Layoff to Launch
A week-one guide for the newly laid off: count your real runway in months, decide between job search and business on purpose, and run a ninety-day plan.
This guide has one job. If you were laid off this week, it walks you to a number: how many months of runway you actually have, built from severance, savings, unemployment insurance in your state, and a survival budget you write yourself. Then it turns the number into a week-by-week plan ending in a decision made on purpose. Sometimes the honest answer is a job search, and this guide will say so to your face, because a false pep talk costs you months.
Every figure here is sourced: the twenty-one-day severance window federal law gives workers over forty, the state-by-state spread in unemployment benefits, the median job-search length, what COBRA actually costs. No income promises, no "fire your boss" energy. People in your position get targeted by sellers precisely because panic makes them easy; this guide's whole method is to replace panic with arithmetic.
This is not a business course. Cleaning, notary work, and every other lane live in their own courses in our catalog, and the final section routes you there by the money and time you actually have. It also does not teach health-insurance choices, the emotional work of leaving a corporate identity, or gig apps as a destination; each has its own guide. You bring the layoff. You leave with a number and a plan.
Count what you have
The first seven days
The deadlines that start running the day you're laid off: unemployment filing, the severance review window, health coverage, and the things you must not do yet.
Severance is a negotiation, not a gift
What severance packages usually contain, the one-to-two-weeks-per-year norm, what you can ask for, and the email that asks for it.
Unemployment insurance is runway
What benefits actually pay by state, how long they last, the rules that trip up people starting businesses, and the program that lets you build instead of job-search.
What a month actually costs
Building the survival budget line by line: the four walls, the health-insurance surprise, and the difference between what you spend and what you need.
Your runway number
The formula that turns savings, severance, and unemployment into a single number of months, plus the things that are not runway no matter how comforting they look.
Decide on purpose
Is the job coming back
Reading your own job market honestly: median search times, the long tail, what the AI restructuring wave means, and the three questions that tell you if your role is coming back.
The fork: job search, business, or both
The fit-check questions, the runway thresholds that make each path honest, and the pre-decided trigger that lets you change paths without calling it failure.
Which business, with what you have
Routing the catalog by capital band, time budget, and temperament: local service, remote service, online lanes, and credential gates, with honest first-revenue timing for each.
Hard truths before you spend a dollar
Business survival rates, the slow bleed of no customers, the sellers who target the newly laid off, and the identity trap that makes week-one decisions expensive.
Run the plan
A week on the ground
What an actual week of the dual-track life looks like: the calendar, the danger hours, the one sheet that tracks everything, and the non-negotiables that keep you functional.
Money systems for the in-between
The two-account system that makes runway visible, the purchases that can wait, and what you owe from the day the first customer dollar arrives: certification answers and self-employment tax.
The ninety-day plan
The capstone: a week-by-week schedule from filing the claim to a checkpointed decision, with kill and pivot criteria set in advance.
When the number gets small
The ordered moves as runway shrinks: cut deeper, earn faster, take the job and build weekends, and retirement money last, plus why the scam pressure rises exactly when you're weakest.