Voice Notes is an every-Friday 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:

When I met Melissa Black about a year and a half ago on Twitter, I had an inkling I’d met my administrative match. As a detail-obsessed person, my client’s experience is very important to me, and I knew that as I shifted from a freelancer model into a boutique digital agency, I’d need someone as detail-attuned as I am to (wo)man the entrance, so to speak. Enter Melissa. There’s no one I’d rather have as the Voice Bureau‘s own Virtual Concierge. If you send us a note through our Contact page, or become a client of ours, you’ll get to know her, too. But you don’t have to wait until then. Here she is, in her own words.

Melissa Black, Virtual Concierge

Melissa Black is Virtual Concierge at The Voice Bureau.
You can also find her at Black Ink VA.
Facebook: Black Ink VA; Twitter: @BlackInkVA; Google+: Black Ink Virtual Assistance

My top 3-5 Voice Values are:

Innovation, Helpfulness, Power, Playfulness, Love. (Note: Discover your own Voice Values when you subscribe to The Voice Bureau’s Insider Stuff e-letter. Look for the sign-up box in the upper righthand corner of the site.)

Personality typing? Why, yes:

My Myers-Briggs type is INFJ (“The Protector” or “The Foreseer Developer”). I’m a Sagittarius.

I do the work I do because:

It’s immensely satisfying for me to have a part in helping business owners execute their operational and creative visions, and watching it all grow and take shape.

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

They are respectful — of me, others, and themselves.

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

Steve Jobs, Katharine Hepburn, Eleanor Roosevelt.

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

“Thank you, Melissa. You totally get me already.”

The truest branding advice I’ve ever heard is:

“People don’t buy what you do — they buy why you do it.” — Simon Sinek

I knew I’d arrived in the middle of my entrepreneurial ‘sweet spot’ when I:

Began receiving referrals from some of my Right People to work with their Right People. It showed me that the work we did together was valued by them, and that I had identified the perfect mix of my right people and right work.

One color I wish was in my visual brand but isn’t (yet) is:

An orangey-red, like chili powder.

My favorite question to ask people is:

If money was no object, what would you be doing with your time?

I can never get enough:

Red Rooibos tea. Hugs from my nephews. My husband’s blue eyes.

The next big business challenge for me is:

Developing our products.  I have a few ideas percolating that I know will turn into valuable resources for our clients. The challenge will be designating the time to develop them.  I know that the key is doing what I tell my clients to do: block off the time on the calendar!

In the comments, we’d love for you to:

Say hi To Melissa. What would you like to ask her about balancing the operational and the creative in your business? She’ll be watching out for your comments.

{ 12 comments }

With so many thanks for the gift of your presence this past year.

 

Stand up, on this Thanksgiving Day, stand upon your feet. Believe in man. Soberly and with clear eyes, believe in your own time and place. There is not, and there never has been a better time, or a better place to live in.

          — Phillips Brooks

Today, I want to take a moment to thank you for the gift of your presence in my life this past year, 2012 — year of so many changes, so much uncertainty, so much laughter and joy and frustration and creation. Thank you — readers, clients, colleagues, and friends — for being there, as I ushered The Voice Bureau into being. Thank you for your support, your encouragement, your warmth. Thank you for your grace, your watchfulness, your belief in the value of what we’re doing.

No matter where you are in the world and in what country you make your home, I wish for you a true feeling of Thanksgiving for all the world has to offer us — and for all we (you and I) have to offer the world.

{ 2 comments }

We’ve got 43 days left in this calendar year. I just counted.

As I write this blog post, I’m sipping on chocolate marshmallow-flavored coffee (it’s roasted into the bean) and reflecting on where this year, 2012, has taken me and my clients. I’m also thinking about the 43 days left in this calendar year (as of the day I’m writing this post) and what advice I’d like to give you as you go forth.

Many of the business owners I know have experienced unprecedented growth this year, despite what headlines from the world’s economy would suggest is our fate. We’re taking off the training wheels and getting ready to ride with the big boys now. Others of us have seen long-loved businesses stall out or curl themselves into a necessary end. Nearly all of us are looking ahead to what’s next for us and our work in the world, saying to ourselves, Okay. This is a new year, a new quarter, a new market, a new world. How do I do it better this time?

One thing I know for sure: our best is yet to come.

But first, the prelude to what comes next: giving ourselves permission to do what we need to do and be what we need to be to allow our most excellent work to show up.

Here are 10 permissions — with a few nuanced interpretations — for you and your brand as you make the leap from this year into all that is to come.

As you know, often the best wisdom is two-sided. So some of these permissions are binary: you can interpret them in whatever way serves you best. Take what you need, and ignore the rest.

YES. You officially and certainly have permission to . . .

1. Embrace your current brand identity crisis. And be willing to depart from a brand identity that no longer serves you and your Right People.

• Completely change your brand’s visual identity that no longer does the job, even though you get lots of compliments on your typography, color palette, and graphics. (Compliments do not equal money.) Ditch the business name or tagline that feels clunky, two-steps-off-kilter, or passé.

• Keep the best elements of what still works and update the rest, or redesign your brand with a nod to your last great iteration, while bringing the rest up to current code.

2. Have the website you want.

• Work with a new web designer. Yes, even after all this time.  Or . . .

• Stick with your tried and true web designer, but tell him you desperately need to flip your brand’s visual script this time around.

3. Get the copy written the way you want it this time.

• Hire a professional copywriter to take care of the main pages of your site. Or even ghostwrite your blog posts from a list of notes you provide. So you can get on with doing your best work. Or . . .

• Write your own damn copy. (We’re making guides for that, you know.)

4. Be you in your brand by building your conversation around your hardwired-in Voice Values.

• Drop all your misconceptions about what it means to have — and use — a ‘brand voice.’

• Drop the pretense, the swagger, the bravado, and the ego. Strip it down, wipe it clean, undress it. Or get lusher. Enrich it, embolden it, pop it out, primp it up. It’s your voice. Use it the way you most powerfully do. (Want to discover your Voice Values? Subscribe below for access to our complementary Discover Your Voice Values self-assessment.)

5. Make sure the brand whose name you envision in lights is linked to a business model that can propel it and sustain it.

• Admit, if you need to, that the business you have, however beautiful it may be, is not the best container for the work you feel called to do.

• Let your ‘sweet spot’ evolve.

6. Work with your Right People, all of the time.

• Refer your Not Quite Right People on to other businesses who can serve them better than you can (or want to). Why? Because when you work with your Not Quite Right People, they pass your name along to other Not Quite Right People, and pretty soon you’ve got a brand built around . . . your Not Quite Right People.

• Write the story of your Right People, just the way they occur to you when you meet them, ready and revved up and resourceful. If you don’t know them up-close-and-personal, how will they know you’re talking to them? We’ve got a great experience in the works for you that takes you through this process.

7. Take off your rose colored glasses — or your ugly goggles.

• Stop idealizing your Right Person and thinking she can solve all of her problems without you. Yes, she may be smart, capable, and self-aware — but she hasn’t seen down the road you live on and she hasn’t come into contact with your solution yet, the way you and your brand deliver it. If you’re intimidated by your Right Person, you won’t be able to serve her from a place of clarity, calm, and strength.

• On the flipside, stop assuming your Right Person has to be a dripping mess of a puddle on the kitchen floor in her life or business before she’s ready to work with you. Do you really want to work with a client who’s feeling that unresourceful? People don’t have to be — and shouldn’t be — on their knees crying mercy before they’ll buy from you.

8. Filter your incoming. Hone in on the voices that work for you today.

• Unsubscribe from and unfollow brand voices that don’t serve you in this season of your business, or who leave you feeling perpetually frustrated, blocked, or irritated. It’s okay to separate the person and their brand voice. You can like one but not be able to take any more of the other.

• Stop retweeting and sharing content from anyone or any site with which you don’t truly feel aligned. If you aren’t convinced that someone’s content serves your audience, their needs, and their desires — just. stop. sharing. Attention is precious. Be someone trustworthy and share only that which you trust.

9. Put your competition and your industry peers in their rightful place — which is not front and center in your mind on a daily or weekly basis.

• Look away from your competition. There’s only one you anyway, and yours is the only brand with which you need to be concerned.

• Be collegial with talented colleagues who are serving the same market as you. Adroitly do your own thing, but plan thrice-yearly check-ins with your similar-niche peers to share wildly adaptable ideas, discuss what’s not working industry-wide, and point out what you see the others doing well. It’s good for everybody, including your clients.

And finally — the best piece of advice I could possibly offer you . . .

10. When in doubt, ignore everybody else’s advice — including mine — and go with your gut. It always knows best.

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

Which piece of permission from this list most resonates with you and why? And what piece of permission would you like to add to this list? We’ll see you in the Comments.

 

{ 6 comments }

Voice Notes is an every-Friday 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:

This is the season of thankfulness, and one person I am surely thankful to have met this past year is The Voice Bureau‘s very own Project Curator, Katie Mehas. As so many great online business relationships start, we met via a mutual connection and got to know each other in a private Facebook group for copywriters I co-facilitate with a colleague. When I began my search for someone to manage our production calendar and help facilitate our clients’ experience, I knew I didn’t need to look further than the fabulous Ms. Mehas. With a passion for details, a penchant for pattern-tracking, and a proclivity for planning, she was our perfect fit. (Plus, as a laser-sharp editor, she’d probably flick me on the shoulder for that last sentence. Gratuitous alliteration.) With that, meet Katie.

Katie Mehas, Project Curator

Katie Mehas is Project Curator at The Voice Bureau.
You can also find her at KatieMehas.com.
Twitter: @KTMehas

My top 3-5 Voice Values are:

Clarity, Enthusiasm, Excellence, Helpfulness. (Note: Discover your own Voice Values when you subscribe to The Voice Bureau’s Insider Stuff e-letter. Look for the sign-up box in the upper righthand corner of the site.)

The Android app I wouldn’t want to live without is:

Astrid! I could never keep track of everything without it.

The best moment in my workweek so far has been:

Picking out the laptop that’s going to be my new official base of operations and knowing that it’s the success I’ve had in my business that’s made this not only possible but necessary.

Personality typing? Why, yes. I’m:

Enneagram Type 1 (The Reformer) with a 2-Wing (this combo is called The Advocate). My Myers-Briggs type is INTJ (“The Scientist” or “The Conceptualizer Director”). I have a Cancer sun, Leo moon, and Aquarius rising.

I do the work I do because:

I love exercising both sides of my brain — being creative and organized — and I love knowing that I’m helping people focus on the parts of their business that make them really come alive.

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

Travel writer! I would love travel to be a requirement in my life, not something I have to struggle to fit in.

The truest branding advice I ever heard is:

The more of yourself you allow to come through in your business, the more engaged you’ll be by what you’re doing and the more you’ll be willing to keep it up.

One color I wish was in my visual brand but isn’t (yet) is:

Somewhere between a rich teal and a deep cerulean blue. I can not get enough of this color.

I knew I’d arrived in the middle of my entrepreneurial ‘sweet spot’ when I:

Stopped trying to pigeonhole myself into an existing job description. My editorial background makes me equally comfortable with words and with planning. Why try to explain that away? It doesn’t make me indecisive; it makes me valuable.

I can never get enough:

Olives. Good music. Bad TV. Naps. Big, thick novels with rough-textured paper and embossed covers.

My brand is all about:

Cutting through the clutter (overbooking, poor planning, cutesy language, gimmicks, etc.) to allow your personality to shine through your business and give you breathing room to do what you love.

What I really wish you could see about yourself is:

You’re so much more interesting when you own your true personality. Everyone thinks they’re weird, but you seem the strangest when you’re trying to be someone you’re not.

In the comments, we’d love for you to:

Pop in and say hello to Katie! What questions do you have for her about cutting out the clutter in your workflow? She’s ready to say hello.

{ 14 comments }