THE GROWTH YEAR | POD

🎧 The Growth Year | Podcast 🌱

is a limited 12-episode series for anyone navigating their first layoff or sudden job loss. When work ends unexpectedly, it can disrupt identity, stability, and purpose. This podcast offers space to reflect, reset, and rebuild a grounded sense of self—beyond the workplace.

Each 3–5 minute episode offers thoughtful insight, touching on navigating career uncertainty, redefining success, and finding purpose in times of change. Whether you're in between roles or simply in transition, this one's for you.

👤 Hosted by Peter Cheng—talent strategist by day multi-hyphenate creative by night (and weekends).

🎧 New episodes every Tuesday starting June 3, 2025
✅ Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon & all major platforms
📲 Follow @thegrowthyearpod on Instagram + TikTok
📼 Watch on YouTube
🔗 Show Notes on The Growth Year | Podcast

🧔🏻‍♂️ Connect with me on LinkedIn

Ready? Let’s go. 🌱

📸 Photography by Sovanna Pang

Laid Off For the First Time? Introducing: The Growth Year | Podcast

PREVIEW EPISODE | SHOW NOTES

Hey friends! This is Peter and I’m so excited to be launching The Growth Year. A limited 12-episode podcast that takes just minutes of your day.

“Your position has just been eliminated.”

In the last few years post-pandemic, corporate employees are finding themselves out of work for extended periods of time, union strikes upending TV and film, off-broadway shows touting stable employment closing overnight. The role of work in our lives has never been put more into question. What was a considered bedrock for stability has now turned into uncertainty.

What do we do in the absence of work? How do we get by? Can we start cultivating a fuller sense of ourselves independent of our day jobs?

In comes The Growth Year: a limited 12-episode podcast that flips the concept of the gap year into a growth year.

It asks us to redefine and rebalance life over work, reminds us that change is the constant, offers a much-needed forced reset, and explores how we can rebuild and rebalance our identities brick by brick. To start de-emphasizing an all-or-nothing mindset when it comes to do.

So, why did I create this mini-series?

Because I wish I had someone by my side the last year to guide my way. A mentor, someone who had been through it before, to share some insight that maybe could have helped make it easier.

Our first episode drops on June 3rd, and stay tuned for weekly episodes every Tuesday morning. Available on Spotify, Apple

Ready? Let’s go.

—

Released on May 27, 2025

Disclaimer:

Thanks for tuning into The Growth Year. The information shared on this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional, legal, or financial advice. We encourage you to consult a qualified professional before making decisions related to your career, business, or personal development.

All views expressed are those of the host and guests, and do not reflect any official position of their employers past/present/or future) or organizations. By listening, you agree not to hold the host or guests liable for any decisions you make based on what you hear. See you next time!

Credits:

Written, Produced, Edited by Peter Cheng

Narrated by Peter Cheng

Intro Music by Lidérc

Outro Music by JoshMusic

Cover Photo by Sovanna Pang

THE GROWTH YEAR | EPISODE 1

🎧 The Growth Year | Podcast

Each 3–5 minute episode touches on personal insights on navigating career uncertainty, redefining success, and finding purpose in times of change. Whether you're in between roles or simply in transition, this one's for you.

🎧 New episodes drop every Tuesday starting June 3, 2025
✅ Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon & all major platforms
📲 Follow @thegrowthyearpod on Instagram + TikTok
📼 Watch on YouTube
🔗 More info + full episodes: peterandco.org/thegrowthyearpod
📸 Photography by Sovanna Pang

Ready? Let’s go. 🌱

Starting Over—How Kidney Failure Reshaped My Career and Identity

EPISODE 1 | SHOW NOTES

Hey friends! This is Peter and I’m so excited to be launching The Growth Year. A limited 12-episode podcast that takes just minutes of your day.

Today, we’re going to take a detour to the past and talk about my first growth year.

Ready? Let’s go.

In 2007, the metaphorical rug had been pulled out from under me. My first Growth Year.

At just 21 my first kidney transplant of 13 years failed and I was promptly put on dialysis. I wouldn't receive another transplant til 2015. Instead of dancing on stage alongside my peers, I sat on the sidelines, in the audience, watching, tears streaming down my face as my class took the stage.

This gut wrenching feeling of missing out, of my body fighting against me, yet all I could do was watch as my dreams of becoming a professional dancer took its last bow.

Post-grad I joined the workforce. My first job out of school? A review site called Yelp. It was my first “big boy” job. From Yelp, I jumped over to Uber, then contracted a bit before joining Ancestry.com, then landed at a Series F Fintech.

After three and a half years there, I was suddenly laid off -- for the first time in the span of my 13-year career in tech.

In the meantime, underneath I was living a dual life as a dancer, choreographer, model, and (newly) an actor. Finding myself dipping my feet in two worlds where I was actually pretty damn good at. The art of juggling had become my M.O.

Early on I’d be pretty secretive with my artist friends about what I did for work -- perhaps out of not wanting to reveal my corporate ties. And in that context, I was an artist.

On the flip-side I found two incredible leaders at work who had a fundamental understanding that work at the end of the day is work, and that life is abundant and beautiful and worth living fully. They knew I could outperform, while still doubling up on my artistic life.

This is how I found myself.

It was only recently that all the pieces of my first growth year made a full circle moment. It became the backbone of how I hold myself today, writing these episodes and launching The Growth Year just shy of 400 days into this thing.

To tap into the past to inform present circumstances, to pull and resource strength from within and connect the dots on that moment 17 years ago.

In the next few episodes, I’ll shed light on what happens when our work identities come into question, clearing paths to make way for something greater, and finding purpose and re-building a safety net to prepare for the next anticipated growth year.

—

Released on June 3, 2025

Disclaimer:

Credits:

Written, Produced, Edited by Peter Cheng

Narrated by Peter Cheng

Intro Music by Lidérc

Outro Music by JoshMusic

Cover Photo by Sovanna Pang

THE GROWTH YEAR | EPISODE 2

🎧 The Growth Year | Podcast

Ready? Let’s go. 🌱

Turning a Gap Year Into a Growth Year

EPISODE 2 | SHOW NOTES

Hey friends! This is Peter and I’m so excited to be launching The Growth Year. A limited 12-episode podcast that takes just minutes of your day.

Everyone knows about the concept of a “gap year”. The time between high school and college, or between college and a first job. The unabashed year of discovery, volunteering, building new skills and broadening perspectives. The sunsetting of youth into adulthood, entering into a new horizon in life.

But, when was the last time you, as an adult, took a “gap year”? With layoffs at an all-time high, how would you manage once the hammer drops? What would you do first?

Let’s get started.

Were you one of the 52,000* tech employees laid off across 123 companies in the last year? Yep. There were THAT many according to Layoffs.fyi. Or maybe you’re finding yourself between things as an adult.

Once we enter the corporate world and begin “adulting” -- when things get serious -- there isn’t usually another period in our lives when we truly get to take a full year to pause, reflect, and take stock of where we came from, where we’re headed, and simply — who we are.

But why? What if, instead, we were forced into a “Growth Year”?

I’m not talking about intentionally leaving a job and taking a solo backpacking trip across Asia, climbing Mount Everest, sailing around the world, or finally launching that side hustle after carefully planning a budget to leave a cushy corporate job. I’m talking about that moment you get pulled into a Zoom call with HR and get the news that your position has been eliminated.

The dreaded layoff.

You’re in your 30’s, built your career fairly quickly post-college, gotten a couple promotions, a merit increase, a steady six figure income, health insurance coverage, and actually enjoy what you do. It’s cushy, it’s comfortable, and assumedly stable. But then, you find yourself semi-down and out.

You’re nonplussed, your systems access has been revoked in minutes, the IP that you built from the ground up no longer is no longer yours, you have to ship back your equipment, and barely have time to say goodbye to your coworkers. With no time to process things, you’re already scrambling to figure out how to file for unemployment, check your emergency reserves, and spend the next few days, weeks, months confused, questioning, doubting, what happened. Your work-identity and your personal-identity in dual crisis.

My hope in launching this limited twelve episode series is that you, whoever you are, can take something away to help guide you through your own “growth year”. And the best thing about it? No goal setting. No milestones. No workbooks.

Just Listen. Pause. And Learn.

—

Released on June 10, 2025

*At the time of writing and recording, Layoffs.fyi reported 52,340 individuals laid off between May 1, 2024-May 1, 2025.

Disclaimer:

Credits:

Written, Produced, Edited by Peter Cheng

Narrated by Peter Cheng

Intro Music by Lidérc

Outro Music by JoshMusic

Cover Photo by Sovanna Pang