Interview with James Boyd of The Norfolk Journeyman
Interview with James Boyd
of The Norfolk Journeyman
James Boyd on the Mentorship Process with Claire Menzies
James Boyd of Norfolk Journeyman
About James Boyd
James Boyd is a highly-trained classical musician, having studied at the Royal Academy of Music and performed on the road with some of the world’s top artists, before his career was temporarily sidetracked by injury. He became an artisanal woodworker in the interim period, working on new, bespoke and historic restoration projects. James came to Claire Menzies for mentorship to help make sense of his mix of skills and to inform his next steps.
How did mentoring help you create a vision for the future?
Claire helped me to see that my work as a musician, an artisan, a coach, even my passion for sailing, is all a coherent part of who I am. At the same time, she showed me when ideas need to have their separate identity whilst remaining coherent. There is real brilliance to her capacity to create the right name for my ventures, and over time I have seen her guidance working through the names themselves.
Can you tell us about those ventures?
Of course. It was Claire who created the name for my artisan business - The Norfolk Journeyman.
She helped me build this at a time of my life when I needed income that couldn’t be supplied by performing. Claire saw this as part of my journey - the master musician with woodworking skill, creating artisanal, beautiful objects in people’s homes.
The idea and name of the journeyman was genius - it helped me see the relevance of what I was doing rather than thinking of it as a sidetrack of necessity and, over time, I have realised what she already knew, namely that my experience as musician and artist was informing my artisan work. I wasn’t just a maker but a journeyman, bringing all my varied experience with me. And conversely my experience in this business has informed my music making. Some customers have become my audience for bespoke concerts in beautiful homes. In returning to the concert stage, I have lost some of the fragile ego that so often dogs a musician’s footsteps, in addition to having a heightened commercial sense of the value of my art.
The Journeyman business is evolving and Claire’s sense of where it needs to go in the next few years is a constant reassurance as I try and balance the challenges of time and profit. Claire understands the sustainability of things and has started to guide me towards sources of passive income through the Journeyman.
Claire also suggested an App for teaching my system of playing the guitar and the techniques I use for performing at a high level on stage. This is currently a work in progress. Here again, the mentoring process revealed itself in her choice of name. She suggested ‘The James Boyd Principle’. I was less than keen on this at the start but her advice to me was ‘to own it’. I realised that the hesitancy I felt at applying my name to the App was perhaps a final tremor of self-doubt. Having adopted the title, I find it is a mantle that fits comfortably - just like the Journeyman. There is strength in this. It seems to me that the right name not only conveys purpose but somehow drives it. It is a form of genius and I feel privileged to be privy to it.
Claire Menzies and current mentee James Boyd of The Norfolk Journeyman.
How has mentoring enhanced your sense of clarity about what you need to do?
Claire is relentless in bringing my attention to a holy trinity of vision, purpose and values. I found this hard at the outset. My natural propensity is for free form creative thought and these incisive questions required me to be irritatingly concise. What is your vision? Your purpose? Your values? I found these dreadfully hard to answer in a succinct fashion and discovered that often when I thought I had answered a question, I had actually answered an entirely different one, one that was unvoiced and less relevant.
Over time I have come to value and understand the rigour of this thinking. It is perhaps one of the most important things Claire’s mentoring has taught me. I find I now lead a more intentional life. Always returning to vision, purpose and value stops aimless meandering and keeps me on track in business and in life generally. It has even made me a better father. Claire has been a stickler for trimming my prose too. She has edited my poetic sensibility without murdering or disparaging it but by understanding it and then showing me that the poetry can be hinted at and delivered in performance. And at the front end it has to be tempered with brevity and clarity in order to get the message across.
Has mentoring helped you become more of a strategic thinker too?
My experience of Claire’s strategic thinking is that of a novice chess player in the presence of a grandmaster. I can see a handful of options and their implications and then, as I unpack a problem or challenge with her, she unleashes a world of possible moves that I couldn’t even see at the outset. I recently had the opportunity to go through a business plan in detail with her. There was a system to this and a logic and detail that made me realise there is a formula for success, even if what that formula reveals is that one should change course or shelve an idea.
How would you summarise what mentoring has achieved for you?
Claire has taught me to question deeply my motives in taking any course, from posting social media content to answering an email or text, not in a navel-gazing fashion but in a spirit of professionalism. She has instilled in me the questions of vision, purpose and values.
Claire also helped restore my confidence when we first began working together and, in the years since, has always shown me that there is the power within me to realise any dream. The thing I love about her approach is that is based on an authentic realism born of real experience. There is always recognition of current challenges and the reality of trying to balance life; a sense of rolling up the sleeves. And yet she never loses sight of ultimate goals.
When Claire was initially advising me to launch the Norfolk Journeyman, she also helped me to fly out to Marrakech to pursue a lead at Pure Life Experiences where I had been invited to talk on the subject of learning and performance and to promote my wilderness concert experiences in beautiful locations. This dual approach of addressing present needs whilst never losing sight of greater aims has been a feature of her guidance. It also holds true within every venture we have worked on together.
Whilst it’s nice to have one’s outstanding attributes recognised, it is also good to have one’s weaknesses and moments of missing the mark pointed out. Claire’s expression is that she will always give her opinion between the eyes but never stab me in the back. I have sometimes been punch drunk but am always grateful for her honesty!
Discover more from James Boyd
www.jamesboyd.co.uk | @jamesboydproductions | @norfolkjourneyman
Claire Menzies discussed the benefits of mentoring in the workplace, and how businesses benefit from upskilling their employees in a guest article for Business Leader. You can read the article by visiting Business Leader.