In this autobiographical monologue, Jo Renshaw recounts her professional and personal evolution from 2018 onward. She began as a freelance shoot producer running a Brighton studio for photographer Ewan Spencer, creating kids advertising for brands like Huggies, Tesco, and Topshop, and commuting between Hove and London. While training to become a coach, she chose to leave her well‑paid freelance work to take hospitality jobs—first in cafés, then as a hotel waiter—where she experienced severe bullying and a deteriorating attitude toward work. Realizing she needed to change her mindset to fund her coaching training and achieve a seaside lifestyle, Jo adopted daily seafront affirmations, declaring herself “amazing” each walk to work. This mental shift transformed her experience, boosted confidence, and eventually led her to a role at Lush, completion of her coach training, and her current focus on coaching. She hints at further stories to be shared later.
Chapters
Alrighty, so I'm going to tell you a bit about my story, which you might not know. In 2018, I had been working as a freelance shoot producer, and I'd been running a studio in Brighton for a photographer called Ewan Spencer, and I also did freelance work, and I produced kids advertising for brands like Huggies and Tesco. We did all their nappy packaging. And I spent a year and a half producing Tesco— Topshop's homepage in London, which was really good fun. So I found myself living on my own for the first time in a long time. My daughter left home. I was in a little flat in Hove with a huge dog and commuting up and down to London. And I was also training as a coach. And as I was commuting up and down to London, I was thinking, You know, I love Brighton. I moved here in 1999 because I wanted to be by the sea. I wanted to have my life in Brighton, and now that's not happening. And my dog is in daycare all the time, and I want to be with him by the sea and spend more time with my daughter and accelerate my coach training. So I left my freelance career, which was really good fun and really well paid, and I took a job in a cafe. And I spent the summer in various cafes, and I ended up in a hotel as a waiter. There was a lot of bullying. There was all the, all the toxic things you can possibly imagine that go on in hospitality. I found myself dreading going to work, and the more I dreaded going to work, the more I was making myself late. And showing up to work with a bad attitude, and it— the harder it came to be at work. And I realized that if I wanted to fulfill my dream of becoming a coach and having this fun life by the sea, I had to sharpen up my attitude because I needed to pay my rent and my bills, and I needed to finish paying for my course. So I sat down and I had a talk with myself, and I decided that I would be the best waiter they'd ever had. And there were some good waiters there, Italian boys that had been trained at waiter school who could carry 5 plates like this and knew all the wine. And, and I walked to work, which was a 20-minute walk along the seafront. telling myself, I'm amazing, I'm going to be amazing. And I didn't believe it at first. I said, I'm going to practice this as a thought and play with it. And so I kept walking to work going, you're amazing. And I literally did it like this, like a deranged person running along the seafront. And one day somebody said to me, the maintenance manager, he said, how are you today, Jo? And I said, I'm amazing. And he said, you always say that. And I found myself saying to him, I know, aren't you lucky that I'm here? Aren't you lucky to have me working with you? I began to really enjoy being there because I realized that what other people thought of me was not as important as what I thought of me. Yeah. And it changed my whole experience. And it also got me in a place where I could feel confident enough to leave. While I was hating my job, I was stuck there and I was watching all my colleagues leave and go on to other jobs. And so then I found my job at Lush and then finished my coach training and now, now that's what I'm here doing. So that's part of my background, many other stories which I'll tell you on other days.
