Your Voice. Your Power. Your Right People. And the Freedom In Your Decree.

Freedom and power are in the voice.

As a younger woman, I felt a profound discomfort with the concept of power.

In undergrad, I loved my women’s studies classes and filled my elective schedule with various courses from the department, but resisted my professors’ urgings to pick it up as a minor. I never told them why. Here’s why: the power discourse — who has it, who doesn’t have it, who bestows it — chafed me to my soul. I didn’t want to align myself with a pedagogy that viewed the world, and all human relationships, through this lens.

Today, years later, I find it fascinating that the concept of power is extremely compelling to me — and particularly how power relates to voice and especially how power and voice manifest themselves in the conversation we as creative entrepreneurs have with our chosen right people.

The power conversation is one of the foundational pieces of what I teach through Abby Kerr Ink. And it’s one of the essential assumptions I make about my Lustermaker brand editing clients — I assume that my clients want to be, feel, and present as more purely powerful in their brand platform than they are right now. That’s a huge part of why they come to me and trust my eyes on their brand. Editing is the tool I use to articulate people’s power more clearly and actionably to themselves and then to their people.

Power is a biggie around here. That’s why I created this audio course around power and voice for entrepreneurs with digital platforms.

And how about you? How comfortable are you with the concept of power and how it relates to your voice in your own brand platform?

So often we default react to the concept of ‘power’ by associating it with control over another, bending others to one’s will. {This is the definition I inwardly railed against back in college.} This default response of course casts power in a rather non-alluring light, as in, ew, why would I want that?

But I’m here to declare a few things about power to you, because I see that you’re ready for this.

Power means something more dynamic than you might at first think. Here are my favorite synonyms for power*{courtesy of Thesaurus.com}: capacity, dynamism, gift, influence, potential, talent, energy, intensity, potency, strength, birthright, sovereignty.

*If you don’t want to build your creative enterprise from a place of power, then you shouldn’t be reading this blog.

‘Powerful’ is a shorthand — and rather lovely and efficient — way of describing you in the fullness of your magnificence.

So when someone describes you as a powerful person {I always perk up when I hear that said of someone}, what they’re really saying is, She’s self-possessed {as opposed to being possessed by someone or something else}. She’s got efficacy. She makes stuff happen, for herself and for other people. She’s happening.

And as a creative entrepreneur with a digital brand platform, when someone says of you, “Ah, there’s a powerful voice,” what they’re saying about you is this: You’re compelling, memorable, daring, accounted for. You understand your allure at some level, even as you wear it with composed grace, or quiet rebellion, or like a flaming hulahoop of joy. {Power isn’t a stylistic thing.} You’re someone other people want to listen to. People go out of their way to seek your point of view. You wear the mantle of that privilege lightly {knowing that power transfers easily and is designed to do so}, but the responsibility of it you take quite seriously.

People want more of powerful voices.

I, for one, want more entrepreneurial voices to rise up on their purest and most powerful notes. I’m damn tired of watery, or cardboard, voices indulging in mimicry both unintentional and intentional {out of laziness}.

Each creative entrepreneur behind every digital brand has a form and flavor of power waiting to be released through the voice of her business.

Your right people want your form and flavor of power. They’re not going to settle for less from you. {They’ll give you so long before they move on in frustration, because they know they’re not getting your mainlined essence. And they wonder why.}

So really now, how much longer do you want to wait to free that power conversation within your own brand?

Here’s how {and why} the power conversation happens within my brand.

Power is important to me, personally. Being and feeling powerful is more important to me than being or feeling sexy or even smart. {Without owning my power, the other qualities feel empty and without efficacy to me.}

It’s important to me that my friends, loved ones, and yes, clients, feel powerful in their own lives and businesses. In the digital entrepreneurial realm, this translates to having a pure and powerful voice. I get really uncomfortable on other people’s behalf when their power appears to be compromised. {Righteous indignation, anyone?}

This is part of what makes me a natural born brand editor. I hone right in on where your power is being compromised and tell you to chuck that jive, and I build up the places where your power is righteous and all yours and just begging you to free it. {You’re the ruler of this realm of yours, you know? Freedom is in your decree.}

This conversation about voice and power we’re having? I’m only getting started with you. I’ve put the continuance of this conversation right here.

It’s called Freeing the Voice of Your Business. It features me, in audio conversation one-to-one with you, and also with four other powerful female entrepreneurial voices I’ve tapped to lead with me. We’re talking about defining, describing, individuating, owning, and freeing your purest and most powerful voice within your own creative enterprise. Plus there’s written content to support your own discoveries.

Your voice. Your turn. Your terms.

Is Freeing the Voice of Your Business for you? Check it out.

What’s your relationship with the concept of power, especially as it relates to your voice in your business? Tell me your own story in the comments.