Who we are
At Soulful Brand Lab, we believe branding is more than strategy — it’s a reflection of your essence.
We’re a creative agency and mentorship space for purpose-driven businesses, coaches, healers and conscious entrepreneurs who are here to build mission-led brands. Brands that feel deeply aligned on the inside and resonate fully on the outside.
We blend business strategy, creative direction, and holistic coaching to help you express who you truly are — not through forced perfection or marketing formulas, but through clarity, alignment and intention. From visuals to messaging, from structure to soulful growth, everything we build is designed to reflect your unique voice and the impact you're here to create.
Experience You Can Feel
Collectively, our team brings over 70 years of combined experience across digital design, business strategy, brand consulting, and conscious leadership — alongside lived experience as founders, facilitators, and practitioners ourselves.
We’ve worked with some of Australia’s most trusted brands — including Westpac, KPMG, Qantas, Woolworths, Nestlé, OPSM, Vision Personal Training, Ausgrid, Sydney Water and the NSW Government — as well as emerging entrepreneurs and leaders creating change within their industries and communities.
What makes us different is how we bridge these two worlds — blending commercial expertise with soul-led, human-centered business.
Committed to Social Impact
Beyond our client work, we’re deeply committed to social change. We actively collaborate with NGOs, not-for-profits and community-led organisations to amplify important work with clarity, care and integrity. We understand the unique needs of purpose-led leaders, and hold space for them to be both visionary and grounded.
Where Strategy Meets Soul
We live what we teach. Our team’s certifications in Reiki, yoga, NLP, kundalini bodywork, movement science and embodied leadership weave into everything we create. This allows us to support holistic brands from a place of authenticity — grounded in both real-world strategy and values-led practice.
Here, your business isn’t just a brand. It’s a reflection of your journey, your healing and your mission.
How Soulful Brand Lab Came to Life
A Founder’s Journey by Cat Dao
There was a time I thought success meant keeping myself busy — juggling a full-time job while building my creative business at night, pushing past burnout, ignoring the whispers of my body and soul.
I ticked all the boxes: design school, corporate job, side hustle.
But something still felt hollow.
The truth is, I did things backwards. My spiritual journey began in my early 20s — healing the trauma and unlearning the survival patterns passed down by my Vietnamese refugee parents. I went deep into healing, embodiment, and self-discovery.
But it wasn’t until my late 20s that I entered the corporate world — landing a role at Australia’s largest company, creating systems and designs seen by millions.
From the outside, I had made it. But inside, I was unraveling.
I was the quiet fixer — building bridges across departments, making things run smoothly behind the scenes. My job was technically creative, but I relied on my side hustle to keep my soul alive. I spent my nights editing weekend passion projects or watching Netflix to escape.
I kept telling myself that if I just worked hard and stayed stable, fulfilment would follow.
Then Bali called me back.
Returning to Ubud, I was searching for clarity — wondering why, after all my healing work, I still felt unintegrated. I dove deeper into other modalities — around 80 hours of nervous system rewiring and soul retrieval work, including breathwork, kundalini activations, voice activations, and future self visualisations.
Then in my last week of my trip, something clicked: I couldn’t keep doing this — the constant hollow feeling of designing for commercial consumption was too loud to ignore.
Then, I heard that people at the company were being made redundant. In my first week back in Sydney, I found out I was one of them.
I had trained my offshore counterparts too well. I had designed myself out of a job.
In hindsight, I realised I had manifested this moment. Deep down, I knew I wouldn’t have left on my own — I believed I needed the security, the money, to start my own creative business.
But that belief was rooted in my family’s experience of survival — passed down through unspoken lessons about stability and fear of risk. I’ve always found ways to create abundance when I have absolute clarity on my mission.
Instead of holding on to fear, I chose to invest into more therapy and healing — using that money to go deeper into understanding my patterns, to unlearn everything I had absorbed in the corporate and conventional world, and to reconnect with the truth of who I am.
That redundancy became the exact opening I had been unconsciously calling in — a catalyst for building something truly aligned.
And just like that, the corporate path I thought would give me peace revealed what I had been avoiding all along — it was never going to fulfil me.
That redundancy wasn’t the end.
It was the initiation.
Why Soulful Brand Lab Exists
Soulful Brand Lab was born from that awakening — a space where strategy meets soul, and branding becomes a sacred act of remembering who you are.
We work with soulful entrepreneurs, healers, artists, and changemakers who are ready to build more than a business. Together, we co-create brands that are alive with intention — brands that heal, connect, and ripple into the world with clarity and purpose.
This isn’t traditional marketing. This is brand alchemy.
Soulful Brand Lab is for the misfits, the visionaries, the ones who never fit into the mold. You’re here to lead with heart — and be fully, unapologetically seen.
Because the world doesn’t need more noise. It needs more resonance. It needs you — in your full, unfiltered expression.
So why us?
At Soulful Brand Lab, we combine the power of strategy, storytelling, and holistic transformation to help mission-led brands grow with clarity and impact.
“Soulful Brand Lab isn’t your typical creative studio — we merge commercial strategy, scientific insight and deep soul-led purpose to help mission-driven brands thrive.”
Our approach is both transformational and results-driven. We guide founders and teams through the inner and outer work required to build authentic, scalable brands — aligning business models, messaging, and marketing systems with your deeper purpose.
Multidisciplinary & Human-Centred
With backgrounds spanning digital marketing, brand design, communications, movement science, user experience and behavioural psychology, we know what it takes to inspire people — and spark collective change.
We also believe in working smarter, not harder — using intuitive systems, automation, and strategic insight to create space, streamline your workflows, and scale with ease. By identifying your unique edge and unlocking quick wins, we help you grow in ways that feel focused, aligned, and sustainable.
Heart-Led Strategy
We speak the language of strategy with heart: transparent, thoughtful, and grounded in your mission.
Our values
Energetic Alignment
Every brand holds a frequency. We build from the inside out — aligning your inner truth with your outer expression to create magnetic, meaningful presence.
Rooted Expansion
Growth should feel grounding, not overwhelming. We build with nervous system awareness, supporting sustainable business and long-term vision without burnout.
Co-Creation & Emergence
We don’t impose top-down strategy. We listen, reflect and create with you — making space for intuition, innovation and soul-led design to emerge naturally.
Clear & Kind Communication
We value heart-led honesty. Through kind, direct communication, we create safe space for collaboration, clarity and aligned creative flow.
Truth-Led Impact
Your story matters. We design for depth and resonance — creating branding that inspires connection, sparks transformation, and ripples far beyond the screen.
Our team
Cat Dao
Cat is the heart behind SBL — founder, creative director, strategist and mentor with a wild mix of digital design, movement science, Reiki therapy and soul work. After building three businesses of her own, she now guides conscious brands to weave strategy, story and soul into aligned, meaningful growth.
When she’s not guiding brands, you’ll find her ecstatic dancing, swimming, soaking in sound baths or sipping coconut water whilst pulling oracle cards under the full moon.
Chris Blanco
Chris is our senior designer and creative problem-solver, bringing 15+ years of experience in branding, digital and web design magic. He’s the one who turns big-picture visions into polished, beautiful assets that flow across print and digital — always with precision, care and a bit of creative flair.
Outside the studio, you’ll find him exploring trinket shops, sipping black tea, camping under the stars or nerding out over AI and new music finds.
Nora Ngo
Nora is SBL’s digital content and marketing ninja — with 4+ years in SEO, social media and brand storytelling, plus a Masters of Commerce tucked under her belt. She helps brands find their voice online with thoughtful strategy, sharp UX insights and soulful storytelling.
On weekends, she’s probably out with friends, sipping matcha, eating something delicious, or literally touching grass to recharge her battery.
Makayla Morgan
Makayla is our video wizard and creative all-rounder with a background in screen media. She keeps our clients’ content flowing — from filming to editing — always bringing warmth, calm and a steady behind-the-scenes presence.
When she’s not behind a camera, she’s deep into oracle cards, yoga, cacao rituals and thought-provoking documentaries — usually snuggled up in cozy blankets or soaking in a relaxing post-work bath.
Dave Beaton
Dave is our strategy anchor with 30+ years of enterprise consulting experience across Qantas, AusGrid, KPMG and Macquarie Bank. He brings business structure, clarity and big-picture alignment to support our clients as they grow.
When not mapping out business models, you’ll find him on long walks around the Northern Beaches, sipping green tea, or keeping tabs on the latest political debates.
Jamie Beaton
Jamie is our nervous system whisperer — blending Integral Meta Theory, NLP, and kundalini bodywork to help clients stay grounded while building conscious businesses. With a BA in Public Communication, he supports content writing, coaching and holistic social media strategies for our clients.
In his downtime, you’ll likely find him deep in a philosophical book, meditating, sipping cola (No Sugar LA Ice) or snuggled up with Moji the ginger cat.
Moji
Moji is SBL’s resident emotional support officer — a silent yet powerful presence during creative sprints, high-pressure deadlines, and vision-stretching meetings. With a calming purr and steady gaze, he keeps the team grounded, reminding everyone to pause, breathe, and pet the cat.
When he’s off duty, you’ll find him sunbathing in warm spots, flopping, inspecting laptops with mild suspicion, or offering slow blinks of encouragement from across the room.