--- title: "Getting fired: Ten years later and much happier" --- [Skip to main content](https://www.davidmeermanscott.com/blog/2012/06/how-to-survive-getting-fired.html#maincontent) [ «  View All Posts ](https://www.davidmeermanscott.com/blog) # Getting fired: Ten years later and much happier June 6th, 2012 2 min read By [David Meerman Scott](https://www.davidmeermanscott.com/blog/author/david-meerman-scott) Almost exactly ten years ago I was fired. Sacked. Let go. Terminated. Made redundant. Booted out. Canned. **Getting fired was an incredible gift. I just didn't know it at the time.** After NewsEdge was acquired by The Thomson Corporation (now [Thomson Reuters](http://thomsonreuters.com/)), my position as vice president of marketing was eliminated. I like to think that my ideas about Web-based marketing were a little too radical for my new bosses. *Perhaps.* Or as is the case in many acquisitions, maybe the new bosses had a pre-determined list of who from the acquired company were redundant to people already in the parent company. *Likely.* Or maybe I just pissed somebody off. I was an unknown. I wanted to impress and might have been too aggressive. The people already in the company were familiar and I was unknown. In business the familiar usually wins. *Possible.* **Anyway, after six years at NewsEdge, I was out on the street.** This was in 2002, one of the worst job markets in history. *It was awful.* But it was also incredibly powerful and amazingly liberating. It's too easy for me to say from my vantage point today that it was just a matter of starting my own business. The truth is that after 15 years of working for a living, it took some time to get my head around the idea that I could support myself by my own wits. I had always been an employee. Except for doing yard work for neighbors when I was a teenager, I had never been an entrepreneur. I did look around for another full-time marketing VP job, but it was a terrible economic situation after 9/11. There was nothing I could find in the Boston area. **I used the bruises on my butt from having been kicked out the door to motivate me to do something new. ** *It was very difficult. * I was a guy who always had a nice fat corporate teat to suckle. I was used to a corporate nanny to provide for me plus a business card with a name that many recognized. Now I was going to be a company of one person. I started my own business to refine my concepts about Web marketing, work with select clients, and teach others through writing, speaking at conferences, and conducting seminars for corporate groups. **Aren't you still unemployed?** It took a long time to convince my family, friends, and colleagues that "marketing strategist" wasn't a euphemism for "unemployed." No, I'd say, I do want to make a go of speaking and writing and consulting for a living. Really, I'd insist, I wasn't just waiting for a full time gig to come my way. It's an enormous cliche to say that you need a disaster like being fired to change your trajectory in life. For me that was absolutely true. Had I not been kicked out of Thomson in a crappy job market, I'd likely still be working in a full-time marketing role today. **I was given the gift of a new direction.** That was ten years ago. The result has been the best ten years of my life. Reinvention is difficult. But the hard work can pay off. **Thank you for your support during the past ten years.** [ David Meerman Scott ](https://www.davidmeermanscott.com/blog/author/david-meerman-scott) David Meerman Scott is a business growth strategist, advisor to clever entrepreneurs who are building emerging companies, and the international bestselling author of a dozen books published in 30 languages. David’s high-energy keynote presentations, masterclasses, and virtual events educate, energize, and inspire. 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