#13: Clair Heaviside - Company Culture and Channeling Creativity

Casey Digital Podcast

I interviewed Co-Founder of The Light Agency, Clair Heaviside, on how she has grown to be a female agency founder and driving company culture. Clair talks us through her diverse creative background and starting up the Light Agency with business partner Dom Carter.

Topics we covered:

• Starting out in an unconventional way through the Odd Arts Charity which is a global drama group who work with people to build confidence and get people to express themselves.
• How Clair has become part of the creative industry and working with a mix of creativity from performing arts and artists to traditional creative design.
• Approaching work with clients with the right agency values and culture, you can have great ideas and make money with the right values.
• Working in a more conscious agency environment.
• Sustainable and conscious brands are great but there is a flip side where people are creating purpose branding which is misleading to consumers in campaigns.
• Saying yes to things and taking opportunities.
• Learning about yourself and how other great businesses are ran.
• Clair realising that “It’s only marketing, no one has died.”
• Having the big job isn’t easy but growing the Light Agency with Dom Carter is going well and they are looking to grow in the future.
• Company culture and work life balance is really important to Clair and she goes into detail about how she see’s the ideal culture.
• Gaining tangible results from creating a high performing company culture. Representation and a supporting environment to help people from different backgrounds grow in future.
• “Coming into to work should feel like double art on a Friday and not double maths on a Monday”
• Gaining inspiration from Karl Barker, Nick Morgan, Rich Whitehouse, Paul Irwin, Ali Hanan, Cindy Gallop, Sandy Lindsay MBE.
• Walking dogs in Disley and getting headspace away from the mayhem of the city centre
• Quote from Jack Kerouac: "Because in the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain."

Links and resources:

• Clair Heaviside on LinkedIn
• @clairheavy on Twitter
• The Light Agency
• Brene brown Ted Talk about The Power Of Vulnerability
• Unf*ck your brain podcast by Kara Loewentheil
• Work like woman book by Mary Portas

We hope you enjoy the episode and if you have any questions please email [e-mail]

Connect with the host, Paul Casey:

@caseydigital on Instagram

Paul Casey on LinkedIn

@casey_digital on Twitter