How do you achieve entrepreneurial success without sacrificing health, family, or hobbies? In this episode, Anna Lundberg sits down with James Healy, communications expert and co-founder of The Shift, to explore how he built a profitable business – all while never having a boss. Tune in for a candid conversation about redefining success, making intentional business choices, and ensuring work fits your life (not the other way around).

Key moments:

[01:28] Defining Success: James describes his philosophy and its roots in his upbringing.

[04:00] Avoiding Burnout: Insights on never having a boss and creating boundaries.

[06:37] From Solo to Co-Founder: The motivation and process of starting The Shift.

[09:43] Aligning Success in Partnerships: How James and Matt ensure shared business vision.

[16:06] Who They Work With: Clients, offerings, and the evolution of their consultancy work.

[21:14] Building a Personal Brand: Navigating LinkedIn and social presence.

[26:24] A Peek into Daily Life: Family, hobbies, and the practical reality of keeping balance.

[32:31] Advice for Making Big Shifts: Tips for those considering major transitions.

[34:26] The Art of Saying No: Managing client relationships and boundaries.

Resources mentioned:

• James’ company website: The Shift: Communications & Company Culture Consultancy
• Bruce Daisley’s podcast: Eat Sleep Work Repeat
• Amazing If podcast: Squiggly Careers
• Connect with James Healy on LinkedIn
• Book a free consultation with Anna: Book a call

Proactive business design

Anna Lundberg:
Reimagining Success, episode 365. And this week I’m joined for another interview with James Healy, communications expert and co founder of the Shift. We explore how James built a thriving business without ever having a boss, why he walked away from a successful solo consultancy, and what it really means to grow a business without burning out. If you’ve ever wondered how to build a meaningful business while still having time for your family, health and hobbies, this is a good one for you. Foreign Reimagining Success, the podcast that helps you build a profitable business as an independent expert, one that works for you and your lifestyle. I’m your host, Anna Lundberg, former corporate insider turned business mentor, executive coach and mum of two. Whether you’re a solopreneur, a coach, speaker, consultant, I’m here to guide you in creating a business that gives you freedom, flexibility and the fulfilment you’re looking for, ready to redefine success and build a business that you love. Let’s get started.

Anna Lundberg:
Okay. Hello everyone, and welcome back to this month’s interview. It’s a post summer interview with James Healy and as is often the case, we’ve met online, we’ve met on LinkedIn. In fact, I believe James and I know we have some colleagues in common. But thank you so much for coming on and talking about your story and I’m going to throw you straight in at the deep end and ask you, what does self success mean to you?

James Healy:
Thank you and well, good to see you. Nice to meet face to face and, and thank you for having me. So, so, yeah, what does success mean for me? It’s a big, a big question, obviously. And for me, the, you know, it, it folds into, to the company that I run and the way that I run it, it’s around, you know, it’s around time and, and what we’re doing with our time and how we’re feeling whilst we’re doing it. That, that for me is, is all bound up with what success looks like and I know where it comes from. It’s very deeply rooted in the, the way that I was raised back in the 80s in, in Essex and East London and seeing a lot of the dads that I grew up with and it was the dads, because that was the way things were back then, basically, you know, driving themselves into an early grave by working far too hard, never really seeing the K around too much with their wives. And I became very aware of that from a young age, that, that was not, not an ideal way to live one’s life. And so, so yeah, it was always considering, you know, what’s the opposite of that, what’s the antidote to that.

James Healy:
And so from a young age, always was very keen to be running my own thing, but doing it in a way that wasn’t going to be, going to be driving me to an early grade, so setting things up. So there’s a bit of time in the diary that you can still, you know, do your hobbies, body, do all the stuff that you want to do. And so my answer to the question is no more complicated than that. It’s not, not particularly innovative answer, but it’s, but it’s variation and it’s being, you know, the master of one’s own destiny that really for me is, is what success looks like.

Anna Lundberg:
Love that. And what’s really interesting there is that you’ve had that since a young age. And I think there’s a lot of talk about, you know, Gen Z, Gen Z, however you want to call it. And, and I’m always curious about where that comes from and if it’s there. Parents, they’ve seen their parents, you know, hustling in a certain way. I guess it’s Gen X in that case a little bit later. But, but I’m really interested to, to hear how you were able to apply that so early on because a lot of people I speak to have had to learn the hard way. And Maybe in their 30s, 40s, they wake up and go, hang on a second, Oops, I’m burnt out.

Anna Lundberg:
I’m estranged from my partner, my children, I’m not enjoying my work. I need to now redefine it. So I’m curious, have you felt it’s been, if not linear, at least sort of moving the right direction since the start, or did you also have a few sort of hiccups along the way where you did go down that kind of more hustle path? I suppose?

James Healy:
Yeah, good question. Well, there’s one detail around it which has helped me along the way, which is I’ve never had a boss, so I’ve never worked for anyone else. And that makes it easier to be the master of your own destiny because whilst I’ve always been a hard worker and I’ve always enjoyed working and I don’t mind working long hours, I’ve also been quite good at knowing actually, this is enough now and I need a bit of time to sit back a bit and, and to, to hit the brakes. So. So there’s never been a real kind of pinch point where I’ve felt I’m Burnt out. This needs to fundamentally change. However. The company that I run now is called the Shift.

James Healy:
The Shift is a, a communications and company culture consultancy. It’s a lot of Cs. Very alliterative. Yeah, exactly. And the Shift’s been running for three or four years. Prior to that I was running a company on my own and that was getting to the point where I was still enjoying it. It was doing very, very well. I’d run it for 12 or 13 years, but I’d fallen into that trap of doing client work and client delivery during the daytime and then getting home, seeing my wife, seeing my daughter, having some dinner and then opening the laptop, doing the accounts, doing the business development stuff, doing all of the emails in the evening and, and whilst I didn’t mind doing it and I was still quite enjoying it, I just thought, hold on a sec, I’m getting older now.

James Healy:
I was getting into my sort of mid-40s by that point and I just thought, I don’t need to do it this way. There is another way that I can approach this and, and had already met someone that I thought might be a good potential business partner. So, so, so I shifted at that point going from being what was basically a sole trader, although I had some associates coming in with the previous company, to, to getting a business partner. Getting a business partner, setting up a new company, 5050 to alleviate some of the pressure and to have someone to bounce ideas off and, and where we could, yeah, you know, compliment each other’s skills. So, so that was the evolution of it. But it never fortunately hit a point where it was absolute kind of panic stations. But I could see that that was potentially coming on the horizon.

Anna Lundberg:
Okay, great. And I’m afraid you’re a bit of an anomaly, I don’t know if I’m afraid to say that, but most of the people we have on here are solopreneurs and individual experts. I’m really curious to unpack, I guess, both the difference in the business model from the previous 12, 13 years and what you’re doing now and also. Yeah. What has been the shift. Haha. From what you were doing before to what you’re doing now.

James Healy:
Yeah, and I loved, I loved being, you know, being solo, I loved doing it on my own because I was very lucky that the communications work that I’ve been doing, I built up a very nice client base all around the world at a lot of repeat business people that I built up trust with. So it was all going very, very well from, from one point of view and what I Also was becoming increasingly aware of was the, you know, the, the approach of AI, the kind, the, the way that technology was going to change the world more broadly and the fact that, that that area is not particularly my strength, nor is it anything that I was particularly interested in. You know, a lot of the communications work that I do is very much about mind, body, voice and the human element. And so I was aware if I was going to be sustainable for the future, then I either needed to learn all of that stuff and get my head around it, which I wasn’t particularly prepared to do and didn’t think I’d do very well at, or I needed to find someone to partner up with who brought those skills, who brought that know how, that understanding that insights. And so Matt, who I then set the company up with, you know, he, he brought all of those skills along with him and he’s actually 15 years younger than I am as well. So there is very much a generational shift between the two of us which we get a lot of feedback from, from clients on as being, you know, something they been an evolution that was prompted by the onset of AI. And it’s not like I was completely over doing it on my own. Working solo was going very, very well.

James Healy:
In fact, my accountant, when I told him that I was closing down the previous company on my own to start up and partner with someone else, he basically gave me a bit of a talking to and said, why are you doing this? This is going well. You’ve effectively, you know, worked your ass off to build this thing up. Why would you close it down? So there was an element of, of risk to it. But, but for me, in my particular set of circumstances, it felt like the right thing to do and, and so far so good. But yeah, I was aware listening to previous podcasts, previous episodes of the podcast, that I’m going to be a bit of anomaly to, to some of the, the other guests that you have on.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, well, I think it’s very courageous, especially to break up a company that is successful. It’s easier to walk away from something that isn’t working, where something’s working really well and you have the foresight to look into the future that actually this is coming and it’s not within my set of skills and strengths generally as a solopreneur, the joy of it. But also the challenge is that we wear all these different hats and we need to stay on top of things. But I, but I love that you were able to say no, actually I don’t want to do that. I’ll get someone younger and who’s a specialist and it just opens up. You get to do the work you love to do while you partner with someone who can support you. I guess the challenge with co founder businesses I’ve always worked with and has, that tends to be a disconnect with what they want from the business. One wants to take money out to put their kids through private school, the other is like, no, no, no one to do this.

Anna Lundberg:
One wants to sell one, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I’m curious, have you made sure that your definitions of success align and how do you navigate that?

James Healy:
Yeah, really good question. And, and it’s. I think there’s a fundamental detail around it that make. Well, that has made it easier for us so far. Not suggesting it will stay that way in the future, but so far it’s definitely helped by the fact that there are two very clear sides to the business. There’s the communication side, which I head up, and then there’s the company culture and organisational development side which Matt heads up and they occasionally come together and overlap and feed each other. But quite often, like, for example, this week, I’m in Zurich facilitating retreat for a client out here for the whole week. And it’s very much, you know, the James show when I’m out here.

James Healy:
And whilst Matt knows loosely what I’m doing with this client, he doesn’t need to know much about it. So. So from a certain point of view, there’s still a lot of solo work that, that happens both for me and for him, so that helps. But. But to come back around to the question about, about, yes, success and what you’re looking to get out of it. We had lots of conversations around it before we, before we jumped in together. And there’s another vaguely. Well, I thought it might be interesting, but another detail in the provenance of all of this was that Matt was actually a client of mine and so I was coaching him 12, 11 or 12 years ago, he was a coaching client.

James Healy:
So. So there’s a fantastic woman called Sarah Ellis who you might know Sarah Ellis, she runs a company called Amazing if you. And the Squiggly Career podcast, all that kind of stuff. Sarah was Matt’s boss at a, At a company called Gravity Road and I’d done a lot of work with Sarah when she was at Sainsbury’s and doing some, some communications work with a lot of the marketing team. She’d bring me in for various things over there. She then left Sainsbury’s went to Gravity Road and Matt was one of her team and she wanted me to come in and work with him. And so, so I got to know him very well as a client, first of all. And what, what became very apparent to me after the first session was that our values were very, very closely aligned, that we saw the world very, very similarly, despite being, you know, 15 years age difference, there was a real chemistry that was very evident right from the first session.

James Healy:
And in fact, I phoned Sarah straight after the first session with him and said, blimey, we are incredibly similar. And she said, yeah, that’s why I wanted you. So luckily from the beginning, we knew that there was real synergy and that we had a fighting chance. Not that we even considered building a business together back then, but there was a connection immediately. It grew over a number of years under my previous company. I then brought Matt in to work on a few projects just to do some tests together to see if we liked working together. And once we’d established that bit, we then started considering, right, well, if we did set up a company together, what would success look like for you and what would it look like for me when it comes to the, you know, the financials, how would that be structured? And we had very honest and very detailed conversations about that stuff before we actually did it. And, and we got it all clear, we agreed it all up front and it wasn’t something that came particularly naturally to me because up until that point, I didn’t have to discuss that stuff with anyone.

James Healy:
I would just, you know, most of it live up here and occasionally in conversations with my accountant. But, but it was really useful to actually have to, to say it out loud because it forced me to make certain commitments and to consider the next chapter of my professional life, what it was going to look like and, and what success might look like if it went well.

Anna Lundberg:
I love that sounds like a very considered process. And anyone listening who is considering or has considered, I know I’ve. I’ve had clients who’ve been approached by someone saying, oh, do you want to become a joint creator? And this. And so, and it’s very tempting. I think it’s very lonely working by yourself and as you say, having a sounding board, having someone to share with, that’s so valuable. But I love what you said about being really clear in those conversations. You knew each other, you knew you shared those values. It sounds like a lot of trust and the clear ownership of a particular area I think really helps as well.

Anna Lundberg:
So I think that’s really valuable and you know, I said it’s an anomaly, but the truth is the whole point of the podcast and the work we do is about finding what success looks like for you. And sometimes it means actually having a big team and, you know, more of a proper company, and sometimes it means completely solo. It’s fractional, it’s. And the co founder model works as well. That’s, that’s what it’s all about. So I think it’s just about being intentional with what you’re building and of course, yeah, how you’re building it, with whom you’re building it. So it’s really interesting to hear a bit more about sort of the, the steps you took. You didn’t just meet someone online and say, hey, let’s start a company together.

James Healy:
That’s the thing. It was a very organic process and, and I’d been very fortunate up until that point. I’d be, I think I wrote them down somewhere. There were about six or seven colleagues who basically do similar kind of things, similar communications work to the work that I do. And over the years they’d mooted the idea of us starting something together. But it just always seemed to me that whilst that was incredibly flattering to be asked, and I’m really not being disingenuous with that, some of these people are way more experienced than I am. It was very flattering, but it didn’t seem sensible to me to say, start a business up with someone who does exactly the same thing as me. Whereas Matt’s background is, is very, very different and his stock in trade is very, very different to mine.

James Healy:
It’s just that they overlap in a way that can have real value for clients. So when that opportunity came along, it seemed a sensible thing to, to go for, but, but, but, yeah, it was, it was, it was just prompted by a bit of luck that we thrust together by Sarah Ellis.

Anna Lundberg:
And I love that it can be different expertise, it can also be sort of different personality. But style, you know, having two really big picture strategy people might not be super healthy. You need someone who’s a bit more operational strategic. So I think that’s really interesting to look for the complementary fit and digging then a bit more into detail about your business model. Who do you work with? You know, what kind of. You talked about retreats. Now I’m really curious to hear sort of what are your, how do you monetize it? What are your core offerings? All that meaty stuff.

James Healy:
Yeah. So. Well, at the moment there’s one of the, one of the banks in the uk we’re working with the board of one of the banks. That piece of work is primarily being led by Matt at the moment. So that’s much more about the, the culture of the organisation, helping them to shape the culture for the next chapter of their, their evolution in a, you know, post AI world. All of that kind of stuff. That’s a very large piece of work that’s ongoing at the moment on, on Matt’s side of the business, but was actually originally prompted by us doing some much simpler work which was helping their exco with some, with some speeches and some, some roadshows that they were doing all around the country where we helped them shape the stories that went into their scripts and then we got them rehearsing. How are they going to deliver those stories in a way that was clear inspirational on message, all of that kind of stuff.

James Healy:
So pretty, you know, Route 1 comms work first of all has then led into this much more significant bit of consulting work on the culture of the organisation. And if it goes well, and it’s a big if because we’re only halfway through at the moment, but if it does go well, it will trickle down and genuinely have a big shift on the way that that organisation looks, feels and the way the employees within it experience their day to day work life. So that’s one example of a big bit of work that we’re doing at the moment. And then on the personal side I do a lot of one to one coaching so I’ve got a space in the West End in London where clients come in. I always try and encourage them to come in face to face wherever possible rather than do it online. So we do a lot of one to one coaching clients who invariably are from law firms, private equity, hedge funds, but also increasingly tech startup people who are, who’ve got off to a good start with their, with their startup and are now getting out and raising the next round of investment. And how are they telling the story of where they’ve been, where they are, where they’re going? A lot of that kind of work is keeping us busy and then we are often brought in by boutique consultancies like the one that we’re working out and Zurich who do a lot of work in the pharmacy sector and they, they don’t have an in house comms person because they’re not quite that, that size of organisation. So whenever they need some help on their storytelling, the way they’re pitching the business, the way that they’re going to be, you know, showing up on LinkedIn for example, then we give them a bit of help on that side as well.

James Healy:
And the other thing that I haven’t mentioned, which is a very large sector for us, is the motor industry. So we do a lot with a few of the big brands in the UK and prior to Covid, I was doing a lot in America with one of the German manufacturers over there. So whilst that industry has been given a bit of a struggle, a bit of a push in the wrong direction by certain international geopolitical decisions recently, we’re still doing a little bit there and in fact we’ve had some work confirmed today that we’re going to be doing some more with one of the, one of the car manufacturers in the run up to Christmas. So, so it’s a real kind of blend of clients.

Anna Lundberg:
And has that been an intentional choice as to who you’ve approached to do work? Has it been organic, just who happens to have come to you based on word of mouth or network in terms of the clients you work with?

James Healy:
Yeah, I mean, yeah, with the, the previous company that I ran on my own it was much more organic and I had pretty much zero business development strategy because I was in the very fortunate position where there was always enough coming through to keep me, to keep me busy. And whilst that is still the case now to a certain extent of the shift, what we’ve been doing is taking a much more structured and forward thinking approach to business development, to sales, to LinkedIn strategy, even down to getting Matt basically getting me to, to post anything on LinkedIn which I very, very reluctantly as a, as a proud Gen Xer, I just don’t feel comfortable, you know, putting stuff out on social media. I never have done, but I’m slowly getting a bit more comfortable with it. But yeah, so there is a whole sales and business development strategy in place now that’s working very, very well. And truth be told, you know, if we didn’t have any of it, we would still have enough work to get by. But we want the business to grow, we want to carry on having a positive impact on as many clients as we can without burning ourselves out and without overstretching. And so to do that the way we want to do needs a much more structured approach to business development. So yeah, we’ve been pursuing that and it’s really interesting to see how it all develops.

Anna Lundberg:
And you mentioned talk. I mean that doesn’t come across at all, first of all, your reluctance in the post that you write, so that’s, that’s a good sign. But in terms of building personal brand Is it the two of you sharing that or are you then more the face of it? Or how do you manage that in terms of building your personal brand versus the company brand?

James Healy:
Yeah, very good question again because, because Matt, Matt already had a very strong personal brand, you know, out there on LinkedIn purely because, for example, there was, there’s a podcast, you know, Bruce Daisley and the Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat podcast. Matt co presented that with Bruce for a year or so. And, and the reason that Bruce had asked him to come in on that podcast was because his personal brand was already fairly, you know, developed and, and they’d done a bit of work together in the past. And so, you know, that was a good springboard for Matt to, to build his brand even further. And you know, he started racking up a lot of followers from that anyway and he genuinely loves the work that he does and it comes through in everything that he posts and, and it does come much more naturally to him as a, as a digital native. Whereas yeah, for me, my personal brand is, is constantly being poked along normally on a Wednesday with Matt saying to me, right, what are you going to post on Friday morning? What’s the nature of it? And basically, you know, he’ll, he’ll remind me that I’m not going to wriggle off the hook and that it is going to go out and I do always enjoy doing it in the end, but it just, you know, it just needs a bit of nudging along from me. But, but at least it’s heading in the right direction.

Anna Lundberg:
Yes, I love that. And well done you for getting out of your comfort zone and doing something that you need to do for, for the business. And now you hear about AI native people, which is just, just crazy to me. So that’ll be really interesting to see our kids growing up with, with, you know, obviously Alexa is something that my kids are very happy with and my son who can’t read or write yet, you know, he’s always using the remote saying Alexa, Spider man or whatever it is, you know, so it’ll be really interesting to see how that just opens up completely new and unimagined worlds.

James Healy:
Yeah. And in fact, this morning out here in Zurich with the, the client, one of the, one of the parts of the this morning sessions that, that really took off was a small piece that I was going to do on the multi generational workforce and the impact of the multi generational workforce on company culture. And I was just going to gently mention it for about five minutes. It ended up taking about half an hour of the session and I had to intentionally put the lid on it just so that we could move on to the other stuff. But it’s a topic that’s got so much heat around it, obviously, because we’re polarising so much.

Anna Lundberg:
And.

James Healy:
And of course, yeah, the younger generations coming through are so, you know, their approach to communication, the way they show up in the world, the way they meet the world is just very, very different to, to those of my kind of age and, and above. And it’s neither right nor wrong. It’s just. It just is and it’s different and we, we just need to be aware of it. But it’s a fascinating topic and yeah, it did really get a lot of, A lot of interest in the room.

Anna Lundberg:
I read something recently that said that, you know, that what happens is that it’s not that we win the argument or the younger generation wins the argument by sort of arguing the case, as it were, it’s rather that the older generation just dies out and then you’ve got sort of, by definition, the culture shifts.

James Healy:
Right.

Anna Lundberg:
We fight for this culture change but unfortunately the dinosaurs maybe aren’t able to do that and then, you know, bye, bye, they retire and actually that’s when shift happens. So, you know, it’s great not to throw a shade on your amazing culture work that you guys are doing, but, you know, some of it just kind of requires the organisation to move on.

James Healy:
Exactly, exactly. And much of it, you know, evolution is a very natural, very human thing. It will obviously outlive all of us and yeah, twas ever thus. So really it’s just around nudging it along wherever we can. And yeah, you know, it’s something that’s always fascinated me but particularly in the last couple of years with all of the technological advances and they all know.

Anna Lundberg:
What happened to the Kodaks and blockbusters and so on with the world. Right. So it’s some good cautionary tales there for us as well, I think.

James Healy:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean, one of the other sessions that I was listening in on, not facilitating this morning, but there was a session on sales and how AI can be used to help the sales process and. And yeah, I mean, you know, fascinating stuff. And some of it I was aware of, much of it I wasn’t. And you know, it is. It’s a brave new world out there and we can either get on board with it or not. But. But if we don’t get on board with it eventually, then, then, yeah, it’s going to be problematic.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I’m always really interested to hear about the reality of the day to day of, of the work that you do. And I know you’re, you know, working abroad at the moment. I’d love to hear a little bit more or get a peek behind the curtain, I suppose, of what a typical day week looks like for you. How do you manage so successfully, it seems for decades, you know, this kind of balance between having a really thriving business but not pushing at any point to the hustle and the burnout and sort of the negative sacrifices that we often hear are necessary to see that financial success.

James Healy:
Yeah, well, it’s, you know, and don’t get me wrong, there have been times where I certainly have pushed it too far and, and you know, found it very hard to say no when. When I’ve been lucky enough to have. To have more work than I can cope with, have always found it very hard to say no. So there have been times where it’s been tough to organise it all but. But the way that we run things. Well, for a start, I mean the standard working day at the moment, last 18 months or so has really shifted. Obviously with COVID we all got used to working from home and I could, I could very easily angle a lot of the work that I do to being online and do it from home and I genuinely don’t want to. I find it.

James Healy:
I really don’t work well from home. It’s fine if it’s occasional sessions being run from home, but if I go a couple of days where I don’t leave the little home office at the top of the house, I just. Yeah, it’s just not good for my, for my general kind of thought process and the way I feel about the work I’m doing. So we took a co working space up in the centre of London about a year or so ago, which I go to most days and. And then aside from that, there’s a separate, a separate place that we use for the coaching sessions that I’ve used for 16, 17 years now and that’s just down the road. So. So I do a lot of kind of bobbing around which, which really works for me. Whereas Matt is much happier working from home and really enjoys being in his home office.

James Healy:
So. So there’s a real, you know, it’s quite modern in that regard that whilst we are business partners, we can go a week or two weeks without working in the same location together and still the business can flourish really well. So. So it’s a mixture of that and then spending Some quite intense periods out on client sites. So we’re going to be, you know, we’re going to be away up north in, in Leeds quite a lot in the next few weeks together on one big project. Then I’m in India the week after next in Bangalore for a week and that again is one just completely on my own. So. So yeah, it’s.

James Healy:
No week is ever the same and I’m aware that is a real luxury to be able to say because I’ve got a very low boredom threshold and I again linking back to being a little boy in the 1980s and seeing some models of working that didn’t seem ideal. The other thing that I was aware of from a very young age was that me sitting behind a desk 9 to 5 was, was never gonna fly. I just don’t have the concentration to do that. So. So the way I’ve set things up both consciously and unconsciously is it’s very mixed, it’s very varied and it. Yeah and it sort of keeps me energised with it on a, on a good day.

Anna Lundberg:
Love that. And what about life beyond the work? So hobbies, family, pets, what does that look like?

James Healy:
So yeah, married, 17 year old daughter. We live in South London and, and have done that thing and we were very lucky to be able to, to get a house in, in an area of South London that was quite down at heel when we bought it and it was a house that needed a lot of attention. So we’ve slowly over the years built this thing up and luckily the area has come up a bit as well and so it’s, yeah, it’s a real, real luxury to be able to have that and to be able to have the little office at home and nine year old spaniel called Frankie who keeps us all busy so a lot of yomping around Crystal palace park with him and, and that leads into the main hobby at the moment which is, and I’m not a kind of gym rat by any means but I’ve got a half marathon coming up and so running is the one thing that to be honest Anna, I don’t particularly enjoy but I force myself to do it and I enjoy the way I feel after the run. So at the moment it’s sort of work, family, running dog that is pretty much the sum total of the way life looks. But, but to be honest that’s enough to keep me content and, and happy for the, for the time being. So, so, so yeah, you know, it feels, it feels lucky to be able to have at least some Balance with everything.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, I love that balance. And, and it’s not luck. It’s intentional design, isn’t it? And also knowing what enough is. I’ve heard you say that a few times. I think that’s such an important concept. It’s not so sexy. Sexy enough, but it’s, you know, it’s, it’s having it all. But you have to define what that all is and it is being clear on.

Anna Lundberg:
On what those priorities are and that’s. That’s really important. I’ve. I’ve got to say, I’ve had a couple of weeks off running too. So as much as I do love it right now I’m feeling a bit. It’s raining. I’m like, I know I love it once I get out. So I’ll take this as a sign that I’ll get out there again and get back into it.

James Healy:
Well, I did want. Yeah, there was one of those runs this morning where I literally dragged myself out of bed here at the hotel, only because one of the clients, I’d arranged to meet him down in the reception at 6am and it was pissing down with rain and dark and grey and, you know, not the best running conditions. And as soon as we got out for 10 minutes and got into it, we’re having a nice little chat and, you know, it’s a wonderful thing to do, so.

Anna Lundberg:
And you feel so virtuous coming back, don’t you? Everyone else is still in bed and you’ve been out there in the. In the dark and the wet, so.

James Healy:
Exactly.

Anna Lundberg:
James, thank you so much. I’m aware that you’ve got a packed day today with all your calls and retreats and things, so thanks so much for taking the time. I do have a couple of. If I can remember the questions now, really, I’m still a little bit curious about these things that. Just to leave everybody with, I suppose, in terms of advice, one would be specifically as you, as I call it, sort of recalibrated. So you said goodbye to one business and then said hello to the new one, as it were. Any advice for someone who’s sort of at that point that you were, and thinking, oh, actually, yes, it’s working, but anything tangible or intangible that you can share for someone at that moment where actually they have built something and they sort of got it going, but their account, you know, their accountants saying, yes, you’ve got to keep doing this, but actually your heart isn’t in it, or, you know, you’ve got a different route that you want to Take.

James Healy:
Yeah, I mean, well, look, whether this is advice or not, I don’t know, but it’s certainly. It’s worked for me so far. I think the only creative, not even creative, but the only thing that I did that was unusual and that a couple of people said to me, don’t do it, was that I was 100% clear that if I was going to start a business with somebody else, I wanted IT to be 50, 50 in the share structure and in everything else. And a couple of people had said to me, but hold on, there’s an age difference. Many of the clients coming into the new business, coming from. From your old business or certainly some of those relationships are. But. But I instinctively knew that I didn’t want it to be an imbalance and that it needed to be a totally, totally equitable partnership.

James Healy:
And I’m a big music fan, and what I know from bands is that the bands that survive are the ones that have an equitable structure around the royalties and the licencing and all that kind of struck, you know, all that kind of stuff. And if it’s not completely equitable, at least it’s, you know, it’s enough to keep everyone happy. And when you get those. Those bands where, you know, one person pretty much gets all of it and the rest of them live in penury, then. Then that ain’t going to work. So my version of that was against the advice of. Of a few people. Well, not the advice, but against the encouragement of a few people, I found a way to set it up that was completely equitable and.

James Healy:
And so far it’s working well. And who knows where it will lead in the future, but that. I know if we didn’t have that, this business would not be, you know, it wouldn’t look and feel the way that it does. And I would describe it as a successful business, and that is a large part of it.

Anna Lundberg:
And final, very tangible question was you mentioned earlier on the difficulty in saying no? And I think as part of sort of moving away from one business and into another direction, you do need to start saying no to the wrong clients as well. Clients who have been paying you well. How did you navigate that particular tension or sort of discomfort, I suppose, with saying no to happy clients who are. Who are paying you, I suppose.

James Healy:
Yeah. To be honest, Anna, I’m still not great at it, and it’s still something that. That I’m. There’s a work in progress because there are some clients that. That I’ve now worked with for 12, 13, 14 years and and whilst, you know, my. My offering has grown and some of the fees have grown in what value that offering has in the market, those other clients, yeah, they still, their budgets haven’t grown. And so there’s a lot of coaching clients that, by the book, might not be the most, you know, the best use of my time or the most profitable use of my time, should we say. But.

James Healy:
But I still work with those clients because I really enjoy doing it. And, and I’m very aware I don’t want to be coming across as, you know, arrogant with this. You know, the point that I’m making that as a business grows, you can charge, you know, some, some higher fees, but I do. The truth of it is I still have a number of clients that it’s not pro bono work, but it’s not far off it. And I love that. I love the fact that we’ve set the business up in. In such a way that there is that flexibility that we can sometimes say yes to clients that we want to work with, even if it’s not financially the most sensible decision. So there’s that side of it which is part of the strategy.

James Healy:
And to come back to your question, the key thing that I’ve done is that with the old business, if anyone approached me with any work, the answer was always yes, let’s discuss it. Whereas now I’m much more in the practise of scoping it out, asking some questions, taking it away and discussing it with Matt, seeing how it might fit in the diary over the next six months and then going back to the client. So it’s just a bit more of a mature, grown up, slower approach to that side of the business. And that’s working well, but it’s certainly not something that comes naturally to me.

Anna Lundberg:
I suppose having a co founder there really helps because you can’t just say yes to things without having discussed them and it makes you a bit more intentional. And it comes with. That comes with confidence, clarity and all those good things that perhaps we can’t do with our first business. So it’s reassuring to people who may be early on in the stage of their first business that actually that is a phase of being a bit scrappy and saying yes to everything and then you learn that way and then there will come a point when you’re happy and confident to say. To say no as well, or as you said, continue, because actually it brings you joy, you enjoy the work and that’s just as important.

James Healy:
So there’s. Yeah. And there’s another angle that you just Reminded me of, which is that I love travel and I love working abroad. I’ve been very, very lucky to work all around the world doing what I do. But what that can mean is if a job comes up and it happens to be in an interesting location, I immediately say yes. And well, certainly the old James immediately says yes. And of course what that means is you can end up in some very interesting locations doing some very inappropriate work or work that’s not in line with the strategy, that’s not going to be, you know, commercially viable. So, so yeah, that I’d need to, I’ve needed to coach around, you know, the, the shiny thing of, of geographical location and travel is, is something that I’ve also been stepping back a bit.

Anna Lundberg:
Okay, yeah, well, I suppose there’s the two sides to that, but it’s also recognising the nuances of what, what is the right decision. And I think, and I had a client the other day saying, oh, I’m getting too focused on just the income and the strategies. Like actually if something lights you up, if it’s an exciting place, if it’s a new client who would give you a great testimonial, sort of brand expert, whatever it is, that could be just as important, if not more important than money. And it’s just having that mix of sort of things. Especially as you said, if your boredom threshold is little bit of whether it’s travel for some people with young kids, perhaps not so much, you know, but thinking about what that kind of the exact recipe is, I suppose for now and it will shift as the years progress.

James Healy:
You’re completely right. We were offered something in Singapore recently and I love Singapore. I’ve worked there quite a lot and I just really enjoy going back there. And once we actually scoped out what the work was, it just wasn’t the right thing for us to be doing. So I very reluctantly said no. But again, you know, I’m very aware it’s, that’s a privileged position to be in and, and there’s a kind of post Covid bounce to it as well that those years of not travelling, I was then even more inclined to say yes. All that stuff and some of it, to your point, Anna, was the right thing to do because it did give me joy and that’s part of what success means, that we can make those choices and be picky about it. But I know I also say yes to the wrong ones as well.

James Healy:
So that’s still a work in progress.

Anna Lundberg:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, James, look, thank you so much for sharing so honestly your story. I love that you had that kind of insight from an early stage, I suppose, but also how that’s manifested in different ways over the last few decades. And best of luck to you and your partner for, for the next few years and excited to see what’s next. Where can we connect with and follow you?

James Healy:
So. So the website is. Is the Shift Dot company. The Shift Dot company is the website and there’s links on there to all the socials. So James Healy is the name. And as for our, you won’t find me on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, anything like that, but I am on LinkedIn and I don’t want to do myself a disservice. I’m increasingly enjoying my LinkedIn presence.

Anna Lundberg:
Well done. And you’re on the podcast here too, so kudos to you for building a personal brand. Well done. We’ll put all that in the show notes as well. So thank you so much.

James Healy:
Amazing. Anna, thank you very much for having me. It’s been a real pleasure.

Anna Lundberg:
Thank you, James.

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