriter uh I feel pretty comfortable. Now there are some employers who feel like well we can outsource copywriting to AI and and they're short-sighted and probably right in 12 months they're going to rehire their copywriter because they're going to find that AI isn't writing anything creative. On the flip side of that, you know, if I'm let's say I'm a proofreader or I'm an editor that may be a difficult job to bridge what AI can do because AI can do a pretty good job proofreading. Right. But you know if I'm in the creative services field I'm not that worried about AI because that's the one thing AI can't do. If I'm in accounting AI can probably balance a spreadsheet and balance a budget you know with the right inputs AI can do decent coding um it needs an editor and the thing with AI is um you need to like supervise it you need to hold its hand and coach it and and and that requires talent and skill right so um I think we're at an inflection point in this this new tool and is that tool being used correctly and and and and and what is its scalability um across different industries and time and I think that's a big unknown right now. I think there's a lot of knee-jerk reactions that time will tell but ultimately I think marketing will always require data points research and a human to interpret all of that to come up with a creative solution.

Emma:

Yeah I I completely completely agree and as you say there's there's obviously a lot of unknown but it it does feel like there has been a little bit of a kind of a knee-jerk reaction to kind of jump to oh well you know we're going to be decimated. Are we? Like as you say it's that that genuine innovative thinking creative thinking strategic thinking that AI currently can't can't do because it is just recycling existing ideas and I think more broadly those certainly those human skills and and other human skills you know leadership like being a great leader and and being able to take people on the journey with you unless you know we're going to end up in a world where literally there's there's one person and a team of robots which I don't think is hope not isn't going to happen. Those those human skills of of leading other humans of of connecting with other humans I still think will will be a a differentiator for for people and and will be needed. And to your point on networking I mean I'm bang on about it ad nauseam but I think you're a hundred percent right and and I think that is only going to continue to be more and more the case and you absolutely hit the nail on the head where I think the the mistake that a lot of people make with that is they wait till they need it and then they're running desperately to kind of catch up whereas you've got to front load it like you want to be years ahead of of of that conversation and to have put in the groundwork so that you know if and when that that time comes you're you've already established those relationships and you're you're ready to go. But it's interesting like you answer that question in in quite a in quite a positive way which is also the way I tend to answer that question and it it does feel that there is perhaps a little bit too much negativity around that but as you said time time will tell.

Steve:

Yeah um final question Steve and it's always the the final question here and that is what do you know now that you wish you knew then yeah I wish I knew um how important those relationships are how meaningful they are how important um and the fulfillment from helping people is I think early in my career I was very focused on myself with my title my salary my responsibilities the prestige of the account or whatever it was um and I I didn't always think about others in a really healthy way and and those relationships. And now on on this side of things I'm really thinking about what can I do to help others? What can I do to prop other people up and empower them to be their best selves. And I feel like this is a much better place and a much healthier place to be and one that I I probably get much more joy from because on the other side of it you know you can never have enough right and it's just it it's an empty cup that never gets filled. This is this is much more fulfilling.

Emma:

Yeah absolutely yeah I I agree I've walked it probably walked a similar path on on on that one. And it's interesting because it's probably actually brought us to to a similar place which is sharing your experience with others now. So sharing the things that you've learned through your own experiences and and now sharing that with with other people to to hopefully help them with with what they're going through. So thank you Steve thank you so much really really enjoyed talking with you and yeah I I I love the way that you you uh think about this and and kind of set it out because I think it's it is a really important topic and and one as we've said is probably only going to become more prevalent so being able to help people with their skills and and kind of show them that there's absolutely light at the end of the tunnel and and the process that they can can walk through to help them get there. So thank you.

Steve:

Thank you. Thank you for having me on I appreciate it.

Emma:

Before you go I've got a quick favour to ask if you enjoyed this episode or something in it resonated with you I'd love it if you could leave a quick review or rating on Apple Podcasts. It's one of the best ways to help more people find the show and I love to hear what's landing with you. Just scroll down in the app, tap a star rating and if you've got 30 seconds leave a few words too. Thanks again for listening I really appreciate it

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Emma Graham

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