Re: Branding
The idea of Re: Working came out of my own experiences of being unemployed and trying to get back on my feet. I struggled with anxiety and depression while unemployed, but worse, I struggled with those things just as much after I found another job. It took months for me to feel comfortable in my new role, even though I was lucky enough to work for a great company, had wonderful pay and benefits, and an amazing professional community. It was about six months into the role when I began to form a professional friendship with a coworker and we often spoke about a topic key in his field: Resilience. It was a lightbulb moment for me. . . the key to surviving change was to be resilient. . . to learn from adversity and then to take what you have learned to build security, confidence, and strength in the event that this happens again, you are as prepared as possible. From that conversation, it dawned on me that I needed to look at job loss in a different way. Rather than look at it as a negative, I had to look at the potential positive outcomes that could happen while out of work; I needed to use this as a learning experience, a time to regroup, rethink, reassess so that I could come out of it as strong as possible. And that is what I want to teach others to do. If you build your strength and confidence now, you will be able to enter your new role as strong as possible— you will have built your resilience. Because of that epiphany, I began to write my book, Agile Unemployment, as a means to help others use their time out of work as a time to build their resilience.
I once posted on LinkedIn that picking a title for a book is almost as hard as naming a person. You are giving an identity. That’s a lot of pressure. Choosing the name of a company is almost as hard. You are picking your brand and identity. I chose the name Re: Working for two reasons: first as a play on words and punctuation. I knew I wanted to have a company where I helped people in all aspects of employment and unemployment, so I picked a play on the idea of “regarding” and email subject lines— my company was about working, or regarding working, Re: Working. But the second and more important reason for this name was that I wanted people to think differently about being out of work. Most of the time being unemployed is an involuntary situation. I firmly believe that the best you can do in such cases is to look for the positives. I want people to yes, acknowledge and prepare for the negative aspects of being out of work (taking care of finances, healthcare, etc.) but to also look to this as the opportunity to rethink their careers and use this time to grow and develop. I want to teach others to use this event as a way of taking ownership of their narrative and their lives. By taking control of the things we can— and while unemployed you will be surprised at the things you can control- you build resilience and confidence. I want people to think of their careers very differently and when they to re:work, or go back to work, to continue to take action and initiative in their work. Rather than be the servant of an organization, I want people to see that it should be a partnership and collaboration. You are an equal in that relationship and would be no less an equal if you were no longer working for that organization. You just need to find another collaborator.
My mission is that as a result of reading my book or going through Re: Working Coaching, clients have learned to rethink, regroup, and rebrand themselves as strong, confident, and resilient.
