Creative Journeys: Story | Sound | Success

06 Part 1 - How to Transition from Corporate to Self-Employment Successfully

• Jo Day / Lucy Rennie • Season 1 • Episode 6

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Welcome, folks!
I’m Jo Day, here with the brilliant Lucy Rennie, as we dive into a bumper episode on the challenges and triumphs of transitioning from corporate life to creative independence. This is the first of a multi-part series exploring the pivotal decisions and creative avenues that have defined our journeys.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Lucy shares her inspiring story of leaving a high-powered corporate role to pursue self-employment and creativity. We delve into her career in corporate communications, her unexpected journey into entrepreneurship, and how personal life events shaped her path. We also discuss the importance of structure, community, and courage when starting something new.

This is a raw, authentic look at the realities of making bold life changes and embracing the unknown.

Key Takeaways

  • Life-Changing Moments: How personal events can drive major career decisions.
  • Building on Experience: Leveraging corporate skills for entrepreneurial success.
  • The Power of Community: How Lucy’s innovative response during the pandemic evolved into the thriving Future Proof Club.
  • Facing Fears: Overcoming doubts to forge a new path as a self-employed creative.
  • Practical Networking: Strategies for using existing connections to jumpstart a business.

Resources Mentioned

Get Involved

Do you relate to the big decisions we’ve discussed? Share your thoughts with us, or let us know how you’ve navigated your own creative journey. Connect with us on [social media platforms] or email us directly!

Stay tuned for Part 2, where Lucy and I discuss networking strategies and creative growth. Until then, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time!

We would love to hear from you, send us a text!

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Connect with Lucy Rennie:

[00:00:00] Jo Day: Hey up folks, how are we all? , I'm Jo Day and I'm here with Lucy Rennie and we've got a bumper episode or one or two episodes lined up for you where we're really going to be delving straight into creative journeys as self employed people with small businesses which will involve book writing and also podcasting and other creative elements of our businesses.

[00:00:28] Jo Day: But I want to interview Lucy today on her own creative journey how we met and we'll touch on Lucy's background. So first of all, Hi Lucy, how are you doing? 

[00:00:41] Lucy Rennie: Hi Jo, I'm really good, thank you. Yeah, I'm feeling a lot better than I was last time we were recording podcast episodes. 

[00:00:48] Jo Day: The old croaky Covid voice.

[00:00:51] Lucy Rennie: I hadn't realised just how, actually, how bad I was. So yeah, it was quite interesting watching that back. So yeah, still a little bit croaky, but a lot better, thank you. 

[00:00:59] Jo Day: Yeah, so I want to just if you share, I know you've done this in previous episodes and in the trailer, but just give us a brief background of how you became self employed.

[00:01:10] Jo Day: I know you're 10 years into that now. Yeah, 

[00:01:12] Lucy Rennie: it's 10 years this year. 

[00:01:13] Jo Day: 10 years, yeah. But in the last couple of years, you've become more creative in the online space using podcasting, video, and also the book writing process as well. For those of you that don't know, Lucy is actually a best selling published author with her book, Clarity, Communication and Connection.

[00:01:36] Jo Day: Yeah. Talk to me about, talk to us all about that Lucy, how you became self employed and why kind of eight years, seven, eight years into that journey, you started using different tools for your visibility and marketing. 

[00:01:54] Lucy Rennie: Yeah it's crazy. Actually it's 10 years this year, which is mental.

[00:01:57] Lucy Rennie: But yeah, just a quick snapshot. So I, again, previous episodes, so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but I spent a lot of time working in the corporate. World in steel in particular. I actually lived in France for 10 years and worked my way up really from going in the back door as a consultant to a VA for the, what they call the president of France at the time, not the president of the company is what they say in the CEO in French.

[00:02:24] Lucy Rennie: And eventually was head of communications for, I think it was 365, might've been 364 at the end of it Steel sites all around the world. And I was there to help them with communication and in the corporate world, communication is everything from internal communication and staff engagement, working with HR and really supporting every different area of the business to, we did a lot of safety culture and changing that culture to, to work towards like a zero accident environment.

[00:02:52] Lucy Rennie: But also we would have our hands in. External communications, whether that's the press not always, we always think of the press as like PR and publicity, but actually a lot of it was more about liaising with the press when the shit was hitting the fans.

[00:03:09] Lucy Rennie: When we were making redundancies or when there'd been an accident or those kinds of things to make sure actually that we were communicating in the best way to protect the brand predominantly. We'd organise, I'd organise. In fact, it had such a great Amazing life. Flying around, doing different things, living in hotels and visiting lots of different people.

[00:03:27] Lucy Rennie: And I was so privileged because I was going to all these different places. Even like Krakow in, in Poland or Serbia or all these different countries, but because I was going as part of kind of the team, I got to meet with the locals and so it was the best way to discover the world because I was they knew the local restaurants, the local spots.

[00:03:47] Lucy Rennie: They'd take you to the places that, as a tourist, you wouldn't normally go to. And of course, most of the time I was in a still. Factory. So it was a different way of life, but it was brilliant. And then in 2000, so I lived in France till 2008, 2009. And then fff, Again, in a corporate organization, you'll know this.

[00:04:05] Lucy Rennie: They go from, we were, I think there was 330, 000 employees at one point. So mining right through to the end product and what happens in a corporate organization is they go from being centralized. So there's one thing, everybody, and we look after everything, then they decentralize it all.

[00:04:22] Lucy Rennie: So they have a restructure and split it back. And then they do, I think we've done this about four times. Various managers coming in and ownership and stuff. And then eventually in 2009, they did this again and I moved to Luxembourg for the latest role because that's where the head office was and for various reasons.

[00:04:39] Lucy Rennie: And I'll be dead honest, I was 30 and for various reasons, it was also the time of the crash. So 2008, 2009. So literally I've just moved to Luxembourg as an ex pat. I had a beautiful apartment and it was amazing, but I was on my own. I'd left almost, I'd been in France for 10 years. I'd left my partner, I'd left my dog, I'd left my friends.

[00:05:01] Lucy Rennie: And yes, I had my work environment. I loved it, but I was Oh, I'm too old for this. I don't want to go out and do, I just want, and also it was the time where the taps, that's what I was trying to do before with my hands. You'll notice I use my hands a lot. That's Which meant there was no budget.

[00:05:19] Lucy Rennie: I'd gone from having like millions of pounds to spend in a champagne fridge in my office to suddenly just to get a train you had to get permission from three levels up, to travel. And for various reasons, lots of things that again, that's probably a different story and a different podcast episode.

[00:05:35] Lucy Rennie: I actually handed my notice in, and in 2009, and there was like a redundancy scheme because there was Obviously it was, the world was in, nobody was buying steel and all these things because everything just stopped. So they had this voluntary redundancy scheme and I applied for that thing.

[00:05:55] Lucy Rennie: Do you know what I was going to do? I'd actually apply for that and I was going to go back. I wanted to come back to England because I hadn't lived in England since 98, 99 and I was going to sell knickers. I was going to, I was going to sell knickers. Why knickers? When I'd lived in France. You know like an Anne Summers party or a Tupperware party?

[00:06:17] Lucy Rennie: I'd seen these women who were doing that, but selling really nice lingerie and I was like, Oh, do you know what? I could do that. I'm going to go back. So I'd made a plan and I was going to go back, take the money from the redundancy scheme, go back to England and launch this knickers party. Business.

[00:06:33] Lucy Rennie: Anyway, I handed my notice in and they said, no, we don't want you to leave. So we need you. What will it take for you to stay? And I was like I just don't want to be in Luxembourg anymore. I need to move back. I need my family. So I actually moved back to the UK in 2009 as an expat, which is like unheard of.

[00:06:50] Lucy Rennie: They I kept my office in Luxembourg. So it was officially still my same job, but they moved me back under expat conditions. So I with all the perks that. You would normally get if you were going abroad, which was quite surreal, really. But I'd lived in France for so long at that point, it's like a third of my life.

[00:07:06] Lucy Rennie: I was French, I didn't really speak English a lot because I was speaking French a lot in my day. And, it was dreaming in French and all sorts. Anyway, moved back to the UK in 2009. And. Got flat by the airport above an off license in Poynting and I would literally fly out every morning on a Monday to Amsterdam and then wherever we were going six o'clock flight.

[00:07:26] Lucy Rennie: Did that for four or five years and in the meantime I met Paul, my husband again. And we got married in 2013 and a week later I was pregnant. So 20. Oh wow. 14. Yeah. Which one you knew. Yeah. . Yeah. We didn't do you know what we did? Anyway, that's another story. Leave it there. Leave it there. . But literally, yeah.

[00:07:51] Lucy Rennie: So 2014 Elliot, my daughter was born. In July, the 3rd of July. And so at that point I realized that I couldn't continue doing that. I literally wasn't there from Monday to Thursday. Every week I'd be flying off doing whatever I was doing. And I realized that if I was going to be a mum, I didn't want that.

[00:08:14] Lucy Rennie: I knew I wouldn't be a stay at home mum. That wasn't for me. I, I needed to, I love my work and I love what I do. And that's part of who I am. But I also knew that it wasn't fair. On Elio and the family and Josh and everyone. 

[00:08:25] Jo Day: A big, massive, life changing event, which drove you to actually make big, life changing business decisions, career decisions.

[00:08:36] Jo Day: So I think for anybody that's watching or listening, they might still be employed now. The same as similar has happened to me. And will happen to anybody throughout their working life that you will have personal life events that will bring you to a crossroads or a fork in the road. And you have to say, shall I go left or shall I go?

[00:09:01] Jo Day: You might, sometimes you might have more than left and right as an opportunity. You might have three or four things to choose from. Even you still have to make that choice. You either stay and continue doing what you're doing, or for us on this creative journey of self employedness, we decide we're going to go down this route, we bite the bullet, take a big deep breath, pull a big girl pants up and go, come on, let's go.

[00:09:28] Jo Day: Now, I did that in 2010, March 2010 is when I started my self employed journey and my creative journey. So for you, it was 2014? 

[00:09:41] Lucy Rennie: Yeah. So I made the decision to leave in 2014. And again I think I'm like, like you're saying the universe throws things at you, doesn't it? And it's those pathways. And I can trace that back 

[00:09:55] Jo Day: Can you remember the thoughts and feelings that were going through you at that time?

[00:09:58] Jo Day: The the emotion? What were all of the what ifs? 

[00:10:04] Jo Day: I'd always, there's always been a niggle inside me that was, like, when I was doing something, or in my old job, or when I was working with other people, I always was like, I was doing all these things and it was brilliant, but I want to do it for me. No, I don't know how, I can't explain it, but I always wanted to like, if I'm doing all this, whatever it was, project or something, I want it to be for me, I'm always doing it for somebody else.

[00:10:31] Jo Day: And it's Oh, so there was always a niggle of that. And I always I loved watching, LA law and all these like programs of And I just, I don't know why I've said LA Law, it just came to me now, or Ali McBeal, or those kind of, High flyers. Yeah, and just I just, I love business, I love getting my teeth into something, I love having a project and a challenge.

[00:10:49] Jo Day: So there was this, and I've always been like that person will put their hand up and go, I'll do it, and then you go, oh shit, what have I said, I'm going to do that now. And it's that kind of experience. It was like, Oh, I want to do it. It's exciting. I know I can do it. But the same time I was like, Oh God, I'm just having a baby.

[00:11:03] Jo Day: I was like, what happens? What if, et cetera. 

[00:11:06] Jo Day: So yeah. That same field of fear and do it anyway comes to mind. Yeah. Massive. Massive. And I will say I've experienced that a lot in 15 years. I've been self employed. God, it's a long time. 15 years. Yeah, that you've actually managed to create the income to support your living and pay your bills and feed you for 15 years and other people.

[00:11:32] Lucy Rennie: Yeah, it's crazy. It really is. And I think from the outside looking in, when you're in that you think, oh it's easy. I'm gonna go and do this. I'll get clients, I'll do this and it'll be awfully fine. And it's not at all hard. That's another story. 

[00:11:45] Jo Day: Yeah. 

[00:11:45] Lucy Rennie: It's 

[00:11:45] Jo Day: hard work. Yeah. So tell me then you've set up, you've made the decision to leave and you are going about setting up our comms.

[00:11:55] Jo Day: Can we fast forward? So it's a given, you're now self-employed. Is there anything in particular and say that before we get to. podcast creation and book writing where I really want to get on under the nitty gritty of that. Is there anything in that eight year, I know eight, trying to shrink it down, but is there anything else creative in those eight years that you think is really important that we need to bring out first and foremost before we go on to, actually in the last couple of years you've become a best selling author and also a podcaster and YouTuber.

[00:12:31] Lucy Rennie: Gosh, Okay. I think it's funny because I remember before I officially, I gave myself nine months with Ellia, but in my head I was already doing it. So I was like playing my logo and I was doing all things. I had everything like set up to start. For me, the main thing was I knew what I wanted to do, which was take the business model from.

[00:12:56] Lucy Rennie: My old life and bring comms, bring communication to SMEs and small businesses. So I was really clear on that. And I think that's really important. I knew there was a gap for these businesses. There was lots of marketing with pr, but I was really clear. I knew I had something that was different that didn't make it easy.

[00:13:14] Lucy Rennie: 'cause no one knew what it was. . Yeah. Everyone was like, what? What did you do? Yeah. 

[00:13:18] Jo Day: Communication. That to say though, would it be fair to say that, so for the nine months you were off with Alia, that was like a planning process. Oh, massive timeline for you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. 

[00:13:28] Lucy Rennie: Yeah. Yeah. And. I think the biggest thing is,

[00:13:34] Lucy Rennie: and I have this all the time with my clients, is the way I started was through people I knew. And I think very often we, when we start something new, we don't want to tell, there's so many people don't want to put it out there to their friends or family what they're doing. Cause they're like, Oh, it's a bit scary.

[00:13:51] Lucy Rennie: Or they don't want people to judge them. Or, and actually I got clients and work through Ex colleagues or people who already knew me. So they already trusted me. They already knew what I did. They, there was that kind of credibility that came with it. And actually the first client, big one I worked with was a steel company.

[00:14:09] Lucy Rennie: So I think it's okay. To do what, and not think, Oh, I'm starting on my own and I've got to go somewhere different. So I think that's the bit is really, and I talk about this a lot, but the con and that's a creative thing. It's the connections. It's who, it's getting in touch with people.

[00:14:24] Lucy Rennie: It's telling that story in the beginning of, the fact that you are putting yourself out there. I didn't know social media and all those things that at that time, this was like picking up the phone or emailing. 

[00:14:35] Jo Day: I don't think they were so big at that point. They were like, we were still doing traditional companies.

[00:14:40] Jo Day: We're still doing 

[00:14:42] Lucy Rennie: traditional 

[00:14:44] Jo Day: marketing. 

[00:14:44] Lucy Rennie: Yeah. I've even got, in fact, I'll find for the, if we do another episode, I printed a little book, and that was my thing. It was like it was all about communication and bits, but I'll share that because that was the creative thing. It was, I knew that.

[00:14:58] Lucy Rennie: We had, it's all about look, me, it's the brand. It's want people to feel something. So I knew I had to find something that would do it. And then getting out there, I did loads of stuff for free workshops. So I got in touch with the chamber. I went and did loads of free added value stuff. To get in front of my kind of people that I wanted to get in front of.

[00:15:17] Lucy Rennie: I wasn't, think of, again, people in the beginning, they're very scared, Oh, I don't want to do anything for free because people, then you can't charge or dah. It's no, just go and show what you can do. Let people see you. And I've still got people now in my network from first workshops I did 10 years ago at the Chamber of Commerce, or for the Growth Hub, where I was literally, I was doing, yeah, but then once that worked and people came, then they'd pay me for it.

[00:15:39] Lucy Rennie: And it was, so that, I think that's the bit I grew through word of mouth. I didn't really do any marketing for until COVID until 2020. I grew, I had an on office, we had an agency, I had a big machine. It was, I was, I'm not going to lie. Tell me about 

[00:15:54] Jo Day: what you started.

[00:15:56] Jo Day: I'm part of that community now, but you started something really special during COVID. Tell us a little bit about that because that is really creative what you did there. So I think, 

[00:16:08] Lucy Rennie: God, it's mental because it just seems like yesterday, but this, I think it was like the 17th of March, wasn't it? I remember we had this phone call or something came out on the news or something was going on about COVID coming. And.

[00:16:22] Lucy Rennie: They shut school, I think, or something had happened at school. My dad was supposed to be picking up earlier and that Thursday, I remember saying to him, don't pick her up just in case, I'll do it today. You just stay at home and we'll pick it up again next week. And anyway, the week after we shut down, don't we?

[00:16:37] Lucy Rennie: And I think that's the bit where I suppose I've, I think is one of my core strengths. I know it is. And it's linked to my ADHD is the crisis. I kick in. Most people, that's when they go, Oh, for me, that's when I come into it. And so for me, the fact that then suddenly everything shut down and then, I think it was the 24th of March, I just put it out there that I was going to do a masterclass online on zoom on a Thursday evening about how to communicate in a crisis.

[00:17:04] Lucy Rennie: Cause that's one of my core things. What I do, it's helping businesses to communicate clearly, to make sure that people know what they're doing and all those things. And so we started a zoom call that evening and I was like, no, one's going to come. And I thought I'd do it anyway. It's that, it just wanted to help people cause like it was weird when it was completely like, you couldn't go to your office.

[00:17:24] Lucy Rennie: It was bizarre. Anyway, did that. And. I think there was about 12 people who showed up and it was yeah, which was, and again, it was free. It was just a thing because I just wanted to help people. 

[00:17:35] Jo Day: Were these 12 people that you knew at the time? Were they connected? 

[00:17:37] Lucy Rennie: Some of them were, and some of them had come through people I knew because I hadn't put it out.

[00:17:41] Lucy Rennie: I didn't, I don't really, I still don't advertise what I do, really. And it was just, yeah, through word of mouth, people, Oh, this will be a good thing. Come along and I prepared all this slide. I'd never really done a live zoom call with people before. It was like the scariest thing ever. And it was like me being me, I was like really anal about it.

[00:17:58] Lucy Rennie: So I'd made my slides and my PowerPoint and it was like, and I've got the video somewhere and we just moved into this house, literally like in the end of February. So it was all. Like nothing was, we had chintzy lights and pink wall, anyway, got on it, did it. And it was the most loveliest thing because I suppose as well, the way I do mass classes and stuff is I have a conversation.

[00:18:21] Lucy Rennie: I don't like it when it's me talking. So we made it really interactive and made it really personal to people's businesses and had conversation. And actually what happened was it wasn't really then about me. People were sharing. And I think at that time it was the beginning of actually, we're all in this together.

[00:18:37] Lucy Rennie: It wasn't just somebody having a shit day. It was, we're all, this is happening to all of us. How can we help each other out kind of thing. And actually what happened was that was the 24th of March. And then for two years, every Thursday night, we did a zoom call on a different topic or. Sometimes, we didn't even have a topic.

[00:18:57] Lucy Rennie: It was just come along. And again, we made everybody, everybody had a moment to check in, talk where we were, what we were doing. And it grew to, I think there was about 200 and odd people in that group now, but we literally showed up every week we'd get on zoom. And we'd come together there was something magical that happened in that group because most of us, we never met each other. And even now I bet those people, if you asked them would step up and help each other out. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:19:28] Lucy Rennie: It's something. Magical happen because I don't know, it became this safe space where people would come and share and sometimes it'd be really good news. Sometimes it'd be really crap and sometimes people would be in tears and, but it was almost like you could, that was your space where you could come and do that and be.

[00:19:45] Lucy Rennie: you and share and, but then also get the support if you needed it or a bit of inspiration or, I don't know. 

[00:19:51] Jo Day: It's become part of your business now because of the lack of doing those masterclasses and those Thursday night lives, you then went on to create the Future Proof Club. Which is driven like behind the scenes, you've got a whole site full of masterclasses different sessions that you do throughout the week.

[00:20:10] Jo Day: There's a ton of value in there for this monthly membership that you've now created for that community and anybody else that wants to come along and join the community. And we'll pop the link to the future proof club down. Yeah. It is there on the site, but we'll pop the link again in the show notes for the Future Proof Club.

[00:20:29] Jo Day: I think it's 35, is 

[00:20:31] Lucy Rennie: that right? It's 25, so 30, it's 30, but it's 25 plus that, basically, 30 a month but actually 10 percent of that goes to a foundation, my Joining the Dots. Joining the Dots, which is, again, another day, another story for another day. 

[00:20:46] Jo Day: But it's just crammed full of value. Now, as a self employed person, and I work alone a lot.

[00:20:53] Jo Day: There are a few other people, who I work with, but I'm over here in Lanzarote and I work in an office all by myself all day long. So unless I'm talking to a team member or a client, it's pretty lonely. It's isolating. You're here all in the office all day alone. But what you are, I love the Eat Your Frog session.

[00:21:15] Jo Day: So throughout the week, Lucy runs two or three sessions called Eat Your Frog, where it's a focused one hour session of come onto Zoom, tell us what you're gonna do. And it's usually about what you've been procrastinating about this week. Let's get that ticked off your list today in this hour. So we come and declare.

[00:21:35] Jo Day: What our frog is, and then we get that frog dealt with within that hour. We don't have something you can leave your camera on, but you turn your microphone off. You basically come in tell everybody what your frog is, then mute your microphone and get on with it. And then an hour later, Lucy comes on, holds you to account and says, what have you achieved?

[00:21:57] Jo Day: Have you done what you set out to do in that hour? And it's just brilliant. And it makes you feel. Part of a community part of a bigger team than just being. in a silo all by yourself or in a very small team. 

[00:22:12] Lucy Rennie: Yeah, I think that's the key. I think for me, what I discovered going back to like in COVID and that, that space was, it's all about community.

[00:22:22] Lucy Rennie: It really is all about people. And I think the key for small business owners like you and me, is you're right. It is. It's really, it can be really lonely. It's exciting and it's brilliant and stuff, but actually Especially when you come from corporate, you come from like having a team of everything, of everybody, who can like, the one thing was IT, for example, you could have been going, Oh, my password's gone or whatever.

[00:22:44] Lucy Rennie: Yeah. And then suddenly you're on your own. You've got to do the marketing, the finance, the HR that, you do everything and actually sometimes you need someone to challenge you or to share or just to go, Oh, do you know what? I'm having a right shit day to day and 

[00:22:57] Jo Day: that's okay. It just reminds me. It was last Christmas, actually, one of the podcast episodes that I recorded with Dimple Thakrar last year on Beyond the Words. She had a guest on called Terry Fisher and Terry used to be the chief exec of Thomas Cook Holidays. Okay. And he took early retirement. He'd made his money, made a lot of money, and he was in Marbella with his wife and young family at the time.

[00:23:25] Jo Day: And His phone wasn't ringing. Now, this really resonated with me, but in the, during this podcast he was saying, he said to his wife, Can you just ring my phone just to check that it's working? Because his phone stopped ringing. Now, it really hit home because that's exactly what happened to me. And I felt really emotional listening to this episode.

[00:23:49] Jo Day: It it hit me hard and I felt it deep in my chest. Where I'd gone from working in corporate where my phone was non stop ringing in demand and having to say, I'm sorry I'm not available until then, or to Making the decision to actually leave corporate, or a contract comes to an end for a while.

[00:24:12] Jo Day: This happened a couple of times during my energy corporate career, where you'd be between contracts. You've been working as the head of a company for 18 months, nearly two years. That contract you finish and then you become available. But during that becoming available period, you're not needed anymore.

[00:24:34] Jo Day: And it's very strange, like all of a sudden, because you're out of contracts and not associated to a corporate, do you know what happened? The newspapers stopped contacting me for commentary. The television channels that I was going on for news commentary. stopped asking my opinion because I wasn't associated to a large corporate entity anymore.

[00:24:58] Jo Day: Prior to that, if something happened in the energy industry, I'd have journalists contacting me saying they wanted one or two lines from me, or could I appear on Breakfast News, or And my phone just stopped. And that really, when Terry was talking about his phone stopped, I thought I absolutely felt that in me soul.

[00:25:19] Jo Day: Because it's true, it happened. It's almost like you become unimportant overnight. Not that I wanted the importance or the fame, but I'd lost all of that massive community just like that. 

[00:25:33] Lucy Rennie: It's like that raison d'etre, isn't it? It's like you, your purpose, it's suddenly if you take that, if you stop, you reason, all your reason for being almost.

[00:25:42] Lucy Rennie: Yeah. It's gone, isn't it? Oh, it's, 

[00:25:44] Jo Day: yeah, it's, I had to build all of that back up again. And then, for me in 2021, so from 2010 till 2021, so for 11 years, nearly 12 years, it was in August 21. I pivoted away from my energy background of 25, 26 years. I pivoted away from that. Focus on business coaching to focus on podcast production and book formatting.

[00:26:12] Jo Day: So it's almost like I drew a line in the sand there and said that I'm not doing this anymore. So when we talk about these big decisions that you have, that's one of them. And it's one of the reasons why I deleted my LinkedIn account as well. 7, 000 connections, all energy related. But I just went.

[00:26:34] Jo Day: They're not my target audience anymore. They're wrong. And I've written a blog on it anyway. So if anybody wants to read the blog, I'll pop that link in the show notes, but why I deleted my account and the impact that has since had. It's almost like a little experiment I'm doing now, starting from scratch on LinkedIn, on YouTube with zero audience.

[00:26:57] Jo Day: And seeing how quickly you can actually build that community and build that audience. 

[00:27:03] Lucy Rennie: Yeah it's so interesting because I think like you're saying about shedding or changing, I think that's what you do when you as business owners, it's almost there's different stages, aren't there, as you go.

[00:27:13] Lucy Rennie: And it's Yeah. I remember I don't know what year it was, but probably two, maybe a year later, I invested in my first office. And I just remember that being so scary, signing that lease to say, I'm going to start paying rent on an office, and then actually. When you look back, you think, it was nothing, or taking your first member of staff on that.

[00:27:30] Lucy Rennie: Oh God, what am I doing? And then when you look back again, it's 

[00:27:33] Jo Day: what was similar scary for me. So I paid for a membership for, I can't remember the actual name of it now, but it was where all directors go in. It's a building in London in Westminster. I think it's the Institute of Directors.

[00:27:49] Jo Day: I paid for a membership to that, which gave me the opportunity to go and hot desk from this building and have a coffee where other directors of companies were. And I used to get myself on the train down to London, not particularly meeting anybody and go and work in London for a day or two, and then I'd come back.

[00:28:10] Jo Day: And I also paid. It was nearly 1, 000 for a membership to BNI networking group and every Thursday morning, religiously, I'd get up at half five in the morning and go to this networking group and stand up and do me 60 seconds and tell people who I was, what I did what kind of leads I was looking for that week and how I could help and support people and did my thing.

[00:28:33] Jo Day: And I was networking and it really pushed me out of my comfort zone. And I'm so glad I did it. I don't do that now, but I'm so glad I became a member of BNI and also the Institute of Directors, because it really gave me that structure when I first started out. Yeah. And I think we've said this before in previous episodes, and I know we've not even got to podcasts yet.

[00:28:58] Jo Day: No, 

[00:28:58] Lucy Rennie: it's so interesting though, because I think this is part of it. People don't see the backstory and the highs and the lows. Yeah. 

[00:29:05] Jo Day: So it gave me that structure To bring with me. And this is what I'm saying. We forget sometimes when we start out in self employed, it's almost like people go, I shut the door on corporate.

[00:29:17] Jo Day: No, don't do that. Bring that experience. Will you bring that structure to your own business? Take the good bits, leave the crap behind. But bring with you into your new self employed or new limited company, small business, bring the structure, bring the business planning, bring the marketing planning, bring the time management, bring that, that structure that you had.

[00:29:42] Jo Day: It's really valuable and it will help you in your self employed day to day life. Oh, I need 

[00:29:48] Lucy Rennie: to 

[00:29:48] Lucy Rennie: tell you a story about networking

[00:29:50] Lucy Rennie: and we could probably do a whole series of podcasts on it. 

[00:29:53] Jo Day: Okay, so hold that thought. I'm going to wrap it up now. So this is going to be part one of what I think might be a three part series.

[00:30:00] Jo Day: So this is part one. I'm going to leave it there for today and then we'll pick up in part two about networking. Okay. So bye for now, everybody. And see you next time. Thanks, Jo. See you soon.

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Jo Day

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Lucy Rennie

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