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Hi! This post is part of a 12-part video series called YOU: Ruling Your Realm — 10 Declarations for Savvy Entrepreneurs who want to rule their entrepreneurial realm and up their addictability factor. You can catch up on the whole series beginning here with the Intro. While you’re at it, be sure to download your free copy of my primer on the mindsets needed to rule your realm. It’s the perfect complement to what I’m sharing with you in each video.

Here’s the 2nd Declaration in the 12-part series, YOU: Ruling Your Realm: I will embrace being either a personality brand or a business brand and will custom-build my strategy to work for me.

There’s some considerable fuzziness around what people mean when they say ‘she’s a personality/personal brand’ or that’s a ‘business/corporate brand.’ The two are not as much a dichotomy as people like to think, because they both involve the integration and infusion of someone’s personality into the brand identity, to a greater or lesser degree. For me, this is one of the most fascinating parts of branding and I can’t wait to share my thoughts with you.

Let’s elucidate, shall we? :)

Please remember to read underneath the video after you’ve watched. I’d love to hear where you’re at with regards to your own creative enterprise when it comes to being either a personality brand or a business brand. I’ll tell you exactly how and where I’d like you to share your thoughts with me. Thanks for watching!

I’d love to know: do you feel more drawn to being a personality brand or a business brand?

Click through to my Abby Kerr Ink Facebook page, Like it if you haven’t already, and share with me and the other emergent entrepreneurial leaders there. It’ll be interesting to see where each of us is at with this concept.

Thanks for watching. The 3rd Declaration video is on its way!

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Here’s the 1st Declaration in the 12-part series, YOU: Ruling Your Realm: I will press into my strangely powerful talent, knowing that that’s where my best stuff resides.

I’ve created this video series to share the most important stuff that occurs to me for savvy entrepreneurs who want to rule their entrepreneurial realm and up their addictability factor.

If you missed the Intro video in the 12-part series, you can catch up with us here.

And if you haven’t yet downloaded your free copy of YOU: Ruling Your Realm {the ebook I created that precipitated this video series}, you can get yours here.

Enjoy — and please read underneath the video after you’ve watched. I’ve got a question to ask you and I’m really, really curious about your response. I’m planning our Fall and would love to get to know you better.

So . . . what’s your strangely powerful talent?

{If you’re wondering what mine is, I wrote about it recently here.}

Got yours in mind? Yeah — I know you do. I know you know. Click through to my Abby Kerr Ink Facebook page, Like it if you haven’t already, and fill us in there.

Thanks for watching. Next up: some face time on the 2nd Declaration– it’s coming soon!

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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. ♥

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Photo by ClickFlashPhotos / Nicki Varkevisser courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

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.

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