Brand Voice Development for Values-Based Business

An open letter to *my* right people.

To my right people:

I’m coming to you here and acknowledging that you know that I know you. These are the kinds of conversations I love to have — deep, straight to the heart of things, and descriptive {not prescriptive}.  Let’s stop messing around here and scratching the surface of the reason we hang out together. Let’s go all in.

It’s curious to me that I’m writing this letter because I know that you get it and when you get stuff, you don’t need or want people to keep spelling it out for you. It’s enough for you to make your own most powerful meaning, own it, and continue on.

But sometimes you have to draw a line in the sand. Or in the foundation. Right now, I’m writing to you as if I’m writing in the wet concrete foundation of what I’m building here at Abby Kerr Ink. You are written into the very foundation of what comes next.

This, right-here-right-now, is a very public gesture from me to you.

People like you and I tend to keep a composed face in public — we’re really good at showing only what we want to — and only behind the scenes do we get truly deep into it with our intimate inner circle. {And yes, we go deeeeep there.} The public version of ourselves we present — which is an authentic slice, because being real and straightforward and cards-on-the-table is highly important to us — is a potent version, but it isn’t even almost the All.

You and I, we care deeply about the All. Not only within ourselves, viewing ourselves holistically, but in our relationships with others. We tend to the whole and notice how all the parts work together to comprise the structure or the community. Because of that, we monitor and edit and revise and curate — not only our work lives and our offerings, but ourselves and our messages, too.

I know you well. You know me well.

And so, you’ve known that here, all along, I’ve been speaking to you. This whole time, you’ve been able to read between the lines and see where I was wanting to take you. You’ve sensed and known that a day would come when you’d be suiting up and following in my footsteps. Maybe I’m years ahead of you in terms of business growth and maybe I’m not so very far ahead at all, but you know that what I’m writing about here and have created for you in our one-on-one work together is exactly what you need and are ready for. Hell, you’ve been ready for this for years because the way I put it out there speaks to who you’ve been and know yourself to be.

You’re a details person. It hasn’t escaped you that I’ve written to you here already. {Thank you. I know you understand what that means to me.}

Because we’re into nuance, there are some other characteristics common to us that I want to acknowledge today in this letter, too:

We’re not always so easy to relate to at the outset, are we?

We stand apart and set ourselves apart, not out of snobbery, but out of the sense we have of ourselves of being watchmen, reformers, leaders, commentators, curators, directors, and officiants. We look out for the whole. We relate to feeling as if we’re the only one doing that, or doing that in the way that we can. {The first part can be a stumbling block. But about that last part, we’re right.}

But when you get into that inner circle with us  — {I like to think of my own inner circle as my ‘brain coterie’} — you know that we’ve got hearts made of love and light and unbreakable filament. We feel deeply but we usher those feelings into a shape that works in service of the whole.

We love the foundation. But this does not mean we’re beginners. We weren’t even particularly beginner-esque when we were beginners. Even in the eyes of others. We see rapid growth in most everything we put ourselves to. We push ourselves through those first foundation-building years with trademark aplomb because we see where and how we’re needed. We seek our particular brand of expertise and we get inside it and live it out. We get the help and development we need where and when and from whom we need it. We implement our learning like hell. We cop to where we’re most useful. We get in there and frickin’ own it.

We’re strong and expansive but particular and we’re gracious, almost unfailingly so. This is why people are attracted to us, in business and in ‘real life’.

It’s unfathomable to us to live a life in which we’re not working on building our dreams to reality.

Yes, I get this about you.

Today, I need you to know that I see that in you. And I honor that deeply. Getting to know you better — through working one-on-one with you as a right person client, through creating content for you and gauging the reaction, through our convos in the backchannels, and through trusting myself to lead — has allowed me to arrive here, right now, in this newly gorgeous moment, where I’m writing this letter to you.

And I want you to know: everything I’m working on right now is designed to support you in getting to your next most gorgeous iteration of your particular brand of expertise.

I build gorgeous, addictive brands that are extremely compelling to their right people, and I teach other creative entrepreneurs how to do it with their own brands through the power of savvy editing. I’ve done this twice now — once with my first business {a nationally award-winning brick and mortar retail boutique with an online component}, and now with Abby Kerr Ink. And I’m doing it again with a new brand I’m developing to serve my indie retail audience {so you won’t hear much, if anything, about that brand over here}.

This conversation right here? This is the convo I’m about the business of having. And if you know I’m talking to you, you’re really going to like what’s coming out of Abby Kerr Ink studios over the next seven months.

Over the next few weeks, you’re going to see me roll out a creation that’s been on my radar for you for months. It’s called Freeing the Voice of Your Business. I’ll fill you in on the details soon. For now, I want you to know that it’s on its way.

If you’re not yet on my Inklings weekly e-newsletter list, you can sign up right here. I’d love to have you. When you sign up, you receive my free 10-part e-course, Creating a Truly Irresistible Niche, which has gotten rave response from my subscribers, but is being retired soon. Sign up now and you’ll get this course plus I’ll offer you access to the new free offering when it’s ready.

Thanks for reading. You’ve got a lot going on. I love that about you. I love who you are. Thanks for taking such responsibility for yourself and the entrepreneurial realm you’re building to support that freedom-loving life you want.

P.S. If you read this and are decidedly not vibing with what I’m saying here and where I’m taking my people, that’s quite okay. We’re not a great fit for each other and it’s better to know that sooner than later. You are free to get what you need in a different place.

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The entrepreneurial realm of you.

We’ve been talking about it around here for a while. Today is where we get evocative and start to build.

If you want to track back, here’s where I first talked about the importance of you envisioning your realm for yourself rather than accepting other people’s interpretation of you. And here’s where I released a free downloadable primer for you on the mindsets needed to rule your realm. Please get yours if you haven’t already. I made it for you.

Build it strong and gorgeous, babe. I know you want to.

Powerful, sustainable creative businesses don’t arrive overnight, fully-fledged. You evoke your entrepreneurial realm into existence, layer by layer, starting with the foundation up.

EVOKE [ih-vohk] – verb
1. to call up or produce
2. to elicit or draw forth
3. to produce or suggest through artistry and imagination a vivid impression of reality

Enough with the block quotes. Let’s get visionary.

You’ve been building your business online for a while now. I know your instincts are good — you’re here, aren’t you? ;) But I know there are gaps in your construction that need to be filled with something mega-potent-powerful. It’s called your vision.

Let’s talk about this post for a minute, which has been one of my most popular up to now, about describing your marketplace for yourself so that when you’re marketing, you’re really going market-ing.

Knowing what your marketplace looks like is about seeing, feeling, hearing, and experiencing your ideal people in the world you create for them — the world that is your most gorgeous, powerful brand platform that’s an utterly pure and potent expression of you, your gifts and talents, and your love — before it fully exists in the actual now.

This is not woo-woo. This isn’t LOA. This is not exactly mental vision boarding, but if you’re an especially visual thinker, it might be useful for you to think of it in that way.

The work I’m here to do with you is this: ruffling up your mind and your spirit to perceive what you want to build — so that you know what you’re building, block by block, decision by decision. Because you, yes you, are the architect, the contractor, and the workwoman. You’ll be inspired and supported by many amazing resources, peers, and mentors along the way, but ultimately, it’s you who does the work. Your work on your foundation. You’re the broad stroke painter and the fine detail finesser.

As entrepreneurial realm builders, we evoke our construction with ideas, messaging, and signals both visual and intangible. Every move we make speaks volumes about who we think we are and what we know is possible for our people.

Here are some of the foundational building blocks you’re going to learn how to evoke more powerfully as you hang with me over the next little while.

• your business’s guiding message
• your offerings and the way you present them
• your personal presence within your brand
• the voice of your business — from copy to your actual speaking voice — as well as the bigger conversation you’re having and the particular flair you put to it

If you want a quick start, check out this guide I wrote for my friend Illana Burk’s Short Attention Span Guides series at Makeness*. It’s called The Suite of Signals: Discovering and Expressing Your Brand’s Unique Point of  View and it’s a primer on getting the signaling right from the foundation upward and outward. ‘Cause I know that’s where you want to go.

*Affiliate link

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I groove on driving metaphors. Glittering roads, propulsion, shifting gears, forward momentum.

In real life, I drive a 2003 Honda. Go figure.

You can drive, in your business, however you want to. You can take the backroads and get to your destination more slowly. Or you can take the freeway and really zoom ahead. The choice, quite honestly and actually, is yours.

But if you’re gonna drive — and babe, I know you are — we need to talk about brand fuel.

Because too many of you are still thinking of your brand as an outward layer you apply to the ‘real work’ that’s going on inside your business.

When ideally, your suite of branding signals is as much the ‘real work’ as the work you do with your clients, the goods you sell to your customers, and the content you create to market it all. Branding is the same art — and comes from the same heart — as creating, connecting, and selling.

And I’m not just talking about hiring an expensive web designer who gets your vibe and can translate it effectively.

I’m talking about your presence in your business and how that fuels every choice you make, from your logo font to your pricing structure to whether you, like me, would ever call your readers ‘babe.’

It’s all signaling and all signaling is branding.

We need a serious perspective check. You need to know where your brand fuel comes from so you can keep your business’s motor running.

A long time ago {in internet years}, I started Abby Kerr Ink as a copywriter. I picked a road whose sidewalk I’d been walking down for a while {web marketing copy for creative businesses, which I learned, then studied deeply, via writing for my own boutique} and began to drive. Got clients, got busy, turned out some great copy for some neat businesses.

But I knew that it wasn’t The All for me.

Writing copy was one medium to use my writing gift, but I quickly had to own that it wasn’t my preferred medium. I found it hard. Not just challenging {as your great work should be}, but hard.

It wasn’t just the work that was off for me. It was also my relationship to most of my audience and clients. Oh, the relationships were going somewhere alright. I just didn’t feel totally lit up and powerful in the context of where they were going.

When I joined the cast of Action Studio 1.0 back in the Fall of 2010, I knew that Sinclair was on to something with her brand archetype work. {Not just Sinclair, but enterprising Fortune 500s and with-it creative solopreneurs everywhere.}  I did big work inside the Studio. I made amazing friends. I revolutionized my business from the foundation up. {Oh, and in case you haven’t noticed, I no longer offer copywriting.}

I found my brand fuel. And now I can’t get enough.

Your brand fuel is who you are when you’re at your best in your business. Your best. Not some put-on image of who you think you should be because of your credentials or absence of credentials or your talent or your family story or what you did before you started your digital business.

Discovering your brand archetype, which points you to the strongest and most natural expression of you in your business, is only the beginning.

The Action Studio doors are opening again soon. Very soon.

Today, I hope you get your name on the Studio door. And then jump on my list to find out what I’m offering people who buy Action Studio through my affiliate link {plus a free gift from me when you opt-in, and then a much bigger bonus gift from me when you buy Action Studio}.

I want you to have what I’m having.

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