I worked for a large college as an Inclusion Specialist and Mental Health Lead. I’ve been a Mental Health First Aid Instructor since 2013. In my day job, I worked with students who had poor mental health and needed additional support to complete their course.
In 2016, my daughter and her husband had their first baby. I wanted to support my daughter with her son. I did the weekly commute 150 miles each way for a couple of years before deciding to move. I got some work delivering courses for MHFA England as an Associate Trainer. I looked for premises to run courses, but there was nothing locally apart from really expensive conference centres and hotels.
I trained to deliver Youth Mental Health First Aid in November 2019. Then COVID happened. My supply teaching work was furloughed, and my courses with MHFA England were cancelled. Within a month, MHFA England started moving everything online. I could not imagine ever being able to operate Zoom and deliver online, but I worked with other instructors to practice, and of course we all got used to it.
I had been in touch with various business support agencies, and I heard about The Rebel Business School. It was radical and free, so I signed up for a course. I had found so many issues with setting up a business that I just hadn’t done it, but now I had all the information and encouragement I needed. I decided to set up, used my initials and Mental Health Training as my business name and set up my free website. I had a training venue on my desk! I never went back to supply teaching! I listed my courses on MHFA England’s website and started to get bookings.
I moved to Newcastle to support my daughter, and I love that I can plan my work around helping with my grandson. I have a mix of work online, which is brilliant and convenient, and in person, which makes a lovely change but usually involves a lot of driving! I get to decide how often I work. I can work weekends if I want and have time off in the week. I have time to volunteer, do some support work online, and spend time on arts and crafts, which are my therapy. I love what I do, and it feels like meaningful work. I know that the people I train are helping others live a happier life with better mental health. I get to spend time with lovely people because people who want to train as mental health first aiders are my sort of people. They are kind and want to learn the best ways to support others.
I attended the Rebel School in Hartlepool in 2022. It was a mixture of great timing and the fact that it was free. I didn’t have any money to spend on even the most basic website! After the first session, I was hooked! Everything made sense; I felt in safe hands, unlike other workshops I’d signed up for that were free but then there was an upsell. It was fun, I met some lovely people, and it was all so clear and simple.
During the course, I built my first website. I’m not good at tech, but I followed step-by-step instructions, and I still have it (don’t look too closely; it needs updating!)
Overall, I think the positivity of it all was infectious, a reminder to challenge the mental blocks and the power of taking small actions. We looked at finances, and I have done my own accounts and tax return every year. When my daughter had to set up a business last year, I felt really confident to reiterate some of the messages I learned with Rebel.
I’d like to retire at some point, but currently five of us instructors who have been supporting each other since 2020 are planning a joint business, delivering our existing courses and writing our own. We all find that, as independent instructors, we miss out on some work just because we are not a larger training organisation. We are only at the beginning of this chapter, but it’s very exciting.
