Ben Hanley didn’t set out to run a global marketing agency. For the first decade of his working life, he was a police officer in Lancashire, fulfilling a lifelong ambition to serve on the force.
“I would have done that job for free if they asked me to,” he tells Prolific North. “I got to genuinely have an impact on people but at 22, I got to see things most people that age probably shouldn’t have to deal with.”
From budget cuts to new technology changes, the reality of the job soon collided with family life as Hanley found himself missing major milestones when his first son was born.
“I missed the first 18 months doing late shifts,” he says. “You can always make more money, but you can never make more time. I didn’t want to chase shoplifters down the seafront anymore. I wanted to be at home, reading The Gruffalo’s Child, for the 15th time to my son. My life revolves around my two boys and wife.”
It was during his time as a police officer that Hanley met Sergeant Tristan Heaword, who would eventually become a close friend and, later, his co-founder.
On the side, Hanley and Heaword dabbled in freelance work doing websites and marketing and in 2015, they landed a lucrative contract with a New York-based software company serving hotels.
“We ended up freelancing with them for a few months whilst we were still cops. I would be a cop in the day, and I would go home and be a hotel marketer by night. Sort of like a really sh*t Batman,” he laughs.
The duo took up career breaks and soon joined the software company full-time, stepping into a period of “ridiculous” growth.
“It’s always like that with anything Tris and I get involved in. We grew the team from just the two of us to around 20 people and were managing a marketing budget of $16m a year. Those were big numbers.”
At the end of his career break, Hanley received a letter from the police after each side assumed the other would make contact, and in the end, nobody did. The letter officially discharged him from the force for failing to return to duty.
“I got that letter on the day I was packing for a New York trip. I had the letter in one hand, and I had my suitcase on the floor. I just shredded the letter.”
“We’ve just managed to get it right”
For Hanley, it was a clear signal that chapter of his life was firmly behind him. But soon after, Covid-19 brought the hospitality industry to its knees. Overnight, Hanley’s team of 15 to 20 people were made redundant.
“Suddenly I had a group of panicked people on a Skype call, asking me and Tris: ‘What now?’” he recalls.
Determined to support his colleagues scattered across the UK, US and India, the duo’s response was to “hustle”, helping rewrite CVs, making introductions, and guiding people into new roles as quickly as possible.
It was undoubtedly a turbulent period, but Hanley and Heaword were quick to set up a small agency, which they later sold, to give their team a way to supplement their income by picking up whatever work they could find.
“One of my proudest moments is that nobody lost their house, nobody failed to provide for their families.”
That loyalty went both ways. By late 2020, the hotel industry began to reopen and many of the same clients returned and so did many of the same team, some even volunteering to work unpaid until the business stabilised.
Out of that moment, three&six was born. The transatlantic agency has grown rapidly ever since by working with hotels and hospitality groups, now employing more than 40 people across the UK, US, South Africa and India.
“By mid-2023, three&six just exploded. We’ve grown by 202% every year.”
And the company’s remote-first structure effectively offers ‘24/7 coverage’ for clients.
“The teams work together seamlessly. We joke that clients have almost 24-hour coverage. We wake up, solve problems, and then halfway through the day, the other team will come on and they’ll keep the coverage. Everyone has their own client list,” he explains.
The agency currently has five open roles, with more to follow next month, and culture remains the driving force behind everything the business does.
“We’ve just managed to get it right. I haven’t the first clue how, but I’m not going to change anything!
“We joke that people think they’re being catfished until they get their first paycheck. It just seems too good to be true. But we care, properly. The team knows they can reach me anytime. And we make it fun, whether it’s gorilla masks on Zoom or nonsense on Monday calls.”
The future
Fresh from a recent team trip to the Bahamas, bobbing in the turquoise waters off the coast of Bimini, Hanley describes the scene as “postcard perfect.”
“I’ve never taken anything for granted,” he says. “I think I spent most of the trip just saying thank you.”
It was a full-circle moment, and a world apart from his childhood: “I grew up in Bradford, relying on food banks as a kid,” he reflects. Now based in Lancaster, Hanley credits three&six for giving him a life he could “never, ever have imagined”. But for him, success isn’t just personal.
“I’m also able to provide a lifestyle for other people,” he says. “We’ve had team members join three&six and come off antidepressants. I love talking about the impact we’ve had, from supporting people through the deaths in the family, medical issues with children, to big life transitions.
“The stuff I’ve been able to do for people? I’m just trying to be the person that wasn’t there for me.”
He pauses, placing his can of Dr Pepper on the desk, as he fondly explains how that extends to his own family, too.
“Now, I don’t miss school nativity plays. I don’t miss Easter. I pick my kids up, I put them to bed. I absolutely love my life now,” he beams.
As the agency continues to scale, Hanley and Heaword have “mergers and acquisitions in sight” and are weighing up their options.
Wherever the path leads them, Hanley insists how “transparent” they have been with the team who will remain key to those decisions.
“We’ve got some decisions to make this year,” he says. “I’ve promised them nothing will happen until they’ve approved it. We are looking at some companies, and we have some companies looking at us as well.
“We’re just a group of people who worked out how to make money and have a great time doing it. And I wouldn’t change a thing.”
