What if the most powerful thing you brought to your brand wasn't your strategy or your service, but your story? My very first guest for The Brand Obsessed Podcast just had to be, not your average brand expert, Jojo Smith!
Jojo’s own story is a masterclass in understanding who you are before you try to tell anyone else who you are. The branding lessons that weave through our conversation are ones every founder needs to hear.
About this week's guest
Jojo Smith is a brand and business development expert and founder of Creativsas. She has built her career across hospitality and retail before moving into brand development, and she brings a rare combination of lived experience, commercial acumen and radical self-awareness to everything she does. Jojo believes that the strongest brands aren't built on aesthetics. They're built on identity. And she has the framework, and the values acronym, to prove it.
In this episode
Most brand conversations start with visuals. Logos. Colour palettes. The things that look like branding from the outside.
Jojo starts somewhere entirely different.
She starts with identity. With the question of who you actually are before you decide how you want the world to see you. And in this podcast, she traces that philosophy all the way back to her own story, a childhood in foster care that taught her more about resilience, self-knowledge and the importance of values than any boardroom ever could.
This is a conversation about brand but it's also about something bigger. It's about what happens when the person building the brand finally understands themselves well enough to build something that lasts.
What you'll hear in this episode
The origin story that shaped everything
Jojo talks openly about growing up in foster care and how that experience forged the self-awareness and values-driven approach that now sits front and centre of everything she does in her business. This is not background noise. It is the foundation.
From hospitality to brand development
How a career across hospitality and retail gave Jojo an education in customer experience, brand consistency and what it actually means to deliver on a promise, long before she had the language to call it brand strategy.
The three stages of brand building
Jojo walks through her practical framework for building a brand that works. Foundations, positioning and execution. In that order. Always in that order. And why skipping straight to execution is where most founders go wrong.
Hiring for values, not just skills
What happens to a brand when the people inside it don't share its values, and how to make sure they do before you make the hire rather than after.
Real AF: the values that run Creativsas
Jojo shares the values framework she uses in her own business: Respect, Encouragement, Audacious, Loyal, Fair exchange. An acronym that is as memorable as it is meaningful and a masterclass in how values should feel, specific, ownable and impossible to confuse with anyone else's.
Brand failures and what they have in common
The pattern Jojo sees again and again in brands that lose their way. Spoiler: it almost always comes back to values. Not bad strategy. Not poor design. Values that were either never defined or never lived.
The routines behind the clarity
Music, journaling and the practice of declaring goals intentionally. Jojo on the personal habits that keep her thinking clearly, showing up consistently and building with purpose.
The strongest brands aren't built on aesthetics. They're built on identity.
The question this episode will leave you with
Do you know who you are clearly enough to build a brand around it? Or are you building the brand first and hoping the identity catches up?
About your host
Amanda Jane is a Sales Communications Strategist and founder of Big Brand Impact with over twenty years of experience in communications, media and PR. She works with established founders whose messaging has got messier as their business has grown to help them finally sound like the brand they've actually become.
Brand Obsessed is her podcast for founders who are done with vague and want better communications to lead to more sales.
Bold thinking. Brilliant stories. Better business.
Download the free business health check tool Why Aren’t More People Buying From Me?
Connect with Jojo Smith
Website Creativsas
Instagram
Facebook
Get Jojo’s books on Amazon:
Not your average Brand Expert
Loving yourself beyond belief
Connect with Amanda
Website: http://bigbrandimpact.com
Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @AmandaJaneStrategist
Enjoyed this episode?
If Jojo's story resonated with you, share this episode with a founder who is building a brand but hasn't yet done the identity work underneath it.
And if Brand Obsessed is becoming your favourite business podcast, a two-minute review makes an enormous difference to helping it reach the founders who need it most.
