Banks aren't the only ones in trouble...

It was a hot Thursday afternoon in mid August, 2008 when I was scheduled to meet with the President of our division. I cant remember his name now but he'd come down from New York to personally meet with each of the business development people in the Atlanta office because the market and our sales performance had been bad all year. It seems important to point out that I was in my 18Th year as a business developer for the Wealth Management area of a Bank and I had become a Senior Vice President and a Team leader precisely because I knew what I was doing. But that afternoon, I was to be in the hot seat - like everyone else.

I should have known something was up when I reported to the conference room and the HMFIC wasn't there but in his place was my social climbing, weasel supervisor and the Chief Operating Officer, a thin, insecure woman who had consistently impressed me regarding how little she actually knew about operations. Grim faced, they stopped me from making my well rehearsed sales report and told me right away that they had bad news. Bad new for me, anyway. The sub-prime mortgage crisis had slashed 30% from their stock price and the Chairman, making a statement to Wall Street had decided to let 10% of the company go. I was being laid off, sacrificed to the God of expense ratio management. I had loyally worked every day for 18 years being the best I could be. I had attended every training option, I had cross sold every stupid new product and I had allowed myself to think that I was entitled to the relative prosperity I had come to enjoy. I thought that I had tenure. I was wrong. In the time it took to make coffee, I was escorted back to my desk, given 2 minutes to collect the personal things that I could carry and shown the door. It happened too fast for it to even sink in.

I resolved to take a month off before beginning the job search just to give myself time to grieve and secretly, take all of the time I wanted to feel sorry for myself. The indignity that I felt was crushing. I admit that I had been feeling really unenthusiastic about my job for a while, though I might have rather left on my terms not theirs. But, the fools that were blaming the office's poor performance on me had also given me a month's pay so I was going to take that month at their expense and relax. As it turns out, two huge things happened in the following days to change my plans entirely. One global and one personal.

At roughly the same time, the banking industry in the US was melting down. The sub prime problems caused an avalanche of bank failures as the stock prices of nearly all of the banks in the country collapsed. Clearly, there wasn't going to be a bank job available for me to try for. My professional life line was being severed. Facing the terror of starting over at 50 years old was something I wasn't sure that I even had in me. Second, on day 2 of my forced sabbatical my phone rang and it was a former client that I'd befriended. I'll tell you more about him in a minute but he went to some effort to find my home phone number so as to be able to tell me that he liked and admired me and wondered if I'd be open to helping him launch a business that he was planning. I liked him too and began to wonder if starting a business, even in the worst economy in 50 years was absolutely the best way to keep from becoming completely depressed. I agreed to consider it.