A Birmingham ADHD entrepreneur who spent most of her childhood years in the care system, and many years following trying to find her place in the world, before building a six figure, award winning brand strategy business, this week celebrated her second No.1 best selling book hitting the charts, that combines both her life lessons, creative director skills and business experience to help other entrepreneurs get to grips with how to build a personal brand.
At the same time she also raised over £500 for her CIC, The Big Wishworks, which helps support young care leavers 16+ with mentorship and entrepreneurship opportunities.
As someone who was locked in the toilet, at her care home, for talking too much as a child, and spent much of her life feeling like she was ‘too much’, JoJo Smith, 52, Founder of CreativSAS®, has consciously committed to making herself visible over the past few years as she’s built her business from scratch, on her terms.
JoJo, who also hosts a radio show on The FriYay Feels Show for Solihull’s On Your Radio, shared her lessons at a celebratory book launch event, with an eclectic audience spanning family, friends, colleagues and peers from the world of entrepreneurship, from startups to multi 7 figure business owners, as well as Olympic medallist Marilyn Okoro who now works in the high performance coaching industry, Sam Teale, the 22 year old award winning founder of Sam Teale Productions, and burlesque sensation Kiki Deville who compared the evening.
As part of her celebrations Marilyn, Kiki and JoJo all shared what they felt they had gained from being care experienced, in an insightful panel discussion that explored how they had all naturally built one of the key qualities that JoJo believes business owners need, resilience.
JoJo went on to share some of her frameworks around building successful brands and being instantly recognisable. She’s built these frameworks drawing on more than 25 years across business development, branding and strategic growth, including two decades in a corporate career that saw her win contracts with TV production companies and premier league football clubs, as well as her own entrepreneurial journey.
When I first started out “I thought I was too much, too loud, too different”, she said. “All things I had been told at some point in my childhood….so I dulled myself down. I tried to fit in. I tried to look corporate – but it just didn’t suit me – all that happened was I squashed my personality and therefore didn’t connect with people I was trying to help”.
This second book, which she started writing after waking up at 5am one day, having been struck by inspiration, is her rally cry to business owners and brands of all sizes – to get personal, and to be unapologetically identifiable.
At the start of her business, CreativSAS®, Jo Jo, who is an international speaker, and trusted Chief Brand Officer to businesses from micro-enterprises to million-pound companies, honed in on her playful and creative side branding herself “The Belief, Branding and Business Development Fairy Godmother” with her trademark pink tutus. Over the last couple of years she has leant more into the strategic advisor role, and sees herself now more as ‘The Godmother of Brand’, as she fiercely protects the brands she is working with.
In this new book she shares her bold new framework, which helps ‘ build legacies over logos’. Using her proven CreativSAS® methodology – Creativity, Self Awareness and Strategy – the central argument is bold: most businesses do not have a branding problem, they have a self-awareness problem. Rather than focusing on logos, colours and surface level decisions, JoJo encourages readers to understand what audiences truly buy into and what actually drives long-term commercial impact.
‘Not Your Average Brand Expert: BRAND: Stripped Back. Strategically Covered. Unapologetically Profitable’ is the second in her planned trilogy, with the next due next year. It includes brand self-awareness exercises, strategic frameworks, guidance on positioning and messaging, and conversations around brand growth and commercial sustainability, written for founders ready to stop guessing and start building with intention.
The book Not Your Average Brand Expert is available now in paperback and on Kindle via Amazon.
JoJo’s Top 5 Golden Nuggets For Building a Profitable Legacy Brand:-
- Prepare to be Loved or Loathed – the middle ground is no man’s land and you can’t make impact from there. The most powerful brands are not universally liked but are deeply loved by their people.
- Get the Eq Edge – Emotional Quotient is everything when building human connection. This is about building trust that feels instinctive, when every touchpoint lands as care, not an interaction.
- Your Values: Live Them Don’t Laminate Them – Your values are not a section on your website but the architecture of your entire brand, and the most powerful decision making tool you can own. Every time you face a decision do a values check – does it align?
- Roll out the Good Ego – this is the one who knows their worth – you have something genuinely valuable to offer and are prepared to take up space to share it – this ego helps support your brand – just be sure to keep the ugly ego at bay -which is the one that makes it all about them, not the mission.
- Create a HOME – Create belonging via your brand thanks to leading from the heart, taking ownership of your expertise, leading from a place of meaningful purpose, and ensuring every touchpoint is an experience, a brand moment. When your brand feels like home people do not just buy from you they belong to something.
