Voice Notes is (now) an occasional 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 vetted web designers for The Voice Bureau’s visual brand identity for a long time: a couple of years, actually. Again and again, I kept being drawn back to Allie Creative‘s site and portfolio. Her quiet, feminine presence, her graceful designs (evidence of technical and artistic chops for daaaaaays), and her thoughtful, gracious, lyrical way with words (as evidenced in her design package descriptions) sold me without even trying to. I had this feeling that Allie was the one to help me usher my new boutique agency brand into being. When I had the chance to sit down with her for coffee in the lobby of the Ace Hotel in Portland last July, I knew she and I could do great collaborations together. Friends, meet Allie.

Allie Rice, Couture Web Designer & Intentionality Coach for Creative Entrepreneurs

Allie Rice offers design services for creative entrepreneurs at Allie Creative.
Twitter: @AllieCreative, Facebook: Allie Creative, Pinterest: Allie

My top 3-5 Voice Values are:

Intimacy, Helpfulness, Clarity, Depth, and Excellence. (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 Type 2 (The Helper) with a 1-wing (this combo is called “The Servant.”) On Myers-Briggs, I’m an INFJ (“The Protector” or “The Foreseer Developer”) — with a maxed-out, yes-to-every-question J.

My lifestyle, in 3 words:

Thoughtful, graceful, grateful.

I do the work I do because:

Design creates connection. It not only tells your story but invites others into your story. I love that, as a designer, I not only get to learn those stories myself but I also get to help make sure that those stories are shared and experienced by others. I also love that design in general, and web design especially, is *right* at the juncture of form and function. It’s beauty that has set out to accomplish something. To make people feel something, or know something, or see something. I’m definitely a beauty on a mission kind of gal.

My favorite question to ask people is:

What do you want people to know about you the moment they arrive at your website?

The best compliment I’ve ever received from a client is:

That her website made her want to do more in and with her business — that her website felt prophetic. We created an online space that not only represented where she was right then but also where she was going — and it made her want to get there. I don’t think it gets better than that.

If I couldn’t do the work I’m doing now, I’d be:

An Anthropologie window display designer. Or a food blogger. Or both.

Three online voices who really inspire me are:

• Tara Gentile
• A List Apart (a note: this is a bit of a cop-out, as it is a collective of many voices — but A List Apart, as an entity, has had a huge influence on me as a designer over the last decade plus)
• Ann Voskamp (a confession: I only read this in my RSS reader or Readability because the power of her voice gets a bit lost in her full website)

I can’t stop staring at [person or brand’s] website:

I love hand-lettering, typography, and painted illustration. As such, I spend a lot of time swooning over work by people like Jessica Hische, Anna Bond, Yas Imamura . . . the list goes on.

I can never get enough:

Afternoons to work at a favorite café. There’s something magical about the gentle hum of activity and the changing scenery of people and a vanilla latte on my table.

The next big business challenge for me is:

Completing and launching my ebook (and a guided program around that book). I’ve watched and helped so many of my clients launch their books and programs over the years, and I’ve always had such admiration for the work they were doing — but I now have a whole new appreciation for it. This stuff is hard. There are a lot of barriers — both emotional and physical — to overcome.

If my clients only hold on to one piece of advice from me, I hope it’s:

Your website is not your brand. It’s a powerful expression of your brand, but your brand is so much more, so much bigger, than pixels and programming.

What I really wish you could see about yourself is:

The work you do is important. There are things in the world that only you can do. You are the premium offer. You have a voice and a story that need to be heard.

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

What inspired you in this Voice Notes feature on Allie? We’ll be hanging out in the comments and we’d love to say hello.