Jo Lilford on working with Julia Chanteray

If you have been wondering what it’s like to work with Julia Chanteray, either on Remarkable or as a one-to-one client, read or watch this interview with Jo Lilford. Here, Jo talks to Jane de Vos about the positive impact it’s had on her business by working with Julia.

You can watch the full video or read the interview below.

Hi Jo, please introduce yourself and your business

I’m Jo Lilford and I’m an MD of a small specialist branding consultancy called Run, Jump, Fly Limited.

We help businesses to tell their story in the best possible way. So, we don’t deal with the visual part of a brand, it’s a bit more niche than that. It’s about the way an organisation communicates across all of their touchpoints.

How did you find out about Julia?

When I first met Julia, I was introduced to her by a peer in the industry that I have a lot of respect for.

At the time, I had too much work on. I was working flat out and stressing myself into an early grave, too.

How has Julia helped your business?

Julia has successfully managed to get me to step back and take a good, long, hard look at the way that I was working and running my business. I was saying ‘yes’ to a lot of work because I was frightened of turning away income.

That was really big for me, learning more about what it is that I want for my business. And the quality of the work I’ve had since working with Julia has improved a hundredfold. This has been a big impact for me.

What has been your ‘can’t live without’ improvement?

My ‘can’t live without’ improvement seem stupidly obvious but never really occurred to me. And it was that I was working flat out with lots of work that I didn’t want. Julia said: “you’re not charging enough”.

I have a lot of International Director level experience but was thinking, “writer’s charge X amount so I should be on a par with them.” But what I do is more management consultancy writing. Julia made me realise the value of what I offer.

Julia said ‘try doubling your price and see what happens.’ And what happened was the kind of work I didn’t want to do fell away immediately. The people who see the value in what I offer stuck with me and I’ve carried on attracting clients of that type.

I’m now working half the amount as before. I was working seven days a week, now I’m down to five-ish. It means I’ve got my family life back and that’s made a massive difference.

Imagine you’re talking to a friend about business coaching and Julia, what would you say about it?

I think the most wonderful thing for me is I’ve had a few coaches during my career. And a lot of them have been very ‘mood board and aspirational’, but not in a way that resonates with me. What I love about Julia is she gives practical, tangible advice that I can implement, fine-tune and implement again.

Julia is a very hands-on, practical person and that really works for me. I want real tools that I can apply immediately to my business.

What is the one thing that you would do differently?

The only I would do differently if I were in her place, is I kept losing the Zoom link. So, before every session, I would send it out again.

And she sent me a fantastic book on pricing but I can’t read it digitally as I don’t read well off the screen and it is too unwieldy to print out.

Julia has made sure Sweetspot pricing is available on paperback from Amazon but is glad you’re found it helpful for your business.

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