Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sarah Saxty. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Sarah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

Absolutely, and I believe that divergence from the industry standard is not just a choice but a necessity for small businesses, I encourage founders to embrace their grassroots energy and turn it into a state of possibility. The early stages are the best time to test and learn, to try new things and innovate – big businesses don’t have that luxury.

My own business, Creating Forward Studio, is an example of my diverging from the status quo with my pivot from retainer consulting to strategic mentorship.

The traditional consultancy model operates mostly, on high retainers, inaccessible to grass-roots, hustling early stage founders. I’ve specifically created a Strategic Mentorship Container model as a way to bridge the gap for those early-stage founders who have amazing ideas and tenacity to make sh!t happen, but need the expertise and guidance from someone who is a few steps ahead of them.

After being a bootstrapped founder myself for 4 years in NYC, and then spending the next 5 consulting as a Head of Brand and CMO for beauty and wellness brands, I realized my favorite thing to do is help early stage founders who are innovating a category, or changing a narrative to build their brands and connect to their target audience with organic brand marketing tactics.

I saw a gap in the market and honestly felt a responsibility to try and bridge that gap with an offering that was more accessible but still super impactful. So many founders are spending their days in what I call a “WTF next spiral” because they don’t have access to the right guidance or resources.

Creating Forward Studio is a culmination of my 20+ year career experience and honest mission to support early stage founders to bring their ideas to market and become confident founders with a healthy mindset.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a brand builder, a marketer, and most importantly, a mentor to early-stage founders. My journey into this world wasn’t straightforward; it was set with diverse experiences that ranged from being a drive-thru chick at Maccas to running a $MM category at an Australian fashion line, to launching a city-inspired lifestyle brand, OVERT NYC, on streets of New York. My collective journey has taught me the power of storytelling, the importance of a customer-first mindset, how to cultivate community, and the art of creating a brand that resonates with the right audience.

Creating Forward Studio is the culmination of my experiences, wins, and lessons learned over more than a decade in fashion retail, brand development, and marketing leadership. My Mentorship is designed to equip founders with the tools they need to succeed and avoid making the common and expensive mistakes that I see being made all the time.

As a hands-on partner, I support founders during the pivotal stages of starting and building a business they are excited to show up for –

1. Validating their ideas and having conviction about their business concept
2. Building a “Sticky Brand” that resonates with the right people and cultivates a hyped up community
3. Developing a multi-channel “Magic Marketing” playbook, and an aligned content strategy to drive organic brand awareness

What sets me apart is my commitment to the grassroots, hustling founders. I understand the challenges of starting a brand with limited resources because I lived it. My approach is personalized, deeply empathetic, and grounded in real-world experience. I solve a critical problem for my clients: bridging the gap between their vision and a tangible, actionable marketing strategy that amplifies their brand and values.

There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing a founder I’ve mentored become a confident entrepreneur, who is ready to make a meaningful impact in their market and connect authentically with their audience.

I think of my work as more than a service; it’s a partnership. I’m here to guide you through the noise and chaos of starting a business, to help you find clarity in your vision, and to give you the skills to create a brand that not only stands out but also stands for something meaningful.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?

Wow, there are MANY. But – one of my favorite marketing stories goes back to the early days of OVERT NYC, the backpack and lifestyle brand I co-founded. It was a period characterized by scrappiness, no fear, and determination. Our vision was to create a “cool and functional” brand for real city girls doing real things and to cultivate a community.

We faced the challenge of breaking through in a market saturated with established brands and glossy (expensive) influencer partnerships – but – this was 2014, the rise of the DTC brand. Think Warby Parker, Glossier, AWAY, Y7 Yoga, Lively…and we were all in it together.

From day one, we had a pretty compelling content strategy (not that we knew what that was!) our “follow the girl” campaign. Before we even had product we were shooting content, IRL, UGC content of girls in NYC doing real girl things – shopping at Wholefoods, schlepping to the laundromat, at a bar, on the subway…

This was a time when most brands were scrambling to work with high-profile influencers to gain traction. We decided to go against that trend because we were confident that authenticity and relatability would resonate more deeply with our audience and our product was designed for real city living – the schlep, but make it chic.

The campaign was dedicated to highlighting the stories of real women in NYC, our “OVERT City Girls,” who were living the hustle of city life. These weren’t your typical influencers; they were emerging artists, creatives, and professionals — we all left the house at 7AM, and got home at 1AM. They were the definition of our brand.

The risk was significant. We put ourselves out there, making connections, telling people our vision and getting their buy in through collaboration. We allocated our limited resources to our bring our first campaign to life, featuring me and my co-founder to begin with and working with a friend of a friend who did us a favor photographer. We did all the editing and designing ourselves to turn it into a lookbook and get it up onto social. We even shot a full campaign video following “the girl” around NY doing real NY things, with a student friend who was at NYU from Australia studying film! Way before our time…

We cultivated relationships with other start-ups, up-and-coming photographers, shooting around the city, and capturing the what we called “real” NYC lifestyle with our girls. This wasn’t just about our product; it was about storytelling, about showcasing a lifestyle and a community that our audience could see themselves in.

The girls we featured reshared their campaigns because of course they looked amazing – they were proud to be an OVERT girl and share their story, so we were able to reach new audiences (qualified audiences) organically.

The best part was when people started spotting “overt girls” in the wild. The campaign didn’t just resonate and drive sales, but had started to create a visible community. Women were not just buying our signature backpacks; they were embracing the brand as a part of their identity. The campaign transformed OVERT NYC from a product into a movement.

The feeling of seeing our vision come to life, against the odds, was truly magic, it’s part of why I call my approach to getting brand awareness, Magic Marketing. It was a validation of our belief that authenticity and a genuine connection with your audience can triumph over conventional tactics and higher budgets in marketing.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I’d have to say resilience is a common character in my story…particularly exemplified during two pivotal moments: my move from Australia to New York, and my transition following the wrap up of my brand, OVERT NYC.

I didn’t know this at the time, because I had plans to come to NY for “1 – 2 years” but it was the beginning of a forever change in my life and set the foundations of who I am today. I was in my 30’s and starting again. I didn’t have a local network, team, or support system, I fortunately had set up a newly created role with the founders of fashion retailer I had been working with for the 5 years prior to leaving the country, so I had a job, as the market research and trends analyst on the ground in the US. But I had to write the job description on the fly, I remember so clearly, googling where to buy a desk from (I had no idea what West Elm or Crate & Barrel were) and carrying my new big Apple computer on the subway.

New York IS resilience, I couldn’t even begin to list all the ways it was shown to me during my 9 years living there, but I wouldn’t take any of them back.

Starting from scratch (more than once) in one of the world’s most competitive cities with a cultural barrier to add to the mix, taught me the essence of building (and trusting!) relationships, connecting with your inner confidence, discovering mindfulness, and leaning into uncertainty.

Building OVERT, and after 4 years, deciding to wrap up the business with my cofounder moving back to Australia, was a tough one, and in honesty, a decision I probably took a little too long to reach.

I felt a sense of loss at the time, loss of my dream, loss of my identity, and uncertainty about what my skills were because they had become SO varied after 4 years of doing it all entrepreneurship. I took on consulting clients by default because I had people asking for my support but after a few years of working with other people’s businesses again, I was unfulfilled.

I interviewed a few coaches, realizing I was in a rut that I couldn’t get myself out of, and went on a journey of self-reflection and realignment working with a wonderful woman who changed my life. Coaching is an investment I wish I had made in myself much earlier in my career and have continued to do as an entrepreneur. I think of coaches as my C-suite as a solo entrepreneur and they can each have their own area of support.

After doing this work, I was in standing in a position of clarity and confidence, and I truly believe it helped manifest my next pivotal opportunity which was to help Kate Hudson and her cofounders build and launch her wellness supplement brand in Los Angeles, where I am now, and where I ended up investing myself into the business full time for its first 2 years of operations to lead brand and marketing.

Creating Forward was a term I developed during my coaching as a mantra for myself, to keep creating, forward instead of getting stuck in overwhelm or over-researching which as a curious mind, I can easily fall into.

These moments of transition have led me to where we are now, Creating Forward, and are about overcoming challenges and the profound growth and learning they gave me. It’s this resilience that inspired the creation of Creating Forward Studio, embodying the lessons learned from embracing change, building from the ground up, and the power of adaptability. These experiences underscore my belief that with determination, a willingness to step into the unknown, and the resilience to keep moving forward, it’s possible to turn challenges into progression.

Contact Info:

• Website: CREATINGFORWARD.STUDIO
• Instagram: CREATINGFORWARD.STUDIO
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahnsaxty/