Meet The Woman Who Runs A Marathon Before Work - Clair Heaviside

0:00Clair Heaviside:I'd already got up at five o 'clock, put my head torch on, gone out in the pouring rain and run half a marathon. Businesswoman Claire, ultra athlete Claire, which is my endurance training side of things. Now the reason why those two things are so interconnected and why I almost can't talk about one without the other is because I don't think I would be the businesswoman that I am if I wasn't somebody that was so invested in the mindset and training that's required to enter the endurance space. So I started my career not in marketing. I don't come from a marketing background, although I've been in marketing for 15 years or something.

0:33Clair Heaviside:So I run to see how far I can go. Like, how far can I go? What can I achieve? What are the limits of my life and how can I go beyond them? What unexpected, strange things can I do and push myself to live this unbelievably fulfilled, ambitious life that's beyond my wildest dreams? What you're saying then, that element of discomfort or something uncomfortable, some suffering element is inevitable to a good story. That's the starting point for everything else. And this comes from my time in prison.

1:05Claire Heverside.

1:06Clair Heaviside:Hello. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. We're going to get right into it. Go for it. Claire, who are you and what problem do you solve? Lots of ways of answering that question. I'm going to start with the easiest and then it will probably develop as we go along. but I am the co-founder and creative director of a marketing agency called Serotonin. And the problem that we solve as an agency, well, we position ourselves as we help brands perform better, faster. And that can be through a whole load of different ways. So we have on the brand and creative side of the agency through positioning or repositioning or brand creation, setting brands up to succeed in a multitude of different sectors.

1:50Clair Heaviside:and then we take them to market and enable them to grow. And the better, faster is important because of the type of demands of the world that we live in at the moment. So we have to underpin our long-term brand growth and our investment in brand strategy with at-pace movement of performance channels. And that's where the kind of creative and media side of the agency come together. In harmony. Wow. That was gorgeous. That was nice. so if somebody's listening to this and they might be uh an entrepreneur business owner they might be somebody that works in sales and things like that what what are you what are you hoping that by the end of the conversation they will walk away with they will leave with that they can kind of put forward in their own life okay love that question because there's always these two two um i not quite conflicting personalities but two different sides to me and i'm never quite sure which one is going to show up in these types of conversations and i think that for you guys in particular we're going to walk a line of both of them and one of them is about my business woman persona you know i'm founder of an agency we're six years old we're four million pound revenue i've got a team in manchester i've got a team in london and we're growing exponentially every year we are a really um you know this dynamic growing agency and i want people to understand about the positioning of that agency and why we've grown in the way that we have which very much down to you know that working in harmony that creativity and media and the necessity and prioritization of both of those in order to support the clients in the way that we do businesswoman claire and then there's the bit that i really really get passionate about talking about which is ultra athlete Claire which is my endurance training side of things now the reason why those two things are so interconnected and why I almost can't talk about one without the other is because I don't think I would be the business woman that I am or even the agency would be the agency that it is if I wasn't somebody that was so invested in the mindset and training that's required to enter the endurance space and to do these kind of ridiculous ultra runs that I do so I want people to take away my and a real good understanding of the business and the priority of creative and media working together in harmony but I also want them to understand that the reason the business has been able to do what it's done is because of some of the principles that I have learnt through my endurance training.

4:31Clair Heaviside:Because I genuinely believe that if you don't need to run a marathon, ultra marathon, you don't need to actually physically do those types of challenges that look great on LinkedIn or Instagram in order to adopt and apply these principles to your life. And I do believe that anybody that does adopt and apply these principles is gonna find that they're going to, well, I always say, achieve beyond the limit of their potential. amazing well let's start there then let's start with what you're most passionate so I've worked probably like most people have for some lunatics in my career before going into business myself that came with all sorts of like crazy lifestyle choices I've never worked for someone who was an endurance athlete let alone an ultra endurance athlete so what do you think that serves you how do you think that complements what you do get comfortable guys because this is really you know I could honestly talk forever about this.

5:30Clair Heaviside:Yeah, yeah. So I love running long distances. In order to run long distances, you have to train really hard. You have to train yourself physically. You have to commit consistently to training. There's no big explosive ups and downs to it. You have to be able to hold on and grit in and get it done when it's raining and dark and horrible. And you've got to be able to go out and do it. And you've got to want to do it. You've got to love to do it. And you've got to have a purpose to doing it that goes beyond the finish line or the PB or the medal or the Instagram post. So you've got to have a sense of purpose and you've got to have a real commitment to consistency in order to do these things.

6:12Clair Heaviside:You've also got, and I'll dissect all of these, I'm sure, through this conversation, but you've also got to have the ability to overcome problems. so if you're going to go out and run for 13 hours on a trail right shit is going to go down like things are going to happen some are out of your control and some in your control but things are going to go wrong not everything's going to go to plan you've got to be able to trust in your training you've got to be able to hold yourself steady uh when when the shit hits the fan and you've got to not um you've got to be able to react to fear in a positive way you've got to be able to keep on moving you've got to stay committed all of the things that i've just said resilience consistency purpose intention problem solving i mean that's running a business right all of those things so by training myself as an endurance athlete i'm almost creating weirdly a safe environment to practice the skills that i need as a business owner and it is a safe environment because even those people say oh god it's so brave you're going up the trails it's dark and you know you're in the middle of nowhere on your own and yeah you're doing all these things anything could happen blah blah but it's still safe like i've still got the privilege of i've made a choice to go to that put myself in that position um there's an aid station five miles down the road i've got a pack full of haribo you know i'm i know what i'm i'm in a safe zone if I get lost I've got a tracker on me so people will be able to find me I've got a mobile phone with a battery all of these things make that experience actually quite safe but it's safe in a way that I can test myself to the limit of my potential while that then can put me out into the what is the real world I guess which is my life as a business owner and apply them and you know that what everything that I've practiced so yeah that's the that's the idea that's where this like dichotomy of my personality comes together and it works do you make that link immediately what's the relationship between the two so I think that I didn't I didn't make the link until um I would say about two to three years ago well so the big pivotal moment in it all when I really made the connection was when I started to see differences in myself and I think part of that was um just generally getting older and a bit wiser like when I hit 40 I suddenly like stopped caring what everyone thought about me and was had this great revelation that it's really bloody great growing up as a woman and suddenly not care having to care anymore and that was wonderful and so I kind of had that and around the same time I was really getting into kind of pushing my body and doing these things and I also started doing which I knew knew we were going to kind of going to come on to because I always come on to these conversations I started committing to this run commute and and that meant that I was getting up every day and kind of running to work which sounds really really simple and it was simple and I think that's actually the key to it all because it's so simple you just get up put your running clothes on walk out the door and go to work on your on your own two legs like it's actually not a big deal you should do that every day like okay easy we can do that and it was the more that I was doing that and locking into that behavior and when that behavior came a habit and then even better when I started to enjoy that behavior I realized that there was something had changed in me and the way that I was behaving at work the way that I was behaving as a leader the way I was showing up for myself was changing and And I don't know if it was about being calmer, more controlled, more measured in situations, not being blindsided when things went off track.

10:09Clair Heaviside:I was much, felt much more capable at taking on a challenge in a day because by the time that challenge had hit me, I'd already done something really difficult. I'd already got up at five o 'clock, put my head torch on, gone out in the pouring rain and run half a marathon. so what else are you going to do like hit me with it I've already shown myself how tough I am so come on bring it on and it was great because it was really about confidence building for me so confidence building and resilience and belief in myself and I think that coincided with turning 40 having less of a care and awareness of what mattered what everybody else thought and that is where I felt that endurance training wasn't just something that sat on the sidelines of my life but actually was part of who I am.

11:04I feel like I can still see the image but I remember social media is a funny thing because you feel like you get to know people through posts and stuff like that and I feel like that was the first post that I saw where I came across you and I was like, this lady, she runs a half marathon every day to work. It was like, it's kind of unfathomable, like it's crazy to think of. So it might be a bit of a personal question, so feel free to take this where you want. But I know from kind of my personal background and probably Zach's as well, but that bit to start your own business, there's something in you that you're probably trying to feel and you don't know whether you're chasing something or you're being dragged or you're working towards it.

11:46From what I know about endurance as well and kind of endurance athletes, there's probably like the same little bit that's there yeah there's so many correlations there's

11:55Clair Heaviside:something that i do just need to say because um it's always a caveat that i need to say i'm currently not running half a marathon to work so i've moved house okay so it's less than that so strava police don't worry don't come after me it is currently not that distance but it is still it is still a daily thing still a daily habit and i think that's the most important thing just to make really really clear it's not about the distance the distance should never be the headline the headline is the consistency the headline is getting up and doing it every day regardless of the weather and the headline is the importance of forming habits and that's what i really want to get across because i think if you talk about distance people feel oh well that's she's superwoman and i couldn't do that and that is not the point the point is anyone can do this and doesn't need to be running it can be absolutely anything so i just need to say that because java police are they'll come for you straight in the comments i will get cancelled yeah it'll be straight on but um yeah i've forgotten actually your original question before my caveat i'm just thinking the the enjoy where where where does that come from the ability to say i'm gonna i'm gonna go and throw myself into terrains that i know are going to be hard situations yeah and you know that it's going to be difficult and some people don't do that they stay at home and they watch the simpsons and that's also okay why yeah i uh sorry okay so this is something that i was talking about yesterday So yesterday I did a webinar, which was me sharing some of the principles that I've been really cultivating just in my own mind that I thought would be applicable to a lot of other people.

13:28Clair Heaviside:And really, and I called it the endurance mindset because I wanted to wrap it up in something that people could understand. And the absolute pinnacle of the endurance mindset is joy in the process, finding joy in the process. and that's when I really realised that this is the calling for me, being able to wade through all of the external validation that our whole society is built upon right now and find something that was intrinsically satisfying to me because I loved the process. And loving the process is, yeah, it's about running. I love moving my body in that way. I love feeling free. I love getting from A to B on my own two legs.

14:07Clair Heaviside:I love the empowerment that I feel from that. I love the headspace. I love listening to podcasts on the way. I love the peace and quiet being away from my phone and noise and everything else. I love the adventure. I love doing the thing of running. But I think there is something deeper than that because you're right to relate it to that journey of endurance of building a business. And I think what that is, it's actually something I've been thinking about even just over the last 24 hours I think what that is is about having a goal and a purpose that is constant in your life and understanding your own personal why and what I spoke about in this webinar yesterday was that my why is my why of running is I run to see how far I can go in distance yeah but also how far I can go like how far can I go what can I achieve what are the limits of my life and how can I go beyond them what unexpected strange things can I do and push myself to live this unbelievably fulfilled ambitious life that's beyond my wildest dreams so I run to see how far I can go and I'll never fail like I'll never fail because there isn't a fight there is no end to that there is no there is no finish line because I'll just keep going because I'll run I'll keep running to see how far I can go I'll keep pushing myself to see what I can achieve.

15:29I'll keep appearing on podcasts that scare me and having difficult

15:33Clair Heaviside:conversations and growing my business and doing those things just to see how far I can go. And every time I do, I'm stacking these bricks that's building my confidence and helping me to live a more fulfilled life that's beyond the limit of my potential. So that, you know, that is genuinely how I feel about running and how I feel about running the business because, and I want other people to as well because I just believe that taking small steps around consistency is great having goals is great wanting to run a marathon for the sake of running a marathon is great wanting to run it on under four hours fantastic do it but don't let that be the end like have a purpose that goes beyond that that drives you to keep going keep going because you'll never fail I'll never fail you could take my business away tomorrow and I It won't have failed because it will have just been part of my journey, my endurance journey to see how far I can go so I can pick myself up and see what I can do next.

16:33Nice. So then when you think of endurance, say endurance, this endurance mindset is a cake, okay? Yeah, okay. We love an analogy. How are we baking it? What are those ingredients? Wow. I didn't know that's where you were going. Yeah, we went there.

16:50Clair Heaviside:like haribo energy gels it sounds like a lovely cake loads of chocolate high carb no um so there's there's some kind of principles that i was trying to kind of break down to it and a lot of them uh you know a lot of them reflect some of the things that i've kind of talked about but i'll take you through some of the kind of key ones so um one of those is is evidence is undeniable proof so that's an ingredient in the cake that's a slice of the cake evidence is undeniable proof and what that means is being able to track your own achievement so that you can go back into your toolkit of evidence and that will continue to drive you forward so that's part of that constant endurance so I'm nervous coming onto this podcast right everyone gets nervous you're probably you've done it a thousand thousand times you'll still feel a little bit of like oh god I'm gonna be filmed where's this gonna go and what people are gonna think we can't help it we're all human we live in society where people are going to judge us and we've all got these insecurities right I don't know about you but what I do is I just say to myself I've done it before and I can do it again or maybe even not that thing but I've done something else scary before and I can do it again and I'm constantly using these things to build these bricks that become undeniable proof that I am the person that I say I am and all that matters is that I understand that and I believe that and I know that I have this stack of undeniable proof that I am who I say I am so that's the first slice of the pie stacking up your bricks of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are and then another slice of the pie cake cake pie it's whatever we're in the north another slice of the cake we'll have the pie and then we'll have the cake after but the is this idea that everything is temporary which sounds really can be sound quite morbid and is a bit morbid I think in some ways but it's also a really really freeing concept it's a beautiful freeing concept that when I'm on a really long distance run is the thing that stops me from quitting and if you believe everything is temporary then the worst moments when it's uphill and the clouds are coming in, or the rain is coming down, or your gloves are soaked through, or you haven't got the right kit with you, and it's awful, and you're on your own, and you're not even halfway.

19:11Clair Heaviside:It's temporary. It's not going to last. Who knows what's going to, the clouds might clear. You could change the sound in your ears, put a different song on. You can change what you can change, but nothing's going to stay the same. Everything is temporary. But likewise, when the sun comes out and you're flying down that mountain and you can feel the air and everything is beautiful that's not going to last either so enjoy it like embrace the joyousness of that moment and i think that once you just realize that everything is temporary it just makes moments really really important but also quite insignificant so it's okay we're just going to keep moving through and when you're on a long run that's something that really keeps you going because you almost want to see what's going to happen next okay so this is a slog but at some point i'm going to reach the top and i'm going to come down and i kind of want to see what happens you know so that is something that really kind of drives drives me forwards as well and i've talked about the why i think the why is a really important part of the of the cake pie the cake pie the wham cake pie you know understanding kind of what that why is for you and how you can have that as a purpose and intention that becomes an achievable action and habit that you can remain consistent with.

20:31Clair Heaviside:So yeah, those are some of my kind of pie ingredients that I would mash together and then stick into an energy bar and they belong through life. I'm just going to take the analogy. You started it. You've run with it. Excuse the pun. You've indirectly played a bit of one podcast bingo there as well. you've named about five different things that we talk about all the time probably without realizing so very good we'll say that you meant to do that yeah um so i think probably something that you'll know as a marketeer like we all know is the importance of stories but what you just talked about there is the importance of the stories that you're telling yourself when you're doing something so what have you learned about storytelling wow i think that the way that you frame a situation um is is magnificently important to the way that you understand it and other people understand it and I'm going to use fear as an example because um you can we all tell ourselves stories about the things that we're afraid of like I think from a really really young age um you hear people saying like oh no I'm scared of heights or I'm scared of public speaking or I'm scared of doing this or that or the other.

21:48Clair Heaviside:And you can repeat that. You can have that running on repeat throughout the whole of your life. And that story will either enable or prevent you from doing things depending upon the type of person that you are. If you reframe that fear and turn fear into the guide, into the support of the story, then fear is just a way of saying to you this is something that you should this is discomfort you should push yourself towards that discomfort you should experience this thing and create your own narrative and create your own story out of this so i think that it's the power of the way that you frame and have a perspective on the story completely changes whatever how how other people feel about it and how you feel about it um so yeah i mean we see it in marketing all the time and everybody talks about kind of brand storytelling don't they um and i think it's just really important when we when we're talking about that in terms of branding is to know and again going back to your pie the ingredients of that story but how it's going to get framed or reframed by the people who are receiving it because they're part of it like you don't exist in isolation as a brand you can say these are our brand pillars and these are our key messages and it can mean absolutely nothing until it becomes live in the mind of the person who's receiving it So I always have a real consciousness of who we're talking to and how they might reframe that story in the way that we present it.

23:16So it sounds like what you say then that element of discomfort or something uncomfortable, some suffering element is inevitable to a good story, whether it's to yourself or in marketing.

23:28Clair Heaviside:it doesn't necessarily have to be discomfort people have got to feel something right so you're either going to feel something through some kind of joy or connection or fear or emotion or upset like people have got to feel something haven't they um and fear can be quite an easy one for people to relate to because we all feel afraid we understand that but it's also deeply personal um so it's um it's a good way i think of of enabling people to feel that they are part of a situation because they immediately think oh my god what if that was me how would i react in that situation or i could never do that or i would really want to do that and so it really inspires an action out people but yeah i think the key in is to you've got to make people feel something well one thing that is it's made me curious about claire is obviously this is this is the way you are and and it's and people will be listening to this and it's very inspirational i think when you're leading a team as well and i was speaking about this today is you can't people have got to help themselves as well so how do you how do you lead and obviously you're you're a great role model from like an endurance standpoint but how do you take that and then use that to lead a team and get them to maybe kind of take what you've got and kind of use that in their everyday life I mean, let's get them on.

24:51Clair Heaviside:Let's get them in and ask them. Bring them now. Again, they're best placed to say that. But the way that I would say it from my perspective, and we have a whole variety of different personalities in our team, and I worry about them all individually all the time, like they're my children, which they're not. I hate that whole family thing. But you do understand all the different nuances of people's personalities and the things that drive them, the things that they're afraid of, the insecurities that they have, the things that they want and desire in their career or what motivates them. So what I do is I am like this.

25:28Clair Heaviside:This is how I am. So I do talk very passionately about the work that we're doing. I really care. They all know that I really care. They know that I just want everything to be as good as it can be. I just want everything to be the best it can possibly be. And I want everyone to be as engaged and care and be involved and be invested in things. But I have to balance that with how it's being framed by the individuals in the team. So there is this balance between the way that I am and the way I like to communicate, which is to bring everybody along with me, but also understand individuals in the team have their own nuances and fears and priorities and things going on outside.

26:06Clair Heaviside:So it takes a lot of emotional awareness, empathy, understanding of individual behaviors even as the team grows to I think be an effective leader in a creative space to get the best out of people and then you keep talking about framing and reframing and me and Zach are big lovers of like perspective shifts and all things like that could you give us some real life examples of how that might look in everyday life or maybe in the world of marketing oh gosh that's difficult that's a really tough one we told you it was going to be tough questions i thought we're going to avoid can we not just talk about running all this talk about things like that um well i think you you see it don't you in the let's let's take linkedin right most of a lot of your listeners i think will be active on the platform will understand how the platform works and then we've seen a lot of content on the platform right what happens when a brand does a big iconic campaign um and they put it out there and it's like a great big billboard to talk about like you know the dairy milk recent campaign or kellogg's campaign that's saturated all over the platform at the moment um and they have a or even let's take the jaguar i knew you were going to say it but i didn't want to be a rebrand are we still talking about that we are aren't we because i just think in terms of controversy and in terms of the intention that went out there in terms of people who really knew what they were talking about.

27:36Clair Heaviside:They had an objective. They had a need to position their brand in a certain way because what had been done before wasn't working. And they knew what they were trying to achieve in the way that they did it. And it went out on LinkedIn. And oh my God, the think pieces, the posts, the opinions, it totally blew up. And it was like this bubble of um of opinion and distaste that turns into a bandwagon and and people start to create content and have opinion around that jaguar rebrand or any of these big campaigns for the purposes of what education or social clout or being controversial or what right so then we need to take a step back and go what's really important here is it the framing of the of this campaign by an audience that have a real clear intention which is sometimes selfish intention or is it how that is received by the actual audience the intended audience of Jaguar or Kellogg's or Daryl McHugh whoever it may be.

28:48Clair Heaviside:And I just think that sometimes as marketers in particular, we think that we are right in the middle of the zeitgeist all the time and we're so important and our opinion really matters. And it just doesn't. It doesn't matter. It's not about the think pieces and it's not about the opinion posts. It is about how that story has been told and received by the people that it intended to receive it and how they have understood it, how they've interpreted it and what action they've taken as a result of it. So I think that's a framing and reframing. Campaigns go out there, they get positioned in one way by marketers and then there is the real story of how they are received.

29:32Clair Heaviside:And I just hope that brands do understand that. And I think the Jaguar rebrand understood that very cleverly because they just ploughed through the noise and did what it is that they needed to do at the end, which was launch you know launch in the way that they intended to launch yeah interesting it just made me think of another marketing ingredient that we're always interested in so obviously the storytelling element as the emotional element and then somewhere in between is this status element and there's a lot of brands where having that brand gives you a certain status within said community so i'm sure for endurance athletes there's probably a brand that you can wear where you're like oh well that's a serious endurance athlete because they're wearing that brand in the same way that driving a certain car if you're that type of person has that kind of weight to it where does status fit in for a marketeer who's actually building campaigns only where it matters only with the audience where it matters and i think it's something that's and it completely depends on the objective of that brand you know we work with a premium um cycling apparel brand.

30:43The cycling apparel market has many competitors who all have their niche and

30:51Clair Heaviside:their objective, their positioning, their market, their sub-market, their type of person who enjoys wearing that product. And so does our client. We know what they're there for, performance. they are performance for real serious cyclists who are um competing at a you know really high level um but they're also there for the aspirational um cyclist who wants to feel like they are now an entry-level cyclist probably is never going to buy that brand because a it's a big investment to buy that product um but also it may not feel that they might almost feel like they need to earn their stripes to be able to get to that point so that's part of that brand story you know they could ripple that apart and go oh actually we're here for everyone here's our entry-level product you can't you know you've just started cycling come on you can use our entry-level product it's not quite as good as everything else but you can still wear our brand but they need to maintain that sense of exclusivity that people earn their stripes to wear that product and that means that they are serving a niche they can um they can ask for a certain price point um they can work with certain athletes and and that is that status is important to them not all brands need to niche down quite so much so there'll be other cycling brands that are very happy and uh very comfortable with that entry level you know we're here to make cycling accessible for everybody we want everyone to give it a try here's our we'll train you how to use this is a you know come and come and wear this we're the entry-level product and that status is different so i do think it's important because it is representative of your understanding of your customer um and it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody needs to have this really elevated status it just means to know that it just means that you need to have an awareness and knowledge of where and why you are positioning yourself in that way and then hold it hold it strong and and stick with it how how common then is it that someone would come to you with here's my brand and you think you've got it totally wrong you're actually not in the right space that you think you are i mean a lot of a lot of time it happens often because i think i think particularly with um established brands that that just aren't aren't who they say they are any longer and it's really really hard for I think for internal brand teams to have that external perspective that wider perspective when things are misaligned and I and I think that that's where brand and creative agencies come in because they can work with brand teams to help them understand why is there a misalignment if there is one?

33:46Clair Heaviside:Is the misalignment a negative thing? Because sometimes a little bit of tension can be a good thing, but is there misalignment a bad thing? And what does that mean for your actual business? Not just because we want to be this way because we want to be this way, but what does that actually mean for your business and your market and your growth? So I think having an external perspective on that misalignment and that tension is really important and yeah it does it does happen a lot and that's where this kind of repositioning comes in so it's that market research and understanding the trajectory of the brand and the business um helping that evolution to happen whether that's entering a new often it's younger we want to reach a younger market really are you sure is that definitely right or is it just because everyone else wants to how do we meet gen z are you sure like you know questioning that and pushing back on that um so helping them to understand those types of things and then um that you know there could be a campaign or a evolution of messaging or even a even a rebrand but it has to be the right solution to the right problem and you have to identify what the problem actually is first of all the problem can't be we want to reach gen z right the problem you know need to identify what the problem is and then help them to work out what the solution is and a lot of that can be done through brand repositioning brand review brand messaging um and campaign activation um so yeah it happens happens a lot i love talking to marketers um i want to be it gets me excited it gets my brain ticking because you said there about like defining the problem if i was a fly on the wall so you've got somebody's seen yourself on linkedin they've come inbound to you they want to sit down they want to use you guys how do you what questions are you asking how do you start to actually define that problem then it's very much about I like to go all the way back so I work with a lot of founders or if they're not founders they are people who are you know really in in a brand and living and breathing a brand and understand it so I like to really go back to the start of the story and to understand usually it's we can go back to origin story like why does this brand exist in the first place what was the ambition for the brand where did it come from why that choice why that market why that product fit and to understand that that story of the brand and then we we talk about goals and ambitions for not just the brand but the whole business and and we think about you know where we want to be in a year or five years or 10 years or where we see the vision going and how that is aligned with the brand goals and the product goals and the business growth and i think even just having that simple and quite informal conversation with your with someone who really really knows the answers to those things or is a real stakeholder or decision maker within those things it's quite therapeutic for people they don't these are people who are very very busy and they're very caught up in the day-to-day and they don't often have a chance just to step back and see the whole landscape of their story and have it listened to you know i'd like if someone did it to me like really talk this is nice i just like to talk as much as i want you know day-to-day i'm pulled from pillar to post but it's nice to sit down and talk about yourself and to talk about the worries that you've got and the niggles that you think about and the ambition that you've got and you know understand questioning things questioning your customer questioning your messaging things that have worked and things that haven't so i i like to guide um a founder or cmo through that conversation and i often talk about it as and there's various exercises that i do with that which i'm not going to give away because then you'll all start doing them but you have to come you have to pay the big bucks yeah you want to do it with me but i often talk about it as um emptying everything out on the table so i um and i'll talk about why i think this is a this is a process that i've used for actually about 20 years i'd let empty everything out on the table and it can sometimes be a big mess at the end we've got there might be post-it notes everywhere there might be things on the wall that there'd be lots of conversation happened and it might be a big mess But my job is to organize the mess, to help the founder, the stakeholders see the sense in it, to find the threads to pull on, to really understand why our origin story might be important, what we were trying to achieve, where we've got to, what the challenges are, who our customers are, who they could be, what their challenges are, what problem they want to solve.

38:47Clair Heaviside:and I pull all of that together and that creates a narrative which when you play it back to a founder and I'll put I'll put a lot of a lot of time into this a lot of creative thinking so I really really go to town telling that story back to them and often I'll get I've had founders then cry like really like sit in a room and kind of cry when it kind of gets played back to them and it can be quite emotional and they almost have the sense of like like been heard and and now we've got something that makes sense that we can build back up because we understand why we existed in the first place if that's changed if that's still true how it needs to be adapted for the future and the next step and the next challenge and the next thing that we want to do what that means to our customers what challenges we solve we can see all of it and that's the starting point that's the starting point for everything else and this comes from my time in prison so i spent eight years in you're both terrified of me now don't inch away no i'll get closer to it so i started my career not in marketing i don't come from a marketing background although I've been in marketing for 15 years or something so I feel like I've earned my place at the table when it comes to brand and marketing but prior to that I um I founded a community arts company called odd arts which came off the back of um working in prisons in South America and learning how to apply creative techniques to help people to understand um everything anything everything anger management um drugs uh addiction um how to have conversations with uh their families while they were uh locked away in prison in south america we we founded odd arts with my two co-founders rebecca goodrich and hannah russell rebecca goodrich mbe now shout out to her on that um we found we founded odd arts and we brought the learnings from south america back to the UK and for over eight years I was working in prisons all over the country in high pressure situations using some of the creative techniques that I still use in marketing to prompt people to share their stories and to help them to understand their behaviours and their stories through creative techniques holding the mirror up now you can imagine people are quite resistant to that in prison.

41:35Clair Heaviside:They don't want to be there at all. They don't want to be in this room. They don't want to be doing any of the things that I'm getting them to do. They don't want to look silly. They don't want to get involved. There's so many barriers to people wanting to engage in that process. But what I had to do was find a way to understand on a human level what it is that really motivates that person to talk and to share with me and to open up their story to me. and that experience is something that I now bring back into leading the team understanding people that human awareness human understanding empathy so the way that I run the business but also in the way that I work with the clients that I work with so I'm not so that I go and treat them all like they're in prison but it is very much the same thing having the skills to to know that everybody just kind of wants to be listened to and everyone's got a really good story and nobody's story is all easy and plain sailing everyone has challenges and worries and insecurities and they just need a safe space to be able to share those things and then from there you can build and that's what we did in prison and that's what i do in marketing have you ever had a link between prison and marketing before on your podcast can i be we've been searching for we've I think that's it now.

42:52It's over. We can retire. We have a main podcast completed, guys. We were talking about the problem that you solved earlier, Claire, but based on what you were saying there and hints throughout the conversation, it feels like marketing is a part of the puzzle. It's a part of the pie and things like that, but it feels like you're on a bit of a deeper mission without getting a bit too airy-fairy. What are those things that drive you? And obviously, with your time left on this planet, the next because you're an endurance runner you've probably got about 90 years um what what are you

43:26Clair Heaviside:aiming to achieve and what what do you want to do to move the needle i like i i really love understanding and helping i know this is great let's just make this sound as whatever altruistic whatever is possible but it's true okay so i really love understanding and helping people I do believe that I know there's a lot wrong with the marketing world and there's a lot that could be better but I love working with people to help them succeed in their lives and grow their businesses and that's why I love to really understand and get under the skin of that story and do something meaningful with them so that they feel success and they achieve their goals.

44:13Clair Heaviside:I love doing it with my team. I love understanding them as people and helping them to achieve their goals and get better and, you know, feel success. And I think that that would be something that regardless of how that plays itself out, whether it's through being on a podcast or standing on a stage or just doing some work in my community or going back into prison world and and helping in that way there will always be an underlying thing where i do feel that my impact on the world will be greater than me just trotting through it on my own and living my little life i feel like there is uh as i live try to push myself to live beyond the limit of my potential i want to encourage other people to live beyond the limit of their potential as well so there is this there is a bit deep and meaningful and it is a bit deep and meaningful particularly for a marketing podcast and i have to say that the way that this levels itself out because we've got to get a reality check a little bit.

45:12Clair Heaviside:The way it levels itself out, particularly in serotonin and in business is through my co-founder and business partner, Dom Carter. So this is the perfect partnership in many ways, not because he doesn't care about these things, because he does care about these things. He wants success for our clients in the same way that I do, but he is level-headed, pragmatic, focused on performance goals, knowing where the next goal is and pushing towards it. And that is a very kind of cutting to the chase, pragmatic way of handling our client accounts and handling our business. And it is a very steady ship that is being kind of driven by Dom.

45:54Clair Heaviside:And on the other side, there is this very like, let's make the world a better place. Let's give, let's, you know, let's be really expansive. Let's do this, you know. And I think that that partnership is what, going right back to the end of this conversation what makes serotonin quite special and a special place to work and a special place to to be um creativity the media performance side it's why we're good at what we do it's the services that we sell it's why people buy the services that we sell because we got it all and we do it all we do it well together but also just you know it's it's what kind of sets the partnership apart as well so you know i give credit to dom um for enabling us enabling me to have this real kind of solid reliable partnership and platform so that i can come and have great conversations like this talk about the meaning of life why don't you talk about me like that i do when you know oh he was he's like you just went to the loo and he was just yeah i'm sure yeah um you called us out at the top before we started recording you said we don't have enough women on the podcast you don't and after this we won't be having any more no yeah um and there probably is too emotional aren't they yeah oh my god she's so emotional um there's a lot of women that we speak to who have worked their way up in businesses and we might be speaking to them from bringing our services in and they say things like oh i'd love to start a business myself one day or at the perfect time or when this happens or when I'm good enough and all these kind of stories that they start telling themselves and who better to ask than you for those women out there that are thinking of taking the leap but stopping themselves what advice would you don't call it take the leap just take a step one well don't have to leap anywhere you just need to take a little step so start with intention what does what does the purpose look like what is driving you why is this niggle exist what is this thing that you want to achieve where do you think that you can add value to the world in this thing there must be something because otherwise you wouldn't be thinking in this way so there's something there that you know you've got something to give and then what's the first little step you can take is it connecting with someone on LinkedIn is it showing up to watch one of Claire's webinars is it um you know just reaching out to someone that inspires you and asking them a question that's you can they'll take you five minutes it's a really little thing but then what's the little thing you're going to do tomorrow so what's the next little thing you're going to do and what's the next little thing you're going to do and I think that far too often we are so blindsided by the glory stories because we're just hit by the glory stories of like yeah we've hit this revenue goal or I've launched my new first website or I've sold x amount of product or I've on a podcast or I've done this and I've done that and we don't take into account the the stories and the tiny little steps that it took to get there every single little tiny one of them because serotonin didn't emerge out of nowhere um my running didn't start with running marathons it started by putting on my trainers and going around the block for 10 minutes that's what it started with so don't take a leap take a step that's what i would say to anyone and also build the bricks of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are because if the thing that's holding you back is the voice the voice in your head that says that you can't the only way to quiet that voice is by going into the toolkit of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are there's no point trying to say to that voice yeah but i can I really I can I really can because it will just say no you can't and that voice is really loud sometimes but if you can say well I can because look I have look for the points in your life where you have trust me you've done hard things before this is nothing compared to the things that you've probably gone through as a woman on this planet believe me it's nothing so you can take the next step and it just needs to be a little one but do it today do it tomorrow do the next day and keep doing it and you'll look back in two weeks time you'll go I have wow what is the first step that you took then because people want to know that when when I say to you what's the first step what do you immediately go back to that's that's a really hard one because I could I could go all the way back and all the way back and you know I could go all the way back to starting um odd arts or um just saying yes you know where when when I was with my two co-founders at that point and we just said yeah let's just try one thing or it could be when I quit my last agency job and I decided to go freelance sometimes quitting is taking a step by the way like most definitely um so I would say you know that for me is really important do you know what there's been so many moments I could just say there is no beginning there is no beginning there is no start my whole life is part of this story you know all the ups and downs of my life have been part of this story to make me who I am.

51:08Clair Heaviside:So there is no start and there will be no finish line. That's really just life. And I think that when you look at the expanse of your life in that way, it stops you being so hung up on the detail of it. Like today is the day I'm going to start. Draw a big ring around the calendar. No, your journey of your life has got you to this point. Just keep moving. Just keep moving. Everything is temporary. Beautiful. Claire, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. if people want to check you out work with serotonin what should they do well my linkedin is probably the best place because i'm quite active on there but it's claire heavyside on linkedin so connect with me serotonin is serotonin.co.uk but you can follow us on instagram as well we're serotonin digital um and yeah it would be really great to you know connect with people connect with the listeners and uh see what they thought of the episode thanks for having me on guys it's been real that's flown by that really time flies when you're having fun i know but yeah thanks so much for having me on thank you