Paul: 0:29

Welcome back for another episode of MarketPulse Pros and Pioneers. I'm Paul, your host, and this week I'd love to welcome Hayley Meakes. Hayley, welcome to the show.

Hayley: 0:38

Thank you for having me.

Paul: 0:39

It's great to have you along. For those of you who don't know Haley, she's an award winning marketer, speaker, and mindset coach. She's got over 20 years of experience. So she's the founder of Gain Momentum Marketing, and she's worked with global brands and won four national awards for effective marketing on a small budget, and I'm sure that's something that everybody who's listening to this show is interested in, 2025. Hayley also hosts the SnipBit podcast and has been named one of the top mindset coaches in the world by the Coach Foundation. And she's known for her one page marketing workshop which helps bridge the gap between clients and agencies through clear and actionable marketing strategies. And I like that because there's, there always seems to be a step, doesn't there Hayley, between, I find you interesting but I'm not sure if I want to work with you. And let's do some more detailed work together. Cause it's a big financial step. It's a big budgeting step. And that feels like a smart sort of common ground between a new client and yourself, right? That way you got started with it.

Hayley: 1:43

I think what the way it happened is that I was doing a lot of brand and marketing training and I'd get people come up to me at the end who wanted to have a go at agencies and they'd say to me I've paid this agency all of this money and they haven't delivered on what I wanted. So I said to them, okay, that's very interesting and I'm not here to critique an agency or any agency, quite frankly. I said, what did you give the agency to work with? You know, what was your brief? What was kind of, you know, the background to what you were trying to achieve? You know, were there KPIs? You know, did you have something that you were looking to get to? And often what I found was they didn't have an idea themselves and they expected the agency to be a mind reader. Yeah. And it's very, very difficult because I've always worked on the basis of garbage in is garbage out. You know, you cannot expect, I mean the agency's got a lot of skills, they've got a lot of experience, but they still need that input from the client. So the one page marketing plan really was to help clients to understand the most important thing about marketing and people are going to hate me for this. Marketing isn't rocket science. It really isn't. All it is, is about having a process and following a plan. So the idea of being able to give them a plan, which that they could then work on themselves, they could come up with the ideas themselves, and then present it to the agency, we knew that they'd be so much further down the line. And then they could look at it and it would almost be like a contract that says, you know, I've said this, this is who my ideal client is, this is my key messaging, this is my channels. So there was something that the agency could actually sort of get to grips with and really work with. So it was the best of both worlds as far as I was concerned.

Paul: 3:37

Amazing. I love that idea. I love that idea. And it does, it's, very much a. It borrows what I do with partnerships, from, a business perspective, right? Like why make life hard for the other person? If you want to partner with someone and you want to be effective at near bound, lead driving, you've got to make life easy for people. Same goes for your clients. You wouldn't give your client a proposal and expect them to imply their own ROI, right? You wouldn't let them calculate that themselves. You'd put that number front and foremost, we're going to, we're going to make you this amount of money, we think by doing these things. We'll. It makes sense, why wouldn't you as a client want to accelerate what they're doing and give them an advantage, make it easy for your marketing agency? how

Hayley: 4:22

also the agency should be an extension of your team. So you should be all working on the same page. It shouldn't be. Client versus agency, it should be client AND agency.

Paul: 4:35

I agree. And I think that goes for a lot of partnerships, in the business land. It becomes too much about, I've given you a lot of money this month and what have you shown me in return? the money is great, but like that's part of the, reciprocity. It needs to be a two way bridge. Hayley, why did you get started in marketing? What led to that path?

Hayley: 4:57

Well, I had a bit of a strange one, I'm not going to lie. I was the classic teenager at school who did A levels cause that was what was expected. And got to the age of 18 and thought, I don't know what I want to do. I knew I wanted to earn money. That was a fundamental driver, but I didn't want to go and spend three years at uni doing something, that I had no interest in the end, and I didn't want to get into debt I was probably a little bit risk averse at this stage, So I remember having a conversation with my mum, and she said"well, if you want to still live in this house, you have to get a job." So I was like Oh, okay, Rubbish! So I ended up, don't hate me you've got to promise, you won't hate me. But I ended up working for the Inland Revenue for two years. I know, I know.

Paul: 5:49

There's a

Hayley: 5:50

Wow, it's something, I tell you. So, and I remember there was one day I literally, I walked up to the front door of the offices and I thought, And I looked up and it was a really nasty grey day and I thought, if this is the world of work, I want to go back to school. This is awful. I felt like the worst. I was so out of place. It was just not my thing. I'm a creative person and this wasn't a creative world. You know, and there are people there who were proud of the fact they'd been there 30 years. And I was thinking, oh my goodness, You know, I considered it a personal shame, I'd got there nearly two, you know, thinking, oh, I've got to do something else. So, a friend of mine had mentioned that he'd joined a missionary school, and he said, it's brilliant, H, you'll love it. He said, we get to, you know, We get to do all of this great stuff of learning, and then we go all around the world helping people. And I said, that sounds really fun, right? I said, as I'm imagining myself, you know, as a sort of like, a modern day Mother Teresa, going round, you know, helping the sick, and, you know, feeding the poor, and all kinds of stuff. And, well, I ended up, after four months, of living a very sort of sheltered life i mean it was a great place but again i was the wrong fit for it So, I ended up spending two months in Albania, working in orphanages, working with old people, delivering Bibles, all kinds of stuff and then two months in Copenhagen working with drug addicts, alcoholics and prostitutes. And I remember thinking, This has been fun, but it's not really me either. So, by the time I came home, my dad decided to put his foot down, and he said, all good girls should become PAs. That was his method in life. And there was a school in London, and he said, I'll send you to this school, Lucy Clayton School of, you know, it was like proper old school. And I said, no, no, no, Don't pay for the school, pay for me to go to the local college and I'll do the same sort of course. Just to get, you know, to get them off my back really. So, I did a business administration course. And, I did alright, you know, it was one of those things. And I decided I didn't know what type of business I wanted to be in, so I'd go around temping. And I ended up in an advertising agency. And it was like the light went on. And I was like, this is where I want to be. This is where I want to be. I love this world. You know, it was crazy, and it was manic, and there were loads of clients, and there's, you know, Ordering couriers and doing this and getting creative proofs and I, this was like my world. This was such fun. So I realized I could do a marketing degree in the evening, which I did. And then I joined full time for an educational marketing agency. And within four years, I'd gone from sort of junior secretary to senior account manager, the account director. So. I just fell in love with that world. I fell in love with marketing and I fell in love with the fact that, you know, marketing can make a real difference.

Paul: 9:13

It's amazing the amount of guests that we get on the show that anyone who ends up in marketing, it seems that like we're drawn to it, but not on purpose. We just find ourselves here. And once we're there, really, I still don't class myself as a marketer, right? It's what I do. It's part of, it's very much a part of what I do. not a, traditional marketer as such, but there's a lot of marketing elements to what I do. And I find that, I'm actually really passionate about being curious about what makes people tick. Why? Why would you buy that thing from that advert? Or why would this change of wording make a difference to what bonds you with this client or this customer? And I find that there's a lot of people, generally what I see with people is that there's a underlining tone that they were doing in their previous jobs But they just weren't doing enough of it in the previous jobs. And I suspect it's something to do with people for yourself as well, right? and that's the connection to the next stage of your journey

Hayley: 10:15

That is a brilliant summation, actually. I, I think it's a combination of three things. It's a combination of a genuine love of people. A sense of psychology. I love the concept of psychology and understanding how people think and how people's brain works and why two people can go through the same experience and one of them can thrive and one of them can be knocked apart by it. And also, I'm just nosy. I think that's probably it. It's all of those three things kind of in a nutshell. And, you know, I consider my, you know, I haven't had the perfect life but i have I've been very, very fortunate with the people that have been around me. And, I just think, you know, positivity, breathe positivity, looking for the best in things, and understanding people is just such a It's such a privilege to do what we do.

Paul: 11:11

is, and I think it's one of the few rules out there where you get to see an immediate impact to the things that you do and change as a result of those learnings. So you get to do the full circle. Whereas a lot of people get to see one side or the other as a marketer, you get to make the learnings on one side. Implement new ideas on the next side, and you almost get to just play, on a daily basis, to an extent, right? On somebody else's money a lot of the time, which is fascinating. and I, so I do a lot of kind of test and learn on my own stuff, so that I can implement things for customers. That kind of brings me back to that kind of, there's a big undertone in your bio there around doing. More with less, in terms of client spend. And you said it yourself, right? Marketing is not rocket science. So walk us through your thoughts then on the difference between working with a small budget and a large budget for marketing and why you don't need a large budget.

Hayley: 12:08

I think, you know, when I first started out in marketing, you did need a large budget. You did. You know, if you look at the way that, that marketing has gone over the, over the ages, you know, the first sort of marketing was all about, you know, direct mail and advertising, and, and it hadn't changed for about 500 years. And then all of a sudden, Content marketing, you know, the social media, the internet, all of these things basically turned the industry on its head. And so many people now are competing against the big boys because they understand how they can harness and create their own audience and create their own tribe using content marketing and through that social media. And I think that's the big difference, because previously you'd have to have such a big budget for the media spend alone. And, you know, the print budget was huge, that, you know, it was very hard. Everything you were doing was pushing out. And now, the whole point of marketing is about pulling and attracting your tribe.

Paul: 13:17

Yeah, I like that. I like that. And I think that anybody who's got a clear proposition that they can articulate in a way that makes sense. And emotionally connect them with their clients or their potential clients. Once upon a time your business had to be local. You had to market in the local area. And it struck me a while back, in the two years since I started travelling, I've never even considered trying to find clients in my local area. I don't need to because my audience, my network is pretty global. I've got clients in North America, in South Africa, all across Europe. and I've got several in the UK as well, but none of them are local to me apart from one, which is very nice because we get to go for a coffee now and again. It's lovely. and I guess that means that the potential target market for a lot of now is also global, right? It's, impacted on everyone.

Hayley: 14:14

And I think that's really important. I think, you know, technology has meant that, you know, that we're today, we're not in the same town. We're able to communicate, we're able to see each other face to face, we're able to have this dialogue and this conversation without physically being in the same room. And that's how things have evolved, you know. The number of people who come to me and I say, Who's your target audience? And they go, Everyone. And it's like, Oh, please, come on. You know, that used to be the case. It used to be like this. Let's hit as much stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Nowadays, you have to know your niche. You have to know your, your people, if you like, because that's who you're going, you're going to, to, to draw into your business.

Paul: 14:59

And I think you need to know them in more detail than ever. I, think, that, that customer research, there is so much customer research that's available. It almost floods you and you've got to be able to siphon off the stuff that's irrelevant or not as niche as you need it to be. I was talking to a guy the other day who was trying to figure out what films his customers like to watch. And I'm like, that is just such an insane level of detail to go to. for a small business, like once upon a time, you'd get customer focus groups for your big retailers and things like that, and they'd horn down on those things. But for a small business owner to be looking at those things, that's an amazing leap. At what point did you decide to become a mindset coach?

Hayley: 15:39

It's a really interesting, it's many years ago I had a car accident, I mean at the very beginning of my, my marketing journey and I remember being told I'd never walk again. You know, I remember the paramedics saying to my mum, we don't know how she's got the car alive. It was just one of those things I got hit head on. And I was in a Renault 5, which is, is like an inferior version to a Fiat 500 for people in the 2020 time And essentially, it's like a tin can. And the engine literally came through the car and came through my leg, essentially, and my leg just, you know, had to be rebuilt. And I remember them saying, You're never going to be able to walk again. You're never going to be able to run. You're never going to be able to kick box, cause I was training for a competition at the time. You're never going to be able to ski, and you're never going to bungee jump. So the last one I, I'm not going to lie, I wasn't that bothered about the bungee jumping. But I was just like, you know, my life at the time was fitness and everything else. And I remember, I was like 8 weeks later, handing back my crutches and walking out of there. After all of this, all of this negativity, you're never going to do this, you're never going to do that. in 2010, I ran the London Marathon, and I still, I mean, obviously I don't compete at kickboxing, but I can still kickbox, and I can still box. I have skied once, really badly, but I just didn't enjoy it. It wasn't that I couldn't do it, I just didn't particularly enjoy it. And it's like And I thought what I did was quite normal. I thought, you know, you have a problem, you, you, you, you apply your, your mindset skills to that problem and then you carry on. And then I remember when I started my speaker training, cause I wanted to be able to speak on marketing and, and business, they were like wowed by this story and they said, well, Explain to me how you've done that, and I ended up creating my own mindset model called Basics, and, you know, it was very important to me, and they said, well, where does this come from? And, I come from a single parent family. my mum suffered with bipolar, so I had the huge blessing of spending a lot of time with my grandparents, and my granddad had been, in World War II. And he's been in Burma in World War II. And, my granddad was Tottenham born and bred, literally. I mean, and so he'd never really been out of London. And when he found out, you know, that he, that everyone was being enlisted, he was like, I want to be part of this, you know, I want to serve my country. and in those days, what they did was they put you together with your community and your friends, you know, so you were a troop and they said that that's how you bonded better. And Grandpa ended up in Burma. Now for someone who's never really been outside London, that was like Can you imagine the culture shock of that? Of never knowing that Are you going to come home again? Are you going to see your loved ones again? You know, it must have been horrific. Anyway, somewhere in the five years that he was out there due due to a paperwork mix up in London, Grandpa was transferred to another troop. And I remember saying to him, well, how was that, Grandpa? And he went, well, I was a bit annoyed at the time, Mum. I won't use the exact words you used. But he was annoyed. but he later found out that this paperwork mix up had saved his life. Because his original troop had been ambushed and killed. And so this led to Grandpa's three rules for life. You know, bearing in mind we spent so much time with him, I, I picked up, I paid attention. And the first one, most important one, is to live every day as your best day, for the people that didn't get to come home. So, every day, I wake up with an attitude of gratitude, and I think about the positives, you know? And some days, it's just that I've woken up. You don't have to have, like, massive reasons. It doesn't have to be earth shattering. You know, it can just be, you know, I'm just grateful I can get out of my bed today. You know, I can walk, I can walk to my bathroom, I can walk to my kitchen. You know, they were telling me I couldn't do these things, you know. The second thing is to face everything that happens to you, again, with this attitude of positivity. Because what you think is meant for your business Your poor health or your, your, your detriment can also be for your benefit. It's like with grandpa, he moving the troops saved his life, you know, so you never know what's happening and what's around the corner and you can look at it and go, Oh my goodness, your car accident was bad. But the resilience that it gave me and the lessons that it taught me, I, I, I couldn't have wished for more. And to be honest, I don't suffer from any of my injuries. You know, I really am very fortunate, very fortunate indeed. And the third thing, and Grandpa would say that this is the most important one. You can support any football team you like, as long as it's Tottenham Hotspur. And if that doesn't teach

Paul: 21:12

Yep.

Hayley: 21:12

you resilience and positive mindset, I don't know what does, you know? And so I had this

Paul: 21:18

certainly does this year. I can see.

Hayley: 21:20

Oh gosh, tell me about it. Still have faith in Anne's, don't you worry, still have faith. so I had this one side of my family and then the other side of my family. You know, my uncle was an amateur athlete who suddenly became Olympic champion. So he came from a single parent home, in a council house in London, and he became Olympic champion. Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European Champion. And it just proves that if you put your mind to it, if you, if you work hard and you apply yourself and, and, you know, you're really focused on your dreams, you can achieve whatever you want,

Paul: 22:40

I think it's probably about how you choose to experience things, right? Like yeah, you can go through like the problem I have with a lot of people that I speak to is that they're stuck in a victim mentality and that's not their fold But it is really hard for them to get out of, and I really struggle to deal with people who are victim mentality, and, when you start talking to people about, you can choose to experience this in a different way, people who are stuck in a victim mentality can't, because they just can't see past where they're at, and people who've already made that leap, who've transformed their mindset, they're in the growth mindset, scarcity, whatever that looks like for them. They can see the importance of what that sentence means for people. how did that, growing up around all of that, there's a phenomenal kind of psychological background that you've got there, and lots of lessons and experience to draw on. and I can imagine, we've talked already, it made you very curious about what makes people tick. What was the, clinching moment where you thought, Do I can go and do this.

Hayley: 23:56

I think when you look at it and There's a lot of things that you can focus on. It's like, recently my husband got a new car. I mean, I'm not saying Mr. Boasty got a new car. I've never heard of it. I'm not a car person. But everywhere I go now, I see this car. Okay, same color, his car. Now, I don't know whether I never noticed those cars before. Or the fact was those cards weren't important to me because they weren't on my radar. And I think the issue that I've learned above all is what you focus on is, is what you see more of. So if your focus is on positivity, if your focus is on gratitude, if your focus is on, you know, looking for the silver lining, if you like, then you'll see more If your focus is on what's gone wrong, if your focus is on how hard your life is, you'll see more of that. And I think it's very simple. It's just about turning the dial. And sometimes it's going to start by feeling really weird. But you almost have to, to kind of think of great things to be, be thankful for and start that positive process as part of the mindset. And so, you know, with basics, the first thing is believe in yourself. You know, acquire your power team. Make sure you've got the right people around you. Make sure you've got those, those radiators and not those drains. You know, have a strategy for success. People, you know, you look at all the great people who've achieved in the world. They've all got a plan. They've surrounded themselves by the right people and they've got a plan. You know, invest in yourself. Whether that is timing, time on, on getting yourself right. Now for some people that might be overcoming. Things that have happened in their past. It might be learning new skills. It might be, you know, taking themselves to the next level, but actually taking the time in themselves. And the other thing is, it's about carry on, carrying on, carrying on. If you like, you know, sometimes we quit just before we get to, to the optimum moment. And there's a book by Sharon Lecter called, 3 Feet From Gold and it talked about the gold mining people in America. And they said so many of them gave up just before they were about to reach the big breakthrough. And it's about having the sense of knowing when is it time to quit because there is no future in this. And when is it, come on, it just needs another push, another piece of effort. And the final one is about smashing it out of the park. Celebrating little successes, you know, thinking about those little wins. What are your little wins? You know, every day you can have little wins, you know? I mean, I've nearly been 11 months without a cigarette. And it started off cabinet in days and I was thinking I'm going to do another day and another day and not thinking I'm never going to have one again but literally being grateful for the fact that oh you know I've looked up now I've done this for a week this has happened oh look and now you know and focusing and going here that's great I've saved this amount of money now what am I going to So I think it's about It's just about little steps and I think too often people, it's like with new year, every new year people try and change their life by implementing a thousand resolutions as opposed to saying okay what's the one thing that I want to achieve and how can I break that down so it's manageable and it's sustainable.

Paul: 27:43

I think that's fair. I, I released a video. obviously this is going out, this is going to be going out on Easter, which is a weird time to be talking New Year's resolutions. But I released a video yesterday where I said exactly the same thing. I'm a big fan. Disbeliever in New Year's resolutions for the sake of New Year's resolutions, right? I believe that every day should be an opportunity to try something new, and it shouldn't boil down to New Year's Day. You shouldn't be waiting for January the 1st to make those decisions. This should be something that you think about, analyse, and decide on any day, any week of the year, and if you're not sure, If things aren't broken for you, don't change them. I see so many people making new business resolutions for January the 1st and actually they're already pretty successful and they don't need a business resolution. They just need to keep doing what they're doing and just keep believing in what they're doing and the clients that they have and just do more of it or do it better or tweak it slightly. It doesn't need a new year's resolution. We're coming to the end of the half hour now. I could probably talk for another hour or two with you on all of these topics. I've really enjoyed this. It's been nice to chat

Hayley: 28:50

Oh thank you.

Paul: 28:51

We talk about you being a mindset coach. Who are your, all your ideal clients out there and what are they, thinking right now that, that might lead them to your door?

Hayley: 29:01

The biggest, the biggest thing that we find is there's a lot of people out there who Really, they need a combination of things. They're probably a business owner and they've been relatively successful. But they're spending too much time working in their business and not on their business. And they're dropping the balls in other areas of their life. They need, they need to have accountability. They need to be, feel that they've got a safe space to upskill, to share successes, share challenges, and to feel that supportive community, but most of all, to have that accountability. So they want to be able to, to have almost like that virtual board. So for them, it's about, you know, surrounding themselves with people who've been there, done that. And that's one of the things that we really love to do, is to surround them with other really good people. And so that they can then take their business to that, scale it up and take it to that next level.

Paul: 30:09

Fantastic. And if people are listening along here and they've enjoyed the story, the background, maybe it resonates with their own story and why they're where they are, how can they reach out and find out more about either, gain momentum marketing or the mindset coaching?

Hayley: 30:24

Well, do you know what, probably the best thing is LinkedIn. I am the only me on LinkedIn. Can you believe it? There's only one Hayley Meakes on LinkedIn. So, please, please connect. It would be great to connect. Send me a little note and then, we'll start the journey.

Paul: 30:41

I once did an experiment in search for Paul Banks on the internet and, there's a lot of us, there's a lot of us out there. I connected with quite a lot of Paul Banks on Facebook. It was a weird thing that I did, but I really enjoyed it and it's still, it's quite a fun story to tell. So I've got a friend out in South Africa who is, a rapper. I've got a friend out in Texas in America who's a music producer and I put them together. I've got a friend not far from me who lives in my hometown with the same name, but there are tens of thousands of Paul Bankses out there. Thankfully, I'm the only one that posts anything of any substance on LinkedIn. So I've managed to get to number one ratings on LinkedIn. That's,

Hayley: 31:17

I love that. I absolutely love that. And I, I love the, I love the fact of, of, of the, the six degrees of separation, right? So we're all connected to anyone else in the world by six degrees, or six connections. And so I realized the other day I'm actually connected to Donald Trump in lesson six. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, people can decide, but I was quite, I was quite impressed by it, you know, if nothing

Paul: 31:46

Yeah, it's the power of network, it's the power of network and if you, if you can share your story and share a bit of you that, that connects you with other people and you mix them with other good networkers who can do the same, then there's a real power to be hard. I'm a big believer in networking, huge believer in it. thank you very much for coming along today Hayley, for being a lovely guest on the show.

Hayley: 32:07

Oh, thank

Paul: 32:07

you. at home for coming along and, listening to us or watching the video and I look forward to seeing you next week for another episode. Bye bye.

Hayley: 32:16

Bye.