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Episode #189: Hayley Donigan

Brand Voice Strategist and Copywriter for travel brands

Hayley Donigan Travel Copywriting

Episode #189: Hayley Donigan
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Guest Bio

Hayley Donigan is a brand voice strategist and copywriter specializing in responsible travel brands. Based in the UK, she combines her expertise in content marketing with a personal commitment to slow, thoughtful travel. After moving from the US to England in 2010, Hayley adopted a flexible lifestyle that blends remote work with extended stays in diverse locations, allowing her to develop a deep understanding of how travel shapes both people and places. Her professional journey began in copywriting for a global travel company, evolving into a career focused on strategic content marketing for purpose-led companies. Today, she channels this experience into her own business, helping culture-led travel brands connect with their communities with clarity and care.

Show Summary

In this episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast, host Jason Elkins speaks with Hayley about the intersection of travel, storytelling, and responsible brand communication. They discuss how adopting a slow travel mindset has influenced her approach to writing and strategy, emphasizing the importance of depth over speed in both exploration and messaging.

Hayley shares insights from her years living between countries and working remotely, describing how this flexible lifestyle has shaped her understanding of cultural nuance and the challenges of representing travel authentically. Their conversation explores the ways generic travel marketing can overlook the complexities of real experiences and how brands can do better by embracing thoughtful, tailored narratives.

Throughout the episode, Hayley reflects on her transition from traditional copywriting roles to founding a business that aligns with her values, highlighting the balance between strategic work and lived experience that informs her approach to brand voice in the travel sector.

Key Takeaways

  • ✓ Slow travel encourages a deeper connection to place, which enriches storytelling and brand messaging.
  • ✓ Living as a ‘flexpat’ offers unique perspectives on culture and remote work that inform authentic communication.
  • ✓ Responsible travel brands benefit from messaging that acknowledges travel’s complexities rather than simplifying them.
  • ✓ Extended stays and repeated visits help build an intimate understanding of destinations beyond surface-level impressions.
  • ✓ A decade of digital marketing experience provides a solid foundation for strategic brand voice development.
  • ✓ Transitioning from corporate roles to entrepreneurship can align professional skills with personal values.
  • ✓ Thoughtful copywriting supports travel brands in standing out by highlighting genuine care for people and places.
  • ✓ Remote work flexibility enables a lifestyle that blends cultural immersion with professional growth.
  • ✓ Clear, considered messaging helps travelers and brands navigate the ethical dimensions of travel.
  • ✓ Combining lived travel experience with strategic communication leads to more meaningful brand stories.

What You’ll Find With Hayley Donigan

  • ✓ Expertise in crafting brand voices tailored to responsible travel companies.
  • ✓ Strategies that reflect a slow and thoughtful approach to both travel and marketing.
  • ✓ Services rooted in over a decade of content marketing and copywriting experience.
  • ✓ Insights drawn from living and working across multiple countries and cultures.
  • ✓ An emphasis on authenticity and nuance in travel storytelling.
  • ✓ Guidance for travel brands seeking to communicate with greater care and complexity.

Learn more about Hayley Donigan Travel Copywriting and connect with Hayley at:

https://hayleydonigan.com

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Podcast Transcript

This transcript is auto-generated on recording, and has not been edited by a human. It may contain lots of mistakes, crazy words, and stuff that makes no sense. The host and the guest are not responsible for the accuracy of the transcript.

Jason Elkins (00:00.931)
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Big World Made Small podcast for the Adventure Traveler. So happy to have each and every one of you back here today. And I’m also super excited. We’ve got a wonderful guest today. We’ve got Hayley Donigan Hayley is a brand voice strategist and copywriter for travel brands. Hayley, welcome to the show. So happy to have you here.

Hayley Donigan (00:21.294)
Thank you for having me, I’m glad to be here.

Jason Elkins (00:23.705)
This is gonna be a lot of fun. We we spoke a week or two ago and I just I thought your your perspective and just kind of your energy was amazing and I thought, Hey, we need to come back. So here we are, and right before I pushed the button we talked about, you’re a brand voice strategist and sometimes sometimes people that work in the branding world are really sensitive to their brand and what it is and what I when I asked you about your title, you’re like, Yeah, whatever. I I love that. So thank you so much for

Hayley Donigan (00:49.485)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (00:53.669)
for your openness. Hayley, we’re gonna get into your background, childhood traumas, all kinds of stuff that caused you to get from wherever you were to where you are now. But before we do that, I wanna give our listeners an opportunity to kind of connect with what it is you do before we start talking about why. So what does a brand voice strategist and copywriter for travel brands do?

Hayley Donigan (01:16.27)
Well it’s funny because I feel like I change how I write about what I do all the time and it’s that cliche of when you’re a

When you’re a copywriter, you struggle to write for yourself. It’s really easy to do it for other people and other brands, but for yourself, it’s really difficult. and I can really sympathize with the companies that I work for, especially ones that have founders who are really close to what they’re doing, because it just feels so personal and difficult, difficult to articulate what you do. I tend to actually just call myself a copywriter, but then I think I’m selling myself short because a lot of what I do is really getting underneath the surface.

Jason Elkins (01:27.412)
Jason Elkins (01:49.274)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (01:53.748)
Of a brand and figuring out how to position them in the marketplace against their competitors and understanding what their audience is, how to connect with their audiences in an emotional way. And so a lot of strategy goes into it. And so that is why I added the brand voice strategist. And also because brand voice is something that I really, really love doing. It’s really fun to bring the character of a brand to life. So that’s why I’ve put that first.

Because that’s what I I love doing the most.

Jason Elkins (02:27.247)
You know, it’s it’s fascinating you say that. I spoke with someone recently that I as I recall I was told the your brand is what people say about you when you’re not there. I I don’t I’m I don’t there’s probably different ways to say that.

And when I heard you say sometimes it’s hard to write copy for myself or you’re sympathetic with business owners and founders that you know, somebody on their team says, You should write more, you should put yourself out there more, you should do more blog posts. And it’s it’s hard. And

Hayley Donigan (02:56.974)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (03:02.135)
So where I’m going with this is it sounds like, okay, for you to come in and look at somebody’s brand and dig deep with them and kind of get into it, you’ve got that benefit of of not being so emotionally tied to it. And you can probably look at a brand and say, look, here’s my take on what I see on your website or what I see.

And help me, this is the story I’ve created in my head about your brand. Does that how does that align with how you feel about your brand? And then you see those those gaps and they’re like, no, that’s not what we’re doing. Okay, well let’s let’s figure out how to share that. And it’s really, really hard to do that when you’re sitting inside your business.

Hayley Donigan (03:27.938)
Yes.

Hayley Donigan (03:32.963)
Yes.

Jason Elkins (03:39.553)
It’s the same thing with the podcast, you know, when guests come on the show. Every guest I’ve had on the show has had somebody on their team said, You need to put yourself out there more. You should you should take your cell phone when you’re walking around on a trip and take videos and commentaries and post them on social media and like how terrif how terrifying is that? It

Hayley Donigan (03:42.104)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (03:55.224)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But you you nailed it because it is. It’s I feel like when I

Approach a project, I always think in terms of I’m the customer now. So I’m getting under the skin of who is the customer and how can I resonate with them. And so I am actually kind of detached from the brand in that sense because what a lot of brands tend to do is they want to they have certain things that they want to tell the customer, and very often they lead with this is this is what we do, this is who we are, these are the things that we want you to know, but the customer often doesn’t actually care about those things, or maybe that’s

Jason Elkins (04:08.997)
Yes.

Jason Elkins (04:31.333)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hayley Donigan (04:33.424)
secondary. So really what you’re trying to do is what is the emotional benefit that’s gonna resonate what and and how do you articulate that? And that is really what makes a copywriter special versus any I mean anyone can write. Anyone can write about a business, but that is what a copywriter brings to the table.

Jason Elkins (04:48.441)
Yes.

Yeah, it’s it’s so true and it it aligns with I’ve been working on a project to build out search capabilities, for example, on the podcast website so people can come in and and search for different not I don’t want to say episodes, but for different guests, different experts and and connect with them and I’m super excited about it and I spend hours and hours and hours in doing it and and I recognize that I have no idea if anybody else cares. You know, so I can say well, you know, if you ask me, well, what is special about your

Hayley Donigan (05:16.204)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (05:21.445)
website I can say, well I’ve got this s AI assisted search feature where people can go in and connect with all these guests and you could and you could say, Okay, Jason, I’m I would never use that. I don’t know if that’s important. Like I just you know but yeah so it’s it’s always nice to have a second set of eyeballs, ears. Yeah. So okay.

Hayley Donigan (05:33.56)
Right.

Hayley Donigan (05:40.259)
You know what, I would also venture to guess that you probably, I mean, you speak to so many people, you are actually the expert in your brand in that sense. And so probably instinctually you do know that that product is something that resonates with them. but it is how do you articulate that to them, right? So it’s like you you have the knowledge of that audience, but but then how do you communicate to them that this is a feature that they should care about?

Jason Elkins (06:00.643)
Right. Yes.

Jason Elkins (06:08.471)
You’re you’re absolutely right, because I can I love building features, but communicating why that’s important and how that’s useful, I I find that when I get on a call with somebody or I’m having a conversation with somebody, I can explain it to them. But you need to get them on the call before you can explain it to them. And Yeah. Ooh.

Hayley Donigan (06:26.122)
Exactly. And can you do it in three words, you know? That’s that’s that’s what makes it really hard. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (06:32.815)
That’s that’s a big challenge because I’ve spent a lot of time on websites and you know, in this ad travel space. And yeah, and I I’m guilty of it myself is I know what I want to convey, but it takes me fourteen paragraphs to do it. Who nobody reads fourteen paragraphs.

Hayley Donigan (06:47.33)
Yeah, I know, I know. And you have to synthesize it down. But I always think, you know, people just this is the mindset I take actually. The more time I spend

Making something really well crafted, it takes a lot of thought, but that means less time that the reader has to spend in figuring out what you’re trying to say. So it’s almost like a common decency thing of I want someone, I want someone to have a really good experience when they land on my website, which means that they get the point of what I’m trying to convey. They get the information that they want immediately, and even better, they feel something and they feel excited or inspired. And so that takes a lot of time and people don’t realize that. But if you just, you know, if you just

Spend 10 minutes quickly writing something and getting whatever you want to get across, that’s fine. They might be able to figure it out, but they’re they might get bored of trying to figure it out and they might just leave and go onto someone else’s website.

Jason Elkins (07:38.659)
I love it ’cause cause yeah, you just hit it on the head. It’s I’m like I’ve I’m doing something like a s a AI assisted search engine, whatever. And it’s like, okay, here are the ten things that I think is cool about this, and I wanna cover all ten things. That’s why I end up with maybe ten paragraphs. And someone else is like, Okay, but

These two or three things are cool enough. You don’t need all these other things, they’re cool to you, but they’re cool to you because you figured out how to do it and you’re excited that you figured out how to do it, but nobody cares that you figured out how to do it. It either works for them, it helps them hit their goal or not. So yeah.

Hayley Donigan (08:10.659)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (08:15.97)
Yeah. And it’s all it really does always come down to understanding the audience and what they’re looking for. Because for example, a highly technical audience might be looking for that level of detail. you can also try to follow the pyramid principle, which is that basically you always put the most important information at the top and then you go into more detail as you go along. But there’s all sorts of different formulas you can follow. So I use instinct.

Jason Elkins (08:37.145)
Yeah. But because that’s tough for somebody that thinks it’s all important because you know, ’cause I s ’cause I spent hours doing it. So and it and the reason I’m saying this, this is not about Jason’s website. This is about anybody that’s listening that has a business. And we’ve got a lot of tour operators that are listening to this right now. And it’s yeah, it’s like f figuring out what is the most important part. I spend a lot of time on websites, as I mentioned, and it’s it’s interesting because

Hayley Donigan (08:45.248)
yeah.

Jason Elkins (09:06.849)
Sometimes people reach out to me, you know, they wanna maybe come on the show and I go look at their website and the first thing I’m trying to figure out is honestly is just what do they do? Like I like and I go to their website and I’ve gotta dig around three pages before I start to kind of figure out what it is they’re doing. And even then sometimes we get on an intro call and I’m still not sure. And I’m like, Can you you in your own words, please tell me what it is you’re doing? And then they will tell me what they do.

Hayley Donigan (09:16.066)
Yes. Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (09:29.432)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (09:34.243)
And I’m like, wow, you I I wish you would have put that on your website, like right on the hero. Like we yeah.

Hayley Donigan (09:34.541)
Right.

Hayley Donigan (09:39.181)
Just be clear. Yeah, first and foremost. And that’s the thing too, is like I think the first priority is to be clear and then you can get a little bit fancier and more clever. But but if you’re being clever and you’re foregoing being clear, there’s no point in doing that. So yeah. It’s very interesting to see I live in London, so to see the tube advertisements. I like to kind of be a critic and go in and think, ooh, that’s a good one. That slapped me in the face. Ooh, that’s not so good. I wonder who wrote that. you see a lot of AI-generated ones as well, which is very interesting to

Jason Elkins (10:01.503)
yeah.

Jason Elkins (10:05.572)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (10:09.016)
Well

That’s a whole another conversation. Maybe maybe we’ll touch on it we we might come back to that. yeah, it’s do you do you find like ’cause one another thing I’ve have seen is like

Some people either they are very visual or their marketing team, somebody, somebody in their space that advised them on their website, built their website, really likes really likes graphic design, really likes you know, colors and maybe even fonts and all that stuff. And you can look at the website and go, wow, this is a really nice website, but I don’t know what they do. and then you’ve got other websites that

Hayley Donigan (10:34.808)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (10:48.384)
yeah.

Jason Elkins (10:51.267)
probably have pretty decent copy or you can kinda see what they do, but they have no aesthetic of appreciation. It’s like

Hayley Donigan (10:57.571)
Right. I know. And this is why the world of digital marketing is so broad, as you know. It’s like there’s so many elements that come into it to make that balance.

Jason Elkins (11:08.485)
Okay. I I wanted to ask you this because I also heard you say sometimes when you sit down to write for yourself, it’s it’s harder than writing for someone else. I complete well, I completely get that. It’s also much easier for me to have conversations with guests about their story, what’s important to them.

Hayley Donigan (11:24.048)
Yeah, if I start to ask you.

Jason Elkins (11:25.931)
Yeah. Where if if somebody said, Okay, Jason, you know, you’re gonna sit down and share your story and what’s important to you for the next hour, I’d probably have to, you know, write a script and practice it and all this stuff. And it’s just so much easier to pull other people’s stories out. but where I’m going with that, as a copywriter or as a boy a brand voice strategist, do you ever think I’m just like do you ever think that maybe you want to partner with another

Hayley Donigan (11:48.143)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (11:55.663)
copywriter just like to either have them edit your stuff or write your stuff. Like do you ever feel like, you know what, this would just be easier if I just hired a copywriter to help me, even though you’re a copywriter, or does ego get in the way? Or what do you does that happen?

Hayley Donigan (12:09.676)
Y that has genuinely never crossed my mind and that’s such a good idea. That is such a brilliant idea. Just to see what they would say. You know, like wha how would they what’s you know, how would they look at it? Because obviously you can take things in many different angles. I would hope that another copywriter would look at my work and say, Yeah, you nailed it, only have tiny little notes here and there, but it’s all subjective. But yeah, it’s a great idea. I should do that.

Jason Elkins (12:14.325)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (12:34.263)
It it makes sense because I don’t know a lot about publishing and editing and writing, but my understanding is most of the amazing writers out there have great editors. Right? So

Hayley Donigan (12:45.314)
Yes. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we’re all perfectionists, by the way. Like I can I don’t think I’ve ever written anything ever where I’m like, okay, that is done now. I’m never gonna improve that or look at that again. If I read something that I wrote five years ago, I can guarantee I’ll have a million things that I want to change about it. But that’s just the nature of the game.

Jason Elkins (13:04.581)
It’s interesting. I bet if I well, I don’t bet, but I I’m postulating that if I had you and another copywriter and I presented the challenge of of okay, Hayley, I want you, you know, so-and-so is gonna write the copy. They’re gonna interview you about what’s important, they’re gonna have a conversation with you, and then they’re gonna walk away and write the copy, and then you’re gonna walk away and write the copy. I’m guessing you’d spend eight hours in a lot of anguish.

Hayley Donigan (13:25.571)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (13:32.921)
They’d they’d come back in about an hour and you would read your final product and still feel like, it’s not quite right. But maybe you’d read theirs and think, wow, sh she nailed it, or he nailed it, right? Yeah. Interesting.

Hayley Donigan (13:33.0)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (13:43.534)
Yeah. So true. And I think the thing as well is it’s you know, there’s

There’s a skill set with copywriting where you can follow certain principles, and you know, you gotta do your audience research and your competitor research, and there’s different formulas that you can follow, etc. etc. But there is also a craft to it in the sense there’s a lot of creativity as well and personality that goes into it. And so that I can find that really difficult actually because it’s quite personal what you think. Okay, I think that this creative element is great, and I can back that up. I can I can explain.

Explain why and how that would resonate with the target audience, but at the end of the day, it is my creative juices that have created that. And so it’s scary when you put that out into the world, or you know, a client has to sign that off, or another copywriter looks at it and they might say, what have you done there? or and and and I don’t know. I I don’t know if I’m the only one, but I I get very personally attached to the things that I write, going back to what we were saying about writing for yourself and why that’s so difficult.

Jason Elkins (14:24.953)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (14:46.031)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (14:49.997)
Yeah. All right, let’s figure out what’s behind all that. Let’s let’s go back to your childhood. I here’s what I want to figure out is I want our listeners, and I also of course want to hear is how did you get from where you were to where you are now? you know, nobody just wakes up one day and they’re doing, you know, this this type of work in the travel space unless the something came along the way. So

Hayley Donigan (14:55.862)
Okay.

Hayley Donigan (15:04.239)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (15:13.997)
Yep.

Jason Elkins (15:15.609)
I don’t know. What do you d should we start with the angle on the writing side or the the fascination with travel? I don’t know. Let’s let’s just go back to when you were twelve. What did you want to be when you were twelve? If I had a time machine, I went back and I said, Hayley, what do you want to be when you grow up? Do you remember?

Hayley Donigan (15:27.181)
Yep.

Hayley Donigan (15:30.672)
You know, I don’t know. I think I had a lot of different things growing up. I think I probably would have said pastry chef at some point, artist, you know, postman. I think I I had like

Jason Elkins (15:39.876)
Hayley Donigan (15:44.918)
I was interested in everything. I don’t think teacher, maybe I would have said. I used to so a big part of my personality is I love guinea pigs. And I had I used to teach my guinea pigs when I was little. So I would I would have them sit on the bed and I’d have my little whiteboard and there would be a whole, you know, this is the agenda for today, and this is your lunch break, and et cetera, et cetera. So actually, I think I would have probably said teacher, guinea pig teacher. No, but but I

Jason Elkins (15:48.548)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (16:00.323)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (16:09.359)
Were you were you an only child? No, okay. Cause I’m just imagining I’m just yeah, I’m imagining poor little Hayley, no siblings, and sitting in her room with her guinea pigs trying to teach them Spanish or something or math or

Hayley Donigan (16:14.787)
My whole family does like guinea pigs. So we’re a little weird. I bet that’s a first on your show, Jason.

Hayley Donigan (16:31.327)
Yeah, well, you know, I was a very I’m an introvert and I was a very independent child. Like I’ve never had any problem spending time in my own company. So maybe that’s why I give a only child vibe.

Jason Elkins (16:41.517)
All right. That’s that’s very cool. Are you familiar with the Myers Briggs personality assessment? Yeah. That’s I won’t put you on the spot. I was just curious if you if you’d heard of that.

Hayley Donigan (16:47.999)
Yes, and I think I’ve done it but I can’t remember what my Yeah, but I I know I’m I’m definitely introverted. I like my own company a lot, but I’m very friendly. So maybe I’m an ambivert. I’m not sure.

Jason Elkins (16:58.852)
Yeah.

Yeah, it sounds it sounds like it. Okay, so did where did you where’d you grow up?

Hayley Donigan (17:10.127)
I grew up in Orange County, California.

Jason Elkins (17:12.613)
what was that like growing up in Orange County, California?

Hayley Donigan (17:17.953)
It was pretty idyllic. it’s always sunny. The seasons don’t really change much, but it’s an interesting place to grow up in the sense that you don’t know what you don’t know. So I didn’t really understand that

That was unusual to live somewhere that was always sunny. That was just you know, Christmas, it’s sunny, you know. It’s just that’s just that was normal to me. we you know grew up going in in the pool, going to the beach, being outside, going to the park. So I’m really lucky. And it was Orange County is very suburban, and so it’s a very safe place to live, and I feel like I got a lot of opportunities to be a kid. you know, like I think kids that grow up in big cities maybe.

Jason Elkins (17:36.741)
Uh-huh.

Hayley Donigan (18:03.672)
have to grow up a little bit quicker but I felt like I really got to be a kid so I feel really grateful for that.

Jason Elkins (18:05.605)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (18:10.263)
Okay. And because yeah, I I’m happy that you mentioned that because a lot of our listeners are from around the world and some of us have ideas of California. So even even I, I like I’m familiar with California. But when you say Orange County, California, I’m I think a lot of people like, that’s just that’s like LA, right? That’s like yeah, that’s hustle bustle, kind of crazy. but it’s it sounds like yours it was more of a suburb type of li childhood, I guess.

Hayley Donigan (18:30.542)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (18:40.526)
Yes. it’s really interesting what people’s perceptions are of Orange County because especially because it’s it’s been on TV, so people are familiar with the OC. And I come from a city called Rancho Santa Margarita, which a lot of people have not heard of. And the reason probably is because it’s only 25 years old. It just celebrated its twenty-fifth birthday. So it that’s something maybe we can talk about during our conversation because I’m I’m sure that’s part of the reason that I’m so fascinated

Jason Elkins (18:50.927)
Uh-huh.

Hayley Donigan (19:10.54)
with traveling because I go places that are that have all this history and culture and heritage and my city was literally built 25 years ago. It’s it’s it’s like it’s beautiful, but it’s like living in I kind of like living in Disneyland or something. It’s very manicured.

Jason Elkins (19:29.153)
Okay. All right. No no old buildings, no okay.

Hayley Donigan (19:33.07)
None of that. No, well, if by nineties you mean old, because people do now think that that’s kind of vintage. So yeah, kind of.

Jason Elkins (19:38.501)
Well, that’s true. And and for our listeners, where do you live now? Yeah. That’s a change. Like su in s in so many ways, because I heard you say that you grew up kind of thinking it was sunny everywhere every day. And and

Hayley Donigan (19:45.294)
I live in London, England now. Yeah, very different. Yeah, it’s a big change.

Hayley Donigan (19:57.701)
yeah, and and this is we were talking about this before the call. It’ll be sunny here one minute, then it’s pouring with rain, and so we were at talking about the lighting of this video because it’s like should I have the blinds up or down? We just don’t know what’s gonna be happening here.

Jason Elkins (20:10.053)
‘Cause yeah. It’s bright out there outside right now, but in half an hour it could be, yeah, could be raining. We’re gonna we’re definitely gonna figure out how you made that big transition because it is a big transition. But let’s do you remember subjects in school that were really like was writing an early on thing? Was did did tell us kind of how you got into that.

Hayley Donigan (20:29.552)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (20:33.872)
Okay, well I guess I can start by saying that my mother is an English professor. So I from an early age was read to and both of my parents read a lot and so I think reading was always a huge part of my life and

Jason Elkins (20:40.325)
okay.

Hayley Donigan (20:51.328)
I I mean it could be genetics, it could be, or it could be that, but I I always found English very, very easy in school. It was like I didn’t need to put any effort in versus math. my goodness, that was a different story. So I think you know, we did we did the standardized tests in school, and English was always like 99th percentile, whatever, you know, not that it means anything, but it was that was, and then math would be like, you’re the 70th percentile or whatever, and that was me like aggregating.

Jason Elkins (20:53.903)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (21:00.101)
Okay.

Hmm.

Jason Elkins (21:14.533)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (21:21.042)
Agonizing over every answer. So I

Jason Elkins (21:22.978)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (21:25.232)
I enjoyed it because I think I was just naturally good at it and it didn’t take too much extra effort. And then I would say I’ve always I’ve always also been interested in I guess the arts or more creative subjects or the humanities. And so I think that’s why I was drawn more to writing as a career, but I do also kind of like the element of strategy and logic that comes with being a marketing person. So there it it’s not like I’m a full-blown creative. I I have a

Jason Elkins (21:36.9)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (21:55.186)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (21:56.547)
All right. Did you do sports in school?

Hayley Donigan (21:58.897)
Oof no. No, no, no, no, no. That was I was the PE person who was just there to get it over with. yeah. I did do a little bit of dance as a child. I did some dance, but that that’s the extent of my nothing competitive. I don’t wanna be competing. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (22:12.921)
That’s the creative side. That’s the yeah, dance is creative. So yeah.

Okay. intri interesting. Did you what did you and after you finished high school, what did you do?

Hayley Donigan (22:28.602)
So I went to university in England. So that is how I ended up over here. Yeah. So I decided that well, I guess to step back, I decided that I wanted to study communications. I realized that

Jason Elkins (22:33.348)
Okay. All right.

Jason Elkins (22:40.505)
That was the actually the question I wanted to get at is what what did you study? and when do you remember thinking do you remember a point when you’re like, yep, this is what I’m gonna do. I wanna do communications.

Hayley Donigan (22:44.634)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (22:51.672)
It’s a good question. I I was very academic in high school. I got really competitive well, not competitive. I wouldn’t say competitive, but I got very interested in doing well in high school because I was really interested in I wouldn’t say it was so much

Jason Elkins (23:02.658)
Okay.

Hayley Donigan (23:08.91)
What college I went to, in the sense of like the how good of a college it was, but I wanted to be able to go where I wanted to go. I wanted to have the option to go elsewhere. And so I was very motivated to give myself as many options as I could. And so I leaned into I’m, you know, all the subjects just to to get you know, the the degree that would allow me to do that. And so my high school offered an international background.

Jason Elkins (23:18.415)
Okay.

Hayley Donigan (23:38.788)
baccalaureate degree, which a lot of high schools do not offer. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s basically it’s a high school diploma that you can use internationally, which basically means that you can use your high school credits to apply to universities abroad. and it’s kind of a unusual thing to do. I don’t I don’t actually know how many people do it. but I had a really big graduating class, like thousands of high schoolers graduating at the same time, but only a very, very small fraction of us

Jason Elkins (23:53.625)
Okay.

Hayley Donigan (24:08.951)
actually got that specific degree. and that allowed me to apply for universities abroad, which weirdly I was the only one from my high school of my year that did that. So that was why I did it.

Jason Elkins (24:22.361)
Yeah, I wanna I wanna touch on that because I heard you say a couple of things. One thing I heard you say was I wanted to go where I could do what I wanted to do. and it sound but you were talking about communication. So it sounded like and I’m just you helped me figure this out because I heard you say I want to do communications, I wanted to do well in school so that I could go where I wanted to go, and then you kind of made it you said something about

Hayley Donigan (24:32.913)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (24:38.875)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (24:52.387)
You c it sounded like I want to get the fuck out of here.

Hayley Donigan (24:57.187)
combination of it wasn’t I don’t dislike where I grew up at all but I I knew that it wasn’t necessarily a perfect fit for me. I knew that I could go elsewhere and have great experiences in different places. And so I I used academia as a catalyst for being able to do that if that makes sense.

Jason Elkins (25:17.695)
It it does make sense. And that’s what I was trying to figure out. Was this a wow, I can go anywhere in the world. If I do well in school, I can go somewhere else. And but I but I want to ask when you said you didn’t think maybe Orange County was the right I don’t know, fit. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but why? Help me understand what maybe was behind your desire to go.

Hayley Donigan (25:34.545)
But no.

Hayley Donigan (25:44.444)
There are so many different things that I could say. I would say that a lot of people in Orange County tend to stay in Orange County or they don’t leave very often. It’s not, you know, l you as you know in in the US, you’re not close to that many other countries. And I felt like I wanted to live somewhere that was more diverse and and gave me more opportunities to

Jason Elkins (25:55.192)
Okay.

Hayley Donigan (26:12.611)
experience different cultures. and that living in Europe has allowed me to do that very easily. Much more much more easily.

Jason Elkins (26:14.381)
Okay, okay, got it.

Jason Elkins (26:19.405)
Yeah. I I get that completely and I appreciate you working through that with me because if you said I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa and I did well in school because I wanted the opportunity to go somewhere else, I probably wouldn’t have even asked that question. And and that’s not knocking Des Moines. I grew up in northern Wyoming. I grew up in a very small town in northern Wyoming. Trust me, there were there were a lot of people that stayed, but there were a lot more people that probably graduation, you know, high school came and they’re like, I wanna go.

Hayley Donigan (26:29.657)
Mm.

Hayley Donigan (26:37.617)
Uh-huh.

Jason Elkins (26:49.567)
I wan you know, I wanna go where there’s more stuff happening. And then maybe later they might move back because they miss the mountains and the nature and all that stuff. But so I wanted to ask that about Orange County ’cause I think, wow, there’s there’s all kinds of stuff there. I kinda see why people might stick around. I it’s not probably the right fit for me. So where I’m going with this is I I actually heard the international part was pretty important. Do you think?

Hayley Donigan (26:56.945)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (27:06.054)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (27:14.993)
Yeah.

I think initially I thought, I’ll go to the East Coast because that feels like a completely different place. You know, it’s a different, you know, the two coasts in the US are so different from each other. So that was my initial. Well, I think I applied to universities in yeah, Massachusetts, where I have some family. N New Orleans, I remember thinking, that’ll be so different. You know, and it is, it’s a completely different culture. So I I kinda you know, Pennsylvania, I think I applied. And then I got the idea basically because my mom is British.

Jason Elkins (27:19.749)
Feels international, yeah.

Jason Elkins (27:39.802)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (27:45.386)
And I have dual citizenship. And so that was kind of a little bit of a ha, I wonder what I could do with that. And so that’s what triggered the decision. Maybe I should look in England. And at the time, England was in the EU. So being in having a British passport basically meant having a European passport, which I mean caching. So that’s kind of how that happened. I should have started with that.

Jason Elkins (27:47.791)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (28:02.105)
Yes, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. that makes sense. I’m happy that came out. That no, that make well, that’s why we have this conversation. We pull these things out. all right, so now we need to back up a little bit. and go into ’cause if your mom was British and she sh showed up in California and I th I think we

Hayley Donigan (28:16.326)
Yes.

Hayley Donigan (28:24.006)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (28:25.743)
I’d like to just dig a little bit more into your family and how that might have had an influence because obviously it it did. so what can you share with us about kind of how your parents came together and what influence that might have had on you?

Hayley Donigan (28:39.889)
I honestly say that’s probably one of the most fundamental things that has triggered where I am today because I Yeah, I should I really should have gone. I you know, when you asked me about when I was 12, I should have said, what about before I was born? Because that might have been more relevant.

Jason Elkins (28:46.029)
And we almost missed it. We almost missed it. my goodness. All right.

Jason Elkins (28:56.825)
Well, I was I was looking for a clue and then finally we found it. So now we can go back to where we should have started. So yeah, tell us more about that.

Hayley Donigan (29:03.439)
So my mom was she taught English as a second language. And so she grew up in England, in Yorkshire, and she, when she was in her 20s, moved to Morocco to teach English as a second language and absolutely loved it. Meanwhile, my father, who’s from Massachusetts,

W you know, also really wanted to travel, but his avenue for traveling was going into the military. So my dad was in the military, he was a Marine, and he took on a program, an Arabic speaking program, where he was required to live in Morocco to do that program. And that’s how they met. And they got married in England and then they ended up moving back to the US. And then my older siblings were lucky because they got to travel around, and you know, they l my sister was born in Hawaii, and you know.

Jason Elkins (29:31.448)
yep. Yep.

Jason Elkins (29:42.341)
Okay.

Hayley Donigan (29:54.646)
They lived in Morocco for a bit, etc. etc. I was number three and by the time I came around, I was born in North Carolina, and then we moved to Virginia and then finally say again.

Jason Elkins (30:01.725)
Mm. Cause your f because your father was still in in the military. Yeah, and your father was still in the military, that’s why the moving around Hawaii, North Carolina, all that. Okay.

Hayley Donigan (30:10.427)
Correct. Yeah. So they basically went around where he was stationed. but my earliest memories are of being in Orange County. So by the time I was growing up, that was where my family had settled. but yeah, that was kind of the the air that I breathed growing up was just this love of being abroad. And it’s funny because we didn’t really do family vacations particularly. Like it wasn’t like, we’re gonna go spend a week in Cabo or anything like that.

Jason Elkins (30:18.52)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (30:36.826)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (30:40.371)
But we did every few years go back to England and and visit family. And my parents eventually separated, and my dad actually was stationed in Japan. So when I was 10, we went to or I went to Japan for a month and stayed with him. And so I guess my my travel is living in places or at least trying to experience places as if you live in them, not necessarily going and being on a beach somewhere.

Jason Elkins (31:08.175)
So we just went from a young woman that gr grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and Orange County, living the idyllic life in Cal in California, moving to the UK. And now there’s so much more context to this. So so thank you. And so let’s chat about so your siblings were were older, you mentioned that. how much like were they

Hayley Donigan (31:16.336)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (31:24.566)
Yeah. Yeah. I’ve I’m from a family of travelers.

Hayley Donigan (31:33.626)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (31:36.801)
old enough that they remembered some of their travels like living in Morocco and these other places.

Hayley Donigan (31:44.125)
They do. I mean they were really little, but s I they remember snippets. so I think I mean they were kind of lucky because I believe when they were in Morocco, they would have been maybe I don’t know, I think my brother was a baby, but my sister would have been maybe three or four years old, something like that. But she was in, you know, preschool and stuff picking up the language, you know, French and Arabic and you know, interacting and they e it it’s just I think a really interesting way to immerse your child. But the funny thing is, my sister is actually

Jason Elkins (32:03.141)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (32:14.078)
Out of all of us, she’s the homebody. She really likes to be home. She lives in California. and me and my brother are the ones that that really love traveling and living living abroad. So

Jason Elkins (32:23.823)
Did they both, when you were younger, do you remember them saying things like, I’m from Morocco or I was born in Remoc or Morocco? you know, ’cause sometimes kids like my son, he was born in Vermont. We lived in Vermont till he was eight. He’s been living in in Arizona for

Hayley Donigan (32:32.274)
Hm.

Jason Elkins (32:41.167)
10, 11 years and he’s still very proud to tell people I’m from Vermont. You know, it’s it’s part of his identity. He was there a little bit longer than it sounds like your siblings were, but I was just curious, did you did did your siblings like, well, I’m special because I was born in Morocco and you were just born here in California? Or I just was there any jealousy around that?

Hayley Donigan (32:46.078)
I love that.

Hayley Donigan (33:01.38)
Yeah. It’s a good question. I don’t remember them doing that. I think that they remember a little bit more of being on the East Coast. So maybe like Virginia and North Carolina a little bit more. but I am jealous. I am I have to say I’m a little bit bitter that they got to have even though they don’t really remember much of it, but Yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (33:10.789)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (33:21.315)
I heard you I heard you say they were lucky. I did hear you say that earlier. So that’s that’s actually what prompted the question.

Hayley Donigan (33:25.508)
And and what if if I could like ask my parents to do something for me, I would be like, just couldn’t you have stayed there and then I could have been trilingual and you know, it would have been great.

Jason Elkins (33:36.11)
That makes sense. But so but you went to Japan at ten, right? To spend time with your dad. What was that like? Had you had you well, it I guess the first question is, had you been out of the country already? ‘Cause you mentioned that you used to go to England every once in while. but I was was this trip to Japan your first trip out of the country? And Japan’s quite a bit different than the UK, so I just I I’m curious about that.

Hayley Donigan (33:40.454)
Yes, yeah.

Hayley Donigan (33:52.113)
Yep.

Hayley Donigan (34:01.7)
It was my first trip to Asia, and it is to this day still my only trip to Asia. and I would like to change that because when I was 10 and I went to Japan, I remember getting culture shock really badly. And I think when you’re 10, you don’t really know how to process those feelings in the same way. so I remember thinking, I really didn’t like the food. I and I was a I was a picky eater, I’m not anymore. I really didn’t like the food, and it was just, you know, overwhelming to not be able to speak the language.

Jason Elkins (34:06.648)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (34:19.823)
Uh-huh.

Jason Elkins (34:24.377)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (34:31.604)
and yeah, there are a lot of things that now I think about, if if I went as an adult, I would absolutely love every single piece of this.

Jason Elkins (34:40.901)
Do you remember having convers have you had conversations about that with your dad? Do you remember there being tension or conflict between the two of you? And the reason I’m asking is because I took my son to Asia. He was probably fifteen. We spent a couple months in Malaysia, Thailand, and a a short stay in Japan. And honestly it was

I think it was kind of the same thing. It was like he lost interest in the food pretty quickly. It was I remember we had a big fight. We were on Penang Island in Malaysia and he just wanted to go to McDonald’s. And I’m like, no, this is like the the food capital of the world. Like this is like there’s so many amazing choices. And he’s just I just want to go to McDonald’s. And it was like this big fight that that we had and

Hayley Donigan (35:30.866)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (35:31.179)
Yeah, so I’m curious, did was your dad frustrated with that? Do you remember a tension between the two of you?

Hayley Donigan (35:39.087)
I do remember the first thing we ate when we arrived was we went to a sizzler, which I think is hilarious. I don’t know why there was a sizzler in Tokyo, and I’m not sure if it there still is. But anyway, that’s like and I remember being like, okay, this is fine. I c I mean the menu’s still a little weird, but I can deal with this. but then there were other times where it was eating thing, you know, I ate horse when I was there. I’m a vegetarian now, but at the time so there’s a lot of I feel like very immersive experiences that I was maybe not fully prepared for.

Jason Elkins (35:44.343)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (35:55.972)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (36:01.445)
okay.

Hayley Donigan (36:08.98)
But I’m so grateful that I had that experience. I mean, how amazing. And to be there for a month. I always joke with my family about this now because my dad had us climb Mount. It was me and my brother that went. And he had us climb Mount Fuji. And we had no prior training or experience to be doing that. And just, yeah, just, you know, we just one day it was we’re gonna climb this mountain today. And I I

Jason Elkins (36:14.244)
Wow.

Jason Elkins (36:24.783)
Cool.

Jason Elkins (36:29.101)
You came from California, sea level, hot, warm, yeah.

Hayley Donigan (36:38.78)
Pretty sure he would probably you asked him, he would probably say that was not fun for him because he was like basically dragging us up that mountain, like, come on. But I would argue that you know it was never meant to be. And funny enough, when we got to so there’s these stations as you go up the mountain, and we got to the second to last station before we reached the top. And I remember him saying, Okay, you’ve got a choice now. We’re almost there. You can either wait here and I’ll go up to the top, or you

Jason Elkins (37:00.741)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (37:08.744)
can just come up with me. It’s one more stop and we’re there. And I said, you you go, I’ll wait here. So I never made it to the very tippy top of of Mount Fuji.

Jason Elkins (37:14.83)
really?

Jason Elkins (37:18.509)
Okay. Do you do you regret that?

Hayley Donigan (37:23.654)
Don’t because I feel like everyone has different things that they care about. And for me, climbing to the top of a mountain is just not something that I care about. And so you know, there’s other things I, for example, really miss you. There’s a very big guinea pig culture and capibera culture in Japan, and those would be the kinds of things that I would really like to go see. So I’m very big on finding the things that you’re interested in and doing those things, not necessarily doing the things that you should do. You know, I should climb Mount Fuji.

Jason Elkins (37:27.749)
Uh-huh.

Jason Elkins (37:53.956)
Respect that. Yeah, I get that. Do you remember what you did while he was trekking to the top? Did you have a book in your backpack that you were reading, or what were you doing?

Hayley Donigan (37:58.971)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (38:03.366)
Just sat there, as they would say in England, as my mom would say, I think I just sat there with a face like a slapped ass. I think I just I just was miserable and wasn’t being very good company to anybody. So yeah, I I I I wasn’t there alone. I was there with my stepsister and my stepmom, and so they sat with me and then my brother and my dad went to the top. He did.

Jason Elkins (38:21.029)
Okay. Your brother went. Did your brother give you a hard time? Yeah, I’m sure he did. No.

Hayley Donigan (38:26.412)
No, you know what, I have he’s a very good brother, so he would he was always the brother that if I, you know, if a if a plate of food was put in front of me and I really didn’t want to eat it, but I knew I had to eat it, he would he would sneakily eat it for me so that I wouldn’t have to.

Jason Elkins (38:37.929)
he’d have.

What have you realized since then that maybe he had an ulterior motive? Maybe he was happy to eat your food, but but wanted but wanted you to think he was doing you a favor? Yeah, I’ve done that.

Hayley Donigan (38:51.998)
I hope so actually. I hope so. Yeah, I hope so. Cause otherwise it’s really sad because I feel like he was always just trying to kind of protect me from things.

Jason Elkins (39:03.833)
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve eaten somebody else’s plate of food and said, okay, I’ll help you. And then I was like, very, very happy. I’m a n I’m a nice guy like that. So all right. That’s that’s that’s pretty cool. When you when you got back, so you were 10. Okay. Around 10 is kind of when, in my experience, you’d come back to school at the end of the summer. This was over summer break, I assume. Yep.

Hayley Donigan (39:08.306)
I’ll just yeah, yeah, leave it to me.

Hayley Donigan (39:29.906)
I think it was, yeah.

Jason Elkins (39:31.501)
So you come back to school after summer break and there’s a lot of like, Well, what did you do this summer? Well, what did you do this summer? The teacher might even make you share with the class at that age what you did this summer. Do you remember any of that? Was there any conversation? Do remember any reactions from other people?

Hayley Donigan (39:36.053)
Mm.

Hayley Donigan (39:48.915)
I do remember feeling a little bit different because I knew, you know, I had my mom was an immigrant, and then my dad became an immigrant when he moved to Japan, and I was kind of aware that my family’s situation was a little bit different from. And I again, maybe this is why I feel slightly out of place in Orange County, in the sense that I think other people maybe were just going on like

Jason Elkins (40:03.385)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (40:11.418)
A a quote unquote normal summer vacation, and I was spending a month in Japan on a marine base and then, you know, taking trips to go climb Mount Fuji. So yeah, I think I was aware and and again when we went to England too, we weren’t going to London and going to up the London Eye and, you know, seeing Big Ben. We were driving up to this small village in Yorkshire that no one’s ever heard of, and and you know, it it’s a little bit of a different experience. So I think I was conscious of that.

Jason Elkins (40:14.116)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (40:38.553)
That’s true. You’d already had been exposed to that. do you were you do you remember were you excited before the trip to Japan? Did you think, wow, this is really cool? And maybe it’s just I wanna see dad. I get that too. But I’m curious, like, were you excited to go and then afterwards when you got back, you know, was ’cause you said there was some culture shock. You said there was some stuff you didn’t enjoy so much. So I’m just kind of curious.

Hayley Donigan (41:02.385)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (41:05.816)
excited but I also I remember keep in mind this was the day you know these were the days before kids had like iPads and blah blah blah so I remember dreading those long flights to England. I don’t know how my mother did it with three young kids when she would take us. But I yeah I remember kind of dreading the flight and this was also before you know flights we didn’t have our own little TVs or anything so I I can’t remember what what we did.

Jason Elkins (41:13.817)
Yeah, yeah. huh.

Jason Elkins (41:22.597)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (41:32.846)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (41:35.71)
I think we must have read or did activities or whatever you do.

Jason Elkins (41:40.313)
What w w was it just you and your brother on the flight? ‘Cause you s you said yeah, it was just you and your brother. Okay.

Hayley Donigan (41:46.32)
Yep. Just does two. Yeah, so again he kinda had to be the big brother there and just kinda take the lead with that. He’s only he’s three years older than me. But yeah, I know.

Jason Elkins (41:53.135)
Cash.

I yeah, my brother and I went from Syracuse, New York to Sydney, Australia when w when I was twelve. It was just the two of us on that unaccompanied minor thing. So I can relate. Yeah, it was really, really boring. Cause yeah, there were no televisions. I think they used to have those like earphones. This was before your time, but I they used to have the earphones that were like you could plug them into the seat, but it was like an air cushion thing. It wasn’t even wired, it was just so you could hear music maybe. but

Hayley Donigan (41:59.943)
Wow.

Hayley Donigan (42:04.208)
Yes, yes, yeah, that’s exactly it. Yes.

Hayley Donigan (42:24.09)
Okay, yeah.

Jason Elkins (42:24.387)
Yeah, that was that was yeah, okay. Did you and did you and your brother get along on the way? You said he was older, so he was a little bit more responsible, but yeah, yeah. Okay.

Hayley Donigan (42:28.836)
It’s funny, isn’t it?

Hayley Donigan (42:33.284)
In my memory, yeah, I think we did. I think we were fine, but it it must have been a burden for him because he was the one that kind of had to take charge, I think, and and be the the responsible one as the older brother. And I was just kind of going along with it. So I’m a very laid back person and that could be why. Cause I’m just like, okay, I guess I’m going to Japan for a month. I don’t think I really thought too much about it. And to be honest, i I’m still a little bit like that w when it comes to traveling, or I’m very go with the flow, like, I know someone in Rome, I’ll just I’ll just go see.

Jason Elkins (42:42.999)
At thirteen. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (42:53.701)
All right.

Hayley Donigan (43:03.228)
them and what do they want to do? I’ll just do what they want to do. I’m very like, you guys take the lead and I will follow. so I don’t really I’m not super fixated on logistics or anything like that.

Jason Elkins (43:16.217)
What’s that that I love that about you, the just kind of the flexibility. Even the first time we the first time we spoke, you’re like, Yeah, spontaneous, great. ‘Cause I told you I said there’s there’s no script. I don’t have a list of questions for you. You’re like, Okay, cool, let’s go. when so now we go back to when you graduated from high school and you got accepted to go to school over in the UK.

Hayley Donigan (43:24.646)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (43:28.922)
Even better.

Hayley Donigan (43:37.564)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (43:41.029)
‘Cause that was a question I would normally ask is, Well, what did your parents think of that? But your dad was traveling, I don’t know if he was still in Japan or where he was, but your mom had immigrated, you know, so obvious so but I’m still gonna ask you, what was that like leaving California to go to the UK to school?

Hayley Donigan (43:49.831)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (43:59.132)
So I I can’t remember if my dad was back at that point, but he did make his way back to California. So they’re both in California now, and my stepmom is in California. they were really excited. I think they were they just understood why I wanted to do it, and I feel so grateful because I think I’m really lucky to have parents that were just like, you go, just go. But I guess the other side to that is they’re also like, you figure it out. Like if that’s what you want to do, great, but we’re not gonna take you. So that was the first time I’d gotten on a flight on

On my own, and it was okay, you’re going, you’re flying to England, and good luck. Like, see you later. And in a way, I think it was good in the sense that there was no option of like, you know, mom, I want to come home now. I’ve I’ve made a big mistake. It was like, no, you’ve committed to this now, you’re going, you’re you’re in the UK, and and that’s that. So I’m grateful for that style of parenting because I think it I I just had to make it work. So, and I did.

Jason Elkins (44:34.724)
Wow.

Jason Elkins (44:53.231)
Okay. So three let’s say I don’t wanna put in well, I’d I’ll just ask you, was there a point after you got there that you did regret your decision? Did you go through the homesickness thing? I think most people do. I’ve been through it. I’ve been traveling for a while now and I’ve been through it.

Hayley Donigan (45:09.841)
Yes, so I don’t remember this very clearly, but my mom reminds me of this. I think the first week that I arrived, I wasn’t so I arrived in you know, you go into student accommodation, but I because I was an international student, they advise that you come a week earlier than everybody else. So I arrived and I wasn’t put in my permanent residence. I was put in some random residence. I don’t know why. so I was staying in this empty dorm building. It was like no one else. I think there might have been one other person in like a different part of the building.

Or whatever. So I’m just, you know, I’m 18 years old, I’ve never lived abroad, and suddenly I’m alone in this, in this, and it was kind of a creepy, it was almost like imagine like being in Hogwarts or something. That was like what the vibe was in this particular student accommodation. So I remember, well, my mom remembers me calling her, and again, this was before, you know, we didn’t have smartphones and stuff, but somehow I think I I managed to connect my laptop into a landline or whatever and and found a way to call her. And she says that I was like, What am I doing here? This is

Jason Elkins (45:41.391)
Yes.

Jason Elkins (45:51.785)
really?

Jason Elkins (46:00.816)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (46:09.631)
Really weird and scary. But as soon as I moved into the permanent residences, that was when all of the students came in, and then it was fine.

Jason Elkins (46:10.265)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (46:17.209)
Why do you like in hindsight, if you look back, have you ever figured out why they suggested you come a week early or is that still a mystery? ‘Cause it sounds like i if it was Yeah, if it was like

Hayley Donigan (46:25.043)
I think that they have some kind of I think they had like orientation for international students. I don’t remember, but I think that they wanted you to like, you know, go set up a bank account and like you you had to kind of do all those little things that intern national students have to do. So I think that was why, just to give you a little bit more time to acclimatize, but I’m not sure why they put me in an empty building. I don’t know why they couldn’t have put us all together. I’ve never figured that out. Yeah. It yeah.

Jason Elkins (46:37.551)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (46:47.939)
Well that’s that’s the part I’m

That’s the part I’m wondering. If you took all of the international students, they all show up a week early and they all get to know each other and they have, you know, dinner together and and maybe go to the bank together, then it would be kind of that would be a softer landing, I guess, is what I would say. But but yeah, but being alone, like right off the bat, that’s not a that’s never a good way to start something, in my opinion. But yeah, okay.

Hayley Donigan (46:58.119)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (47:05.061)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (47:11.76)
Yeah.

Once once I was kind of everyone moved in, I was absolutely fine. I loved it. I was like flying. I I thought it was amazing. And and to this day, you know, I’ve lived I’ve lived abroad for 16 years now. I don’t have moments of homesickness, but I do find that saying goodbye when I travel back and forth, when I say goodbye, that gets harder every single time. I’m not sure why, but it’s just that it just it’s really difficult. and I do sometimes kick myself in the sense.

Jason Elkins (47:34.787)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, it does.

Hayley Donigan (47:43.838)
That I’ve set I I feel like I’ve made my life more difficult. Sometimes I think, why couldn’t you have just stayed in California? You’d have been near your family. Everything would have been so much easier, but I’ve kind of set myself up in this immigrant life that is, you know, it’s not easy. It’s not an easy thing to do, but it has obviously its appeal.

Jason Elkins (48:03.609)
Let’s let’s discuss that. Some of the things are obvious because you mentioned, well, you know, families a long ways away. That’s an obvious one. but there’s some other things that are maybe not so obvious. So I so I’ve been traveling for four and a half years, full time, and oftentimes people are like, my gosh, that’s amazing. That’s so cool, that must be a wonderful. And and I’m not saying it’s not, but there’s also some things that surprised me when I started doing it. and

Hayley Donigan (48:30.643)
Hmm.

Jason Elkins (48:31.887)
There there are the other side. One is just being physically, you know, long distance from family, but I’d love to dig into some of your other kind of moments that you’re that you stop and have those like, What am I doing here? What what you know? So what should people that have never experienced what you’re doing or what I’m doing, what would you like them to understand about the reality of being an expat anywhere?

Hayley Donigan (48:45.137)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (48:55.026)
Yeah.

Well, first and foremost, I would love to talk to you more about being a digital nomad because I think that would be so difficult and I’ll explain why. Because I feel like at least

me as an immigrant in England, I’ve been able to kind of settle and and carve out a second home, if that makes sense. So I do still have that feeling of rootedness, even though I did also live in Spain for a bit. So you know, it it has changed, but I have this this sense of having two homes. And so I think that has helped me feel secure. But there is this constant feeling of being kind of pulled in two different directions.

Jason Elkins (49:28.09)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (49:39.738)
Which is really difficult. And you never feel like you fully belong in one place. So I never feel like I’ve I fully belong here or back at home because I’m a different person now. I mean, I’d I’d love to know if you think I ever sound British when I speak, actually, because sometimes people pick up a little twang of of the English. but when I’m home, I sound very, very, very American. So it’s it’s things like that that I guess I’ve become a hybrid and it’s a in it’s a interesting balance.

Jason Elkins (50:01.678)
Right.

Hayley Donigan (50:09.621)
of you know where do I belong.

Jason Elkins (50:10.361)
Let me let me ask you a hypothetical question, because I don’t know how you’d know the answer to this question, but I’m curious what you would think if you had gone to school in Pennsylvania and decided wow, I really like Pennsylvania and you decided to stay in Pennsylvania, do you how would you co how would you guess how you like would you ’cause you just described I feel like I’m kind of in between.

I’m I don’t necessarily belong here, I don’t necessarily belong there. There’s this in between thing. And I’m wondering if you’d just moved to Pennsylvania if you would have felt kind of the same because it’s still far away. You know, you’re still not gonna go there for the weekend. but culturally it can f there’s still a difference between culturally and Yeah. Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (50:35.837)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (50:46.887)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hayley Donigan (50:51.539)
It’s different. And it’s hard. I mean, it’s still a five-hour flight. Yeah. I think that that’s right. I think I would still feel I think no matter what, I was going to do this to myself. I think it was just something that I had that I was gonna go somewhere else and live in a different place. And the difference I would say is that because I’ve lived in

a different country since the age of 18, I would feel really weird moving back to the US as an adult. Because I’ve never actually been an adult living permanently in the US. And I feel like I wouldn’t really I it would be like being an expat again. Yeah. I would have to figure out so I mean how the heck does healthcare work in the US? my goodness. So these are the kinds of things that it it’s strange to say this, but it’s like I would feel like a foreigner in my own country. And so

Jason Elkins (51:31.811)
A culture shock. Happy culture shock.

Jason Elkins (51:38.564)
Yeah, yeah.

Hayley Donigan (51:47.519)
And and sometimes now I when I speak to other Americans, they they make references about certain things, and I’m like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. So it’s this strange thing where it’s like, I’m not fully British, I’m not fully American, I’m just I’m just swimming in both waters.

Jason Elkins (51:55.587)
Ha ha ha.

Jason Elkins (52:02.509)
I get that. And I suspect that that’s if if somebody listening to this has not had that experience, it’s maybe kind of hard to imagine, but I completely get it. And I’ve you’ve been outside the US, living outside the US a lot longer than I have. And I’m still I’m already like that, four and a half years. And when I go home to visit, I just feel like kind of uncomfortable in my own skin. It’s not that I don’t like it there, it’s just that, you know,

Hayley Donigan (52:25.299)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (52:28.279)
and of course every time I go back the food prices are really it seems like they double and I it maybe it’s the same thing in the UK. but just things and I get back and yeah, I just kinda feel like I’m kinda already out of touch. And then when I

Hayley Donigan (52:32.185)
my goodness. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (52:43.727)
I spend a lot of time in Colombia. It feels kinda like my home probably more than any other place. But I leave and go other places, visit other places. So for me, every time I back to th come back to Columbia, I feel like, I’m home. I underst I feel like I understand how things work here. I can connect with people, communicate with people and move through my daily life and it just feels much more normal than it does even when I go to the US. So it’s interesting how we maybe the place we were born or the place we grew up isn’t like

Hayley Donigan (52:47.558)
Hm.

Hayley Donigan (52:55.393)
good, yeah.

Hayley Donigan (53:08.041)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (53:13.177)
the natural fit for our personalities or there’s an energy thing, right? And I there’s probably research around that, but it it’s just like I feel like I’m more Colombian than I am. we would say American, but if you say American to Colombians are like, no, we’re all Americans. We’re all on the American continent. So I’ve I’ve I’ve become very sensitive to not using the word American, even though it makes easier because most of the world understands exactly what you’re saying when you say that.

Hayley Donigan (53:31.004)
Right. Yeah. US American.

Hayley Donigan (53:42.312)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (53:43.254)
but which actually reminds me because in in English we don’t have another word for American. We can say I’m from the United States or a United States citizen or whatever, but you know in the Spanish Spanish language they have a specific word for somebody from the US and I’m afraid to even try and say it, but it’s something like ustada nencia or something like that.

Hayley Donigan (53:53.62)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (54:05.3)
Interesting.

Jason Elkins (54:05.997)
Yeah, so they have a word. So it’s very easy for them, you know, they would say you’re Colombian, you’re Mexican, you’re French, you’re German, you’re Estadoinencia or whatever. So it makes sense for them. They’ve got a word for that. So when they hear Americans, you people from the US say, I’m American, they’re like, jeez, you you Americans. It’s an interesting language thing. So the reason I’m bringing this up is

Hayley Donigan (54:20.382)
Say that. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (54:31.321)
You were interested in English. That was a strong suit for you. But you also had family that traveled. You mentioned, you know, your your sister, I believe it was had learned some some words when she was in in Morocco. Have you studied other languages? Was that part of your thing? Is that something you’re really into as well? Cause you I think you mentioned that you lived in Spain as well, right?

Hayley Donigan (54:43.636)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (54:54.312)
Hmm. So I did French growing up, so from the age of 12, I learned French in school, so 12 to 18, but I didn’t have a knack for it. I think part of the reason is because the US education system doesn’t really do an amazing job of teaching languages, or at least not in the sense of being able to use them in a natural way. So my French is not good. and then when and I guess you could also add, I grew up in

Jason Elkins (55:04.389)
Okay. No.

Hayley Donigan (55:23.334)
Southern California, which is full of Spanish speakers. and I, for whatever reason, decided to learn French, which I don’t regret, but I, you know, I think back on it and I think, ooh, oops. but when I moved to Spain, I did not speak Spanish, and that was quite an adjustment, and it was a little bit of a baptism by fire, and it was a good thing because I did learn.

Jason Elkins (55:26.563)
Uh-huh.

Hayley Donigan (55:47.869)
I learned the basics very well. Like I can order food at a restaurant and I can get groceries. You know, all the things that you have to do, I can do that. No problem, I wouldn’t bat an eyelid. but having meaningful conversations is much more difficult for me. I don’t think I have a knack for languages. but I’m grateful that I have I I did have that experience. And then my partner here in London is British and Turkish. And so now I’ve been trying to speak, I’ve been trying to learn a little bit of Turkish.

Jason Elkins (55:58.298)
Yes.

Jason Elkins (56:14.125)
No.

Hayley Donigan (56:17.782)
And that’s that’s much more difficult actually. So now I’m like, gosh, I wish I’d have just, you know, really applied myself with Spanish. That probably would would have been much easier. But, you know.

Jason Elkins (56:28.975)
But yeah, and I’ll tell you I I kinda similar s story that before I started traveling full time, I was living in Arizona. I lived in Arizona for f I don’t know, five, six, seven years. Plenty of opportunities to learn Spanish, to practice Spanish.

Did I? No, of course not. And then when I got to Colombia the first, you know, four and a half years ago and I thought maybe I’ll stick around in Latin America for a while, is it became obvious. Probably time to start learning. You know. It was so much easier and it just came because cause I had to. That’s the difference. Like I’m pretty I’m kind of on the extrovert side and

Hayley Donigan (56:55.516)
Yeah. And how did it go?

Jason Elkins (57:07.329)
I wanna talk to people. I wanna connect with people. And I quick I quickly learned that the only way I’m gonna really be able to do that is start to start learning. And and it was yeah.

Hayley Donigan (57:09.726)
So perfect, yeah.

Hayley Donigan (57:16.39)
It takes a lot of confidence. Yeah, because it can be very humbling to be muddling through a foreign language.

Jason Elkins (57:23.715)
And another thing I I learned pretty quickly was, you know what, we’re all like that. So me me in Colombia or Mexico trying to have a conversation, you know, because there’s plenty of there’s plenty of people in the Latin world that speak some English. Not not not everybody. I’m not gonna I’m not gonna over exaggerate this. It’s it’s not easy to find people that do. But what I’ve learned, and I think is common, is if I’m trying in Spanish

Hayley Donigan (57:29.662)
Hmm.

Hayley Donigan (57:39.154)
Hmm. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (57:52.236)
And they’ve got a little bit, maybe their English is about as good as my Spanish. If they hear me trying, they are much more likely to open up and try as well. Where if I just showed up and just expected to find just to find people that could speak some English, I think the vast majority of them would just look at me and say, Nope, no habla Inglis. And and it would be done. But since I’m trying, they would try. It’s the same thing. It’s kind of a

Hayley Donigan (57:56.594)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (58:02.355)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (58:14.313)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (58:20.015)
When I was young and I visited France, I think when I was fifteen, and I’d had three years of French in school. And I quit but like you said, I realized, okay, like in school, I was like, I’m one of the top students. I I I know this French thing and you go to Paris and yeah, it’s a it’s a totally, totally different animal. But

Hayley Donigan (58:28.348)
Yeah.

Oops, yeah.

Hayley Donigan (58:35.784)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (58:39.837)
It’s

Jason Elkins (58:42.201)
Just the fact that I was willing to try and speak in French, you know, those the stereotypical Parisian who doesn’t have any time for for somebody from the US, at least it would soften them up a little bit. They’d at least, you know, start to try and and communicate. So I think there’s value, value in that. How let’s okay, let’s go back because I want to make sure we don’t miss any we’ve already covered a lot of great stuff, but I want to make sure we don’t miss any any other huge things that we just gloss over.

Hayley Donigan (58:53.842)
Ha ha ha.

Hayley Donigan (59:10.322)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (59:12.311)
So you went to school, you were majoring in communication right from the beginning, is that right? And did you stick with communication all the way through?

Hayley Donigan (59:15.476)
Yeah. Correct.

Yeah, and something that was great about the education system in England, and one of the appeals for me coming here is that when you study in a university, you just study that subject. So I wasn’t taking any other, you know, I you don’t have to take math and science and all these other, you know, subjects. So I loved that. So I only did communications. and I was able to hear you graduate in three years rather than four years as well. So in three years I got my bachelor’s degree, and then I had one additional year where

Jason Elkins (59:28.928)
okay.

Hayley Donigan (59:49.648)
I got my master’s degree. So in four years I was able to get two degrees, which is, you know, and truly a fraction of the price of what it would have been in the US. So really even that in and of itself made it a fantastic decision for me.

Jason Elkins (59:51.397)
Okay.

Jason Elkins (01:00:04.707)
Was there I hear all the the pros, the pros sound amazing. And what are the cons? Was there any downside to the way that I’m gonna say you did that, but I guess it’s just the way they do it there. Was there a downside to that? Do you feel like you missed out on anything?

Hayley Donigan (01:00:08.787)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (01:00:18.709)
Interesting question. One thing I did notice is I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I guess just stepping back a little bit and talking about American culture. So whether it’s academic or work culture, Americans hustle and they really, you know, you really have to fight to get to where you want to be. And I think that there’s a lot of pressure to be quote unquote successful. And I think

In high school, I managed to use that to my advantage in the sense that I was ambitious and it got me over to England. And then I got to England and suddenly that culture kind of disappeared. And there were a lot of people that didn’t they were in, you know, they’re really smart people and they’d clearly worked hard in school, but it was almost like la la la la la, like here I am at university, I’m kinda here to have fun, and whereas my friends in the US were like really, you know, they were it was rigorous. And so I did feel a little bit like

Jason Elkins (01:00:59.439)
Really?

Hayley Donigan (01:01:17.567)
I lost a little bit of that like being pushed to to strive for more. luckily I

Jason Elkins (01:01:21.509)
Okay.

Hayley Donigan (01:01:26.185)
didn’t really need to be pushed because I was so grateful to be there and I want I was so interested in the subjects anyway that I, you know, I engaged. But I knew a lot of people that wouldn’t show up to lectures, wouldn’t show up to seminars, and I think part of that as well is yeah, I think part of it is also because it’s so much cheaper that maybe they didn’t feel as much of a like, I really need to take advantage of this. so it’s just an i it’s an interesting one. But other than that, I thought the quality of the education was amazing. My professors were amazing, University of Leeds.

Jason Elkins (01:01:38.435)
And they still got through.

Jason Elkins (01:01:46.927)
Pressure. Yeah. Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:01:56.132)
is amazing, shout out to Leeds. so yeah i in that sense it it was a great experience and as I said I feel lucky I got to have two degrees.

Jason Elkins (01:02:05.891)
As far as you mentioned the things you didn’t have to do. You didn’t have to study math or biology or all those one on one courses that most people in the US end up taking a bunch of classes that I guess you could say maybe they don’t need or it doesn’t contribute directly to their degree. But I also, you know, when I was in school, it was I well, here’s the thing. I imagine i if I’m doing communications

Hayley Donigan (01:02:12.831)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:02:35.713)
And pretty much every class I do is communications related and which means presumably all the other students are also communications majors. You’re hanging out with a bunch of communications people and you don’t have the opportunity to maybe be exposed to the people that are doing computer science or or math or or engineering and I wonder

Hayley Donigan (01:02:38.741)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (01:02:44.852)
Right.

Hayley Donigan (01:02:54.579)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:03:00.077)
I guess that’s you know, I just wonder if you kinda miss out on not being exposed to maybe some of those well, here’s an example. If I’m a computer science major and I’m only going to class with a bunch of computer scientists, I’ve spent four or five years at university to get my master’s degree, and I and I never once hung out with anybody that was there for theater or music or English or anything like that.

Hayley Donigan (01:03:08.789)
Mm.

Hayley Donigan (01:03:12.115)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:03:24.297)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:03:25.163)
So what are your thoughts on some as somebody who went through a program like you did, i is there any relevance to that? Would you advise anybody to Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:03:28.554)
Mm-hmm.

It’s an interesting way to look at it.

Yeah, I’ve never looked at it that way. I think that there were some degrees that were really like that where it was very insular and people really stuck with each other. And in a way, I think in having that network is a good thing. My degree wasn’t so much like that. It was very kind of, you know, there was lots of different disciplines within communications. So there were the people that were Yeah, there were people that were doing cinema. There were people that were doing radio. There this is it I remember new media was social media was coming about.

Jason Elkins (01:03:53.401)
Well, that’s what I figured. Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:04:03.35)
Was like the new degree, and it was kind of ooh, that’s weird. so in that sense, and and I also think the professors did a really good job of making it multidisciplinary, and we did pull in from other disciplines, but my student we called them student halls. My student halls were very diverse, and so the people that I actually ended up being friends with and am still friends with today are from all different, they did all sorts of different degrees. So I think I think I did get exposed to the different degrees.

Jason Elkins (01:04:04.877)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:04:13.688)
Okay.

Hayley Donigan (01:04:33.25)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:04:34.221)
Okay. I appreciate that response because I I think of like if I am having a conversation with my son or a daughter or maybe a grandchild someday, it it is like I see

Hayley Donigan (01:04:43.158)
Jason Elkins (01:04:46.989)
One of the benefits of going to university as engaging with a bunch of different people from a different bunch of different backgrounds. And if my kid was going into accounting, I would encourage them to, you know, maybe take some, you know, music classes or dance classes or whatever. But that and that just kind of naturally happens in our typical university structure here. So I was just wondering if if that was something. Okay. So from the time you started as a communications major until you finished with your master’s degree in communications, did

Hayley Donigan (01:04:51.37)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:05:02.667)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:05:08.277)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:05:16.903)
Did you still love it the same? Did you love it less? Did you love it more? Were you still as enthusiastic by the time you graduated?

Hayley Donigan (01:05:24.444)
I still loved it. I loved it more. And I was really interested in media. I found media fascinating and just the way that we communicate, but I didn’t know exactly how I was going to apply that in my career. But again, I knew I was good at writing, so it was kind of like, okay, this is the thing that I can do really well. And to be honest, I think early in my career I rested on my laurels a little bit with that because it was like, yeah, I can write. Like, yeah, I can do anything. No problem. And to an extent, that’s the case. You you know, I can I can basically

Right till the cows come home, but obviously over the years I’ve developed my craft, and there’s actually now I’ve learned all of because that was I guess that’s another thing. My degree wasn’t super practical in the sense that I wasn’t learning like these are the principles of marketing, for example. so then I I I can’t remember how, but I decided I was gonna get into marketing because that seemed to make the most sense for what I was good at and what I was interested in. and so when I was applying for jobs that

was that was what I looked into and I looked into travel businesses because of course I at that point had developed my passion for travel so that’s that’s that’s how I started my career was at a travel business.

Jason Elkins (01:06:38.325)
Okay. So tell me, yeah. T well, before we before you tell me about working in that travel business, let’s talk about marketing a little bit because I see where marketing connects, it seems like it would make sense, but I’ve also remember hearing from you know, and I’ve I’ve worked in kind of the marketing space for a while as well. And I came across this concept that marketing is an awful lot of analytics and a lot of just kind of spreadsheets and stuff like that. And I I

Hayley Donigan (01:07:02.078)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:07:08.269)
And it seems almost contradictory sometimes to maybe somebody that likes to wants to share a story and write things and get to the bottom of emotions and all this stuff. And then maybe you get a marketing job and somebody sits you in front of a spreadsheet and you’re analyzing, you know, Google paid ads results and tweaking and try and all these different things. Did that all feel did you even end up doing any of that stuff? Or what what would you like somebody to know about the realities of working in marketing when you’re passionate about writing and stories?

Hayley Donigan (01:07:36.437)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:07:38.023)
storytelling ’cause it’s not always the same thing I think.

Hayley Donigan (01:07:41.162)
for sure. There are, yeah, there are marketing people that are super well, I guess for example, performance marketing people who go into, you know, the analytics and the numbers versus the brand people, for example, that are much more into the creative. But digital marketing overall, it all overlaps and you need to be able to pull from all of those things. So I would say that that was the muscle I had to build was the analytical side of things. and I’m grateful that I did have, and again, I would if

Jason Elkins (01:08:06.105)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:08:10.905)
If I was speaking to you know, let’s say an 18-year-old that was interested in getting into marketing, I would definitely say go into broad marketing roles so you can figure out what you actually want to do. For example, I got the idea in my head I wanted to do PR, and I did an internship in PR and quickly realized that you have to be quite extroverted to do pre-PR. And I thought, no, this is not what I want to do at all. so I I basically tried out a lot of different things and I had several roles that were broad, which I’m

Jason Elkins (01:08:34.181)
Okay.

Hayley Donigan (01:08:40.835)
Glad for because they pushed me and challenged me in ways that I had to learn the full scope of marketing. And then now later on in my career, when I realized, okay, no, the writing side of things is definitely where I want to be, I’ve been able to specialize down that route. but as always informed by all the other stuff. It’s just that that’s not what I lean into anymore.

Jason Elkins (01:08:56.911)
Got it. Sure, sure. I think when I I had when I actually around the time I started this podcast, I kind of thought, I’ll do digital marketing stuff. And that was great and tell people that well, can you do SEO analytics and paid ads and all this stuff? And I realized, yeah, I really don’t want to do that.

Hayley Donigan (01:09:20.618)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:09:21.167)
Can I just build a website for you that looks pretty? Or, you know, maybe even you know, some email automations or, you know, and yeah, and I I realized, maybe digital marketing is not really my thing. But

Hayley Donigan (01:09:28.534)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:09:34.935)
And there’s so many, even like for example, I’ve done quite a lot of social media marketing, which I don’t do as much anymore, but it’s so interesting the way people perceive it, because everyone thinks they can do social media or everyone thinks it’s a s it’s an easy job. my goodness, is there a lot involved in doing social media marketing? So yeah, I I totally get what you’re saying.

Jason Elkins (01:09:48.612)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:09:53.638)
Yep. All right. So you got you got hired by a travel company. So that was that was was that your first job out of out of school?

Hayley Donigan (01:10:00.28)
He did.

Hayley Donigan (01:10:04.875)
That was my first job, and that was why I moved to Spain. So my first job at a travel company in Spain. So that was how that happened.

Jason Elkins (01:10:08.859)
okay.

Jason Elkins (01:10:12.749)
And were they operating in Spanish? there’s just tell me. I don’t want to jump the gun, but yeah, tell me about that. What was that like?

Hayley Donigan (01:10:20.905)
So when I graduated and I was applying for jobs, I had it again, it was just in my head, okay, I’m in the EU, I’m gonna get a job in the EU, I’m gonna find a job, any English-speaking job, but I didn’t want to be a teacher. So, okay, any English-speaking marketing job in the EU. And so I was applying to all these different jobs, and I actually got accepted into a job at a it was it was to write blog content for a tuna industry company in the Netherlands. in

place called Tilburg, which I decided I was like, you know, I did say I would go anywhere, but then I looked into it and I was like, I just don’t think that is gonna be the right fit for me. so I I declined that.

Jason Elkins (01:11:04.217)
Based what was what was the biggest part of the decision? The geography involved or the writing about Cantuna?

Hayley Donigan (01:11:11.063)
It was a combination, I think more the the writing about tuna. but well exactly it was

Jason Elkins (01:11:15.725)
I d what would you write about? You gotta be cre well, you’re creative. I’m sure you could find something.

Hayley Donigan (01:11:19.401)
It was the the industry. Yeah, the industry at whole. And you know, it tracks to where I am now because I do prefer doing B2C marketing versus B2B. but I think also I looked into and you know how we were talking about earlier about certain places just resonate with you more and I looked into where that was gonna be and kind of you know the how I would be able to get around, et cetera, et cetera. And I just thought this doesn’t it just doesn’t feel like a good fit. So anyway, I’m really glad that I didn’t do that because that was when I found

I got offered this job in Seville, Spain, which I’d never I’d never been, I didn’t know anything about it, and it was for a luxury camping company. So basically it was like the Airbnb of luxury camping, and they needed a copywriter. And this was at the you know, this was this was when SEO was first really becoming a big thing, and so that was how I started my career was doing SEO copywriting, which was great, and obviously it gave me the opportunity to move there, so it was it literally was like

Jason Elkins (01:12:01.968)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:12:09.53)
Right.

Hayley Donigan (01:12:19.192)
just I landed and I found an apartment and and I started at this job but it was all English speaking. So even though the so the founder of the company was from Spain and he did a business degree in the US and I think I can’t remember the details but I think Spain paid for him to go do that degree but the requirement on his scholarship was that he had to come and start his business back in Spain. So that’s how that ended up

Jason Elkins (01:12:25.445)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Jason Elkins (01:12:43.031)
okay. So he started a business, an English based business, but it was in Spain. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay.

Hayley Donigan (01:12:48.17)
In Spain. And and he and so a lot of English and American people worked there, or English-speaking Spanish people worked there.

Jason Elkins (01:12:55.607)
Right. Okay. That’s cool. Yeah. Did so one thing you mentioned that I I guess it just I don’t know, popped in my head. You said with the copywriting with the SEO, that was a big thing. And then I remember I had tried to kind of write some of my own stuff, you know, for s for some websites and businesses I’d had in the past. And it was trying to trying to write with a SEO in mind.

Hayley Donigan (01:13:20.503)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:13:20.729)
didn’t always feel very natural. So I I’m curio I’m sure it’s natural to you, but if but do you have a strong preference for if somebody said, I just want you to write stuff that’s really good, or I want you to write stuff that’s gonna help us with our SEO. Do you have do you have a different physical, emotional reaction to either of those two job offers?

Hayley Donigan (01:13:25.858)
Hmm.

Hayley Donigan (01:13:35.639)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:13:42.305)
Yeah, I’m a big believer that you can you can keep the integrity of your brand and and the voice of your brand and still apply the principles of content marketing and digital marketing. there should be a balance. if you if you just write something that you only want it to be like super high quality in your brand voice, but you’re not gonna optimize it for the internet at all.

I mean yes, you can send it to people or you can sh you know, you can share it and people will see it and it is a great reflection of your brand. But what is the purpose of that piece of content? Because if the purpose is to

Jason Elkins (01:14:18.991)
Get red. Get in front of people. Convey a message. Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:14:20.108)
G yeah, get read, get traffic, then it’s what what’s the point of doing that? So I think you have to have a balance of those two things. I would say the the principles of content marketing apply whether we’re talking about SEO or now in the age of AI. It’s that you need to make sure that you are writing for humans first and foremost. If it’s not interesting to humans, there’s no point in writing it. But you can also do so in a way where, okay, what are humans searching for at the moment? If they’re searching for this certain keyword, that means they’re interested in that. So how can I write this piece?

Jason Elkins (01:14:40.676)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:14:51.247)
Yeah. It sounds like the difference between well, I if you go back to before like right now we can we see stuff and we recognize, that’s AI. But before that, you know, when the blogs and the websites you know go back a little ways, I think we all had seen pages that were just stuffed with keywords that it was like, my gosh, this is horrible, da da da da da.

Hayley Donigan (01:15:10.028)
He would suffer. Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:15:15.607)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:15:16.847)
But the trick, but that’s just that’s just bad writing, I think, right? And it’s

Hayley Donigan (01:15:20.202)
It’s it’s a similar conversation. Yeah, it’s a similar conversation. Cause you don’t want to sacrifice quality for doing those things, but you have to do it in a smart way, don’t you? You have to be strategic about it.

Jason Elkins (01:15:30.467)
Right. Because if we read it and it’s just full of keywords and it’s just horribly written and it’s repeating the same stuff and you’re just like, Wow, this is really bad you might you might if you’re not a writer, you don’t work in marketing, you might think, Wow

This SEO, whatever this SEO optimized writing stuff is is horrible. Why I would hate to have to do that as a job. But then when you see a blog post, you Google something, you see a blog post, and you’re like, this is really helpful. And you stick around on it. The I the the point is you don’t know that it was SEO’d. It it’s not obvious that it was written for SEO, but it’s also very good for SEO. I right. So you can have good writing that’s also

Hayley Donigan (01:15:49.644)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:16:07.775)
Exactly.

Jason Elkins (01:16:11.139)
gets in front of people because it’s it’s well optimized, right? Is is just my take on it.

Hayley Donigan (01:16:14.87)
And adding value. I think as long as that piece of content adds value to the reader, then they’ll they’ll forgive you for putting a few keywords in there because they know that you’ve written that for them and it makes sense to them and they’ve gained something from it. Otherwise they’ll resent you because they clicked on it and then, you know, you’ve wasted their time.

Jason Elkins (01:16:26.787)
Well yeah, that’s that’s true.

Jason Elkins (01:16:32.141)
If it’s a whole if it’s a whole article full of keywords that you get to the end of it and you’re like, Wow, I just wasted five minutes or ten minutes or however long it is, that’s a little different than you recognize, there’s I see this keyword a few times, but this is a really helpful article and I’m getting something out of it. That’s all right. So all right.

Hayley Donigan (01:16:37.482)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:16:48.726)
Yeah. And it goes down to what are your KPIs? What do you see as success? Because if you if you just want traffic, fine, you can get that traffic, but then is that meaningful traffic? Is it gonna do anything? So you really have to balance the two things.

Jason Elkins (01:17:02.341)
And that yeah, and that comes into, you know, yeah, what’s the the marketing company or the writer that wrote the stuff is are they going to their client saying, Look, I got you all this traffic, or or is it I’m getting you conversions, I’m getting email signups, I’m getting followers or whatever, all the all that type of stuff. But yeah, yeah. Right. So what did you what was the biggest takeaway you got from your job in Spain?

Hayley Donigan (01:17:18.114)
Loyal brand yeah, advocates that are gonna come back to you.

Hayley Donigan (01:17:28.908)
Hm. You know what? I think it gave me a

Jason Elkins (01:17:30.413)
Like like personally probably. We could talk about business, but I mean personally, I’m just curious.

Hayley Donigan (01:17:35.038)
I guess to my job in Spain, that it gave me confidence. I think it gave me confidence that, like, I can I can make a career in this, and you know, obviously moving abroad gives you confidence. So the fact that I was able to build a life in Spain, I lived there for almost two years. So it was my first job, my first time living somewhere where they don’t speak English. I think both of those things gave me a lot of confidence. and then I, you know, I got to a point where I felt like I’d outgrown the job, and I also living in in southern Spain.

is a very relaxed lifestyle. It’s an amazing lifestyle, but I was, yeah, I can’t I was in my early 20s and I kind of felt like, okay, I I think I need to pick it up pick up the pace a little bit. So that’s when I moved to London and I certainly that’s you know I certainly picked up the pace. But yeah, it was a a really formative experience for me living there.

Jason Elkins (01:18:20.677)
All right.

Jason Elkins (01:18:24.815)
Very cool. It’s interesting because you kind of you mentioned that when you went to school in the UK, people were just more laid back, relaxed. I’m here to have fun, type of thing. And then you said you went to Spain, where it sounds like it was even more laid back and relaxed. And and okay. So just kind of walk me through from when you left Spain, you went back to London to kind of where where you are now and and what you’re excited about.

Hayley Donigan (01:18:34.727)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:18:48.409)
Mm-hmm.

No.

Jason Elkins (01:18:54.605)
you know, during or what got you most excited during that process of transitioning to where you are now?

Hayley Donigan (01:19:01.281)
Yeah, it was really exciting. It was the first time that I I lived in a really big city. and I got a job as the marketing manager at a really iconic restaurant in London. It’s called the Oxo Tower Restaurant, and it’s got this beautiful terrace with a view of St. Paul’s and the River Thames, and it’s just I don’t know how I managed to get that. You know, it it’s funny actually because sometimes as a someone who writes and travel, you think, who gives me the right to write about these places? But

Yeah, it was it was my first time where I was like, you know what, I can do this. You know, I’m not a Londoner yet, but I can really visualize what it is that makes this place so special, why it’s a landmark restaurant here, and I’m gonna bring that to life. So that was yeah, that was my first job when I moved to London, and since then I’ve had two other jobs in London full time that were both again, all different industries. So I did move around, I wasn’t always in travel, but all of the companies.

that I’ve worked for since then have been very London rooted and a lot of the work that I’m doing for them or did for them was about showing that London character in their marketing. So that’s been really fun.

Jason Elkins (01:20:05.295)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:20:16.005)
Do you think that you had an advantage as being someone, you know, from the US with the accent? Do you think that was an advantage or did it make it more difficult for you overall?

Hayley Donigan (01:20:27.293)
I think it was an advantage. I think that people perceive Americans as confident, as driven. I think, you know, there are people that kind of sneer at Americans in in Europe, and that’s fine. I whatever. but I think overall it has I think that Americans carry themselves, not I mean, this is a a generalization, but carry themselves with confidence. Yeah. Carry themselves with confidence. Yes, we’re loud sometimes.

Jason Elkins (01:20:51.461)
Be careful. Be careful.

Hayley Donigan (01:20:57.227)
I know, but you know, we we get things done, we we solve problems, and we have I would say a a good attitude. Again, I know this is a bit I know this isn’t always the case, but anyway, I think that that is how I was perceived in some instances. And I think I’m clearly not

I’m not an American who’s just gonna come in and bulldoze over because there’s I think there’s that stereotype kind of going back to what you were saying about how Americans just call themselves Americans. And it’s so it’s so arrogant, right? But that’s just how it is. So I I don’t I don’t know, I don’t think I would I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Emily in Paris, but she kind of just comes in you you should watch it actually because it’s quite amusing. And it is she it’s this American that she comes in and she’s driven and she’s you know she’s got charisma.

Jason Elkins (01:21:27.331)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:21:40.151)
Okay. All right.

Hayley Donigan (01:21:46.957)
Etc. etc. But she just isn’t, she doesn’t understand French culture, and so it’s really jarring. and so I don’t think that I did that in London. I think I I entered the scene with humility, and I think that has gotten me far. there might be people out there that disagree, I don’t know. They can leave that in the comments.

Jason Elkins (01:21:52.474)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:22:06.053)
Cause because I can imagine, you know, you apply for a job with this restaurant that you mentioned, this iconic restaurant in London, and the board sitting around trying to decide whether they want to offer you a job. you there’s someone that how can somebody how can we hire an American to come write about this iconic London restaurant? It just doesn’t make sense. And then someone else on the board might say, you know what, this is great because we want

Hayley Donigan (01:22:13.345)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (01:22:20.793)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:22:25.134)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:22:36.185)
Maybe because tourism is important. Maybe we want to appeal to the US market. I remember when I, you know, was spending quite a bit of time in Colombia, I had a client that hired me to do some stuff and he said, Geez, Jason, we should have you go around and and do, you know

Hayley Donigan (01:22:38.5)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:22:51.599)
create videos of the different destinations that we work with in Colombia and you can kind of because you look like the our typical client, you know, you’re f instead of hiring somebody in Colombia to walk around and say how great Colombia is, hires, you know, somebody that looks like the typical client to walk around and talk about how great Colombia is. It just it makes a difference. So that’s why I guess what is behind the question is if it helped you with the travel writing, because pr presumably so many of your clients are super interested in the US market. I’m just guessing.

Hayley Donigan (01:22:58.328)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Hayley Donigan (01:23:05.262)
Yes.

Hayley Donigan (01:23:12.644)
Mm.

Hayley Donigan (01:23:21.38)
Definitely.

And you know, I would also say, so now that I’ve lived in because I was obviously fresh to London at that point, now I’ve lived in London for 10 years. And something I love now is when friends or other people come and visit London and they’re telling me they’re noticing things and did you hear about this restaurant? And I heard I had a friend here the other weekend that was, this restaurant has the best sticky toffee pudding. And so it is, it’s like having people highlight those things that actually are really exciting about a place, I think, is a benefit to having somebody. And then another thing

Jason Elkins (01:23:27.205)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:23:48.739)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:23:52.204)
thing I would say is that London is such a diverse city. It is so incredibly diverse that I I also imagine that they were probably just like, it’s just like another, you know, another foreign person. So yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:23:57.551)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:24:02.19)
that’s that’s that’s that’s true. And I think most of us have had the experience where they visit a place and like our like me, I you know, I’ve been traveling full time four and a half years, quite a few places.

And I show up and I’m like, my gosh, the metro is so cool, or the metro cables, or the buses, or the street food. And then I meet people that have lived in there, you know, I’m also single, so I do date on occasion. And I’ll meet somebody and and in my mind I’m thinking, you know what we should do? We should go get on the metro. We’re gonna go to the metro cable, take the metro cable up into the mountains, and then we’re gonna eat empanadas on top of the mountain. To me, that sounds amazing. I’m like, wow, what a good date. And they’re like, Jason, are you kidding me?

Hayley Donigan (01:24:18.72)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:24:32.91)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (01:24:39.651)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:24:43.383)
Like you wanna do what? Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:24:44.291)
I you know, I never I never get a second date because they they they’re like, I do that every day. That’s you know, it’s so it’s we just have different perspectives. There’s no right or wrong. I get that. You know, if if somebody was visiting me in the US and wanted to go to McDonald’s every day, I’d probably like, are you well, okay, we I’ll go. I’m always happy to share things, but you know, yeah, it’s so I

Hayley Donigan (01:24:50.36)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:24:55.096)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:25:05.431)
Yeah. And I think as well it is being in the travel industry. You have to there’s just so many things that you have to navigate and it is it’s that awareness that I don’t necessarily know best, but I have a curiosity about these places and I hope that I can open them up to other people. But it’s a whole minefield. I mean I’m very aware of it.

Jason Elkins (01:25:14.917)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:25:21.815)
Yeah. It’s it’s you touched on the key there, I think, is the curiosity. Because if you hire a you know, I’m in Bogota, if I hire a great guide in Bogota, you know what? He’d probably take me on the metro, take me up the Metro Cable and eat empanadas and he would just be enthusiastic about it and he’s like, I’ve got this really cool place that, you know, we can we can, you know, go get whatever and

Hayley Donigan (01:25:26.081)
Mm.

Hayley Donigan (01:25:37.218)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:25:47.866)
But that’s it’s just a reflection of that openness and that curiosity and very importantly the desire to share. Because that’s that’s the part because empanadas can be really boring if you’re just talking about empanadas. If you’re talking about sharing, if you’re talking about sharing empanadas on the street and with a story behind it and all this stuff, it’s a totally different, totally different thing, which is what we’re talking about is you know that storytelling and and authentic authentic connection. so

Hayley Donigan (01:25:54.711)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:26:00.065)
Absolutely.

Jason Elkins (01:26:17.029)
All right. So you worked for a few different brands and now you’re you’re I don’t want to say you’re doing your own thing, but I mean that in a very positive way. You’re doing your own thing. Right. So so let’s discuss a little bit how you transitioned into that and kind of what that’s like.

Hayley Donigan (01:26:25.816)
Yeah. Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:26:33.892)
So I decided after, yeah, working full-time with companies, I guess there were two things that I that that fostered this decision.

One was that I wanted more flexibility to be able to go back and forth to the US. And obviously when you’re in a full-time job, that’s that’s more difficult. And and to travel in general, because I really enjoy slow travel. And when you’re just trying to travel on the weekend or you know on limited vacation days, it’s it’s very difficult to do that. So I wanted to live more of that lifestyle. And then the second thing was that I wanted to be more specialized in copywriting and I wanted to go back into

Jason Elkins (01:26:52.121)
That’s a challenge, yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:27:12.812)
The travel industry, and I thought, okay, well, I can get both of those things. I can really focus in on copywriting and develop my craft and my experience doing that, and I’ll have the flexibility of freelancing. So I decided to go freelance over two years ago now, and it’s been amazing, but it is a whirlwind for sure. I mean, you really have to, gosh, I did it because I wanted to do just do copywriting, and it’s like, I have to be a whole business owner, and there is, you know, there’s sales, and there’s so many things.

That I’ve had to navigate. but I’ve learned so much from doing so and it’s been amazing. And I’ve been able to be more selective about the types of companies that I work with, which is great, and it’s really helped me get in touch with the type of work that I like to be doing, the type of clients that I like to work with. So it’s been a really fantastic experience, but it’s it’s not been easy.

Jason Elkins (01:27:54.223)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:28:03.823)
Did you did you just jump right into it like, okay, you quit your job and started your own thing or did you transition? How did you do it? You did. Would you do it would you do it that same way? Again? Yep.

Hayley Donigan (01:28:10.913)
I sure did. I sure did. And I would say no, probably not. I really wanted to go all in and I was like, I’m ready, I’m gonna do it, and I went all in. There

Pros cons to doing that. I would say to anyone thinking of doing it, make sure you have a big buffer to tide you over because there’s going to be ups and downs, and it’s it’s very difficult to keep, you know, you’re just so used to having a steady income, and then suddenly you’re you’re super busy one month and then you’re quiet the next, and especially in travel too, there’s peaks and troughs, and you know, at the moment the the economy is not great, and certainly a lot of people are not traveling at the moment for various different reasons, so there’s ups.

Jason Elkins (01:28:34.181)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:28:39.525)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:28:53.359)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (01:28:54.235)
And downs, but in a way I do kind of again, it’s like that sink or swim thing where it’s like I I was like, I’m just gonna go all in and I’m gonna make it work. And if it fails, at least I know that I really, really gave it a shot. But there’s something to be said about maybe like dipping your toes in and kind of gradually getting into it as well.

Jason Elkins (01:29:14.755)
Yeah, and it’s it’s always easy to look back and say, Well, like maybe I should have done it a slightly different way, but it but I’m also concerned that so many people have this dream. They’re like, I really want to do my own thing, but I’m afraid to do it, so I’ll start it on the side, but then they

Hayley Donigan (01:29:27.789)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:29:33.806)
Sometimes it’s really hard to get things going when you’re starting them on the side. It’s just I guess it just depends on the person and what it is. I definitely kind of just jumped in myself, but I appreciate the, you know, it’s hard to get used to the ups and downs.

Hayley Donigan (01:29:37.495)
Yeah, yeah, it is.

Jason Elkins (01:29:50.416)
And it’s like, you know, if every couple of weeks you’re going through a existential crisis ’cause you’ve got ’cause you’ve got th three dollars and forty three cents left in your bank account and you’re hoping that client who said I’ll pay you by the end of the week actually comes through and yeah, you get you get to Friday and you don’t get the notice yet and you’re like, you know, it it’s it’s stressful.

Hayley Donigan (01:29:54.849)
Yeah. my goodness. Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:30:03.705)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:30:08.301)
Yeah. And it’s like, am I really doing you know, maybe I shouldn’t be doing website copywriting. Maybe I should have gone all in with the social media captions. And there’s so many ways that you can position yourself in the market. So again, it’s interesting as a as a brand person and as a copywriter because I do have to remind myself, okay, wait a second, sit back and think about how you’re positioning yourself. Cause that’s important too. And in fact, I had to do that before our call because I was like, Yeah, how exactly should I position myself? Because it’s a minefield, there’s just so many aspects.

Jason Elkins (01:30:15.129)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:30:23.108)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:30:35.791)
Ha ha.

Hayley Donigan (01:30:38.235)
you can go down. So again, I really sympathize with anyone that started a business. It’s it’s not easy.

Jason Elkins (01:30:44.823)
It’s not, but at the same time, you know, what I’ve noticed is when I’m doing I guess what I would call a job, you know, like just kind of straight like maybe I’m doing some some work for a client that’s not super exciting. And not if my clients are listening, I you know, I love all I appreciate the opportunity. And it’s so when I contrast how I feel doing that work to how I feel when I’m, you know,

Hayley Donigan (01:30:53.625)
Hm.

Hayley Donigan (01:30:58.391)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:31:12.515)
working on my own website or working on my own business or you know, creating w connections with people, having conversations with people like yourself. It’s like I I love it. You know? And it’s like, man, if I wasn’t s an entrepreneur, if I wasn’t self employed, if I was just doing the boring work for someone else all the time, I wouldn’t wake up at, you know, on Sunday morning at seven AM with this idea in my head and I r run and pull out my laptop and I end up spending all Sunday sitting in front of my laptop and

Hayley Donigan (01:31:22.552)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:31:31.128)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:31:38.947)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:31:41.925)
you know, creating something that that gets me excited. And I’m not gonna do that for a client. I love my clients, but

Hayley Donigan (01:31:48.281)
Yeah, it’s so true. It’s it’s funny, isn’t it? It’s like it’s so difficult, but then you care about it so much and

Jason Elkins (01:31:55.009)
yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:31:55.909)
Yeah, the things that you get to do, the opportunities that you get are amazing. And if you if you do really lean into the networking side of things, I actually cause I I used to be repulsed by the idea of networking, and now that I’ve leaned into it, my gosh, it’s wonderful. You get to connect like us, where it’s like, it’s someone that has really interesting views and similar values to me, and I can learn from them and you can be picky about who you connect with. It’s great.

Jason Elkins (01:32:08.921)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:32:17.22)
Yeah.

That’s that’s what I love about the podcast. It’s like a c it’s like a university education for me. You know, every week I have a c I have a conversation with somebody who is aligned in purpose and and interests, but has different perspectives. And it’s it’s I love it. I you know, we’ll we’re gonna turn this podcast into a university for s someday and and people can sign up and take classes from from folks like yourself. So all right. So is there

Hayley Donigan (01:32:25.624)
Yeah, exactly.

Hayley Donigan (01:32:40.034)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:32:45.466)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:32:47.907)
We we’ve discussed a bunch of things. We’ve been going for qu quite a while and I appreciate you sharing so much time with me. Yeah, well, but there’s I’m sure we missed something. We almost missed the whole fact that your parents met Morocco and the influence that had on you. So I don’t want to miss anything else. But let me ask you this, Hailey. What did I forget to ask you? What do you wish I had asked you, or what else do you want to share with our listeners before we wrap up?

Hayley Donigan (01:32:51.618)
I’ve thrown the kitchen sink at you, I feel like.

Hayley Donigan (01:33:00.908)
Ha ha ha.

Hayley Donigan (01:33:14.794)
Guess I wouldn’t I I think we’ve touched on everything about my life. I mean, obviously there’s many other things I’m sure I could speak about, but I would say, in terms of because I’m aware that there’s a lot of travel businesses that listen to your podcast, and I would like to say to them: if you are a purposeful business and the work that you’re doing out in the world is with integrity and meaning.

Jason Elkins (01:33:19.769)
Not everything.

Hayley Donigan (01:33:40.579)
Don’t let your online presence be mismatched with that because it will show. People will see that and and think, why are you know why are they doing this great work? But then they’ve got the this really shallow blog that’s just stuffed with keywords or is clearly written with with AI, or they send out these generic emails. And I think what ends up happening, and again, I really sympathize. We’re in this, you know, I spent over a decade now in in the digital marketing world, and I’ve seen how increased.

Jason Elkins (01:33:46.874)
Yes.

Hayley Donigan (01:34:10.732)
There’s this pressure to generate more content and do it quicker, and it’s like everyone’s fighting to be visible. And I think we can all agree that we don’t need any more noise, like, there’s enough noise out there. And I would just say to those businesses don’t worry about keeping up with the Joneses because if you have this, like if you if you don’t have the resources to do all of those content channels justice, you know, you’re gonna do your emails and your website and your blog and your social channels and anything.

Etc., if you try to do it all, you’re not gonna do them well. And so I would say streamline that, go for depth, step back and really think about your brand and your tone of voice, who you’re talking to, and how you want to position yourself to those people and connect with them on an emotional level and build a community of long term, high quality people that you actually want to be your customers. you can do that by taking a quality versus quantity approach.

Jason Elkins (01:35:06.02)
Mm-hmm.

Hayley Donigan (01:35:10.332)
Approach. So I would just because I speak to so many people that work for small businesses, and I just want to reassure them that you really don’t need to be killing yourself to be out there and super super super visible. The right people will resonate if you create an online presence that that adds value and show your own unique expertise, insights, experiences, because ever all people in in travel have them, and and show that, and you’ll be fine.

Jason Elkins (01:35:38.576)
I I love that you said that. I I think you’re right. I I mean we just we started this conversation with you what brand voice strategists is is the voice. What I hear you saying is let them hear your voice, whether that means on a podcast or a YouTube channel or in your website copy or whatever. And the other thing that came up, I I’m just curious what you think. I was actually thinking, you know.

Hayley Donigan (01:35:51.64)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:36:04.151)
If you can listen to like go back through the arc I don’t want to say the archives, go through the the group of amazing experts that I’ve brought together here in this community. And if you can listen to someone’s episode and then go look at their website and their marketing, and is there is there a connection? Kid is is what you see on their website, does it sound like what you heard when they were speaking with Jason?

Hayley Donigan (01:36:19.64)
Hayley Donigan (01:36:23.15)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:36:29.07)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:36:29.291)
And if those two things do not align then maybe there’s an opportunity to have somebody like yourself come in and and work with them to to help create that alignment ’cause

Hayley Donigan (01:36:39.001)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:36:39.653)
Because when they do something like this, have a conversation with me, I believe that, you know, out of everybody I’ve spoken with, we’ve really got to their voice, just like we did with yours today. And to take that and compare that to, okay, so what’s your website look like? ‘Cause I know. I I’ve had I’ve had conversations with people, I’m like, my God, that was the most fascinating conversation. We discussed all these things and I know what their website looks like. I’ve seen them all. And I go look at their yeah, and I go look at their website, I’m like, they don’t even have an about section.

Hayley Donigan (01:36:53.561)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:37:02.542)
Yeah, I see it all the time. Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:37:08.697)
They don’t have a picture of anybody. Like I can’t tell what they do. And it’s it’s there’s the there’s that disconnect. So I’m happy you brought that up.

Hayley Donigan (01:37:09.198)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:37:14.872)
Yeah. Yeah.

And it it sounds cheesy, but I really want, like, I personally, and this is the reason I got into this type of work, is because I personally want to make travel better. Like, I think we can all travel better. I think the world would benefit if we all traveled better. Whatever that means to you, I have my own opinions on what that means. And I want to help the company, because there are companies out there really doing that and really making, you know, changing things, but they’re not being heard and they’re not sharing their stories, and and it’s a shame. And so that’s why I want to help them. I want to help the companies that are making travel better.

Jason Elkins (01:37:27.45)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:37:34.885)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (01:37:39.395)
Yeah, yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:37:49.021)
and it’s sometimes it is just a few little tweaks and then and then they’re there. So that’s yeah, that’s what I wanted to say. I wanted to say don’t feel bad if you’re not doing that, because I know how difficult it is as a as a business owner myself to do all of that. and it might just be that you need to bring in an expert that can just kind of tweak a few things or get your positioning there or whatever, but I know that these these companies do have the integrity, so it it should be reflected in what they’re doing online.

Jason Elkins (01:37:49.455)
Get it. Yep.

Jason Elkins (01:38:15.141)
There are so many amazing people in this space. you know, just the ones I’ve had a conversation with just is just a s a narrow slice of the pie. There are so many, and that’s why I love doing this. When I started this podcast, I didn’t know if I’d make it past episode 10. But I was like, wait, wait, I’ve had 10 amazing people. There let’s find 10 more and let’s find and it just keeps going. Cause there are so many amazing people, but sometimes you don’t realize how connected they are, how passionate they are.

Hayley Donigan (01:38:24.376)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:38:31.342)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:38:37.05)
It’s amazing, isn’t it?

Jason Elkins (01:38:43.531)
until you sit down and have a conversation with them. It’s it’s that thing, you know, you’ve got a tour operator that the first time his clients ever connect with him on a or him or her on a personal level is maybe they lead a group trip. They take a group trip to, I don’t know, Turkey or something, and they’re sitting at a hotel or a lodge

Hayley Donigan (01:38:43.545)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:39:03.695)
with their clients that came with them on this trip and they and they start the questions how did you get into this what were you doing before this where were your parents from how do your parents meet all those questions that we’ve just been discussing. Many times that’s the first time that those clients have really had that connection with with the person that they booked their trip through. So if we can if we can get that connection started beforehand, you’re gonna have more clients, you’re gonna be able to change more lives, you’re gonna be able to expose people to cool stuff. So yeah, I’ll get off.

Hayley Donigan (01:39:12.751)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:39:23.16)
Yeah.

Hayley Donigan (01:39:31.224)
Yes. You’re speaking my language. Exactly. Yeah, you nailed it.

Jason Elkins (01:39:33.477)
Well, that’s that’s why we’re having this conversation is because we’re aligned. We’ve got the got got that same same energy and passion for it. So Hayley, this has been so much fun. I I know we ch we chatted for quite a while. I appreciate I don’t know if the sun is going down there yet. Your room looks a little darker, so maybe maybe it’s raining. I don’t know. But anyway, what a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much, and I look forward to finding some projects to collaborate with you on the future. So thank you, Hayley. Appreciate it.

Hayley Donigan (01:39:50.154)
Yeah, actually. British summertime, we’re good.

Hayley Donigan (01:40:01.37)
Sounds great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you asking such interesting questions and I loved our conversations. So yeah, hope to do it again.

Jason Elkins (01:40:08.345)
All right. Sounds good. Thanks, Hayley. You have a great day. All right. Bye bye.

Hayley Donigan (01:40:10.958)
Take care. Bye bye.

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