Brand Voice Development for Values-Based Business

A few months ago, I released a free download called YOU. Ruling Your Realm.

You can get it by clicking the big link above if you don’t have it already.

As of this morning, over 800 people have downloaded it since March. I dig that number — and appreciate every individual who’s taken the time to download and read it.

I also really dig the idea of getting to connect with you here in a face-to-face way.

We don’t do that enough in this digital business space. We tweet to each other’s avatars. Reading someone’s About Me page feels downright intimate. Even my client sessions are mostly Skype audio only.

Being seen around here sometimes feels as if it’s at a premium.

I think you need to know that the last thing I want you to do is hide behind a beautifully branded construct that doesn’t even begin to approximate the fullness of who you are.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m all for the beautiful, powerful construct. But I also want you to build your brand platform and the construct that heralds it out of the foundational stuff that’s true for you — the stuff you highly value, the stuff that makes you you, the principles, the promises, who you are today and who you want to be tomorrow.

The realm of your creative entrepreneurial life is big enough to contain all of that.

And brand editing is my methodology for discerning and teaching you how to recognize which parts of it get expanded and which get to slip around the edges of your foundation.

Today I foray back into video after a long hiatus {and the deletion of my previous low budget-looking attempts — don’t we all have those hiding out in our YouTube unlisted queue?}. This one — and the eleven more to come in the series — is for you.

I know, I know — watching a video of someone is not exactly face to face. But I’m imagining your face. And I love what I see. Because you are wanting this freedom and power for yourself just as badly as I am, for myself and for you.

Here’s the Intro video to what will be a 12-part series rolling out over the next couple weeks. In it, I’ll share more about this concept of your entrepreneurial realm and exactly what’s in store for you in the series — and afterward.

Thanks for watching! Oh, and I invite you to participate by clicking through to my Abby Kerr Ink Facebook page after the video, Liking it if you haven’t already, and letting me know what most intrigues you about the idea of ruling your realm. ♥

{ 13 comments }

I love it that I have friends who give me great books just when I need them.

Michelle Farinella is one of those friends. {Do you know her and her work? She’s one to know.}

At Profit Catalyst earlier this Summer, Michelle gave me a book called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. I’ve spent the past couple weeks savoring it slowly, a few pages a day.

The central proposition of The Big Leap is that we all have what Hendricks calls an Upper Limit Problem. Your upper limit is the highest level of abundance, success, and love that you can tolerate — like an internal thermostat, programmed for you in childhood — before you start messing it up for yourself. ‘Messing it up’ can look like illness, an accident, slacking, procrastination, depression, fear, anxiety, self-doubt, a fight in a relationship, being careless with money, losing things, etc.

Making the big leap to cross the threshold of your Upper Limit Problem is about accepting that you can receive, tolerate, and enjoy more abundance, success, and love than you have known yourself to before.

That’s a wild proposition, huh? Living happier, more prosperous, more open to love?

This, I’m thinking, is really good for business. And so I’m sharing it with you today.

Part of taking on the big leap in your creative life and business is knowing what it looks like to live in what Hendricks calls your Zone of Genius, embracing what I’ve previously described as your strangely powerful talent.

Here are 3 questions Hendricks invites us to answer about ourselves when we’re working in our Zone of Genius:

. . . I recommend that you deconstruct the set of Russian dolls until you uncover the one that contains your unique ability. Begin with a fundamental statement like this:

I’m at my best when I’m _______________________________________________________________________.

Let that statement resonate in your mind a few times; then speak it out loud. Discover what you come up with. Perhaps you come up with “I’m at my best when I’m generating ideas on a yellow legal pad” or “I’m at my best when I’m figuring out how to put a team together.” Just get a good general statement of what you’re doing when you feel you’re at your best.

Once you’ve come up with a simple, clear statement of you at your best, go a little deeper. Use a statement like the following to zoom in for a closer look:

When I’m at my best, the exact thing I’m doing is____________________________________________________.

Go for a more detailed description, such as “When I’m generating ideas on a yellow legal pad, the exact thing I’m doing is doodling and enjoying the feeling of creating something out of nothing.”

Go even deeper with a sentence like this one:

When I’m doing that, the thing I love most about it is_________________________________________________.

For example, “When I’m doodling and creating something out of nothing, the thing I love most is not knowing where it’s going to take me. I love the surprise factor, the excitement of seeing what’s going to emerge.”

You’ll be able to know you’re getting closer to your unique ability when you feel an inner glow of wonder and excitement. Even though I’ve been with hundreds of people as they tapped into that feeling, I never feel blasé about it. There’s something intrinsically enlivening about being with people when they’re discovering this depth within themselves. Probably because the process is connected to my own genius, I can engage in it all day long and never get tired. That’s what I want for you.

— Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap*, pp. 140-141

And so, I want to share my own answers to these sacred questions with you. And then, I’d love for you to share your answers with me. Here are mine:

I’m at my best when I’m articulating the dynamics in a situation.

When I’m doing that, the exact thing I’m doing is noticing, naming, and describing the seen, felt, and implied elements of a concept, a relationship, or a dynamic. I do this across multiple realms: in my creative business, in my own personal creative work, and in my relationships.

When I’m doing that, the thing I love most about it is clearing away confusion and distractions, thus creating freedom for myself and others to enter more deeply into an experience and feel its impact.

And that, my amazing readers and friends, is what I mean by calling myself a brand editor. I articulate the dynamics at play in your digital brand — those seen, felt, and implied — so that your right people can behold and experience you and your impact more deeply.

{This Summer, I’d love to share my gift with you in this way.}

In the comments, let’s talk about your zone of genius, or, as I’ve named it before on this blog, your strangely powerful talent. I’d love for you to consider, name, and articulate your own special gift by answering these three questions:

I’m at my best when I’m . . .

When I’m doing that, the exact thing I’m doing is . . .

When I’m doing that, the thing I love most about it is . . .

Can’t wait to hear you articulate this for yourself. I’m standing right here looking forward to joining you in responding to each other.

*This is my Amazon affiliate link.

{ 4 comments }

PROLOGUE

A look at this Summer {so far} at Abby Kerr Ink and beyond . . . and maybe your Summer, too. I know it’s not Summer everywhere right now, but let’s take this as a metaphor, shall we?

*

ACT the FIRST

I woke up from a dream one morning this Summer, sat up in bed, and said to myself, “My writing is my own.”

I had let myself forget how important my creative writing is to me. My business is a creative act, and so, I’ve been letting it feel like enough for far too long. While knowing it isn’t enough.

I know you know what I mean. There’s something in your life that’s awaiting your attention, your love. Like what Hiro talks about here in this gorgeous piece about the miracle of ‘unadorned attention to what is.’

It may be your business. It may not be.

This Summer, my personal and professional realm has been expanding and integrating at the same time. Yeah, pretty frickin’ tricky to feel two seemingly opposing dynamics work in me at once, but here I am. The process here for me has been about beholding what wants to happen, and letting it — not trying to steer it forcefully.

The realm of you is bigger than just your business. Bigger even than your most beloved creative acts. That we know.

My business mentor Sinclair laid down this little gem in my path at Profit Catalyst — which is where I was fortunate enough to be in June for three days in Portland, with thirty or so other amazing creative entrepreneurs:

“It’s okay to bring all of you to the table when trying to be in collaboration with your business. Collaboration is only exhausting when you leave one of your parts off the table.”

Ah, yes.

So – this Summer, I’ve said another fervent yes to my writing, which is my own.

Yes to poetry. Yes to short stories. Yes to that novel manuscript I weekly add ideas to in a OneNote file saved to my desktop. Yes to the Writer Me who emerged at the time in my life when I discovered that language was something that bubbled up inside of you and could be — had to be — turned outward.

And that ownership of and invitation to all of my parts meant that for three weeks, I took my direct gaze off of my business and allowed it to alight where it wanted to.

So I was quiet over here on the site and that was okay with me. Because I was in collaboration with my business and my creative self.

Splendor and pain and progress and peace. It was all there.

And I welcomed it all in.

*

Editor’s Note: the service described below was available for Summer 2011 only {U.S. Summer, that is}, and is no longer available. Please see the full-service Lustermaker.

ACT the SECOND

Which made me realize, there’s so much more here than I’d given myself access to — even within my business.

‘Here’ as in available, present, accessible, at play, ready to come forth.

And within that so much more is possibly . . . you.

I work with creative entrepreneurs this way, usually, but this feels like the season to work with you in a lighter way, too, and it’s this. Editor’s Note: again, this post has been edited as the Lite version is no longer available.

 

I want my calendar to fill up with new people, and I also want to work again with past clients who are ripe for a redux.

I want you to work with me on this if you have one or two readily apparent {to yourself} parts of your digital brand identity that need some love and power.

We can go a long way in a little while. {That’s how I live. And deliver my work. And I know it’s what your brand wants.}

You don’t have to wait forever. This is the season. Invite it in.

*

EPILOGUE

What’s up next — an announcement of a new project I can’t even believe this is the season for, a video series about ruling your realm {here’s the last video I made, for a project belonging to Jen Louden}, and a new freebie for my Inklings people.

And more room and time at the table for my writing? Yes.

How about you? What are you ready to bring to the table, to invite in, to your business or creative life? Give acknowledgment to it in the comments.

{ 8 comments }

I’m copping to it. {I’ve been copping to so much lately.}

I have this habit of saying, “Who, me?” when people ask me a direct question. Like, on the phone. As if there’s anyone else hearing the question.

{Yeah, me.}

Of course, that’s right before I lay it aaaaaalllllllllllllllll out on the line. ;)

 

 

And yeah, today I’m talking to you — about freeing the voice of your business. You know it’s time and only you can do it.

Freedom, voice, and power are the themes I’ve been devoting my creation time to over the last month as I built my first digital product, which is officially on the market as of today.

Freeing the Voice of Your Business is a 5-module audio course-with-written-content. It explores the what, why, and how of freeing your purest and most powerful business voice. It’s efficient, elegant, and just right-sized. After six years of creative entrepreneurship, two businesses {my first one nationally award-winning}, and lots of one-to-one time with clients whose beauty and strength blows me away . . . I’m making it easy to share with you what I know about freeing the voice of your business.

Your voice. Your terms. Your turn.

Joining me in this conversation about freeing our strongest voices in our creative businesses are four voices I personally can’t get enough of {and I thought you’d love them, too}:

• Justine Musk — we talk about creating a persona for your business voice that showcases certain elements of your personality, while holding onto your authenticity and what’s important to you

• Erica Swanson — we pull the concept of ‘business voice’ from the ephemeral into the tangible, visceral world, and emphasize how key it is to let it happen

• Amna Ahmad — we use her inner decolonization framework in considering how other industry voices impact your own when you’re creating content for your business — and tell you what to do about them

• Alison Gresik — we rest on her understanding of how artists and writers carry their identity through the world to help you own the voice of your business without question

Killer lineup. I’m proud to have these four inimitable voices on my roster for the course. And I’d love for you to hear what they have to share.

Go here now to learn more about Freeing the Voice of Your Business.

And thanks to all who helped me get this idea off the ground and into the world, including the lovely Illana Burk, who designed its visual identity.

{ 1 comment }