Brand Voice Development for Values-Based Business

In this fifteenth episode of the Creative Solopreneur Podcast, I’m talking with Karen Paritee from Effindiets. Karen is a Certified Life Strategies Coach and Diet Crusher.

Here are links to the people and ideas we talked about:

• Geneen Roth
• Tim Brownson, A Daring Adventure
• Catherine Caine
• Tim Gary, MINDCUE
• Karen’s 30 minute invitation to all podcast listeners who connect with what she’s saying

Listen in as Karen shares how she became a Diet Crusher, how to begin sharing your mission with your audience, how to know when you’ve found your right creative service providers {from designers to coaches}, what Harriet Tubman has to do with Diet Crushing, and making friends with “Rita” and “Juanita.”

Right click here and select Save Link As to download the podcast to your hard drive, or left click to play in-browser.

P.S. Karen will be hanging out in the comments to answer your questions and to chat. Come by and say hello! :)

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In this fourteenth episode of the Creative Solopreneur Podcast, I’m talking with Victoria Brouhard from VictoriaBrouhard.com. Victoria is a former scuba instructor {wow, right?} turned database programmer turned project and business coach. Today she uses her analytical superpowers to help people find, create, and support their Thing — with a capital ‘T.’

Here are links to the people and ideas we talked about:

• Havi Brooks, The Fluent Self, Blogging Therapy series
• Myers Briggs personality type test {free, abbreviated version}
• Hiro Boga, HiroBoga.com
• Victoria’s No Brainer Scenario e-book
• highly sensitive person {HSP}

Listen in as Victoria explains why you pay twice when you do something that’s not a good fit for you and why self-care needs to be a priority for creative solopreneurs. She also shares why entrepreneurship is about “becoming the person you need to be to have the life you want.” Love that.

By the way, we did have a listener question from Illana Burk from Makeness around the 40 minute mark {the one about how Victoria stays so calm and centered all the time}.

Right click here and select Save Link As to download the podcast to your hard drive, or left click to play in-browser.

P.S. Victoria will be available in the comments in case you have questions, or if you just want to say hi. :)

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Update: As of 12 AM on Sunday, February 20th, 2011, this limited time offer is now over. You can still use the links below to get started with Vision Coaching at the regular price. Vision Coaching will be available through March 2011.

If a little birdie told you and you’ve been waiting for this cart to open to the public, you can access it from the link directly below and learn more about the Vision Coaching Triple Pack.

Click here for the limited time offer on my popular Vision Coaching sessions.

If you’ve been reading my recent series on the most popular questions brought to me by my Vision Coaching clients, you’ve heard me say this:

Savvy is a muscle.

The most successful entrepreneurs have a strong, vivid vision for their work in the world and the savvy to make the best decisions on behalf of that vision. They work that muscle, whether they have strong natural savvy or whether savvy is something they’ve had to cultivate.

But before savvy even comes into play, it’s all about the vision.

Do you know where you’re going with your entrepreneurial work in the world?

Is your vision for 2011 and the years beyond lip smackingly vivid?

Are the decisions you’re making lining up with your vision foundation?

If you can’t answer a resounding yes to the three questions above, then the Vision Coaching Triple Pack is perfectly timed to help orient you.

Click here to learn more about what Vision Coaching can do for you, and to see how much you’re saving when you get in on this limited time offer.

Looking forward to seeing you propel forward into your entrepreneurial dream!

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This is Part 3 of a 3-Part series on the questions my Vision Coaching clients most popularly bring to our work together. This series is a gift to my readers during Valentine’s Day week. Special thanks to my previous clients and my Inklings e-newsletter subscribers for weighing in on this.

If you missed the beginning of this series, you can check out Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Heads up: there’s a special offer coming at the bottom of this post. If you’re curious, you can scroll down immediately to learn more, or hang on with me through this post on vision, which, if I do say so myself, is really quite delightful.

Part 3 of this series is about Having Confidence In Your Vision. I do not mean hype-y, positive affirmations confidence. I mean anticipating whether your vision will resonate with your intended audience and whether it’ll make you any money. Here are my clients’ top two questions in this vein . . .

1. How do I know whether my vision will resonate with the people I want to serve/sell to?

2. How can I anticipate ahead of time whether my niche will be profitable?

I could give you the short answer to both questions, which is you don’t and you can’t.

Or I could give you the long answer, which is this: knowing things ahead of time, sensing, sussing out, anticipating . . . these are all functions of that enviable quality we call savvy.

Savvy is a muscle. The more stress you put on it, the shapelier and stronger it gets.

Some of us are born with more muscle mass than others. Others of us have to lift heavier weights and eat more protein to bulk up.

Same with savvy. Naturally savvy people take for granted that their internal compass points them in remarkably optimal directions. {This can look a lot like luck.} Naturally savvy people feel their way into situations that position them in a great light. They make connections easily. They anticipate their market’s needs. They trendspot. They gain followers easily, often just by being themselves {but the best version of it for their business}.

People without a strong savvy muscle stand back and look at their savvier peers and wonder what magic they have. How did she do that? they wonder. They find themselves breaking down the equation they’re perceiving, over and over, trying to “figure out” what works.

Naturally savvy people look at what works and why, too. But they have an inborn ‘resonator’ that picks up on what the market is getting ready to ask for next. This is savvy in action — coupled, quite often, with in-depth study, market research, and practical experience. But sometimes not.

If you want to know whether your vision will resonate with the people you want to serve and sell to, start working that savvy muscle.

Observe who your right people gravitate to in the media. Observe who they hang out with in the blogosphere and who they most commonly Retweet. {These suggestions are so obvious I hesitate to even post them. I know you’ve got this down.}

Here are some bigger picture things for you to consider, assuming you’ve done some market research and feel a natural affinity with the people you’re hoping to reach:

• Is your platform distinguishable from everyone else’s in your niche? For example, if you’re a life coach for married male executives, can your ideal clients see and feel how you’re different from all the other life coaches courting them?

• Is your visual brand identity on par with the quality of your services? If you’re hoping to snag high end clients, your site can’t look like you paid only $300 for it.

• Is your content shareable, in the sense of, would your ideal client — as cool as she is in all the ways that you intrinsically understand — want to share your stuff with her people?

• Are you pricing with confidence, minding what the market will bear, but also aligning with the unique value you provide? Forget about the economy. There are always buyers if you’re giving them what they want at that moment.

• Are you willing to shift and re-vision when you see overwhelming evidence that your vision is not resonating {or when you’re no longer willing to provide a given service to the same level of quality or at the same price, for whatever reason?} Entrepreneurs may have a stubborn streak, but the best ones aren’t stubborn about listening to feedback. The most successful entrepreneurs are highly responsive to their market.

Want to know whether your niche will be profitable?

Get a crystal ball. :)

In lieu of that, make your offer, gain traction, test, evaluate, re-test, re-evaluate.

Every business on earth is an experiment. Part art, part science, highly changeable, and subject to re-vision at any moment.

The longer you’re in business, the more data you’ll have to work with that can help you predict the success of future ideas. But no one and nothing can tell you that a given business concept will be a hit or not. You’re as subject to your market as every other entrepreneur is to theirs.

One trait that all successful entrepreneurs share is having a clear vision that informs every decision they make on behalf of their business.

My uncomprising vision was the reason for the success of my first business, a French-inspired lifestyle boutique in my hometown that achieved national recognition as a “retail star” after only two years in business. And my steady, vivid vision is the reason for the coming shift in Abby Kerr Ink. I’m able to take my right people with me on this journey because I can see what’s in store for them and what they can achieve.

For a limited time only, I’m offering my popular Vision Coaching sessions at a 20% discount. This is the last time I’ll offer this depth of coaching at this price point.

The cart opens to the public tomorrow, Thursday, February 17th, 2011, at 9 AM EST. If you’re reading this post on Thursday or later {EST}, click here to be redirected to the Home page, where you’ll find a link to the sales page for the Vision Coaching Triple Pack in the very first post.

Hope you enjoyed this 3-part series on the questions my clients most popularly ask me about entrepreneurial vision. To get insider info and tips to propel you deeper into your entrepreneurial dream with clarity and can-do, hop on my e-newsletter list right now. As a bonus, you’ll receive my 10-part e-course on Creating a Truly Irresistible Niche — for free!

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