Most business owners think they have a branding issue when they actually have a clarity issue.
In this episode of Go Beyond Busy, I spoke with Katie Smetherman from Brand Studio Creative ( https://www.brandstudiocreative.com/ ) in Dallas, Texas. Katie works with businesses of all sizes, from large corporate energy companies to small local florists. The common thread is not the size of the business. It is the need for alignment between who they are and how they show up.
One of the first things Katie shared was something I wish more business owners would accept earlier: it is okay to ask for help.
Asking for Help Is a Strength, Not a Weakness
Katie talked about the early days of her business and her decision to bring in professional accounting support from the start. Not later. Not when things became messy. Right at the start.
That decision gave her clarity and confidence.
As a business consultant, I see this all the time. Founders try to do everything themselves. They are capable. They are intelligent. They are resourceful. But capability does not mean you must carry every responsibility alone.
You do not know what you do not know.
Getting the right advice early, whether it is financial, strategic, operational or brand-related, often saves years of small mistakes that quietly compound.
What Branding Really Means
When people hear the word “brand”, they often think “logo”.
Katie was very clear. A logo is part of a brand, but it is not the brand.
A brand includes:
Your mission and purpose
The way you communicate
Your tone of voice
Your visual identity
Your positioning in the market
The experience clients have when they interact with you
Customers today look deeper than they used to. They are not simply asking, “What do you sell?” They are asking, “Who are you?” and “Why should I choose you?”
That shift matters.
If your external messaging does not match the internal heart of your business, there is friction. Prospects feel it, even if they cannot articulate it.
Heart, Purpose and Strategy
Katie uses the phrase “heart purpose” in her work. I like that.
Before design. Before typography. Before colour palettes. There is purpose.
Why was the business started?
Who is it really for?
What does it stand for?
Without clarity on those questions, design becomes decoration. With clarity, design becomes reinforcement.
This is very similar to the work I do with clients through the Business Success Programme. We start with personal goals, then business goals, then strategy. Everything else follows.
Brand strategy without business strategy is incomplete. Business strategy without brand alignment is inconsistent.
The two need to talk to each other.
From Corporate Energy to Local Florists
Katie shared examples from both ends of the spectrum.
On the corporate side, branding includes internal documents, structured communication, consistent messaging and alignment across large teams. It is not just what customers see. It is what employees experience.
On the smaller end, she spoke about rebranding a local florist whose work was already premium, but whose brand did not reflect that. Once the visual and strategic identity matched the quality of the work, confidence increased. Pride increased. The business owner became excited to share everything from business cards to vehicle signage.
That matters more than people realise.
When a business owner feels proud of their brand, they market more confidently. They speak more clearly. They charge more appropriately.
Confidence changes behaviour. Behaviour changes results.
Websites Are Part of the Foundation
Katie also builds websites, and I appreciated her practical approach.
Not every business needs the same structure. E-commerce businesses operate differently from service-based businesses. Some need training on the backend so they can make urgent updates themselves. Others need a full reboot rather than a cosmetic refresh.
The key theme running through her work is this: reduce stress.
That is something I relate to deeply. Business owners are already carrying enough. If your website, brand or systems create additional pressure, something is misaligned.
What This Means for You
If you are watching this episode and thinking:
My brand feels outdated
My website does not reflect where we are now
We have grown, but our messaging has not
I am doing too much on my own
Then this conversation is for you.
Strong foundations create room to grow. Weak foundations create constant tension.
Brand clarity does not sit in isolation. It connects to strategy, structure, pricing, positioning and long-term goals.
If you would like an outside perspective on where your business currently stands, I offer a free Business Strategy Session. It is simply a structured conversation to help you step back and see the bigger picture.
In the meantime, watch the full episode with Katie Smetherman above, and take note of the small decisions that build strong businesses over time.
Grow your business. Not your to-do list.
Want to read the transcript?
Welcome to Go Beyond Busy + Meet Katie Smetherman
[00:00:00] Bernard: Welcome to Go Beyond Busy, the podcast for business owners who want growth without the chaos.
[00:00:06] In this episode, Christine Abela speaks with Katie Smetherman from Brand Studio Creative in Dallas, Texas. Katie shares why asking for help early in business can make all the difference, and why branding is far more than just a logo.
[00:00:21] They discuss heart, purpose, strategy, and how strong foundations create confidence and clarity.
[00:00:28] Here is Christine with Katie.
[00:00:30] Christine Abela – Christine.Oxygen8.co: Hi, I’m Christine Abela from Go Beyond Busy, and I’m here with Katie Smetherman, who is in Dallas, Texas, and she runs a business called Brand Studio Creative. Hi Katie. How are you doing?
[00:00:42] Katie Smetherman: I’m doing great. It’s cold over here, but I’m doing great.
[00:00:45] Christine Abela – Christine.Oxygen8.co: Good, thank you. It’s spring here, early summer, so we are doing okay as well. There you go. So tell me, what’s something that you’ve learned about running a business that you wish you’d known earlier?
Big lesson: Ask for help early (especially finances)
[00:00:57] Katie Smetherman: So one thing that I learned when I started my own business is it is okay to ask for outside help. Don’t ever think that it’s. Too early or too late to be able to ask for help. And so for me in particular, even though I am a creative person and I have a very like go-getter, I love to learn type attitude towards a lot of things. And so I love to learn and do things a lot myself.
[00:01:24] But in that regard. When you are starting a new business and there’s like all of these various task lists that you have to do to start off on the right foot, it’s okay to ask for help in those early instances.
[00:01:38] And so for me one of the first people that I got to help was particularly in the financial section. So I got somebody to help with when it came to the business accounting, the taxes, getting all of those completely squared away. ‘Cause sometimes those terminologies can be tricky, especially again, starting out, you don’t know all of the terms and, legal terms that kind of go with it. And so having somebody there being like, oh, this just means this, oh, this just means this is this part of your business was such a relief. And I’m my number one thing that I tell anybody, if you need somebody to help with the accounting, just get it right at the beginning.
[00:02:18] Christine Abela – Christine.Oxygen8.co: So you don’t know what you don’t know.
[00:02:20] Katie Smetherman: Exactly.
[00:02:21] Christine Abela – Christine.Oxygen8.co: And so do you ongoing still have that type of help?
[00:02:25] Katie Smetherman: I do ongoing. I am fortunate that the accountant and CPA tax professionals that I was able to find a network with at the start of my business, they have been with me through it’s coming up to five years of my business now. So they’ve been with me through every step of the way and all the ups and downs, and it is just been great to have somebody stick with you for that entire time.
[00:02:48] Christine Abela – Christine.Oxygen8.co: Very cool. As a business consultant, I do that kind of thing as well, where I help the business to grow and to expand. And so it’s really nice to get into a business that’s maybe not brand new, is just starting out and is, trying to find their feet.
What Brand Studio Creative does (strategy, design, websites)
[00:03:02] You run a business called Brand Creative Studio. Tell me more about that. What do you do?
[00:03:07] Katie Smetherman: Yes, so my business is Brand Studio Creative, and we are currently located in the Dallas, Texas area. But that does not mean that I only serve Dallas, Texas. I serve businesses and entrepreneurial throughout the world. I have worked with those in the North American region, but also those in the Europe region as well.
[00:03:29] And so I really enjoy taking a business’ branding from start to finish. So I help build them on strong brand strategy and brand design, as well as website design and development, all built around heart purpose and strategy.
Heart & purpose: the ‘why’ behind your business
[00:03:49] Christine Abela – Christine.Oxygen8.co: Tell me more. What do you mean by heart purpose?
[00:03:54] Katie Smetherman: So I love to dive into every single business’ heart. So what that means is I like to know why you started your business, what was the mission that really called you or drove you to start your business?
[00:04:09] And diving into truly the heart of your business, it helps formulate a strong purpose that not only helps you and your team members in your business run smoothly, but also attracts all of those targeted audience and clientele that will want to work with you and be excited to work with you for many years to come.
[00:04:30] And as we build up that purpose in your business, I formulate strong strategies that go along with it to help keep it running and running smoothly.
Branding isn’t just a logo: visuals + messaging + mission
[00:04:40] Christine Abela – Christine.Oxygen8.co: Can you give me an example? What kind of businesses need a brand?
[00:04:46] Katie Smetherman: Any business that is starting out definitely needs a brand. And what encapsulates a brand is so much more than what many people think and realize. When people hear the word brand, they think, oh, it’s just a logo. I need a logo for my business.
[00:05:01] And while that is a key part, like yes, you do need a logo that represents your business, represents who you are, what you do, who you serve. But also part of that brand is developing a lot of different strategies and pieces.
[00:05:18] And so part of those are visual pieces. So this could be your typography, your colors, your bridge structure layout. Or if they are different personalities that kind of are encapsulated in some of those graphics being playful or more modern and luxurious, like those are visual elements.
[00:05:36] But as well as visual elements there are also more strategic elements that dive a little bit more into kind of writing practices. Those will be your writing out your brand’s mission and purpose. And those are key statements that clients and customers not only are aware of nowadays, but they look for those when they are shopping or wanting to work with your type of business.
[00:06:05] They are looking to know what is your mission? What drives you, what is your purpose? How do you want to interact with your customers?
[00:06:15] We’re so inundated with so many different types of businesses, from small mom and pop businesses to large corporations, that because we have so much being fed to us through social media and through websites and through videos and everything, we as consumers have become much more strategic in looking into what actually drives a business. And who are they wanting to work for, wanting to do. It’s much more than just surface level. We have this great product, come buy from us.
[00:06:48] It’s like, why should I buy from you? What key things do you offer other people? How do you interact with other consumers empathetically? How do you reach out to your local communities? We want to know more about the business than just they offer X, Y, Z.
Client stories: corporate energy to a luxury florist rebrand
[00:07:05] Christine Abela – Christine.Oxygen8.co: Can you give me an example of what kind of business you might have worked with in the past? You can name names if you want to, but you don’t need to.
[00:07:11] Katie Smetherman: Being in Texas, I originally am from Houston, Texas, so it’s a lot of oil and gas type clients, a lot of energy and electrical type clients. So I have worked with some very large corporate oil and gas kind of clients.
[00:07:26] I have a lot of various knowledge in transmission power lines just from working with clients, which, in my personal day to day, being a creative, it doesn’t really matter. But when working with clients, like I have a lot of just like various knowledge that’s always like fun to be like, oh, did you know that this type of transmission line is called a X, Y, Z, and such. And my friends will always be like, wait, what? Aren’t you in branding? I’m like, yes. I love to learn. And so I learn through my clientele.
[00:07:55] So I do have a lot of those kind of experiences and working on a large scale corporate entity. ‘Cause there’s a lot of moving parts. Not just your front facing kind of visuals, but also there’s a lot of internal documents that sometimes need that branding and that expertise and that strategy and that content writing that kind of goes with it.
[00:08:17] Some of my favorite ones have been just the smaller kind of mom and pop shop clientele. And one in particular that happens this year I had met through my wedding actually. It is a small florist in the Dallas area called Flower House Dallas. They were undergoing a new branding as well as a new website build, and so I really their brand and took their business into a much deeper level and got them into the more luxurious look and feel that they had already been doing with a lot of their clients, but their brand just didn’t reflect that.
[00:08:58] And so by rebranding them to showcase what their expertise and what their knowledge was in the florist industry as well as the wedding industry, which they really excelled at. We built this whole kind of like branding system. And still to this day, even though we have completed all the immediate assets that they needed for their brand, the owner, she will still individually text me and be like, oh my gosh, like I just ordered some new business cards and I can’t wait to show you and look at them.
[00:09:26] And she’s just so excited to not only share it with her clientele, but also she always comes back to me and it’s like I had to make this one little quick thing. Like just recently she got a new truck for carting around some of her pieces. And she had sent me, she was like, it’s a very small simple design, it’s still like your branding and your logo on it, and I’m so excited to share it with you. And so she showed it, and again, we just get so heartfelt about, it’s the littlest things, but it has affected her life in such a positive way that, it warms my heart anytime that she pops up on my screen.
Websites & packages: custom scopes, refreshes, and support
[00:10:03] Christine Abela – Christine.Oxygen8.co: So you’ve mentioned that you do the branding, but you’ve also mentioned websites. Do you build the websites? Is it a whole package or do you outsource that?
[00:10:11] What happens there?
[00:10:13] Katie Smetherman: So typically how my packages work is even though I have, when you go to my website, I do have some kind of very standard or starter packages as I like to call them just because sometimes people don’t know what terminology or what comes with a brand or comes with a website.
[00:10:31] So having it listed out is sometimes just really helpful to be like, oh yes, that is something I need. Or, oh no, I don’t need, that extra page. Or I don’t need business cards. ’cause everything I do is digital. There’s various talking points through my packages.
[00:10:44] And so I love to guide people to my website when they are unsure of what they might need. But I also, in our intake meeting that I do with every single client that I have, I sit down on a Zoom call and we hash out not only their goals, but also their challenges where some of the stresses in their businesses lie. Because even though my business does maybe a part of what could help your business, I also have a lot of networks that, if you know you need somebody that is much more catered towards copywriting, for example, I do have some external sources that we can bring in. So I love to sit down, really see where your stresses are so that I can take off some of that heavy mental load. That’s my whole purpose is: I want to be able to relieve some of that stress. My knowledge and expertise is in branding and websites, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t also have a good source of networks that can also help in other regards.
[00:11:44] So we sit down, hash out where you are really needing help. And then from there I will look at my different packages and see how I can modify or curate them towards whatever you may need.
[00:11:59] So one example that kind of comes up a lot is some people, all they ever do is digital interactions. They don’t really have any in-person. So having a printed business card isn’t as helpful for the business. But if they had like a digital business card or a small digital postcard that shared their services to be able to email it to all of their clients. That’s something that, you know, like little tweaks.
[00:12:25] And so the same thing goes with website. Businesses that you know are e-commerce operate very differently than those who are just service based. And some of those web pages and everything that they might need also definitely differ. And that’s one thing that my business excels at, being able to develop as well as design your websites.
[00:12:47] If for some reason you already have a website and are needing just like a refresh or just some modifications, additions to your website. Then we’re happy to work with whatever platform, whatever server or hoster that you currently have.
[00:13:03] But a lot of our clientele, if they are doing a refresh, most of the time, they are also interested in a whole new system. Like they are wanting a full kind of reboot instead of just a more visual refresh. And so that’s where, a lot of times we’re like, we are happy to help. We have our own server and hosting that we can definitely get you in contact. So just in case you can’t get ahold of us, you also have their contact information.
[00:13:30] I’m never gonna leave you like in the dark where you only have to come to me. Absolutely not, because that stresses me out and I don’t wanna put that on any of my clientele. So I make sure that, if there are external sources they still have access to contact them. But most of the time they are happy to go with my server and hosting.
Website training so clients can update fast (even in emergencies)
[00:13:49] And then with each of my packages as well, whether they have somebody on their team that can help it or not, I also do a small training session on the backend of the website. Because again, I’ve had clients especially this comes with the larger corporations that, there’s just a lot of legal terms or things on their websites that sometimes need to be updated in an instant in an emergency situation.
[00:14:15] And so I never want my clients to feel like they can’t access something in an emergency situation where it’s oh, we really need to remove this person from our team members’ page. Or We need to swap out this language for this bit of text because we have our legal team is reviewing our website for trademark purposes or whatever it may be.
[00:14:34] So I do provide a training for every single website package. Which I’ve noticed talking to some other branding and website kind of professionals where they don’t always do that. They offer it as an additional thing. But for me I at least teach the basics to every single person who gets a website from me.
Wrap-up: free strategy session + where to find Katie
[00:14:54] Christine Abela – Christine.Oxygen8.co: Good. Thank you very much. If anybody listening wants to get some help with their business when they’re starting out, or even when you’re fully established, I do offer a free business strategy session and there’ll be a link to where you can get that below this video. But thank you very much for joining me today, Katie.
[00:15:12] Katie Smetherman: Yes, it’s been a joy. So good.
[00:15:14] Christine Abela – Christine.Oxygen8.co: Thank you.
[00:15:15] Bernard: If Katie’s insights have you thinking about your own brand or business foundations, you can find the show notes and Katie’s contact details, at GoBeyondBusy.com.
[00:15:26] Christine Abela also offers a free Business Strategy Session, and the link is below this video.
[00:15:32] Until next time, this is Go Beyond Busy. Helping you grow your business, not your to-do list.
