Your Voice Charter is one sentence, 25 words or fewer, that says who you are, who you serve, and how you sound. It is the first thing you paste into any AI prompt, the first page of any brand doc, and the tiebreaker in any "does this sound like us?" argument. It's the foundational deliverable of the Context pillar.
25 words is a feature, not a limit. If your voice takes a paragraph to describe, nobody will use it. If it fits in one breath, everyone will.
Step 1: Answer these five questions (10 minutes)
Write fast. First answers, plain language, no polish.
- Who are you, in words a customer would actually use? (Not your job title. What are you to them: the coach, the fixer, the calm one, the straight shooter?)
- Who do you serve, specifically? (Name the person, not the market. "Solo consultants drowning in their own marketing," not "SMBs.")
- What do people say after working with you? Pull real phrases from emails, reviews, or texts.
- What would you never say? List three phrases that make you cringe when competitors say them.
- If your brand were a person at a dinner party, how would someone describe them the next day? One sentence.
Step 2: Draft using the skeleton (5 minutes)
Fill in this frame, then rewrite it until it sounds like something you would say out loud:
We're the [role/personality] who helps [specific person] [get specific outcome], and we sound [trait], [trait], never [anti-trait].
Read it aloud. If you stumble, cut words. If it could describe a competitor, sharpen the personality words until it can't.
Three worked examples
A leadership coach:
I'm the coach who asks the question you've been avoiding. Direct, warm, zero corporate speak. My clients leave meetings knowing exactly what to do next.
A SaaS team (project management tool):
We're the tool that respects your Tuesday. Plain answers, honest limits, no productivity guilt. Built for small teams who'd rather ship than sync.
A creative agency:
We're the agency that argues with you (kindly). Opinionated, curious, allergic to safe. We serve founders who want work their competitors will screenshot.
Notice what these have in common: a concrete role, a named audience, personality traits you can hear, and one thing they refuse to be.
Common mistakes
- Adjective soup. "Authentic, innovative, passionate, dynamic" describes every brand and therefore no brand. Pick two traits you would defend in an argument.
- Writing for the boardroom instead of the reader. If it sounds like a mission statement, start over. A charter should sound like speech.
- Skipping the "never." The anti-trait does half the work. "Never corporate," "never pushy," "never precious" tells AI what to avoid, which is often more useful than what to include.
- Describing what you sell instead of how you sound. The charter is about voice. Your product page handles the rest.
- Going over 25 words. Over the limit means you haven't decided yet. Cut until it hurts, then read it aloud once more.
Step 3: Final fill-in block (5 minutes)
Lock it in:
My Voice Charter (25 words max):
Two traits I'll defend: ______________ and ______________
One thing we never sound like: ______________
The test: Read your charter to someone who knows your brand. Ask "does this sound like us?" If they hesitate, revise the personality words, not the structure.
How to use it
Paste your charter at the top of every AI prompt, starting today. A simple opener works:
You write for a brand with this voice: [paste charter]. Match this voice exactly in everything below.
Then check the output against your "never" word. That one check catches most drift.
Your charter will feel slightly wrong in a month. Good. Revise one word at a time, not the whole thing. The charter that gets used and updated beats the perfect one sitting in a doc nobody opens.