Welcome to 3,2,1 iRelaunch, the podcast where we discuss return to work, strategies, advice, and success stories. I'm Carol Fishman Cohen, CEO and co founder of iRelaunch. Before we get started, I want to remind our listeners who are actively relaunching to make sure to register and upload your resume to our iRelaunch Job Board, this is where we go to share relaunchers profiles with our employers that are hiring for their career re entry jobs and programs. So, it's important that your profile and resume are in there. Today, we welcome Evan J. Kopelson. Evan began his career as an in house business affairs attorney for Capitol Records, and then he spent 20 years in the entertainment industry and pursuing creative interests including songwriting.

In fact, one of his songs called 'Where Do We Go From Here,' that he wrote for Vanessa Williams, hit three billboard charts and won a BMI Pop award. Then Evan took a career break. When Evan relaunched his career, he relaunched first as a volunteer and ultimately he was hired as a trial attorney for the Eviction Defense Network, a non profit that supports individuals and families facing eviction.

Evan is a beloved member of our iRelaunch Return to Work Forum private Facebook group, and we will talk about the role of the group in Evan's relaunch, and Evan's role in the group as a contributor, bringing his peers along with him on his relaunch journey, the highs and lows, the setbacks, the victories, and the ultimate successful relaunch.

Evan, welcome to 3,2,1 iRelaunch.

Evan Kopelson: Thank you, Carol. It's a pleasure to be with you. Thanks for having me.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Well, we're really happy to be able to have this conversation, Evan. Just so our audience knows, Evan spoke at our recent iRelaunch Return to Work Conference, and his story and the way he talks about it and what he talks about it is so compelling and powerful, we knew that we wanted to have it reach a larger audience, so really, really very generous of you to be here today and share your story. Evan, why don't we start at the beginning of, just an overview of your career path. I know I quickly ran through the bio, but what you were doing up until you took your career break.

Evan Kopelson: Sure, Carol, happy to. So I think you covered it pretty well, actually. But let's see, when I was, younger, like super young, elementary school, my father who's now passed, was a lawyer and he was a, a litigator for 20 years. And then he was working in motion picture finance, and then he transitioned into making movies. And so I worked with my dad on and off many years in my life. And so early on, like I used to just go to his office, this was before computers and before, LexisNexis and these great research tools where, they had to subscribe and get books. And then every year or so they would get a package of pages to change and had to change out the pages in the books to be more recent case law and stuff like that. So I became enamored with that law office thing. And I used to go and work when I was a kid, just changing the pages in his, in his research books and things like that.

And, working through high school and even in college in his office at different times, and I saw his transition into motion pictures. And when I went to law school, I spent my first year in New York City at New York law school in Tribeca. And, then I transferred to Loyola here in Los Angeles, where I finished my law school career, let's call it, and took the bar and passed the bar and started working at Capitol Records.

And there's just, man, I can talk to you all day about it, but just trying to do the broad strokes, working at Capital Records was great in that round building in Hollywood.

Carol Fishman Cohen: I'm from LA and I remember, I know that building. It's iconic.

Evan Kopelson: It's iconic, and it was just such a rush to go in there every day. And I felt so cool when I was in law school interning there and then I was hired as soon as I passed the bar, they hired me as a junior business affairs guy. Excuse me. So during that time, I was doing licensing and recording contracts and, really learning and kind of cutting my teeth there because, like when you finish school and you take the bar, you feel like you know a lot, but then you go to your first job and you realize you don't know anything.

They give you like a three page memo and they say, okay, here's a template for an 80 page contract, like turn this into that. And you're like, whoa, you know, and so a couple of years of that and getting everything marked up in red and just having going into my boss's office every five minutes and ask another question.

That was a great experience. And I had, really caring and generous supervisors who kind of helped me along the way and taught me the ropes about entertainment contracts. Meanwhile, I was writing songs and I had this fantasy that didn't happen of wanting to be taken out of my legal role at Capitol Records and put into one of these creative roles.

A& R, you know, finding new bands, going out and looking for talent, or doing promotions or marketing, any of that. And that wasn't happening. It was like, I was very welcome as a lawyer to be there, but my, the president of the company at the time said to me, Evan, you can stay here and be a lawyer as long as you want, as long as I'm here, but if you want to be taken seriously as a songwriter, you need to quit being a lawyer. And it was tough love, but it was like, I realized I slept on it and I thought about it for a long time. And that's when I decided that I was going to quit being a lawyer, at least for a while. And that led to one thing after another, after another, where, I was lucky enough to meet David Foster, an incredible producer, and write a song with him and some other people that became that hit for Vanessa Williams that you were talking about.

And, you know, then I got to say, let's keep it real, like, ego sets in, you start getting these massive checks where I got one check, that was bigger than my entire year salary at Capitol Records. And then you're just like, okay, I've graduated. I never have to be a lawyer again. I never, you know, I can do creative stuff all the time.

And that just led to a long and winding road of ups and downs and sideways and ins and outs and good years and bad years. And, just constant struggle to find my place in, in the world and in this big entertainment industry. And, after a while, my father, again, rest in peace, like he had started to transition from television into some, from movies into television, and I was pushing him hard, like to get into TV, and he got a TV deal and he hired me on and we worked together for many years and had a couple of shows on the air that, you know, great. We got great deals and got good shows on the air, but they didn't get renewed. So they didn't become hit shows. And then again, it was ups and downs. It was like you get some really big checks and then you get no checks, and then it's like crickets. And then you just, you're living on credit and it just, it's like you're, I'll call it like, if I'm going to date myself here, but, the old Charlie Brown cartoons with Charlie Brown and Lucy.

Carol Fishman Cohen: I know what you're talking about.

Evan Kopelson: Okay. So there's that old running gag on all those cartoons where, Lucy and Charlie go out there and he's going to kick the football. And every time he gets right to kick the football, Lucy pulls it up and he ends up flying up in the air and landing on his butt. And every time he's like, No, Lucy, I don't want, she's like, Come on, Charlie Brown, I'll do it, I won't do it this time, I promise. And he's like, Okay, finally believes her and it goes running, running, running. And sure enough, pulls it up and there he is on his butt again. And that's what I liken to being an independent producer in the entertainment industry. It's just time after time of shopping your shows and having good studios and network executives nodding their head and they like it and they call you back and you hire a writer and you negotiate everyone's deal and you might even end up starting to cast, precast to make sure you can get actors who might be available.

And then you bring them in to do some reads. Sometimes it goes, but 99 out of 100 times, it's Lucy picking up the football. At the last day, they're telling you, Oh, Evan, we're sorry, we loved your show, but we ended up going with this other producer, and blah, blah, blah. And one thing after another led to me ultimately running out of credit and running and not being able to bootstrap myself anymore. And that led to me exploring website building and marketing consulting. And then I did that for a while because it was like, I got tired of having to get permission from someone to make something. The beautiful thing about website building, WordPress, and now all these other tools that allow any person to build professional quality websites, and then you can put videos up on YouTube or other platforms and you can embed those videos on your website and all of a sudden you have something, and you can sell stuff, you can talk to people, podcasting very much fits into that.

And so that became my thing for a while. And COVID lockdowns and, a bunch of my consultant clients got, their businesses just got decimated. And all of a sudden there I was with no, hardly any clients and hardly any income and unable to pay my rent. And, you know, that happened, and in Los Angeles and, California, there were eviction moratoriums, and like, ultimately that saved my life at a certain point because I got behind and I couldn't find work. And then it was when I tried to find work, I had a lot of interesting experiences, let's just say with like, when you leave the entertainment industry and you leave entertainment law, it's almost like a mafia mentality.

Like you can't leave. If you leave and you survive, you're never allowed back in. It's like, Oh, you left, why would we leave you back in? If something else comes along, you'll leave again. It's that kind of a thing. And, I think you probably experience this with relauncher stories in other industries as well.

People who take a career break are often, people worry about people like us who have taken career breaks. And, I think it's what I learned at the iRelaunch conferences and from meeting other people is that, people who take breaks often come back refreshed, recharged, like with a renewed purpose and ready to rock and, completely healed from whatever it was in their prior career that burnt them out.

But I think a lot of employers don't quite get that and they feel Oh, the next thing that comes along, these people are just going to leave again. So it was hard to find work for a long time in a lot of different ways, but in a very strange series of events that put me, kind of, I would say in trouble.

And, what do they say, necessity is the mother of invention. So as I was looking for solutions to my own problems, I found legal aid organizations and things that like, I live too close to the Beverly Hills border, so my median income in my neighborhood is too high for me to qualify for any free legal aid services.

So I found these self help services and EDN, Eviction Defense Network, was one of them.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Wait, I'm going to stop you right there, Evan, because I want to dive into a few pieces of your story before we get into exactly what I feel is sort of the, the crux of your relaunch and what happened from there.

First of all, your comments about employers worrying that when we leave our, so we've seen, that's part of our mission is to normalize career breaks and we've seen a huge shift and recognition among employers, about exactly what you pointed out, and how people, have, come back to the workforce and they're refreshed and they're eager to join.

And also just to talk to our audience, we've talked in another podcast about the wide range of reasons why people take career breaks. And sometimes they might elect to take a career break for childcare reasons, or maybe they don't really elect, but they're in a position now where they have to do elder care or they have their own health issue.

Or it could be, they, their spouse or partner was on an expat assignment somewhere. So all of these different reasons, and we like to have all of these reasons represented in our podcast. And so Evan, really appreciate you talking about your specific background and how you ended up on career break.

Before we get more into that part of the story, I just wanted to ask you one question. So you were a lawyer and I'm guessing, and then you did all these different things and you went on career break. So were you connected at all with the legal profession? Did you have, could you like renew? Are you, were you a member of the bar?

Did you have to do continuing ed? What happened on that side of it?

Evan Kopelson: Okay. Yeah. Great questions, Carol. Let's get into that a little bit. So, when you take the bar, when you pass the bar and you get accepted into the bar, you have to pay dues like any membership organization and whether you're active or you're inactive, you have to pay dues. And the California State Bar has inactive dues that are a lot less than the active dues, but they still, if you're not working, there's still, a couple of hundred dollars you have to fork over every year. And there were times that I felt during certain times, downturns, where I didn't have 150 to pay the bar and I felt like, you know, why am I being penalized for passing the bar?

Like, why can't I just tell them, turn off the switch? Hey, I'm not practicing. Let me just, when I want to come back, I'll pay. But to keep your license, you have to pay. So there were several times over a course of about maybe 15 years that I didn't pay a couple of years and my license got suspended for non payment.

And then it's not a disciplinary thing, but it still is a ding on your bar. So you have to pay the fees and the penalties when you come back. So I had that on again, off again, kind of thing with the bar, where there were times that, I wanted to be more active. There was a few years where I actually activated all the way, and paid all the fees and penalties and did all the continuing education I needed to do at that time. And then I still couldn't find work because of that mafia thing I was telling you about. Nobody would have the kind of ex pat lawyer who left and then wrote a hit song and they're like, oh yeah, you'll never come back and be a real lawyer again.

And so for me, it was an interesting time, but in terms of staying active with it, my dad, because he was a lawyer for so many years, was an incredibly active, proactive, producer in that he negotiated every one of his deals. And even though we had great lawyers, some of the top law firms at the time who would close the deals and negotiate the fine points and stuff, we would read every contract, every word we would mark it up, and just like, you know, my old boss at Capitol Records used to mark my thing up.

And so we would have effectively, my dad and I were a business affairs team, even when we had business affairs lawyers. And so I was very active all through those years with, not necessarily me on the front end of the sphere negotiating, but behind the scenes, coming up with the deal structure and spotting issues and talking to the lawyers.

And so I felt very active even when I wasn't actively practicing that I felt like I was doing business affairs.

Carol Fishman Cohen: So Evan, let me just ask you a question about that. So essentially you're saying that you were functioning as a lawyer, looking at all of these contracts on a pretty regular basis, even though you weren't officially employed as an attorney.

Evan Kopelson: That's was the, that was the hidden blessing of working with my dad at the time. He took everything, basically saying, if, in the law, the lawyer always says, the client is the boss, but then the client turns around and says to the lawyer, yeah, but you're the lawyer, you have to tell me what to do or what you recommend.

And, in my situation, my father was just very active. He was like, he depended on his lawyers, respected them a great deal, but made no bones about it that he was the head lawyer on the team. My dad stayed active with his bar license all through his career, even though he stopped practicing probably 40 years before he passed.

So it was a great opportunity and experience for me to be enmeshed In that type of work. And so it did keep me, and my parents always said they're the typical, Jewish parents from New York. You want your legal career. Cause you may need something to fall back on.

And so of course me, Mr. Hit songwriter, was like, I'll never need to fall back on anything. You guys are crazy, and lo and behold, one day came and I did have to fall back. And thank God for them, that they had put me through school and gave me that backdrop.. Right.

Carol Fishman Cohen: All right. So let's now jump to that point where you had left off, where things were very rough and you had discovered these resources for people who were facing eviction and part of that led you to learn about the Eviction Defense Network.

So can you walk us through that a little bit and also maybe touch on any other tools and resources or communities that were part of what was going on at this time?

Evan Kopelson: Absolutely. I mean, this kind of goes back to the, the lockdown era that basically destroyed so many people's businesses and livelihoods.

And because what I was doing at that time, was consulting for independent business owners. I had lawyer clients and I represented a marriage and family therapist and help people get on Google results, better Google results, and all that kind of stuff, trying to get people to help them build their businesses.

But one after another, people were dying, literally, some of my clients died, other ones had their careers just folded, and some of them decided, this is too much for me, I'm just gonna fold in the chips, and so I left, I was left holding an empty bag, so to speak. And then I had to have a kind of, come to Jesus moment, let's just say, where I was, What am I gonna do now?

And then, thankfully, like I was touching on before, I went through a period of time where I had no income and I had no credit and I couldn't pay the rent and I got one of those dreaded three day notices on my door. And so nothing wakes you up faster than a three day notice to pay rent or quit.

And so it led me on an incredible journey that led me kind of indirectly to where I am now, on the other side of it. And the first thing you do is you get on Google and you're like, what to do when you get a three day notice. I mean, you literally start there. And I started getting search results and here's what to expect if you're facing an eviction.

And there's an organization called Stay Housed LA, who's one of our biggest funders at EDN, and they have toolkits. So there's a toolkit for what to do. After you don't pay your three day notice on time, you get a lawsuit for eviction. And all of a sudden, it's you never know when Christmas is coming.

You open your door and you just don't know when you're going to get another notice or something on your door or someone is going to pound on your door at six in the morning with process server. And this was a great wake up and remembering that I was a lawyer and like, I should know how to deal with this, you know?

And then I realized, I never did any trial law. I certainly never did real estate property or any kind of landlord tenant stuff. So someone needed a recording contract, I could do that with my eyes closed, but you know what to do in court, I had no idea. So, thankfully there's all these resources online and I ultimately filled out some forms and that's when I found out because of my zip code is too close to Beverly Hills that I didn't qualify for full scope legal aid.

But then I found, EDN, Eviction Defense Network, and they have, EDN. LA is their website, and they have, which coincidentally, I just helped them rebuild their entire website because I had, nobody knew how to use WordPress when I got there. And I was like, Hey, I happen to know that. So I helped them rebuild the whole thing.

I didn't design it, but I helped redo all the content. And there is a step by step like what to do, and they have videos and they've got live classes on Zoom every week, several times a week, and a ton of videos and a ton of web pages where you can learn how to manage your own case. And that goes to what to expect on your first day in court and what to say when you're the judge asks you certain questions, so you preserve your rights and how to get a jury for you, and all of these really important things. And then, how to build your binder of evidence. You know, what are trial documents look like and how to read them and what? I mean, it's just incredible stuff. So I started going to these live zoom classes, free classes, and I was forced to be in listen and learn mode because they have sometimes 75, 100 people come into these webinars.

Everyone, of course, is in a situation, let's call it, and they, everyone has questions, and they can only talk to a certain number of people. So, they developed rules and protocols like Carol, if your case was coming up tomorrow or the following day, you could ask a question on today's webinar. Otherwise you have to wait until your trial date is just a couple of days from now.

And they have three times a week, so like you can go regular. But what you realize is when people are talking about their situation, not everything, but a lot of the things kind of, you're like, Oh, wow, that's similar to my situation. So you actually learn from just listening. And a couple of things I heard along the way, this was back in September, October of last year, 2023. And, I heard our executive director, Elena Pop, who's I call her General Pop lovingly. She is 40 years in as the iconic eviction defense lawyer. She's loved, feared, respected, hated, like all of the above, by her colleagues and her adversaries.

And she's just an amazing woman. And so, she had mentioned a couple of times her vision to expand Eviction Defense Network and to hire more lawyers. And she was saying, look, we're teaching non lawyers effectively, how to be their own lawyer and show up in court and be professional. And when I finally got to send in a question, my question was, Hey, I hear you keep teaching non lawyers how to be lawyers.

How would you feel about teaching an actual lawyer how to be a lawyer? And you know, I told you ...

Carol Fishman Cohen: You asked this on the live zoom?

Evan Kopelson: Well, it's no, you get to chat in a message.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Oh, I see. You've got a separate chat.

Evan Kopelson: One of the administrators fields all the messages. And so after that webinar, I got a message from Elena Pop p saying, Hey, I heard that you're a lawyer and you want to, Come work for us. What? You know? And so it was an amazing kind of thing. We got on the phone. I told her how much I had learned and how I was really coming to be enamored with the organization because I didn't know what I was doing. And even as a lawyer, it became, if you're a non lawyer and you get in a spot, it could be hard and it could be embarrassing and humiliating to have to deal with three day notices and eviction lawsuits.

But, Imagine being a lawyer and feeling that dumb that you don't know how to deal with your own thing. I mean, it was like humiliating on steroids, you know? So then when I got these self help tools and I started following the instructions, I all of a sudden started feeling a charge, a positive charge.

Oh, this is empowering. If I learned this, for myself, I could maybe even help other people in my situation. That's how it led to that. And I said to Elena, all the things that had helped me and how much I was really understanding now, how valuable organizations like this were and how I would love to learn the ins and outs so that I could help other people. And she said, Evan, she's like, it's, I can tell you're passionate about it, she said, because the hardest thing in a nonprofit is to find the passionate people who want to be part of the mission and want to be part of it. She's like, I can teach people how to do the legal stuff, but do they stay?

Do they really want to give it their all? Cause they're long days and long hours and stuff like that. But, in a nutshell, that's how it was. It was like necessity being the mother of invention. And I call it the God's organizational brilliance that in order to help me find my new career, you get in a situation that seems like it's the lowest of the low, but it's really an opportunity.

You know, that thing about the, I don't speak or read Chinese, but, and so I can't even verify if this is true, but apparently I've heard that the characters in Chinese writing for crisis is the same as opportunity.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Oh, interesting.

Evan Kopelson: And so where there's a crisis, there's an opportunity. Where doors are closed, other ones are open.

And so my life is like a walking example of all of that. Every cliche you can imagine, I've kind of lived it.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Incredible. Thank you for walking us through that in that kind of detail and with that kind of candor. And I know that our audience is learning and is deeply appreciative. Evan, can you talk a little bit about, and I'm asking this because you, as I mentioned, you're a beloved member of our Facebook group and you had a lot of interaction and I know that you've said that it's been beneficial to you and we're telling you that you, what you're doing in the group has been so beneficial to everyone else.

Can you talk a little bit about the role of the group and, any other resources that you, that were helpful to you?

Evan Kopelson: Absolutely, Carol, a hundred percent. Thank you. That means a lot to me because it's like, part of my searching for resources that predates everything I just shared, predating the three day notices and finding Stay Housed LA and Eviction Defense Network, predating almost by a year or more, was I think when I found iRelaunch. And it was in similar things, just searching for Google searches for getting back to work and how to find, you know, and sometimes just putting in, you'd be amazed what you can find in the search engines just by searching like really long questions.

You know, like, are there any opportunities for older people to get back to work after a long career break? You know, and somehow I found iRelaunch when I searched for something like that. And I was a big, because I had been doing marketing in the past and direct sales, I touched in a bunch of different industries that indirectly led me to discover the internet and building websites and joining groups and being parts of groups and realizing that social media, I mean, there's good and bad and indifferent.

You know what I mean? There's, we can always go down the rabbit holes of how social media is destroying society and culture, but let's not talk about that. Cause in this case, social media is like a real great springboard and a connecting tissue to help you meet other people who are like minded and going through things.

And then other people who are in mentor roles or leadership roles, and so like you. And so, finding the iRelaunch community and joining the group on Facebook, and I think on LinkedIn, finding some people, I decided at this time, and again, this was about a year prior to like all the bottom dropping out for me.

So I was still, I still had some clients. I was still making some money, but I saw things starting to dry up and I was starting to get nervous. Like, how am I going to get through this? I better find some other opportunities before everything dries up. And it turns out it didn't. There was a little dropping out of the floor and a little gap, but thank goodness I had been part of the community.

So, I went to the 2023 iRelaunch Conference.. And between then and the this one that I was a guest on, it was just an amazing experience and journey in and of itself of, going to these conferences, hearing people's stories of their relaunch, and then you have these booths where, it's almost like speed dating for like job hunting.

You get to go chat with people for 10 minutes, and get exposed to a bunch of different companies who sponsor your workshops and everything. And so then it was going into the group and this is where the group comes in in FaceBook, which, people who were at the conference and either had questions about the community, Hey, I met with this group or I met with, different companies. And did anyone get anyone here back from Goldman Sachs? Did anybody meet with Moody's? Like, did anyone here, and then just seeing people sharing their stuff. I don't know. I was spurred on to want to share some of my experiences, good ones and challenging ones.

And also because, I guess in my own career journey, I've been up down in every which way. And so I've become to realize, what, it's almost that Buddhist thing. It's who we are in reality is the awareness behind everything else. It's not what we're wearing or what we're doing or where we're working.

And those are all things that help, kind of help reflect who we are, but they don't define who we are and who we are is the consciousness and is the awareness that doesn't change. So I realized that it's that's why I tend to share my challenges and my worst moments very openly because I feel like those things don't define me.

They're things I had to go through. And I think that other people maybe benefit from hearing that because, honestly, when you're at your lowest, it's not a good time and it's not a good thing. It's not anything you want to go out there and tell people. It's a lot easier for me to talk about these things now that I'm on the other side, let's just say.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Yeah. Let me just interrupt because we have a whole podcast. We have a mini series on the prolonged job search and we interview people who really got to the lowest depth and we're not sure what was going to happen next. And, some of the mental health ramifications of that, and other parts of it.

And we talked through what was that next little step and how did you then emerge? But, what you're describing is it's a reality for people, especially if their are job search is taking a long time. And part of being the, in the community is that you're with other people and A, it's normal and B, people are exchanging ideas.

Evan Kopelson: So. That is, exactly. I'm so glad you brought that up because it was part of that, just knowing that there were others who were either ahead of me in the journey and had already found a relaunch or were still struggling, and then I realized as much as I realized I wasn't yet where I needed to be, I saw other people sharing and I realized wow, that's where I was a while ago, and these people need help. They need to know that they're not alone and that there's hope. So it's, I'm so grateful. And I've said this before, I'll say it again. So grateful, Carol, for the community and the structures that you've built, where you've created these, I call them structures, because whether it's a group to go in on Facebook or it's a iRelaunch event, where it's very highly structured for a few days, and all of the things that you and your colleagues give to the community in terms of getting ready for the conference, I felt like that was thousands and thousands of dollars worth of value that someone would have to pay a coach to kind of help get in the right mindset that, the mindset, yes, you can do this. Then there's the reality, have you updated your LinkedIn profile? Does it look attractive to potential employers.

What does that even mean? Like, how do you update your resume? Like, you know, even just go use the AI and get some help with your resume. I mean, just, I picked up all these things from being in your community and just, trying to make the most of it and it really helped me. So even when I got to that conversation with Elena Popp, that was months and months, even a year after I had encountered your community, I wouldn't have been ready. And I really mean this. I've told her this, I would not have been ready for that conversation to be successful and lead to a job offer, had it not been for iRelaunch and all of the preparatory work that I did, even though eviction Defense Network wasn't one of the sponsors of your community. Getting ready to go and meet all of the sponsors of the iRelaunch events and getting everything ready to present myself and the getting the right mindset. It just all led me to be able to have interviews and do well and be able to present myself well.

And it just, everything fits together. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. And iRelaunch is such a huge part of it, and again, faith plays a big part of it too. So it's just like everything you have to be in health. You have to be in a healthy mindset. You have to actually do the work. And then how do you revise a resume when you haven't worked for many years?

Like, I think a lot of people get caught up on that too. And so there's just so many challenges, and just the fact that iRelaunch exists and that you're, you've created a kind of a home base for everyone who's in similar situations to come and learn from others and to support each other and get preparatory help and get access to interview people for actual jobs.

It's so valuable, Carol, what you've done. It is.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Well, thanks, Evan. It's so gratifying to hear you say this. And, and also, it just messaging in to our audience out there that when we have an event like the conference, we do have preparatory material and certain extra sessions you can go to.

And it, it actually works when you go to all of those and you take advantage.

Evan Kopelson: It really does. This year, I particularly, cause last year, I think when I found you, the relaunch conference was literally just starting in a number of days. And I was so lucky.

And so it was like, everything seemed like it lined up in this direction. So when I got the early announcements of this year's conference, before you invited me to be part of it, I remembered how valuable it had been the prior year and I had been in the group a couple of, you know, throughout the year, just sharing different things.

But, I re I made a commitment to myself, this year, I'm going to go to all these pre launch events. I'm gonna do all the homework. I'm gonna quote unquote "do it right" this time. And it really did It made a huge difference, Carol.

Carol Fishman Cohen: Well Evan, this has been an incredible conversation and we're so grateful to you.

And as I mentioned before, we feel like so generous of you to share, the real story and, how you went through it and how you triumphed and your example is so inspiring. Before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you the question that we ask all of our podcast guests, and that is, what is your best piece of advice for our relauncher audience, even if it's something we've already talked about today?

Evan Kopelson: That's a great question. I like to think about faith, you know, for me, it's God. For other people, it could be whatever it is. And I, you know, that's a bunch of weeds I don't want to jump into right now. But what I would say is if you believe in God, give your life to God fully. Because God is like an umbrella, and a big set of hands that'll hold you up and shield you. And if you give everything over to God, like a child, you know, would give to our Father in heaven. And ask for the grace, the mercy, the forgiveness for everything that, you know, humans are flawed. What do we do? We do the best that we can, but like, nobody's perfect, right? So who could forgive us for the things that we wish we did and didn't do? I mean, a lot of that self loathing gets in the way of people being able to really be their best and present themselves. So I like to start and end with the umbrella of faith. And then in that context, inside of that, then do all the work.

Like there's this, Sufi saying, praise God and tie up your camel because, you know, it's like for the wandering people who like their entire life worth is tied to their camels back. And if they go to praise God and they forget to tie up their camel, their camel can wander off and they come out in bliss, and like, where's everything that I own, you know, and so, in that context, you know, put your faith in God, but you still have to do all the work, is what I'm trying to say. And so plug into the things like iRelaunch and plug into the communities that if you have the budget to hire a coach, hire a coach, like someone who can help you set goals and achieve them.

And if you don't, then plug into these incredibly valuable communities like what Carol has built, because those will literally, hand hold you step by step into all these different things you have to do to get your profile ready and your resume and get ready for interviews and get ready to present yourself and have the positive mindset and the community to kind of bolster you and help encourage each other.

So all of that is what I would leave with anybody who's listening and say, do all of that and you'll be on the right path.

Carol Fishman Cohen: That is excellent advice and, very personal too, and we know everyone's different and we, it's so helpful and really helping with our awareness to know all the different ways that people are motivated and that keep them going when they're in a difficult situation, which job searching can be.

So thank you for sharing that Evan, we appreciate it. And thanks for joining us.

Evan Kopelson: Absolutely, Carol. Thank you so much for having me. And, again, I look forward to seeing you and talking with you soon. Thank you everybody.

Carol Fishman Cohen: All right. And thanks for listening to 3,2,1 iRelaunch, the podcast where we discuss return to work strategies, advice, and success stories.

I'm Carol Fishman Cohen, the CEO and co founder of iRelaunch and your host. Be sure to visit iRelaunch. com to access our many return to work tools and resources just like Evan was talking about a few minutes ago. And to sign up for our mailing list so you can receive our weekly return to work report featuring career re entry jobs and programs.

Thanks for joining us.