Here is the full transcript of Alexandra Gater’s talk titled “How Losing My Dream Job Skyrocketed My Career” at TEDxCentennialCollegeToronto conference.
Alexandra Gater’s TEDx talk, “How Losing My Dream Job Skyrocketed My Career,” is a compelling narrative about resilience and the unexpected paths to success. She begins by sharing the disheartening experience of being let go from a coveted position at a leading magazine, a moment that initially left her feeling lost and uncertain about her future.
Despite the initial setback, Gater discusses how this event became the catalyst for her to redefine her career on her own terms. She emphasizes the importance of trust in oneself and the courage to pursue a passion, even in the face of adversity. Alexandra’s journey led her to start her own YouTube channel focused on home decor for millennials, which quickly turned into a thriving business.
Her story is a testament to the idea that sometimes, losing what we thought was our dream job can open the door to even greater opportunities. Gater’s talk is not just about her personal success, but a broader message of hope and inspiration for anyone facing career uncertainty.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Unexpected Meeting
Two years ago, I found myself wearing cut-off denim shorts to a business meeting that was about to change my life. I remember this vividly because although I was supposed to be running around planning a photo shoot for the magazine I was working for, I was called into a mandatory meeting with the head of publishing. “Mandatory” was written in all caps on the email invite with no other details.
As I was in a cab crossing the city to get to work on time, all I could think about was that I was going to be sitting in a room filled with very important people wearing denim shorts. I was 26 and had a job most people build their careers up to. In three years, I had graduated with a journalism degree, was hired full-time at one of Canada’s most iconic women’s magazines before I graduated, and worked my way up to the home editor position, meaning I was in charge of the entire home decor section of the magazine.
I was producing photo shoots, writing, and planning content for a magazine that had been in publication for 90 years. Ninety years! I knew that this job was a really big deal.
A Sudden Silence
When I arrived at the office and stepped out of the elevator in my denim shorts that Thursday, I immediately knew something was wrong. The entire floor, which was usually buzzing with energy, nails hitting keyboards, food wafting from the industrial kitchen that produced the magazine’s recipes, was eerily quiet. People were huddled in groups of four or five, quietly whispering amongst themselves.
Somebody told me that a massive layoff was about to happen and we would be split up into two groups. One was safe and one was not. Which group would I be in? I felt as though I couldn’t breathe.
As an anxious person, the feeling of dread is always bobbing along the horizon of my mind, especially when I feel like I have something really good. As if it’s not possible to feel consistent, instrumentable joy without it being punctured by a massive wave of letdown. And before this Thursday, I was trying to hold on to that feeling of joy more than usual.
As one of the youngest editors on the team, I realized that I could bring something different to the home decor section of the magazine, which is why a year before this Thursday, I had pitched a YouTube video series all about helping millennials decorate on a budget after I began to see a gap in the world of home decor.
The Birth of a New Venture
I noticed that a lot of my friends didn’t put time or effort into decorating their rental apartments. And when I asked them why, they told me, “Why bother putting money into a home that you’re just renting temporarily?” And yet, according to a study done by OnePoll, 42% of American millennials, that’s almost half, say that they want to buy a home but just can’t afford it. Where was the decorating advice for us? Where were those solutions and magazines to make our not-so-temporary rental homes a little more stylish and functional without breaking the bank? That’s when the Homeprint was born.
And alongside a team of videographers, I produced 19 YouTube episodes over the span of a year for the magazine. I would make over small rental apartments, bedrooms, bathrooms, all the while sticking to a tight budget and layering in lots of attainable decorating tips. Each video got an average of 200 to 400 views on YouTube, nothing much, until about a year in when we published the second last episode we would ever film. Over the span of about three weeks, this studio apartment makeover went from 200 to 1,000 to 10,000 to 500,000 to just over one million views. One million views! I felt like I was on the verge of something big.
The Turning Point
I was on the verge of seeing all of those long hours studying for exams and all those tireless nights worrying about my future in university pay off. I was experiencing what it was like to be successful. It was like this momentum I had built up over a year was turning into something I’d always wanted to be doing.
As I walked down the hall to the meeting room in my denim shorts that Thursday, single file behind 40 other editors, I kept telling myself that I wasn’t going to be let go. I was bringing something new to the team, pushing the envelope on digital media, exceeding expectations with millions of views on my latest video.
But I knew it was over as soon as I saw executives in business suits lining the large glass meeting room.
There was a man in a crisp black suit at the front and the head of publishing was standing beside him, crossing and uncrossing his legs, not looking any of us in the eyes as we filed in. The room was crowded and warm, and my whole body was shaking, and I had to keep reminding myself this is real, this isn’t a joke. I cried with my head down as the head of publishing thanked us all for our hard work and said that we would be let go immediately.
Coping with Loss
I can’t quite describe the feeling of losing something right when it’s at the peak of triumph, but in Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Option B,” she talks about how to build resilience after experiencing a traumatic event, as she did after suddenly losing her husband when she was 45. She talks about how we can apply the same tools of coping with the death of a loved one to losing a job, and says that not only is it devastating, but losing a job can also trigger anxiety, depression, and rip away self-confidence.
When I woke up the next day, my head was foggy and my eyes were tight from crying. My dream career and this newfound momentum was taken away from me in the span of 10 minutes. The grief of knowing I was never going to get this thing back that consumed my whole life took over my whole body, and I felt really empty. The Homeprint was no longer mine.
The lights used to produce the videos, the editors, the videographers, the budget, the one million views I had accumulated just three weeks before. They were no longer mine. The momentum was there, and people were engaged and wanting more, but how was I going to keep this going without those resources?
A New Beginning
A week later, I started my own YouTube channel, uploading home decor hauls and small makeovers that I did for my friends’ apartments. I tagged every video with the Homeprint so that viewers finding that viral video would have more of a chance of finding my new channel. My friend Carla, who shot the Homeprint, was also let go and said she’d shoot and edit a few videos. I used my severance money to pay her, and we began to shoot every week.
After three months, I joined an influencer network who helped me land brand deals and sponsorships, which for many is the main form of income as a YouTuber. I kept putting out a video every week on my channel, and six months after I lost my job, my own channel had over 30,000 subscribers. I landed a couple of brand deals, and my videos were monetized, meaning I was making a small amount of ad revenue from YouTube. But the question of how I was going to produce these videos and make them bigger and better and with what money was still looming over my head.
Facing Realities
A month after hitting 30,000 subscribers, just before the holiday season, I got a really bad chest infection, and I was in bed for almost half the month. I wasn’t shooting, and therefore wasn’t uploading any new content, and therefore wasn’t making much ad revenue. I also wasn’t landing any brand deals because it was the end of year for brands, most people were on holidays, and plus my channel following was still quite small. It was at this point that my severance money had run out. It was then that it hit me. How did I ever think I could do this as a full-time job?
For the first time in six months after I had lost my job at the magazine, I let myself think about job searching.
The Moment of Doubt
At the beginning of March, I made a call to the influencer network I had signed with and told them I thought I needed to quit. I remember saying out loud, “How could I have thought this was going to make money? How did I think I was going to fund this?” I was embarrassed that I thought I could ever have my own company and make money as a YouTuber. I hadn’t even been to business school. I know that so many people are probably feeling exactly how I did that March. There is so much uncertainty smothering us all.
As a student who has just graduated, I can imagine that having the whole world at your fingertips feels terrifying and not in an exhilarating way, like it typically would as a new graduate. Instead of feeling like you’re getting on the world’s largest roller coaster with no idea how the ride ends, I would instead imagine that it feels like you’re completely lost in a gigantic theme park where none of the rides are working. You don’t even have the option of getting on that scary roller coaster. You’re stuck. I was there too.
A Glimmer of Hope
But less than 24 hours after I made that phone call wanting to quit, I got an email that I had landed a brand deal that would fund my videos for the next six months. There are two things I think can happen in a situation like this when we feel as though we’ve lost everything. We either keep going with what we know, like hopping back into a nine to five that we’re only mildly passionate about, or we decide to trust that there’s something even greater on the other side of that loss and seize the opportunity to do what we really want in life. Maybe that’s backpacking across the world, going back to school in our 50s, or starting a small art business from scratch.
In a 2019 study done by Elena Christina and Michael G. Pratt, they researched the mourning patterns and career paths of the employees of a company that went bankrupt and found that there are two different kinds of responses to job loss as people search for new employment. Christina and Pratt used the words “recreators” and “repurposers” to describe the two different paths that people end up taking if they’ve lost their jobs. Repurposers are those who find similar positions in the same industry. Repurposers usually leave the field altogether to pursue entrepreneurship.
The Path to Entrepreneurship
In this particular study, they noticed that it wasn’t money or networking that guided the path these employees chose after losing their jobs. Instead, it was what they chose to hold onto from their jobs. Instead of focusing on what they lost, both groups of recreators and repurposers tried to figure out what they could save from their experience at the company they were let go from.
One of the questions I get asked the most is how I became an entrepreneur. And looking back on my experience, I always say, “Well, it was just so simple. I just did it.” But I realized that I, too, as a repurposer, tried to figure out how I could take what I had gained at the magazine and producing these videos and how I could do it on my own without the support of a massive brand.
I try to remember when people ask me this question, how scary taking that leap of faith to start my own channel was and how I almost didn’t make it past the six-month mark. I think about how many people must come to this crossroad at least once in their life and not have what I believe is a secret ingredient to coming out on top of a huge loss like this. It’s trust.
Trusting Myself
Because the truth is, I was already equipped with so much of the knowledge from the magazine on how to produce a YouTube channel. I’ve been doing it for the last year. The hardest and most difficult part that I feel we have all felt at least once in our lives is trusting that I can make it happen for myself. I would have never left my dream job if I hadn’t been let go because I never thought I could bring the happiness it brought me all on my own. It never occurred to me that I could create my own stability with a high-paying salary.
And it also never occurred to me that I could be my own boss. It’s been a year and a half since I almost quit and then landed that deal. I have built up a channel with over 300,000 subscribers and counting. I have a six-figure business and two full-time employees and two part-time employees.
The Verge of Losing
And I think back to last year when I made that phone call and how I was on the verge of something big. But this time, I was on the verge of losing. Losing something that’s so much more important than success, YouTube views, or money. I was on the verge of losing the trust that I could make my dream career happen by myself.
When I think back to getting let go in my cut-off denim shorts, I can still feel the grief and emptiness I was left with that Thursday. And I think about how I could have chosen to go down a different path, the one where trusting myself wasn’t an option, and that really scares me. Because if I hadn’t lost my dream job that day and trusted myself enough to take what I’d learned and kept going, I wouldn’t be here now at the peak of the happiest life I could have ever imagined for myself.
Dreaming Big
We’ve all heard that you should dream big, but that doesn’t seem possible when you’ve been dealt a hand that crushes your confidence and your ambition. Wake up every day and do that thing you know how to do best. Keep doing it until you realize that your dreams have suddenly come to life and that they’re bigger than you ever imagined they would be.