In Turbulent Times, You Can’t Expect Others to Save You: How to Keep Yourself Prepared for Any Economy

At 36, Kathleen Flinn was laid off from her secure corporate job with Microsoft in London. She walked out of the office in December 2003 with all her belongings in a box. The layoff shocked her. They had thrown her out of her warm cubicle into the cold water. She thought about joining her boyfriend in Seattle, but he urged her to go to Paris to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a chef. She enrolled in the famous Le Cordon Bleu restaurant school in Paris, became a chef, and wrote about her experiences in her memoir, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School.¹

The vessel carrying her work life capsized, but she found a way to rescue herself. In fact, she thought creatively ...