67. Building a Bad-A** Brand Voice with Helen Tremethick
Screw the Template
That tagline is in every episode of the podcast. But why do you need to screw the template? And how did the business world end up with so many shoulds and templates in the first place?
Ditching the templates and developing your own brand voice helps your business maintain consistency, clarity, and authenticity. And all of those elements are rooted in your values.
Doing business in alignment with your values, from your clients to your team, means you need to own your voice.
Helen Tremethick joins India to dig into why you need to say goodbye to templates and shoulds and develop your voice.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
Why we reach for templates and why they don’t work
How to identify and cultivate your brand voice
How to disrupt copycatting and own your voice
Questions to help you leave the elevator pitch behind for good
Showing Up Fully
Helen Tremethick is a Holistic Business Coach & Co-Conspirator for entrepreneurs who are ready to show up more fully (and authentically) in their lives and their businesses. Since 2011, Helen has worked with hundreds of business owners using a proprietary methodology called Love & Badassery, which combines contemporary business strategy, values-based business models, and a hefty dose of what makes you unique.
Helen lives on a permaculture farm in the Canadian countryside, which means if you ever hop on a call with her, you might hear roosters.
Why Templates Don’t Work
On the Flaunt Your Fire® podcast, Helen Tremethick says the short answer to why there are so many templates and shoulds in the business world is that there is a lot of money to be made in providing those templates to business owners and entrepreneurs.
Their longer answer is that many entrepreneurs are high-achieving perfectionists and templates are an easy fix. And she says templates do have a place in business when they help you at the very beginning stages of getting your name out there.
“The trouble with them is that they don’t work for very long…Then we end up feeling lost, we feel unsupported, we feel unsuccessful.”
And when seven and eight figure businesses are selling these templates, those comparisons only increase feelings of failure.
Helen says, “There’s this trauma-inducing factor of us being a failure. It was our fault if those templates didn’t work…It’s not you that’s the problem…It’s the template. It’s the shoulds. It’s the expectations we place on ourselves.”
But, she continues “The more that we can get closer to who we are, the more that we can share who we are in a really representative way, consistently, in a way that our clients really resonate with; that’s where the gold is…[but] it’s not an easy fix.”
India recalls going to networking events early in her career and giving the standard elevator pitch, “It felt so awkward…it felt like it was intruding on my identity a little bit…I’m so much more than [a fill in the blank pitch template.]”
Cultivating an Authentic, Consistent Voice
Developing and cultivating an authentic brand voice helps us move away from the awkwardness of the pitch formula, the templates, and the shoulds.
But brand voice is a term that can get overused without enough definition or context.
Helen clarifies that “brand voice, done well, is a consistent combination of who you are as a business, your core values, and all articulated in a way that resonates with your ideal people.”
They say just like having consistent font and color combinations across your website, your brand voice is a consistent combination of showing who you are as a business, using language that resonates with your people.
“Do they use words like wow, or wonderful, or fuck yeah? Because knowing that helps us then articulate in a way that they can understand.”
She says once you have that voice, “It’s so much easier for you to show up into a conversation and answer that question, what do you do, or put on your Instagram profile, or write your website copy in a way that feels more truthful than that robotic, I am fill in the blank.”
And as you become more aware of your language and how you’re showing up, Helen says many people find that they’re not that different than their ideal people.
“The more that we can show up truthfully…the easier it is for our people to find us because there isn’t that much of a difference in the way that I would articulate my services and my worth and my value to my ideal people. The trick is stepping away from all of those shoulds.”
Disrupt the Impulse to Mimic
When we don’t work to develop a brand voice, Helen says that too many people end up relying on copycatting and mimicry in how they show up.
“The idea behind it is that if you follow this template, if you follow this model, if you follow this formula, then you will achieve the same success I have. But what ends up happening is that your brand is actually just a diluted replica of the one that you’re trying to follow behind.”
And while it’s a natural impulse to want to show up in ways that our role models do, “there are layers of unearned privilege that aren’t necessarily seen in many, many of these success formulas, and there are so many variables involved.”
India agrees that she’s seen that play out in norms of how people approach branding, publicity, or their websites within industries.
Helen links it back to the way many people seek authority figures in their lives and businesses. “I don’t know that it’s always intentional, and that’s where the opportunity lies to break away from that automatic habit to just do the same thing, to step in line. This is where the opportunity to disrupt the pattern is.”
India adds that in her experience and the experiences of friends and colleagues, “that I’ve witnessed [people], especially those from marginalized backgrounds, looking for certain types of service providers to work with, but they really could not find people who had this perspective or did things that way because everyone was following the same formula of what they thought they needed to be.”
Helen says that not only are we diluting ourselves, but “we are not allowing our clients to find that sense of belonging that they would feel matching up with a service provider who sees the world in a similar way.”
And forcing ourselves into those boxes or templates sets us up for dissatisfaction and feelings of failure. “It sets us up for like, this business isn’t working and I need to burn it to the ground.”
Helen experienced this in her own business as over time she shifted more towards business coaching and away from communications.
“I felt stuck in this should that I had created myself because I had this brand that I had built up and what would happen if I stepped away?”
They continue, “There’s a lot of fear in making a change for our businesses, especially if we already have clients. What would happen then if I showed up more truthfully as myself…Would I lose clients? Would I lose revenue? Would I lose the ability to support my family? And those are real questions that many entrepreneurs ask themselves when they’re faced with that, this is not working, then what, place.”
India connects that to how Erica Courdae has talked about Imposter Syndrome and how “the imposter is who you were allowing yourself to stay stuck being, because that’s who you have to be to get where you are. And the next place is actually the bigger, bolder place, it’s actually the real you.”
Helen acknowledges that for many, a big pivot isn’t always accessible or safe, but says that “sometimes it’s a very, very slow unfurling. And regardless, it’s worth it.”
Write Love Letters to Your People
When it comes to saying goodbye to the elevator pitch, Helen’s advice is to take action by brainstorming around these questions:
What do I believe in?
Why is it important?
Why is this work important?
What moves you?
What sets you on fire?
“Write from that place, and then when you get clear on who your people are, everything is a love letter to them.”
What Flaunting Your Fire Means for Helen
Helen says Flaunting Their Fire means “disrupting not just what they expect, but also what you expect from yourself, and you’re showing up as truthfully as you can.”
Connect With Helen Tremethick:
Ready to Dive Deeper?:
What would be possible for your brand visibility if you could attract new clients who enthusiastically shared your values and vision, if you could get out of the hustle of content creation and focus on building meaningful relationships that turn followers into fans, fans into clients, and clients into lifelong referral sources?
Every month inside Pause on the Play® the Community, Erica Courdae and India Jackson host a live Q&A session where you can get individualized feedback on how to do exactly that. Get access to the next Q&A, plus replay videos and workshops by joining today.