This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What if losing your job could become the best thing that ever happens to your career? Maybe even to your life, maybe even to a huge life transformation. I love stories of reinvention when somebody goes from one thing to another and it's completely unexpected. And sometimes it often involves this element of fear or insecurity or like, oh my God, what do I do next? But then, as we're gonna title this episode, when getting fired becomes your best break.
I also think of it sometimes as if you hadn't been pushed, you wouldn't have made the leap. So let's hear the story today of Michael Hanna. He discovered that a corporate layoff ended up transforming him from a cubicle dwelling sales professional into Portland, Oregon's most innovative mattress entrepreneur. He actually becomes a mattress salesman, well, the owner of a mattress store. And so this segment is part of our weekend workshop series.
We're gonna tell a story to teach a specific concept. We're using listener stories, examples, anecdotes, and such along the way. And building it on the book "Side Hustle" from idea to income in 27 days. In the second half of the series, we've been looking at more detailed case studies so you can understand how people apply the framework. All right, so let's get to today's story.
Michael Hanna, he had spent 25 years climbing the corporate ladder as a sales professional. One day, one morning in May, he dresses in his usual Nordstrom suit. He goes to his downtown office. It seems like a normal Tuesday, but then he does all these routine tasks. He takes a client to lunch.
And when he goes back to the office, his boss requests a meeting and his boss avoids eye contact while giving him this script about economic downturns and so on. Basically like an HR manager comes out of the corner and gives him a box to pack up his stuff. You know how that works, that whole layoff script. And basically by mid afternoon, he's driving home, gonna tell his wife and their two kids that his 25 year career had just ended. So that's no fun.
And then after the initial shock wears off, Michael settles into the routine of collecting unemployment and hunting for job leads. And the search was brutal. Like at the time the industry was contracting and qualified candidates were competing for every available position. And so this is when a completely unexpected conversation changes everything. A friend of his who owns a furniture store mentions to Michael, 'cause Michael's got free time.
The friend says he has a truckload of closeout mattresses with no use for them. And the friend's like, maybe you can sell these individually on Craigslist and make some decent money. Now the idea sounds crazy, of course, to Michael. He's got no experience in this world, no retail background, no business plan, but he also had time as mentioned. So he figures he can at least try to sell them, make a small amount of money.
The worst case scenario is basically breaking even while staying busy. So he calls his wife, Mary Ruth. He's like, honey, it's a long story, but can I buy a bunch of mattresses? He secures her approval and goes off to find space for his new accidental inventory. Now along the way, he discovers a car dealership that had recently gone out of business, another casualty of the economic downturn.
And so he approaches the landlord about temporarily using the empty showroom and they strike a deal. The first inventory sells quickly through Craigslist and Michael realizes his biggest challenge wasn't selling mattresses, it was answering customer questions about products he barely understood himself. Now, as you might guess, he figures it out. I'll tell you a little bit more about Michael's success and what happened next after this quick break. And we'll also talk about how to kind of take this approach or this mindset and apply it in the face of another potential disruption.
Like what can you do when something doesn't go your way? How can it become perhaps your greatest career decision or at least something positive? All right, stay tuned. [Music]
Okay, so after Michael sells out his first batch of mattresses, which was kind of random, now he faces a more intentional decision. He could treat this as a one-time opportunity and get back to job hunting, or he could commit to learning the mattress business properly.
And he decided to go for it. He chose education over ego. Michael spent weeks studying mattress construction, materials, manufacturing. He talks to suppliers. He learns about different comfort levels.
He develops genuine expertise in a field he'd never before considered. And more importantly, he commits to creating a different kind of mattress shopping experience because a lot of mattress stores, at least to him, felt high pressure and seedy, just places you don't really want to go. And he decided his store would be welcoming and educational rather than pushy. So basically he starts a whole new retail shop in that car dealership. He calls it the mattress lot.
He also had a breakthrough that got him a lot of press. He introduces what might have been the industry's first mattress delivery by bicycle. That's correct. He did this in Portland, Oregon. A friend built a custom tandem bike with a platform capable of carrying a king-sized mattress.
And in fact, if you rode your own bike to the store as a customer, you got free delivery. So this generated buzz. He got fan videos on YouTube. I heard about Michael. I wrote about him in the $100 startup.
So it wasn't just a marketing gimmick. It actually represented his philosophy of making mattress buying fun and memorable as opposed to stressful and forgettable. So many years later, the mattress lot is still running. It's still up and running in Portland, Oregon. You can see it in Northeast Portland.
And this transformation worked because Michael approached the accidental opportunity with genuine curiosity. He also committed to becoming legitimately good at his new field rather than just going through the motions. And he also found ways to innovate within a traditional industry. So I think this story demonstrates more than just like a success with a mattress store. It shows how forced change can lead to previously unimaginable freedom.
Michael built something on his own. And the same approach works with any kind of unexpected career disruption or a life disruption, perhaps. The key is viewing setbacks as redirection rather than rejection, redirection over rejection, hand remaining open to opportunities that don't necessarily match your previous career path. Sometimes the best moves are the ones you never planned to make and sometimes even getting fired is exactly the push you need to discover what you're really capable of building. Hey, perhaps there's somebody out there who needs to hear this today.
And even if that's not your situation, I want you to know it's better to have a simple idea. You can start right away than a brilliant idea that never launches. I hope you will take action on your goals today. I'm so grateful to you. Thank you for being part of our community.
Every single episode available for free download or streaming on the website, sidehustleschool.com. 3,200 plus episodes and new ones out every single day. My name's Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
