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I’ve been transfixed by NBC’s new talent show, “The Voice,” since its premier a few weeks ago. Especially because it highlights an aspect of creative entrepreneurial life that really deserves some attention right now.

Your voice. The voice of your business, savvy creative entrepreneur that you are and are rapidly evermore becoming. The importance of your voice in your creative business’s online presence is exactly why “The Voice” has me so captivated. I want your voice to be just that captivating to your right people.

Image courtesy of blog.zap2it.com.

If you haven’t seen “The Voice,” here’s a quick recap of how it works: pre-screened singers {read: definitely talented, skilled, and practiced} perform for an audience, full-out, while celebrity musical artists serving as vocal coaches {Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Blake Shelton, and Adam Levine from Maroon 5} listen with their backs turned. When they’re convinced that they’re hearing a Voice — someone whose inborn talent and unique vocal quality could carry them all the way to superstardom — they hit a big red button which makes their chair spin around to face the stage. Only then do they encounter the talent face-to-face. The contestant then pairs up with the spun-around coach, and if more than one coach spun around, it’s the coaches’ job to plead their cases and the contestants’ prerogative to choose whom to work with for the remainder of the season.

What I love about ‘The Voice” is how it puts the focus on the sparkling talent of the artists, not on the already fame-ordained coaches’ judgment. The voice and its never-heard-quite-like-this-before qualities are front and center.

As creative entrepreneurs with online brand platforms and a consistent digital presence across various social media venues, our voices are front and center. We lead with them everywhere we go online, as people read our blog posts, open our e-newsletters, or catch a RT of us on Twitter. Visual brand identity, including headshots of us, are essential to the holistic presence, yes — but the voice and the message and the story it carries is what resonates across time.

I almost cry every time one of the judges on “The Voice” hits their button and spins around to face the talent. That moment is so real for me. I think of how it must feel to be up there performing and to see someone physically turn around to witness you filling up the whooooole space with your talent and your energy. That experience is something I want to be a part of facilitating for my people, too. {In a different context, of course.}

Something to witness in “The Voice” and in your own creative business life: we all have right people — people who come alive when they hear us speaking {or writing, as it were}.

Not every judge spins around for every artist. Sometimes it’s only one who can hear the power and the potential there in a way that compels them to buy-in, to get on board, to help usher that voice to the next phase of its development and to its rightful audience.

Your right people witness you like that, too. When you upload a new video to your channel or you Tweet your latest blog masterpiece, not everyone responds, do they? But your right people are always ready to hear what you have to say and they love the way you say it. They hear you. They recognize what’s gorgeous there. They see the strength inside the unique package that is you and your brand identity.

As a creative entrepreneur, the voice of your business is your signature. It’s your particular flair, your turn of phrase, your eclectic cache of phraseologie. It’s what you don’t say as much as what you do say. It’s your tone, your style, and your message — all rolled into one.

What I want for you is this: that you create content for your creative business from a voice that feels like the purest, strongest, most full expression of you, meeting your right people right where they are. I want you to experience your right people spinning around to watch you moving in the fullness of you because they can’t get enough of your irrepressible voice. It’s you. And I know it’s waiting for you to free it.

In June, 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.

For now, I leave you with a favorite clip from Week 1 of “The Voice.” The singer is Vicci Martinez and she’s rocking out one of my current favorite songs, “Rolling in the Deep” by the inimitable Adele. And Vicci doesn’t imitate — she brings her own style to it. Pay particular attention to the bit between Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera that starts around the 2:55 mark. It’s the whole ‘right people’ thing. Enjoy.

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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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