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What's up, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Action Academy podcast, Corporate America's least favorite podcast. Guys, when I recorded the first episode of this podcast, it was in October of 2021, directly post Covid. And since that point, now that I'm recording this In November of 2025, everything has essentially changed. Post Covid we got this nice wave of real estate appreciation. We got this wave where people were beginning to buy small and companies were going from this remote environment kind of back in office, and the labor market, the job market was kind of up for grabs and everybody could kind of ride this beginning of AI wave. And things were just kind of good for the most part. Fast forward to today with Amazon firing over 30,000 people in a day. Nvidia laying off people. I'm in Austin, Texas. Oracle laid off, I think 7,000 people. It's happening across the board, especially in big tech companies. So today what I want to talk about is what I would be doing if I were in that position right now. If you're in a position that is threatened by AI, if you're in maybe a middle management position and you're kind of nervous about what to do next in the event that you're the recipient of one of those emails from HR that all of a sudden says, boom, you're part of the 10% of the company that's let go today. I want to talk about maybe a checklist that I would have in place of what to do and then also kind of a few pivots that we've made with Action Academy to address this and also help with this, because right now we're smack in the middle of holiday season and we've got something that hopefully can help with this at the end of the episode. So first things first, I'm not trying to scare you guys. I'm not trying to fear Monger. What we're about to do here is called inverse thinking, inverse reasoning. And Charlie Munger is, who made this famous Warren Buffett's business partner for over, I think, 60 years. And so Charlie had this quote which says, I don't want to focus on all the different ways that I can live. I want to focus on the three to four ways that I can die. And his quote was, I want to know where I'm going to die so that I never go there. And so inversion thinking is instead of thinking about all the best case scenarios where you get promoted, you know, you buy all this real estate, you buy a business on the side, all of a sudden you're financially free, Hooray, hoorah, blah, blah, blah. Instead we're thinking about, okay, well, what are the ways that I would get taken out if this were to happen? And so you go ahead and plan for it and you prep for it. So best case scenario is it doesn't happen. And then the worst case is it does happen and the risk is mitigated because you have now planned for the worst case scenario. So one of the ways that people are going to die is if you do not know where your money's going. So controlling your burn, your spend monthly. Number one thing to focus on here. I have a lot of friends that make six figures, well into the six figures, working at Amazon, Google, Meta, whatever have you name it. And they're data engineers, software engineers all across the board making, you know, $400,000 a year. They have no idea how much money they spend. I make more than that now. I know exactly how much money I spend. And that's how you stay in the game. You get in the game by making a lot of money. You stay in the game by knowing how much you spend. That's what matters. Because if you're a billionaire and your lifestyle costs a billion dollars, you are not richer than the person who makes $400,000 a year and lives on for 50. That person is significantly more well off and lives a richer life than the billionaire with a billion dollar lifestyle. So first thing I would do is do what I describe as survive, arrive and thrive numbers. This is the most important thing that I would do and focus on right now is just knowing where the heck my expenses are A going and B, what numbers do I need to actually live. So for anybody that's brand new to the show, survive, arrive and thrive are my key key three cash flow numbers. So survive is going to be how much money do you need to just pay the bills? Fixed expenses, rent, mortgage, car payment, if you have one, food on the table, you're not going out to eat, but just groceries, meal prepping, um, bills are paid, essentially you can live. So that is survive, arrive is gonna be discretionary spending. So that's gonna be okay. I've got a little bit of money in my pocket. Like I'm still saving some money. I can go out to eat a few times and go out to the bars with my friends and the bills are paid and then thrive is okay. Now I can comfortably do whatever I feel like doing. I can also save money on top of that. And things are honky dory, right? And so to get Some teeth to this. My first original time doing this exercise was 2020 or 2019, I believe, five or six years ago. Crazy. And so my original survive number was $4,000 a month because I was house hacking in North Atlanta, Georgia. And so I had no rent expense because I owned the house. I was renting out the other bedrooms and basically I was just living super, super lean. So $4,000 a month, I was still saving money. I think I was still saving like a thousand bucks a month and living off of that. That was my survive number arrived for me at that time was 6.5 thousand. So 6,500amonth. So that's kind of what my normal expenses were. If I just felt like going out, doing stuff, traveling every once in a while, kind of living life. And then my thrive number was $20,000 per month. So that is what I would focus on, is the monthly. Then what I would do is I would eliminate all high interest credit card debt like immediately, right now, 20%, 25% debt, go ahead and attack that ruthlessly. Student loans and all the lower stuff, I would let that kind of sit to the side. I would attack all of my high interest debt as fast as humanly possible and just get square with the credit cards, right? So now that we're starting out, we're playing defense, right? We know exactly how much we're spending, where the money's going, and we know what our numbers are that we need to hit. And we also know how much passive income we have coming in today. So I'm assuming that I don't need to let any of you guys know that, that are listening to this podcast because you guys care about passive income, right? So if you have some rental properties, if you have some Airbnbs, you should know where you are on your survive, arrive and thrive freedom journey. Next thing I would do is I would make sure that I have some liquidity, right? So I would take that arrive number or that survive number, I'd multiply that by five to six and I would have about six months of expenses in my account, maybe three minimum 90 days to 180 days of living expenses in my account of my survive numbers. So I'm just like, okay, if anything happens, I'm good here, right? So these are defensive metrics. This is just Dave Ramsey boilerplate stuff that we're talking about so far. So for people that are listening, you guys are like, okay, cool. Well, you know, maybe I'm not as worried about the layoffs as other people. And I want to play a little Bit of offense, too. And sometimes the best offense is a good defense, and in this case, sometimes the best defense is a great offense. And so how I would do this offensively, which is what I did in 2021, is when I was actually at my lowest and I quit a job in a non sexy and non financially free way and had to go crawling back to my previous employer. I went on offense because I had all of my numbers down for my savings and I had all my cash flow goals down for my spend. And so I went on offense and I basically took all my money and I invested it into connections, I invested it into capital partnerships, and I invested it into skill sets. Like that is where all my money went to. So in 2021, my income dropped from $252,000 down to 60, I think $62,000 to $61,000. And I still was investing in masterminds, I still was investing in coaching, I still was investing in all of the different things. And so that took a while. It hurt in the short term, while I was going through it. But in 2022, that January is when everything hit for me. And all of a sudden all the connections started paying off, all the coaching started paying off, and I was able to quit my job in March of 2022. So there's a gap in the middle where it kind of hurts in the beginning and it hurts in the short term, but then long term, it is the thing that keeps you out. So the two things that they cannot take away from you, no matter what, they can take away your title, they can take away your position, they can take away your salary. They cannot take away your skill sets, they cannot take away your connections, your skill sets and your network. They cannot take away from you. So if I was investing right now, I would not be investing in the stock market. And we'll put commercial real estate and business buying aside. We could talk about that with the whole Action Academy thing. But at its core, what you want to invest in right now is going to be skill sets and network, period. A great example of this is my business partner, Kyle. He's been on this podcast, I believe, twice now. He's the gentleman that I bought the Northern Lights company with in Alaska, in Fairbanks. And when he was let go from his job, he was making well into six figures. He already had the connections because he'd already been in Action Academy for over a year. He had the connections, he had the skill sets, and he had capital saved up for six months. So with a newborn child and a wife so he had an idea already of everything that I just talked about. He knew his survival arrive and thrive. He knew his numbers, he knew exactly what his asset class class was he was pursuing, which was small business acquisition. And so he posted in the group and he said, hey, I am not going to get another job now. I'm going to ride off the severance and, and I'm going to use this to fund and fuel this fricking business. I'm coming back as an owner, I'm not coming back as a another employee again. And so that's what happened. And I was able to invest $150,000 with him to buy into that company. And now we run that company along with Ashley, one of our other business partners, and some other Action Academy members. With all that being said, that's an example of how to do this the right way. They took away Kyle's job, they took away Kyle's title, they took away Kyle's salary. They did not take away Kyle's skill sets and his network. And most importantly, what Kyle had was frickin momentum. Because he had already been talking to people, he'd already been talking to guys like me for capital and for mentorship. He was already talking to other people in the group for partnership. And that is the most important thing, more than anything is you want to be liquid with your capital and you want to be heavily invested in your skill sets and your relationships. So guys, everything that I just told you to do, you could do 100% for free. You can go out to your local real estate meetups, you can go to all these different local meetups, you can go online, you can message people that were on my podcast, you can do that stuff. But if you really, really want the security, if you want to be able to have ownership in 2026, you want to be an owner of a business yourself. Because the only person that cannot fire you is you on earth. All right? Even your wife or your husband can fire you. But you can't fire you, baby. You've got this. So if you want ownership, that is why we changed the offer for Action Academy for Black Friday for this week and for next week, until the end of November, we have the lifetime access deal. Okay? Lifetime access. The reason we did this is, is because with all the uncertainty in today's market, the last thing that I want to do is have liquidity taken away from an Action Academy member that is going into a renewal. Because before we did Action Academy as a 12 month program, it was annual. Every single year you repay you renew and you go into another year's worth of membership. But now, instead of doing that for 9,000, 10,000 bucks a year, we're now changing that to one price. Lifetime offer for Black Friday. So that way, when you join, you get everything. You get access to the coaches, you get access to the deal rooms, you get access to the capital partners, you get access to the operating partners, every single person in the group forever. So again, I'm posting this on a Friday. You've already heard me talk about the Black Friday offer up until this point. So if you guys are interested in participating in that, go to actionacademy.com go in the show description for this episode. You're going to have actionacademy.com you can go ahead and click it on your phone. Book a call with our team. We're happy to speak with you. Just remember that as soon as it hits December 1st, my 31st birthday, the lifetime offer is gone and we're going back to annual. So heads up there and hopefully we'll be talking very soon.