Defining your verbal identity is only half the work. The other half is keeping it alive.
Too many founders and consultants write a brand voice doc, save it in a Google Drive folder somewhere and move on with their lives.
Maybe they revisit it when a freelancer asks for “tone guidelines.” Maybe they don’t revisit it at all.
And that’s a problem.
Because you are not the same person you were two years ago. Your company is not the same company. Your customers have changed. Your beliefs have sharpened. Your story has evolved.
Your verbal identity should evolve with it.
In a previous article, I walked through what verbal identity actually is, why it matters more than your content strategy and how to define it from scratch. If you haven’t read that yet, start there. It’s the foundation.
This piece is about what comes next. The ongoing work of developing, refining and keeping your verbal identity alive as you grow. Because this isn’t something you create once.
It’s something you cultivate, learn from and develop over time.
Your voice goes stale and you don’t even notice
I think it starts with a lack of awareness. You don’t even realize you’re reducing down your natural words, your personality, the tone with which you speak. That uniqueness gets toned down without you even realizing it.
And that’s not intentional sabotage. You don’t really give yourself a chance. You accept whatever version of your voice existed when you first launched, and you ride it until it doesn’t fit anymore.
I’ve lived this. When I looked at my own tone recently, I realized it was three years old. I had come a long way and changed as a person over those years, but the way I was showing up in my brand hadn’t caught up. I was muted. Stoic. I wanted to be seen as solid and steady.
And I am those things. But in reality, I’m kind of a whimsical person. I always have been kind of mischievous, kind of zany. Like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh energy. I get joy out of lifting the energy in the room. I am people’s force, their cheerleader, their hype man.
That mischievous, bouncy energy would never have come out in a company or a brand in the past. But now I’m realizing that’s how I actually show up with people. So the tone shifted from muted and stoic to vibrant, mischievous, cheeky, bold, opinionated and passionate. And every brand I build from here will carry that.
The point is that your verbal identity is not static. You are evolving as a person, and that evolution is either going to consciously seep into the product direction and the direction of the company, or it’s going to seep in unconsciously. You might as well make it conscious and actively bake it in.
Copying competitors is how you become invisible
There’s a common belief that in order to develop your brand messaging, you need to look around and see what everyone else is doing. Use “best practices.” Distill what competitors are doing so you can show up and look like them and slightly outdo them.
That is as backwards as anything I’ve ever heard.
This idea of being corporate is really trying to be seen as good enough and appeal to what others think you need to be. And if everyone is doing that, it becomes very difficult to stand out. Humans start to lump those brands together as one thing and not really see the differentiator.
Starting off with the most unique thing about you, which is your own tone of voice, beliefs, values, things that you always say, your diction, your writing style, is critical. It already positions you outside of your competitors, outside of the algorithm on LinkedIn that’s now filling up with artificially created content from a mathematical prediction system.
If you start off from a place of differentiation, you’re more likely to continue down a path of differentiation. But differentiation isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a practice. And like any practice, it requires regular attention.
Four practices that keep your voice from going stale
You don’t need to overhaul your verbal identity every month. But you do need a rhythm. Through communication, through feedback with others, through regular reflection, you keep it alive.
Through introspection, you build an awareness of how you’re evolving as a person, because that’s going to be reflected in the company somehow.
This is what works for me and the founders I coach.
1. Speak about your work out loud, regularly
Every time I go to a coffee shop or do a pitch, every time I’m at a networking event at a co-working space with a new friend and somebody asks “what do you do,” I have to pick and choose my words. How am I going to phrase things? What might excite them, pique their curiosity, versus just a bland explanation of the product?
That kind of talking about the product or your brand or your services really helps you hone in not only on how you’re currently saying it, but you can get feedback from others about how you want it to become.
Speaking about it out loud, getting it out of your head and doing it with others is the first and most important practice.
You don’t need a formal setting.
Pitch your product to a friend over lunch. Explain what you do to a stranger at an event. Record yourself answering customer questions. Every one of these interactions is a chance to notice what words feel right and which ones feel stale.
2. Run a yearly verbal identity review
Not every month. Not every quarter. But definitely yearly, at minimum every other year, sit down and ask yourself some honest questions.
Look at the tone of voice you’ve documented. Look at words you always say. Look at the concept of the story and the narrative that you want to put forth into the world. Then ask: is this still true? Do I still resonate with this? Is this still something I want to put out into the world?
This review doesn’t need to be complicated. Pull up your verbal identity doc, your last 10 LinkedIn posts, your most recent sales calls and your website copy. Read them back to back. If something feels off or outdated, it probably is.
Here are the specific things to audit:
Your core beliefs and non-negotiables. Have any shifted? Have new ones formed from the last year of building?
Your recurring phrases and go-to words. Are you still using them naturally, or are they leftovers from a version of you that no longer exists?
Your tone axes. If you were to rate yourself on a scale from formal to casual, from stoic to energetic, from serious to playful, have those sliders moved?
Your stories and examples. Are you still telling the same origin story, or do you have fresher, more relevant ones from recent experience?
3. Do the introspection work
Introspection feels soft.
I get it.
But it’s the most important part of this entire process.
As someone who is the CEO or the founder of the company or the business owner, you have to analyze your own story and where you’ve come and the gaps in that story. Because it’s going to be reflected in the company somehow.
You have to build an awareness of how you’re evolving as a person. Your growth, your new convictions, the things you’ve let go of. If you’ve pivoted your business, gone through a hard season, had a major win, changed your mind about something fundamental, all of that needs to make its way into how you communicate.
I used to think professionalism meant being measured and careful. Now I know that the personality I was hiding, the mischievous, energetic, opinionated version of myself, is exactly what makes people want to work with me.
That wasn’t a branding exercise. That was an introspection exercise. The branding just followed.
4. Get feedback from people who actually interact with your brand
You can’t see your own voice objectively. You’re too close to it.
So ask the people around you.
Ask customers what they remember about how you communicate. Ask your business partner or co-founder what resonates about your presence. Ask friends how they describe you when you’re not in the room.
Those answers reveal patterns. Patterns become guidelines. Guidelines become your updated voice.
Your story matters more than you think it does
Founders and early stage companies need to accept on an almost emotional level that their story matters.
There isn’t this huge chasm between how you show up in your personal life and the verbal identity or the story that the business can tell.
People don’t turn off their emotional processing centers when they evaluate a product or a service. We make a judgment about whether we like or trust something pretty instantly and then justify it with logic.
Knowing that could release some of the fear or anxiety that founders have about letting their personality come through in their content, their messaging and their marketing.
And even if you lean a little too much into your personality and somebody dislikes you for it, there’s still going to be a tribe of people that latch on to that. That do like you for taking that stance or sharing that opinion or telling that story about the thing you’ve been through. That’s a competitive advantage if you do it correctly and with tact.
The ongoing development of your verbal identity isn’t just a branding exercise. It’s a self-awareness exercise. And when who you are becoming finally matches how you’re showing up, everything gets easier. The content, the pitches, the partnerships. All of it.
Your verbal identity is a living thing. It grows as you grow. It changes as your convictions sharpen and your experience deepens.
The founders who stand out in an AI-saturated world will not be the ones who defined their voice once in 2024 and let it collect dust. They’ll be the ones who treated their verbal identity like a practice, regularly speaking about their work, reflecting on what’s changed, asking others for honest feedback and having the courage to update how they show up.
Speak about your work out loud this week. Pull up whatever brand voice doc you have and ask yourself if it still sounds like you. If it doesn’t, that’s not a failure. That’s growth. Now make it conscious.
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