Made redundant: "I never had a job. The job had me."

The unit disappears

Abda: Redundancy is something many professionals face but few openly discuss. In February 2025 alone, US employers announced 172,000 job cuts. Chris, what happened to you?

Chris: I spent five years at one of the largest banks in the Nordics, starting in business transformation, then digital, and finally as chief futurist. Market conditions changed, the chairman of the board was replaced, then the CEO and the COO we reported to, and then my unit disappeared. They gave me a choice: they'd try to place me elsewhere in the bank, or I could leave with a severance package. It was an easy choice. I took the package.

Abda: Most people would see the negative side straight away. Was it a shock?

Chris: I saw it as a great opportunity to step outside my comfort zone. You learn and grow at the boundary of where your comfort zone ends. Big shifts like this force you to learn new skills, change your mindset and put yourself in situations you'd never choose. That builds character. I didn't know how hard it would be, but I took it with open arms: bring it on.

“I realised I never had a job. The job had me.”

Letting go of the salary

Chris: I was always thinking about what else I could do. The problem is that with a good salary and benefits you get used to a lifestyle: travel, restaurants, shopping. When you step away from that, there's an internal battle and real fear. I'd been prepared to spend years in a job for security and comfort, just so I wouldn't have to face the uncertainty. It took me about six months to let go of that dependency. My only regret is not doing it earlier.

Abda: What did you do right after?

Chris: I told my wife: let's go travelling. Probably not the most sensible thing with the salary running out, but I needed to remove myself from my environment to think creatively. It was just as COVID started, and we ended up stuck in Vietnam. Not a bad place to be stuck.

Chris: While I was there, I realised I had no skills, or at least none I knew how to sell. I knew strategy from consulting, financial services, communication, and I loved making videos and drone footage. But in a company you're part of an engine already built for you to add value. Creating value from scratch is a different story. It was like learning to walk: crawling, stumbling, bumping into things.

The second, harder decision

Chris: Then a former colleague offered me a director role in an internal consulting team at a large pharmaceutical company in Prague. I went through five interviews and got the offer. It was almost harder than the first decision. But I thought: if I don't try now, I'll be stuck in the corporate hamster wheel for the rest of my life. So I turned it down. My wife supported it, though neither of us really knew what we were doing until we had to cut expenses.

Abda: Not everyone can afford to do that, especially with people depending on them.

Chris: We don't have children, and I think the decision would probably have been different if we had. We knew that if it didn't work, I could always go back and find a job, and I don't mind working any job, even catering. I wanted to test myself.

Chris: Back in Denmark, an ex-colleague said: "I hear you're a YouTuber now." That was the lowest point. I went to university, I'd held senior positions, and now I'm a YouTuber? But that's ego. Once you let go of the salary dependency and the ego, and accept you might look like a fool while you're learning, things start changing.

Building something from scratch

Chris: A little income started coming in from former colleagues. Then I realised that to really create value I had to take on more of the value chain. I was introduced to my now business partners, who came from media, and we combined media capabilities with financial services: helping companies communicate their value proposition end to end, from content to channels, platforms and a magazine distributed digitally and in print. Four years on we're in eight markets, with a ninth coming. Financially it's nowhere near the bank. But I've never experienced greater professional satisfaction than seeing people pay for value you've created from scratch.

Abda: What were the biggest challenges?

Chris: Focus: with bills to pay, you can't bet everything on one idea, so you try lots of things to see what sticks. And not knowing what you're doing: constant testing, talking to clients, adjusting. What we ended up with was far removed from the original idea, so you have to learn to drop ideas soon enough. And we expanded across the Nordics before the model was fully baked, so you never quite know whether it's the market, the culture or the product.

Chris: It's scary, and I empathise with anyone going through it. But it's also an opportunity to grow stronger, build resilience and character, and discover things you never knew you could do.