This ONE Book will Revitalize Your Business!

I picked up this book in 2022 because an incredibly intelligent friend and business owner of mine had written it. I had no idea what it was about as we discussed it very little before it was released. She found out that I had also written a chapter in a business book and we decided to support one another and buy each other's new masterpieces. I didn’t realize that reading hers would have changed the direction of my business forever.

Muting the Megaphone is not only a short read that gives you loads of information on how to shape the messaging of your brand but it’s also full of entertainment, stories about the author’s life, failures and successes and real life experiences. I couldn’t put the bloody thing down despite how busy I was.

I thought I was happy with my brand message for my own marketing agency but after reading a few pages I decided to pick up a pen and notebook and start writing based on her advice in the book. Not only was her brand strategy easy but it was fun and eye opening. I learned a new way to think about my business, to describe my brand and how to ask people to become a client without “selling”. It was like a wave of clarity crashed into me and it made me want to read more and write more. 

One of my favorite questions she asks in the book is “If your brand were a person, who would it be?”  

When this question was first presented to me in the book I skipped it because I had no idea. But as I thought about it more and more over the next few hours and days that passed I realized that mine would be Melissa McCarthy, a bubbly, bright and fun, super talented actress, full of spunk, confidence, sarcasm and intelligence. My brand colors are a bright yellow and black with a honeybee and the vibrance of the yellow brings a lot of that personality to life. I thought it was a perfect fit for my persona identification.

As the book went on, and without giving it all away, the most productive part was the information that goes right on the homepage of your website, for an example. What do you want people to learn about your business or brand the second they land on your page?  How can you convey that message effectively? 

Kate walks you through this process beautifully calling it the brand trifecta and making it so easy that anyone on this earth can “build a brand that wins more work”.

She teaches you how to create the perfect tagline that tells the world this is exactly what you do. 

She goes on to explain how to create a value proposition statement. This is the way you would identify the pain in your target audience and explain how your product or service is the solution to their pain. 

Following the value proposition statement is your differentiators.  What makes you better than your competitors? Why should your prospects choose you over them?  Why are your products or services special and why should anyone invest their hard earned cash in them? 

And the point of conversion answers the question a prospect may ask you “so how does it work?” or How do we get started?

These brand trifectas should be created for each one of your products or services and she teaches you how to organize them based on your different target audience segments. It is incredibly helpful and should be a component of every business owner’s brand guide. 

I knew the theory behind most of these things, being a marketing agency owner myself, but the questions she asks you in the book made it more clear and easy to extract from your brain. 

If you don’t have Muting the Megaphone on your desk today, I would highly recommend Kate DiLeo’s book to bring clarity and simplicity to your brand so you can start building a brand that wins more business.