To me, there’s only one sexier phrase in all of business-speak than ‘brand identity.’

That phrase is ‘brand voice.’

When I was in my mentorship semester for my (now defunct) English teaching career, my amazing mentor teacher Mark Jamison allowed me to create and teach a themed unit of my own from scratch. The theme I chose: Identity & Finding Your Voice. When I left teaching to open a brick-and-mortar lifestyle retail boutique, I was inspired not by the prospect of hawking wares or working the sales floor, but by the prospect of conceptualizing and creating a 3D world that didn’t previously exist: breathing tangible, visceral life into a brand identity, giving the merchandise a cohesive voice and story.

Clearly, brand voice is one of our primary obsesions around here.

But many idealistic business owners — including some in The Voice Bureau‘s own readership and clientele — have some discomfort with thinking of themselves as a brand, and with thinking of their ‘brand voice’ as anything but the pure, unadulterated them putting fingers to keyboard and letting it fly.

I’d like to introduce a slightly different perspective — yes, even for solo businesses with a personal feel.

There’s your brand. And there’s you.

The two are not one.

One popular teaching about branding these days is that you and your brand are one and the same. By extension, people say that if you know yourself, you’ll know your brand.

To that I say . . . yes and no.

In the sense that as a solo or small business owner doing values-based work in the world (this is you, right?), it’s easy to feel that our brand is something we walk around inside of. Some people even go so far as to think that in their business, they’re really marketing themselves. I personally don’t ascribe to this point of view, though it’s a popular one. So I understand where the habit of overidentifying with one’s brand gets started.

But in my world, a brand is something we get to create and curate. A brand is never quite ‘complete,’ in the sense that it’s always active and re-engaging with its Right People and responding to trends and other factors inside and outside of its control.

But a brand — unlike a person — should always be ready to face the world and  always be ‘on.’

You see why it’s helpful to think of your brand as a creation apart from your self?

Your brand has the capacity (and, some would say, the responsibility) to always be ‘on.’

You, the business owner, don’t have that capacity. And shouldn’t try to. The very best brands have REAL people leading them, not coldhearted robots or glossily coiffed personas. Real people get to have off days, quiet seasons, and resting phases.

Brands and businesses can be built to function much more consistently than the typical values-based business owner can function. You get to be fluid while your brand provides the flexible architecture needed to support an important conversation over time with the people you want to serve.

Let’s get back to the YES for a moment.

As a business brand with a personal feel, there’s a lot of YOU in your brand. And you need to know where YOU come in, and where the brand can take over.

I’ve developed and methodologized a way for you as a business owner to understand your own brand voice — originating out of your natural communication strengths, but to be beheld as an entity separate, complete, and organic unto itself.

It’s called the Voice Values Paradigm for Branding. The Voice Values are the centerpiece of how we work with clients, and we want YOU to have access to it.

Enter your email below and click GO to get access to your complimentary brand voice self-assessment, Discover Your Voice Values.

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For those who have taken this assessment before, we’re proud to introduce our new scoring system. It should lead to more honed results (fewer ties) than you may have had in the past. NOTE: If you’re already an Insider Stuff subscriber, you’re receiving a link to access the NEW self-assessment in your inbox today, April 30th, 2014.

I look forward to hearing your Top 3-5 Voice Values — what we call your Signature Mix — in the comments of this post, or on Twitter or Facebook.