Interview with Richie Manu

Study into You: Rebranded: Be Seen, Be Heard, Get Noticed by Richie Manu and interview notes.

As the name suggests, You:Rebranded is focused around branding yourself. I've delved into this book as I'm trying to rebrand the way a younger generation and an older generation see each other as well as rebrand their relationship.

This post will highlight key information taken from the book and the interview.

'Whoever you are, it is important to recognise the need to change and adapt to the new situations and circumstances throughout the various stages of your (professional or business career). And as you make your way into new environments, it is vital that you have the tools and knowledge to be able to navigate your way...'(Manu, 2014)

Within the first chapter, Manu asks the question Who are YOU?, and offers a way of being grouped. While his grouping is more focused towards career paths, in the interview we discussed how my stakeholders can be grouped.

An interesting point he made was asking me why I keep using the term 'Gen Z'. Saying Gen Z is a political grouping, and might not be true to how the stakeholders are actually grouped within themselves. While explaining who I'm trying to tackle, I said 'While all the older generations can be roughly categorised into early and late of their respective generations, Gen Z seems to change every 3-6 months'.

Could I create an identity for them with my expertise, understanding, and observations combined with their way of seeing themselves. Could this reach an 'individual identity' than imposing one stereotype on all? Richie also asked how important it is that I put them into groups at all?

The second question I posed was to understand how important is to keep a balance between conventional and new. I wanted to understand that in a world that is telling everyone to 'get with it or get left behind', that it can't be that absolute in ditching the conventional ways.

What Manu said is first to question what the status quo is. We need to know the rules to break - I say this quite a bit in my personal life as I'm not a rule breaker no matter how reckless I am. He said there has to be a strong foundation for anything to be built on. During the discussion, I realised that I need to find the insight of why people hold on tight to their belief systems.

A section from the book where he talked about how to make networking for you can be directly applied to how and why the two parties should communicate with each other.

• Communicating concisely and effectively.

• Connecting over common interests.

• Being confident.

• Being your true authentic self.

• Remembering that you are investing your time and energy.

In his book, there is a discussion about dreams about what you want to do with your life. I apply this to both generations. From earlier analysis, we can see that the youth has a dream of what they want their lives to look like, and there's the older generations either living their dreams or had it crushed into a powder a long time ago.

Manu says that there needs to be a pragmatic/realistic approach to pursuing your dreams. You need to be resilient, and constantly revaluate whether your dreams are changing or if you are still working towards it. While you give the time and commitment, you need to also pay attention to the resources you need to achieve that dream, and dream with strategy.

As the last point, when discussing how to present myself (with my piercings, tattoos, and coloured hair) to a traditional group of people as someone they should trust to be a part of this intervention, I asked what I should be concerned about. He said I need to determine what is failure and success in their eyes. If I know the answer to that, they I know where my insight will come from.

'Believe in yourself. Then they'll believe in you'.

Manu, R. (2014). You : Rebranded be seen. be heard. get noticed. Bancyfelin: Independent Thinking Press.