11/02/2024
I was featured in an Inc. Magazine article. The article highlighted examples of what people did after being laid off.
https://www.inc.com/issie-lapowsky/here-come-the-rebounder-founders/90986141
Here's the section about me:
Jake Whitman’s sense of self was similarly shaken when he was laid off from his corporate communications job at Dell, alongside 13,000 other employees over the course of 2023. Whitman had spent 13 years at the company, and a decade before that in similar roles at other tech giants such as AMD and HP. After his layoff, he spent months doing all the things people are supposed to do when they lose their job: He talked to a career coach, got his résumé reviewed, and spent his days applying to new positions. “I hated every minute of it,” he says.
Then Whitman, too, had an epiphany. All those years he’d spent working inside stuffy office buildings, covering up his sleeves of tattoos to keep up appearances, he’d fantasized about opening a plant nursery or becoming a beekeeper. If he found another tech role, he was certain that before long, he’d be back to wishing he could be just about anywhere else. So in August 2023, Whitman put his job hunt on hold to launch his own pressure-washing company—Bastrop, Texas-based Bright Power Wash—leaning into a trade he’d learned during college.
It’s been a lifestyle adjustment, forcing Whitman to get stricter about his budget and even sell off a motorcycle he rarely rode. He’s found out that, in this industry, dumping dumb money into slick Google ads is actually a far less effective marketing strategy than simply knocking on doors. In just about every way, it’s a job that couldn’t have less to do with Whitman’s decades-long career in tech. But he also realized that the only thing that had been keeping him in that career so long was his ego. “As soon as you don’t allow your ego to dictate your actions and your feelings,” he says, “suddenly the world opens up.”
