June 3, 2025 • 39 mins
What if your brand voice didn’t live solely inside your head? What if it was a system—a tool that helped you write faster, delegate confidently, and create calm across your business?
In this episode, I share how I took my brand voice from “just a vibe” to a repeatable, documented system with the help of voice strategist Justin Blackman. We dig into how building a voice guide changed the way I write, collaborate, and scale. If content creation feels like a bottleneck—especially when you're not the one doing the writing—this episode is for you.
We’re not just talking about voice—we’re pulling two big levers from the CALMER framework:
→ Efficiency, by turning intuition into reusable tools
→ Management Style, by empowering your team with clarity instead of corrections
This is a behind-the-scenes look at the system that helped me put my voice on autopilot—and made content creation calmer, faster, and more fun.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why “no one can write like me” is a sign you need a system, not more effort
- The three components of a brand voice (and why most guides get it wrong)
- How defining the difference between you and your brand prevents burnout
- Why “authenticity” doesn’t have to mean writing everything yourself
Learn More About Justin Blackman
- Website: justinblackman.com
- Grab Justin's Feelings Wheel
- LinkedIn: Justin Blackman
Learn More About the Host – Susan Boles
- Website: beyondmargins.com
- LinkedIn: Susan Boles
- Submit your Calm KPI or System: Send it here
- (00:00) - The Subjective Nature of Brand Voice
- (00:50) - The Challenge of Maintaining a Consistent Brand Voice
- (01:51) - Building a Scalable Voice System
- (04:41) - The Science Behind Brand Voice Guides
- (09:11) - Balancing Personal and Brand Identity
- (29:17) - Leveraging AI for Authentic Brand Voice
Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Justin Blackman (00:00):
We all have different viewpoints. What we
(00:02):
don't understand is thateveryone has these subjective
definitions of an objectiveword. So by being able to pull
out and understanding what ourviewpoint is, that allows us to
define our brand in a way thatcan scale, that can spread
across an entire team.
Susan Boles (00:30):
What if your brand voice wasn't just a vibe, but an
actual system? A tool that couldhelp your team move faster, make
better decisions, and sound likeyou even when you didn't touch
the draft. Today, we're solvingfor calm. One KPI, one
bottleneck, one business at atime. Imagine this.
(00:51):
You're staring at a Google Docfrom your VA, your marketing
assistant, or maybe even a hiredcopywriter. It's a blog post or
an email draft or a podcastoutro, and it's fine,
technically accurate, on brandish, but it's missing something.
It's not you. So you rewriteagain. And in that moment, you
(01:15):
confirm the story you've beentelling yourself.
No one else can sound like me.I'll just do it myself. As a
founder or a consultant or anagency owner, your voice is
often your brand. You've builttrust with it, a vibe, a
following. But that trustbecomes a trap when your voice
(01:36):
only lives inside your head,undocumented, undefined, and
totally unscalable.
And if you think you're the onlyone stuck in this loop, you're
not. I was doing it too even asthe only person writing my
content. Because here's thetruth. Documenting your voice
isn't just about delegation.It's about removing mental load.
(01:58):
It's about creating repeatabledecision making tools. It's
about building a system, not forsomeone else, but for you. A
system for your voice helps youwrite faster, delegate with
confidence, and lead moreeffectively. That's what I did.
I brought in Justin Blackman, abrand voice expert, to help me
(02:18):
create a voice guide that's nowat the core of how I run my
business.
I even used it to help me writethe script for this episode. As
it turns out, building a voicesystem doesn't just make things
sound better. It pulls two keylevers from the calmer
framework. The ones that makethings feel better too. First,
(02:39):
the lever of efficiency.
So you're creating reusabletools that cut down on decision
fatigue and help everyone's workrun smoother. Second, your
management style. You're makingyour team more autonomous by
giving them clarity instead ofcorrections. So here's the
(03:05):
bottleneck. I was the onlyperson who could write like me,
not because I wanted to be, butbecause no one else could hit
the tone, the rhythm, or theintention, at least not
consistently.
And it wasn't just slowing downmy content. It was bleeding into
other areas, emails, proposals,client communications. If I
(03:26):
wasn't the one writing it, itjust didn't sound right. And if
it didn't sound right, it didn'tship. I've built a business that
depends on my voice.
But without a system for thatvoice, I can't delegate, and I
can't scale, and I can't do allthe things I wanna be doing. And
here's the twist. I don't evenwant to outsource my writing.
(03:46):
Most of the time, I likewriting, and I'm pretty good at
it. But I needed a way to makeit faster, more consistent, and
less exhausting, especiallyduring seasons where my capacity
drops.
And that's when I realized theproblem wasn't output. It was
clarity. I'd never taken thetime to define what my voice
actually was. So even when I wasthe one writing, I was
(04:09):
reinventing the wheel everytime. And when I wasn't the one
writing, everything juststalled.
So I called Justin. He's someoneI trust, not just because he's
worked with big personal brands,but because he's a systems
thinker like me. And he geeksout on the science of voice. And
together, Justin and I builtsomething I'd never really had
(04:31):
before, a brand voice guide thatcaptures the decisions that I'd
been making intuitively andturned them into a tool I could
reuse. We're gonna take a quickbreak to hear from our sponsors.
But when we come back, Justinand I get into the science of
systematizing your voice and howwe each use our own brand voice
guides even though we're stillthe ones writing our own
(04:53):
content. So what problems domost people not realize are
(05:53):
actually like voice problems orsystem problems? What problem do
they think they have versus whatproblem do they actually have?
Justin Blackman (06:00):
A lot of people think that they actually have a
copy problem or they havetrouble working with creatives,
or they say that nobody can getmy voice right, because they
feel like they have a strongbrand voice. The fact is, maybe
they do, but there are a coupleof challenges with this. One, if
it's not documented, the voicein your head is never going to
match exactly the voice in awriter's head. And they're going
to think that they're gettingyou exactly. It's like the whole
(06:23):
reading the label from insidethe bottle thing.
You can't hear the voice that iscoming across in the reader's
head because it's going to sounddifferent in your head. So
getting an outside perspectiveon how you are, they're gonna be
seeing things differently. So alot of times they think that
they have creatives who justcan't get it right. Other times
they're trying to do too muchwith their brand voice. And if
(06:45):
you have a personal brand, thisis very common, especially these
days, where people are puttingtoo much of themselves into the
copy to the point where itbecomes unscalable.
You're one person, and thenthere's the brand. And even if
it's your brand, the voicesshould be deliberately
different. They should besimilar, but there should be
boundaries around the brandvoice. Like, you talk about
(07:07):
common KPIs and things likethat, but we don't necessarily
know all the details of what'shappening in your life. You're
showing up as a professional andan expert in your business
regardless of what's happeningbehind the screen.
So sometimes they actually havea boundary problem, which is
showing up as a voice problem.
Susan Boles (07:23):
Interesting. When we were working together, one of
the things that I thought wasreally interesting was when we
were going through the process,one of the questions you asked
was, is that a Susan thing or isthat a brand thing? And I had
never really thought about thembeing different because I have a
(07:44):
personal brand. Yes, I have abrand, a company that I talk
under sometimes. But for themost part, I'm talking as me as
a representative of the company.
And it never really occurred tome that there are parts of me
and my personality and how Inaturally communicate one on one
(08:05):
when we're talking versus how Icommunicate when I'm being a
representative of my brand.
Justin Blackman (08:12):
We all have worries, we all have troubles,
we all have problems. But nineto five or whatever hours you
work, we want you showing up asthe expert in what you do. We're
hiring you. We're paying you. Wewant confidence.
We don't want to hear thatyou're being troubled by either
a personal problem or familyproblem or maybe even a business
problem. We wanna hire peoplewho are the best at what they do
(08:34):
and can absolutely help us. Andvulnerability, that's okay.
We're allowed to show like, Hey,I can help you because I
struggled with this too, buthere's how I figured out. So
you're positioning yourself asthe expert.
I want the work done, and Iwanna hire the most capable
person for that. Yes, we shouldhave connectivity through
personalities and things likethat, but there's a difference
(08:55):
between the way that you show upat work and the way that you
show up in life, that'simportant. And I think the lines
have been blurred, or in somecases completely obliterated.
And that's causing a lot ofchallenges that people are
getting burnt out with theirbrands right now.
Susan Boles (09:11):
Yeah. It's always challenging for me to figure out
what should be me, what shouldbe my company. And if my company
is not named Susan Bowles,right, then how do I make that
distinction between brand stuff,company stuff, and my stuff?
(09:32):
Because I don't really show uppublicly in any way that is not
somehow related to my company.And they feel so intertwined
sometimes.
And it's such a difficultdecision as to like what should
be under what bucket.
Justin Blackman (09:51):
Yeah. Completely get that. There is a
challenge. There's a an issue tobe solved with how you show up
publicly versus privately. Withsocial media, sometimes these
lines are blurred.
I mean, it used to be that ourInstagram pictures were filled
with pictures of our pets andour sister's goofy looking kid.
And now it's just all businessstuff. It's like your Instagram
(10:13):
reel is now like three keys toclose more sales. So our brands
have overtaken our lives, andrather than building businesses
that are part of us, they'vebuilt businesses that are all of
us, and they've taken over ourfeeds. And some of us want that
back.
Susan Boles (10:31):
I desperately want it to be more human. It feels
like no matter what socialchannel you go to, at the
beginning, it feels fun andgenuinely social. So LinkedIn,
three years ago, there was thechannel of like very, very
business y stuff. But then therewas also this very human piece
(10:54):
that it felt like very, veryearly Facebook days, right?
Where you're like DMing people,but you're DMing people and
you're making friends in thoseDMs.
And then it got taken over bynow we have to turn this into
something that turns a profitand that makes money for the
algorithm and the companythat's, you know, controlling
the algorithm. And when we turnit into something capitalistic,
(11:17):
it sucks all the fun out of it.
Justin Blackman (11:20):
Yes. It used to be that we went to social media
to avoid making decisions. Andnow we treat it as a place where
people are going to makedecisions. And it's just ads,
and it's just pitches, and it'sjust not fun anymore. And we
feel that we need to show upthat way.
And that's okay. Sometimes youcan show up as business you on
(11:41):
certain platforms. On LinkedIn,it makes sense to show up as
business you. But Instagram,maybe you don't want that to
show up as business you. Maybeyou want that as old you, as
personal you.
Know people that treat Facebookand Instagram as a record of
their lives, and that's great.Other people treat it as a
record of their business, andthat's okay too. But when they
(12:04):
blur, it just becomes thischallenge to the point where
it's like, I don't know what topost anymore. The way that we
can define this a little bitclearer is if we were to make a
Venn diagram of what's youversus your business, I mean,
for some people, it's just acircle. Like, it's the same.
And that becomes exhaustingbecause you have to show up on
(12:26):
all the time. And when you havethat split to figure out what's
the business, what's you, andwhat's the overlap, it becomes
much more manageable. You canturn it off. Your business can
scale. If you're working with ateam, they know what elements of
you to replicate, to emulate, toembrace.
They don't have to represent theway that you act at the dinner
(12:47):
table. They have to representthe way that you act at the
office. That's going to bedifferent. It's the brand value
versus personal value. Thosedon't have to be identical.
The purpose of your business isnot the same as your purpose of
your soul. And without thatclear distinction, sometimes
your employees or your teams, wereally don't know what we're
there to do.
Susan Boles (13:06):
I think that makes perfect sense and is a fantastic
transition to basically usingthe systemic process that you
created to systematize all ofthose pieces that we're talking
about, to look at what parts areme and what parts are part of
(13:27):
the brand's voice and then canbe explicitly defined and
explicitly delineated how infact this voice happens out in
the world. And I'm a hugesystems geek. So the fact that
you have developed a system andkind of a science behind
creating that package that canthen be handed off to somebody
(13:53):
to replicate your brand voicewas super interesting to me.
Yeah. Like, just the fact thatit's for someone like me who
came into being creative, whatfeels like very late in life.
And it always felt very, I don'twant say mystical, but like very
squishy.
Justin Blackman (14:13):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (14:13):
When people are writing out in the world, I kind
of assumed it just happenedmagically or that they had some
innate skill that I did nothave. And I think the idea that
that can be quantified and itcan be systematized is super
interesting. So walk us throughwhat a brand voice guide should
(14:38):
have in it. And then maybe theprocess of how you think about
creating a system aroundsomething that feels very
squishy?
Justin Blackman (14:48):
Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot of brand voice
guides that you'll see. Some arecreated by creative agencies.
Some people do themselves.
Some people pay like way toomuch money for it. And then
other people, sometimes theydon't pay enough money for it.
But there's this belief that youcan create a brand voice guide
that's three adjectives in anavatar. We're friendly, we're
(15:08):
human, we're professional, andthen we act like your favorite
neighbor or something like that.Honestly, that's garbage because
they're open up to so muchinterpretation that they don't
mean anything.
It means that everyone can havean opinion and everyone is
right. Like the term friendly,for instance. Almost every voice
guide I've ever seen actually,let's go with human. That's an
even better one becauseeveryone's big on that with AI.
(15:30):
We want our voice to sound
Susan Boles (15:31):
I feel attacked because I'm pretty sure human
and friendlier were both on
Justin Blackman (15:36):
this Right, but that's the problem. They're in
everybody's list.
Susan Boles (15:39):
Nobody wants to be like, I want to be the evil
corporate overlord.
Justin Blackman (15:41):
Right, but even so, the evil corporate overlord,
that's a human. There are8,500,000,000 people in the
world. Choose one. As far asfriendly, think about how many
friends you have. There's no waythat they all sound the same.
Friendly is a personality. It'snot a voice. We actually need to
define our voice way moredeliberate than that. And what
(16:02):
it comes down to is brand voiceis three things. It's your
vocabulary, your tone, and yourcadence.
Vocabulary is the level of wordsthat you use. Do you say big or
huge or gigantic or tremendous,gargantuan? Those are all
different. They all mean thesame thing, but it keeps getting
more complex. So there's a levelof vocabulary.
(16:24):
The tones are the emotions inyour writing, and that could be
on a broad level, like, youknow, happy, sad. Like, so
you've got calm. Calm is a bigpart of your business. Calm can
mean balanced. It can meantranquil.
It can mean serene. Those aredifferent versions of calm that
can be defined differently. Whenwe talk about happy, there's
(16:47):
about 300 different definitionsfor happy. Everything from
optimistic to hopeful. Those aregoing to mean different things
to different people.
So we want to get reallygranular on the tones that we're
defining. We want to trulyunderstand what the tone is. Not
just happy, but what level ofhappy. And then the cadence is
(17:07):
the rhythm of your writing. Isit short and choppy with a lot
of periods, very few commas?
Or do we write long, wordy birdsentences that tend to go on and
on forever with tons of commas,maybe a semicolon, a couple of
em dashes, and some ellipsesthat go on until you actually
run out of breath before you getto the end of the sentence.
That's the cadence. So yourbrand voice are those three
(17:29):
elements. And then we want todefine that super clear so
anyone can emulate the styleconsistently, and we actually
have a way of measuring to knowif it's on brand or not. We can
literally use math andcalculators to calculate your
brand voice, which is separatefrom your brand personality,
which is broader identity.
A lot of people are giving brandpersonalities and mistaking them
(17:50):
for a voice.
Susan Boles (17:53):
Say more about that.
Justin Blackman (17:54):
So, like, a brand personality it's gonna
sound cocky, but my brandpersonality right now is
unusually insightful. And what Imean is that I look for an
unusual insight. That'ssomething that just shows that I
look deeper. And it kind ofshows you how I show up and the
way that I'm thinking, butthat's not how I talk. The way
that I speak is deliberate.
(18:15):
It's short. It's choppy. It'sabout making something complex
more simple. And it's designedto be at a lower vocabulary
level, a more objective point ofview. I'm not using a lot of you
and I as I speak.
I'm talking about, like, theprocess rather than my process
or your process. So it's anobjective tone, and the
(18:36):
vocabulary is pretty basic. Ilike to make it accessible. I
want anyone to be able tounderstand it. So my voice is
more of a simple objectiveelement, but my personality is
more about unusually insightful.
And the way that someone definedmy voice, way that I show up is
(18:57):
a very bright light that shinesnarrow. So basically like a
laser. I'm a spotlight on a veryspecific thing. Those are some
of the leading elements, but Ikeep it short. I keep it tight.
Susan Boles (19:07):
I am curious. Do you have a Brand Voice Guide for
yourself? Like, did you do thisprocess for yourself and you
have one?
Justin Blackman (19:14):
So I've tried to do it for myself, and it's
really, really hard. Like, thethings that seem interesting to
other people are every day forme. So I don't realize that
those are unique. I have a coinstructor in Brown Voice
Academy. Her name is JillianHill.
I had her run me through theprocess. My voice came out so
much different than when I didit. And I was like, Oh my God,
(19:35):
this is it. Like, now I know whyI do this for people. I know the
power of it.
And because this stuff is soin-depth, the process is the
product. Like, going throughthat, I'm able to figure out
what my voice is, and I canactually just put the transcript
through AI. And I have atemplate that I've created that
will make the voice guide moreaccessible. And the plus side is
(19:56):
because it's built with AI, ituses the terms that AI
understands. So if I'm using AIto brainstorm or to come up with
a couple of headlines or evenrepurpose all my content, it
comes out so much better than itever did when I just said make
it more friendly.
Susan Boles (20:12):
Yeah, I have definitely found that to be true
in using my own going back andforth with an AI tool. Being
able to brainstorm has beenreally interesting because my
brand voice guide, like it'sstill me, but there are elements
of it now that I am leaning intomore. The one I like, we decided
(20:35):
it should be 77% nerdy. And,like, it's always been kind of
nerdy, like, because I'm kind ofnerdy. Like, you know, this is
the kind of stuff that I likedoing is gigging out about
different systems and nuancesand, like, little fine details.
But the fact that you were ableto mirror that back to me and
(20:55):
say, hey, this is an elementthat you talked about, but is is
not actually as present in mywriting and my content as I
would like it to be because Ilike it being nerdy. And over
the course of the last fouryears, that sort of faded away.
Like it was there initially. Andthen my like it I just kind of
(21:17):
forgot about that piece. Andit's one of those elements where
now that it is very explicit, Ican explicitly aim at that
element because I want to leaninto having nerdier content.
I want it to be a little bitmore sciency. I want it to be a
little bit more geeky. But Inever would have headed in that
(21:39):
direction, except that it cameout of the process of trying to
be very explicit about what arethe different elements. One of
the challenges for me, becauseI've, you know, I've been
through a lot of messagingstuff, I've done a lot of like
brand and personal voice work.It was never explicit enough.
And I think that is true of mostsystems. Honestly, they don't
(22:06):
work when we're not explicitenough. That is really one of
the main benefits of havingsomething like a voice guide.
It's that it makes the quietpieces louder.
Justin Blackman (22:17):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (22:18):
So that you can hand it off to a copywriter who
you have chosen the 10 wordsthat you very thoughtfully spent
twenty minutes debating whetheror not which word was the
appropriate word. But we did. Wewent through the process and
there were a few words where welooked up the definition of the
(22:40):
word and compared it to asimilar word and which one had
the right flavor. And I thinkbeing able to be very explicit
about all the different flavorsthat make up your brand voice or
in the case of other systems,all the different elements, that
is the piece that gives clarityto be able to delegate this
(23:07):
function, whether that's to AI,whether that's to a copywriter,
whether that's to your visualdesigner even. The piece that I
think we miss when we're tryingto delegate is almost never are
we explicit enough.
Justin Blackman (23:20):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (23:21):
And if we aren't direct and explicit enough about
what we're communicating, that'swhere the message gets missed, I
think.
Justin Blackman (23:29):
Yeah. That's what's so interesting is we all
think that we have the rightdefinition of what these words
mean. And the fact is sometimesthey mean multiple things.
Authoritative is a word thatcomes up a lot. Some people are
like, Absolutely, yes, I want toown my authority.
Other people are like,Absolutely not. I don't want
(23:50):
authority to be part of mybrand. I always respond either
way with, That's interesting.Tell me more. And sometimes they
define authority as someone whocan be trusted, which is great.
Absolutely, we want that. Othertimes, it can mean someone who
is obeyed or in charge and canalso be repressive. We all have
(24:12):
different viewpoints. What wedon't understand is that
everyone has these subjectivedefinitions of an objective
word. So by being able to pullout and understanding what our
viewpoint is, that allows us todefine our brand in a way that
can scale, that can spreadacross an entire team, and also
(24:34):
maybe able to alter your views alittle bit.
I had one agency owner inparticular who was against the
word authority, and her team wason the call as we were doing
this. And they're like, Weunderstand that, but we have a
team of experts. And because ofyour views of authority, it
means that we actually have tohold back, and we have to play
small because of our leader'sview on this. So we understood
(24:58):
that she, separating her view,wanted to lead with
accessibility, but the brand canlead with authority, meaning
someone able to be trusted,someone as an expert, someone
who was just confident in theirrole. So the brand became more
authoritative than the founder,and it had its voice that
allowed the team to flourish.
Susan Boles (25:19):
The way that I have experienced leadership and being
inside agencies and those kindsof things, I think it is
interesting, particularly as youget a bigger team. It's one
thing if it's you and I, wepretty much do all of our
content. We don't really haveteams that are writing for us.
But I think once you end up witha bigger team, it adds
(25:43):
exponential issues to trying tohave somebody else represent
your brand, represent yourvoice. It's really interesting
to have like the founderpersonality and the brand
personality.
They start to really divergewhen you have a team writing as
the brand versus the founderwriting as the brand.
Justin Blackman (26:04):
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes when you have a
founder led brand, you get ateam that tries to mimic the
founder all the time. Andbasically, they're trying to be
stunt doubles. And they'retrying to step in and, like, let
the audience make the audiencethink that this is the star.
Other times, you get a brandthat's influenced by them under
their direction, but not thementirely. So what you're doing
(26:27):
is you're building a supportingcast that's there to bolster the
brand and make it come alive ina way that fits the scene, in a
way that fits the theme ofwhatever it is that you're
talking about. And it makes theentire brand stronger. It gives
it a well rounded cast asopposed to just mirroring one
person. And it could be doneboth ways, but sometimes a brand
(26:49):
develops the owner's personalitynot intentionally.
And sometimes a founder mayleave, and then the brand kind
of suffers a little bit, or ithas an identity crisis. When you
build a brand that's beyond justyou, influenced by you, led by
you, but not just you, even ifit's a personal brand, it can
scale even if the founder exits.
Susan Boles (27:13):
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting
point because so often, like theconversation I'm having with
other founders, with otherbusiness owners, is what happens
when things have to transition,right? Like what happens if you
lose a key team member? Whathappens if the founder leaves?
What happens if I decide to sellthis brand that I've built? How
(27:34):
do I manage the risk of that?
Because it can cause a lot ofchaos. And I think you have a
really interesting point thathaving a delineated explicit
brand is one of those thingsthat allows you to build more
inherent resilience in yourcompany and in your brand is by
(27:57):
defining this thing, definingyour voice explicitly, that can
be passed on, that can becomepart of the IP of your brand
that we're talking aboutselling, you then have, look,
here's a system. You know, a lotof the times when I'm working
with clients on the how do I setmy company up to sell it or to
(28:20):
transition it to whatever theexit plan ends up being. The
thing that we're talking aboutis systems. Like that is what
makes a company marketable isthat they have repeatable
documented systems that somebodyelse can come in and run.
And I don't think we normallythink about our brand as part of
(28:42):
that. But in a lot of cases,especially if you're developing
a brand that is separate fromyour personal brand, you have a
company name, and the point ofthat is to transition that to a
bigger entity or to be able tosell it at some point. Almost
never do I hear anybody talkingabout how the brand or the
(29:04):
marketing or the personality cantransition after the person that
developed that brand is gone. SoI think that's a really
interesting point in terms ofbuilding longevity and
sustainability into ourcompanies.
Justin Blackman (29:17):
Yeah, authenticity is about the
consistent expression of corevalues and communication
principles that doesn't justhave to come from one person.
That can be a team. That can becopywriters. That can even be
AI. AI can still be authentic.
As long as it's representing youand your values and your
(29:37):
viewpoint, that's what makes itsound on brand. That's the human
that people are looking for.
Susan Boles (29:43):
Interesting. I never really thought about that.
Like, the debate now is AI isinherently not human. It's
inherently not authentic. Butyou're right.
If your AI is doing a reallygood job and you have delegated
your voice, you've trained it onyou and your voice and your
(30:05):
ideas and your rhythms and allof those things, using AI to, as
long as it's maintained byhumans, it doesn't necessarily
mean that it's inauthentic. Itdoesn't necessarily mean that
it's not still your voice.
Justin Blackman (30:24):
Yeah, I was a copywriter, still am a
copywriter, but primarily Ifocus on voice guides. But as a
copywriter, if you outsourceyour writing to me, a sales
page, emails, messaging, and Iwrite that for you and give it
to you, is that still authentic?I think so. A lot of the top
personal brands and evencorporate brands, they all have
(30:47):
copywriters. It's stillauthenticity.
It doesn't just have to comefrom the founder. And now that
it can come through AI, it canstill be authentic. It can
absolutely not be authentic, andthat's the challenge when it
doesn't understand your voice.That's a big, big problem. But
that's something that I canactually help people solve by
getting deeper and trulyunderstanding what your voice
and your views and your valuesare, documenting it, and giving
(31:10):
that to AI, it can now representyour authentic voice.
I've had AI write some stuff forme that is better than what I
came up with, and it's still onbrand. And, yeah, sometimes I
change a few pieces, sometimes Idon't. It can be authentic when
it understands where you'recoming
Susan Boles (31:26):
from. As we are learning how to effectively use
AI, and I think part of that isreally looking deeper at what we
mean by authenticity, right?Because I think a lot of people
the reaction of, hey, I used AIon this thing is Oh, well, then
(31:48):
it's not authentic. It's notreal. Humans didn't put the
effort into doing that.
Part of the evolution of likewhat we end up using AI
effectively for, it isinteresting to really think more
deeply about what we mean byauthenticity. Because you're
right, there's not a hugedifference between spending a
(32:08):
lot of time training an AI onyour voice versus spending a lot
of time training a copywriter onyour voice. Those aren't
necessarily different processes.Like, I think that's going be an
interesting thing to see evolvein the world.
Justin Blackman (32:22):
Yeah, I mean, I still love the art of writing. I
love the depth. I love goingdown the rabbit holes and
figuring out why someone'sapproach is like this. It's not
necessarily something that AIcan do or is made to do. It's
made to systematize things.
A person is gonna put morethought into it. It's gonna be a
little bit more deliberate. Butthe fact is AI is getting
(32:43):
really, really good. And we'reonly really on year two of
ChatGPT being out or Claude.They're getting better every
day.
I do still love writing by hand.I love the craft of it. I spend
weeks building a voice guide.Not everybody needs that. A lot
of solopreneurs don't need a 107page voice guide, and that's the
(33:05):
length of some of mine.
Sometimes AI can do a reallygood job and get it done quickly
and at a much lower lift. And soit just doesn't make sense not
to use these tools. They can bea great resource.
Susan Boles (33:19):
Yeah. And I think what's interesting as you were
talking and you were saying, youknow, that AI is really good at
things. AI is really good atbeing a mimic. Right? So it
can't write original content.
As a person, I think it's reallygood at me training an AI to
(33:40):
replicate me. But I don't thinkthat somebody from the outside
could train an AI to be me. It'sreally good at systematizing and
replicating what already exists.But it's not coming up with
anything new.
Justin Blackman (33:56):
It's not. That's not to say that it won't
one day. But the vocabulary,tone, and cadence things that I
mentioned before, like thedefinition of brand voice, AI is
getting better at that everyday, because it's using the math
that I talked about. Literally,you can measure the vocabulary
levels, you can identify thetones, you can measure the
cadence. It's getting better atthat.
Last year, it sucked at it.Copywriters were laughing it out
(34:19):
of town. It can't sound likeyou. Now it kind of can. So the
voice guides that I'm creatingnow, it's not just about the
vocabulary, tone, and cadence.
It's about the viewpoints andthe perspective, And that's the
thing that a generic brand guidejust isn't going to get.
Susan Boles (34:35):
Yeah, you're gonna end up with human friendly
trustworthy. So what is one kindof small action that somebody
listening to our conversationcould take today to start
building their own ordeveloping, making their own
(34:58):
voice a little bit more explicitor moving towards a little bit
more systematized process there.
Justin Blackman (35:05):
I do offer services that can help you nail
in exactly what the right fourto nine tones that truly define
your voice are. But there aresome ways to do some of this on
your own. It's obviously notgonna be as deep, but you can
use tone wheels or emotionwheels and kind of define much
clearer what tones are essentialfor your brand, what has to be
(35:27):
there. And it's not just happy.Like for you, calm would be one
of the elements that we want togo for.
It's not like a caffeinatedkangaroo just jumping around all
over the place, because that'shappy too. So using a tone wheel
or an emotion wheel to go from abroad emotion to a more specific
one is probably one of theeasiest first steps.
Susan Boles (35:50):
And is there anything you think we should
talk about that we haven'ttouched on yet?
Justin Blackman (35:54):
So, I mean, if we're gonna be talking about
brand voice and AI, everyoneright now is saying, I could
tell it's AI because of theEmdash. I've been using the
Emdash deliberately for years.And
Susan Boles (36:06):
Well, that sounds like the Emdash is there in AI
because so many professionalwriters use it. Yeah. It's ours.
They copied all the professionalwriters.
Justin Blackman (36:14):
It is our crutch. I I had someone reach
out to me saying, did you writethis with AI because you use a
short question in the middle ofthe statement and you use the m
dash three times? I was like, AIdidn't touch this copy. This is
a % me. Now I have to defendmyself?
I don't like that. But it alsodoes mean that AI is getting
more consistent to the way thatother people write. So the lines
(36:36):
are already blurred. Trust islost. That doesn't mean that
it's going to not come back.
I think right now we're alllooking at things with
scrupulous eyes, and we'rehunting to discredit someone. I
think as AI gets better atauthenticity, because as we
establish it doesn't just haveto come from one person, it will
be more accepted and it will befine. And we'll be able to get
(36:58):
our messages across tighter.We're going to be able to be
authentic easier and sometimesfreeing up by defining our brand
voice and freeing up and beingable to outsource this copy,
it's great because it gives usmore time to be the leader of
our brands rather than itsmechanic. We don't have to clean
up after.
We don't have to be its janitor.It gives us more time to be the
(37:20):
visionary and do the stuff thata founder does. So I like that
it's here. Yeah. There's a lotof it that I strongly dislike.
I don't like that a lot ofwriters are getting put out of
work and struggling andsuffering right now. But I do
think that for founders, it canbe a great resource if you
understand how to define yourvoice so it can sound like you
(37:40):
to maintain authenticity.
Susan Boles (37:45):
So let's zoom out for a second. What we just
walked through wasn't just astory about a brand voice guide.
It was a snapshot of what itlooks like to build a calmer
business by intentionallypulling two specific levers. The
first lever is efficiency. So wecreated a reusable tool one that
(38:06):
reduces decision fatigue,shortens revision cycles, and
frees up time, whether you'redelegating or not.
The second is management style.We've replaced ad hoc guidance
and rewrite cycles with a systemthat empowers your team to act
with confidence without needingconstant input from you. That's
the essence of calmer. Not justmaking your to do list shorter,
(38:29):
but changing how decisions getmade so your business runs
smoothly even when you stepback. If you've ever rewritten
your team's copy because it justdidn't sound like you or you
delayed launching somethingbecause the voice felt off, I
hope this episode gave you a newway to think about solving that.
And if you're building toolslike this in your own business,
(38:51):
or you want your system or youhave a calmer KPI and you'd like
to be featured in a futureepisode, I'd love to hear from
you. You can submit your system,your bottleneck, or your
question at the link in the shownotes. And of course, if this
episode helps you see somethingdifferently, share it with a
friend who is stuck in the Iwill just do this myself loop.
We all have different viewpoints. What we
(00:02):
don't understand is thateveryone has these subjective
definitions of an objectiveword. So by being able to pull
out and understanding what ourviewpoint is, that allows us to
define our brand in a way thatcan scale, that can spread
across an entire team.
Susan Boles (00:30):
What if your brand voice wasn't just a vibe, but an
actual system? A tool that couldhelp your team move faster, make
better decisions, and sound likeyou even when you didn't touch
the draft. Today, we're solvingfor calm. One KPI, one
bottleneck, one business at atime. Imagine this.
(00:51):
You're staring at a Google Docfrom your VA, your marketing
assistant, or maybe even a hiredcopywriter. It's a blog post or
an email draft or a podcastoutro, and it's fine,
technically accurate, on brandish, but it's missing something.
It's not you. So you rewriteagain. And in that moment, you
(01:15):
confirm the story you've beentelling yourself.
No one else can sound like me.I'll just do it myself. As a
founder or a consultant or anagency owner, your voice is
often your brand. You've builttrust with it, a vibe, a
following. But that trustbecomes a trap when your voice
(01:36):
only lives inside your head,undocumented, undefined, and
totally unscalable.
And if you think you're the onlyone stuck in this loop, you're
not. I was doing it too even asthe only person writing my
content. Because here's thetruth. Documenting your voice
isn't just about delegation.It's about removing mental load.
(01:58):
It's about creating repeatabledecision making tools. It's
about building a system, not forsomeone else, but for you. A
system for your voice helps youwrite faster, delegate with
confidence, and lead moreeffectively. That's what I did.
I brought in Justin Blackman, abrand voice expert, to help me
(02:18):
create a voice guide that's nowat the core of how I run my
business.
I even used it to help me writethe script for this episode. As
it turns out, building a voicesystem doesn't just make things
sound better. It pulls two keylevers from the calmer
framework. The ones that makethings feel better too. First,
(02:39):
the lever of efficiency.
So you're creating reusabletools that cut down on decision
fatigue and help everyone's workrun smoother. Second, your
management style. You're makingyour team more autonomous by
giving them clarity instead ofcorrections. So here's the
(03:05):
bottleneck. I was the onlyperson who could write like me,
not because I wanted to be, butbecause no one else could hit
the tone, the rhythm, or theintention, at least not
consistently.
And it wasn't just slowing downmy content. It was bleeding into
other areas, emails, proposals,client communications. If I
(03:26):
wasn't the one writing it, itjust didn't sound right. And if
it didn't sound right, it didn'tship. I've built a business that
depends on my voice.
But without a system for thatvoice, I can't delegate, and I
can't scale, and I can't do allthe things I wanna be doing. And
here's the twist. I don't evenwant to outsource my writing.
(03:46):
Most of the time, I likewriting, and I'm pretty good at
it. But I needed a way to makeit faster, more consistent, and
less exhausting, especiallyduring seasons where my capacity
drops.
And that's when I realized theproblem wasn't output. It was
clarity. I'd never taken thetime to define what my voice
actually was. So even when I wasthe one writing, I was
(04:09):
reinventing the wheel everytime. And when I wasn't the one
writing, everything juststalled.
So I called Justin. He's someoneI trust, not just because he's
worked with big personal brands,but because he's a systems
thinker like me. And he geeksout on the science of voice. And
together, Justin and I builtsomething I'd never really had
(04:31):
before, a brand voice guide thatcaptures the decisions that I'd
been making intuitively andturned them into a tool I could
reuse. We're gonna take a quickbreak to hear from our sponsors.
But when we come back, Justinand I get into the science of
systematizing your voice and howwe each use our own brand voice
guides even though we're stillthe ones writing our own
(04:53):
content. So what problems domost people not realize are
(05:53):
actually like voice problems orsystem problems? What problem do
they think they have versus whatproblem do they actually have?
Justin Blackman (06:00):
A lot of people think that they actually have a
copy problem or they havetrouble working with creatives,
or they say that nobody can getmy voice right, because they
feel like they have a strongbrand voice. The fact is, maybe
they do, but there are a coupleof challenges with this. One, if
it's not documented, the voicein your head is never going to
match exactly the voice in awriter's head. And they're going
to think that they're gettingyou exactly. It's like the whole
(06:23):
reading the label from insidethe bottle thing.
You can't hear the voice that iscoming across in the reader's
head because it's going to sounddifferent in your head. So
getting an outside perspectiveon how you are, they're gonna be
seeing things differently. So alot of times they think that
they have creatives who justcan't get it right. Other times
they're trying to do too muchwith their brand voice. And if
(06:45):
you have a personal brand, thisis very common, especially these
days, where people are puttingtoo much of themselves into the
copy to the point where itbecomes unscalable.
You're one person, and thenthere's the brand. And even if
it's your brand, the voicesshould be deliberately
different. They should besimilar, but there should be
boundaries around the brandvoice. Like, you talk about
(07:07):
common KPIs and things likethat, but we don't necessarily
know all the details of what'shappening in your life. You're
showing up as a professional andan expert in your business
regardless of what's happeningbehind the screen.
So sometimes they actually havea boundary problem, which is
showing up as a voice problem.
Susan Boles (07:23):
Interesting. When we were working together, one of
the things that I thought wasreally interesting was when we
were going through the process,one of the questions you asked
was, is that a Susan thing or isthat a brand thing? And I had
never really thought about thembeing different because I have a
(07:44):
personal brand. Yes, I have abrand, a company that I talk
under sometimes. But for themost part, I'm talking as me as
a representative of the company.
And it never really occurred tome that there are parts of me
and my personality and how Inaturally communicate one on one
(08:05):
when we're talking versus how Icommunicate when I'm being a
representative of my brand.
Justin Blackman (08:12):
We all have worries, we all have troubles,
we all have problems. But nineto five or whatever hours you
work, we want you showing up asthe expert in what you do. We're
hiring you. We're paying you. Wewant confidence.
We don't want to hear thatyou're being troubled by either
a personal problem or familyproblem or maybe even a business
problem. We wanna hire peoplewho are the best at what they do
(08:34):
and can absolutely help us. Andvulnerability, that's okay.
We're allowed to show like, Hey,I can help you because I
struggled with this too, buthere's how I figured out. So
you're positioning yourself asthe expert.
I want the work done, and Iwanna hire the most capable
person for that. Yes, we shouldhave connectivity through
personalities and things likethat, but there's a difference
(08:55):
between the way that you show upat work and the way that you
show up in life, that'simportant. And I think the lines
have been blurred, or in somecases completely obliterated.
And that's causing a lot ofchallenges that people are
getting burnt out with theirbrands right now.
Susan Boles (09:11):
Yeah. It's always challenging for me to figure out
what should be me, what shouldbe my company. And if my company
is not named Susan Bowles,right, then how do I make that
distinction between brand stuff,company stuff, and my stuff?
(09:32):
Because I don't really show uppublicly in any way that is not
somehow related to my company.And they feel so intertwined
sometimes.
And it's such a difficultdecision as to like what should
be under what bucket.
Justin Blackman (09:51):
Yeah. Completely get that. There is a
challenge. There's a an issue tobe solved with how you show up
publicly versus privately. Withsocial media, sometimes these
lines are blurred.
I mean, it used to be that ourInstagram pictures were filled
with pictures of our pets andour sister's goofy looking kid.
And now it's just all businessstuff. It's like your Instagram
(10:13):
reel is now like three keys toclose more sales. So our brands
have overtaken our lives, andrather than building businesses
that are part of us, they'vebuilt businesses that are all of
us, and they've taken over ourfeeds. And some of us want that
back.
Susan Boles (10:31):
I desperately want it to be more human. It feels
like no matter what socialchannel you go to, at the
beginning, it feels fun andgenuinely social. So LinkedIn,
three years ago, there was thechannel of like very, very
business y stuff. But then therewas also this very human piece
(10:54):
that it felt like very, veryearly Facebook days, right?
Where you're like DMing people,but you're DMing people and
you're making friends in thoseDMs.
And then it got taken over bynow we have to turn this into
something that turns a profitand that makes money for the
algorithm and the companythat's, you know, controlling
the algorithm. And when we turnit into something capitalistic,
(11:17):
it sucks all the fun out of it.
Justin Blackman (11:20):
Yes. It used to be that we went to social media
to avoid making decisions. Andnow we treat it as a place where
people are going to makedecisions. And it's just ads,
and it's just pitches, and it'sjust not fun anymore. And we
feel that we need to show upthat way.
And that's okay. Sometimes youcan show up as business you on
(11:41):
certain platforms. On LinkedIn,it makes sense to show up as
business you. But Instagram,maybe you don't want that to
show up as business you. Maybeyou want that as old you, as
personal you.
Know people that treat Facebookand Instagram as a record of
their lives, and that's great.Other people treat it as a
record of their business, andthat's okay too. But when they
(12:04):
blur, it just becomes thischallenge to the point where
it's like, I don't know what topost anymore. The way that we
can define this a little bitclearer is if we were to make a
Venn diagram of what's youversus your business, I mean,
for some people, it's just acircle. Like, it's the same.
And that becomes exhaustingbecause you have to show up on
(12:26):
all the time. And when you havethat split to figure out what's
the business, what's you, andwhat's the overlap, it becomes
much more manageable. You canturn it off. Your business can
scale. If you're working with ateam, they know what elements of
you to replicate, to emulate, toembrace.
They don't have to represent theway that you act at the dinner
(12:47):
table. They have to representthe way that you act at the
office. That's going to bedifferent. It's the brand value
versus personal value. Thosedon't have to be identical.
The purpose of your business isnot the same as your purpose of
your soul. And without thatclear distinction, sometimes
your employees or your teams, wereally don't know what we're
there to do.
Susan Boles (13:06):
I think that makes perfect sense and is a fantastic
transition to basically usingthe systemic process that you
created to systematize all ofthose pieces that we're talking
about, to look at what parts areme and what parts are part of
(13:27):
the brand's voice and then canbe explicitly defined and
explicitly delineated how infact this voice happens out in
the world. And I'm a hugesystems geek. So the fact that
you have developed a system andkind of a science behind
creating that package that canthen be handed off to somebody
(13:53):
to replicate your brand voicewas super interesting to me.
Yeah. Like, just the fact thatit's for someone like me who
came into being creative, whatfeels like very late in life.
And it always felt very, I don'twant say mystical, but like very
squishy.
Justin Blackman (14:13):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (14:13):
When people are writing out in the world, I kind
of assumed it just happenedmagically or that they had some
innate skill that I did nothave. And I think the idea that
that can be quantified and itcan be systematized is super
interesting. So walk us throughwhat a brand voice guide should
(14:38):
have in it. And then maybe theprocess of how you think about
creating a system aroundsomething that feels very
squishy?
Justin Blackman (14:48):
Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot of brand voice
guides that you'll see. Some arecreated by creative agencies.
Some people do themselves.
Some people pay like way toomuch money for it. And then
other people, sometimes theydon't pay enough money for it.
But there's this belief that youcan create a brand voice guide
that's three adjectives in anavatar. We're friendly, we're
(15:08):
human, we're professional, andthen we act like your favorite
neighbor or something like that.Honestly, that's garbage because
they're open up to so muchinterpretation that they don't
mean anything.
It means that everyone can havean opinion and everyone is
right. Like the term friendly,for instance. Almost every voice
guide I've ever seen actually,let's go with human. That's an
even better one becauseeveryone's big on that with AI.
(15:30):
We want our voice to sound
Susan Boles (15:31):
I feel attacked because I'm pretty sure human
and friendlier were both on
Justin Blackman (15:36):
this Right, but that's the problem. They're in
everybody's list.
Susan Boles (15:39):
Nobody wants to be like, I want to be the evil
corporate overlord.
Justin Blackman (15:41):
Right, but even so, the evil corporate overlord,
that's a human. There are8,500,000,000 people in the
world. Choose one. As far asfriendly, think about how many
friends you have. There's no waythat they all sound the same.
Friendly is a personality. It'snot a voice. We actually need to
define our voice way moredeliberate than that. And what
(16:02):
it comes down to is brand voiceis three things. It's your
vocabulary, your tone, and yourcadence.
Vocabulary is the level of wordsthat you use. Do you say big or
huge or gigantic or tremendous,gargantuan? Those are all
different. They all mean thesame thing, but it keeps getting
more complex. So there's a levelof vocabulary.
(16:24):
The tones are the emotions inyour writing, and that could be
on a broad level, like, youknow, happy, sad. Like, so
you've got calm. Calm is a bigpart of your business. Calm can
mean balanced. It can meantranquil.
It can mean serene. Those aredifferent versions of calm that
can be defined differently. Whenwe talk about happy, there's
(16:47):
about 300 different definitionsfor happy. Everything from
optimistic to hopeful. Those aregoing to mean different things
to different people.
So we want to get reallygranular on the tones that we're
defining. We want to trulyunderstand what the tone is. Not
just happy, but what level ofhappy. And then the cadence is
(17:07):
the rhythm of your writing. Isit short and choppy with a lot
of periods, very few commas?
Or do we write long, wordy birdsentences that tend to go on and
on forever with tons of commas,maybe a semicolon, a couple of
em dashes, and some ellipsesthat go on until you actually
run out of breath before you getto the end of the sentence.
That's the cadence. So yourbrand voice are those three
(17:29):
elements. And then we want todefine that super clear so
anyone can emulate the styleconsistently, and we actually
have a way of measuring to knowif it's on brand or not. We can
literally use math andcalculators to calculate your
brand voice, which is separatefrom your brand personality,
which is broader identity.
A lot of people are giving brandpersonalities and mistaking them
(17:50):
for a voice.
Susan Boles (17:53):
Say more about that.
Justin Blackman (17:54):
So, like, a brand personality it's gonna
sound cocky, but my brandpersonality right now is
unusually insightful. And what Imean is that I look for an
unusual insight. That'ssomething that just shows that I
look deeper. And it kind ofshows you how I show up and the
way that I'm thinking, butthat's not how I talk. The way
that I speak is deliberate.
(18:15):
It's short. It's choppy. It'sabout making something complex
more simple. And it's designedto be at a lower vocabulary
level, a more objective point ofview. I'm not using a lot of you
and I as I speak.
I'm talking about, like, theprocess rather than my process
or your process. So it's anobjective tone, and the
(18:36):
vocabulary is pretty basic. Ilike to make it accessible. I
want anyone to be able tounderstand it. So my voice is
more of a simple objectiveelement, but my personality is
more about unusually insightful.
And the way that someone definedmy voice, way that I show up is
(18:57):
a very bright light that shinesnarrow. So basically like a
laser. I'm a spotlight on a veryspecific thing. Those are some
of the leading elements, but Ikeep it short. I keep it tight.
Susan Boles (19:07):
I am curious. Do you have a Brand Voice Guide for
yourself? Like, did you do thisprocess for yourself and you
have one?
Justin Blackman (19:14):
So I've tried to do it for myself, and it's
really, really hard. Like, thethings that seem interesting to
other people are every day forme. So I don't realize that
those are unique. I have a coinstructor in Brown Voice
Academy. Her name is JillianHill.
I had her run me through theprocess. My voice came out so
much different than when I didit. And I was like, Oh my God,
(19:35):
this is it. Like, now I know whyI do this for people. I know the
power of it.
And because this stuff is soin-depth, the process is the
product. Like, going throughthat, I'm able to figure out
what my voice is, and I canactually just put the transcript
through AI. And I have atemplate that I've created that
will make the voice guide moreaccessible. And the plus side is
(19:56):
because it's built with AI, ituses the terms that AI
understands. So if I'm using AIto brainstorm or to come up with
a couple of headlines or evenrepurpose all my content, it
comes out so much better than itever did when I just said make
it more friendly.
Susan Boles (20:12):
Yeah, I have definitely found that to be true
in using my own going back andforth with an AI tool. Being
able to brainstorm has beenreally interesting because my
brand voice guide, like it'sstill me, but there are elements
of it now that I am leaning intomore. The one I like, we decided
(20:35):
it should be 77% nerdy. And,like, it's always been kind of
nerdy, like, because I'm kind ofnerdy. Like, you know, this is
the kind of stuff that I likedoing is gigging out about
different systems and nuancesand, like, little fine details.
But the fact that you were ableto mirror that back to me and
(20:55):
say, hey, this is an elementthat you talked about, but is is
not actually as present in mywriting and my content as I
would like it to be because Ilike it being nerdy. And over
the course of the last fouryears, that sort of faded away.
Like it was there initially. Andthen my like it I just kind of
(21:17):
forgot about that piece. Andit's one of those elements where
now that it is very explicit, Ican explicitly aim at that
element because I want to leaninto having nerdier content.
I want it to be a little bitmore sciency. I want it to be a
little bit more geeky. But Inever would have headed in that
(21:39):
direction, except that it cameout of the process of trying to
be very explicit about what arethe different elements. One of
the challenges for me, becauseI've, you know, I've been
through a lot of messagingstuff, I've done a lot of like
brand and personal voice work.It was never explicit enough.
And I think that is true of mostsystems. Honestly, they don't
(22:06):
work when we're not explicitenough. That is really one of
the main benefits of havingsomething like a voice guide.
It's that it makes the quietpieces louder.
Justin Blackman (22:17):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (22:18):
So that you can hand it off to a copywriter who
you have chosen the 10 wordsthat you very thoughtfully spent
twenty minutes debating whetheror not which word was the
appropriate word. But we did. Wewent through the process and
there were a few words where welooked up the definition of the
(22:40):
word and compared it to asimilar word and which one had
the right flavor. And I thinkbeing able to be very explicit
about all the different flavorsthat make up your brand voice or
in the case of other systems,all the different elements, that
is the piece that gives clarityto be able to delegate this
(23:07):
function, whether that's to AI,whether that's to a copywriter,
whether that's to your visualdesigner even. The piece that I
think we miss when we're tryingto delegate is almost never are
we explicit enough.
Justin Blackman (23:20):
Yeah.
Susan Boles (23:21):
And if we aren't direct and explicit enough about
what we're communicating, that'swhere the message gets missed, I
think.
Justin Blackman (23:29):
Yeah. That's what's so interesting is we all
think that we have the rightdefinition of what these words
mean. And the fact is sometimesthey mean multiple things.
Authoritative is a word thatcomes up a lot. Some people are
like, Absolutely, yes, I want toown my authority.
Other people are like,Absolutely not. I don't want
(23:50):
authority to be part of mybrand. I always respond either
way with, That's interesting.Tell me more. And sometimes they
define authority as someone whocan be trusted, which is great.
Absolutely, we want that. Othertimes, it can mean someone who
is obeyed or in charge and canalso be repressive. We all have
(24:12):
different viewpoints. What wedon't understand is that
everyone has these subjectivedefinitions of an objective
word. So by being able to pullout and understanding what our
viewpoint is, that allows us todefine our brand in a way that
can scale, that can spreadacross an entire team, and also
(24:34):
maybe able to alter your views alittle bit.
I had one agency owner inparticular who was against the
word authority, and her team wason the call as we were doing
this. And they're like, Weunderstand that, but we have a
team of experts. And because ofyour views of authority, it
means that we actually have tohold back, and we have to play
small because of our leader'sview on this. So we understood
(24:58):
that she, separating her view,wanted to lead with
accessibility, but the brand canlead with authority, meaning
someone able to be trusted,someone as an expert, someone
who was just confident in theirrole. So the brand became more
authoritative than the founder,and it had its voice that
allowed the team to flourish.
Susan Boles (25:19):
The way that I have experienced leadership and being
inside agencies and those kindsof things, I think it is
interesting, particularly as youget a bigger team. It's one
thing if it's you and I, wepretty much do all of our
content. We don't really haveteams that are writing for us.
But I think once you end up witha bigger team, it adds
(25:43):
exponential issues to trying tohave somebody else represent
your brand, represent yourvoice. It's really interesting
to have like the founderpersonality and the brand
personality.
They start to really divergewhen you have a team writing as
the brand versus the founderwriting as the brand.
Justin Blackman (26:04):
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes when you have a
founder led brand, you get ateam that tries to mimic the
founder all the time. Andbasically, they're trying to be
stunt doubles. And they'retrying to step in and, like, let
the audience make the audiencethink that this is the star.
Other times, you get a brandthat's influenced by them under
their direction, but not thementirely. So what you're doing
(26:27):
is you're building a supportingcast that's there to bolster the
brand and make it come alive ina way that fits the scene, in a
way that fits the theme ofwhatever it is that you're
talking about. And it makes theentire brand stronger. It gives
it a well rounded cast asopposed to just mirroring one
person. And it could be doneboth ways, but sometimes a brand
(26:49):
develops the owner's personalitynot intentionally.
And sometimes a founder mayleave, and then the brand kind
of suffers a little bit, or ithas an identity crisis. When you
build a brand that's beyond justyou, influenced by you, led by
you, but not just you, even ifit's a personal brand, it can
scale even if the founder exits.
Susan Boles (27:13):
Yeah, I think that's a really interesting
point because so often, like theconversation I'm having with
other founders, with otherbusiness owners, is what happens
when things have to transition,right? Like what happens if you
lose a key team member? Whathappens if the founder leaves?
What happens if I decide to sellthis brand that I've built? How
(27:34):
do I manage the risk of that?
Because it can cause a lot ofchaos. And I think you have a
really interesting point thathaving a delineated explicit
brand is one of those thingsthat allows you to build more
inherent resilience in yourcompany and in your brand is by
(27:57):
defining this thing, definingyour voice explicitly, that can
be passed on, that can becomepart of the IP of your brand
that we're talking aboutselling, you then have, look,
here's a system. You know, a lotof the times when I'm working
with clients on the how do I setmy company up to sell it or to
(28:20):
transition it to whatever theexit plan ends up being. The
thing that we're talking aboutis systems. Like that is what
makes a company marketable isthat they have repeatable
documented systems that somebodyelse can come in and run.
And I don't think we normallythink about our brand as part of
(28:42):
that. But in a lot of cases,especially if you're developing
a brand that is separate fromyour personal brand, you have a
company name, and the point ofthat is to transition that to a
bigger entity or to be able tosell it at some point. Almost
never do I hear anybody talkingabout how the brand or the
(29:04):
marketing or the personality cantransition after the person that
developed that brand is gone. SoI think that's a really
interesting point in terms ofbuilding longevity and
sustainability into ourcompanies.
Justin Blackman (29:17):
Yeah, authenticity is about the
consistent expression of corevalues and communication
principles that doesn't justhave to come from one person.
That can be a team. That can becopywriters. That can even be
AI. AI can still be authentic.
As long as it's representing youand your values and your
(29:37):
viewpoint, that's what makes itsound on brand. That's the human
that people are looking for.
Susan Boles (29:43):
Interesting. I never really thought about that.
Like, the debate now is AI isinherently not human. It's
inherently not authentic. Butyou're right.
If your AI is doing a reallygood job and you have delegated
your voice, you've trained it onyou and your voice and your
(30:05):
ideas and your rhythms and allof those things, using AI to, as
long as it's maintained byhumans, it doesn't necessarily
mean that it's inauthentic. Itdoesn't necessarily mean that
it's not still your voice.
Justin Blackman (30:24):
Yeah, I was a copywriter, still am a
copywriter, but primarily Ifocus on voice guides. But as a
copywriter, if you outsourceyour writing to me, a sales
page, emails, messaging, and Iwrite that for you and give it
to you, is that still authentic?I think so. A lot of the top
personal brands and evencorporate brands, they all have
(30:47):
copywriters. It's stillauthenticity.
It doesn't just have to comefrom the founder. And now that
it can come through AI, it canstill be authentic. It can
absolutely not be authentic, andthat's the challenge when it
doesn't understand your voice.That's a big, big problem. But
that's something that I canactually help people solve by
getting deeper and trulyunderstanding what your voice
and your views and your valuesare, documenting it, and giving
(31:10):
that to AI, it can now representyour authentic voice.
I've had AI write some stuff forme that is better than what I
came up with, and it's still onbrand. And, yeah, sometimes I
change a few pieces, sometimes Idon't. It can be authentic when
it understands where you'recoming
Susan Boles (31:26):
from. As we are learning how to effectively use
AI, and I think part of that isreally looking deeper at what we
mean by authenticity, right?Because I think a lot of people
the reaction of, hey, I used AIon this thing is Oh, well, then
(31:48):
it's not authentic. It's notreal. Humans didn't put the
effort into doing that.
Part of the evolution of likewhat we end up using AI
effectively for, it isinteresting to really think more
deeply about what we mean byauthenticity. Because you're
right, there's not a hugedifference between spending a
(32:08):
lot of time training an AI onyour voice versus spending a lot
of time training a copywriter onyour voice. Those aren't
necessarily different processes.Like, I think that's going be an
interesting thing to see evolvein the world.
Justin Blackman (32:22):
Yeah, I mean, I still love the art of writing. I
love the depth. I love goingdown the rabbit holes and
figuring out why someone'sapproach is like this. It's not
necessarily something that AIcan do or is made to do. It's
made to systematize things.
A person is gonna put morethought into it. It's gonna be a
little bit more deliberate. Butthe fact is AI is getting
(32:43):
really, really good. And we'reonly really on year two of
ChatGPT being out or Claude.They're getting better every
day.
I do still love writing by hand.I love the craft of it. I spend
weeks building a voice guide.Not everybody needs that. A lot
of solopreneurs don't need a 107page voice guide, and that's the
(33:05):
length of some of mine.
Sometimes AI can do a reallygood job and get it done quickly
and at a much lower lift. And soit just doesn't make sense not
to use these tools. They can bea great resource.
Susan Boles (33:19):
Yeah. And I think what's interesting as you were
talking and you were saying, youknow, that AI is really good at
things. AI is really good atbeing a mimic. Right? So it
can't write original content.
As a person, I think it's reallygood at me training an AI to
(33:40):
replicate me. But I don't thinkthat somebody from the outside
could train an AI to be me. It'sreally good at systematizing and
replicating what already exists.But it's not coming up with
anything new.
Justin Blackman (33:56):
It's not. That's not to say that it won't
one day. But the vocabulary,tone, and cadence things that I
mentioned before, like thedefinition of brand voice, AI is
getting better at that everyday, because it's using the math
that I talked about. Literally,you can measure the vocabulary
levels, you can identify thetones, you can measure the
cadence. It's getting better atthat.
Last year, it sucked at it.Copywriters were laughing it out
(34:19):
of town. It can't sound likeyou. Now it kind of can. So the
voice guides that I'm creatingnow, it's not just about the
vocabulary, tone, and cadence.
It's about the viewpoints andthe perspective, And that's the
thing that a generic brand guidejust isn't going to get.
Susan Boles (34:35):
Yeah, you're gonna end up with human friendly
trustworthy. So what is one kindof small action that somebody
listening to our conversationcould take today to start
building their own ordeveloping, making their own
(34:58):
voice a little bit more explicitor moving towards a little bit
more systematized process there.
Justin Blackman (35:05):
I do offer services that can help you nail
in exactly what the right fourto nine tones that truly define
your voice are. But there aresome ways to do some of this on
your own. It's obviously notgonna be as deep, but you can
use tone wheels or emotionwheels and kind of define much
clearer what tones are essentialfor your brand, what has to be
(35:27):
there. And it's not just happy.Like for you, calm would be one
of the elements that we want togo for.
It's not like a caffeinatedkangaroo just jumping around all
over the place, because that'shappy too. So using a tone wheel
or an emotion wheel to go from abroad emotion to a more specific
one is probably one of theeasiest first steps.
Susan Boles (35:50):
And is there anything you think we should
talk about that we haven'ttouched on yet?
Justin Blackman (35:54):
So, I mean, if we're gonna be talking about
brand voice and AI, everyoneright now is saying, I could
tell it's AI because of theEmdash. I've been using the
Emdash deliberately for years.And
Susan Boles (36:06):
Well, that sounds like the Emdash is there in AI
because so many professionalwriters use it. Yeah. It's ours.
They copied all the professionalwriters.
Justin Blackman (36:14):
It is our crutch. I I had someone reach
out to me saying, did you writethis with AI because you use a
short question in the middle ofthe statement and you use the m
dash three times? I was like, AIdidn't touch this copy. This is
a % me. Now I have to defendmyself?
I don't like that. But it alsodoes mean that AI is getting
more consistent to the way thatother people write. So the lines
(36:36):
are already blurred. Trust islost. That doesn't mean that
it's going to not come back.
I think right now we're alllooking at things with
scrupulous eyes, and we'rehunting to discredit someone. I
think as AI gets better atauthenticity, because as we
establish it doesn't just haveto come from one person, it will
be more accepted and it will befine. And we'll be able to get
(36:58):
our messages across tighter.We're going to be able to be
authentic easier and sometimesfreeing up by defining our brand
voice and freeing up and beingable to outsource this copy,
it's great because it gives usmore time to be the leader of
our brands rather than itsmechanic. We don't have to clean
up after.
We don't have to be its janitor.It gives us more time to be the
(37:20):
visionary and do the stuff thata founder does. So I like that
it's here. Yeah. There's a lotof it that I strongly dislike.
I don't like that a lot ofwriters are getting put out of
work and struggling andsuffering right now. But I do
think that for founders, it canbe a great resource if you
understand how to define yourvoice so it can sound like you
(37:40):
to maintain authenticity.
Susan Boles (37:45):
So let's zoom out for a second. What we just
walked through wasn't just astory about a brand voice guide.
It was a snapshot of what itlooks like to build a calmer
business by intentionallypulling two specific levers. The
first lever is efficiency. So wecreated a reusable tool one that
(38:06):
reduces decision fatigue,shortens revision cycles, and
frees up time, whether you'redelegating or not.
The second is management style.We've replaced ad hoc guidance
and rewrite cycles with a systemthat empowers your team to act
with confidence without needingconstant input from you. That's
the essence of calmer. Not justmaking your to do list shorter,
(38:29):
but changing how decisions getmade so your business runs
smoothly even when you stepback. If you've ever rewritten
your team's copy because it justdidn't sound like you or you
delayed launching somethingbecause the voice felt off, I
hope this episode gave you a newway to think about solving that.
And if you're building toolslike this in your own business,
(38:51):
or you want your system or youhave a calmer KPI and you'd like
to be featured in a futureepisode, I'd love to hear from
you. You can submit your system,your bottleneck, or your
question at the link in the shownotes. And of course, if this
episode helps you see somethingdifferently, share it with a
friend who is stuck in the Iwill just do this myself loop.
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