Muting the Megaphone with Kate DiLeo

Tom Schwab (0:00): The things that I consistently see is this deep desire and intentionality around purposeful scaling of the business, healthy scaling of the business, healthy scaling of the brand. The consistent thing that I always see is that people who recognize the power of brand recognize the power of scaling purposefully in a healthy way, and great brands allow you to do that.

Kate DiLeo (0:23): Welcome to the podcast interview marketing show where we explore big ideas with leading experts on how to grow your brand and business with targeted podcast interviews.

Kate DiLeo (0:37): Welcome to the podcast interview marketing show. I'm Tom Schwab, and today we're talking about something that every expert, author, coach and consultant needs to hear in this age of AI noise. Your brand is not a megaphone, it's a conversation. My guest today is Kate DeLeo. She's the author of Muting the Megaphone and she brings a message that's more relevant today than when the book first came out because right now everyone has more tools, more automations, and more content than ever before, but more volume doesn't equal more trust.

Kate DiLeo (1:20): If your message does not resonate, turning it up to 11 only creates more noise. Kate explains how great brands create conversations that convert by getting clear on three things. What you do, the real heart level problem you solve, and why you're different. That clarity matters before you ever step behind a microphone. As a podcast guest, your goal is not to tell your story.

Kate DiLeo (1:50): The goal is to help the right listeners feel seen, heard, and understood so that they naturally take that next step with you, the only choice. Let's get into it. Kate, it's so great to see you. I remember back in 2022 when we were working together, you were promoting the book muting the megaphone, stop telling stories and start having conversations. It was applicable in 2022, and I think it's even more so in the age of AI.

Kate DiLeo (2:21): Can you just sort of

Unknown Speaker (2:22): Yeah.

Kate DiLeo (2:22): Give a background on the big picture from that and what you were trying to accomplish with that manifesto, really?

Tom Schwab (2:30): Yeah. You know, it's funny. I can't believe it's been it's been four years already since that tiny little book tiny but mighty book came out, And really, you kind of call it a manifesto, and and I think that that's true. It was really the the core purpose of that book was to put onto paper the brand methodology that I've been teaching for more than a decade, closer to fifteen years in in the world. And the entire precipice behind it is to really state, listen, your your brand is about having conversations that convert.

Tom Schwab (2:59): And how do you actually put pen to paper and develop a brand message that deeply resonates at a heart level with your buyers and and compels them to want to take action in an authentic way? That's the goal of our brands, and that's what I was trying to put forth in that book, Muting the Megaphone.

Kate DiLeo (3:17): And you hit on so many words there, right? Conversations that convert. Let's dig into that one a little bit because most people think marketing and, hey, grab the megaphone and like the carnival barker at the old carnivals. I'm just going to make noise and talk to everyone.

Unknown Speaker (3:34): Right.

Kate DiLeo (3:35): You know, that's not a conversation that converts. Explain the difference there.

Tom Schwab (3:40): Yeah, it's interesting. I think, especially in, in you and I were talking about this earlier, I think that now more than ever, we're feeling this sense of megaphone marketing that's put in front of us, especially in the world of AI. The, the noise is so amplified right now. Everybody's talking at you. They're trying to put messages in front of you and put pushing them to you versus really allowing buyers to self select into the process with a brand or an organization to go, I feel understood and heard.

Tom Schwab (4:11): You get me. And now I wanna go deeper and understand about your offering, your products, or services. So conversations that converts really means having a brand narrative or a message that actually says very specific things in the right order that psychology shows buyers need to understand to feel heard and welcomed. And those things are a tagline that states, this is what we do. A value proposition statement that says, here's how we solve your deepest heart pain or problem.

Tom Schwab (4:40): And then differentiator statements, which are like those three to five big bullets, Tom, of like how your organization or your brand is different and better than the rest. And what we find based on buyer psychology is that when we lay these things out very cleanly in that order of operations, That's how you have a brand conversation that converts.

Kate DiLeo (5:12): So it becomes more of a magnet just to attract the right people.

Tom Schwab (5:17): Yes. Right fit, right time. Absolutely. Like great brands don't serve everybody. They ultimately are very geared to the one, maybe two, maybe three audiences who you believe as an organization are supposed to make up the the majority of your revenue.

Tom Schwab (5:31): Because you really you can't speak to everybody, can you? I think that would just be almost impossible. You know? Is everybody going to be your buyer? Probably not.

Unknown Speaker (5:42): That's okay. I

Kate DiLeo (5:43): came across something the other day that was interesting. It's this whole physics behind resonance. Right? And it really struck me of you know it's a physics term when something resonates it means one thing vibrates at a certain frequency and it can cause something else to vibrate at a certain frequency. When you say that resonates with me, but the thing is if it doesn't resonate it's just noise and the idea of if it doesn't resonate putting more volume to it it doesn't do anything.

Kate DiLeo (6:17): It just adds more noise. I wonder, do you think that brands are actually causing themselves harm by trying to be heard by everyone and, you know, just telling their story nonstop?

Tom Schwab (6:31): I think they are. I think, you know, listen, there was, there was a moment in time. There was, there was definitely a moment in time, especially for marketing. I'll say that we really latched onto this concept of storytelling and hear me out. Like, love this concept of storytelling.

Unknown Speaker (6:48): I think it is important, but my thesis is that you don't launch into a complex story in the first fifteen to thirty seconds of when you engage somebody. Do you like imagine walking in the room, Tom, like, hi, my name's Kate. Hi, my name's Tom. And you go, Kate, you know, tell me about yourself. What do you do?

Tom Schwab (7:02): Am I going to go launch into some long narrative about, let me tell you about the time I was 16, Bob? No. Instead what happens is, is that we've got to get to some brass texts first before the other person on either end of that conversation is willing and ready to hear the story, the why behind things. So what what's happening here is brands are inundating with so much information. They're pushing their story through ads upon ads, upon email, upon email, or on all of these tactics.

Tom Schwab (7:32): And they're not actually stepping back into creating a messaging brand messaging structure. That's clear. It's precise. It's just enough. And it allows room for that buyer to make an informed decision.

Tom Schwab (7:45): So it's, it's almost a pull versus a push like we're talking about.

Kate DiLeo (7:49): And it's almost this idea of who's the most important person in the story. Right? So if you start with, let me tell you a story about when I was 16 years old, You know, nobody cares about- Nobody cares. Nobody cares, right? As a client once told me, we're all selling Preparation H.

Kate DiLeo (8:07): Nobody cares about our product or service. They care about the pain in the rear end. And so from that standpoint, if you can say, I understand the problem, here's how I see the problem, maybe the story supports that, but you don't start with the story. And I see that being taught to people, just tell your story and the right people will resonate with it. Right?

Kate DiLeo (8:33): My mom doesn't really care about my story. Right? Because, we're all the main characters in our own story.

Unknown Speaker (8:42): That's just it. And, know, and I remember, so there's, there's a great book by a gentleman named Donald Miller called StoryBrand that came out many years ago. Gosh, I think it's almost been, it might've been already eight to ten years. It's been around for a long time. It's a great book.

Tom Schwab (8:54): And his whole precipice was beautiful around, you know, you gotta make the customer the heart of the story. Okay. That that's important. The problem is, is when we get to brass tacks as business leaders, nobody told you how to write the story. In other words, and we all say it differently, and we have all these different communication styles and personality traits and, you know, imagine how hard that is then to create consistency in your brand story, even across a team of five or a team of 20 in an organization between sales teams and marketing teams and so on and so forth.

Tom Schwab (9:24): And so part of what I'm really passionate about, Tom, is, is helping people synthesize that down and actually understand how do you write the darn message? How do you put pen to paper? Because there's a formulaic way in which you can do this that everybody's beating to the same drum of what the customer cares about versus what we ourselves inside the organization may care about and think is super. And that's critical. We're all then gonna speak with the same language to, as you alluded earlier, the right fit audiences.

Tom Schwab (9:56): Not everybody, but the right fit audiences. And when we do that, it's that like attracts like moment like we're talking about. It's that magnetism that's really important.

Kate DiLeo (10:05): Yeah. And it's, as you talk about clarity before conversation, because without that, it's just noise. So what clarity should people have before they go to the market with a conversation?

Tom Schwab (10:17): Yeah, so this is a great question. What we're hitting on now is like, so the strategy before you actually pen to paper and write the darn message, right? So I think there's a couple buckets of work that are really important and I outline this in my book. So before you go and write the coolest tagline and slogan and the coolest value propositions, like, how do you get there? Well, first of all, I think that we intrinsically understand that we need to know our own business strategy and what we're doing, what our product or service offerings are, and what we're trying to accomplish.

Tom Schwab (10:42): I would warrant though, in order to have a brand that really hits the nail on the head and drives revenue, there's two things that are imperative. Number one is you need to know thyself. In other words, you need to understand how your organization sounds and seems in the market today. Not aspirationally who you think you're supposed to be. Well, our competitors do that and they sound like this.

Tom Schwab (11:05): When we get into, how do you sound and seen brands, tone of voice, your brand's personality, the character of your organization, not just your culture by the way, but how do you actually sound? Right? What's your messaging currently like? Knowing yourself is really important because you got to put a stake in the ground. That's step one to really say, yeah, we're bright.

Tom Schwab (11:26): We're gregarious. We're, we have punchy language. We're like, boom. You know, we're kind of bright orange. Or you may say, Hey, we're a bit more reserved and we've, this is who we are and our people love that.

Tom Schwab (11:37): That's great. Wherever you are, know it and own it. Phase two work though, before you write then is you have to know your customers and you have to go deeper than simply saying, well, we serve midsize manufacturing companies. Okay. Well, if you walked into a chamber of commerce meeting and there were a 100 CEOs of a 100 midsize manufacturing companies, how do you know the 10 or 20 or 30, whose business cards you need to actually get?

Tom Schwab (12:02): In other words, how do you qualify ideal customer profile? And I don't think a lot of businesses go to that depth. And what we look at for brand is that you not just need don't just need demographic, but you need psychographics to understand the psychology. Like, who are the humans behind that category? How do they make decisions?

Tom Schwab (12:20): What do they care about it? But here's what I also recommend. It's defining what we call the bottom line heart pain you solve for those people. Actually understanding not what you do for them, but what's the burning platform that's keeping that's what's that thing that's keeping them up at night? Saying here's the reality of what they're facing and how we help them solve that is through our amazing products and services.

Tom Schwab (12:48): When you get these two things done, tone of voice and knowing yourself, knowing deeply what the bottom line heart pain is for your customers, that's when you can really develop a message that's gonna resonate in the world.

Kate DiLeo (13:01): Tone of voice is something that I was just introduced to recently. And I know big corporations spend hundreds of thousands of dollars defining it, but that's the reason you can look at a Mercedes ad and know right away that's a Mercedes as opposed to a Kia, right? A Chevy and a Ford ad look different because there's that tone of voice and so many times people are like, well it's my brand color and I use the Oswald font. It's like, that's part of it but is But this tone of voice and that's something that we worked with because as we got more and more speakers out talking, evangelizing for podcast interview marketing, we all have to have a similar tone of voice. Trying to quantify that before you go to the market and like as you said, if you're not clear with who you serve, what you believe, what you reject, right, all of those things, the market's not going to be either.

Kate DiLeo (14:01): Right? When I hear people say, know, I have a full service digital marketing agency that serves small and mid sized businesses. That tells me nothing. I don't know what you do or who to introduce you to, right? I'm not sure if you can solve my problem or not.

Kate DiLeo (14:24): And so it becomes more and more the noise and just as you would say turning the megaphone up does not help there. It better to get very specific with what you believe and what you want to do.

Unknown Speaker (14:38): I always give the silliest example when I teach this concept to imagine that I ran a tax consultant firm. Okay. Like I always joke. I'm like sexiest topic in the world. Who does not wanna do taxes for a living for people?

Tom Schwab (14:53): No, I'm kidding. To all the tax folks listening, I love you. Thank you. You keep us all in business. Hallelujah.

Unknown Speaker (14:58): Okay. But okay. Imagine though I walk into the room and you are my ideal customer profile. You you know, I serve small business owners. Let's say they're doing about 1,000,000 and up in revenue.

Tom Schwab (15:09): You know, busy CEOs. They got a lot on their plate and, oh, man. I just am so passionate about helping these these businesses that are like 1 to $20,000,000. Really, you know, do it right. Okay?

Tom Schwab (15:19): So I beat you. If I just walked up and you're like, Kate, what do you do? And I just said, well, I do taxes for small businesses. You'd be like, great. And, you know, eyes glaze over and you're walking away.

Tom Schwab (15:30): Not very compelling. But if I flip that just slightly, just slightly, and I talk about what's in it for them and I say, well, I make tax compliance effortless for small businesses. Do you hear the difference? Do you hear the difference in how that message, that brand message of the tagline can totally bring that right person to go really? What do you mean by that?

Unknown Speaker (15:50): How do you do that?

Tom Schwab (15:51): Yeah. And that's the beginning of a brand message. Like I talk about in the book of these core components of your message stack, that when you write them in such a way and you hit on that heart pain, of a sudden that person's naturally drawn in without you having to be a pushy, slimy salesperson. It's kind of lovely

Unknown Speaker (16:08): and it's

Unknown Speaker (16:09): kind of awesome.

Kate DiLeo (16:10): It's interesting. It's like every tactic gets used so much that it becomes ineffective. Right. And learned this in the military, right? Arrows were revolutionary until they came up with gunpowder and all of these things.

Kate DiLeo (16:25): I see so many people that are using tactics that were cutting edge twenty years ago or ten years ago and now people just turn them off, right? The elevator pitch. I help insert ICP with this so that, right? That doesn't tell me anything.

Unknown Speaker (16:44): No, doesn't. It's to the point where you even just sit back and you go, do I even want to see it or hear it or read it or anything else? Probably not. And if I wouldn't want to consume it, why am I saying it?

Unknown Speaker (16:58): And it's this idea of, you can focus, like, as you said, on their pain, on their problem, on their aspiration that causes them, I would say to turn you up or turn you off because

Unknown Speaker (17:09): that's exactly right.

Unknown Speaker (17:10): If already taxes are easy for me, then it's impossible. If I choose not to file taxes, No, I need a, I need a criminal lawyer more than I need an accountant at that point.

Tom Schwab (17:24): Well, and again, you know, when your message is really dialed in and you've built it authentically from who you are and what you're passionate about and how you're showing up in the world and your tone of voice, and it just sounds like you and seems like you. And then you've defined that ideal customer, that right fit target audience. The magic happens because you have to remember that like attracts like and the wrong fit people are going to self select the heck out of that process with you in a hallelujah. Isn't that great? Because we want them out of our pipeline.

Tom Schwab (17:52): We want them away from us. They're going to waste our time. We don't wanna be spinning our wheels. I talk about this idea of convincing versus converting. If we're spending time going after decent fit people or we'll maybe eventually fit people or I bet I could get them over the the fence.

Tom Schwab (18:10): We are wasting precious resources and time and energy and pulling ourselves away as an organization from our zone of excellence, serving right fit people who are ready, who have the money, the know how, the means and the pain where they're like, oh my gosh, have this specific thing. What's it going to cost to fix it? Can we work together? I mean, I don't know about you, Tom, but that's who I want on the phone every single day. That's who I want to serve.

Unknown Speaker (18:36): I hope that's the next book. Right? We'll mute the megaphone and then we're going to blow up the sales funnel.

Unknown Speaker (18:41): There you You

Kate DiLeo (18:44): probably get the same ones. Where do you get the emails up? We can get you, you know, 20 more conversations today. We can get you 50 more leads. Well, that's not what we're optimizing for.

Kate DiLeo (18:55): We're optimizing for profits, for impact, and that comes from ideal clients, not just activity. I love Eric Galper, who's like the world renowned expert in trust based selling. He's like, I reject the idea of the sales funnel. A thousand people in to get one person out, he's like, let me do the sales cylinder. Right?

Unknown Speaker (19:18): Yeah, that's great!

Kate DiLeo (19:20): Five people in, four people out. It's more efficient for everyone in there.

Unknown Speaker (19:25): It is.

Kate DiLeo (19:25): And as you said, should be repelling people that aren't a good fit. Not that you're bad or they're bad, but if it's not a good fit, don't spend all your time trying to convince them and cajole them into being a client because it'll be frustrating to you and the client.

Unknown Speaker (19:45): I will yes and I will say it's not that we don't appreciate and recognize the power of critical sales activity. So I actually started my trade craft in sales, not even in marketing, by the way, I'm really a salesperson through and through because I had to learn back in the market crash many years ago, how to like cold call and sell people on the phone. And somehow that turned into understanding the art and science of brand. I digress. But here's the thing.

Tom Schwab (20:09): When we talk about the sales funnel, it's not about just this massive amount of let's get as many quote unquote leads or conversions or clicks or whatever to drive, you know, things for, you know, to drive actual like pipeline for sales. In fact, any salesperson would tell you any day of the week that what they're looking for is a better qualified prospect that they can talk to. In in other words, did the marketing materials of the sales and brand message you put out there, okay, on your website, through your social, through your ads, and whatever you're doing from a tactical perspective, did it bring in a prospect who self selected in and was like, I love that. That resonates with me. I'm ready now to actually talk pricing and optionality, and I'm I'm further on in the cycle.

Tom Schwab (20:52): That's what we're looking for here with a brand that can actually drive revenue for you is your your close ratio starts to shift. We start to see this massive impact on sales cycle, Tom, where all of a sudden we're seeing even in e commerce situations, we're seeing massive shifts with a strong brand around shopping cart abandonment rates. We're seeing time on-site. A lot of these metrics where we go, wow. Okay.

Tom Schwab (21:17): This is the power of having a brand message that actually resonates with the right people. The wrong people get out the right people move faster. And when that happens, that's a direct impact on top line and bottom line.

Kate DiLeo (21:30): Yes. And it's interesting because sometimes the metrics don't roll down to profits. Right? I can think of, one client that came to us, right? He was getting 900% return on ad spent and it was killing him.

Kate DiLeo (21:45): He was losing money with it because, he was spending it, but then he had to spend all of the time in order to kiss all the frogs before he found one to close. And he realized this isn't scalable and when he went back to the ad agency they're like, Sure it is. All you need to do now is hire a couple sales development reps, spend more on ad send and you'll get more from the bottom. And he's like, that's insanity, right? It's not efficient.

Kate DiLeo (22:16): It's not effective. And he went back and said, I don't need all these sales reps. I can talk to the right people. They will come. The sales cycle is faster.

Kate DiLeo (22:28): They close for a higher initial amount, right? That's what conversations are doing.

Tom Schwab (22:32): Yeah. And I think you're hitting on something that's really important. A lot of the people that I know who are fellow authors or speakers or, you know, have gone through this, this path of not just marketing their business, but also building a personal brand. Let's say they have thought leadership throughout the world. One of the things that I consistently see is this deep, desire and intentionality around purposeful scaling of the business, healthy scaling of the business, healthy scaling of the brand.

Tom Schwab (23:02): Now that can look different for everybody, but whether that's a personal brand, because your goal is to be able to work twenty hours a week from anywhere in the world and sit on a beach. You're like, just Kate, I'm I'm 62 years old. I'm ready for that. Or you're like, hey, I'm 35 years old and I'd love to hit $5,000,000 in ten years and we're scaling towards that and I'm building a team and I'm trying to exit whatever it is. The consistent thing that I always see is that people who recognize the power of brand recognize the power of scaling purposefully in a healthy way, and great brands allow you to do that.

Tom Schwab (23:33): They don't push you so far over your skis where all of a sudden you have the complete inability to operate and deliver on the promise of the brand. That's paramount. You always build a brand for here and now so that you can deliver on it. And that's what great brands do.

Kate DiLeo (23:52): So let's dive in a little bit because one of the things you said is that conversations convert. I totally agree with that, but stories don't, but yet the vast majority of the world is just go out there and tell your story, tell stories. Where is the disconnect on?

Unknown Speaker (24:10): Okay. If I could put it at the highest level, I love to just want I just want to frame this as is that I'm not telling you stories are bad. I'm telling you it's about order of operations. I want you to think of a big old iceberg or pyramid here, Tom. What I'm really getting at is at the tip top of your iceberg message that converts to get somebody to want to take the next step towards buying.

Tom Schwab (24:30): There's three things that go at the top in that brand conversation. Tagline value proposition statement, differentiator statements. Now I call that the brand trifecta. These topics, these concepts have been around for, for decades. Right?

Tom Schwab (24:41): Okay. So what happens is, is once a buyer hits that and they see that they understand it. Psychology shows they're self selecting indigo deeper AKA conversion moment. And once that happens, what we see is that the next layer down of information that somebody contextually needs are things like, tell me how it works and what's included. And so logically, that's the kind of information as a business you're delivering things like, you know, product service details, maybe proprietary process or methodology information.

Tom Schwab (25:14): Maybe it's audience specific messaging where you're like, well, if you're a CRO, here's how we help you. And if you're a CEO, here's how we help you. Tom, it's actually only after that layer of messaging that real storytelling comes into play because it's what we consider to be more long form content. It's contextual, but it's the why behind it or how the product was built or the history of the organization or other types of pieces, case studies, white papers, all of that can have a lot of story in it. But you have to remember that that your buyers don't necessarily care about all of that until they've actually gotten themselves to the point where they're pretty entrenched in the buying process.

Tom Schwab (25:50): They don't care and that's okay. So what my recommendation is, is you need to move story down. Story is not your conversion engine. Story is your contextual engine. It's the engine that actually allows for continued context for those who need it, recognizing by the way, not everybody's going to need to hear your story in order to buy.

Kate DiLeo (26:10): That's, that's awesome because if you're just doing story, you're stopping most of the people right there so I love that that conversations convert and stories don't.

Unknown Speaker (26:22): Yeah.

Kate DiLeo (26:23): So as we're wrapping this up right podcast interview marketing show people that are listening to this so they can get more results from every podcast appearance you've been a guest you've launched books you're you're getting ready to launch another one what would you tell someone especially in this age age of AI to think about as they're going on that next interview?

Tom Schwab (26:49): You know, think first off, you know, remembering that that podcast interviews are so imperative right now with the way that our audiences and the marketplace as a whole, the way that we consume content, podcasts are, are more relevant than ever in this age of noise. We, we really want conversations that we ourselves can listen to that bring a level of granularity and depth and personalization that it's really important for us. So for me, you know, not only was, you know, doing podcast interviewing very successful for me four years ago, but it's going to be a part of my whole philosophy moving forward with this next book. One thing that I would say is as you're moving into the next interview for your own, for your own podcast interview, take a step back and really understand what are the big bullets I want to get across that aren't just about me, but that are going to really help those listening. What what can I do for them?

Tom Schwab (27:40): How do I solve their problem? How am I different and relevant for them? And I think if you hit on those bullets, it's going to naturally feel like a conversation between the listener and you as you're on that podcast interview is going to create rapport. It's going to create that magnetism and that attraction that's hopefully going to bring in right fit people for you after listening to you.

Kate DiLeo (28:01): Yeah. Kate, what's ordinary to you is amazing to others. How can people get in touch with you?

Tom Schwab (28:07): Oh, well, you know, honestly, I keep it pretty simple. I think you can find me on LinkedIn and you also can visit my website, which is kateadeleo.com. And so if you have questions as you're listening related to this topic on brand, feel free to send me a message. We'd love to understand, you know, what questions you may have about the idea of brand in general.

Kate DiLeo (28:26): Highly recommend it. Like I said, the book that you wrote in 2022, Muting the Megaphone, more applicable today in the AI age of AI, than ever. And if you go back to katedeleo.com, you can also find out about the new book that'll be, coming out. Kate, thank you so much.

Unknown Speaker (28:47): Thanks so much, Tom.

Unknown Speaker (28:48): What a powerful conversation with Kate DeLeo. The big takeaway for me is this, stories have their place, but clarity, that's what comes first. Too often experts show up on interviews just ready to tell their story, to explain the journey and prove their credibility. But the listener, well, they're asking a very different question. Do you understand my problem?

Kate DiLeo (29:16): And are you the one that can help me solve it? That's where Podcaster and B Marketing becomes so powerful. You're not there to convince everyone. You're there to connect with the right people, your super consumers. The people who hear your message and think, wow, that's exactly what I've been struggling with.

Kate DiLeo (29:37): As Kate said, great messaging helps the right people self select in and the wrong people self select out. So here's the next step. Before your next podcast interview, write down three bullets. What do you do? What heart level pain do you solve?

Kate DiLeo (29:56): And what makes your approach different? If you can answer those questions clearly, your interview will feel less like a pitch and more like a conversation, a conversation that converts. Because podcast interviews don't work because you talk louder. They work because you talk clearly, clearly to your ideal super consumers.