WGU Alumni Podcast
WGU’s alumni network now has more than 400,000 graduates living in all 50 states. The WGU alumni podcast highlights the incredible work that our alumni are doing in their local communities. We also share benefits, perks, resources and partner information to help our graduates stay engaged and get the most out of the alumni community.
WGU Alumni Podcast
Laid Off, Then Leveled Up: Dax Rich’s 60-Day Comeback
Two-time WGU grad Dax Rich was laid off, one day before his birthday. Suddenly, everything was on the line. Dax had to choose: spiral or level up.
In this episode, Dax shares how preparation before crisis, disciplined habits, and hands-on AI tools helped him rebuild confidence and land his next role in just 60 days. We talk career resilience, leadership clarity, and why systems beat motivation when everything feels uncertain.
If you’re facing a pivot, or want to be ready before one finds you, this episode offers practical steps, real tools, and the mindset to move forward with intention.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the WGU Alumni Podcast. My name is Jeff Burton. I'm the Senior Manager of Alumni Engagement here at WGU. And this season continues on. We're spotlighting graduates who prove that it's never too late to invest in themselves. And today we are joined by a special guest, two-time graduate of WGU, Dax Rich. Hi, Dax. Welcome to the program. Hey Jeff, thank you so much for having me today. All right. So for background, Dax has worked for leading U.S. companies, including Zillow and Amazon Web Services. He's currently based in the Fort Worth, Texas area. And he also records a popular podcast on the side, In Rich Relationships. And Dax, I gotta say, anytime we can support a fellow podcaster, we're gonna have you on the show, man. Hey, that's awesome. Love it. All right, let's jump in. Dex, uh, I understand about a year or so ago you lost your job, and that surely was both scary and unnerving. If it's okay with you, Dax, I'd love to have you walk us through what that experience looked like.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, Jeff, happy to do so. Uh, well, I'll tell you, it was a day right before my birthday. So I always remember that because we're there's a lot of planning that we had going on to make it a fun week at work and at home. And I remember waking up to a peer calling me and saying, Did you get the email? And I was caught off guard. It's seven in the morning. No, I didn't check my email yet. Go check your email, he says. And I go quickly check my email. I don't see anything. Try to turn on my uh work laptop, blank screen, nothing there. In fact, it shuts down on me. And I was nervous for a moment. I call him back and I say, I can't get into my computer. I don't have an email. I don't know what's going on. Right then, I got an email saying I'd been part of a mass reduction in workforce. 2,000 of us were uh removed from our positions as part of a layoff. And I just remember those three days that happened from then on was just filled with a lot of confusion, a lot of tears, and uh a lot of questions. A lot of questions, wondering why, what does this mean for us? Where do we go from here? The company was gracious enough to give us 90 days of uh payment to allow us to look for work. But for a lot of folks, they'd been with the company 10, 15, 20 years, had never even thought a day in their life about looking for other work. So it was incredibly emotional. Uh, it I'll be honest with you, it took me down a couple of pegs in terms of my self-esteem and my self-confidence and recognizing that I maybe wasn't as great as I thought, even though it wasn't due to performance or anything. Being laid off sucks.
SPEAKER_00:It sucks. No, and no, no fun at all.
SPEAKER_01:Not at all. Not at all. No.
SPEAKER_00:So you get that email, you're you're you're stunned, kind of blindsided. What do you what do you do next?
SPEAKER_01:I get that email, and the the first thought I had was let me reach out to other folks and see how they're doing. Some of those folks that I shared who had been with the company for a long time and never even thought that they'd leave there or lose their job. And we just had some camaraderie in talking about our feelings, where we were at, where we're going from there. For myself, I'll share with you that I was fortunate enough to see the writing on the wall, if you will. A few months prior, there had been other layoffs with tangently related uh organizations. And I said, you know, that could be me. So I had already begun updating my resume, starting the interview process with other companies. And I'll tell you, long story short, it was such a blessing that 60 days later I was able to start with my new organization. But those 60 days in between were filled with such anxiety, uh, a feeling of loss, a feeling of low self-esteem. And so uh finding that connection with other people I found to be crucial in the short and the long term.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for being vulnerable, sharing that with us. Um, Dax, you recently posted on your LinkedIn, and that's how we kind of got reconnected, uh, about how fast forward now to today you're you're with a company, you're thriving, you enjoy, your, your mindset and and vision really aligns with theirs. Talk to us a little bit about going from kind of the low of the lows to now the high of the highs and being successful in your career today.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I I feel like a lot of it comes from, well, maybe I'll say two things. One is good fortune. You know, at the end of the day, you can't plan for the unexpected, but you can prepare. I think that's the second piece is just good preparation. So if you have that good fortune, that's important. But that good preparation is really where I felt like I was able to go from that low, low to that high, high. And that's something I like to share with folks is this idea of future proofing yourself in preparing with education, preparing with skills that are needed in the workforce and looking forward to what skills is there a gap for, or what skills are employers hungry for in an employee, and really investing my time in that up front made it so that I was able to go rather quickly, you know, again, 60 days from that low, low to that high, high and be in an organization where I'm really thriving.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. That's that's awesome. We're glad that you've you've landed and you're thriving as as you stated. I want to go back to the future proofing. I think that's an interesting, uh, interesting concept. Tell us a little bit more about that and why that resonates so um so well with you.
SPEAKER_01:I find that it's very easy to rest on your laurels, as they say, or be comfortable with where you're at. Uh, but having been involved in a layoff, having seen great peers and leaders and family members be involved in reductions or just life hitting you hard when you don't expect it to, I found a need to future-proof yourself. And the way that I found to do that is again, just investing in those skills that are desirable. In the short run, I found that expanding your network and expanding your influence, reaching out to folks through LinkedIn, uh, WGU's alumni community has been a great resource for me. In fact, I've worked with a couple of alumni in the past roles that I've had because of that community and because of those doors that have been opened. And really just being able to sit down and say, whatever's going on in my life, every six months I'm going to update my resume and I'm going to effectively challenge myself and say, Am I as desirable as I was six months ago? If not, what can I be doing to improve that resume and improve myself?
SPEAKER_00:Kind of piggybacking on our conversation about uh future proofing. Um, how are you staying up to date on technology and disruptive innovations, especially in the world uh in the land of AI?
SPEAKER_01:Glad you brought that up there, Jeff. AI, I feel, is the future. I heard somebody describe it as kind of the internet when it came out. Folks were hesitant about it, thought it was a passing fad. Here we are on doing a great podcast via the internet.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So with AI, I feel like it absolutely is the future. What I've found is first and foremost, there's a lot of opportunity to learn about AI. And I'm grateful to work for an employer who invests so much in AI. Uh, I've been able to experiment with tools like Google Gemini, uh Glean, Chat GPT, of course, even things like Google's Notebook LM, which is pretty cool. It allows you to create a podcast with meeting notes. So lots of ways to use AI in innovative ways. Um, but what I've also noticed is that folks just don't know what they don't know. So when they think about AI, there's this hesitation or in some cases fear about using AI. When in reality, if we take that leap, if we ask what don't I know, or what would I like to learn more about, or in a dream world, what could AI do for me? That's where I found I've learned the most and been able to utilize AI to, for example, build a website on coaching, which is just a past project I did a few weeks ago. Google Apps Scripts took uh uh some ideas that I had and Chat GBT put it into actual code and created a whole coaching website in 30 minutes for my organization. Yeah, pretty amazing.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, that that is really, really cool. Um so I want to go back to to something that we were just talking about in the navigating the space of uncertainty. Um was there something unexpected that you learned about yourself during that uh trying time?
SPEAKER_01:For me, it was learning that I was more resilient than I thought. Like I shared those first three days of getting the news about the layoff were the most difficult. And it was really hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel. Uh, even with a few job applications out, there was no hope or no certainty, I should say, that things would work out the right way. But as I got past those three days and really started to challenge my negative self-talk, the negative self-talk saying, You're you're not as good as you think you are. There's not a light at the end of the tunnel. And as I challenged that, and I said, Oh, absolutely there is, and absolutely you're you're great. You can do this, have faith in yourself, work hard, and all that change in how I talk to myself allowed me to really get a lot of great things done, more connections than I had made in the last five years in just those 60 days, three different job interviews where yes, two were declines, but still had that confidence to keep moving forward. And I found that that resilience came as I challenged that negative self-talk.
SPEAKER_00:Um, you talked about resilience. I'm curious, is there somebody that you look to that is just the epitome of being resilient?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I have to give a plug to my father, and we'll maybe we'll talk a little bit more about it here in a moment. But my father has helped me to create a great podcast, The Enriched Relationships as You Shared. And part of the reason I turned to him to be a co-host in the first place is because he's such a great example of those leadership capabilities, namely resilience. Uh, he too has lost his job at a time where he had four kids who were in college and uh in high school, and his expenses were far greater than mine at the time I lost my job. And he was without a job for a full year. So six 60 days is nothing compared to 365. Uh, but he always had that positive can-do attitude. He always prioritized family and he knew how to bounce back when the emotions got to be too much. So I always look up to him as an example of resilience.
SPEAKER_00:That's great. What a great example that you have in your life. Uh, let's let's stay there on the podcast. Tell me a little bit about uh Enrich Relationships podcast and uh why you created it in the first place.
SPEAKER_01:About four years ago, I was looking at my career direction and I was asking myself, where do I want to be five, 10 years from now? And I really felt like I wanted to take what I was doing in leadership development and share it with more people. Small things, at least to me, that seems small, such as uh bringing empathy into a conversation or asking open-ended questions to understand someone else's opinion. I found that a lot of folks just didn't know how to approach those topics. And so I felt like I wanted to write a book about all of that, share that experience. My father had just finished writing a book for his PhD program, and he said, I'd love to write a book too. Let's get in on this together. And so for two years, we put together this book to help people build the leadership skills that would help them not only at work, but also at home. And then one day, two years later, we were sitting on an airplane and we turned to each other and we said, folks here, they're not reading books right now, they're all listening to podcasts. And so we realized, you know what, if we want to help folks, we need to reach them the way they want to be reached. And that's with a podcast. So we pivoted there, and that's really where Enrich Relationships came from. It was this idea of helping folks build those skills to help them at work and at home. And in bite-sized segments, only five to ten minutes is typically the episode duration.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's there's short episodes. Um, but I I love listening to them, Dax. You and your dad Larry are are just you're really good. I mean, you you're articulate and you just you bring great points, uh, make them uh really digestible. And like you say, they're just short, uh short bites, you know, short episodes, but they're they're really, really good. So I would I would commend the podcast, you know, to any of uh in our in our audience here today. As you've recorded the podcast, um can you think of a key takeaway recording and producing these episodes?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Probably that audio editing is the hardest thing in the world.
SPEAKER_00:It takes a long time. It does, it is time consuming.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, it is. No, but on a more serious note, I think it's that people respond the best when content is tailored to their needs. One of the things we started to do only five or six episodes in is we'd end the segments by saying, reach out to us if there's a topic you'd like us to go over. And we got a lot of takers. We had four or five people right off the bat say, I need help with having a courageous conversation uh with my spouse, or I need help talking to my boss in a way that builds the relationship, not you know, undermines that relationship. And so we put together just quick episodes on that. And what was cool is seeing people who asked for those episodes then come back to us and say, That's so helped, or I'm gonna apply X, Y, and Z, or I never thought of A, B, C. And so being able to see the impact on people's life is what made it more valuable and more meaningful.
SPEAKER_00:That's awesome. That's really great. Now I want to uh transition and talk a little bit about Zillow. What's the most exciting thing that you're working on at Zillow right now?
SPEAKER_01:Great question. So we actually just went through a reorganization a few weeks ago, and in that reorganization, they put me in charge of the manager evaluation strategy for the upcoming year. And so what's exciting about that is before I was able to build programs to help managers be more effective, but now I get to do it with the end in mind and say, what is great look like for managers? So that a manager can say, here's what I'm being evaluated on, here's what success looks like, and this is what I need to be doing in my day-to-day job, as opposed to the ambiguity of, well, you need to be nice to people, you need to also hold the line with the business, you know, and where's the balance in that? What are you holding me accountable to? I really get to spearhead bringing it all together and helping managers see what I need to be doing to be successful in my role.
SPEAKER_00:All right, Dex, uh, what's a professional goal you're focused on over the next couple of years?
SPEAKER_01:The biggest goal I have right now actually plays off of that five-year plan I shared earlier. I would love to be getting into a public speaking place, maybe a conference, uh learning conference, where I can share some of this great work that I've put together, some of the great learnings with AI and how it works with leaders, uh, leadership development as it impacts individuals at home and at work. I'd love to be able to take that stage and share what I've been able to learn and create.
SPEAKER_00:That's awesome. Yeah, good luck with that as well. How about on the personal front? A anything that comes to mind that you want to be tackling over the next one to two years?
SPEAKER_01:Well, with more kids on the way, I find that I need to be a little more in shape to lift them up and to chase them. So getting in better shape has been the goal. I've got my gym membership going and be working on not eating as much garbage, but you know, garbage is tasty.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, it is. Well, good for you. That's awesome. Um now I want you to impart a little bit of wisdom uh to me and to our audience, uh, Dax. You've been very successful. And again, we appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing your your ups and downs. And and uh maybe that's why you have have the wisdom that you do. So I I'm curious, I love asking this question of our WGU graduates, and that is what is a life hack that you have learned that's worked for you to help you be super successful?
SPEAKER_01:You know, Jeff, it might sound simple, but I find that it's very powerful and it's just blocking time on your calendar. Uh, I find I just use one calendar, it's my work calendar, but I put my personal life on there as well. And I do it for two reasons. One, it sends me reminders, so that's helpful to know what's coming up and what I need to plan for in that day. And two, it lets other people know to not interfere with me during that time. So even small things like lunch or this week I have an hour block set that says watch a LinkedIn learning video. Small things like that I find help me with accountability and help reduce the noise that comes in. Uh, I'll share just an interesting statistic from a previous company. We did an internal audit of how people were using their calendars. We found that people who did not put a lunch block in their calendar were 78% more likely to not take their lunch. So, to that end, I just find putting it in is a game changer.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love that. Super simple. You're right. Like, I mean, that's that is not hard to do. No, you could even do it on recurring, right? You take lunch from noon to one every day. Um, I also like the suggestion, though, of again, kind of how we teed this episode up investing in yourself by doing a LinkedIn learning program or or something else that that might be beneficial, uh, never forgetting to invest in in your uh development. That's awesome. That's great. Absolutely. I I want to ask you uh an advice question. That is for those that might be tuning in today that that uh that want to chase a dream or want to go after a goal, and maybe they're wondering, you know, are they are they too old? Is it too late to invest? Is it too expensive or too time consuming or whatnot? What kind of advice would you give to these individuals in pursuing their dreams?
SPEAKER_01:I would start internally and maybe ask a thought-provoking question. And that question is, are you clear on what that goal is? For a lot of us, we say, well, my goal is to get a promotion or my goal is to retire soon. You know, and they're they're lofty or perhaps ambiguous goals, but being very clear on what that goal is makes it a lot easier to then plan those milestones, the next steps, and really understand who do I need to involve in it making that a reality as well. So that's where I would start is are you clear and crisp? With what that goal actually is.
SPEAKER_00:Dax, this has been so great. And uh I've loved you sharing your journey with us. Uh, the the bits of wisdom that you've shared with us. It's been a lot of fun. Now I want to see if you're willing to sit on the hot seat and uh have some rapid fire questions for so folks can get to know you a little bit better. How does that sound? I'll brace myself. I'm ready. All right. Let's do it. So from the nest, uh, Dax, are you an early bird or a night owl? Night owl, easy.
SPEAKER_01:First thing that you do in the morning. Well, because I'm a night owl, the kids are the ones who wear my alarm clock. They wake me up and then I just take care of them. That's my entire morning.
SPEAKER_00:What's one word to describe the moment when you completed your WG degree? Either one.
SPEAKER_01:I'll say fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00:If you could take a sabbatical anywhere in the world, where would you go?
SPEAKER_01:Italy. I have family roots back in Italy, a Sicily area, and my wife is a history buff for Italy.
SPEAKER_00:Plus, best food in the world. Favorite late-night study snack? Takis. Delicious. A quote or a mantra that you live by.
SPEAKER_01:I'll quote from the Bible: seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, what's a project still on your bucket list?
SPEAKER_01:Private leadership consultant is something I really hope to do down the road.
SPEAKER_00:What makes you proud to be a night owl and a WGU alum?
SPEAKER_01:WGU really redefined the way that higher education works, making it accessible and relevant. It's something I've seen in my life. And it honestly was the best educational experience because it was so focused on what I needed to know. Seeing my family, uh, coworkers who have taken WGU and completed degrees has been fulfilling for me to see in them and then see it, of course, in myself as well.
SPEAKER_00:All right, Dax, you're off the hot seat. That was very nicely done. All right, thanks. No, this has been so great. And as we conclude our interview here today, I want to just turn the time over to you and let you uh kind of take us out. And that is any final words or final thoughts that you'd like to share.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe we wrap it up the way we started. It's never too late to invest in yourself. I find that there's immense blessings to that come with standing behind your future, standing behind in your investment in your future, and blessings that come to your family as well when you take that leap. It's scary, it pushes us, but it allows us to achieve so much more than sometimes we're we think we're capable of. So I would just end if you as an audience are thinking of an opportunity to push yourself to that next level, to try something new, to be a little vulnerable, don't wait. Take that leap today.
SPEAKER_00:I love that. Thanks so much, Dax, for coming by. Thank you, Jeff. Appreciate it. Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the WGU Alumni Podcast. We hope that you'll stay engaged by going to WGU.edu slash alumni to learn more about all the benefits, resources, and things available to you as a graduate of WGU. We also invite you to check out our active LinkedIn community. So search up WGU Alumni in LinkedIn and connect with graduates today. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.