Voice Notes is an occasional special 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:

Megan Auman is one to watch. She’s an accomplished jewelry designer and business educator, but that’s just for starters. This multifaceted entrepreneur is also is a painter and quite a home/creative studio stylist, judging from this Design Sponge feature on her recent dramatic pool-to-studio transformation. I first met Megan a couple years ago when she and Tara Gentile interviewed me for a program they co-ran. Since then, I’ve continued to watch with admiration as Megan shapes and iterates her creative career with smartly full-hearted aplomb. Her get-down-to-it and get-it-done approach to doing business on her own terms is so, so fun and inspiring to me.

Friends, I’m happy to share this Q&A with Megan Auman with you —

Megan Auman, Jewelry Designer & Business Educator

Megan is the designer of her eponymous line of metalsmithed statement jewelry. She also runs Designing an MBA, which asks, what would business school look like if it were geared towards crafters, designers, and makers?
Find Megan on: Twitter; Facebook; Pinterest; Instagram

MY TOP 3-5 VOICE VALUES ARE:

Enthusiasm, Audacity, Power. (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.)

My brand is all about:

Confidence. Confidence is the secret sauce that keeps my creative juices flowing, but it’s also the reason I do what I do. I want to help women feel more confident, regardless of how they engage with my brand. Whether it’s wearing my jewelry or taking a course to grow their business, my mission is pretty much the same, to give women the confidence to take over the world.

The iPhone app I wouldn’t want to live without is:

Evernote. I have it installed on every device I own and I use it to sort all the ideas I have swirling in my brain. Blog posts, e-course ideas, new product designs, to do lists, you name it, it goes into my Evernote.

I FIND THE RICHEST SOCIAL MEDIA CONVERSATIONS TAKE PLACE ON:

Instagram, because you get to connect with people on a visual, visceral level. (Which makes it great for artists and designers.) Whenever I meet someone in real life that I follow on Instagram, I always feel like we know each other so well. I love that you can build these connections with people through the visual aspects of their lives and that I don’t have to try and express in words things that are best said in images.

Three other online voices who really inspire me are:

I have a serious girl crush right now on the painters Kal Barteski, Lisa Congdon, and Michelle Armas.   I started painting again last year, and they’ve each been a big inspiration to me, not only to keep painting, but to blog about and share what I’m up to in the studio.

The next big business challenge for me is:

Loosening up my brand, especially on the creative/studio=based side of my business. For the last few years, I feel like I’ve been super tight, focusing only on making jewelry and having a pretty narrow brand aesthetic. In 2009, I launched a home decor line that lost a lot of money, and I think that experience left me a little gun shy to try and sell anything that isn’t jewelry. But now that I’ve started painting again, I realize that I have so many other creative passions. Now I’m trying to figure out how to create a broader brand, one that incorporates my interests in jewelry, painting, and textiles, not to mention teaching and business.

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

Raise your prices.

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

A talk show host. I’m pretty sure I’d make a great one. Or a reality TV star. (But not the trashy kind.) Or a surfer girl or action sports hero, which is about as fantasy as you can get, because I’m actually a big chicken and I’ve only ever been on a surf board once in my life. But truthfully, I can’t imagine being anything but an artist. That is, unless there’s a network executive reading this, in which case, I’ll be waiting for your call.

I can never get enough:

Books. My bookshelves are overflowing, but I keep buying more!

An unlikely source of creative inspiration for me is:

The city. Even though my work uses a lot of organic and natural forms, I don’t usually turn to nature for inspiration. (That might be because I already live in the country.) Instead, I head to New York. There’s something about the buildings and the people and the energy that calms me down and clears my head.

Three words to describe the way I feel about my visual brand identity today is:

contrast, in transition

The best moment in my work week so far has been:

Working from the beach (okay, not technically the beach, but a beach town). I took a long working weekend at my family’s beach house, and I got so much done. I launched an ecourse, announced the pre-launch of a second ecourse, and finished a few paintings, all while working on my tan!

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

What are you most inspired by that Megan has shared? Let us know in the comments. We’re listening!