Welcome to the UnCloned® Insider audio newsletter. My name is Audria Richmond, and I am your marketing and launch strategist. I work directly with my clients to show them how to build uncloned brands and launch profitable marketing campaigns. We are the brand that you come to when you want to become or remain the obvious choice of your industry. Hey, y'all.

What's going on? Happy Monday. As you all know, every single Monday, we drop an audio newsletter that is designed to get you thinking and moving and grooving in the right direction as you continue to develop your uncloned brand. And so today, I wanna talk about mastering your voice. And so today's topic is when you master your voice, you will master your content.

One of the reasons why I am talking about this is because I have been on fire with my content lately, and I've been feeling so good about it. Normally, when I, am creating content, I'm typically, like, killing it with the, you know, videos and launches and things like that. Maybe reels, I post a lot you know, video has always been my thing and obviously, audio has always been my thing because it's the best way for me to communicate. But now that I've been using this tool, and I'm a tell you about it, it's been changing the game and it's really not a tool, it's a hack. I I found a hack that works for me, that I've been teaching my clients, and I'm a tell y'all at the end of this because I have a video on this topic, but I'm a I'm a share with you how I developed my voice over the years and how I felt about that and like where I am now with it.

So grab your notebook, you are in for a treat, so let's get started. So I'm a I'm a get a little personal here, and share some things with you, and you may not believe it when you look at the achievements that I've had in life. It's gonna be hard to really believe what I'm gonna say, but it's true, and I don't have a problem talking about it. Alright? So one of my biggest things that I kinda struggle with when I was coming online, to run an online business was that I was really struggling with writing and grammar.

Writing and grammar has never been my strong suit at all. Whenever I needed to write something professionally, I've always hired like a copywriter or someone who who who offers writing as a service. And as a result, they have helped me be able to effectively communicate. So if I've ever needed a press release, if I needed someone to help me with our sales pages are, you know, anything copy related, anything word related, anything where I need to communicate a thought and get it out into words where it cannot be an audio, it can't be video. And that's probably been my strongest, you know, setback.

Right? Coming online. And it's one of the reason why I would I wouldn't write a lot of social media statuses or written content. I don't know if you're really big on LinkedIn right now or even Facebook, but Facebook and LinkedIn and also threads now is a is one of those platforms that prioritize written content. And so if you are not really good at communicating your thoughts, you really can't take advantage of people who like to read because everybody don't wanna watch a video and everybody don't wanna listen to an audio.

Okay? And that's not you that don't wanna listen to audio because you're listening right now. But, nevertheless, you know, me personally, I've always kinda, you know, led with audio and video because that was my strong suit. Right? And ever since the creation of AI, you know, when AI first came out, I was just like, I don't wanna use it, because I felt like it wasn't in alignment with what we stand for, Like, what uncloned stands for, which is individuality, so on and so forth.

So a lot a lot of the times people use AI to think for them. I actually use AI as a refinement tool, and so I'll tell you about that process later on, but I'm kinda giving you a hint now. But it's not fun having something to say and not know how to effectively communicate that. And I feel like over the years and at least in the past decade, I have really take a liking to activating my voice, right, and activating an opinion. And so one of the things that really helped me with my communication is reading a lot of books.

Reading does help. There's a level of comprehension you get when you read. So if you're not a reader, if you're not reading books, you're missing out on, you know, this whole idea of being able to really understand how to effectively communicate. And oftentimes, if people don't know how to communicate, they don't they don't have a lot of words to use, they don't have a a large vocabulary. You may not be reading a lot, you may not be learning a lot.

And so for me, reading a lot, learning a lot, and also being being in conversation with a lot of dope people has really helped me perfect my communication skills over the years. And you can always improve how you communicate. I literally just wrote, not wrote, but found a book on how to say different words because I tend to say the same words a lot, so I'm working on increasing my vocabulary. So now that you understand that, I wanna kinda pivot into what did it take to, like, you know, cultivate my voice even more. So once you kinda have an understanding of what you wanna say, how you wanna say it, how you wanna communicate it, there's a level of trust that has to take place when you are utilizing your voice.

And so what I mean by that is sometimes we don't trust ourselves, and as a result, we don't communicate. It's like, I don't trust what I'm thinking or saying, and so I'm not gonna say anything. And that's not good if you're a business owner because your job as a business owner is to drive traffic, get clients and customers and leads and grow a brand and business. And so if you're not putting out your opinion, your voice, all of those things, and I'm not saying from a, destructive perspective, but if you're an expert and you teach ex you teach something where you're, you know, teaching someone how to learn some or do something, the first voice that people are gonna trust is yours. And if you don't trust your voice, how can you get other people to trust your voice?

And so this is something that I knew for a fact that I needed to cultivate and master if I wanted people to, 1, respect me, if I wanted people to pay attention to what I'm saying, or if I wanted people to take heed to what I was saying as well. And so I really felt like, okay, now that I'm I'm doing all this reading and learning and I've gotten really, you know, pretty decent in my writing, and grammar now, the thing that's really been taking it over the time for me lately is, AI. And so we're gonna get to that in a moment, but I just I'm so excited. I I guess I keep bringing it up because I'm so excited to talk about that, but nevertheless, because I have my talking points, but I keep wanna go to that talking point, but nevertheless, we're gonna get to it. Right?

Okay. So I wanna talk about what it takes to develop a voice as a leader. Right? We're not talking about just you learning and taking courses and stuff like that and talking to people and communicating and reading books. What I'm talking about right now is you once you start trusting yourself, that means you have to trust your thoughts, that means you have to trust what you believe, and more importantly, you have to stand for something.

Right? And so let me give you an example. Today, at the time of me doing this audio newsletter, if you're watching this, if you're listening to this audio newsletter on September the, today is September 16th. If you're listening to this audio newsletter on September 16th, you can navigate to my Instagram or my, Facebook group post. I did a post about, really telling people to, like, trust their ideas.

And if you have many ideas, go full fledged. Don't let nobody try to stop you. Now I originally was having this conversation with my husband, and so normally when me and my husband is talking, I record our conversations because we'd be dropping fire, we'd be having ideas and all the things. So I was recording our conversation, and there was a part of my conversation where I was using Beyonce as an example. And I was talking about sometimes the culture doesn't always reward people who aren't ambitious and have a lot of ideas because they think you're doing too much.

And a lot of the times, it's them projecting their insecurities on you because they are not pursuing their vision, and they're not pursuing what they're doing. And so I took part of a conversation I was having with my husband, something that I truly believe, and I was able turn it into a piece of content that people can benefit from reading. So when I say you have to stand for something, that's what I mean by that. Like, what do you stand for? What do you believe in?

Like me, I believe I don't believe in niching. And so my post is about anti niching. And so for me to feel confident in that and for me to believe that and for that to be my thought, I have to have the confidence to pursue that thought and turn into a piece of content and put it out in the world and get people to respond to it. So some people may like it, some people may not like it, but either way, I have to be comfortable with that. And oftentimes, people aren't comfortable with their thoughts and their opinions because they don't want people checking for them in a negative way.

They don't wanna get judged and so on and so forth. And I'm one of those people too. I definitely have played it on the safe side or the neutral side. I tend to kinda shy away from, you know, topics that's that ain't got nothing to do with my business or I kinda shy away from topics that are negative. But if I have an opinion about something that is truly my opinion and I believe that opinion and I trust that opinion, why am I not having a conversation about that opinion?

And so the reason that thought leadership is so important is because if you are a leader with thoughts, meaning you're thinking, you have really cool ideas, are you really sharing those thoughts? Are you communicating those thoughts? Are you putting those thoughts into videos, audio content, written content? Are you even sharing your thoughts in any form, any media? And so when you're not sharing your thoughts, it's very hard for people to, like, know what you stand for.

It's like, you know, for instance, I don't know why, but Dave Ramsey came to mind. I know Dave Ramsey cares about being debt free with Christian principles. That's what he stands for. It's a part of his brand, it's a part of his culture, so on and so forth. When he's when he's doing his radio show every day, he's very adamant about helping people get out of debt to 0 and not accumulating and having debt, and he's also a firm believer of doing it through Christian principles.

And so that's how you build a brand and that's how you build a voice for your brand, when people can know you, know what you stand for, and become an advocate for what you believe in all of that. Right? And so now that we have an understanding about that, I do wanna get into, how I've been using voice notes lately to create content. So I did a whole YouTube video on the technical aspect of how to do this, but I wanna talk to you about why I do this. I did talk about why I do this in that YouTube video, but I kinda wanna go a little bit deeper because I've been really using this strategy, a lot more.

And so I really want you all to know that, like, when you are coming up with your, thoughts for content, you need to know what do you want the reader to take away from this. And so when you're thinking about takeaways, it becomes so important when you're ready to create your voice notes. So but because I am a voice first, video first content creator, right, as I create content online, that's my first go to. It's the reason why we have the audio newsletter on Monday and the YouTube videos on Wednesday. However, I do have a big segment of my audience who read.

I read, but I'm one of those people who was anti long post. Right? Not because they're ineffective, but they took a lot of work at least before AI, but now the AI is here, oh my god, y'all. Oh, I have so many ideas and I found so many hacks on how to use this strategy. So let me kinda give you some ideas on how I'm using this concept.

So first, let me tell you what the strategy is a little bit, and then I'm a go into how I'm using it. So number 1, you will find a tool that allows you to record voice notes. And so we use I've taken voice notes that I've said to clients in Slack because, you know, Slack has an audio feature. I've taken voice notes that I've said on Voxer and turned that into a content. I've taken voice notes from audio newsletters and turned that into content and articles.

I have taken, audio from videos that I've done in the past and turned that into audio content. And then, depending on the soft depending on the AI tool that you use, you could possibly talk to it. So one of the tools that I use, I use 2 AI tools. I use Pro, which is by my homegirl, April Beverly, and I mainly use that for, like, adding personality and culture to my content. I also use it for some of our sales content.

And then I use chat gpt when I just wanna talk to the AI and get it out. And so the reason that I started to embrace AI is because when I use AI, all I'm asking it to do is enhance what I'm saying. I'm not using you know, some let me give you an example of what I mean, because then this will give you all context. When I'm talking to AI, I'm never saying create me a post for social media to talk about my lunch planner, like, I would never say that to AI. How I would use AI instead, I will say what I wanted to say and then ask AI to enhance it.

So let me give you a real world example of how I would use it, so you can understand it. It's a particular prompt that I use in the beginning of everything that I say verbally. That way when the AI picks it up, it knows to stick within the tonality of what I'm saying. So let me give you an example. So let's say that, I wanna make a post around, the free new master class we have going on right now.

So we have a free new master class right now, shameless plug, called unclown offers. Okay? And this this masterclass is all about how to create unclown offers that no competitor can copy. Right? So if I was talking to AI and I wanted to create a social media piece of content where I'm I know for a fact I'm a promote this masterclass, I would say something like, hey, let me see.

Let's say I wanted to make a post around why people should be more intentional with creating their product suite, which is really a topic I wanna talk about for real, but I'm a give you, like, a a simple simple version of it now. Just know if I was doing this officially, it would be way more it'd be way deeper than what I'm saying now. So an example of that would be like, are you a person who has prioritized creating individual products and selling them throughout your your business? If that's you, then it's important to understand that one of the reasons why clients don't stay with you and why they don't retain with you because a lot of your products don't go together. So basically, the premise of the post would be like, do your products go together?

Right? Let me explain. When you go to Apple and when you're getting an Apple product and you buy like an iPhone, an Imac, an iPad, so on and so forth, they go together. But do your products suite go together? Do I know how to ascend from one product to the next?

So I would do a whole conversation around that, and let's say that I have the everything I wanted to say. I would literally say in my prompt, enhance what I I said, enhance what I said, while main no. Enhance enhance this while maintaining the essence of what I say. I literally put that in front of everything that I that I make, and if you go to if you go and look at my Facebook page, or even my Instagram, and you look at any if you see if you see a post from me and it's like hell along, it was me talking to AI first and then asking AI to enhance it while maintaining the essence of what I originally said. The reason that I use that exact prompt is because I don't want it to come up with regular words, I don't want it to come up with AI words.

I wanted to stay in the lane of what I said. So when you read it as the reader, you know for a fact, like, damn, this this is fire, because it is fire because it's mommy. It's not like AI is adding to what I said in a way where it takes away from what I said. It's taking what I said and adding the the proper grammar and punctuation, and it's clarifying because, like, for instance, I'm very wordy as you can tell. Like, I tend to, like, be very very wordy.

So what it does is, like, if I'm saying a lot of the same thing, it will condense it so it can be concise. So I'm telling y'all, this is a complete game changer. If you head over to my YouTube video, to watch this, it's at I'm at Ardra Richmond on YouTube. If you go to my YouTube video, there's the name of the video is called how to turn your voice notes into captivating social media content. I'm telling you, y'all need to watch this video.

I don't know why people I have been telling people that this like, hey. I don't know what to post on social media. I don't know what to share on. Go watch the video and actually apply the video. Don't just watch the video and bookmark it.

Like, if your Instagram, social media, whatever is struggling, you really need to go and and watch this video. So now I wanna talk about, like, how am I using it. Right? And how have I been using it? 1, I've been I used this strategy to write our sales emails.

I used this strategy to make carousel post. I used this strategy to write captions. I used this strategy to tell stories. I use this strategy to write articles. I use this strategy to coach clients.

When I tell you this strategy works for damn near anything that you got to say and you wanna share it, I'm telling y'all, it is a game changer. So, hopefully, you're going to apply this strategy to your content, utilizing your voice. We did a whole conversation about that. Please, please, please let me know your biggest takeaway by coming inside of our free Facebook group. If you're not a part of our free Facebook group, you can click the description section wherever you may be listening to this audio newsletter.

And until next time y'all, let's go live an UnCloned® life and build an UnCloned® brand. Bye y'all.