Jen McCanna - Why Managing Your Energy Is The Real Edge In Freelancing

Ready to turn a solid charity career into a resilient, human-centred freelance practice? Jane sits down with leadership coach and My Emotional Work Life host, Jen McCanna, to explore how she moved from events fundraising to learning and development and built a coaching business that lasts. Jen shares the underrated skills that still pay off, and how they translate into confident facilitation and trusted delivery.

We dig into energy management as strategy, not self-care fluff: the rhythm of client days and desk days, the power of social energy, and the telltale sign she watches for as a cue to reset. If you’re juggling big roles, tough stakeholders, or a leap into freelancing, her tools for noticing early and adjusting fast will help you protect your capacity to lead.

We also get practical about finding clients and staying booked. Expect thoughtful insights on designing work around life, shedding old rules, and building a business that feels energising, not draining.

Check out My Emotional Work Life here, and you can connect with Jen on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Subscribe for more conversations on freelancing, leadership, and meaningful work. If this sparked something for you, share it with a colleague, leave a review, and tell us: what skill from your past role will you leverage first?

Jane Curtis, founder of The Charity Freelancing Course, host of The Other Side Podcast and Co-founder of The Rich & Restored Movement. 

Jane has spent 26 years in the charity sector, is a former events fundraiser, and now supports over 100 charity sector freelancers to build businesses that make more money with joy and integrity.

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Transcript

Welcome And Episode Setup

Jane Curtis 0:30

Welcome to the other side, the charity freelancers podcast. I'm Jane Curtis, and this is where we explore the journey from charity professional to thriving freelancer or founder. Each week I chat with people who've made this leap from the charity sector, sharing invaluable practical tips and incredible insights firsthand. So whether you're considering making the move or you've already made the move and you're on your self-employed journey and want to know what goes on behind the scenes of well-known freelance businesses, you're in the right place. So let's dive into today's conversation. With a 12-year career in events fundraising, a pivot into learning and development, and since 2011, a leadership coach supporting leaders at all stages of their journey, Jen McCanna has seen the charity sector from a number of different angles, including supporting clients who make the step from in-house to freelance, manage their energy, surf the emotional roller coaster, and make and stick to a plan. Jen is a fellow podcast host of My Emotional Work Life and a Leadership Coach, and she is my first podcast interview of 2026. So, Jen, you're on the other side. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me, Jane. It's a pleasure to be here. It's lovely to have you. And we have spoken before, but it was when we were doing the when I was doing the LinkedIn Lives um some time ago. I think probably over a year ago now. So a little bit um bit of time has passed. So I would love first of all just to dive in a bit into your background. So tell me, could you tell me a bit about your charity background and what you were doing when you worked in-house?

Pivoting From Fundraising To L&D

Jen McCanna 2:02

Sure. So I started my charity career at Breakthrough Breast Cancer in 1999, which accurately ages me. And had the most amazing 20s working as events fundraiser there. What an amazing grounding, what an amazing culture that was. I got involved in all sorts of events, fundraising, you know, the mass sponsored walk events, the overseas treks, the garliballs. It was such an amazing grounding, not just in events, but also in you know complex projects with massive budgets. Um, I then moved, um, I went travelling, I did a brief stint at Tommy's the Baby Charity. I landed at VSO in a fundraising role around just after the financial crisis. Um we had targets that were um set before the financial crisis. I inherited those after the financial crisis. Our team was unsurprisingly restructured about a year into my tenure there. Um I was uh quite I was quite nonchalant about that actually. I wasn't um you know it's it's hard being made redundant, but I was quite happy because I kind of got it. I wasn't particularly angry about it. Um, and I learned an awful lot through that process of supporting a team through that process. So um I went away, I did a bit of fundraising consultancy, very small amount of consultancy, um, but realised that really my heart was no longer in fundraising. My heart was in the leadership that I had been doing with my team at VSO and back at breakthrough. Um, the supporting people, supporting humans, developing humans, running bits of training, running away days, those are the bits that I really enjoyed. Um, so I went back to the head of learning and development at VSO and said, Look, I've stopped doing this consultancy, I need a rethink. I'm gonna start looking for jobs where I can use more of those kind of skills. Please could I volunteer in the learning and development team at VSO for a bit whilst I'm applying for jobs? And she said, Yes, please, yes, please, of course, come and come and like come and do some volunteering. Um, and whilst I was volunteering, an opportunity came up to do a contract piece of work with them. I mean, I said I say this now and and people will groan, but to devise and develop a new performance management system and process. Um and then um, which I took and then I was made permanent later on. Um, and at that point I said, right, I've changed from being a fundraiser to being a learning development person. I was in my early 30s. I was like, I I'm like totally new to this. I need a piece of paper, I need to do some study. And my very, very wise boss said, You don't need a piece of paper to say that you don't need to do learning and development study because you're going to learn that on the job, but we'd love an internal coach. So we'll help fund a coaching qualification so that you can then use that internally and be an internal coach. So from 2011 to 2016, I was a learning and development manager at VSO. So doing lots of new management development training, lots of senior management development training, lots of culture change pieces, and also acting as an internal coach.

Jane Curtis 5:25

Fantastic. Wow, what a wise manager you had to be. Oh my god, so amazing. Clearly was. Yeah, that's amazing. Um, what do you think? So can you cast your mind back and sort of remember what the driver was? I'm just I'm just being nosy here, but um please be nosy. Like what what was it that you were like, I fundraising, I'm over fundraising or not over fundraising, but you know, like I'm I'm ready to move, I want something different. What was talking through that?

Jen McCanna 5:55

So the the shift from fundraising to land development, I think that I was um looking ahead to the potential of having a family life and thinking, I'm not sure that overseas treks and weekends away and late nights and the sort of um the sort of energy pattern that you get in events is going to be conducive to a family life. So I was being a bit kind of forward-looking. I also think um, you know, I had some amazing times and learned some amazing things in events fundraising skills that I use in my business all the time. Um such as? Such as uh managing budgets, such as, you know, so I run away days for organisations, um, but I don't just like plop into the room and like do my thing because I'm an event, I'm used to be an events person. So I'm also checking, asking the questions beforehand to check the tech, make sure the room's set up, be there the day before to have a look at it, like troubleshoot in the morning when the when you know you can't get the slides to work or the sound's not working, or the mic, you know, all of those things that you're just sort of used to doing as an events person support you in in how you show up in those high pressure moments in whatever sort of job you do, I think.

Jane Curtis 7:21

Yeah, yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, there's nothing I love more than organising some kind of in-person event. You know, I just love it. So all those little bits, you know, let's go and get some new highlighters and you know, I mean, I'm I'm obviously underselling it, there's way more that goes to it than just nice stationery, but that is part of high. And I also enjoy the little foot finer touches, you know. I love doing that sort of stuff.

Jen McCanna 7:41

So I also think that when you've you when you've done events fundraising with really strict fundraising ratios, and you have this much budget and you need to raise that much money, so then do something like, you know, I in my personal life, I like organise a clothes swap and I used to like run the PTA at the in when my kids were in infant school. Honestly, that stuff is straightforward compared to a gala ball with a 25k budget where you've got to raise over 100k. You know what I mean? So it's just I had I was I very feel very privileged to have had a really sort of big comfort zone stretch in my 20s. Whereas like I can do a clothes swap, like seriously, it's really not a stretch because I've done garla balls at Savoy before now with really tight budgets. So um I think those kind of uh it brings lots of confidence, doesn't it? That kind of thing. And I think that sometimes when people move from in-house to um freelance, we forget some of those transferable skills that we have, and we think it's all about the area of expertise that we're bringing, but actually it's all of the other things as well, isn't it? It's your ability to to work under pressure, it's your ability to build relationships, all of those things are still the same things.

Transferable Skills That Still Pay Off

Jane Curtis 9:05

Exactly. Staying calm. I I've never met an event fundraiser that wasn't like really quite calm, you know, like you have to be right. Yeah, even if even it's like the swan, isn't it? Even if you're going at like 80 miles per hour under the water, you're just kind of yeah. Um, so I think that's a great, fantastic rounding. Um, tell me a little bit about what a kind of normal, if there is such a thing, working day in your world um looks like now that you work for yourself.

Jen McCanna 9:32

Um there are not there's not really a normal day, but there's a few, there's a few different sorts of typical day. So most of my work is one-to-one leadership coaching with um senior leaders, um not as senior leaders, um across the charity sector, but also in the corporate sector and the public sector as well. So I don't just work in charity now. Um, and so that kind of day um works around the school day. So my first client is at 9:30, I finish by three. So I normally I see clients for 90 minutes, so I would normally see two clients in a day. Um, I might do a little bit of admin around the sides of that, but I'm not gonna get into any deep work because it's a client day. So, you know, I am I feel like the energy of that day is I'm in service of my clients, I'm not getting stuck into writing my own content or that kind of thing. Um there's another kind of day where I am delivering maybe a team away day or a piece of leadership development in an organisation or in a venue. Um, so that obviously looks like that kind of day. Um we could probably all have picture of a team away day or a piece of training. So I've often travelled the night before, got there really early, had some excellent coffee, um, made sure everything's running okay, and then again, I'm in service of the people in that room and holding the space for them. Um and then the other kind of day is where I might have a mixture of conversations about work, so like this one, maybe, um, or with clients who I'm go about to do a piece of work with, we're doing a bit of planning. Or I might be writing my Sunday night email I have done for for many years. So I might be writing some contents, um, I might be sending some invoices, um, I might be doing a bit of planning. Yeah. So those are like a sort of desk day. And I try, doesn't always work, but I try and have clients Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, my desk day on Thursday, and on Friday I try and have off. Nice. So I'm not saying that always works perfectly. Yeah. And you know, great boundaries do have a bit of flexibility in them, don't they? If we get too rigid with them, that causes more stress. But that's the that's the that's the general rhythm, and it seems to work.

A Day In The Life As A Coach

Jane Curtis 11:57

Seems to work well. That's great. Um, how do you manage your energy then? Obviously, we're recording this at the beginning of January. It can be quite challenging for a lot of people coming back after Christmas, New Year, holidays. Um but but just generally, anyway, like how do you manage your energy and what advice would you give to somebody who might be feeling that slump at the moment?

Jen McCanna 12:18

How long have you got? Yeah. Um managing energy is one of the biggest things that comes into my coaching work, actually, because um a lot of my clients have big jobs, whether they are big freelance jobs or big senior leadership jobs in organisations. Um, and the curveballs don't stop coming. We can't stop the curveballs. But what so what we can do is ensure to the best of our ability that we are well energised to meet them, which means just having a little bit in the tank so that when the next big change hoves into view, we've got a little bit of capacity to meet it. Um it's difficult to summarise really, but I would say that um and not all energy is made equal, is it? So we have some social energy, we might have emotional energy, mental energy, physical energy, and thinking about all of those kinds of energy helps me feel balanced. So, for example, I don't have clients before 9:30. That means that there's a little window after the school drop where I have given myself permission to stay and have a coffee with any of my school parent friends that are there, and I would I probably do that at least three times a week. And that is that is social energy. It's like a kind of virtual huddle because I don't have a team. Um, well, I do have a mini team, but you know, um I we don't we don't work synchronously, if that makes sense. Um so that really boosts my social energy. Um, it really kind of boosts my emotional energy. These are people that are like really dear friends, so you can show up, you know, feeling like death, a bit like I feel this week, to be honest, because I've got a chest infection. Um you can look like you can feel like death, you can have had the worst morning getting kids to school. It's all up for grabs, and it's just a really grounding moment.

Jane Curtis 14:13

Yeah.

Jen McCanna 14:13

Um, I also have like the most amazing boardroom, like virtual boardroom. So, you know, I go for a massage, I have reflexology when I need it, I see natural health practitioners and have done since my early 20s. Um, I have supervision. Um, it's sort of eye-watering the amount of you know, support I have, but that support enables me then to show up a hundred percent there for my clients. Yeah, it enables me to show up and hold the space for uh a leadership team to have some like, you know, some conversations about some difficult stuff for a day. I mean, that takes quite a bit of mental and physical and emotional energy, right? So I see it as scales. So I need my my energy battery needs, you know, fueling in order that I'm able to do that.

Jane Curtis 15:05

What do you think is like a telltale sign that that things are starting to go a bit awry or like you know, sort of spiral down? Like for yourself personally, what do you think are some of the telltale signs?

Energy Management Foundations

Jen McCanna 15:17

For me, it's resentment. So if I start even thinking about resenting going to doing do something, or like you know, not just a work resentment, but you know, being asked to do stuff out of out of work, then I know that my energy is off. Um, and that I've maybe said yes to some stuff that probably I could have said no to, or I've or I said yes to stuff when things look different and now like the curveballs happened and we're in a different space, you know. So um I try not to overthink stuff in a way that I did before. I remember a couple of years ago being so exhausted in an run up to Christmas that I couldn't really think straight, you know, and you get get past exhaustion. I remember saying to my daughter, I need to go to choir, but I can't go to choir because I feel so tired. And she just said, bearing in mind she was about nine at the time, no one will mind if you don't go to choir, mummy. And I was like, Yes, correct. So how am I giving myself this terrible like I'm giving myself a hard time? And if I even feel like I'm going anywhere near that kind of, I I can't say, I can't not do that thing because you're tired, you're you're not yourself because when I'm energised, I can, you know, I make decisions quickly, I make decisions quite, I'm quite a quick decision maker. Sometimes that that is is not what's needed, and I have to rein it in a bit. But when I'm energised, I'm pretty decisive. I get on with stuff, I'm quite focused.

Jane Curtis 16:51

So you can hold, you can hold more, can't you? I mean, I really noticed that before Christmas. I was getting overwhelmed, really. And there were certain things that I just look back on now, and I really resented having to put all the decorations up for Christmas, which ordinarily would be a real joyful thing to do with my with my nine-year-old um daughter. And I just was like, oh, I can't be bothered. Literally just chucking decorations on the Christmas tree. It was just like, oh, I've just got to get it done. Um, and that was such a sign for me. I was like, just go to bed.

Jen McCanna 17:22

You need to say absolutely, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And actually, I think the key thing, especially if you're starting to work on your own, or not on your own, but as a freelancer or as a founder, as opposed to in-house, is that you really have to be the person that notices that stuff. Because you do not have a lovely boss saying, You seem a bit tired, Jen. Um, don't come into work today until you're properly better and all of those things. You that that person doesn't exist, so you really have to to do it for yourself, really.

Jane Curtis 17:59

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, what gives you the edge, do you think, Jen? You've been successful for many years. What's your secret to longevity and your success?

Spotting Burnout And Resentment

Jen McCanna 18:09

Oh, that's a great question. Okay, so I think so before the pandemic, I was, I've been, I was uh, you know, an experienced coach. Like I've been coaching for 15 years now, which basically means I'm like, I've known in coaching years, like I'm like 100 years old. You know, I um I I've been coaching for a long time when it got to the pandemic, like a decade pretty much. Um and I had been successful, I think, because um I'm I'm good at coaching. Excuse me, coughing. I hope that's why. Um, but also um good at building relationships, good at maintaining relationships, that kind of thing. In the pandemic, I realised that the people were who were coming to me were coming with a lot more emotion, a lot more anxiety, a lot more complex stuff going on, and they were needing to use that space, maybe because um maybe because of the the the extreme challenge we were experiencing at that time to um process emotion. Um and coaching, uh I can't speak for any other coaches, but of course, coaching is a space where one can process emotion, and lots of different coaches have different ways of doing that, and lots of different coaches have different um energies for going into that space, if you know what I mean. Um I, as a as a human being, had um, as a punter, I suppose, had worked with therapists who use emotional freedom technique myself since my 20s, and they'd supported me through some of life's quite big challenges. And I was finding that I was signposting people to emotional freedom technique all the time in the pandemic until I thought to myself, you know what? You just need to train in this yourself to blend it in with your coaching, um, which I did in. 2021, I think. And honestly, that has um I think my pure, I think the fact that I was a very solid, experienced pure coach was an amazing foundation. I think having that extra element of being able to help clients process big stuff in real time. And often what comes into my coaching room is um toxic work environments, difficult bosses, big change, awful work relationships, lack of confidence, that kind of stuff. Actually working on an emotional level with those clients to help them look at that stuff and decide what to do with it and move past it if they would like to, I think has added a huge amount of depth to my work. Um and so um that that is I I think I don't know because I'm not the world's best person at analysing the stats, but I think that that's one of the reasons why people particularly come to me now because they know that they've got a kind of you know, it's sort of it's coaching, but it's sort of coaching with a therapeutic element to it. And and something that um a typical kind of pattern in a coaching program would look like we'd start off quite emotional and messy and doing quite a lot of emotional freedom technique to process some of the stuff that this person has experienced. Um, and then as that lifts and that client starts feeling much calmer and much lighter, then we start thinking a bit more strategically about energy management and some sustainable things so that next time something awful and challenging comes along, they feel more equipped to deal with it because they've got some tools in their toolkit.

Jane Curtis 21:50

Yeah.

Jen McCanna 21:50

So um it can go through lots of different, it can go through lots of it can be all sorts of different things, coaching with me, depending on how you show up and what you want, basically.

Jane Curtis 22:00

So would you say, sorry, I was gonna say, would you say then that um part of the reason that you're still sort of booked out and you you know you're so successful is that you were able to spot an opportunity there and you were able to act on it quite quickly and um decided to add that string to your bow. Um there's something there about constantly kind of innovating, evolving. Would would that be yes?

The EFT Shift And Coaching Depth

Jen McCanna 22:27

I think that's part of it. I think part of it part of it is part of it is that part of it is not feeling like you need to hide part of yourself. So emotional freedom technique is actually neuroscience. I mean, studies now show all the things that happen in the brain when we do emotional freedom technique, like stress stress hormones dropping, for example. But when it was discovered in the late 70s, um, we didn't have that kind of level of um neuroscience on offer and studies on offer. Um, so it got a bit of a reputation for being a bit woo. So to begin with in my coaching career, I was like, well, I'm a leadership coach, so I need to be very leadership coachy and very professional and very corporate. Whereas actually in my non-work life, I was having emotional freedom technique myself. I'm into natural therapies, you know, there's a crystal on my windowsill. And I thought that those two things had to stay separate. Actually, like, why? Yeah. You can be you like when you show up, this sounds like a cliche, um, but it's probably a cliche for a reason. Um when you show up as yourself, then people respond to that really real version of you. And if that's a bit quirky or a bit not what's expected, then some people will think, oh, but some people will be thinking, wow, I didn't know I was allowed to have a crystal on my windowsill as a as a CEO. It's like, do we like mates?

Jane Curtis 23:57

Yeah, those are the those are the kind of clients you really want to be working with. I I think you're giving permission to people to be more to lean more into that. Um, I completely relate though, because I was the same. I mean, I'm really quite woo. I've got loads of crystals behind me too, and uh, and other things. Um uh so I totally get that, and I would have kept that very hidden as well. I think there's something, there's such an opportunity for when people move out of nine to five to really get clear on what it is that they want to create, you know, that's gonna work for them, um, and and therefore feel more flowy and energising and and joyful, you know. Um, and what whatever those kind of unique bits of you are, because we're all very unique and very different, is what will attract people to you, I think, you know. So we're more into the woo.

Jen McCanna 24:47

And I think um as well the the contract we have when we go to work isn't necessarily one where we go to work expecting it to be joyful. We expect it to be a mix. We hope it will be, we hope we'll have a good day, we know we'll have mediocre days, we don't go in thinking everything we're gonna sort of you know skip in, it's all gonna be gorgeous. Um, but we do have an opportunity as a uh running our own thing, yeah to like really get as much joy in there as we possibly can.

Jane Curtis 25:17

Yeah.

Jen McCanna 25:18

Um, and uh the work I do with clients when they are making that transition, and I've had a couple of really amazing clients recently who've been in that sort of transition space into freelance, is just shedding so many of those beliefs that we hold, you know, just about things like the practical stuff about when I work, but also what I'm allowed to do, um, what I could delegate or not do at all. There's sort of the amount of stuff that we're just conditioned to do when we work in an organisation is massive and multi-layered. And actually, the work that I do have done recently with clients in that space, arguably is not about the work at all, it's about them as humans and how they want to set up their life to feel energised, yeah. Almost a conversation about permission about what to let go of.

Jane Curtis 26:13

Yeah.

Jen McCanna 26:14

For sure.

Jane Curtis 26:16

Um, what support or networks or communities have you found useful as a self-employed person?

Showing Up As Your Whole Self

Jen McCanna 26:25

Oh, loads, and I will caveat this by saying there's also lots of um amazing communities um that I haven't had the time to engage with. So, for example, there's a brilliant, I live in Sheffield, there's a brilliant coaching community in Sheffield. I know one or two of them, but I I I have two very busy children who require lifts everywhere for various, you know, exciting hobbies. Um and I run a business, and I I I don't at this point in my career have have the time for a breadth of networks, if you see what I mean. But what I do find really, really useful is a sort of depth. So I of like I have some small networks where I know have known these people for a while, and I have that depth, um which really supports me. So I have a I have a friendship group of other coaches that we met largely online, a bit not online. Um we meet up a couple of times a year in person. We um always there for each other on WhatsApp, we have Zoom calls every now and again um for moral support and normalising and you know, that kind of thing. And there that is that is an invaluable um community, which you know a couple of us, you know, created ourselves because we saw remarkable. We didn't we didn't feel like spending 10 grand on a mastermind, so we thought we'd just create our own. Um and that is very helpful. I have a couple of associates, i.e., other brilliant people that I do work with. You'll see me on LinkedIn doing work with Lucy Gower a lot that a lot of people in the charity sector will know. She and I do team away days quite a bit, we run events together. Um, so you know, Lucy's someone I can just kind of send a voice note to going, ah, a really frustrating day, you know. So um, and I have other colleagues that I might pull in to do bit different bits of work with me that are sort of bigger pieces of work that I want to do in partnership. So yeah, you create the kind of work team that you want. Yes, yeah.

Jane Curtis 28:39

So, what advice would you give to someone who is sort of standing on that crossroads to leave nine to five, thinking about maybe setting something up themselves? What would your advice be?

Jen McCanna 28:53

Um I could go like very um sort of motivational, or I could go really practical here, Jane. So maybe I'll go really practical. Okay. Um I would say that um people say this a lot, but it's genuinely true. If you are at that point where you're about to go freelance, your first pieces of work will come from the people you already know.

Jane Curtis 29:22

Yeah.

Shedding 9–5 Beliefs In Freelancing

Jen McCanna 29:23

Like you like invest in your current network, like be proactive as you can be. Um, the f the first piece of work I did that wasn't one-to-one coaching when I um so I set up my own thing having come back from Matt Leave after my second child was um a really old and dear colleague asked me to come and do a um sort of strategy day for a group of leaders down in London. I would move to Sheffield at that point. Um, I was I had a breast pump in the loo during the breaks of that event, you know, and you're like, uh it was one of those things where I just had to say yes to it. I look back and I think, oh my god, how on earth did you wing that one, Jennifer? But like, you know, your first stuff will come from your not all of your col old colleagues, because some some people are wired to connect and some people are not wired to connect. But you will have a few couple of people in your network who really rate you, think you're brilliant, and will be up for you know, you using your expertise. So like invest in those people until then you know the word of mouth spreads, and until your marketing, whatever that looks like, sort of gets a bit more established. But nobody buys anything off anybody based on one LinkedIn post. So that bit is gonna take time. It is your existing networks that are gonna support you in the first instance.

Jane Curtis 30:54

Just say that again about the one LinkedIn post, because I think that needs to be heard.

Jen McCanna 30:59

Oh yeah. So I reckon I've been on LinkedIn since I can't actually remember, but like I think pre-pandemic, I think. I can't remember, I've blocked it out. Um, I would say, not to depress anybody, I can't actually tell you that I had an actual client from LinkedIn for about the first two years. And then and and lots of iterating and a lot of like, you know, we're inner work on how I show up there, um, and that kind of thing. And then I started getting people saying, Oh, I've been following you for a while.

Jane Curtis 31:37

Yeah.

Jen McCanna 31:38

Oh, I've no, you know, I follow you on LinkedIn and getting in touch. But it took a really long time. Um, so look it I'm I hope that's not a depressing thought. The the other thing is to to go back to your to go back to your point, um, the market changes. What people human beings don't change, and the work that we need to do doesn't change, but how people want it want to buy it and what the sort of packages they want, that does evolve all the time, doesn't it? And budgets go up and down and all of that kind of thing. Um you know, part of running a business is keeping an eye to that. Like we were talking before we put hit record, weren't we, that LinkedIn is changing.

Jane Curtis 32:25

Yeah, you know.

Jen McCanna 32:26

Um none of us know how that will how that will land. It's obviously gone through some kind of algorithm shift recently.

Jane Curtis 32:35

Um, who knows? The sector is changing. I mean the world is changing, AI is going up, you know, it's um all of that. So you're caught constantly evolving. Yeah, absolutely.

Jen McCanna 32:47

And that's why you're um don't underestimate the power of your in real life connections. Yeah. Um I I think that that's um I think getting out and meeting people in real life is is having a comeback.

Networks, Associates, And Support

Jane Curtis 33:03

Yes, a hundred percent agree. People want to see the faces behind the words and behind the posts. I feel you know, it's it's that connection is so so important. And I I also think things are taking perhaps a bit longer, you know, because there's that trust that needs to be kind of built. But some of that, like you said, could be years, you know. Um, I'm talking to a client later who first started working with me in 2020, and I haven't worked with them since, you know, but it that it's funny, it's five years later, well maybe six years later now. Um so yeah, it's it's really it is about the long game, isn't it?

Jen McCanna 33:40

It certainly is. So when I first started uh in my business, I remember thinking, why haven't I why have I not got any clients through any of my colleagues or colleagues from Breakthrough Breast Cancer? And the answer was probably when I was at breakthrough breast cancer, I was a denim mini skirt wearing events manager, not a leadership coach.

Jane Curtis 34:00

Going to the pub every night by me transfer.

Jen McCanna 34:03

Um I can't tell that story about the denim miniskirt. That's not for a podcast. Anyway, um, but then um in the last couple of years, I have had lots of work from my dear, wonderful colleagues who I thank profusely for trusting me to do work with their people from that time, and that is because they already knew me, and then they just sort of see a trickle. They nobody sees everything you put out there, but they might see one or two things and remember, ah, yes, Jen, she was a good colleague, and now she does this thing that I might need. So and I I haven't worked with those people since, you know, well, actually like for 20 years. So really 20. Oh my life. No, not yes, 20 years. Um you know, so it is a long game. Yeah, it is a long game.

Jane Curtis 34:56

It really is. Um, brilliant, Jen. Tell tell the listeners how they can find out more about you and get in touch if they want to.

Practical Advice For The Leap

Jen McCanna 35:07

Okay, so um I host a podcast which I'd love your listeners to check out called My Emotional Work Life. Um I um season one landed last year. Um, it's a mixture of interviews with really interesting people about on topics that feel emotional about work, um, and a few really short, sharp um episodes on things like dealing with a difficult boss or managing overwhelm, that kind of thing, which are just me chatting away for 10 minutes or so. The second series launches proper um towards the end of January. So um there's loads of strategy stuff in there, and hopefully it helps people feel a bit more comforted about the idea that it's okay to have emotions about work and at work. Um, I also have a website which is just www.mechanicoaching.co.uk, and there's loads of resources on there um that are useful on the resources page. Um, to support leaders, to support people who are going about setting up a new thing. Um, so check it out. And if anyone wants to get in touch and talk about coaching, of course, they're very welcome to.

Jane Curtis 36:17

Amazing. Oh, thank you so much, Jen. I hope you feel better soon.

Jen McCanna 36:21

Thanks.

Jane Curtis 36:22

Um, thank you for coming on, even though you're not feeling 100%.

Jen McCanna 36:26

The wonders of um Sudafed and Coffee.

Jane Curtis 36:29

Yes, exactly. Well, you did very well not to cough as well. Thank you, and thank you for inviting me. That's a wrap on another episode of The Other Side. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a colleague who might be thinking about their own freelance journey. And if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. You can find all the links and resources we mentioned today in the show notes, and if you want to connect with me, you can find me on LinkedIn, where you can also sign up to the Charity Freelancing course. Until next time, keep exploring what's possible on the other side.