Like all rules in business, this one is neither hard nor fast.

Well, it is kind of fast.

It’s about your freebie opt-in gift — you know, the [buzzphrase alert!] “incredibly valuable content” you deliver to subscribers in exchange for their email address and permission to market to them in their Inboxes.

Lest I sound too jaded, let me explain why I put “incredibly valuable content” in quotes.

Your freebie opt-in gift should be something that feels valuable to your Right Person reader and potential client or buyer.

It should feel helpful, remarkable, and desirable. And yes — those are very subjective characteristics. All the more reason for you to get to know your business’s Right Person in a much deeper way. (And I’m not talking about whether she’d rather have tuna salad on nine grain or pastrami on rye for lunch).

One of the top questions on new Voice Bureau clients’ minds is: What should my opt-in gift be? What do people want from me? What would dazzle/delight/serve them so well that they want to keep coming back for more?

I’m all for you creating incredibly valuable freebie-in opt-in content. (In fact, we’d love to help you with it!)

But many values-based business owners take the advice to “give them something they can’t believe they’re getting for free” a little too far.

Yes, your opt-in content needs to be good. It should hook your Right People into the ongoing conversation you want to have with them through your brand, over time. Ideally, it should be attractively presented, with high production values (as high as you can swing right now — there’s always room for improvement later as your budget grows).

But please hear me: your freebie opt-in content does NOT need to be the definitive tome on your topic area (ceramics? dog sitting? graphic design?). It does NOT need to be a 20-part video series edited by someone fabulous, with amazing, originally commissioned background music and custom graphics.

And (especially as a first time brand creator) you do not have to spend 20 hours crafting your freebie opt-in content.

In fact, when it comes to free content, shorter is better.

Why? We’re busy. Your Right People feel busy. Chances are, they want to spend as little time in their Inbox as possible.

So you need a gauge — a way to know how long is too long for them to spend consuming your freebie opt-in content, and how long is too long for you to spend creating it.

Here’s the Voice Bureau’s 10-Minute Rule (non-hard, but fast) about opt-in content.

Your opt-in content should:

• take 10 minutes, tops, for someone to consume, if it’s delivered in one fell swoop (i.e. something they receive one time and that’s it — an e-book, a screencast, a quiz)
• take 10 minute, tops, for someone to consume in each sitting if it’s delivered in segments (i.e. a 5-piece e-course that’s delivered via email over the course of 3 weeks)
• take 10 minutes x 10 (that’s 100 minutes, or under two hours) for you to create — this window of time does NOT include things like graphic design, editing, etc., although it might

Remember, incredibly valuable content does NOT have to be long, exhaustive, definitive, or complex. People learn best in small slices, not in huge dollops.

In the comments, I’d love to know:

What’s the best, most helpful, or most memorable free opt-in content you’ve ever received? Did it fit the 10-Minute Rule?

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Voice Notes is an occasional special feature. We take you inside the online brand presence of a business owner we think you should know — through a dozen evocative sentence-starters.

Abby (Chief Voice Bureau Officer) says:

I really like Nathalie Lussier’s tagline: Digital Strategy To Match Your Ambition. In fact, there’s something about Nathalie Lussier I’ve always liked, from the first moment I encountered her online. Part tech geek, part online marketing teacher, part cheerleader (she’d be the bookish one), she’s someone whose site I search when I want a really practical “how-to” answer to a tech question that ties in with my overall content marketing strategy. And geez — the woman is just nice. She brings a fresh, clean, youthful, and yet stable energy to the digital marketplace of business owners — one I always appreciate.

I’m delighted to bring you this Q&A with Nathalie.

Nathalie Lussier, Digital Strategist

Nathalie Lussier is the digital strategist at Nathalie Lussier Media. She turned down a job offer from Wall Street to start her own business straight out of college. She helps driven, creative business owners understand the profit potential and exposure available for their business online. From her site: “Clients and customers rave about her ability to simplify the complex, and make technology and digital strategy easy to understand and implement.”
Find Nathalie on: Twitter; Facebook; Pinterest; YouTube; Google+

Personality typing? Why, yes!

I’m a Virgo, and my My Myers-Briggs type is INFJ / INTJ (borderline Feeling and Thinking).

I knew I’d ‘come into’ my writing voice when I:

Stopped sounding like my mentors, peers, and favorite authors. When my ideas came to me away from the computer, too.

I do the work I do because:

I believe that we’re living in a different world than we were even just a few years ago, and I want to inspire other women and men to create the work that lights them up, while serving others, too.

If I could invite 3 people to dinner to give me their take on my work in the world, I’d invite:

Steve Jobs. Cindy Gallop. Richard Branson.

An unlikely source of creative inspiration for me is:

Romance novels, walks in the park with my dog, and funny YouTube videos.

The best moment in my work week so far has been:

Announcing my free, no-pitch 30 Day List Building Challenge, and seeing the responses come in! [Abby’s note: I’ve signed up!]

Three words to describe the way I feel about my visual brand identity today is:

Growing trees. Spacious.

One thing I know for sure about my Right People is:

They’re smart, they get shit done, they love thinking differently, and they’re out to make a difference in the world.

If my business were a movie, the title would be:

Imagine That

The best compliment I’ve ever received from a client is:

“You’re not trying to fit me and my ideas into a cookie-cutter system; you’re looking for unique and creative ways to help me put my work out into the world.”

If my clients only hold onto one piece of advice from me, I hope it’s:

Ideas have a shelf life. Act on them before your ideas expire. That means taking action on your great ideas and not letting them get stale!

If I couldn’t do the work I’m doing now, I’d be:

A sexy librarian. [Abby’s note: See the photo she submitted for this post.]

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

I’m curious about what Nathalie’s Voice Values are. Now that you’ve read this Q&A and taken a look at her site, any guesses, fellow Voice Values junkies?

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This blog post is in support of a new book by Michelle Ward and Jessica Swift called The Declaration of You. It’ll be published by North Light Craft Books in Summer 2013. If you’re a Voice Bureau reader who isn’t familiar with Michelle and Jessica’s work, I’d recommend taking a look if you have a high Enthusiasm or Playfulness value. In their own words, readers get “all the permission they’ve craved to step passionately into their lives, discover how they and their gifts are unique, and uncover what they are meant to do.” Learn more about The Declaration of You’s BlogLovin’ Tour, and how you can participate, here.

Uniquity and I have an intense relationship.

As an Enneagram Type 4 — and if you know what that means, you’re probably chuckling to yourself already — To Be Unique, Original, Individualistic, Myself feels like my soul’s deepest longing. Type 4s long to create an original identity — the same way Type 2s long to be cherished, Type 6s long to be supported by others, and Type 9s long for inner peace.

The quest for what Michelle Ward and Jessica Swift term ‘uniquity’ has driven and defined my life.

I’ve been the eight year old girl whose blood ran cold with anger and astonishment when her church friend dared to name her new stuffed animal the very same unique name I gave mine (Tiffin, if you must know, after the town in Ohio I’d never been to but seen in my dad’s atlas).

I’ve been the sixteen year old girl whose heart broke into a million pieces when her ballet friend (a different person this time) named her new golden Cocker Spaniel the same name as my long-dead golden Cocker Spaniel. (Rudy, may he RIP.)

I’ve been the shopkeeper who inwardly rolled her eyes when a socially advantageous customer requested to know what her friends who had purchased housewarming gifts from me earlier in the day had gotten, so that she could make sure her present was on par, price-wise and impressiveness-wise.

I’ve been the blogger who rolls her eyes outwardly — right here, in front of my Mac as I type — when I read stuff online that feels derivative, recycled, or like a mash-up of Blogger X, Y, and Z’s latest articles. Really, people? I think to myself. Was that worth publishing?

I can’t even listen to audio interviews of me from my earlier days in business because so many times I refused to make a statement without attributing it to the person I heard, learned, or read it from — which makes me sound like a bona fide name dropper. Integrate the teaching into my own framework and put it out there as mine? Nooooooo. Not unique enough.

And while I’m a great curator, you’d better believe there’s no quicker way for me to short circuit a work day than to spend the first hour of it clicking through links on Twitter, reading Other People’s Stuff. Damnit! I’ll think. There goes that topic.

My personal recipe for Uniquity has always been: look away from everyone else! Your creativity has nothing to do with theirs!

I’ve been (privately) critical of other business bloggers whose work I’ve seen as “push off” pieces — in other words, they’re not actively developing and teaching their own methods, they’re just “pushing off” of other people’s with a light (or harsh) critique, or teasing out one undeveloped point from the original piece and making it. And yes, I’ve written a few pieces along these lines, too.

(There’s nothing inherently wrong with the above approach, by the way. I’m just a Type 4.)

It wasn’t until I found myself feeling shackled to Uniquity as the most important component of any creative endeavor that I felt moved to take a closer look at what was really driving me.

Several years ago, I asked myself, “What would you, at the age of 94 after a well-lived life, regret not having done?”

Only one thing came to me strongly and clearly, soared up into the open sky of my mind, a warm, soft-bodied bird with an all-knowing glint in his eye: Write and publish your book, it said.

And I knew it was true. Writing my book is it for me. That’s my Thing.

Here in my mid-thirties, I’m a working writer — I’m founder and Creative Director of The Voice Bureau, I still write copy occasionally, and I create lots of teaching and learning materials for our clients and readers. I love to write. I write every day.

But I’m not writing, you know, my book.

Because, well, “everybody” writes books. (No they don’t.)

And “everybody” has a story in them that needs to be told, and what if it’s like my story? (It both will be and won’t be.)

And which is the better route these days — self-publishing or traditional publishing? Which holds more prestige? (That’s my high Power value talking.) Which is easier to market and sell? Will one of the routes banish me to the pile that’s “just like everybody else?”

And so on.

Many times, my prerequisite to Be Unique, Above All, keeps me from ever beginning my great work in the first place.

That is no longer okay with me.

A conversation with (of all people) a health coach friend of mine got me thinking about my creativity in new ways: What if, she said, you were allowed to look at other people and in other places for creative inspiration? What if you didn’t expect yourself to reinvent the g*d*mn wheel every time you write a blog post? What if being UNIQUE meant just being you — and the whole world was available to you as inspiration?

I liked those ideas. And whoa — what a different way of being in the world that is for me.

My instinct is to tie up this piece with a nice little bow, bring it to a tidy conclusion, an exhale.

But we all know that creative work, defining Uniquity for ourselves, and claiming a true and original identity — that’s big human stuff, dudes.

I don’t want to sell you short by pretending that it isn’t.

So I’ll just let you in on a promise I’ve recently made to myself: I am allowed to be expansive. To be all-encompassing. To be Yes and No and All and Some and Never and Maybe. To be in the thick of a creative swamp and to be standing willfully on the rooftop of a building I have erected myself, a building called Unique — and both places are equally valid.

And whatever I am when you see me there — that’s me. Unique enough.

In the comments, I’d love to hear:

What’s your relationship to your own Uniquity? Equally intense? A little more loose and free-flowing? Tell me about it.

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