Marketing Clarity in the Nonprofit Space | Katherine Lacefield

Welcome to Wickedly Branded: Marketing, Magic, and The Messy Middle, the podcast where real conversations meet real strategies. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, founder and fairy godmother of brand clarity at Wickedly Branded. With over 25 years of experience, I’ve helped hundreds of entrepreneurs awaken their brand magic, attract the right people, and build businesses that light them up.

In this grounded and inspiring episode, Katherine Lacefield, founder of Just Be Cause Consulting, shares how she went from burnout in the nonprofit sector to building a purpose-driven consulting business rooted in clarity, confidence, and connection.

We talk brand clarity, sustainable visibility, systems that create headspace, values-led marketing, and why relationships, not hustle, have been the real growth engine behind her success.

If you’ve ever felt like an accidental entrepreneur, questioned your authority, struggled with imposter syndrome, or felt overwhelmed by marketing that doesn’t feel like you, this conversation will remind you that clarity is created through action, not perfection, and that you’re more ready than you think.

Three Key Marketing Topics Discussed:

1. Brand Clarity Through Experience, Not Perfection
   Katherine shares how clarity came after she started, not before, and why testing, conversations, and real-world feedback shaped a brand that finally felt aligned.
2. Visibility That Feels Sustainable and Human
   We explore how consistency, repurposing, and simple systems made it easier for Katherine to show up confidently without burning out or overcomplicating content.
3. Systems, Support, and Confidence as Growth Catalysts
   From hiring branding support to using templates and automations, Katherine explains how simplifying marketing created the headspace needed to grow her business and her confidence at the same time.

Follow Katherine: 

Katherine | LinkedIn
Just Be Cause | Instagram
Just Be Cause | Website

Dare to be Wickedly Branded

Transcript

Beverly: 0:11

Did you know that less than 5% of global philanthropy directly supports animal and environmental causes? Today's guest is changing that. She's bringing fresh energy and strategy to what she calls the non-human philanthropy space, ensuring humans, ecosystems and the planet itself get the funding they deserve. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell. I am the founder, author and fairy godmother of brand clarity here at Wickedly Branded, and we've helped hundreds of overwhelmed overachieving consultants, creatives, and coaches awaken their brand magic and boldly bring their marketing to life so they feel more confident and attract their absolute most favorite customers. Joining us today is Katherine Layfield. She is the founder of Just Because Consulting with over 20 years in the nonprofit sector, spanning animal shelters, national animal rights, advocacy, and grant making. She now serves nonprofits in the animal and environmental world with clarity, strategy, and tons of heart. She's also a sought after speaker, podcaster, and consultant helping organizations create sustainable giving programs that truly reflect their own values. Welcome, Katherine. Thank you very much. I am excited to talk to you because I have a little bit of a selfish reason for having you today, but I wanna talk about how you went from animal shelters and all that stuff to opening your own consulting business and what did that those early days look like for you as an entrepreneur?

Katherine: 1:33

What a journey was. So I started working in animal shelters as soon as I turned 18, and I legally could work in an animal shelter. Animals have definitely been a driving force in my life, but also environmental causes. So I studied in environmental development. When you work in a nonprofit, I was doing direct services, so I was doing adoptions, foster care programs, reception, et cetera. I realized that everyone seemed to hate humans, and I realized they were like, that was one of the most common sentences I would hear from obviously the internal staff of, I hate humans, and it made me realize like. But we're humans and the people that are adopting are humans and the volunteers and the foster families and the donors, and everyone is a human. Why do we have this hate? And I started really trying to build and fostering a sense of no, there's some amazing people that stopped judging. And I started getting more involved in trusting people and people brought in animals, asking them more authentic questions. And that led to me also incorporating fundraising into some of my asks. Okay, you're bringing in these tray animals, would you like to make a donation to help support their care? Bam,$250. It started making me realize like. We don't incorporate fundraising into our services as much as we should, and I just naturally had a fundraising quo, and I love doing fund projects to raise more funds for the shelter. So that kind of got me into the fundraising sphere and that led to the animal rights organization where I was just doing fundraising. Have you ever seen those people in the streets that are like, hi, do you have two minutes to talk about Greenpeace, Yeah. So I did that for five years for animal rights. I was on the streets, face-to-face fundraising, best sales training I've ever done in my life. And that kind of led me to start understanding how different types of fundraising work, which led me to do a certificate in nonprofit management, which gave me more of the concrete strategies on how to run a nonprofit. And then I got burnt out, as I'm sure many entrepreneurs or people maybe in the nonprofit space that might be listening happen. I got exhausted, emotionally drained from working in animal rights for almost 10 years, and I took a break and started working in a philanthropy research lab. So that's where the grant making comes in. I was working in academia, very different audience, and I started doing more communications, coordinating a network of people. But that's not where my passion lied. My passion really is in fundraising and in the environment. When COVID hit, which is insane, that it's been five years. Crazy to think about that. And I lost my job. I lost my side job as a waitress, so I just had my. Research lab job, which anyone that's worked in university, you don't necessarily get paid that much. So I lost my source of income and my husband really pushed me as Kat. You have over 10 years of experience working in nonprofits. Why don't you launch a business? He's the business minded person. So that's how I got into launching the consulting business.

Beverly: 4:09

I'm an accidental entrepreneur. I never had this big grand plan to open a business. That was never my thing. I was working in corporate America, perfectly fine. Got married to an active duty army soldier, and all of a sudden my show had to go on the road. And that required me to how do I create a business from the skillset that I had? Being really creative in that. And then using my connections back in Detroit, where we're from to, to do that. And it literally just landed in my lap, Katherine. So it sounds like you were an accidental too, like out of necessity, you gotta start this business, which means you didn't have a plan, which means I know for myself, not having the plan, my customers created my business. And that was very dangerous for lots of reasons and caused lots of burnout. So what was like the biggest thing you took away from not having the initial plan, and what would you do different now if you had more of a plan?

Katherine: 5:00

It's hard in the beginning. When you've never run a business before, especially in any particular niche, I didn't really know what I wanted to offer and I didn't really know what my client base wanted. And honestly, to this day, I don't think they know what they want. But I had to do a lot of testing. What saved me, which was really helpful is that I kept my full-time university job to have the financial stability. I am someone that needs financial stability or I get too stressed and I can't work properly.

Beverly: 5:26

Oh, you're lucky to have that.

Katherine: 5:27

Yes. And it was remote after COVID. Yeah. So I had flexibility and like you, me and my husband are nomads. We've moved, probably close to 20 times in the last eight years. We're very mobile and I needed also a job that can follow me wherever I went, like from to Mexico to Hungary and Europe. And it's been crazy. So I would say from a plan perspective, I had never done business marketing. I had never done funnels or marketing for myself. I had done academic research, nonprofit fundraising, but I didn't have the knowledge of how to set things up so that it's not all manual. And I've learned a lot since then of now using tools like Calendly can really help streamline the process.'cause oftentimes I find when people are starting an initiative, a nonprofit or a business, we tried to do everything ourselves. And I found that was really exhausting. And while you're in the beginning, you don't necessarily wanna hire people right away if you don't have steady income or whatever. So finding the right tools to help move things forward and templates and examples and things that already exist. You don't have to reinvent the wheel so you can find these things that can really help speed line the process. And also it's interesting. The first three years of my consultancy, I didn't have a website.

Beverly: 6:42

Oh, I didn't either, but I'm a marketer so you think you need one, right? But you don't. I get in some ways you don't. That was because I was doing websites for everybody else. I didn't have time to do'em for myself. And honestly, my marketing didn't really get good, I think, until about two years ago. Because I took the time invested in it and I hired someone to do it specifically same on my team to do it the way I want it done. And but I think that, and I say this a lot too in some of the interviews that I do on podcasts is that your first couple, three years, your entire energy and your network can sustain you. So I totally agree with you. Like DIY and all that works for the first three years, like it's totally fine, but at some point it stops working.

Katherine: 7:20

I agree. I think I had an extensive network. And this is also the question I think entrepreneurs should ask themselves before they launch. Do you have a network of potential clients already or else if you're starting from zero, if you're starting something that's completely out of left field, you might have a hard time in the beginning'cause it will take time to build up that confidence. At least for me, it took some time to be like, oh wait, who am I to tell them what to do? But I found just being active on LinkedIn and talking to people about what I did, you'd be surprised at how many people were like, I was thinking of starting a nonprofit or I have a friend that really needs help, like everyone knows someone. And that really helped me in the beginning stage. But having that stable job allowed me to not be stressed about just taking whatever came my way. It allowed me to really figure out what is my main offer? What comes organically and what do I have to push really hard for people to wanna hire me for?

Beverly: 8:11

So you have a personal love of animals And the non-human philanthropy space. Yes. But how did you get to that niche specifically for your consultancy, and why is it so important right now?

Katherine: 8:22

In the beginning, I was doing whatever. I just wanted clients. I wasn't doing anything, but I was doing fundraising, and I was of course more interested and attracted to environmental or animal nonprofits. But in the beginning, I just wanted to have proof of concept. I wanted to have proof that what I was doing was working. Another thing that helped me in the beginning was I became a subcontractor for a bigger consultancy. That gave me a hell of a lot of confidence and they were giving me clients like without me having to do the marketing. So I was able to start building my own and internal templates of what my development plans should look like, what my case for supports should look like. So it gave me a paid opportunity to get experience with different nonprofits and build my own internal tools so that when I have my own, I was able to be much more efficient. But I worked with, international development organizations, a lot of child pediatric centers. So I really was doing everything but my heart lies with animals in the environment. And if you're doing fundraising, like marketing, if you don't care about the cause, if you don't care about your product, it's really hard. To make your stuff compelling. I had a client that was saving African penguins, like it was the most fun I had in thinking about fundraising campaigns and branding ideas and what can we call their things and what jokes can we make, what memes can we use? It was so much fun, a pediatric center, that's not where I have as much knowledge and connections. But it took me a while to build up that reputation of this is the animal fundraiser. So that you can't necessarily establish such a small niche in the beginning until you have a network, at least in my opinion. You build that up through time, but don't say no to other clients that will still give you that experience, those testimonials and the knowledge I guess that you would need before you move into your more specific niche. But I still do everything now.

Beverly: 10:10

I think there's some. Value in a proven concept, right? I have a lot of experience and I worked for Chrysler and their marketing team so Fortune 500. I worked for a tech startup. I've worked for mom and pop type businesses doing translation services. I've done a little bit of everything. And what I found though, just like you I have some non-human clients. They're humans that run non-human businesses. Dog daycares and a naturopathic pet food store. And I am drawn to those businesses for sure, because I have dogs and I love dogs, who doesn't? And I tell people this all the time, all of our clients, you have the ability to create a business doing the things that you love to do. So if you love to travel, how can you work that into your business model? There's a lot of opportunities for you to take the thing you love and do the thing you love if you think about it and take some time. We're wickedly branded, so have a lot of Wizard of Oz and wicked analogies and the things that we do. It all starts though with your heart. It's like the tin man. You need a heart to do the things. So you need to really look at the things that you love and let you up and bring you joy and looks like you do that. And I do think niching is liberating. Once you niche, a lot of things become easier but doesn't mean you don't have to get to work with other kinds of businesses. We are female founder focused. We love to work with female founders. That's like our thing. We love that. I've been in this business long enough to see how far we've come and how far we still need to go. And I really wanna be a mentor for other businesses, but I have an NFL professional football player who's a client and talk about as manly as it gets. That's pretty wicked. But I get to choose who I work with. I get to choose the kind of clients I wanna work with. Obviously I have some success that I'm able to be a little bit pickier, but once you have a proven concept, that concept can fit within other things if you choose to do those other things. You have a choice and you can build within that choice. You have that power to do that.

Katherine: 12:07

If I could just work for my dogs forever, that would be the best. Be their manager. No, but I completely agree. I choose where I speak, right? I love speaking at Humane Canada Summit for animals, or I went to the New England Federation of Humane Societies to speak because that's putting me directly in front of who I want to work with. But one invited me to speak in front of it was like a book access association. So they were a whole bunch of book accessibility literacy nonprofits. I'm not gonna say no, sorry, you don't help animals like, screw you. Of course not. It didn't necessarily turn into any clients, but I've also had the animal ones that didn't turn into any clients. They don't turn those things down unless it's really oh, I really don't wanna work with that kind of organization, like political stuff. Not my thing. Or like it is important to know what you really don't want to work with. That's an important distinction. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to choose and make a list of the only types of organizations you want to work with. Like I've been surprised by what doors have opened with clients and it allows me to also think differently.

Beverly: 14:15

Yeah, I agree. So talk about creating your brand and your logo and your website. What was the process like for you to develop this brand?

Katherine: 14:24

I tried to do it on my own and that's why I stopped because I'm a child at heart in many ways. Like I have a unicorn tattooed to my arm. I have a very childish side in the sense of I'm playful. This is a unicorn scrunchie but I also I'm very good at what I do and I'm very professional. I have those two sides, but when I was coming to branding, I was like, pretty colors and I couldn't distinguish that. So I actually ended up hiring someone, Samantha, who I still work with to this day. She's amazing. She really helped me stay like minimalist. And my husband did a lot of input'cause he was also like, Kat, you don't wanna seem too childish. That's not your audience necessarily. And I was like, you're right. Even if I hate it, I want unicorns everywhere. So he actually was a really great influence. He's my business partner as well. He helped decide on the colors. And the branding being very minimalist and it works really well because it's easy to continue. If it had been a very complex branding without a full-time branding marketing team, it would've been maybe much more difficult for me to continue. So Samantha really helped me with the logos, the color, and setting up the brand of like the fonts and how to use it. And then she set up the website and some social media templates that I now still use and duplicate. So that was really helpful. Once you're starting to get regular client, people are coming back, income is coming in. I think an investment in branding is really important in getting that base done. Doesn't have to be for five years. Just getting the base stuff set up is so helpful.'cause as much as you know yourself, it's really hard to come up with your own brand.

Beverly: 15:53

As much as you know yourself. It's really hard to come up with your own brand. And maybe that's why I waited 10 years to do my own, Katherine, to be honest. It's incredibly hard to look at what makes you different and unique and how to put that into writing and into pictures and into imagery, without a logo can just be a piece of art or it can actually represent your soul and your passion. There's two sides of that. And I really do believe that we're really good at that aspect of kind of looking at who you are. And we walk the line every day, Katherine of playful. And serious branding and marketing experts Now, because of what we do, it's a very creative space. We can probably push the envelope a little further than you.

Katherine: 16:32

Oh, I've definitely pushed it in many ways.

Beverly: 16:33

But I think your website's very clean and minimalist. I love the color choices you've used. I think there's so much you can do with color that people oftentimes don't see or know psychologically and even aesthetically to make people click on buttons and things like that. There's psychology on every piece of that, which is amazing. I'm so glad that you found the right partner for you to be able to develop your marketing in that way. And I think, even if you start out with something like whether it's something that someone like myself does for you or you do for yourself it's going to evolve a little bit, right? You become more sophisticated, you become smarter, wiser. You know yourself better, you become more confident, I think, in who you are and how you serve people. And so your brand will continue to evolve. So what do you think has been the biggest evolution of your brand over the years?

Katherine: 17:18

In the beginning it was more about figuring out how I wanted to show up and being consistent. I have not multiple personalities in the clinical sense, but I have very different aspects of my life. And it was hard for me to show up in a consistent way. So having my brand guide has been really helpful in creating this sense of consistency and also not making me go crazy, of trying to figure out how am I gonna make this presentation now? It's so easy. I have my elements, I have all these little things that she custom made for me that I could just pop in. Of course sometimes I go off and do weird things, but the majority of the time it, it helped me streamline it. So that was the biggest evolution of once it was clear of the guesswork was taken out of it, which allowed me to have more space and time to actually create the content and actually publish, which got me lots more visibility. I've been growing my email list, growing my visibility. People are like, oh, you really are showing up everywhere. I'm like, yeah.'cause I'm duplicating stuff that've already done.

Beverly: 18:13

So the simplification, the systemization, the automation are all things that can create headspace to do other things, the things you're more passionate about. So marketing's not your thing, which is totally okay. Although, I love marketing. I see in so many of our clients is that they're so worried about they spend hours on a Canva template. I'm like, no, dude. Stop. This is not what you have to do. I want you to spend your time developing the concepts or developing the new services you can offer. I don't want you to spend time on a template that's not the best use of your time at all. And I don't know if enough people understand this, but to my listeners, when you do this really well, when you have templates and you have icons, and you have colors and everything is laid out for you it can become a little boring to do your marketing. And that's okay because that's your brand. Your brand becomes so consistent and persistent that is what you need to show up so people recognize you, like it needs to be. And I've read all kinds of statistics on this seven to 11 times people have to see something to remember it. So those evergreen pieces of content that you can create be one and done are really powerful because you're just reinforcing that messaging every time you do it. So don't be scared to repurpose. You might wanna change up an image or something like that, but it's just a little tweaks versus having to create the whole thing over and over again. Yes, systemize, simplify and automate as much as you can to create headspace. Great tips there. Katherine. I have a very selfish ask. One of the things that we do here, one of our core values, things that matter to us is that we do wanna give back. Everything we do is about giving back, about making the world a better place. Just bringing more joy. The ripple effect of what we do is so important. And everybody on my team has a quarterly project, a nonprofit project they work on whether they donate money they actually work within the nonprofit or they actually will do the marketing or social media or something for the nonprofit for the quarter. And we have talked about here internally about maybe starting a nonprofit arm of our business so that our clients can. If one of my marketing associates wants to ask their clients to support their cause for the quarter, that the clients can donate to that particular cause, and it's been on my like big goal list probably for three or four years now, Katherine, and I know I need a board of directors and I know I need all these things. How hard is it to do that? Tell me the simple guidance and wisdom of someone who's thinking about doing something like that.

Katherine: 20:32

You don't need an official charity to do social impact work. There's now many alternatives that will facilitate it. What we were just talking about. You don't need to take in the beginning, especially, you don't have to set everything up properly before you can actually do the good work. There's two things that I would suggest. First of all, there's this amazing company called Lush. For the longest time I love their case study of the way they were doing giving,'cause they said, you know what? Screw the charitable system because the charitable system has its own limitations. If you can't grant to grassroots organizations that are not registered, you can't support everyone. You can't give money. If you want to, let's say support financially an organization, you can't just give it to anyone. You have to give it only to another registered charity, which had limitations if you wanted to support grassroots organizations. So they just created a fund in their business. Where they put money aside, they had their own rules. If you buy this product, 10% of it or all the value of it, goes to this pot, which will go to fund social projects. Okay. So for you, you could even do that internally just as a grassroots initiatives, we have our fund, it's managed internally and you won't get the charitable tax receipts. You won't get the charitable deductions as a business, but you can, if you're donating to charitable organizations, you can yourself, as a business, get the tax receipts. So there's the like fiscal aspect. But if your goal is just to support non-profits, you don't need that. But if you do want also the fiscal opportunity, there's things called the giving circles. Actually just my last episode was just on this, so it's like perfect timing. You should definitely check out Grapevine. I'm not an affiliate and it's free anyway, but I just really what they do. And especially if you're in the us you can basically start a pot, like a giving circle of people who can donate to your giving page, can be internal, it could be with your employees, it could be your clients, it could be the whole wide world. And they donate and they will get a charitable tax receipt for donating. Because the grapevine is a charitable organization.

Beverly: 22:23

They have the certification.

Katherine: 22:24

Yes. Okay. So anyone that donates to your fund can get charitable tax receipts for their donations, which is great selling point. But then the limitation is that you still have to distribute it to only charitable organizations. So as long as they're a registered charity, then you can regrant to them the money. The pro of the giving circle is the managers of it. We'll decide where the money goes. However the downside, if I could say of a giving circle is that usually it's supposed to be a community based thing, so everyone that's donating kind of the goal is that they have a say. But you can manage it there. All of the platform it allows you to do who gets the vote and who doesn't get the vote. Like you can manage that internally from a governance perspective,

Beverly: 23:02

I'm a US based company, can I only donate to US based companies or can I donate to International

Katherine: 23:08

They just launched, they international ones. That's one of the reasons why I launched the episode at this time of year is because they had just started doing that. So of course I think they still need to be a registered organization in another country. And I don't have all the fiscal details around tax receipts and donations and stuff, but. Yes, you will start being able to work with organizations internationally, which was one of my questions.'cause I wanted to create an animal fund that would support international organizations that were helping us. That's amazing. They need the support.

Beverly: 23:37

How hard is it for people internationally to get like a designation for that? Is that something that's hard for them to get do you know?

Katherine: 23:44

It depends on each country. In Africa, for example, in Uganda and Nigeria, very difficult because there's a lot of money laundering issues in certain countries. So some countries are more challenging than others. Some recognitions are not recognized. So it definitely complicates things. But one of the things that I also like, there's another format that's called the Awesome Foundation. So what they did is they were just outside of the charitable system. This is the initial model, but you can change it. But 10 people come in and they donate a hundred dollars a month into a collective pot for a thousand dollars grant. And they ask people, okay, submit your grant idea for an awesome project. That's the whole point. And then they just send them the money. And that could be individuals, it can be organizations, it can be anyone. So there's many ways to do it outside of the institution of charities, which has its own limitations. It really depends on what are you actually trying to achieve.

Beverly: 24:41

My only concern from that perspective was if the client donated. I would then be taxed on it and then I feel like it was like double taxed to do it. So I wanted more money to go to the organization and not as much to taxes if possible.

Katherine: 24:54

The Giving Circle would be a great opportunity then. And then as your company can donate to the Giving Circle and get a charitable tax receipt for your own company. And then you can invite your clients, which also from a transparency perspective is great. You're saying 10, you can even add them, donate separately so that it's not coming through your business. It's going to directly to this giving circle and from a books perspective, it definitely helps.

Beverly: 25:15

Great advice. Oh my gosh, Katherine, that was like amazing. The best advice I've probably gotten in the last, I don't know. Forever. Because I don't think I'm alone in this. We want to support our communities. We want to help them as much as possible. This is something that matters to us. I always say that if you can have a collaboration or partnership with a nonprofit that matters to you, that only amplifies your voice and your work. One thing that we're in the middle of launching right now, is a buy one, give one? If you buy a brand spark experience from us, and we'll give one. It's like a scholarship type of situation. They can apply for the scholarship and we'll give one to somebody who is deserving. There are some requirements for us to give that to someone. We're not just giving it away to anybody and whatever, but they apply and we choose those every single month. So for every brand spark, somebody does purchase, they can know that they're gonna give one to another female founder and their magic. We multiplied with somebody else's magic. So we're launching something like that. So that's something that a lot of businesses can do is even in their own services, offer something that can give back to your community as well. So from a branding and strategic opportunity, this might be something that you wanna consider for your business, for my listeners, for sure. I think there's just a lot of opportunity to be a good citizen and to build your communities accordingly with your work.

Katherine: 26:29

I will give a very specific example of how I use a similar thing to actually do list building and build my potential clients with nonprofits. I do contests where I give away consulting products. So for three months, we'll meet every two weeks and I'll give you fundraising advice and we'll build up according to what you need. Or I'll give you a free training. Yeah. And I give back for free. But of course people that sign up, and I also get their context and I'm starting to build relationships with everyone who signed up even if they didn't win.

Beverly: 26:57

See for the scholarship, they have a business obviously. So they could potentially be a client. The other thing that I think is really powerful of it, if you help someone, they're more apt to talk about you. But even from a referral standpoint, there's some power in it. Testimonials. And I don't believe that when you give, it has to be purely selfish. Like it can be very strategic and it can help. I'm doing this thing with genuine purpose to help. However, I do think that strategically it's a good choice for the business because it grows the list, it grows the possibility for referrals, it increases your testimonials.

Katherine: 27:27

And I work with nonprofits, those are my clients. So if I were just to do good and I wouldn't get paid, I wouldn't be able to run my business.

Beverly: 27:36

I always say that, even for our clients who maybe are undercharging, I say, you should charge your, what you deserve. And you might lose a client or two, but you're gonna be making far more money first of all. You're now able to have a little bit of wiggle room to be able to give back. The giving back side of it and charging what you're worth, that's just good practice business, common sense kind of thing for lots of reasons. If you're a healthy business, you're gonna support your community in different ways. You're gonna buy a nice house, you're gonna pay your taxes, all that's gonna support your community. So don't feel like that's selfish in any way.

Katherine: 28:07

I wanted to bring up another point about the pricing. I think you bring up a really strong point, and I wanted to share some really great advice that I got from one of my mentors who she said, your pricing might change based on different factors because there's the passion component. If this is a project that's gonna turn you on, yes. Intellectually you might be like, you know what, you have a smaller budget. It's okay, I'm gonna do it because I really want to, yes. Reputation, if this is a big client that you know, they're being associated with their name. Is gonna be great for your business. You might maybe not necessarily on pricing.'cause usually if they're a big name they should have the things. But anyway, you might be more flexible on your structure because you wanna put your name with them. There's also the PITA tax, have you heard of it?

Beverly: 28:51

Pain in the Ass Tax? Yeah.

Katherine: 28:52

So you might wanna even increase your pricing if you know this is gonna be really tough to work with. Like arts organizations for me, I love artists and all, but they're always more complicated to work with. So unfortunately most of them get a PITA tax. So it's just about thinking about your pricing as it doesn't have to be fixed. If you have different criteria that will affect if you want to work with them or not. I just wanted to bring that up because I thought that was really interesting way of thinking about it.

Beverly: 29:19

Another thing that I also advocate for with my clients is maybe the first three or four people in a certain niche that you want to deliver on, and maybe you don't have that much experience in. Charge them half price as a case study, that gives you the model with which to build off of and gives you some testimonials and things like that. There's lots of reasons to adjust your pricing. Anybody who comes to my podcast they get a 50% discount on our brand Spark service. And the reason why that's great is'cause I already know you, like I don't have to do a lot of digging and I know you're brilliant and I wanna work with you. So there's some reason to do that. Again, you can build the business you want and you can charge what you want. Did you have any mindset issues that you had to overcome, Is there stuff that you've had to work through to get here?

Katherine: 29:59

Scarcity mindset? A hundred percent. And it's funny'cause I work with my clients to get over a scarcity mindset. I've had to definitely deal with that. And I'm not just saying this because he is right next to me. He has his AirPods on and I don't think he hears me. But my husband really helped me from a confidence perspective. Even if no matter how much experience I had and how I knew I could help, especially in the beginning, I thought, who am I? I look young, like generally speaking, I'm still 35, like I have 20 years experience, but 20 years experience for a 35 year old. Most people are like, what? I'm like, yeah, I just started really young. So I was always like, people aren't gonna take me seriously. How am I supposed to be a consultant? Especially when I just started. I felt like I was too young and no one's gonna take me seriously. So I really had that imposter syndrome. But what really helped me was just getting those first clients and hearing their amazing testimonials of you are amazing. I love what you did. And how that really helped boost my confidence. And now it just comes naturally. Confidence really makes a difference to be able to get more clients and just makes it less annoying to work.

Beverly: 30:58

I think women specifically, but so many people really the imposter syndrome is a very real 70% or something of leadership and businesses have experienced imposter syndrome to some degree. So for those that are listening, just know you're not alone in this. Everybody feels like they don't deserve to be at the table. So that should give you more confidence right now because everybody feels the same way. But when you have a strong brand, when you have a strong positioning and you have case studies and you have testimonials, your confidence just inches higher and you continue to make those steps and you continue to have momentum and then you build and build and then 20 years later look at what you can have. So I do have a couple of fun things. I have a magic wand round and this round is all about what's possible what's happened, and maybe something we could even fix in the process. So when I wave the magic wand, it takes us back to that first day or the first little bit of when you started your business. What is one piece of advice you would give her now that you wish she'd had that would've saved her some headaches and struggles?

Katherine: 31:55

Don't be scared to try things, even if they're wacky. I was very exuberant about who I was as a person individually, and I was scared of how that might show up of maybe being too weird. I tried doing a tarot, like a nonprofit tarot reading. I just offered it for free. It was for fun. Like I have six of my tarot decks with me now, and people loved it. And it wasn't weird and people weren't like, oh, you're unprofessional. They loved it. I've had people cry on these calls of that was exactly what I needed to hear today, thank you so much. And I would tell them like, now this is my tarot reading hat. And this is my consultant hat. Just letting you know. So not to be scared to try things. That are a bit weird or funky. I think it'll distinguish who you are.

Beverly: 32:35

Totally, fully lean into who you are. I think that authenticity is huge and people can see if it's contrived or not. If you really love tarot and you're like digging it, and that's part of who you are, that's part of you Katherine, and you're a holistic person. You don't have to just be super uber smart and professional. You can be fun and little mystical and be super smart. There's a hundred sides of us. And I love that you're willing to be vulnerable enough to show up as who you are. So if young Katherine could look at you now, what would she say about where you are now versus where she was like, how far have you come?

Katherine: 33:12

I think she would not believe it to be honest.

Beverly: 33:15

Why?

Katherine: 33:16

Because when you work in nonprofit space, you are taught you'll never reach these big things. You'll never make good money. My boss told me, and I swear, you're getting paid$16 an hour. That is the most you'll ever make in the animal welfare space. And I'm like, oh yeah. I charge$200 an hour now. Thank you very much. I didn't have the confidence in myself. And for anyone who's been in the nonprofit space, this is one of the biggest things I tried to break down of you can reach for the moon, you can have a good lifestyle. You can travel the world while building your business with two dogs. You make it work. And I feel like I'm just throwing flowers to my husband or like he really helped me. Having a strong partner that helps you build up that confidence is necessary, especially when you're coming from a very scarcity mindset industry. It really helped. I never would've believed this was possible that we just moved to Hungary and we are here now with our dogs running a business that's paying for all of our travels around the world. Who would've thought I don't work at a the university anymore. This is all us now. So it's possible. I don't think I would've believed it and I would've said you got this, like I would've been I'm in awe of myself as maybe weird as that sounds.

Beverly: 34:19

No, I think it's lovely and that's how it should be to see that you maybe pushed the boundaries of what you thought was possible and maybe even twisted what was even possible. So I'm gonna wave the wand and we're gonna go future, really super far in the future. Okay? And we're gonna be at your funeral and people are gonna be talking about Katherine and someone's saying your eulogy and they're talking about the impact you made in the world. What are they gonna say your impact was on the world?

Katherine: 34:40

Inspiring other people to actually like fundraising. From a business perspective, I would say I bring the spark. You talk about, your own program is about spark. I think a lot of people are so scared of asking people for money and I'm like, stop acting like you're begging people. You're asking people to invest in the world that they want to see. I'm really good at inspiring and motivating people to believe in themselves, believe in their mission, and get the money necessary to accomplish their dreams. And I think that's one of my biggest strong suits. I am really good at making people excited about something that most people are not excited about. So that's one of my good things. And obviously that I have the best dogs in the world and that I'm a very big animal lover.

Beverly: 35:20

Okay, so I'm gonna wave the one, we're gonna come back at the present time. And if I could wave my magic wand and fix anything to do with marketing and branding for you right now, what would it be?

Katherine: 35:30

I wish I could just speak and my automations are created for me themselves. Like I could just be like Zapier, but like next level where I'm like, just do it.

Beverly: 35:41

Right now, you can use chat GPT to do some of that heavy lifting, but you still have to make all the symptoms connect to each other.

Katherine: 35:47

I do that, but I would just be like, okay, for this segment this happens and this happens right away. Thank you.

Beverly: 35:52

Oh my gosh, that would be amazing. I agree with you. I also have a magic hat and the magic hat has a few questions in it. So the few questions are more rapid fire and more fun. What's one thing you wish more people understood about your business or industry?

Katherine: 36:05

That people actually have jobs in the nonprofit world. It's not just volunteers. Unfortunately a lot of people think what? You can make money doing that. We get paid to do jobs.'Cause we're there full time. And people have this weird thing about not wanting to pay for people's salaries and nonprofits. I really wish people would get over that.

Beverly: 36:20

Yeah. What's the One area you had to learn the most? Finance, hr, leadership, operations, or marketing?

Katherine: 36:27

Operations. Create project management, the invoicing, the contracts, figuring out how to do it in a smooth way, like all the business registration. Ugh.

Beverly: 36:35

Yeah. What's one thing people overcomplicate about marketing That's actually really simple.

Katherine: 36:41

For me it's creating content. Just like making a post. Just talk. Just say what you think. We just try things and just see what happens. I feel like some people are so scared of what are they gonna do? I'm like, what? Seven people are gonna like your posts instead of 20? Who cares? I just think people over complicate creating content.

Beverly: 36:57

I totally agree with you. We have a repurposing spell that we use that is amazing. That I'm like, this is what makes everything easier. Then you created content vaults and everything is easy, I don't understand how it's not everywhere. If your brand had a theme song, what would it be and why?

Katherine: 37:12

Oh my God, you're catching me off guard here. I just have Sailor Moon stuck in my head right now, let's go with Sailor Moon theme song.

Beverly: 37:18

Why?

Katherine: 37:19

Because it's a great song and i'm Sailor Moon and I'll do my weird magic things. I don't know. I have Sailor Moon stuck in my head. That's the one that came up.

Beverly: 37:25

I like it. Okay, last question. What does being wickedly branded mean to you? How do you show up wickedly branded and what advice would you give to our listeners to be more wickedly branded?

Katherine: 37:35

I think is that people know it's you without seeing your name. When they can say, oh, that's definitely Katherine's weirdness without seeing my name. They can recognize it. That's you. I think that's being wickedly branded, that you don't need to be associated with your name for people to recognize you. What was the second question? How I show up? Yep. Yep. With my visuals and my photos. I use authentic photos. I often share pro photos of my dogs. The colors I find is really helpful. Colors and fonts, it goes a long way. And having very similar elements, like I have a couple of the elements that I always recycle, and the same little stick man that's wait a second. And I reuse that so people recognize it. Even if it's a bit of a different context, people will recognize it. So visuals I find is very important.

Beverly: 38:15

What advice would you give to our listeners to be more wickedly branded?

Katherine: 38:19

If you don't have your Canva brand guide set up, please set it up right now. Come on. Do that. And just use it consistently. I find for me the elements, I'm gonna say that again, but having those little elements that add some spunk to my, that add a little bit like fun. Made it feel less boring and yet still consistent.

Beverly: 38:38

I actually paid an illustrator to illustrate some things for us. So instead of ruby red slippers, I have iridescent ballet flats. Ooh. There's a Tin man, but I have a heart that's specifically for us and a star that's for courage and a light bulb for like brains. We have these little elements. So when we're talking about those aspects of what we're doing, whatever that is for our marketing, we use those elements to kind of correlate with that particular thing. But when we give our brands for our clients, we create some icons related to their services, so they can use that for those going forward. It's so good. This has been so fun. So Katherine, tell everybody where they can find more about you. Learn how to work with you. Where can they find you?

Katherine: 39:18

I'm a LinkedIn girl, so I'm all over LinkedIn. Katherine Layfield. If you wanna check out my website and figure out all the cool branding I did there. JustBecause.C onsulting, very simple, but definitely showing up on LinkedIn is where I'm at or my podcast, the Just Because podcast you can definitely check that out as well.

Beverly: 39:33

Awesome. To my listeners, I really hope today's episode inspired you in some way, maybe a little fire in you to do some more community work. Maybe gave you some new ideas, but most of all, I wanted to inspire you to take some step forward, an action for your business that is positive. Because the thing that I know for sure is that your work matters. Your message matters, and the world needs to hear more of what you have to say. So marketing isn't just about visibility, it's also about the impact you make on the world. It's about connecting with the right people in the way that feels absolutely 100% true to you. So please keep showing up, keep sharing your brilliance, and keep making magic in the world. And if you ever feel stuck, know that you don't have to do this alone. We're here to help you turn your spark into a wildfire. But until next time, I dare you to be wickedly branded.