Career Advice / Layoffs and Setbacks
Getting laid off feels personal. It almost never is. A spreadsheet made the call, and you were a line on it.
What you do in the next 30 days matters more than what happened. These articles cover the layoff itself, the rejection that follows, and the stubborn work of getting back up.
A Jermaine Dupri interlude from 1998 carries a career lesson: everybody comes down eventually. Scott on enjoying the wins, staying decent at the top, and relationships that outlast the title.
Read Article →His role was eliminated in April and it messed with his head. Scott on rebuilding confidence, blocking out the noise, and refusing to let one chapter become the whole story.
Read Article →The first termination, the first layoffs, the first big screwup. Scott on why the sun still comes up after difficult moments, and why walking toward them beats avoiding them.
Read Article →Pete Carroll tried to recruit LeBron James to play tight end during the 2011 lockout. Scott on why failing in the wrong arena says almost nothing about your talent.
Read Article →Celebrity home tours are spotless and staged, and real homes are messy. Careers are the same. Scott on why comparing your messy reality to someone’s polished LinkedIn tour is a losing game, and why the mess means you’re living in it.
Read Article →The fox called the grapes sour because he couldn’t reach them. Scott on the stories we tell ourselves after rejection, why honesty after disappointment is so hard, and what calling the grapes sour actually costs you.
Read Article →A few months back, Scott's day job was eliminated, and at first he felt like a fraud. Scott on why hard seasons don't take away your credibility, they add to it, and why setbacks shape us more than we realize.
Read Article →Every big goal you want is on the other side of a wall you have been avoiding. Scott on why careers are built in the hard parts, not the easy ones, and why the wall is there to reveal what you are made of.
Read Article →An anonymous Signal user burned through 954 messages in a free trial, cost Scott $35, then canceled. His response was gratitude, not frustration. Sometimes the moments that look like failure teach you more than any success.
Read Article →A smashed car window taught Scott a simple lesson: most problems deserve far less attention than we give them. The people who keep moving forward are not the ones who avoid setbacks. They are the ones who clean up the glass and get back to the road ahead.
Read Article →We all start our careers as Anakin and risk hardening into Vader. The difference between wisdom and cynicism is not the scars you collect, it is what you decide they mean.
Read Article →Frank Sinatra released 1,200 songs. Picasso produced 150,000 pieces. Babe Ruth came to the plate 8,399 times. Scott on the math of success and why confidence is just accumulated proof that you survived failure before. Most careers come down to volume of reps. The people you admire stayed in the game long enough for probability to work in their favor.
Read Article →Switch the narrative from ’I’m embarrassed to fail’ to ’failure is a signal’ and you start to win. Scott shares two of his own recent failures, and explains why most people never even access the signals. They refuse to put themselves in positions where rejection is possible.
Read Article →Ring. Airbnb. Facebook. Spanx. All originally dismissed as bad ideas. If someone tells you your idea sucks, it might just be a sign that it is worth a billion dollars.
Read Article →No matter what you do in your career, it's not always going to be roses and pots of gold. Here's how to create small pockets of relief so you can keep showing up without completely checking out.
Read Article →Amazon has had over 50 major product failures. Microsoft over 100. Google over 200. The companies that win big are the ones willing to fail big. Here's what tha
Read Article →Your GPS doesn't call you an idiot when you miss a turn, it just says
Read Article →Failure is treated like a scarlet letter. But if you failed recently, it means you moved. It means you stepped into the arena instead of critiquing it from the
Read Article →One phone call, one email, one meeting, everything can change in an instant. Here's how to make sure that moment doesn't get to decide everything.
Read Article →Everyone says they want to succeed. But the fastest way forward isn't polishing, perfecting, or waiting until you feel ready. It's failing more often than the p
Read Article →I love to gamble. I also know that every big win sits on top of a pile of losses that nobody talks about. The willingness to lose is what separates the ones who eventually win.
Read Article →When life gets too smooth, you start believing you're better than you are. The friction, the difficulty, the resistance, that's where skill actually gets built.
Read Article →DVD bonus features used to show the bloopers, the outtakes, the stumbles behind the polished final cut. Your career has those too. And they matter more than the highlight reel.
Read Article →Ten NCAA football coaches have been fired this season. Three are owed millions. Getting fired is not the end, it's a redirect.
Read Article →Last night the Mariners won a 15-inning classic to advance in the playoffs. The lesson: you don't win by quitting at bat nine.
Read Article →Change is disruptive. It interrupts what you thought was certain. But the people who thrive aren't the ones who avoid it, they treat it like raw material.
Read Article →The fastest way to kill your career momentum is to play the comparison game. You scroll LinkedIn, see someone's highlight reel, and immediately your brain write
Read Article →What separates good from great? The mental game. Learn how to reset quickly and control your response when things go wrong.
Read Article →In gambling, there are only winners and quitters. Nobody texts you when they lost, only when they won. The same mindset applies to your career. You either win
Read Article →When it ends, let it come to an end. Jobs end for a reason. Relationships cease for a reason. Holding on after something is finished becomes a heavy weight. End
Read Article →When you're down, the instinct is to retreat. Scott Bond on why the better move is to double down, not with desperation, but with belief.
Read Article →Sometimes when you're down, you just need to double down. One of Scott's favorite YouTubers is a guy named Vegas Matt, and he taught him something real about resilience.
Read Article →There's no good way to slice it. Layoffs suck, for the person receiving them and the person delivering them. A raw, honest look at what it actually feels like from both sides.
Read Article →My grandmother shouted it to a kid in my front yard: 'Life's not fair.' She was right. And playing the victim in your career won't get you anywhere.
Read Article →In a span of 12 hours, three people texted me that they'd been laid off. The reminder is harsh but real: you lease your job. You don't own it.
Read Article →Thirty years ago your parents told you to get a job. Scott on why the kids bucking conventional wisdom are learning to build, sell, and fail while everyone else waits in line.
Read Article →Seventeen months ago Scott wrote that a forced career change can be a gift. After having his own role eliminated, he understands it differently. The first thing that arrives is the punch to the face.
Read Article →Seattle tore down a highway Scott loved to make room for a better waterfront, and he couldn’t see the vision at the time. The opportunities you want are usually hiding on the other side of something you’re refusing to tear down.
Read Article →Meta laid off 1,400 Seattle employees on May 20th. Six days later, Mark Zuckerberg’s $300M superyacht cruised through the same city. Scott on why this isn’t really about yachts, it is about emotional intelligence, reading the room, and understanding that great leaders manage energy, morale, trust, and perception, not just revenue and strategy.
Read Article →Scott on watching CEOs and Presidents exit billion-dollar businesses with barely a ripple, and what that means for the rest of us. If a CEO is replaceable, you are too. But being replaceable to one company means you are irreplaceable to another. The trap is letting one rejection collapse your sense of value before you test it elsewhere.
Read Article →Disaster companies fail for three reasons: bad leadership, smoke-and-mirror products, and toxic culture. Here's what you can learn, and how to know if you're inside one right now.
Read Article →88% of resolutions are broken before the end of January. The problem isn't your goal, it's the missing purpose and accountability behind it.
Read Article →Leaving behind who you were is the price of becoming who you want to be. Scott Bond on ten years in media, the identity tied to a career, and why letting go of who you were is part of the process.
Read Article →You've heard "don't put all your eggs in one basket" about money. Scott Bond on why the same principle applies to how you think, and what happens when your mindset gets stuck in one lane.
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