#13: Clair Heaviside - Company Culture and Channeling Creativity

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