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Cat Gerke Creative

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Brand strategy, branding + websites + social for creative small businesses who are tired of winging it.

Helping small brands look better, communicate clearly + grow with confidence.
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20/10/2026

There’s a strange thing happening in business at the moment. Somewhere along the way, actually doing the work seems to have become something we’re all supposed to graduate from. Build the business. Develop the strategy. Sell your expertise. Outsource the ex*****on.

Look, I get it for businesses who want to scale, but for service based businesses like mine? I’ve never quite subscribed to the idea that the thinking is somehow more valuable than the doing. Because I think a hell of a lot of the thinking comes FROM the doing.

I know which website platforms work brilliantly and where they fall frustratingly short because I’ve built the websites. I’ve hit the limitations, found the workarounds and spent hours solving problems that should never have existed in the first place.

I know which marketing strategies work because I’ve implemented them. I’ve seen what happens AFTER the beautiful strategy document is delivered and real people start interacting with it.

I know which apps are worth paying for and which are a complete waste of money because I’ve wasted my own time and money finding out.

I know how long things actually take because I’ve done them. Hundreds of times. That’s not knowledge I picked up from a podcast, a business coach or a LinkedIn thought leader. It’s knowledge I’ve accumulated by rolling up my sleeves.

The thinking informs the doing. But the doing also informs the thinking.

There’s absolutely a place for delegation, specialists and building teams. But there’s something incredibly valuable about staying close enough to the work to understand the problems you’re asking other people to solve.

I don’t want to sell a strategy I’ll never have to execute. I want to know what happens when the theory meets reality. When the software doesn’t cooperate. When the budget gets cut. When something that looked brilliant on paper turns the tables. Because that’s where you learn things and that’s where you solve things.

That’s what clients are paying for. Not just my ideas, but the experience behind them. I don’t think doing the work is something to graduate from. I think it’s what makes you better at the thinking.

10/10/2026

Consider this my professional dating profile.
I’ve realised that what I actually do is a little harder to explain than “branding, websites, marketing and strategy”, because while yes, technically that’s the work, it’s not really the bit that lights me up.
The bit I love is the messy middle. The creative business owner with too many ideas and no idea which one to focus on. The designer whose work is brilliant but whose website makes them sound beige. The founder who knows what they mean but cannot, for the life of them, explain it in one clean sentence.
Those are my people.

I’m also not the person you hire if you want someone to simply nod along.
My relationship style is probably best described as: very pro-you, not necessarily pro-every-idea-you-have.

I’ll champion the brilliant stuff. I’ll tell you when I think you’re underselling yourself. I’ll tell you when the website is the problem, when the website is definitely not the problem, when the offer needs work, when the messaging is muddy and when I think you’re about to spend money on something because Instagram told you to. Affectionately, obviously.
I work best with creatives, entrepreneurs, designers, consultants and people building something that has a bit of themselves in it. People who care about how it looks, yes, but also how it works. People who want a business with substance, not just a polished front end.

So no, this isn’t really a “here are my services” post. It’s more of a: this is how my brain works, this is what I love, this is who I tend to click with.
If you read this carousel & think, “Oh God, she sounds like a lot” - fair.
If you thought, “Finally, someone who will just tell me what they actually think” - we’ll probably get along.

08/10/2026

I realised something recently. Almost every client I’m working with at the moment has, at some point, casually said to me, “Oh yeah, I have ADHD.” Usually somewhere between sending me 14 voice notes, having three new business ideas in one meeting, and saying, “Okay, this is completely unrelated BUT…”

So naturally I went down a little rabbit hole about ADHD, creative thinking and entrepreneurship. And no, I’m obviously not saying all creative people have ADHD or that ADHD is some cute little business superpower. It can make planning, prioritising, organising and actually finishing the bloody things genuinely hard… BUT…there are definitely patterns I see again and again in the creative people I work with and I think it’s worth sharing.

They have a LOT of ideas. They make strange connections between things that other people might never put together. They can see the huge vision incredibly clearly while sometimes having absolutely no idea what needs to happen on Tuesday. And when they care about something? They CARE. Deep dives, obsessive research, full steam ahead. I really love people who care about stuff, like really care, it’s infectious.

I love these people because my job has never really been to give creative business owners more ideas. Most of you have enough. You do not need another brainstorm. You need someone who can listen to the entire brain dump, including the tangent about the thing you might launch in 2028, and work out what actually matters.

I’ve always been good at seeing the forest through the trees in someone else’s business. Or perhaps more accurately, walking into someone else’s forest while they’re yelling, “WHY ARE THERE ARE SO MANY FU***NG TREES HERE?!,” and helping to find the path through…

02/10/2026

Before you spend another dollar on marketing, shouldn't you know what the money is supposed to do? A revolutionary concept, apparently.

I see this all the time with small businesses. Business gets a little quiet, so immediately the conversation becomes: should we run ads? Post more? Hire someone for social media? Do SEO? Start TikTok? Get PR? Redo the website?

Maybe. But before we start handing money to Meta, Google, a marketing consultant or anyone else promising to “increase visibility”, I want five fairly boring questions answered:

Who are we selling to?
What are we actually selling them?
Why would they choose us?
Where are the good clients currently coming from?
And what, specifically, do we want somebody to do after they encounter the marketing?

If the offer is confusing, ads will simply pay to show that confusion to more people. If the positioning is generic, posting seven times a week gives you seven opportunities to say something nobody remembers.
If your best work comes through referrals but you’ve never once asked a happy client for one, perhaps we don’t need to begin with a complicated funnel.
If somebody lands on your website and still can’t work out whether you’re for them, I’m probably going to spend time fixing that before I spend it sending more people there.

This is the less glamorous side of marketing strategy. Sometimes my recommendation is genuinely: do less, but fix the right thing. I’m not interested in creating a shopping list of marketing activities so we can all feel busy. I want to know what the business needs, what is already working, where the gap actually is and then spend money there.

Marketing should amplify something that already makes sense. It should not be expensive life support for a business nobody understands.
So before you hand over another dollar for ads, content, SEO, PR or whatever platform we’re all apparently supposed to be on this week…

Answer the five questions and if you can’t answer them clearly? Then I don’t want your marketing yet. I want to fix the strategy first.

29/09/2026

Somewhere along the way, owning a business apparently started requiring a minor in theatre.

After this long in marketing, design and business strategy, I can pull a few rabbits out of a hat. I’ve worked with enough teams, clients, suppliers, launches, deadlines and assorted chaos to probably qualify as a ringmaster too. But other than asking AI to dress me like one for this post, that is about as far as I’m willing to take the performance side of social media.

I really do not want to spend my working life pretending I’m thrilled to point at floating text. I don’t want to lip-sync to trending audio. And I definitely don’t want to suddenly develop “three things you NEED to know” energy every time I open my phone.

Also, I’m terrible at talking to a script or hitting neat little “content points”. I could, however, waffle on like Lorelai Gilmore for several minutes, start telling you one story, somehow give you the backstory of three others and inevitably bring up “that friend who had exactly the same thing happen last year, you know?”

That I can do and that’s partly the point. Content matters. Of course it does. I literally work in marketing. But content should support the business.

It should help people understand what you do, how you think, what you know and whether you might be the right person to help them. It shouldn’t require you to become a full-time entertainer who occasionally remembers they also have clients.

You don’t need to perform your expertise every day for it to exist. You don’t need to become an influencer because you happen to own a business.

Your business should give you things worth talking about. Your life does not need to become something you manufacture purely so you have something to post.

I’ll happily keep pulling rabbits out of hats behind the scenes. I’ll keep wrangling the circus. But the ringmaster costume can stay with AI… although I could be talked into that magician outfit… bowtie and cocktail pants, yes please.

28/09/2026

I think I missed the meeting where we decided the goal of business was to make the maximum amount of money while doing the minimum amount of work. Lately I keep seeing the same advice everywhere: monetise every conversation. Charge for access. Never give your expertise away. Package the transformation, not the hours.

Look, I get it. The cost of living is obscene. Running a business is expensive. Expertise has value. I’m also probably the worst person to ask about pricing strategy.

I work fast. Really fast. And when I quote branding, websites, marketing strategy or creative direction, I’m often 50–80% cheaper than competitors. Not because I think my work is worth less, but because if something takes me one day, I struggle to charge you for three just because someone else might. And yes, if you were my client saying this, I’d probably tell you we need to review your pricing. The hypocrisy is not lost on me.

Maybe it’s my country upbringing. I was raised by parents who thought working hard was non-negotiable. Annoyingly, it rubbed off and I actually like working.

My dream has never been to build a passive-income empire so I can spend six months a year on a tropical island. Sand? No thank you.

I like making things. Solving problems. Talking to clever business owners. Helping creative businesses figure out what they’re trying to say, sell and become.

So I’ve priced my business at a point where I can cover my costs, live comfortably, buy something ridiculous occasionally and put money aside for a rainy day.

I don’t want to live beyond my means and I’m not sure I want to price beyond my needs either. Somewhere in the endless conversation about scaling, leveraging and monetising, I think we forgot that “enough” is allowed to be the goal.

You’re allowed to build a profitable creative business without squeezing maximum revenue out of every human interaction. You’re allowed to like the work. Be generous. Decide what enough looks like before the internet moves the finish line again.

Apparently that’s my controversial small business opinion for the week.

26/09/2026

Other people are manifesting promotions, European summers and passive income.

I’m manifesting ducks sitting on vintage chairs, vegetables growing out the back, a house far enough away from everything that no one “just pops in” and a suspiciously extensive apron collection.

Very much entering my Pammy in an apron era.

And frankly, the vision is getting clearer by the day.

20/09/2026

A busy but beautiful month so far…

15/09/2026

Big day on today. Editing things, organising things, finishing things, starting things, emailing things… basically one of those days where the tabs are multiplying before I’ve even opened the laptop.

So, what better way to start than cracking open a fresh packet from my Thieves Coffee subscription, making a proper coffee and taking in a bit of fresh air before I get stuck behind the computer for the day.

A small moment of calm before the organised chaos begins ☕️

Address

14 Coleman Street

2480

Telephone

+61405717400

Website

http://www.catgerkecreative.com/

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