Brand Voice Development for Values-Based Business

Freedom and power are in the voice.

As a younger woman, I felt a profound discomfort with the concept of power.

In undergrad, I loved my women’s studies classes and filled my elective schedule with various courses from the department, but resisted my professors’ urgings to pick it up as a minor. I never told them why. Here’s why: the power discourse — who has it, who doesn’t have it, who bestows it — chafed me to my soul. I didn’t want to align myself with a pedagogy that viewed the world, and all human relationships, through this lens.

Today, years later, I find it fascinating that the concept of power is extremely compelling to me — and particularly how power relates to voice and especially how power and voice manifest themselves in the conversation we as creative entrepreneurs have with our chosen right people.

The power conversation is one of the foundational pieces of what I teach through Abby Kerr Ink. And it’s one of the essential assumptions I make about my Lustermaker brand editing clients — I assume that my clients want to be, feel, and present as more purely powerful in their brand platform than they are right now. That’s a huge part of why they come to me and trust my eyes on their brand. Editing is the tool I use to articulate people’s power more clearly and actionably to themselves and then to their people.

Power is a biggie around here. That’s why I created this audio course around power and voice for entrepreneurs with digital platforms.

And how about you? How comfortable are you with the concept of power and how it relates to your voice in your own brand platform?

So often we default react to the concept of ‘power’ by associating it with control over another, bending others to one’s will. {This is the definition I inwardly railed against back in college.} This default response of course casts power in a rather non-alluring light, as in, ew, why would I want that?

But I’m here to declare a few things about power to you, because I see that you’re ready for this.

Power means something more dynamic than you might at first think. Here are my favorite synonyms for power*{courtesy of Thesaurus.com}: capacity, dynamism, gift, influence, potential, talent, energy, intensity, potency, strength, birthright, sovereignty.

*If you don’t want to build your creative enterprise from a place of power, then you shouldn’t be reading this blog.

‘Powerful’ is a shorthand — and rather lovely and efficient — way of describing you in the fullness of your magnificence.

So when someone describes you as a powerful person {I always perk up when I hear that said of someone}, what they’re really saying is, She’s self-possessed {as opposed to being possessed by someone or something else}. She’s got efficacy. She makes stuff happen, for herself and for other people. She’s happening.

And as a creative entrepreneur with a digital brand platform, when someone says of you, “Ah, there’s a powerful voice,” what they’re saying about you is this: You’re compelling, memorable, daring, accounted for. You understand your allure at some level, even as you wear it with composed grace, or quiet rebellion, or like a flaming hulahoop of joy. {Power isn’t a stylistic thing.} You’re someone other people want to listen to. People go out of their way to seek your point of view. You wear the mantle of that privilege lightly {knowing that power transfers easily and is designed to do so}, but the responsibility of it you take quite seriously.

People want more of powerful voices.

I, for one, want more entrepreneurial voices to rise up on their purest and most powerful notes. I’m damn tired of watery, or cardboard, voices indulging in mimicry both unintentional and intentional {out of laziness}.

Each creative entrepreneur behind every digital brand has a form and flavor of power waiting to be released through the voice of her business.

Your right people want your form and flavor of power. They’re not going to settle for less from you. {They’ll give you so long before they move on in frustration, because they know they’re not getting your mainlined essence. And they wonder why.}

So really now, how much longer do you want to wait to free that power conversation within your own brand?

Here’s how {and why} the power conversation happens within my brand.

Power is important to me, personally. Being and feeling powerful is more important to me than being or feeling sexy or even smart. {Without owning my power, the other qualities feel empty and without efficacy to me.}

It’s important to me that my friends, loved ones, and yes, clients, feel powerful in their own lives and businesses. In the digital entrepreneurial realm, this translates to having a pure and powerful voice. I get really uncomfortable on other people’s behalf when their power appears to be compromised. {Righteous indignation, anyone?}

This is part of what makes me a natural born brand editor. I hone right in on where your power is being compromised and tell you to chuck that jive, and I build up the places where your power is righteous and all yours and just begging you to free it. {You’re the ruler of this realm of yours, you know? Freedom is in your decree.}

This conversation about voice and power we’re having? I’m only getting started with you. I’ve put the continuance of this conversation right here.

It’s called Freeing the Voice of Your Business. It features me, in audio conversation one-to-one with you, and also with four other powerful female entrepreneurial voices I’ve tapped to lead with me. We’re talking about defining, describing, individuating, owning, and freeing your purest and most powerful voice within your own creative enterprise. Plus there’s written content to support your own discoveries.

Your voice. Your turn. Your terms.

Is Freeing the Voice of Your Business for you? Check it out.

What’s your relationship with the concept of power, especially as it relates to your voice in your business? Tell me your own story in the comments.

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I hate it when you don’t sound like yourself.

{There was a time when I didn’t sound like myself, either. So I’ve got compassion for you. I know how you probably got into this situation. But I’m also ticked off on your behalf.}

Know what else? Your right people hate it when you don’t sound like yourself.

Photo by baileyraeweaver courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

They can tell when you’re indulging in unintentional mimicry or when your voice is ‘off’ — even if they don’t tell you straight out.

They can feel the inauthenticity — ooh, harsh word! — and they make decisions about you and your offers accordingly.

Quick Personal Story Time

A long time ago {I was really young}, upon ending a two and a half year relationship, I told my onetime guy, “You know what? You never really knew all of me.” And he said, “Yeah, you’re right. I could tell.” His voice rose in indignation. “That pisses me off,” he said. “Why didn’t you ever let me really know you? Why did you hold back?”

Turns out that the version of my voice I’d presented through that relationship, while lively, engaged, loving, and seemingly me — wasn’t the fullness of me. And, to my surprise, I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.

A compromised, unwhole voice leaves a void where the whole, powerful you should rightfully be.

Just like my voice in this relationship, going in halfsies — even an energetic, well-intentioned halfsies — just isn’t enough.

Your right people want all of you, and they want you to come to them in the pure, powerful, unfettered voice that only you can inhabit.

When you sound like you, you’re unknowingly writing in your brand language. You’re drawing on your signature phraseologie. You’re striking the tone that makes us say, “Ah, yes. She’s on fire today.” You’re creating an experience where your right people can see themselves in the light you cast for them.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could catch yourself writing like this — like you?

I have a way for you to start noticing when you’re sounding like you. Becoming conscious of your voice and what you really sound like at your best is the way to being able to step into your purest and most powerful voice at will.

Find your best post or piece of content {e-newsletter, etc.}.  Open a blank document and get ready to jot stuff down.

Read the post and in the blank doc, keep track of words and turns of phrase that leap out at you. If you’ve heard it before or know that you got it from someone else, don’t include it. Note only the phraseologie that sounds and feels fresh, alive, and like it leaped from the primordial goo of your deepest message. It all counts — nouns {names for things}, adjectives {words that describe}, cadence {rhythm patterns}.

Add to your list as often as you can, as often as you spin phraseologie that makes you say, “Oh! That’s me.”

Keep your list somewhere easily accessible. Read it from time to time. Remember that this is evidence of your voice and your brand language in the world. This is your stuff.

Noticing the components, step one. Stepping into that foundational stuff whenever you want and need to, step two.

More on that very soon.

Next week, I’m releasing Freeing the Voice of Your Business, a multimedia product designed to help you own the conversational space that’s rightfully yours as a creative entrepreneur working digitally. To be among the first to learn more, sign up here for Inklings, my weekly e-newsletter.

Signature brand language — you’ve got it. In the comments, share with us a gem from your phraseologie cache. We want to hear you.

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So I’ve heard there’s been a wee bit of ‘unintentional mimicry’ hysteria being whispered in the backchannels ever since my last post went live. Was chatting with a friend about it and decided I needed to publish this piece next to set a few people back on-kilter.

Photo by Chicago Art Department courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

In my last post on unintentional mimicry, I warned you against the promiscuous appropriating of other people’s brand language.

Perhaps you’ve grown self-conscious {in an empowering way} about where you’ve been less than fresh in your own foundational verbiage. Perhaps you’ve turned a keen eye on a peer or a competitor who’s been a bit loose in adopting your signature phraseologie for herself. Perhaps you yourself have copped to some unintentional mimicry of someone you admire. And you know what? You’re so much better off for taking a look at it.

Now — you can begin to do the work of freeing your own purest and most powerful voice, the voice that only you can inhabit. The voice that your right people rise up and say ‘yes’ to.

What you’re now ready to reflect on is this: there’s a difference between unintentional mimicry and collective consciousness.

Collective consciousness is one way to describe the phenomenon at play when we’re seemingly all hitting upon the same ideas at the same times.  You know you’ve seen that at work. It’s more subtle and less insidious than ‘group think’ — but collective consciousness is common.

Some examples of collective consciousness at work:

Two novels come out in the same year with remarkably similar motifs and characters whose archetypes seem to echo each other.

Three business development coaches launch programs in the same season with eyebrow-raising overlap in the focus and content.

A jewelry designer friend of mine, often after coming up with a new necklace or earring design in the privacy of her home studio, sees something eerily similar pop up in Anthropologie’s online store a few weeks later. {Hidden cameras installed in her home? I don’t think so.}

Many pregnant girlfriends of mine have chosen names for their babies that they thought sounded unique and fresh. And then by their babies’ first birthdays, their “unique” names are in the Top 3 Most Popular Names for Boys/Girls in the U.S.  {Still nice-sounding names, just whoa! trendy.}

Is it in the water? Is it filtering down through the media? Or is there something even more subtle and cosmic at play?

Yes, yes, and yes. It’s collective consciousness. Ideas get around. It’s their nature.

So what this means for you and your brand language: it’s okay to get swept up in collective consciousness. That’s a totally different thing than unintentional mimicry.

The difference is: you get swept up in collective consciousness — blindsided. You’re part of a phenomenon. And yes, when this happens you’re still responsible for rendering your own ideas in your own voice.

Unintentional mimicry is something you do and once realized, are responsible for repairing.

And the distinction between collective consciousness and unintentional mimicry as it relates to the voice of your business:

Collective consciousness positions you as part of a conversation.

Unintentional mimicry, when left unchecked or when allowed to mushroom, positions you as unoriginal.

This month, I’m releasing Freeing the Voice of Your Business, a multimedia product designed to help you own the conversational space that’s rightfully yours as a creative entrepreneur working digitally. To be among the first to learn more, sign up here for Inklings, my weekly e-newsletter.

What else needs to be said about collective consciousness and unintentional mimicry? Please share your thoughts with me and others in the comments.

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