And focusing on building the system within myself that relies upon consistency and celebrates consistency.

So, consistency over motivation is what I look for.

I don’t look for being great every single day, or even being great sometimes.

I just think about being averagely good as much as I possibly can.

If that means showing up every single day, then I’ll do that, and I’ll take that.

I won’t just take it. I’ll celebrate it, and I’ll really, really give myself credit for doing that thing.

No Bullshit Talks is a podcast for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs.

There’s too much bullshit out there, especially when it comes to business.

This podcast aims to highlight what’s true and what’s not in the world of entrepreneurship, bringing you honest and raw conversations about the roller coaster that is entrepreneurship.

Each week, my guest will be a high-performing entrepreneur, sharing the ups and downs of their journey and helping you prepare for the road ahead while providing you with actionable insights and absolute gems of knowledge.

Stay tuned as I introduce this week’s guest.

Clair Heaviside is the co-founder of the multi-award-winning marketing agency Serotonin, based in Manchester.

She has her own podcast called “Create Brave” and is also a trustee of a charity.

However, Claire is also an ultramarathon runner, famous for running half a marathon to work every single day.

I present to you this week’s guest, Clair Heaviside.

[Music]

Welcome, Clair, to No Bullshit Talks.

Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

I’m so excited.
I’m kicking off this season. I’ve had two live podcast recordings, and you are my first back-in-the-studio-vibes podcast in a long time. I feel like I’ve forgotten how to do this.

This is good.

It’s good to be in person and have a proper chat.

Yes. Although we’ve been in person for the last few hours eating a luxurious lunch, so I’m feeling a bit…

We’re not supposed to tell everyone about the luxurious life in Founder, going to Hakkasan for lunch for three hours. We’re supposed to make out that we’re hustling hard.

That’s true. Hakkasan for three hours. Four seasons of recording.

It’s a hard life. I’m off to the theatre tonight. Standard day in the life of a founder.

But, you know, obviously that’s the whole point. It’s a balanced life. We do have days like that, which is great.

And then we do have days hustling and crying and stressing, you know. But hopefully more of today’s days will be good.

Clair, why don’t you introduce yourself? Because I obviously know what you do, but some of our viewers may not. So, I want you to introduce yourself.

So, I am the co-founder and Creative Director of a digital agency called Serotonin.

We’re based up in Manchester with our head office. We’ve got a satellite office down here in London.

We’ve been going for about six years now. In fact, it’s our sixth birthday in August.

Founded in 2019 with my co-founder, Dom Carter.

Amazing. August is also my sixth-year anniversary with my partner too.

Oh, is it? There you go.

So, good times.

It’s a good month.

August 2019. That is a long time.

I feel like it’s funny because obviously I can relate to that in terms of where I was as well.

But that was just before the world broke, right?

You had about a good six months, and then the world went to shit.

So, as an agency… First of all, you say “creative digital.” I think I’m in the agency world, so I get it. But that also means so many different things to different people.

So, I’d love to understand, I guess, a bit about what your agency actually does. And just, like, what was that journey like?

Because you started in 2019, it seemed great, probably super positive, then the world went to shit, and you’ve had to probably adapt and pivot a few times.

Yeah, what’s your agency journey been like?

So, the best way, I guess, to have an understanding of what we do as an agency is to talk about it in terms of service delivery.

Even though that’s not very sexy or exciting, it means everybody understands what it is that we actually do.

We’re quite unique in the sense that we do everything on a brand journey, from brand creation and repositioning through to web design, and then to activating multi-channel digital campaigns and offline campaigns as well.

So, that means that more often than not, the journey a client will take with us will go through all of those stages, where there is optimization through brand, the web, and then digital advertising.

Within our agency, we’ve got the media team and the creative team, who are kind of our core teams.

Within that, there’s obviously organic social, content creation, and influencer as well, but those reflect Dom and I, our areas of expertise and where our backgrounds are as well.

We’ve grown the agency on that solid foundation ever since we started, which is building teams with people who are able to do the things that we know, understand, and are good at, but can do better than us.

I guess that’s possibly one of the reasons why, despite starting six months before the world went shit into a pandemic, in some respects, going through COVID at such an early stage of our agency meant that there was no need for a drastic pivot.

In fact, what we found was that period of time saw some real acceleration of growth for us that perhaps, who knows, we may or may not have had if the world hadn’t gone to shit.

I think the main reason for that is we found that quite early on in our journey, suddenly the curtain was being pulled back on larger agencies, and everybody was in their bedrooms or at their kitchen tables talking to clients who were also at their kitchen tables, or in their holiday homes for some of them.

We were suddenly having access to the type of clients that may not have wanted to speak to such a small agency at an early stage of its journey.

They just wanted to speak to people who were good at what they did, who were able to communicate well, who were able to service above and beyond in times of trouble, who were able to forecast and report in ways that built transparency and trust within the agency-client relationship.

We were good, and still are good, at all of those things.

So, what we found was we were getting pitches with clients that we had no business pitching to during that COVID period because, like I say, the curtain was pulled back.

We were suddenly on agency rosters that, you know, it was incomparable.

But because we had a team that was built around two founders who really knew what they were talking about within their own areas of expertise, who really gave a shit beyond your imagination really, when you think about the hype you have when you start an agency and you throw everything at it, and there was nothing else to do because we were all locked down.

What we found was that COVID didn’t require us to pivot in any way. It just made us drill down into what we do well and do it as hard and as much as we possibly could so that we could grow.

We did grow during COVID and managed to hire people and bring people on board, managed to win and retain some really exciting clients, and it’s been a growth journey for us ever since.

I know that’s not a usual story. Over the past few years, many agencies have struggled, and I’m not saying we have been without our struggles, but over the past six years, it has been a growth story for us.

I will always put that down to, yes, being agile and, yes, pivoting where necessary, but mainly staying true to the foundation of the agency, which is trust, transparency, delivering above and beyond for clients, building great relationships with clients, doing what we do well, knowing what we’re good at, and building teams around those two areas of expertise.

And in two words, you can say no bullshit.

That’s basically what you described.

TL;DR, no bullshit.

Yeah. So, that’s basically no bullshit.

I love that because I feel like I always try to find people who resonate with our values. Same sort of thing.

I do think that about the agency world, that the ones who are truly doing the right thing and doing quality work will stand out, and that’s why you grew during that time.

But I also think it’s still a funny time at the moment.

I see so many posts now. I don’t know if you are seeing this, but people are worried that agencies are going to implode, or, like, obviously AI is coming for all the jobs and all the scary stuff.

There’s a lot of lack of trust in agencies at the moment, right?

Like you’re saying, obviously that’s what you built it on, trust and people. You were getting big brands for such a small agency because actually they trusted you.

How are you finding it? Because I do feel like there’s a bit of a shake-up.

Agencies are worried, aren’t they? There’s a lot of stuff going on.

Agency owners are worried, and rightly so.

But I like to have perspective on things.

I started working in the agency world 14 years ago, let’s say, and back then I remember people saying, “The agency model is broken.”

Then three years later, “The agency model is broken.”

“We can’t be integrated. We have to be consultants.”

“We can’t be consultants. We need to deliver strategy.”

“We can’t be strategy. We have to be tactical.”

“We can’t be this. We can’t be that. We have to be everything else.”

For me, I can reflect on 14 years or so of being told the agency model is broken, but there are still agencies here and clients that not only need but also really value the services that agencies bring them.

Any agency worth its salt knows that one of the reasons why clients pay for an agency’s time is that we stay ahead of the curve and that we are always looking for ways to innovate, keep delivering value, and bring our clients along with us.

We make them look good in boardrooms because they can see into the future, they can rise above their competitors, and they can have the competitive advantage.

That’s part of our job.

So, yes, we all are nervous, and we are right to be nervous because change is upon us.

It’s not just around the corner, it’s upon us now.

But also, I don’t know if it’s age or just weariness with the agency model being broken, I also look at it with a real sense of perspective, which is, yes, of course we’re going to be in the throes of change.

We’re agencies. We’re always in the throes of change.

If you’re not in the throes of change, then you’re probably not best placed to be where you are, because you should always be on the cusp of changing things.

So, yeah, I definitely see the buzzword of AI being certainly something that agencies should be incorporating into their systems, processes, and the way they deliver work.

They should be upskilling their teams.

They should be upskilling their clients.

They should be explaining to their clients how AI should and could be used across a whole different range of services in a lot of different ways to deliver greater efficiencies, which frees up the skills of the humans within an agency to deliver even better value and spend time doing the things that really matter, rather than spending four hours pulling data for a report.

We should be spending those four hours analyzing the data and providing recommendations based on our creativity and innovation, which can only come from the human brain, to add value to our clients.

So, yeah, I’m kind of tired of being nervous about these things.

I’m just like, yeah, of course we are. We should be nervous.

We stepped up to that plate when we founded an agency.

Yeah. Well, and that’s it.

It comes with risks, right?

It’s never a safe industry to be in, but also if you’re pivoting and you’re actually agile enough, you should be able to do it.

What would you say then are some of the things that agencies are doing badly at the moment, which is what’s causing all the fear and distrust?

What is Serotonin doing better?

One of the biggest things that we’re seeing with the clients that we speak to, and one of the things that they’re most interested in speaking to us about, is driving efficiency in the way that they spend budget.

Traditionally, agencies can be motivated to help their clients spend as much money as possible on advertising so that money can provide the biggest return on ad spend and then be reinvested back into growing a business.

That’s a traditional cycle of how you would grow your influence.

But now clients aren’t getting increasing budgets.

In fact, they’re asking to scale down budgets, and they’re being asked in the boardroom to demonstrate how they’re using their budgets more efficiently.

That’s been a real focus for us over the past 12 months, particularly on the media side.

Not so much… I’m on the creative side.

But particularly on the media side, where we’ve been building out a technology stack within the business which helps us spend media budgets really, really efficiently and save money where we can so that it can then be spent elsewhere.

Our clients can then go back into the boardroom and say, “This is the saving that we made, and we used that saving to experiment with X, Y, or Z, or to invest it elsewhere, or to save money within the marketing budget.”

That’s really the conversation that I think clients are really needing to have with their agencies.

So, in that sense, yeah, maybe the agency model is changing.

It’s just making us need to be more and more aware.

It’s not changing. It’s always been that way.

It should have always been that way.

Yeah. More and more aware of the pressures that our clients are under.

I actually think that they really are under pressure.

Brands and businesses… we see the trickle-down of it because we see how much longer it takes to get things signed off, or we see how much ghosting there is going on.

It’s not because marketing directors are just shit and they like ghosting people.

It’s because internally they’re probably going through a varying amount of struggle to get budgets signed off themselves.

So, the more the agency can help them prove the worth and value of that investment, the better.

Just having that compassion and understanding of the pressure that your clients are under and providing solutions for it, rather than banging your head against a brick wall trying to get budgets signed off, I think is really where agencies should put their focus.

But to be honest, they should always put their focus there.

But that’s a should thing.

I feel like so many people think of an agency as one thing, and then they go into it and they’re not willing to do all the messy parts.

They just want the fancy.

I think when I hear “agency world,” a lot of people assume that when you run an agency, it is all just, I’m going to say, fancy lunches and stuff, which is basically what we’re doing today.

But they think it’s all wining and dining, big fun campaigns, lots of content.

They see all the glamorous, fun side of agency life, like launch parties, all the drinking, the partying, influencer-style.

That’s what they see the agency world as.

Coming up with cool ideas.

But they don’t see all the messy stuff and the actual hard work and everything.

I think people forget that, and then when it comes to that, they’re just like, “Oh, no, thank you.”

Sometimes… I mean, talk about no bullshit.

This is how I really feel.

Sometimes I see announcements saying, “Oh, someone started this agency,” or “this agency,” or whatever.

Me and my co-founder, Dom, will look at each other and go, “We’ve got to stop making it look so easy.”

Yeah.

Because I think that’s a problem.

People are out there making it look like it’s easy, but it’s not easy.

I’m six years in, and really that still makes me a little toddler in the world of agencies.

But to go the distance, to actually build a business that is able to keep up with the pace of change, that is able to service the clients that are required, to build a scalable business for growth if that’s what you’re after, and deliver quality work across an ever-changing sea of channels and an ever-changing need for creative ideas against the backdrop of platform changes, content creators, and a changing landscape of what it means to build a brand, it’s really hard.

So, what do you think the key to success is?

The one key that obviously magically exists to open the box of success.

What is the answer?

Obviously, the answer to that is there is no one thing.

But I can only talk from my experience about what I have found to be the answer.

The answer to me is the resilience to keep showing up.

To build out your own… as a founder, as anyone driving a business forward, regardless if it’s an agency or any kind of challenge.

We live in a challenging world.

Anyone growing a business right now is putting themselves up for some real challenges.

To be able to flex your resilience muscle and to keep going, to have the grit to hang on perhaps when others would let go.

To keep going despite how difficult things might be and to take it in your stride.

That is what I work on.

That’s where I really put my attention, to become the person that can ride those things through without being miserable about it.

Because essentially what I’m saying is it’s really hard, but you’ve got to learn to love that.

You’ve got to love the hardness of it.

You’ve got to love the process, even though the process is tough.

That’s not the answer that anybody wants to hear because the answer everybody wants to hear is, “Here’s 75 hooks that you can use for your LinkedIn post, and then that will get you X number of clients, and then before you know it you’ll earn 150 grand a month.”

Exactly.

Or the morning routine.

Or the morning routine.

Whatever it might be.

You just have to have this supplement, and it will all fall into place.

The limitless pill.

I’m waiting for that pill.

We know that’s not the answer, but we still are bombarded by things like that.

We always will be because it’s human nature to want to find the easy way out.

That’s what we want.

But there is no easy way.

That’s what I’ve discovered.

There is only working hard, showing up, and doing the right thing.

I always say to my team, “Just do good work and be nice to people.”

It’s not rocket science.

That’s really what you’ve got to do.

But you’ve got to keep doing that all the time.

It’s really hard to do that.

Don’t get me wrong.

It’s really hard to do that.

But you’ve also got to, as a founder in particular, like I say, learn to love the process of doing it because if you don’t love the process of doing it, there’s just no way.

You can’t do that.

So, yeah, sorry.

There’s no easy answer.

Just keep showing up.

So, I feel like you’ve just disappointed everyone with that answer because there’s no silver bullet and no magic formula for success.

But you mentioned resilience, which I think is such an important thing…

And it’s something I talk about all the time. Um, I run TX Shortage, and that’s our theme this year: resilience, for that exact same reason.

And it’s all about that. And I would love to, because I’ve been asking so many people this year about resilience and what their take is on it because I think, again, it’s another one of these buzzwords that’s been slightly butchered because of all these people spinning up motivational posts on it.

But you said that is your kind of key thing to keep going, and obviously it means something different to everyone. What’s your kind of—not key to success, obviously—but what are your tips and advice for people who are going through tough times? Because, like I said, it’s hard. Building a business is really hard. Like, how do you stay resilient when you feel like…

You’re speaking my language. This is my thing. Okay. This is really my thing.

No, I’m joking, but it really is. Yeah.

So, I mean, this is really my thing because I’m like a vegan that has to tell everyone they’re a vegan. I’m an ultra runner, so I love to run long distances.

[Music]

And what that means is that I really see the benefit in my life, in my work, in my whole identity, to some extent, of building the bricks of resilience—the small steps every single day that create this undeniable proof that I am who I say I am.

And that, to me, is a key part of showing up for myself so that when times get tough, I can look into the toolbox of proof. I can open it up and say, “You can do hard things. You can step up. You can do it because you do it every day. You run every day. You train for these things. You’ve been through difficult moments within what I call the practice ground of the ultramarathon because that’s a safe place to practice resilience.”

You know, that’s somewhere where there’s aid stations, someone’s tracking me, and I’ve got nothing else to worry about apart from putting one foot in front of the other. But what I’m really doing in that time is just training my brain to be able to keep going even when times are tough.

And that really is, for me, what the art of resilience is.

So, I have developed this whole kind of idea around the endurance mindset. And it’s nothing complex, and it’s nothing unique. But what it is is a series of lessons which have helped me get through ultramarathon training and ultramarathons themselves that I think are relevant and pertinent to people that are running businesses.

And I use that in various kinds of talks and situations like this because it helps people not be distracted by the fact that, “Oh, well, I could never run that distance,” or, “I’m not a runner,” or, “She’s banging on about running again, and it’s got nothing to do with me.”

But actually, it has got something to do with you and every single person listening to this because every single person, whether they run or not, goes through tough times and could benefit from having this toolkit in their mind that helps them recognize when they need to draw on that extra bit of strength.

So, for example, one of the principles, if you like, of the endurance mindset is that everything is temporary.

And I always describe that as being something that you could see as, “Oh, that’s a really negative thought, isn’t it? I don’t want everything to be temporary. I want things to build and to last forever.”

But actually, no. The freeing feeling of everything being temporary is almost, when you’re going through a tough time, zen-like because you can almost feel like no matter how bad this is, this too will pass. The sun will come out, and I will be running down this mountain with my arms outstretched, with my head up to the sky, and everything will be great again.

And I don’t need to let this consume me. I can keep moving through.

And sometimes that means just getting to the next aid station.

Another principle of the endurance mindset is just moving through. Is it five miles? Is it ten miles? Is the next aid station the next board meeting? Is it the end of the day? Is it just after that one difficult conversation? I’m just going to let myself get to that one point rather than thinking about the big goal at the end.

Breaking it down.

All of these things, you can suddenly see how they play into the life of someone who is a founder or is going through a difficult time, whether that’s personally or professionally.

I think that it’s also about celebrating the things that happen in the dark.

So, you know, what you do in the dark puts you in the light. It’s one of the big inspiring things that we can kind of draw upon.

And I think what that does is really emphasize my attitude towards the hard work that goes on in the background and my celebration of that work.

So, more often than not, all we hear about is, “We got the funding round,” or, “We sold the business,” or, “We hired another ten people,” or, “We’re now making £200,000 a week,” whatever.

These things are all well and good, but what I really always want to hear about—let’s talk about No Bullshit Talks—I want to hear about the struggle. I want to hear about the story. I want to hear about the resilience that got someone there, the showing up every day, the sacrifices that they had to make, and the reasons why they felt that it was worth it to make those sacrifices.

That’s the key.

And that’s it. I think you talked about being negative earlier—that temporary.

I said to you earlier, lots of people think that some of my content is negative because I bring up the downsides, but there’s always an up. There’s always an up.

If you listen to really what I’m trying to say, we’re always finding the solution to the problems that we have, but there are always problems.

Unfortunately, that’s just life.

And like you said, it’s the struggles, but actually we all think it’s worth it in the end. We’re not going, “Entrepreneurship is ****.” It’s like, yes, it’s tough and everything, but we want you to be realistic. It’s tough. You’re in for a rough ride.

But struggle is perception as well.

So, I always think nothing is good or bad. Nothing is good, and nothing is bad. It’s about how you perceive it to be.

When it snows, the snow is not good or bad.

If you’re a delivery driver and you’re being tasked to get a number of parcels out that day, then the snow is a bad thing. It’s a disaster because you’re not going to get paid that day.

If you’re a parent who’s got a free day and can take their kids out sledging, this is going to be one of the most beautiful days, and you’re creating beautiful memories. The snow is a good thing.

Snow, on its own, is not good or bad. It’s about how we perceive it to be.

So even the struggle of building a business—and I’m not talking about the big mammoth hard decisions that get made. I’m talking about the day-to-day daily grind of being there for people, constantly being needed by people, constantly having to make decisions, constantly having to deal with problems as and when they come in, regardless of whether you were expecting them or not or what you had planned for your day, etc., etc.

It’s about how you perceive those things.

So, we’ve had difficult times within the business, but I’m now at a point—I don’t know if it’s an age thing or whatever, or it’s just experience, or if I’m just tired of it all—but now I perceive everything to be as it is in the moment.

And I’m like, “It’s my decision how I take this situation. It’s my decision what the outcome of this situation is.”

The present moment that we’re in right now is the one moment between the known and the unknown. It’s the most magical time.

There’s things that we know, and there’s things that we don’t know yet.

What a magical place to be—that we’ve got all this stuff that we know, we’ve got all this stuff that we can step into and create regardless of what we’ve been handed in that situation.

It’s down to us.

And if you are somebody who has been through struggle before, who has overcome those struggles, and can go into that toolbox of evidence to say, “I have overcome in the past,” then why not do it again?

Yeah. My God, yeah.

And I think that if everyone had that mindset, we’d be able to handle situations so much easier.

And I think that’s it. I think lots of people have this tendency to catastrophize, right?

And it’s like they see it like, “Oh my God, this is terrible.” Or they victimize themselves. “I’m so unlucky. Why is this happening to me?” All that sort of stuff.

Like I said, if someone sees snow, even that delivery driver who’s not going to get his things out, he might see that and be like, “Oh God, it’s going to make my day a little bit harder.” But maybe he’s both. He’s also that parent who gets to go home to their kid, takes their kid out into the snow, and is like, “This is a beautiful day.”

And so, yes, you have to get through the difficult part of the day to get home to that beautiful part of the day.

So, even sometimes it doesn’t have to be one or the other for different people. It could be both for the same person.

I think that’s what people have got to realize, is that it’s beautiful either way when you look at it.

Yeah. And everything is temporary.

And I don’t want to kind of downgrade that some things are almost insurmountable, and some things cannot be overcome by purely just having a zen mindset or a broader perspective or whatever, however you want to describe this type of thing.

And I understand and appreciate that and have been through those times myself as well. Make no mistake about it.

But I think when we’re talking about business growth, and we aren’t talking about life and death, if my business disappeared tomorrow, would I be a failure? Would my business be a failure? Would I have failed?

I don’t think so.

If it all disappeared tomorrow, I don’t think so. I don’t think it would have failed.

It depends how people define failure and success, right? And everyone’s going to have it a different way.

I wouldn’t think so. I would definitely consider it a success.

There are some people who may not because they have a completely different definition of failure and success.

Right? I think that the only opinion that matters would be mine.

Correct.

So, it wouldn’t matter what their perception of it was. I would know that I could sit there. It’s all gone. It’s all gone away. Everything’s disappeared.

I know that because of the way that I have my value system, the way that I behave, the mission that I set out on, and the journey that I’ve been on, I made the right decisions as I saw them, in the best way, at the right time.

And I did the best I could.

And that’s the other thing about ultra running. That’s the other thing that it teaches me.

Just to give it everything.

Just give it everything. If it matters enough to try, it matters enough to give it everything.

And that’s really what I do.

So, I really lean into this idea of people talking about having their “why.”

People often say, “Why do you run those distances?”

And my reply is always, “I run to see how far I can go.”

That’s why I run.

I don’t run so that somebody can tell me that they’re faster than me. I don’t run for Strava kudos. I don’t run to race somebody else.

Some races I do, but that’s just for fun.

For me, personally, it’s got to be deeper. It’s got to be beyond that.

It’s got to be beyond, “Do I want to be in the top ten?” Because I’m not going to keep running after that, am I?

Yeah.

There’s got to be something deeper.

And for me, it is: I run to see how far I can go. Not in distance, but because I believe that we’ve got one chance at this short little thing that we call life, and we owe it to ourselves to give it everything.

And that is what I endeavor to do, and that is what I try to…

You know, how do you do that through an agency?

Well, you talk about the things that you care about. You reach a whole load of businesses through the power of branding and marketing.

We have the capacity to reach great audiences.

I work with a team of people who look up to me, listen to me, and are influenced by the way that I behave and watch me do things.

My team are 50% female, 50% young women.

They watch me every morning run to work, get changed, stand up in front of them, give a presentation, go in, speak to a client, solve their problems, do this, talk…

And I talk to them about how they present themselves, how they hold themselves, how they have self-confidence, and how they don’t let anybody tell them that somebody else’s opinion of them is important.

It’s about how they feel about themselves.

And that’s part of my journey. That’s part of why I’m here, as well as building a business in the best way I can.

So tell me more about this ultramarathon running because, like when you were saying earlier, I was like, “Oh, that’s the only thing I have to worry about is putting one foot in front of the other.”

I was thinking that’s not the only thing I’d be worried about if I was doing an ultramarathon. I was almost like going, “Oh my God, this sounds dreadful.”

Like, it’s not just running. It’s not even just marathon running. You’re ultramarathon running.

I mean, okay, we’re going to break it down.

First of all, I guess, when did you start running?

Like, I know that I saw that article about you in the paper for running a half marathon to work every single day. That blows my mind. Like, I don’t even need to think about it.

But yeah, how did you go from just being a normal runner to running ultramarathons, and now it’s part of your identity and who you are?

Why? How?

I started… I mean, I did my first marathon in 2012, so that’s a long time ago.

And I guess, yeah, I was a normal runner. I always loved running, but for the reason why most women love running—it was a way to lose weight.

Okay.

Yeah, it really was.

And hand on heart, that’s probably why a lot of women start running or start doing cardio.

Yeah, I could see benefits in my fitness from it, but it was always just something that I did, and there were varying levels of obsessiveness with it at times.

During COVID, it all stopped, like it did for most people.

Our worlds all got much smaller.

I’m also immunosuppressed, so I was on the list of people who were warned, “Don’t put your bin out. Don’t even step outside of your house.”

Which, looking back now, I kind of think that’s crazy nonsense, but that’s how it was.

And so, it was really easy to make my world really, really small.

And it did become very small.

And like I’d said earlier, I really focused on the growth of the business—to the benefit of the business, probably to the detriment of my own health.

I came out of COVID and emerged back into the world and just didn’t feel like myself.

So, I made a real conscious effort.

I remember saying to my fitness group, “Just get me running again. I just know it’s the ticket for me. I don’t need to do anything else. Just get me running again. I know it’s deep within me that this is where my happiness is and where something that makes me me.”

And so, I started just running, and running long distances.

I did my first ultra just on my own.

It was 56K, I think, on the Gritstone Trail in the Peak District.

My partner dropped me off at the beginning and picked me up at the end.

It ended in the village that we used to live in.

So, it was really poignant, kind of running into the village.

And I was like, “I’m an ultra runner now. I’ve done this.”

And really, it’s a gateway drug, right?

You do a half. You do a marathon. You do your first ultra.

If you’re still running at that point, good luck to you.

You’re an ultra runner now.

It’s a gateway.

Once you’re in, you’re in this community.

You have this real urge to go, “Well, if I can go that far, how much further?”

And to me, it wasn’t about, like I say, ultra running isn’t necessarily about your speed or about competition.

There is a sense of everybody there being on their own personal challenge, pushing themselves for whatever reason, most of the time driven by something that’s quite innate and emotional.

There’s a lot of people there from all different ages and different levels of fitness.

And there’s something so beautiful and empowering about that that it really hooked me in.

So since then, I’ve run, I think, eight or so different ultras.

The longest being the 100K last year.

Now I compete to try and come in the top ten in the races that I do.

So, it has become this thing that’s really important to me in terms of the training, developing my fitness and skills, and more so than anything else, the lessons that I learn and the mental strength that it builds for me.

But the running-to-work thing was so interesting because that’s what a lot of people suddenly knew me for.

It was a coincidental thing.

I was having a chat with a friend of mine who owns the gym that I went to, and I was stressing about training for an ultra that I had coming up.

I was like, “I’ve got time to do this. I don’t know how I’m going to fit this in.”

And she said, “Why don’t you just run to work?” as a joke.

Obviously, don’t joke with me.

Sabrina, do not joke with me about things like that because I will do it.

And I did.

So, the next day, I just thought, “Yeah, I’m going to go.”

And that really was it.

I never set out with the intention of thinking, “This is something I’m going to do every single day.”

It was just that once I’d done it once, I was like, “How can I get up every day and not do it now? Now I’m just going to do it.”

So, my routine was to take my bag to work on a Monday with all my clothes for the week.

Then on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I would run in.

On a Sunday night, I’d be planning my outfits for the week.

By the time it got to Friday, I’d be like, “What the fuck have I picked myself to wear? Why have I got this to wear? I’ve got a pitch today.”

But then I would just carry on with my day.

Now, I have to say, because there’ll be people that listen to this who follow me on Strava, I have moved house, so now my routine has changed.

So, it’s not a half marathon anymore, but it used to be.

Now I run a shorter distance and jump on the train.

But it is still about the consistency.

For me, it’s about the consistency.

And what I really want people to take from the story of that, and what I think people relate to, is that when you use the headline, “Half marathon to work,” people just go, “Well, I could never do that, so that’s got nothing to do with me.”

But that’s not the point.

That’s not the message that I want to give.

The message that I want to give is showing up for yourself every single day.

Regardless of whether it’s snowing, whether it’s raining, whether there’s a storm outside, whether it’s dark, whether I’m on my period, whether I’m pissed off, whether I’m angry, whether I’m not in the mood, whether I’m tired, whether I’m hungover—whatever the feeling may be.

I never once opened the door, looked outside, and thought, “Nah, just get the train.”

Every day, I made sure I did it.

How long for?

Well, it’s been two and a half years.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

And you never missed a day?

No.

Well, there’s been a couple of days I’ve had to miss.

This is England, just for context. You’re not in sunny California or whatever.

Head torch on at half five in the morning.

Oh my God.

Storms coming down.

I remember one day when I did have to get the train.

It was so unusual that I texted my partner, “I’m on the train.”

Expecting him to be like, “Oh wow, you’re on the train.”

And he just replied back, “Oh, like a normal person.”

And I was like, “Yeah, you’re right.”

Actually, reality check.

Yeah, this is ridiculous.

So, yeah, it became something that I was really, really proud of and wanted to talk about because I was proud of my consistency.

Talk about building evidence blocks of who you are.

I am who I say I am.

I say I am someone that shows up.

I say I am someone that does what they say they’re going to do.

I say I’m someone who’s resilient.

And if you want the proof of it, here’s the proof of it.

And I don’t need anyone else to have that proof.

I need that proof sometimes.

So that when I’m in a tough time at work, and that wave of self-doubt can hit you…

Can I deal with this problem?

Am I capable?

I’ve never been in this situation before.

I’m the type of person who gets up and does that every day.

If I’m the type of person who gets up and does that every day, I’m the type of person who can deal with this.

And that is really, really empowering.

And what I want to really emphasize is that you don’t need to run a half marathon to work every day.

You just need to find a way to show up for yourself consistently to give yourself that sense that you’ve been putting in the building blocks, building that evidence, that proof that you are the person who you say you are.

And that’s where real self-awareness and transformation come in, enabling you to take on hard things.

And I guarantee that by taking on hard things and stretching your ability to deal with discomfort is where growth is and where happiness is because then you know that you’re living a life beyond the limits of your potential.

And that, to me, is the greatest thing you can do for yourself in life.

So, hearing all of that is…

Well, I can’t run one mile at the moment.

I used to run.

I had multiple knee surgeries.

I’m sure there’s still a lot of psychology there blocking it, other than the physical stuff.

I don’t know what my physical capabilities are.

But it’s also just thinking about it.

Regardless of running, you’re saying showing up all the time for yourself.

Whatever it is, you’re using running as a metaphor really, aren’t you?

Yeah.

And I like to think that I’m not a lazy person.

I’m very determined and very ambitious, but I still have days where I can’t get out of bed.

Like, I had a wonderful day today, and I still struggled to get out of bed this morning.

And people would say, “Oh, it’s because you don’t love what you do.”

I fucking love what I do.

And that’s very clear, I think, talking to me. I love what I do, but I still struggle.

And sometimes I’m like, “I don’t want to do this.”

And you did it for two and a half years through the crappiest weather in England.

Like you’re saying, it’s not just running.

It’s a metaphor for just showing up and being the person you want to be and proving to yourself that’s who you are.

How do you do it when you feel crap?

How do you do it?

Because, like I said, you may sound like a machine right now, but you’re human at the end of the day.

How do you show up when you are feeling those human emotions and you feel like, “I don’t want to do this”?

I want to be really, really clear.

I am not motivated every day.

So, the fact that you woke up this morning and didn’t feel motivated doesn’t mean anything negative about you as a person, about what you’re doing with your life, or that you’re doing the wrong thing, or that you don’t love your job.

It doesn’t mean any of those things.

It just means that you’re human and you weren’t motivated when you woke up this morning.

I didn’t jump out of bed highly motivated, put on “Eye of the Tiger,” and fly out the door.

I just didn’t.

That’s my vision.

Sorry.

It’s a fantasy.

It doesn’t happen.

It’s not like that.

What it is, is about building the system and focusing on building the system within myself that relies upon consistency and celebrates consistency.

So, consistency over motivation is what I look for.

I don’t look for being great every single day, or even being great sometimes.

I just think about being averagely good as much as I possibly can.

And if that means showing up every single day, then I’ll do that.

And I won’t just take it.

I’ll celebrate it.

I’ll really, really give myself credit for doing that thing because, like I said earlier in the conversation, we don’t celebrate that enough.

I think people can get very caught up in the headline.

It’s not about the headline.

It’s not about the finish line or the race.

What I want to hear is the consistency.

Listen, you woke up this morning, you didn’t feel motivated.

When you go back home tonight, despite the fact that you weren’t motivated, what have you achieved today?

Think of the people you have influenced by just being in the room with them.

Think of the conversations that you’ve had.

The conversations that happened because of you.

The new networks that have been built.

This conversation happened because you still went and did it anyway.

And do you feel thankful now?

Do you feel thankful to Sabrina from this morning that she went and did it anyway?

I feel like I need you as my hype woman.

That was amazing.

I’m like, “Oh my God, that’s really cool.”

You did.

That’s me on my unmotivated day.

So, what the hell can I do on a motivated day?

Imagine the greatness.

But that’s what motivates Sabrina.

No, she’s just the same as you.

She’s still just you.

And you’re still just showing up every single day.

The only thing you can do is try to make those systems work for you.

So, celebrate it.

Appreciate yourself.

Don’t be hard on yourself when you’re not motivated.

There’s easy things you can do to make it as easy as possible.

Put your clothes out the night before.

Prep your breakfast.

All these sorts of things—we can learn about those by just scrolling LinkedIn for ten minutes.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

What I’m talking about is what goes on in your heart and the way that you think about yourself.

So, the fact that you got up on a day that you weren’t motivated and achieved the things that you’ve achieved today makes this day even better than any day that you bounded out of bed totally motivated and just did the ordinary.

Because despite the odds, look at what you’ve done.

I’ve been thinking about this lately, and it’s so nice to hear you say that because I feel like I need to take my own advice sometimes.

I took some time off for that reason because I started to feel unmotivated with certain things.

Yes, I changed things, and I’m doing what I should be doing now.

But I started to feel this element of guilt for being lazy because I wasn’t motivated.

And I realized motivation is just a fleeting feeling.

Everything is temporary.

Exactly that.

Actually, where were you a few months ago when I was going through this?

But that’s what I realized.

I was like, motivation is temporary.

Like you said, you don’t get up every day thinking, “I’m so excited to do this half marathon.”

But you’re going to get up and do it anyway because there’s something deeper inside you that gets you to do it.

And I think that’s the key.

Notice there’s a difference between motivation and determination, right?

I think that’s a big difference.

So, yeah, I’m always determined to still make a difference and make that impact.

So I get up anyway.

I do it.

And I always give my 100% when I’m there.

But just because I wasn’t necessarily in the mood to do that in the morning doesn’t mean I’m going to carry that feeling all the way through.

Great that you did it then.

Thank you.

So, I’ve got one last question because it’s a new thing I’m starting this season.

Again, as you know, everything that I want to do is to try and help other people.

I want people to come on and just support each other.

You’ve been so insightful already, so thank you so much.

The idea is also to help solve some of your problems.

So, I want to ask a question.

What is something that you’re currently struggling with in business at the moment?

Again, the whole point is no bullshit.

We’re being vulnerable here.

Not a lot of people are going to want to say they’re struggling.

“I’m not struggling. I’m doing well.”

Right?

It’s about smashing down that bravado because we’re all struggling with something.

Whether it’s determining what motivation really is or whatever it is.

What are you struggling with at the moment that you’d love to have some help with?

It would be really nice if the answer to that, from my perspective, was, “I’m struggling with recruitment, and here are three things that I’ve done to solve it.”

Or, “I’m struggling with new business, and here’s my five-step process to unbeatable new business strategies.”

But I have to be really honest, Sabrina.

It’s not like that for me.

Which comes as no surprise after the conversation and afternoon that we’ve spent together.

For me, the thing I struggle with—the thing that I’m tackling—is where I put my energy.

It’s about trying to create the framework for me to show up as my best self every single day.

I’m dealing with it in the best way I possibly can by teaching myself mindset tools to be the person that I need to be.

By training my body and mind to be the person that I need to be and to maintain the sense of steadiness that my business requires as it goes through the day-to-day turbulence that it inevitably is going to go through.

We’re only six years in, but as an agency we’ve experienced a huge amount.

And we are, again, on another chapter of our journey, I believe.

A lot of that is new to me.

A lot of the things that we’re doing at the moment are new.

Everything’s new in agency land.

So, the thing I struggle with is just ensuring that I keep myself centered.

I keep coming back to my personal why.

I keep showing up for my team.

I keep having that perspective where I can deal with things on the day-to-day.

And really, that’s the struggle.

The day-to-day.

That’s it.

I feel bad because there isn’t just a singular lesson I can give people.

But my only hope is that, in the process of listening to this conversation, there have been some mindset tools or ways of reframing the idea of what struggle is and the idea of what failure is.

So that people are less afraid of struggle, less afraid of failure, less afraid of discomfort, and instead can learn to embrace those things as part of the rich tapestry of trying to be your best self and trying to create the best business that you can.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but I do believe it’s worth it.

Yes.

And I do too.

That’s why we’re here, and that’s why we go through all this.

But you’ve been amazing.

You have given some brilliant tools.

Even for myself, I’ve been sitting here thinking, “Oh my God, this is amazing.”

And I know that so many people are going to be listening and thinking the same thing.

The idea of ending on that question is that if anyone listening feels like they can reach out to Clair with some help and support too, then that’s why we’re doing it.

But thank you so much for being on the show today.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you.

Yay.