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:

I really like Nathalie Lussier’s tagline: Digital Strategy To Match Your Ambition. In fact, there’s something about Nathalie Lussier I’ve always liked, from the first moment I encountered her online. Part tech geek, part online marketing teacher, part cheerleader (she’d be the bookish one), she’s someone whose site I search when I want a really practical “how-to” answer to a tech question that ties in with my overall content marketing strategy. And geez — the woman is just nice. She brings a fresh, clean, youthful, and yet stable energy to the digital marketplace of business owners — one I always appreciate.

I’m delighted to bring you this Q&A with Nathalie.

Nathalie Lussier, Digital Strategist

Nathalie Lussier is the digital strategist at Nathalie Lussier Media. She turned down a job offer from Wall Street to start her own business straight out of college. She helps driven, creative business owners understand the profit potential and exposure available for their business online. From her site: “Clients and customers rave about her ability to simplify the complex, and make technology and digital strategy easy to understand and implement.”
Find Nathalie on: Twitter; Facebook; Pinterest; YouTube; Google+

Personality typing? Why, yes!

I’m a Virgo, and my My Myers-Briggs type is INFJ / INTJ (borderline Feeling and Thinking).

I knew I’d ‘come into’ my writing voice when I:

Stopped sounding like my mentors, peers, and favorite authors. When my ideas came to me away from the computer, too.

I do the work I do because:

I believe that we’re living in a different world than we were even just a few years ago, and I want to inspire other women and men to create the work that lights them up, while serving others, too.

If I could invite 3 people to dinner to give me their take on my work in the world, I’d invite:

Steve Jobs. Cindy Gallop. Richard Branson.

An unlikely source of creative inspiration for me is:

Romance novels, walks in the park with my dog, and funny YouTube videos.

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

Announcing my free, no-pitch 30 Day List Building Challenge, and seeing the responses come in! [Abby's note: I've signed up!]

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

Growing trees. Spacious.

One thing I know for sure about my Right People is:

They’re smart, they get shit done, they love thinking differently, and they’re out to make a difference in the world.

If my business were a movie, the title would be:

Imagine That

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

“You’re not trying to fit me and my ideas into a cookie-cutter system; you’re looking for unique and creative ways to help me put my work out into the world.”

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

Ideas have a shelf life. Act on them before your ideas expire. That means taking action on your great ideas and not letting them get stale!

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

A sexy librarian. [Abby's note: See the photo she submitted for this post.]

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

I’m curious about what Nathalie’s Voice Values are. Now that you’ve read this Q&A and taken a look at her site, any guesses, fellow Voice Values junkies?

This blog post is in support of a new book by Michelle Ward and Jessica Swift called The Declaration of You. It’ll be published by North Light Craft Books in Summer 2013. If you’re a Voice Bureau reader who isn’t familiar with Michelle and Jessica’s work, I’d recommend taking a look if you have a high Enthusiasm or Playfulness value. In their own words, readers get “all the permission they’ve craved to step passionately into their lives, discover how they and their gifts are unique, and uncover what they are meant to do.” Learn more about The Declaration of You’s BlogLovin’ Tour, and how you can participate, here.

Uniquity and I have an intense relationship.

As an Enneagram Type 4 — and if you know what that means, you’re probably chuckling to yourself already — To Be Unique, Original, Individualistic, Myself feels like my soul’s deepest longing. Type 4s long to create an original identity — the same way Type 2s long to be cherished, Type 6s long to be supported by others, and Type 9s long for inner peace.

The quest for what Michelle Ward and Jessica Swift term ‘uniquity’ has driven and defined my life.

I’ve been the eight year old girl whose blood ran cold with anger and astonishment when her church friend dared to name her new stuffed animal the very same unique name I gave mine (Tiffin, if you must know, after the town in Ohio I’d never been to but seen in my dad’s atlas).

I’ve been the sixteen year old girl whose heart broke into a million pieces when her ballet friend (a different person this time) named her new golden Cocker Spaniel the same name as my long-dead golden Cocker Spaniel. (Rudy, may he RIP.)

I’ve been the shopkeeper who inwardly rolled her eyes when a socially advantageous customer requested to know what her friends who had purchased housewarming gifts from me earlier in the day had gotten, so that she could make sure her present was on par, price-wise and impressiveness-wise.

I’ve been the blogger who rolls her eyes outwardly — right here, in front of my Mac as I type — when I read stuff online that feels derivative, recycled, or like a mash-up of Blogger X, Y, and Z’s latest articles. Really, people? I think to myself. Was that worth publishing?

I can’t even listen to audio interviews of me from my earlier days in business because so many times I refused to make a statement without attributing it to the person I heard, learned, or read it from — which makes me sound like a bona fide name dropper. Integrate the teaching into my own framework and put it out there as mine? Nooooooo. Not unique enough.

And while I’m a great curator, you’d better believe there’s no quicker way for me to short circuit a work day than to spend the first hour of it clicking through links on Twitter, reading Other People’s Stuff. Damnit! I’ll think. There goes that topic.

My personal recipe for Uniquity has always been: look away from everyone else! Your creativity has nothing to do with theirs!

I’ve been (privately) critical of other business bloggers whose work I’ve seen as “push off” pieces — in other words, they’re not actively developing and teaching their own methods, they’re just “pushing off” of other people’s with a light (or harsh) critique, or teasing out one undeveloped point from the original piece and making it. And yes, I’ve written a few pieces along these lines, too.

(There’s nothing inherently wrong with the above approach, by the way. I’m just a Type 4.)

It wasn’t until I found myself feeling shackled to Uniquity as the most important component of any creative endeavor that I felt moved to take a closer look at what was really driving me.

Several years ago, I asked myself, “What would you, at the age of 94 after a well-lived life, regret not having done?”

Only one thing came to me strongly and clearly, soared up into the open sky of my mind, a warm, soft-bodied bird with an all-knowing glint in his eye: Write and publish your book, it said.

And I knew it was true. Writing my book is it for me. That’s my Thing.

Here in my mid-thirties, I’m a working writer — I’m founder and Creative Director of The Voice Bureau, I still write copy occasionally, and I create lots of teaching and learning materials for our clients and readers. I love to write. I write every day.

But I’m not writing, you know, my book.

Because, well, “everybody” writes books. (No they don’t.)

And “everybody” has a story in them that needs to be told, and what if it’s like my story? (It both will be and won’t be.)

And which is the better route these days — self-publishing or traditional publishing? Which holds more prestige? (That’s my high Power value talking.) Which is easier to market and sell? Will one of the routes banish me to the pile that’s “just like everybody else?”

And so on.

Many times, my prerequisite to Be Unique, Above All, keeps me from ever beginning my great work in the first place.

That is no longer okay with me.

A conversation with (of all people) a health coach friend of mine got me thinking about my creativity in new ways: What if, she said, you were allowed to look at other people and in other places for creative inspiration? What if you didn’t expect yourself to reinvent the g*d*mn wheel every time you write a blog post? What if being UNIQUE meant just being you — and the whole world was available to you as inspiration?

I liked those ideas. And whoa — what a different way of being in the world that is for me.

My instinct is to tie up this piece with a nice little bow, bring it to a tidy conclusion, an exhale.

But we all know that creative work, defining Uniquity for ourselves, and claiming a true and original identity — that’s big human stuff, dudes.

I don’t want to sell you short by pretending that it isn’t.

So I’ll just let you in on a promise I’ve recently made to myself: I am allowed to be expansive. To be all-encompassing. To be Yes and No and All and Some and Never and Maybe. To be in the thick of a creative swamp and to be standing willfully on the rooftop of a building I have erected myself, a building called Unique — and both places are equally valid.

And whatever I am when you see me there — that’s me. Unique enough.

In the comments, I’d love to hear:

What’s your relationship to your own Uniquity? Equally intense? A little more loose and free-flowing? Tell me about it.

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:

Long ago (in internet years), when Danielle LaPorte used to offer her now-retired Fire Starter Sessions at $300/hour, some retail blogging friends of mine went in together and got me one as a gift. During that call, Danielle told me that I should look to Susannah Conway’s blog as inspiration for what I could do online. At the time, I was a lifestyle boutique owner (brick and mortar with an online presence). DLP told me to look at Unraveling: The e-Course and said I could be the “Susannah Conway of retail.” :) I didn’t exactly go that route, but that call with DLP, and finding my way to Susannah’s site, and then to so many more wonderful creatives’ sites from there, was the beginning of my adventure in creating community online and making offers from the heart. And I’ve never looked back.

 

Today, I’m still enchanted with Susannah’s artist eye. She’s one of my very favorite Pinners. I admire her writing voice. And I like the way she puts learning experiences together for creative people to invest of themselves in. She’s inspiring in so many ways.

 

This year marks the one-year anniversary of the publication of Susannah’s book, This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart. To celebrate, she’s hosting The Big Book Giveaway on her site — a contest you can enter to win 21 beautiful books.

And now I’m glad to bring you — Susannah . . .

Susannah Conway, Photographer & Author

Susannah Conway is the author of This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart (SKIRT! Books). A photographer, writer and e-course creator, her classes have been enjoyed by thousands of people from over 40 countries around the world. Co-author of Instant Love: How to Make Magic and Memories with Polaroids (Chronicle Books), Susannah helps others reconnect to their true selves, using creativity as the key to open the door. You can read more about her shenanigans on her blog at SusannahConway.com.
Find Susannah on: Twitter; Facebook; Pinterest; InstaGram

My top 3-5 Voice Values are:

#1: Playfulness and Love. #2: Intimacy, Transparency and Helpfulness. (These are all spot-on!). (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.)

I knew I’d ‘come into’ my writing voice when I:

Started blogging. I have a degree in journalism and worked as a fashion editor and freelancer for many years, but it wasn’t until I started blogging in 2006 that I allowed my true writing voice to come out and play.

If I could invite 3 people to dinner to give me their take on my work in the world, I’d invite:

Natalie Goldberg, Cheryl Richardson. Martha Beck.

On social media, I find I get most triggered when I see:

The seemingly never-ending stream of promotion. We have to get the word out about what we’re doing, absolutely, and there are elegant ways to do it. But my brain starts to hurt when I see the same words popping up again and again: free training call. Free video series. Free this, free that. So much of what I see is purported to be full of ‘value’ yet it actually contains nothing more than hot air. It’s all so formulaic it drives me nuts.

Personality typing? Why, yes!

My Myers-Briggs type is INFP (“The Harmonizer Clarifier”). On the Enneagram I’m a 4 (the Individualist). I’m also an Aquarius.

One thing I know for sure about my Right People is:

They are filled with heart and soul and want to connect deeply with themselves and the world.

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

“You touch so many women on such a deep soul level. You’ve made journal writing sexy and sacred.” ←— this makes me unspeakably happy.”

The next big business challenge for me is:

Working on my next book and creating my most ambitious project to date: a 6-month course launching in 2014.

I do the work I do because:

My deepest desire is to help people feel less alone.

I can never get enough:

Sunshine. I live in the UK where we famously exist on a meteorological diet of cloud with a side of rain. But on those rare days when the sun comes out, the city blooms like a smile. I live for those days.

The one ‘essential’ I could totally live without is

A television. In fact, I gave mine away last year and haven’t looked back.

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

A rock poet à la Patti Smith.

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

What inspired you in this Voice Notes feature on Susannah? We look forward to connecting with you in the comments.

The Situation:

Lourdes [not her real name] is designing a line of high quality, fashion forward toxin-free nail polish to sell at market. She has a 12-year track record in the beauty industry and for the past 5 has been studying organic beauty products and talking with chemists who are committed to researching and making ethically sourced, toxin-free products. She’s beta tested small batches of her products extensively on family, friends, and friends of friends for the past year and has solid testimonials to share.

Lourdes is getting ready to bring her new nail polish line to the web. She wants to make sure that she positions the brand in a way that appeals to her intended Right People buyers: high end, eco-friendly boutiques, as well as consumers who are searching for toxin-free beauty products. She’s a capable writer with lots to say and is willing to blog and participate in social media if she knows there’ll be some yield on her time investment.

Lourdes’ Voice Values are Love, Accuracy, Depth, Enthusiasm, and Clarity.

Lourdes is in Phase 2 of her microbusiness brand development, what we call the Avid Adopter phase. She’s hungry, ambitious, and a bit impatient. But at the same time, she’s not hasty. She’s a Methodical Buyer who approaches decisions carefully.

Pop Quiz Time:

What’s Lourdes’ best next step?

A) Hire a web designer and get this brand built! After all, it’s fun to pin color palettes and that’ll be a nice distraction from the drier work of reading lab reports.

B) Start burning the midnight oil writing site copy for her Right Person buyer, leaning on her hunches and her intuition to guide her, plus the real-life feedback she’s gotten from her nail polish beta testers. What was that her neighbor Martine’s sister Kelly said? Oh, yes, “I liked how the Carousel Coral smelled like cotton candy. Nice touch.” [Note: Lourdes purses her lips and emphatically crosses out Kelly's observation. Cotton candy???]

C) Hire a college student at $12/hour to research online shopping cart options for her. There’s so much to do still when it comes to “branding,” but the practical stuff can’t get lost in the shuffle.

D) Get clear on the Pressing Problem her business solves so that she can articulate her Brand Proposition clearly and powerfully to her web designer, to her copywriter, and most importantly, to her Right Person buyer.

Spoiler Alert!

Choice ‘D’ is the best use of Lourdes’ energy right now. While it’s true that Lourdes already has a product to sell, she’s not ready to do the deep (and FUN!) work of branding her business unless and until she’s clear on her Brand Proposition.

A Brand Proposition is a clear statement of The Value (what your business offers), The Vibe (the style or manner in which you deliver — AKA your Voice Values), The Who (who you serve), and The View (what makes you different — your individuated point of view on the solution you offer).

But before your (and Lourdes’) Brand Proposition comes shimmering into clarity (or mortared in soundly, if that’s more your vibe), you (and Lourdes) must identify the Pressing Problem your business solves.

Your Pressing Problem is the thing that makes you pound your fist on the table.

It’s the issue in your industry or the challenge you see good people facing that gets you all riled up.

Because life/laundry/dog training/living with an autoimmune disorder/throwing a surprise party for your partner shouldn’t have to be so damn hard.

IMPORTANT: The Pressing Problem doesn’t have to be a life-crushing, I-can’t-get-up-off-the-floor-because-of-this issue for your Right Person.

Nope. Not all businesses solve problems that are dire or drastic or grave in nature.

Your Right Person might experience the Pressing Problem your business solves as a minor ache, an irritating lack, or an annoying itch. The Pressing Problem pokes at her just acutely enough to keep her aware of its presence. (Note: The Pressing Problem pokes acutely at her. You don’t have to poke.)

When your Right Person finds you and your solution, she’ll think, “Hot damn! I’d LOVE to get rid of this problem.”

And YOU want to be someone who creates a solution to that Pressing Problem.

What Happens Next

Well, for Lourdes, it’s time to get clear on what words her Right People might think about when they’re looking for products like hers online.

This can be easier said than done.

What might be obvious to us — “Lourdes, they probably are thinking about — and most likely searching for — non-toxic nail polish” — can feel like a mystery to the brand creator herself.

Lourdes is a very smart person. She’s done her research, she’s deeply invested in the product she’s creating, and she wants nothing less than for her online brand presence to reflect The Value of what she’s got clearly and powerfully.

But when she thinks about what her Right Person buyer might be searching for online that would lead them to her and her brand, she thinks like this:

“Well, women want to feel beautiful. They want to feel alive again, light and free in their own skin. They feel a deep disconnection from the mainstream beauty industry, which says to be young and beautiful at all costs. They buy these over the counter beauty products with no understanding of the chemicals in them. Much less, what those chemicals are doing to their bodies from the insides out. They are all endocrine disruptors. Anyhow, I digress. My Right Person wants to feel beautiful, and sexy, and young. Even well into middle age. That’s important to her. I could see educated, savvy women ages 40-65 really liking my line. Although, my Right Person could probably be a teenager, too. So, maybe my Right Person is actually anywhere from ages 15 — or 13? — through 65. Wait a minute! Maybe I need three different Right Person Profiles. I do, don’t I? Three different Right Person Profiles, one for each color story in the collection. But oh, there’ll be crossover in which colors different women like. Oh my God, this is confusing.”

So again, Lourdes, what’s the Pressing Problem your business solves?

Many of us can relate to Lourdes, including me in one phase of my brand development. It’s a normal transition when you’re moving from passion to clarity — and it can occur even after you’ve launched your website and sold your first product.

Sometimes, we feel the urge to launch already, and at the same time, we still sense we’re not seeing the (very rich and well-groomed) forest for the (very distracting) trees.

If this is you, it’s time to get clear on the Pressing Problem your business solves.

The Voice Bureau’s Beta Empathy Marketing DIY helps you do that and more. From identifying the Pressing Problem to understanding your Right Person reader and buyer to articulating what makes your solution more desirable to your Right Person from a range of available options (including the option to do nothing), then you may want to check it out.

All the DIY details are here and your password for the page is: innerwork

If you’re reading this before June 8th, 2013, there’s still time to enroll for the very first Beta session. We’ve just opened up five more seats and we’d love to have you with us.

And oh, hey, if you happen to know Lourdes, feel free to invite her, too.

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

Have you been in a phase of business or brand development where you couldn’t see the forest for the trees? How did you find your way through?

Every business has a Right Person — an ideal client.

This is a marketing concept most values-based microbusiness owners buy in to. After all, we can’t serve everybody, and — stop me if you’ve heard this before (you have) — when we try to talk to everyone, we end up talking to no one.

We believe it’s important to be authentic, to differentiate our brands from the pack, and to develop offers that meet true needs, rather than fulfill trumped-up desires.

Most likely, you’ve been focused on doing all of those things over the past however long you’ve been running your business online.

Maybe business is steady. Maybe business is slow.

You have some readers, you’re serving some clients, but could things be better?

How can you gauge if your efforts to understand your ideal client have been working? How can you know if you’ve been slowly and consistently drawing your Right People to you, or whether you could be missing out on a whole lot more of everything?

Here are 7 signs you’re ready for a closer relationship with your business’s Right Person:

No. 1

You actually enjoy blogging — at least sometimes — but despite your intention to connect with real readers, it often feels as if you’re blogging in an open-air theater, with no butts in the seats. (Crickets Forever, anyone?)

No. 2

You’re ready to receive more emails and contact forms that say, “As soon as I landed on your site I knew you were my Right Person. I’m ready to work with you — today!” instead of ones that say, “Hey, I like your work. Any chance you do X, Y, or Z. [You don't.] I’m not sure if you do exactly what I’m looking for.”

No. 3

You write heartfelt sales page — then tweak them and tweak them and tweak them — and your friends and colleagues tweet them and share them and give them huge high fives . . . but no one (or very few people) buys.

No. 4

The prospect of creating content on a regular basis to answer your Right Person’s questions sounds very appealing to you, because you love to teach and to share. If only you knew where to start, or how much to give, or how to partition your expertise into ‘bite-sized’ content.

No. 5

Even your favorite (so far) clients have raised some issue with your prices — and you know you aren’t exactly high-priced for your market. You sense a disconnect between the value you’re delivering and the value they’re perceiving.

No. 6

You catch yourself spiraling into feelings of frustration, shame, and hopelessness about your business. You’ve tried to design a business that draws from your deepest well of gifts and strengths, and yet, you continually feel drained.

No. 7

Something feels ‘off’ with your brand’s visual vibe. Your content is good, but you know it’s compromised by the way your visual brand looks. You’d love to fix that, without investing thousands of dollars in design guesswork.

Getting to know your Right Person — your business’s ideal client — is far from a fanciful, nice-to-do-but-not-really-that-important exercise.

Here at The Voice Bureau, we see clients’ businesses lighting up every day because of their renewed relationships with their Right People readers and buyers. And we practice what we preach. We’ve designed our site, our sales pages, all of our offers, and all of our content, with our Right Person squarely in mind. (Psst — she’s not actually that square.)

Tami and I would LOVE to support you, in a very hands-on and in-depth way, in your getting-to-know-your-Right-Person work. The price of our popular 2-to-1 Empathy Marketing experience will increase on June 1st, 2013, from $1800 to $2700 USD. You can book a start date in late June by putting half-down before June 1st, and secure the lower rate of $1800 total.

Click here for all the details, and to get started.

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

Which one of the 7 signs above is most meaningful to you, in terms of wanting to connect more deeply with your ideal client?

This post is part of a blog hop series on Social Media Consciousness, organized by the lovely and oh-so-conscious Heather Day of Vital Being Wellness. Click here for a list of all the posts in the Social Media Consciousness series. And if you tweet this post, please include the hashtag #SocialMediaConsciousness.

Most everyone I know who does anything intentional online wants to find their social media voice.

Of course, there will be those who read the title of this post and scoff. Pshaw, they’ll think. Ain’t no thing as a ‘social media voice.’ I’m just me. Let’s not get too self-conscious about it.

But I’d like to challenge that.

Allow me to paint a little scenario.

Most of us know what it’s like to open Twitter or Hootsuite or Facebook or Google+, and collect our thoughts, fingers poised over the keyboard. We want to connect. We want to add value, contribute meaning, be part of an Important Conversation. And, if we’re on social media at least partly for business networking and marketing, we want to generate some sort of interest in who we are and what we do.

And with that loaded pistol of creative expectation pushed into the back of our neck, we start typing.

What comes next is anybody’s guess. Maybe we write the most brilliant status update of our life; it gets 149 likes and 16 shares. We go to bed that night still high on the Social Media Validation cocktail we felt lucky enough to sip that day.

Or maybe, we write the most heartfelt blog post of our life, the one we feel perfectly marries the values we stand for, the work we have to offer the world, and our own poignant personal story. We push Publish. We perch like an expectant mama bird, waiting for her delicate, speckled eggs to hatch. Refreshrefreshrefresh. And — crickets. Crickets forever [great new band name by the way -- somebody please steal that]. Two months later, still not one comment.

What does this mean? Does it mean that you, your voice, your essence, the ideas you care about, are not wanted, not desirable, not share-worthy? Not pruned and primped up enough for digital culture? Not spotlight-ready?

Maybe that is the case, if you see yourself as a fledgling content creator trying to navigate the thicket of social media without a clue, desperately wanting to find the magic Social Media Strategy That Makes An Impact [!!!!!!!!].

But probably not, no — not by my standards, at least.

Every voice, and every Voice Value that it might embody, can be authentic.

There is a realer (can we make that a word?) version of your voice and a less real version of your voice — even when you’re strongly identified with your Voice Value’s particular verbs, adjectives, and metaphors. I can be all Clarity/Power/Excellence/Depth/Legacy on my On Days and my Off Days. I can be writing and crafting social media updates from an authentic inner stance or not, depending on the context, whether or not I’m triggered, or how hormotional I am (let’s definitely make that a word).

How do you get to a stance of owning your authentic social media voice? Of not shrinking and shimmying into someone else’s brand language just because it’s the style of Call To Action, or it’s the phrase of the moment, that gets the most shares?

I’d like to offer this: finding your social media voice, as a thinker and a creator and a human being conversing in the digital marketplace, is about finding your intention.

And finding your intention has to be 100% about you, not about them.

I’ll clarify.

You might have a high Helpfulness value. You can write a blog post trying to be helpful. You can share something on G+ trying to be helpful. But your desire to be helpful, and your act of helping, has to be enough. Enough reason to share something in the first place, enough reward on its own. You can’t hinge your success based on whether or not someone responds and says, “My God! That was helpful. Thank you.” Well, you can hinge anything you want on external validation, but it’s not going to feel very good in the long run. (Trust me. I know from whence I speak.)

Let me make this about me for a minute, lest I start to sound didactic.

My relationship with social media? Well, it’s a charged one.

I love social media — that it exists, what it can do. There are days when I love being myself on social media, and days when I hate being myself on social media, oftentimes in equal intensity, almost always within the very same 24 hours. Definitely always inside of every 7 days.

I’m one of those people about whom other people say, God, I don’t know how she keeps up with so many relationships and connections. Seems like she’s everywhere, all the time. How does she do it?

Truth? I’m a whiz at creating what this digital culture calls “valuable free content” — which is the stuff social media thrives on. I can give and give and give, and whether or not I get more business, I just keep creating and giving. Instead of building my next thing for sale (which would grow my business’s bottom line more quickly than will asking thoughtful questions in my private G+ community), I think of the next value-packed blog post I could write, the next color palette from Design-Seeds I could link to one of the 16 Voice Values, the next free call I could co-host with my collaborative partner. I think of adding value, almost to the deterrent of my own extraction of value (read: getting paid).

And if you look at my tweetstream or watch my Facebook page for a day, it looks as if I’m always on. Always there. Quickly hitting Like on nearly every comment someone posts on my Wall. Never failing to reply to a tweep. Plus-one-ing on G+. Pinning the shit out of everything on-brand for me.

But hey, this hyperconnectivity is not necessarily something to emulate.

(Have I mentioned I’m an introvert?)

Why do I do social media the way I do it?

For me, it’s a control mechanism as much as anything. [Ohhhhh, here we go . . .]

I love having a multitude of conversational tools and portals at my fingertips (literally). I love having the personal power — yep, I said it — to dip in and out of other people’s lives, to converse in slices, to convey huge support or fierce love or kooky wink-wink nudge-nudge humor in 140 characters, on my own timing, in my own way, and then to walk away. I like how social media allows me to connect, from a place that feels safe and relatively free, because nobody from Twitter is going to just come over to my house unannounced, and very few of my online connections have my phone number. I like looking as if I’m always watching, because to not always watch leaves you [me] unguarded, and vulnerable, and out of control. (High Power value, much?)

And this, my friends, is the most valuable vulnerable I think I’ve ever been on social media. Right here, in this blog post.

So lately, when I’m on social media (or my fingers are itchy to pick up my iPhone and get on social media), I do an intentions check.

I ask myself (in my head, not out loud):

• Why do I want to use social media right now?

• Why is that reason important to me?

• Can I use social media right now, for that reason, without expecting anyone else to do something, say something, be a certain way, or respond to me in a way I’m pre-anticipating?

And if the answer to the last question is NO — and the truth is I need some kind of external validation — then I try to go find something else to do. Make a smoothie. Walk my dogs. Take a nap (but not really). Or pin some shit.

Now over to you.

In the comments, I’d love to hear:

How do you connect with your authentic social media voice? How do you check your own intentions?

Once we published The Voice Bureau’s service pages for web copy and content writing, I felt a deep, settled, relaxed yes sink down into my bones.

CLICK HERE to see a round-up of our most popular writing services, with rates.

You’re even sitting differently, my sweetheart told me, giving me the once-over as we pulled out of the driveway on one of our short country roadtrips through the Walla Walla Valley. I feel it, I said. It’s getting that services page up. It just feels right.

(Apparently my puppy could feel my deep relaxation, too, as he fell asleep with his chin in my hand.)

Our ‘official’ web copy and content writing services have been a long time coming, given that the site has been live for seven months now, as of the date I’m writing this post.

We relaunched the site as The Voice Bureau in November 2012 (I formerly did business as a one-woman show, Abby Kerr Ink; our Facebook page still bears the old name due to some sticky re-naming rules of Facebook’s).

We soon after rolled out Empathy Marketing, Tami and I, which is our premier service and most holistic marketing solution for values-based microbusiness owners.

And if you follow my work closely, you know that I’ve been at work on the Voice Values Profiles, beautiful digital dossiers that help you understand how you show up for your community of readers, prospects, and clients when you communicate from your voice of natural ease and power. My goal is to release the Voice Values Profiles into the world Summer of 2013.

And yet, somehow, I never found the time to get our copywriting service page launched.

Despite all this other marketing activity at the forefront, we never stopped writing copy for our Right People.

In the background, we’ve been running client copywriting projects that came in via referral, helping solo-owned businesses bring new brands online, or revamp and realign existing ones. With the support of my team, I’ve been busy building out systems that would allow us to serve many more clients each month, each quarter, each year, than I’d previously been able to handle writing copy for on my own — without having to keep people on a waiting list (tapping their toes), or raise prices too crazily high.

I think we’ve found our sweet spot when it comes to copywriting.

I haven’t always felt this way about it, though. In previous iterations of my business (back in my Abby Kerr Ink, one-woman show days), I’d lopped copywriting off of my services menu more than once, out of sheer frustration. I’d get exhausted by how far out of project scope I’d have to go to get a client some good results from what we created together — because as we all know, words on a web page are never just words on a web page. They create a world, and if the world is one in which you’re asking someone to buy something, there’d better be a strong foundation under that world.

In other words, I ended up teaching clients (many times new-ish business owners, or new to doing business in a digital marketplace) a lot about their own marketing approach, their signature brand voice, and the Important Conversation their Right Person wanted to have with them online — stuff I never billed for, never set out to offer, but realized part-way into the copywriting project that to leave this fundamental stuff OFF the table would be doing the client a disservice.

I needed to figure out how to marry all of this into a complete approach, and so I built out other pieces of The Voice Bureau’s core infrastructure before publishing the services pages for copy and content writing.

The end result: we’ve built a framework for copywriting that starts where you and your brand are today, and ushers you elegantly into the next phase of your business.

You’ll arrive there, standing on your own two feet, with copy that is clear, and optimized with empathy, so it moves your Right People site visitors from chemistry — that initial spark of ah! resonance — into conversation, which leads to better conversion (i.e. selling more of your products and services).

And the next time I head out on a country drive, I’ll be thinking about the next thing we’re working on to help you connect with your Right People more intentionally and meaningfully. Because there’s room for that now.

Please come on over and see if our approach to writing web copy and content is a great fit for you and where you want to go in your brand conversation this year.

In the comments, I’d love to hear:

What’s the THING in your business that, when you finally got it done/shipped/published/off your plate, made you feel a deep, settled, relaxed YES in your bones? Tell me about it.

Every business owner who hires a professional copywriter dreams of walking away with stellar copy that makes a meaningful connection with her Right People, but unfortunately, not every copywriting project goes smoothly or gets the desired results.

What can you, as the client, do to make sure you’re making a wise investment and starting off on the right foot with your copywriter?

In the spirit of education, here are are 13 things to know and do before you hire a copywriter.

1. Know what business you’re in. I can not stress enough how critical this is to the copywriting process going well.

2. Know what business you’re not in. Figure out which of your ideas are better off left for another business concept down the road.

3. Understand your Right People — the ideal clients you want coming to your site because they’re likely to hire you or buy from you.

4. Know why you’d rather work with a copywriter than write your copy yourself. Communicate this to your copywriter during the vetting process, before signing a contract. This helps establish mutual expectations for the working relationship and helps ensure that the process will go well and you’ll get the end result you want.

5. Know what pages you want to have written. Do you need or want a traditional Home page, like this, or do you want your blog to be your site’s landing page? Do you want a separate About page and Contact page, or do you want to roll your contact info on to your About page? Do you want to sell all of your products and services from one page, or will you have a separate products landing page and services landing page, with text links leading to longer and more in-depth sales pages for each specific offer? Get your Pages Needed list down on paper. Draw it out like a map if you’re a visual thinker. Don’t expect the copywriter to be able to ‘diagnose’ your business and tell you what pages you need.

6. Know what you want your site visitor to do on each page of your site. Think: one page, one goal. For example, on your About page, your Call To Action (i.e. what you’re asking the site visitor to do) might be to have people click through to your Services page. On your Services page, your Call To Action might be to have people click the Book a Session button, or send you a contact form. Note: It’s your job, not your copywriter’s job or your web designer’s job, to figure out what you want people to do on each page of your site. If you’re not sure what you want people to do on your website, you’re not ready to invest in a web design or web copy.

7. Ask your network for referrals to good copywriters. Use social media to ask who people you already know, like, and trust have worked with. Look for recommendations on other business owner’s websites (occasionally, you’ll find a copywriting credit in the site footer, along with the web designer’s credit). Check out many different copywriters’ sites to get a feel for how people work, the ‘default’ voice they write in (as many times, this voice will bleed into the copy they write for you), and check to see if they have samples of past work on their site.

8. When you find a few copywriters you like the looks (and the vibe and the voice of), Google their name to see what other people have said or written about them. Check out their testimonials closely and email their past clients to get a fresh take on the work they had done for them, and the results they got. Read interviews they’ve given to learn more about their philosophy on writing, business, branding, and marketing (all important components of a copywriter’s point of view and level of expertise).

9. Familiarize yourself with rates for good, professional, experienced copywriters. These days, it’s tough to find a copywriter in a competitive market who bases her project rates on less than $100/hour. Some copywriters in my circle of colleagues charge up to $200/hour for their work. That might translate to $500 for a home page, or $1000 for an About page, or $5000 for a sales page, if a writer is highly experienced with proven results. Note: It doesn’t matter whether it takes your copywriter an average of 2 hours or 4 hours to write a page of web copy. The work of copywriting is about delivering value, and rates are based on the value the copy adds to your online presence, not the writer’s word count or her speed. For this reason, most experienced pro copywriters charge by the project, at a project rate, not by the hour.

10. If you’re having your web copy written while your site design is in-progress (as opposed to finishing the copy before you start your web design), make sure your web designer knows you’re reaching out to copywriters and that the copywriter’s start and finish date may impact the site launch date. Don’t assume a writer can whip up copy for you in a week. Most active pro copywriters can start a client in anywhere from a week to a few months’ out. Always plan ahead and allow way more time for your project than you assume a copywriter would need. And always, always ask and clarify timeframes and turnaround times.

11. Be prepared to invest time in the copywriter’s intake process. If you’re getting ready to leave on a big family vacation during which you won’t be working, or you’re in a really heavy season with your own business and have little flex time in your schedule, this is probably not the best season for you to start working with a copywriter. Some copywriters prefer to do intake over the phone, and others prefer to work via written intake questionnaire. (Note: The copywriter’s preference trumps yours here, because she’s the one collecting the info and needs to do it in a way that makes sense to her brain and her creative process.) Make sure you know what you’re getting into with your copywriter in terms of an intake process, and make yourself available.

12. Understand what the copywriter’s revision process is like. The revision process can be one of the stickiest spots in a client’s relationship with her copywriter, due to misunderstandings about how the process will work. While there are working copywriters who welcome written collaboration with clients — I’ll write some, then you write some, then I’ll edit what you wrote and send it back to you — but most pro copywriters I know prefer their clients to leave the wordsmithing to them. After all, that’s why you’ve hired a pro writer, right?

13. Understand what great copy can and can not do. Great copy can make your site visitors say anything from, “Hey! That’s great copy! Who’s your copywriter?” to “Ohmygosh, I want copy just like hers for my site,” to “Dude, THIS is the guy I want to hire to help me with X, Y, or Z.” (In the case of your Right People, it’ll be the last one.) Great copy can help your Right People site visitors feel seen, witnessed, and understood. Great copy can lay the foundation for the relationship you want with your Right People readers and clients. Great copy can help you stand out in the marketplace and appear relevant in search engines. Here are some things great copy can not do (because these results depend on other factors, not solely the copy): make you an online superstar, guarantee you’ll rank on the first page of Google for your desired search terms, guarantee that you’ll sell as many of your products and services as you’d like to. Don’t get me wrong: great copy can help you do all of those things, but great copy doesn’t work in a vacuum, and it’s not a magic bullet.

So there you have it: 13 things to know and do before hiring a copywriter.

The goal of your web copy is to move your Right People from chemistry — that initial spark of emotional and intellectual resonance — into conversation, toward conversion. Great copy CAN help you do that. Approach the process prepared and your project will go smoothly and help you create the results you want.

In the comments, we’d love to know:

What’s been your biggest question about working with a copywriter? What would you still like to know?

(Image credit.)

This is a Contributor’s Post from The Voice Bureau Collaborative Partner and Empathy Marketing Co-Creator & Strategist, Tami Smith.

As a business owner, you’ve been told: an ideal client is a very clear description of the type of client you would love to have more of.

She or he may be an exact replica of a client you’re working with today, or she or he could be a combination of qualities you’ve seen in past and current clients.

You took this advice and you created your ideal client. You’ve even named her. (This is not so kooky as it may sound.) You care about her.

But even with your good intentions to cater to your ideal client through your business and your brand, something is missing.

You have a feeling you might have not be having the same experience as all those other people who rave about the power of knowing your ideal client, because you aren’t seeing or feeling much of a difference in your results.

Oh, the agony and the ecstasy of the Myth of the Ideal Client.

It’s true that ideal client profiling is supposed to be the Holy Grail of building a values-based microbusiness for the web today. And, well, we at The Voice Bureau agree.

But here’s what we see: it isn’t unusual for our incoming clients to feel like all the exercises they’ve done to define their Right Person were nothing more than going through the motions. If you’ve felt this way, rest assured, you aren’t the only business owner who’s had a temporary high of defining an ideal client, only to later feel like Meh. What was that all for, anyway?

An ideal client profile is supposed to be the most important aspect of your marketing. If ideal clients are so important, why doesn’t yours bring significant results?

There’s a good chance the way you created your ideal client is the real problem.

There are 6 common mistakes people make when creating an ideal client. Read on to see if you recognize your past efforts in one of these scenarios.

The 6 biggest mistakes people make when creating an ideal client:

Mistake No. 1: WISHLISTING

Wishlisting happens when you define your ideal client based on your wish list, or all the characteristics and qualities you would just love for her to have. This is the ideal client you “would love to have lunch with” and “hang out with” because she is just so darn nice.

• What Wishlisting sounds like: This could sound like anything based on what would appeal most to you, the business owner. If you’re childfree by choice, she’s childfree by choice. If you like cupcakes, he likes cupcakes.  [Abby's note: We jest. A little.] Chances are, your Right Person Profile sounds a lot like your dream best friend (you know, the one who “really needs your services”), or like someone you wish existed.

• Where Wishlisting comes from: More than likely, we do this when we’ve absorbed the popularly taught notion that your ideal client is someone you’d like to have as a friend. This may indeed be true (as some of our Empathy Marketing clients find out), but it’s not the most effective place to start getting a picture of your ideal client.

• Why Wishlisting doesn’t ultimately work: When we use ourselves as the focal point — if I’d be her friend, she’d be a good client for me -- we risk letting our own ego, our own personal needs, or our own projections of ourselves creep into our Right Person Profile, thus missing the true needs of the person Most Likely To Buy from us.

Mistake No. 2: HODGEPODGING

Hodgepodging is when your ideal client is a hodgepodge of various people, usually all your favorite attributes out of the clients you’ve worked with so far.

• What Hodgepodging sounds like: “Hank is a 28-year old web developer and unisex jewelry designer who comes from privilege and money (and so has plenty in a trust fund to spend on my services), yet chooses to live a rather minimalist, ascetic life. He’s outgoing, kind, but can also be kind of a jerk in relationships and he doesn’t know why. He refers to himself as a ‘bacon-eating Vegan.’ He wants to travel the world on a dime, reduce his carbon footprint, create big social change (through his jewelry line), and have a great relationship at some point — after he figures out if he should chuck both of his current career pursuits and start a band. After all, you only live once, and why not let it be epic?”

• Where Hodgepodging comes from: There’s a notion that “if I could just take his grit, her experience, and his sense of humor, I’d have the perfect client!” But alas, people are not hybrids of many different people. They are themselves. Your Right Person deserves to have a complete, nuanced identity unto herself, complete with high sides, low sides, strengths, weaknesses, gifts, and challenges. (And, huge bonus: your Right Person, as unique as he or she is, represents many people.)

• Why Hodgepodging doesn’t ultimately work: Just like you and me, your ideal client is imperfect, full of internal tensions and paradoxes, and is consistently inconsistent. When we fail to regard and respect our ideal clients as the whole human beings they are, we miss out on lots of opportunities to connect with and serve them.

Mistake No. 3: CAVALIERING

You’re Cavaliering when you define your ideal client around all her problems or claim you can help her with “anything” because you have “the power of helping people get clear.” Like boiling the ocean, this is a problem of trying to solve too many problems at once, often using a single tool.

• What Cavaliering sounds like: “Miranda is tortured. She hates her messy closets — she thinks of them as ‘closets of shame.’ On the outside, she’s warm, competent, and pulled together. Her friends and neighbors would never suspect that underneath her cool exterior, lies a tidal wave of unopened mail, years’ worth of receipts, and clothing with the tags still on — all enclosed behind the perfectly painted-and-trimmed doors of her suburban upper middle class home. She’s not just messy, she’s desperate, lonely inside, and feels ugly and worthless because of what she’s keeping stuffed inside her closets. She wants to get a grip, she NEEDS to get a grip, and when she finds me, she knows that someone can finally help her get clear. She sees that I’ve done it for myself, and she automatically believes that I can help her do it, too. She knows I can help her with more than closet organizing — I can help her get clear on who she wants to be. Because I am that woman she wants to be more like.”

• Where Cavaliering comes from: The origin of Cavaliering is the misguided belief that people reach out for help when they are all but flattened by their pain, and thus respond to sales pages full of pain points and Calls To Action that promise to save them. Also, in some cases, Cavaliering comes from — dare I say it? — a God(dess) complex: too much ego projection into the business. This often sounds like: “I’ve been put on this planet to help women like you do X, Y, and Z! It’s my gift to the world and to you, so you, too, can live a fuller, richer, sweeter life — just like me.” Oftentimes, it’s presented in a more subtle way than that, but the subtext is still clear: my life rocks, and I can help you make your life rock, too.

• Why Cavaliering doesn’t ultimately work: Despite what some ‘turn up the heat’ marketers will tell you, people don’t seek solutions from the depths of their despair. Usually, people buy products and services from integrity-based businesses when they are in a more resourceful, emotionally integrated place. In fact, some values-based coaches and consultants have a policy where they refuse to start work with a client who’s in crisis mode. A healthy, resourceful buyer is still aware of his pain points (as awareness of pain points is a critical piece of the buying process), but he’s standing on his own two feet again, looking to the future, and ready to do something about his problem. He doesn’t need (or want) you to save him.

Mistake No. 4: STEPFORD WIFING

This is similar to Wishlisting, but instead of including ‘everything but the kitchen sink,’ Stepford Wifing draws the description of the ideal client into a very narrow view of the person, one who perfectly fits your needs, whims, and predilections as a business owner. (You’ve seen the movie or read the American cult classic novel, The Stepford Wives? It’s a satirical thriller.) Meanwhile, your ideal client’s imperfections are glossed over, as you narrow in on her extreme and oversimplified needs/desires.

• What Stepford Wifing sounds like: “Marika is a smart, savvy, fit 40-year old wife and mama who, although her family lives on a tight budget, always manages to pay for her premium fitness coaching with me. Despite staying home with 4 kids under the age of 10 while her devoted husband works full-time plus, she never skimps on personal time because she understands the importance of putting herself first. She manages to maintain her size 6 figure through healthy eating and regular intentional movement, though it isn’t always easy. All of this plus she uses social media like candy so she’s a HUGE brand evangelist for me!”

• Where Stepford Wifing comes from: Fear — specifically, the business owner’s fear that a “real” person with “real” problems and “real” challenges won’t hire her. So she draws her Right Person Profile to a (rather self-serving) tee.

• Why Stepford Wifing doesn’t ultimately work: When you gloss over a potential client’s challenges, struggles, and imperfections, you risk having her miss herself on your sales pages. If she can’t see herself reflected in your brand, she won’t buy, because she won’t believe you ‘get’ her.

Mistake No. 5: BANDWAGONING

Bandwagoning happens when you jump on the bandwagon of whatever the popular teaching is and use a list of over simplified, means-nothing-really-but-sounds-good qualifiers as your ideal client characteristics. Bandwagoning oversimplifies the holistic and the nuanced aspects of what it means to stand in your Right Person’s shoes.

• What Bandwagoning sounds like: “My ideal client is ready for what I have to offer, and happily pays what I’m asking without question because he sees the value in it.” Is this true? But of course. It’d better be. Is this all there is to understanding your Right Person? Absolutely not. Do these qualifiers help you see, clearly and with empathy, what your ideal client’s core needs and motivators are, his developmental desires, and his emotional triggers (for better and for worse)? Not even almost.

• Where Bandwagoning comes from: Again, fear. And then dismissiveness of the necessity for a deep understanding of who your business can serve best. Knowing your Right Person and practicing empathy as you design your brand conversation for her is a complex practice. It requires us, as business owners, to go deep and to set our own assumptions aside. When this gets too difficult, it’s all too easy just to say, “Ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing: here’s all I need to know. The rest is just extraneous details.”

• Why Bandwagoning doesn’t ultimately work: When we design our brand and our offers based on assumptions about who our ideal clients are (or, worse, when we say, it doesn’t matter who they are as long as they need what I’m selling and will pay my price), we end up with a Throwing Spaghetti At The Wall To See What Sticks brand. We become a hammer, to whom everything and everyone looks like a nail. Boom! There’s a problem. I can design a solution. Boom! She’s got a symptom. I can address it!

Mistake No. 6: SHADOWING

In shadowing, a business owner unconsciously projects his or her own problem onto an ideal client. Projection is a psychological defense mechanism where you “project” undesirable or unacceptable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else, in order to distance yourself from the discomfort of experiencing them for oneself.

• What Shadowing sounds like: Shadowing can take many forms. But if reading your Right Person narrative — Ohmygod, that’s meeeeeeee! — feels like reading a page from your diary, you’re probably Shadowing.

• Where Shadowing comes from: The current microbusiness coaching landscape sometimes pushes us toward the idea that a powerful Value Proposition comes from taking people through the transformation you yourself underwent to get the results you got. While bringing your own personal experience into your brand can be a wonderful and valuable thing (in fact, how to invite your story in strategically is part of the work we do with Empathy Marketing clients), problems start when a business owner can’t see past her own projections of what her ideal client might want and need.

• Why Shadowing doesn’t ultimately work: Shadowing can often turn up online in the form of what a writer friend of Abby’s [Abby's note: Hi, Angela!] calls a “vanity venture.” In essence, the business exists to reflect back to the business owner that she has done a good enough job of healing herself, or fixing herself, or creating for herself the result she wants. While this is by no means a ‘wrong’ reason to have an online presence, Shadowing is not at the heart of a values-based business that offers a viable solution in the marketplace.

Why these mistakes will keep you from realizing the benefits of an ideal client

Your ideal client isn’t one person, a hodgepodge, or a wish list of characteristics. An ideal client isn’t a projection or a tidy little list of how much she values you. An ideal client is an ideal list of qualifications that make someone more inclined to buy your solution, rather than less inclined.

Creating a persona — what we at The Voice Bureau call a Right Person — is a way to avoid the common mistakes in creating ideal client scenarios.

A Right Person persona should:

• Represent a buyer who shares the problem, paradox, and desires your solution is designed to address

• Highlight search intent (queries and questions being asked in search)

• Explain core motivators, desires, emotional needs, and buying preferences

• Provide a logical way to create content that is optimized for the core practical  and emotional need of your Right Person

Your Right Person Persona will become your ideal client profile. When you understand who she or he is, you understand what he or she wants from you, and why.

When you get to this next level of clarity and create an ideal client based on methods that are proven to work, you will understand the relationship between you and your ideal client. You will see how your strengths, experiences, and intrinsic Voice Values serve your ideal client.

Your ideal client profile, created in an empathic way, is the key to articulating your Brand Proposition and your USP, and it’s the key to crafting even more effective Calls To Action.

Knowing what to say and how to say it unlocks those places where you feel stuck.

Feeling stuck and frustrated about not being able to articulate a strong Brand Proposition isn’t an experience unique to you or your brand (thank goodness, right?). It is incredibly rare to find microbusiness owners confident and clear about how they are a better choice for their ideal clients.

We think it’s important for you to know that these things aren’t easy to do and to know that persona development can bring clarity to your entire process of bringing a new brand online, or realigning an existing brand.

Your Right People are important. Understanding yours at an intimate level will bring significant results when created the right way.

In the comments, Abby & I would love to hear:

What hasn’t worked for you so far in getting clear on your ideal client? What popularly taught advice has fallen flat for you? Have you had experience with one of the 6 Mistakes described above? We look forward to discussing this with you in the comments.

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:

I am so pleased to share a Voice Notes feature today on the unstoppable Sas Petherick, a Londoner (by way of New Zealand) coach and writer who I’ve been thrilled to work with on web copy and brand voice development. Sas has an unmistakable style (that we were careful not to over-groom) with a natural, easy, fun-to-follow voice. The timing of our feature coincides with the launch of her emBODYment program. emBODYment is for women who want an easy, conscious, trusting relationship with their body. Sas describes it as “a mind-body-soul mash-up of my own experience of losing 65 pounds, and my coaching toolbox (which is the size of Texas). ” There’s so much gorgeousness inside this work she’s created, and a strong focus on community. I’d be happy to hear you checked it out. (As of May 1st, 2013 — registration is open NOW.)

Sas Petherick, Coach & Writer

Sas Petherick is a coach, a writer, and the creator of the emBODYment program for women.
Find Sas on Twitter; Facebook; Pinterest; InstaGram

My top 3-5 Voice Values are:

Love, Intimacy, Audacity, Power, and Depth. (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.)

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

Tube Deluxe — essential for Londoners.

I find the richest social media conversations take place on:

Twitter, because it’s a many-headed stream of consciousness, with folk collectively weaving a story of sorts (I always thought James Joyce would totally get into Twitter). [Abby's note: Ooh, he'd be a Twitter natural.]

On social media, I find I get most triggered when I see:

Misuse of the Oxford comma.

The album that feels the most like my brand is:

Workers Playtime. Billy Bragg is an English troubadour of the highest order and this album is jam-packed with the stuff of life: love, heartbreak, belief, and unapologetic liberal rants! Plus, there is something quite magical about work that feels more like play.

I do the work I do because:

I can’t not do this . My whole life, people have told me their stories and sought my counsel when all I could really offer was empathy. When I trained as a coach, it was like going from playing ping-pong with my bare hands to using a smart red paddle.

The best moment in my workweek so far has been:

Sharing some happy tears with a client who’d had a heart-opening conversation with a member of her newly-blended family. I am thrilled to witness her journey.

An unlikely source of creative inspiration for me is:

My fellow Tube commuters. Each morning I tweet out a Haiku about the most interesting person in my carriage (search the Twits for #tubeku). [Abby's note: God, I love this!]

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

The owner of an awesome café in Tetbury – an old English village with a cobbled market square and my favourite bookshop in the universe. I’d also like to bring back bartering.

I can never get enough:

Of New Zealand. My home country has my heart.

The truest branding advice I’ve ever heard is:

Be a voice, not an echo.

What I really wish you could see about yourself is:

Everything you are looking for is waiting right inside you. It’s never too late.

In the comments, we’d love to hear:

What inspired you in this Voice Notes feature on Sas? We look forward to connecting with you in the comments.