About this column
Voice Notes is an every-Friday feature. We take you inside the online brand presence of a business owner we think you should know — through a dozen evocative sentence-starters.
Abby (Chief Voice Bureau Officer) says:
I’m up this week. Since the purpose of Voice Notes is to shine a spotlight on a brand creators/business owners with whom we’re closely involved, I thought I should take a moment to share a few items about myself, too.
Abby Kerr (That’s Me), Chief Voice Bureau Officer
I’m the Creative Director of The Voice Bureau, a digital copywriter for microbusinesses, and a brand voice development specialist.
Twitter: @AbbyKerr, Facebook: Abby Kerr Ink, Google+: Abby Kerr
My top 3-5 Voice Values are:
(#1) Excellence & Power, (#2) Depth, (#3) Clarity & Legacy. (Note: Discover your own Voice Values when you subscribe to The Voice Bureau’s Insider Stuff e-letter. Look for the sign-up box in the upper righthand corner of the site.)
Personality typing? Why, yes. I’m:
Enneagram Social Type 4 (The Individualist) with a 3-Wing (this combo is called “The Aristocrat”). My Myers-Briggs type is INFJ (“The Protector” or “The Foreseer Developer”). I’m a Pisces with double Sagittarius.
One thing I know for sure about my Right People is:
They’re pretty damn self-aware. They don’t always immediately embrace what they perceive about themselves, but they’re learning to. They’re into making the full spectrum of their nature and personality work for them. They have a high degree of self-respect for their essential humanity, and other people’s, and they’re able to laugh at themselves. (That was several things, actually.)
The truest branding advice I’ve ever heard is:
Design your brand for the people you want to serve, not based on your own idiosyncratic taste.
If my clients only hold on to one piece of advice from me, I hope it’s:
You will inevitably change things about your business and your brand, so commit to the choice that’s the best decision for now — and go all in with it.
I can never get enough:
Water.
The one ‘essential’ I could totally live without is:
A hairbrush. I don’t own one. My curly hair texture doesn’t allow it.
My lifestyle, in 3 words:
Deliberate, curated, harmonious.
My brand is all about:
Identity work. Brand voice is about presenting your work and your personality as a thoughtful composition, one that serves your Right Person wherever she is in her journey. Content strategy is about serving your audience in a way that continuously moves them forward toward their own goals, so they can become more of who they want to be. Copywriting is about helping your site visitors feel witnessed, seen, and understood. It all comes back to identity — who we are, who we’re becoming, and who we want to be in our lives and work.
An unlikely source of creative inspiration for me is:
Again — water! I’m guessing it’s a Piscean thing (the fish). Nothing gets me creatively loosened like a shower, sitting by the ocean, or even a drive in the car past Mill Creek, which flows through the Walla Walla Valley where I live. Even washing the dishes by hand usually works!
On social media, I find I get most triggered when I see:
People being carelessly self-righteous.
The next big business challenge for me is:
Building out The Voice Bureau‘s Classroom. Little by little over the course of 2013, we’ll arrive at a full suite of digital guides, programs, and experiences that help entrepreneurs develop their brands online. Having come from a teaching background (I have my Master’s in Teaching and taught high school students in both traditional and alternative learning environments), moving toward being more of a ‘teaching brand’ has been my dream for a long time. Honestly, it’s a dream I backburnered for the past few years in favor of growing my clientele and working in my business. Now with the team I’ve added, I have more time than before to devote to creating our Classroom. And I’m so excited about that!
In the comments, we’d love to know:
Is there anything else you’d like to ask me about my work or my lifestyle? I’m all ears and look forward to chatting with you.
Hello, you.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Aw, Abby – I loved reading this! Thank you for sharing with us. I love how much we have in common – from our curly hair, to our MBTI. :-) I also appreciate your advice: “You will inevitably change things about your business and your brand, so commit to the choice that’s the best decision for now — and go all in with it.” It’s something I needed to hear today.
I’m SO looking forward to The Voice Bureau’s Classroom development. I have so much love and respect for teachers, and I thank you for finding a way to share your knowledge with us. I can’t wait to watch the Classroom expansion in 2013!
Thank you, Melissa! We sure do have a few things in common. And I’m so glad that particular advice resonated with you. I think, for me, it tempers my propensity for Futuremindedness (one of my top Strengths from the Clifton Strengths Finder) to remember that really, we’re all just living in the present moment!
I can’t wait to roll out our Classroom offerings, too! ;)
Beautiful. Insightful. And so very welcoming!
I’m INFJ too and I know a lot of INFJs who run their own businesses on the web, there must be something to that in there somewhere.
As I like to say, “INFJ’s Unite! …quietly and from the comfort of their own homes.”
Haha, yes! You, too?
haha, love this! INTJ’s love uniting that way as well.
Hi, Nathalie —
There really must be! So cool to know you’re one, too. :)
Curly girls rock. :) I loved this too, Abby, and feel like Melissa–so much in common. Water. And very much looking forward to the Classroom.
I do have a question about the inevitable change thing. I’m finding myself with several options for the direction of my products and feeling a little reticent about choosing which direction because I don’t want to sign myself up for going all in on something that I cannot sustain –or worse– will not enjoy. Am I messing up by waiting for more clarity?
Great question, Susan!
Here are my thoughts:
You never know what you might be more interested in doing tomorrow than what you’re interested in doing today. (Although your life has more than likely already provided you with LOTS of clues as to what your burgeoning interests might be.) The smartest thing you can do in business is to build slowly, carefully, and sustainably. Try out the stuff you think you want to do without assuming that it’s what you’ll always do. You don’t yet know what will rock your market, after all, until you put it out there. That said, it’s important to COMMIT in the now to whatever you believe to be the best first choice. And when I said ‘go all in’ in my feature above, what I meant was: go all in with your commitment to see it through until it’s proven that it doesn’t work the way you need and want it to. I definitely don’t advise that people invest in a $3K+ website until they’re pretty darn sure that this is something they want to commit to for the next few years.
Hope that helps!
Yes, that helps, thanks. Actually, after posting this question I focused and solved the issue yesterday. It was interesting to watch the process. As you know I began product creation several weeks ago. But as the material is unfolding I found myself several times being drawn into places that make me squirm. My abilities lie in big-picture thinking, analyzing systems, and the impersonal. Yet my genre is personal development, so the pull to get into the nitty-gritty practical can be strong.
Yesterday I noticed how defining my work can throw a monkey-wrench into the works of product development. One word, one nuanced change in how I define what I offer and suddenly products can shift in a direction that causes me to contract. Yesterday I thought through my nuanced word in three ways: relating to my Being, “Is this really who I am and what I want to do?”; through my Business, “Is this a marketable product that I can sustain over time?”; and though the Marketing itself, “What IS the value of doing it this way vs. what others are doing?” When I couldn’t answer that last question I knew I was off base. That took me back to Being and I realized that I had answered that question at the level of “Yes, I’m good at this and enjoy it” rather than at the level of “Is this what I love MOST to do and what I’m the BEST at?”
All this to say, yep, I think you’re right and yesterday I got (back) to the place of, “YES! I want to spend at least the next few years doing this.”
Another INFJ over here :)
Looking forward to seeing your classes roll out.
Thank you, Jo! Your excitement helps fuel my inspiration.
Just took the Enneagram test on-line and guess what –
Enneagram Test Results
You are most likely a type 4.
Taking wings into account, you seem to be a 4w3.