Three layoffs in ten years. If that sounds like a cruel joke, trust me — it feels like one too.

The first time it happened, I told myself it was bad luck. The second time, I told myself it was a pandemic. The third time — just two weeks after signing a lease on a bigger, more expensive home closer to work — I realized this wasn’t just bad luck. This was life in the modern economy.

Each time the reasons were different: Fanatics during a rebrand, Cox Media Group during the pandemic (“luxury position”), Superior Fireworks during tariffs. But none of it had to do with me or my work. It was always forces far above my control.

And that’s what I keep circling back to: control. Or lack of it. Because if you’ve ever been laid off, you know the truth — control is an illusion.

Act One: The Early Hustle

Before marketing, I spent years in retail and merchandising. I was the guy making sure products were in stock, displays looked good, and stores were hitting their numbers.

At Spectrum Brands and Advantage Solutions, I was a rep managing multiple stores across a region. I checked stock levels, reset planograms, and made sure products looked the way they were supposed to. At Walmart, I was a department manager in produce. At Native Sun, I was negotiating with vendors and analyzing sales trends.

It wasn’t glamorous, but it taught me resilience. Retail is improv theater with angry customers. It taught me leadership, how to adapt, how to solve problems on the fly. And it gave me the itch for something bigger. I didn’t just want to move products — I wanted to tell stories.

Act Two: The Fanatics Lesson

Fanatics was supposed to be my ticket into something bigger. I actually started there as a photographer — shooting products, building content, shaping the visual side of sports merchandising. For a while, it was exciting. But photography had a ceiling, and my daughter had just been born. Suddenly, “passion” wasn’t enough — I needed stability and a bigger paycheck.

So, I pivoted. I dusted off the skills I’d first built in the late ’90s, when I was hand-coding websites from scratch, and moved into SEO. It seemed like the right move: creative enough to stay interesting, technical enough to keep me sharp, and valuable enough to support a growing family.

But once inside the SEO department, reality set in. Most of my days were turnkey tasks: meta refreshes, plugging in blog posts, routine site maintenance. I wanted more. I wanted to understand strategy, to push things forward, to experiment. My director’s mantra, though, was always: “Control your controllable.” Which, in my case, meant “don’t think too hard, just do the tasks.”

But I do think too hard. I ask too many questions. I don’t just want to push buttons — I want to understand what happens when they light up. And at Fanatics, that curiosity branded me as difficult.

Eventually, during a rebrand, they let me go. The official reason? Performance. The irony? I pulled the performance reports every week, and it had actually been my best quarter yet. The numbers didn’t lie — but calling it “performance” was easier than admitting they didn’t want a question-asker in the room.

As I walked out of the building for the first time, I wasn’t about to let their version of the story stand unchallenged. I attached the report — the one showing my best quarter — to an email, copied HR, my bosses, and sent it directly to Dennis Goedegebure, the growth manager from Airbnb who had joined Fanatics. It was my way of saying: the numbers prove my worth, whether you admit it or not.

That was my first layoff, and it set the tone for the rest of my career. Sometimes asking questions — the very thing that drives growth — gets you punished.

And the timing made it all heavier. Not long after losing that job, my son was born. One chapter closed, another opened, and I had to figure out how to rebuild while holding a newborn in my arms.

Act Three: Growing Into Marketing

I didn’t quit after Fanatics. If anything, the setback pushed me harder. I freelanced SEO campaigns, driving traffic increases in the triple digits for clients who had barely seen movement in years. One client saw a 371% jump in a single month — their first online sales in forever. That kind of win reminded me I knew what I was doing, even if a rebrand and some politics had cost me my job.

That led me into healthcare. At Lakeview Health, I built and executed a centralized SEO strategy that tripled website traffic and delivered the highest volume of organic leads the company had ever seen. It was proof that the right mix of content, structure, and persistence could transform an entire business pipeline.

But Lakeview was also where I hit another crossroads. In 2017, I went to Boston for INBOUND, one of the biggest digital marketing conferences in the world. And there, I sat in a session where the speaker said something that flipped a switch for me: “Video is the future.”

I felt that in my bones. I had always loved production — filmmaking, storytelling, editing. I’d been doing it on the side with Upside Down Creative Media for years. Suddenly, I realized I didn’t just want to optimize words on a page. I wanted to take my marketing experience and marry it with my love of visual storytelling.

So after Lakeview, I made a conscious choice. I pivoted again — this time into roles that would let me bridge the gap between digital marketing and video production. That leap took me to Pearson, where I managed multimillion-dollar budgets and SEO strategy across North America. It sharpened my skills at the highest level, but the seed planted at INBOUND kept growing.

Each role was adding to the toolkit: SEO, content, analytics, strategy, and now a clear path toward production. I wasn’t just executing tasks anymore. I was shaping the story — and realizing that the story didn’t just belong in search rankings. It belonged on screens.

Act Four: Cox Media and the Luxury Joke

Cox Media Group was a turning point. I was finally combining my love of production with marketing — managing ad budgets, producing promos, livestreams, and shows. It felt like the best of both worlds.

Then 2020 happened. The pandemic gutted advertising revenue. My role was deemed a “luxury.”

Imagine sitting at your kitchen table and reading that your livelihood is considered the corporate equivalent of a hot tub. That’s how I learned the word “luxury” can sting more than “fired.”

Act Five: Graham Media and the Vanishing Magic of Local TV

After CMG, I joined Graham Media Group. For almost four years, I poured myself into producing campaigns for broadcast, digital, and OTT platforms. I helped shape subscription strategies, worked closely with newsroom leadership, and helped shape messaging that mattered to our community.

It was creative freedom in its purest form. I wasn’t just maintaining — I was producing, editing, strategizing. I felt plugged into something bigger than myself, something local and vital. It reminded me why I fell in love with media in the first place: because a local station can still be a heartbeat for its city.

But while I loved the work, I couldn’t ignore the cracks forming in the foundation. Every year, audiences shifted further to streaming and on-demand. Local newsrooms downsized. Resources stretched thinner. I started to fear I was living inside the slow-motion demise of local television — a medium that raised me, taught me storytelling, and once carried real influence in shaping how a community saw itself.

That fear stayed with me. As much as I loved the craft, part of me wondered if I was building something on borrowed time. Eventually, I pivoted back toward marketing, hoping for firmer ground. But the truth is, leaving Graham felt less like a career decision and more like saying goodbye to an old friend you’re not sure will still be around in a decade.

Act Six: Superior Fireworks and the Illusion of Stability

Superior Fireworks was supposed to be the culmination of everything I’d done — SEO, paid ads, social media, photography, video. They had recruited me for nearly a year before I finally joined, which made me believe they truly wanted what I brought to the table. I thought I was stepping into a role where I could stretch my skills across the full spectrum of marketing.

But the reality was different. Creativity hit a ceiling fast. Our brand identity was rigid, stuck in “this is how we’ve always done it” mode. Every idea had to be bent, trimmed, or abandoned to fit an outdated playbook that stifled growth. Instead of experimenting and pushing the brand forward, we were stuck repeating the same tactics, hoping for different results. For someone wired to innovate, it was suffocating.

Still, I gave it everything. I produced campaigns, maintained digital strategy, and pushed as far as I could within the limits. After a year and a half of believing I’d carved out a stable future, I signed a lease on a bigger house closer to the office. It felt like the responsible next step.

Less than two weeks later, I was laid off.

The reason? Tariffs. Global trade disputes, far beyond my control, reached down from Washington, D.C. and erased the stability I thought I’d finally found.

That one hit harder than the others. Not just because of the work — I was proud of what I managed to build within the constraints — but because I’d been recruited for so long, led to believe I was vital, and then dismissed with no warning. It was another reminder that in today’s landscape, stability is more illusion than reality, and even when you give everything, the system can still collapse under you.

The Constant: Comedy and UDCM

Through every layoff, one thing has never stopped: Upside Down Creative Media.

Since 2008, I’ve been writing, directing, producing comedy. In 2013, I made it official with UDCM. I’ve produced web series, short films, livestreams, and podcasts. I’ve won awards: Best Director, Best Film, Audience Choice, Best Sound. I’ve been recognized by Kyle Newacheck, copied by Comedy Central Digital, and even inspired SNL writers.

Comedy is how I survive. It’s how I process. Even when the paycheck disappears, I can still make people laugh.

In 2025, I launched the UDCM Podcast Network. But right now? The studio is down. The network is paused. Uncertainty seeped in there, too.

Still — comedy is my anchor. It’s proof that I don’t stop creating just because the world keeps taking jobs away.

The Existential Question: What’s the Point?

And here’s where it gets real.

Three layoffs in ten years. A studio on pause. AI stepping into marketing, production, and even comedy. Some days, I find myself asking: What’s the point?

I used to have fire. I chased titles, dollars, recognition. I thought if I worked hard enough, I’d build stability. But the truth is, stability’s an illusion. Companies rebrand, pandemics happen, tariffs hit, and now AI threatens to replace half the work I’ve spent decades mastering.

So why keep going? Why keep chasing the dollar when the rules keep changing?

Because the point isn’t the dollar. It’s the work. It’s the stories. It’s the connection.

AI can spit out a blog post. But it can’t feel the sting of explaining to your kids why you lost your job two weeks after moving into a new house. It can’t sit in a theater and hear an audience laugh at your short film. It can’t wrestle with doubt, loss, hope, and still get up the next day to create anyway.

That’s the fire. Maybe it burns smaller than it used to, but it’s steadier now. Less about chasing flames, more about building light.