The Freelancer Life: Meet Jonan Boto
Meet Jonan, a freelance Management Consultant, a qualified mental health first aider and founder of Mama Kari Presents, a social enterprise with the aim to improve emotional and mental health in the workplace.
"Blue Monday" - supposedly the most depressing day of the year - is upon us. We know that freelancing can sometimes be a pretty lonely and anxious place, so we thought Jonan was the perfect antidote.
Jonan has worked for himself for four years, he has experienced depression first-hand, both himself and within his family, and is using his experiences to make a real difference. Through his recent training as a mental health first aid instructor, he’s making positive steps to change the way workplaces support employees, and has also launched Mama Kari Presents, a social enterprise which aims to reduce workplace induced anxiety and depression through team sport, all inspired by his mother, Kari.
“Freelancing has both its great highs and lows, and I’m so glad I’ve done it for the past few years. It’s given me the space I needed to gain self-confidence and to take breaks between projects to allow me to put energy into new things”
Tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do and how long you have been doing it for?
Hello, I’m Jonan! I’ve always enjoyed bringing people together, and have been a bit of a people pleaser since I was a kid. I've been making steps recently to become less of a people pleaser – in a good and healthy way – and I'm enjoying that journey. I’m 34 years old and have been freelancing as a Management Consultant since 2016.
My first job was in economics consulting, after which I got into the graduate scheme at the Bank of England. By my mid-20s, I knew I wasn’t going to be a lifer there, but was really unsure what other work I would be good at. I joined a management consultancy for three years: the training I got there was so useful, although tough and lacking in autonomy at times.
My freelance projects focus on helping teams drive things forward and “get things done quicker”. I’ve mainly sourced my projects through a number of specialist recruiters including Barton Partnership, Investigo and Dartmouth Partners. The roles have ranged across chief of staff for a CEO and Trade Director, to helping corporate strategy teams push forward their initiatives.
Freelancing has both its great highs and lows. I’m so glad I’ve done it for the past few years. It’s given me the space I needed to gain self-confidence working as an independent within teams, to take breaks between projects to allow me to put energy into new things, and to understand the importance of earning potential versus stress. I’m now getting to a stage where the stability and team culture of a long-term role is feeling more attractive, so I’m watching this space.
You’ve recently retrained as a mental health first aider - tell us more about this role and how you came to train as one.
Yes 😊 I completed a two-day Mental Health First Aid course in July 2019 with Mental Health First Aid England, certified by Public Health England. Since then, I’ve enrolled to train as an instructor of the course, with my seven-day instructor training running this January to February. This instructor training will allow me to deliver mental health first aid courses across teams and organisations in England. I’m really energised about this, as I want to gain a deeper understanding of workplace induced stress and anxiety, and find ways to drive change in an area which is so important to all of us in life – whether you’re working as a freelancer with an organisation, or as an employee in full or part-time employment.
“My dream is to create a life-long positive impact on the way organisations approach mental health, and to collaborate with some great people along the way. ”
You’re also the Founder of social enterprise, Mama Kari Presents which launched in the summer of 2019 - tell us about this and what inspired it?
Mama Kari is named after my mother, Kari, who lost her life to suicide back in 2007, having suffered from workplace-induced anxiety and depression. I wanted to take the difficult experiences of her struggles and mix them with the positive ways she lived her life to create a series of events which focused on positive emotional and mental health.
We launched with a series of ‘summer bounce events’ in 2019. Held in over ten cricket clubs across England and Wales, the festivals focused on good emotional and mental health with the hook of making the game of cricket more accessible to women. Through the events we created a safe space for open conversations and shared stories about mental health in the workplace and a real sense of community through inclusive and accessible team exercise and sport.
The next step for Mama Kari is to train some of our team as mental health first aiders, to link up with Zinc Academy’s mental health mission, and to take our expertise and events into organisations to help tackle workplace anxiety and depression from within.
My five-year ambition is to:
1) Offer down-to-earth leadership and training in workplace mental health, certified by the UK’s Royal Society for Public Health
2) Work B2B with psychiatrists and therapists to fix the frictions that currently exist in the uptake and success of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) sessions.
My dream is to create a life-long positive impact on the way organisations approach mental health, and to collaborate with some great people along the way.
Find out more about Mama Kari via our draft mission video, and how you can get involved via our website. We’d love you to take a look at both, and feel very free to shoot us a message jonan@mamakaripresents.co.uk
What does a week in your working life look like?
In my consulting role, my working week varies a lot and changes month to month. In 2018, I spent January to March on a project in the lovely Wakefield, working for a womenswear fashion brand. April to June, was spent working in London for a sport’s national governing body. I was lucky enough to have three months off to get married, chill and visit family! I then spent October to December working in London for a new fintech partnering with a UK bank.
Consulting can certainly take its toll. Travel to Wakefield every Monday and Thursday or Friday was tiring and hotel life isn’t the most social, but if the work is interesting and the team is responsive then it’s always worth the effort. Over the years, and now I’ve been thinking more and more about workplace mental health, I’ve concluded that for me, enjoying my working life always comes down to my mindset and the quality of the boss I’m working with and their understanding of good mental health. If these two factors are aligned, I see a real increase in the quality of my own work in the first few weeks of a project. This is why I really want to focus on improving workplaces understanding and support of mental health as I think it can make a real difference to consultants, employees and freelancers a like.
I went a little off topic there, so the more precise answer is that a typical working day looks a little like this: coffee, PowerPoint, listening, working in a team, coffee, thinking, PowerPoint, coffee, working out which helpful questions and contributions I can make in my meetings, decaf coffee!
Freelancing can often be a lonely place and full of self-doubt, what are your top tips for freelancers to look after their mental health?
It can definitely be lonely, especially when you’re looking for a new project. One tip that comes to mind is to be better at planning than I am – both financially and on sources of new projects – so that when you are taking a break from projects you’re able to give yourself permission to rest and enjoy life, without feeling guilty that you’re having a coffee and reading a book at 2pm - strangely enough the world will keep spinning without you!
There's been no silver bullet for me - I've had two shorter periods or depression relapse since 2016 - but there are a few things I've learnt that are important to keep me feeling energised:
Exercise: Personally I don't love the gym or running, but I’ve come to love hot yoga as a great mind and body cleanser. Find the exercise that energises you and work out what time of day your body feels ready for exercise and prioritise your week around it.
Make good use of quiet times : During the weeks when you don't have work, try not to panic and allow yourself some down time and do some things which are good for your soul. Don't just stay in your flat scouring the web for new projects. Go back to your mum or dad's place to stay and get some family love for a few days. Or leave the flat to read your book in a coffee shop and don't come back until The Chase is showing on ITV!
Screwing the 9-5: Don't beat yourself up if you’ve fallen out of ‘the routine’. Your mind always wants some problem to focus on. Let it do its thing every now and again, then see how it changes when you start work again, or when you've exercised. Celebrate the flexibility and team up with another freelance friend to treat Monday and Tuesday like a weekend - it’s your routine and you can shape it how you like.
Mindfulness: See how practising awareness and compassion feels (thank you, Andy at Headspace) - just turn up for it as much as you can, and let it do its thing.
Alcohol: Enjoy your drinks, but try to schedule in a few weeks off alcohol a couple times a year - if only to keep your body guessing :)
What are the most important things employers can look at to improve mental health in the workplace for both employees and freelancers?
I’m not 100% sure yet, but I want to work it out over the next few years. As a start, access to psychotherapists and CBT needs to be easier and less hassle. And from a different angle, employers need to help current employees think about their future career outside of the current organisation, and support them in taking those next steps. Bosses don’t always get it, but teams appreciate and give more loyalty to organisations who openly engage with their goals, without a hidden agenda. Or at least that’s been my experience, when working with bosses who really understood the value or nurturing employees and consultants alike and seeing the big picture.
Mental health in men is very slowly becoming less taboo to talk about. Why do you think this is?
There’s been a lot of good progress and conversations around men’s mental health, boosted by some high-profile figures taking it to the wider public, but it’s hard to know which people and parts of the country are still being left out and feel unable to share their feelings, worries and concerns.
I think that once you’ve been through depression or anxiety yourself, you quickly start to realise that anyone you know might be going through something similar but be keeping it hidden. So how do you know who needs help and what support is right for them? There’s certainly a lot more we can do, but it’s great that these conversations are now happening.
In addition, on suicide, we need better ways to talk about the topic, and clearer advice on the steps you can to take to help someone who is going through a crisis.
What are your top three sources of inspiration and why?
Reading political history books, and thinking about which side of history we could have been on - the TV series The Man in the High Castle is amazing, the book I’m not sure!
My Grandad (Bobo), my mum (Kari) and dad (Paps), my cousins in Uganda
Any celeb who is fighting the good fight (including Beyoncé, Gareth Thomas, Stormzy, and for good measure, Harry, Meghan and the Queen in some weird way). But less those who do it in an annoying or self-righteous way (including numerous peeps on twitter)
What’s your proudest achievement to date and why?
On a work front, learning how to gain energy from different jobs and people, and becoming a good boss.
On a life front, struggling through moderate to severe depression in 2013-16 while staying a good human-being. And marrying my lovely wife Srishti, of course 😊
What were you doing this time last year? What have you learnt or how have you changed since then?
This time last year, I was starting a four-week coding course, which I then dropped out of during the last two weeks… I’ve changed a lot over the past year: I’m feeling less financial stress, and have a lot more patience for myself, other people and life.
“I’ve changed a lot over the past year: I’m feeling less financial stress, and have a lot more patience for myself, other people and life.”
To find out more about Mama Kari and Jonan’s Mental Health First Aid work visit www.mamakaripresents.co.uk and to find out more about his freelance Management Consultant role connect with him on LinkedIn.