"When David Bowie and Prince came to the rescue".

This is The Business Village People Podcast. Hello, I'm David Markwell and welcome to the second edition of the Business Village People Podcast. If you missed our first episode, all you have to do is to search for us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, subscribe, and then that way you'll never miss another. This podcast is about the people who work, the business that are based, and the services that are available at the village here in Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

 

Our KPI is to be informative, entertaining, showcase success, and promoting collaboration. Okay, let's go. In this episode of Business Village People, what would you do? You've politely asked your employer for six-month unpaid leave to look after your three-year-old daughter who's just had major surgery and an eye removed, and the multi-international bank who you work for, say, No, we chat to the village c e o, who played golf with kangaroos and is pretty neat at delivering a double-handed backout plus David Bowie and Prince the artist, not the dog.

 

Discover how they help set up a digital marketing company that's based here at The Business Village. First part one of my chat with Caroline Haywood from Clea Digital Marketing. Caroline's Dream when growing up was to become an actor. She studied at Barnsley College in drama and performance skills, but thoughts of working in theatre disappeared after two deaths in her family.

 

Here's Caroline's story.

 

I am a digital marketer, so I'm a specialist in digital advertising. Facebook ads, Instagram ads, LinkedIn ads, Google ads most predominantly. So, Google ads, when somebody searches something and your business comes up within Google, the search engine, oh, those weird ones that chase around the internet that everyone's a bit freaked out by.

 

So basically, it's magic. A hundred percent. I can't, I say that to people a lot like people because of the jargon involved, et cetera. A lot of the time people sort of, when I'm trying to explain it to a customer say, look, it's just magic. I'll just do it for you. What did you want to be when you were at school?

 

I wanted to be a drama teacher. So how come you're not teaching drama? Because what happened to me when I was younger, so I went to Barnsley College, which I absolutely loved. I had the absolute time in my life, um, to study drama. I met some amazing people and friends. Did you go to the electric theatre? I did.

 

Why did you, did you? Yeah, I did performing arts. You kidding me? No, I did performing arts. So who was, who's drama teaching, do you know? I'll just stop it here and now, Caroline and David Tittle tattle about people they might both know.

 

and we're back. So you did performing arts in Barnsley? Mm-hmm. At the Electric Theatre Barnsley College. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. How did that go? I absolutely loved it. I absolutely loved it. That's it. So, you loved it? I loved it. I absolutely loved it. But then what happened to me was, was um, my mum died. Right.

 

So, I had this like a knee-jerk reaction of having to work and survive. Um, and five years previous to that, my dad had died. So, at the age of 19, I found myself, um, Alone in the world, if you like. I wasn't, I wasn't actually alone in between my mum and me, Dad died, and my mum had remarried to a wonderful, wonderful man who was now still my stepdad to this day.

 

So he helped. But yeah, it was a horrendous thing. But I had this slight knee-jerk thing of I need to survive, I need to work, I need to make money. So I think that has laid a foundation for my work. Today, do you think that's taking you away from doing drama? Well, it did, yeah, because I like stopped doing it because, uh, it would almost like, I think, uh, obviously the arts are incredibly important, but I just, I just had this overwhelming urge to make money and.

 

Survive and that didn't seem like an option at the time. What happened then? I went to live down south. I actually worked in publishing for five years, so that was book publishing, which was absolutely fascinating to me. And then I then went on to work for an ad agency, which is what. Developed my interest in advertising.

 

So we did adverts for like radio specialist press, national papers, anything you could think of, billboards. And then what would happen is, is people would spend like 20 grand on a campaign and not know if. The phone, you know, the phone might not ring why they've spent 20 grand. I, um, did something to try and combat that frustration within myself, which was try to understand Google Analytics, which is the software that goes behind a website, where you can understand what people are doing when they go onto that website.

 

So then that led me to gain qualifications from the Charter Institute marketing in digital marketing, digital magic you like. At that time I had a really little. And so literally sort of studying and working at the same time. I'm now a fellow with the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and that means that, um, I've got 15 years worth of director experience within organizations.

 

So how come you ended up back up in Barnsley? Just because I'm from here and I love it and eventually it got to the stage whereby me family, we were just traveling back up the M one all the time to visit family and eventually it was just a case of why, why, why am I doing. So we sold up and we came back, moved back to Poggy, and then from there I then went to work for a property management company, and then I left them when I had my second child and set up my own website and just thought, you know what?

 

I'm gonna do it on my own. I'm gonna see, because what happened as, as well because I've got like a history here, because I'm from Barnsley originally. People started to know me as that lasso knows a bit about internet, internet, tinter, web. So what happened? Where is that? Um, yeah, people would ask me and I would help them, you know, get followers on Facebook or advertise the services online, because if 98% of all transactions start with a Google search, that is a fact.

 

So Google's a bit like God, people ask it questions. So if you want something, you'll ask Google. If you consider your own internet behaviour, that's what you do. But it is true though, isn't it? Because like people are using technology and speech to turn on their electricity and. To live their lives and to do everything.

 

So it's really significant and wonderful. A lot of people are scared of the internet, but I am not. I think it's a wonderful tool. Well, another thing, what I was gonna say is what I found utterly, utterly fa fascinating is that my dad wouldn't have known what the internet was. Yeah. He was an engineer.

 

Obviously. He must have loved technology and things like that. And then to think that he would've never have known, just it blows my mind, really. And then his daughter's gone away and he is running a business. Working with this amazing tool that he never knew. It makes me wonder what is gonna be, in my view, you know, in a hundred years time, you know, what will my grandchildren be working with?

 

Where did Purple Genie come from? Right? So basically I was literally sat with my baby on my knee and thinking I want to start my own business. So what I did is I, um, when I were younger, I utterly loved Prince and I utterly loved David Bowie. So what happened, where is that? I. Took two elements from some of their songs and I put 'em together.

 

They died in the same year and I felt sad about it, so I thought I want something nice to come out of that. So I basically name a company out after it. People who run marketing companies or agencies tend to have quirky names anyway, so I wanted to go down that quirky route. Um, and then I had like a, a lightning bolters MI logo, which was like the bolt.

 

David Bowie space. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought, I'm just gonna allow my creativity to flow and I'm just gonna do what I want after years of being employed. And one thing I realized when I did it as time went forward is that being employed wasn't a model that suited me. I'm, you know, I've met some wonderful people when I've done it and learned from 'em, but I just feel like shifting the dynamic of providing service for people works better for me personally than it does being employed.

 

I like to provide service. That's how I see it, you know? Um, so anyway, that's where Purple Gina came from, but now it's gonna change. Well listen, we'll just stop there. Yeah. I think the second part of this interview is gonna be on the next podcast. Mm-hmm. Because, There's big news coming up here, isn't there?

 

About purple G? Yes. Yeah. And the future of the business. Yes. So you're gonna have to listen to the next episode of the podcast to find out what that is. Never