Company. Cultural. Personal. Brands matter to your customers and your bottom line. They are the path of least resistance to revenue.
This week, we’re giving you the whys and hows for creating a better brand for your company (and yourself).
Our guest is Kate DiLeo, the Chief Brand Architect with brand strategy firm, Ennobble, and an expert who has worked with over 200 companies across more than 20 sectors to improve their brands.
Kate has developed a proprietary method for helping organizations and leaders identify and articulate their brand messaging and she shares her strategies with us, including:
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Which questions to answer
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How to deploy your new brand messaging
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Using your brand to find the right customers and hire the right employees
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And so much more
Some branding professionals may stop after the mission/vision/value statements are written, but Kate gives us the important next steps as well – getting your tag line into everyone’s vocabulary and the importance of engaging more than just your marketing and sales employees. There is so much in this episode you can start using today. Don’t miss out, listen now!
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Kate DiLeo: Part of your brand, Nicole’s, going to sell part of your brand is going to humanize. And CEOs take the time to get this done, are highly empowered to lead authentically, to forward think and innovate, and to bring up the next generation who’s going to help them run the race.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Vibrant Leadership podcast with leadership speaker and consultant Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Welcome to the Vibrant Leadership podcast. My name is Nicole Greer. They call me the vibrant coach and I have none other than Kate DiLeo on the show today. She is the chief brand architect with brand strategy firm Ennoble. She is a pragmatist who believes that brand is the path of least resistance to revenue. And she is passionate about helping organizations create compelling common ground with their customers. Kate’s proprietary process quickly and effectively helps her clients articulate who they are, why they are different and how they solve their customer’s problem. And she does all this in only four to six weeks. So she’s like a genius. And the proof of Kate’s unique approach has led her to work with over 200 companies across 20 sectors, in helping them craft authentic brands that get more prospects to the table, more users who click and more customers who buy. So I cannot wait to interview with Kate. How are you doing, Kate?
Kate: Thank you. I’m great, Nicole, and it’s an honor to be here today. So thank you again for having me today.
Nicole: Yes, it’s absolutely my delight. Well, we start out with the same question every time, which is, what is your definition of leadership?
Kate: My definition of leadership is living life on purpose and living life on brand. And the reason that I say that is because in order to lead others, you must know how to authentically lead yourself. And it really starts with you doesn’t it. It really starts with taking a step back and looking at yourself as an individual. Regardless, if you’re leading a team or you’re a solo entrepreneur, or whatever it may be. Great leaders understand intrinsically who they are. And they live with intention, they live on purpose. And once they know that purpose, and they’re rooted in that purpose, they then make the choice to live it on purpose and on brand, meaning not swaying to the left or the right. But really staying true to who they are, what they view is the best for themselves.
Nicole: Yeah, and you know, what you just shared, which was great. I also feel like, it’s consistent, too, right? Like, we all want to be with a leader who’s like I can, I don’t want to say I can predict everything they’re gonna do. But I like to a degree of, you know, comfort knowing this person is going to be consistent, right?
Kate: Yes. Absolutely.
Nicole: Yeah, yeah. So I want to talk about brand in two ways with you today, because I think that leaders need to understand that hello, your organization needs a very clear brand. So let’s start with like leaders listening because they want to understand brand better. So tell me, why is brand absolutely essential as like a strategic thing inside an organization?
Kate: Yeah, that’s a really good question. That’s a big question. And I’ll start by saying to I think many of us, regardless of where you would sit inside an organization, we hear this word brand, and it can just sound so nebulous, right, so fluffy. So like, oh, pie in the sky marketing, but actually, okay, my real firm belief, Nicole, is that brand is the path of least resistance to revenue. And so everything that I do is around this philosophy that you know, you can tell your customer in 15 seconds or less, whether it’s in a conversation, you’re on a golf course, or you’re in a Zoom Room, or they hit your homepage of your website, when you can say to them, hey, this is what we do. This is how we solve your problem. And this is how we’re different from the competition.
That is the stuff that’s going to provoke them authentically, to go, wow, that’s different. I want to have a conversation with you. And so really, again, brand is critical. From the lens of revenue generation. If your message is off point, because no matter what you’re doing from a marketing standpoint, or a sales standpoint. It’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks, you have to go back to the beginning and really address who are we going after? What are we trying to say that’s authentic to us? And how can we create a message that’s really clearly speaking to what’s the heart pain we solve for our customers. So that’s what the power of brand is.
But there’s another big piece here that I think leaders need to recognize. Brand is also critical, once you understand your message, your brand of what you’re saying to the world, your promise, that is also the thing that’s gonna drive culture in your organization. So I talk with a lot of leaders as well about the fact that, you know, at the end of the day, brand really drives purpose, purpose drives culture, culture drives brand. And it’s cyclical, and so if you’re not staying in, tune to the message you’re putting out in the world for employees, for your customers to say, you guys, this is what we’re rallying around this is who we are what we do what we solve in the world, our mission vision values, chances are, you’re not going to have a strong sense of purpose in your organization.
And then with that, your culture can falter. However, companies that are doing really well, consistently align their employee base, and their leadership base around, this is where we’re going, this is what we’re doing. And that creates that common purpose, which drives culture of innovation. Drives culture of high retention, all the things that we know right now in the 21st century are really critical for the organization from a cost and talent standpoint. Once that culture is bolstered, that culture is going to reinstate, and renew and re drive that brand statement again. So those are the two areas for brand.
Nicole: I think what you’re saying is absolute genius. Because you know, I have talked to people who are inside a large organization, or even a small organization, and they don’t understand what how their work ties to the overall destiny of the company, right? Like they don’t get the connection point. Like me doing this really well affects this outcome, you know, and so I might not have as much energy around my work or desire to do well, because I don’t understand how it all works and making me do this work. I just do it. Who cares, right? So if I, if I understand that I’m solving people’s problems in the world, I can get more inspired by things as well, I think that’s fantastic.
Yep. So so I think you’ve kind of opened up another little box you might want to play in. So there’s this idea that my company has to have a brand. But then also my culture ends up with a brand. And then like you, as an individual have a brand. So I’m hearing kind of like three things now, which is fantastic. So you said that in getting our brand, going the right direction, I got to figure out what problem I solve. So can you share maybe not the details of how you work with an organization that might be some top secret priorities in there or something. But what what is your process for helping people figure out their brand, the first thing is to figure out who they solve and who they solve it for. But then how do you add brand to that?
Kate: Yeah, that’s such a great question. So the process I think starts with and the way that I work, by the way, is really a workshop program where I’m pulling the client in, right? Because I think, unfortunately, a lot of us as marketers are brand experts, it’s really hard as we get put into this box of oh, they’re just going to come on in do a two hour intake with us and swoop away. And you know, a $95,000 later, they’re gonna go, here’s your brand. Well, by the way, if anybody’s gone through that process, it’s unfortunate because brand is not built in a box. So you have to you have to sit down and talk about the following things, I think the first thing you really do need to articulate is what the heck is your purpose and your why?
And so for me, I think doing some intake questions of really asking, why did this company get built? What exactly are we trying to solve? Why do we exist? What problems specifically your problems just specifically do we solve in the marketplace? Who are we actually serving and why? And getting that nailed down they and then you also need to know, who are we authentically as a company with culture, character, personality, tone of voice, like some of those other fluffy pieces that I is like a language person are going to look at when you write your messaging. So you got to know you. But then you need to this is the piece that gets missed the most, you have to know your audiences. And it’s not enough to say, Nicole, we serve mid size manufacturers, Kate.
And I go that’s great, Bob. If you walk into the room of 100 C suite leaders of 100 mid sized manufacturers, how do you know the 10, whose business cards you need to get? And every time Bob’s going to give you a blank stare. My question to you is how do you define your target audiences? Also in the world of marketing your personas. Have you defined it to a level where you’re not just looking at size, organization, sector, employee count? Things of that nature? Have you defined? What are the cultural attributes we’re going for? What’s the level of bureaucracy in our ideal client? Who as a decision maker cuts the check, that we want to talk to? Wait a second, who’s the one that we need to get on the phone? How many layers of red tape do we need to go through? Are they coachable? Are they teachable? Are they open to us even coming in and asking questions?
Start to define for second who do you actually want to work with? Because in the world of 100 mid size manufacturers, your job is to actually really figure out who’s the best one that’s got the right level of pain and the right cultural attributes that’s going to immediately go wow, I need exactly what you offer. So you have to know you, you have to deeply know your audience. And once you define that, this is the kicker. You have to really ask yourself, okay, what is the bottom line heart pain we solve for our customer? Said differently, we can often want to write a brand that says, we provide these services for these people. And you’re going if I were to read that I go that does nothing for me right? We see this all the time.
Instead, we want to flip the narrative with the message that says, mister or miss or person, customer. Here’s the bottom line heart pain we sell for you. And oh, by the way, how we happen to do that is through our products and services. So we want to flip it to say, we get you, we’re gonna solve this pain in your life. How we do that is through this great technology, this great product, this great service, whatever it might be. So that’s the secret to writing brand, what comes out of there, Nicole, and I promise I’m wrapping up is going to be writing your actual brand statements.
So guys, then that literally then translates into writing a tagline, writing a value proposition statement, writing differentiator statements, writing mission, vision values. And then you go, oh, this is the actual language our sales team can use and our marketing team can use in our emails, and that will go on our homepage. So it should be sticky enough for you to have actual sentences in a very specific order that every single time provoke your customer. But it starts with know you. Why in the world, do you even exist? And really ask that lately? Who the heck are you are serving and why? What’s the deepest level heart pain? And then writing a message that speaks to the heart pain first.
Nicole: Yeah, I love it. Okay, so everybody, just to make sure you got all that, you know, the first thing is your purpose, right? And your why. Who you’re serving and why. Figure out the heart pain that person is experiencing, and then put together a statement of how you actually address that heart pain. Yeah, you know, I think sometimes people think that businesses, it’s just like, oh, they’re just trying to make a lot of money. And it’s like, well, you know, it’s a business, we are trying to make a lot of money. However, I find that most organizations have a very, like high calling. Yeah, in terms of like what they’re doing for people, right? So it’s kind of like, you know, you you solve the problem of like, who are we? Why do we exist? And how do we how do we help our customers in a way that it helps me get it nailed down and succinct, right? And so what happens to the CEO who gets his brand in place? What happens to him, Kate, when you get him in place or her in place.
Kate: I will tell you what, the CEO, the leader, the founder, that gets the brand in place for the organization, is completely set up to lead with a level of authenticity and excitement and fire that they’ve never been able to do before. Really, this is an empowering, emboldening process to get your brand done. And to do it right. Because at the end of the day, what you’ve done is you’ve actually written the language, that’s probably taken the 35 million ways that you have it up here, and really synthesize it. I’ll tell you this, too.
What I often find in CEOs and founders that I work with, is that going through this process, and tactically understanding how they can give this language to the employees, how they can deploy it across their marketing channels, and their sales channels, and all these things, really empowers them, and it reconnects them back to the reason that they even started this company, or why they’re leading this company in the first place. And I have to tell you, people buy from people. And so brand is your ability to capture that. And we often focus on things like I gotta get a catchy tagline, I would agree. You need to catch tagline, you know that stuff.
But guess what? Your vision and mission statements and your values are equally important, because what they do is they humanize your organization. When people see that when they hit the homepage of your website, they go, I like these people. These are my kind of people, I want to do business with them. So part of your brand Nicole’s going to sell, part of your brand is going to humanize. And CEOs to take the time to get this done, are highly empowered to lead authentically, to forward think and innovate, and to bring up the next generation who’s going to help them run the race.
Nicole: Yeah, I love what you said. So don’t miss what she said this is worth repeating. She said that brand will help you sell but it also helps you humanize your organization. Yeah, you know, I tell people all the time about when I’m training or doing whatever. And I talk about how important human resources are, or the human human factor inside an organization. I mean, like if we all got like, raptured out of here, the aliens come, whatever’s gonna happen. I mean, you’re just gonna have an empty building, you know, I mean, it’s the people. Yeah. And that is that is so so important. I love that. Okay, so um, so this empowered leader gets the brand straight for their company, and they’ve got the tagline and all the marketing things that go with it. Then what does the leader need to do him or herself? That makes sure the brand gets kind of instilled right so we could spend money like you say time and energy coming up with this brand, but then what are the key actions the leader has to do to get it in there, solid, like it’s part of the DNA.
Kate: Yes. Such a great question. So I think that it’s important, I’m going to probably group this in a couple buckets to give some clarity. So in general, if you’re a leader that’s taking your team through a branding exercise, right, or somebody within the organization, even if you’re not the CEO, or C suite leader, and somebody says, go build the brand, like, okay, great. And so you’re you’re tasked with building this brand. Okay. At the end of the day, there’s a couple buckets of work that have to happen to entrench the brand and the organization and to see traction with that brand. Okay, so the first set of work is work that we all would probably think of, which is deployment of the message from a marketing and sales standpoint.
So for example, I walk my clients through, here’s what needs to get updated on the homepage, about page and services pages of your website, based on what we wrote. Here’s how you update your social media pages and bios. Here’s how you can update your advertising and marketing pages. You know, your Facebook, your your email marketing, so weren’t you I think we all understand. If you change the brand, you change the message, you have to deploy it to your customer base, we get that. So there’s that set of work that does need to happen. And the number one detriment that I’ve seen is company spend an arm and a leg on a brand. And then they sit on it for six months, because they’re waffling on what agency they should work with to go and update this and that.
Where they say, oh, well have to have a brand new website. Well, do you have to have a brand new website? Or can you use the maybe not so perfectly pre website but update the messaging and see a higher conversion rate because your message resonated with people? So I really try and arm CEOs with move beyond trying to do all the pre stuff right away. Tactically speaking, what do you need to do to get your message in the world? Also, I will tell you this, on the sales side, your message becomes the elevator pitches for everybody in the organization, especially your sales team. Anybody in that business development role, your C suite leaders that are knocking doors and rubbing elbows in the zoom rooms, right?
These elevator pitches are critical to arm them to and I have most companies I teach them? Have you printed it and literally sent it to them to have by their guests. Do they have the language literally on a piece of paper? Do they have it on a calendar or notebook that you’re sending to them? Is it on a swag card of some sort, like get it in front of them every step of the way, so that they can speak it and it becomes rhythmic and it becomes their language. And so you’re all speaking a singular language. That’s where the marketing and sales standpoint. But if you’re gonna miss a big memo, if we circle back to that culture piece, Nicole, if you don’t also work to entrench this in the organization for those that aren’t maybe in a sales role.
And one of the best ways to do this is to actually do like townhall meetings. And so instead of just sending out a mass email, please, please, please, please do not just send out a mass email saying we updated our tagline. Nobody’s gonna care. One of the best things that you can do is, seriously try and create some small town hall meetings or zoom rooms or something to just even allow employees to ask questions and to do like a 30 minute recap to say, here’s the process we went through. Here’s some of the before and the after. And here’s why we chose some of this language. And here’s how you fit into this. Here’s how you fit into this. This is what we’re trying to do. We’re going to send you all you know, a card. So you’ve got this next to your desk, this is what we are going to live, breathe, eat and sleep in our organization.
And then open it for questions, open it for feedback, let them weigh in on it. Most companies, employees feel like marketing is this bubble that they can’t touch. And often on this pedestal, and if you open the doors to getting feedback on your brand, and really engage people to say I love that, or oh, that reminds me of the story when I first started. It’s going to click at a culture level. You’re going to reignite purpose and people whether they are running the mail, doing the counting for the CFO, you’re going to reignite them. So those are the two big things. As a leader, get the tactics on the marketing and sales side. But please, please, please engage your people in more than an email as I recommend town halls.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. Okay, so two things, you got to deploy the marketing because hello, the marketing has to get out. So people read it and see it and I love what you said about it’s got to be out there. And I think this whole thing of like getting the elevator pitch in front of people that card in front of people. Yeah, that’s fantastic. And, you know, I do some sales training. And I talk about writing scripts all the time. And people are like I don’t want things to be canned. And I’m like, well, that’s that’s not what I’m saying. You know, we need to have like, the essence of what we need to say. So it matches the brand to your point, and then you can freestyle around that but you can’t have everybody totally freestyling.
Kate: That’s right. Right. And you know what’s so funny is and I get this question, I get this question a lot like, Kate, why is it that we have like a sales team? And some of them that like are just, I don’t know how they close, but they just like, are such a natural, and you have others that struggle with it right? There’s often this gap. And in some people, you can analyze it to kingdom come you guys as far as oh, it’s a talent gap. Not necessarily. Because often what’s going on here is there’s probably one person from an EQ or language standpoint that just somehow is so quick on their toes, and knows how to repetitively like ask that say the right things and go down to trail it because if they see it.
Not all of us see it, right. So scripting comes becomes really helpful when you put the brand message in front of people. Because what you’re just trying to give them a dip to something is like a formula. Give people formulas, because not everybody learns and processes language and remembers language on the fly the way that your other superhero sales people do in the organization. So if you can give everybody a very, very systematic template to say this is our tagline. By the way, Bob, our tagline answers the question of oh, what do you do?
That’s what our tagline does. So somebody asks you what you do, we’re gonna say the tagline. And then if somebody says, oh, well, what problem do you solve? We’re going to see the value prop Bob. And here it is. Like very clearly helping people understand, here’s how we use this. It’s so powerful, you’re going to see that also from a sales and marketing standpoint, the gap close on skills and abilities to actually like win work. Because people are saying the same thing.
Nicole: I absolutely love it. That’s fantastic. Okay, so that is culture, that a lead, excuse me, that is a brand that a leader can put in place, right, you can get a brand for a company, she can get the brand for her company and get it in place, and start really making things hum. Don’t miss this. You were totally talking about getting the revenue up, right? Yep, getting the sales team going. Okay. Now, we touched on the culture, right. So now that this is kind of seeping into the culture, we’re very clear on our values, we’re very clear on you know, what our personality is, I had an aha, while you were talking about, you know, we’ll probably start to also get the right people working here.
Kate: That’s correct.
Nicole: Right? Right. So if my, if my customer see my brand, then potential employees also see the brand. And so it either repels those that don’t like our brand, that’s fine. Or it draws in those that see our brand and go, oh, I would fit in there. Right. So will you kind of speak to, you know, like the brand and how it helps us recruit the right people?
Kate: Absolutely. Yeah, I think, you know, employees or prospective employees do go out to your website to try and see like, does this align with my mission, vision, values. Does this, what I want as a prospective employee or somebody as a professional, is this an organization that’s really going to support me? My goals. Is this a place where I can grow. This is a place where I can thrive and be a part of something bigger in your brand, if you’re really clear about, again, not only having language that can sell to the end customer, but that language that we’ve talked about that humanizes the organization, people buy from people and people work with people.
You know, I think we get thrown right now a lot of tendency to say that we all want to work for innovative companies. But some, but the reason that a lot of people can leave innovative companies is because they don’t treat people as people, you have the best ideas in the world. But if it’s not a clear understanding of how you have these people fit, and that they’re going to thrive, they’re out the door as quickly as they came in. So I think your brand, it’s it is really important to recognize that it is there to attract again. And it’s a it’s a key piece for talent acquisition and retention, and even succession planning. Recognizing that, wow, we have a strong mission statement, a vision statement, we now understand how we can grow and groom XYZ leader to help fulfill that vision.
To help fulfill that mission. And we have a we have a sense of trajectory of what we’re trying to accomplish. So again, you need to have it out there. You need to have it in front of the world. And I can’t say this enough. If you’re posting job postings, and you’re doing all these things. It should be in your postings, it should be leading them back to the same message on your website. The more that you can put this in front of people in their first interaction or glimpse of who you are as an organization, the faster that you’re going to have talent go that’s different. That’s refreshing. I like that. That’s the goal of brand. It’s all about provocation, and bringing people to the table.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I do some recruiting and whenever I interview, the company, I get the mission, the vision, the values, and instead of just saying we’re hiring an office administrator, I kind of changed the tone of how it reads. It’s almost like a conversation, like come be part of what we’re doing. And then you know, again, it draws in the right people. And gets things going. I love what you said also about getting the employee a trajectory based on the mission, the vision, the values, the brand. So, if you think of a particular story, while we’re talking, I would love to hear about how like a company did any of these things. I would love to hear that the one that popped in my mind was Tony Shea. He’s no longer with us here on planet Earth, unfortunately.
But he had Zappos, which was a online retailer. And I, what I loved about Tony Shea is that he had this thing called the culture book. But his culture, his brand, the way he did, everything was so integrated. And in that culture book, he would have his core values, and one of them was be a little weird. And I’m like, okay, so everything that Zappos did was just a little bit weird. And so I think that was just fantastic branding all the way through. And if you could, even if you didn’t work there, you could write them and say, please send me a culture book. So I did. And I got this big, fat culture book in the mail. Which isn’t that weird that they would send those out?
Kate: It’s amazing. I mean, you know, again, I think the tendency is that, oh, you spent all this money and time writing a brand. And then it lives in somebody like Microsoft documents somewhere on some marketer’s computer, you know, come on, writes on your SharePoint guys, it’s on your, it’s on the shared drive. Alright, come on. Now pull back for a second here. There are cheap, ineffective ways to get your brand in front of every employee in the organization. I have clients that I had a client a few years ago, he was so darn funny. He’s a hockey freak. And so what he did is he had these like hockey pucks that were like little mouse’s that were made for everybody that had their tagline on one side, and their values on the other.
And then he had mouse pads made and so he shipped them out. I think he spent 15 bucks 20 bucks, an employee. He had a team of 50 people, right, choose your price point. But simple stuff that everybody just giggled at. They loved it that right? You know, it’s like personal. But it was practical, too. So if you’re thinking about deploying your brand, one of the things to remember as well is make it practical. What can your employee have? That’s front and center every day in front of them? may not be a Yeti mug, you’re not doing Yeti mugs for everybody. But what would they have? What would they use? I had a client that did car chargers, people loved them.
Or that now they have the power, the car charge, you guys, what was that, like eight years ago, right? So now you’re like the wireless chargers that you can just put the phone on. I mean, get creative here, instead of just having your company name on there, hold on, put messaging in there that’s sharp and you’re like, oh, I love that. Other people will see it. So get creative on that way as far as deploying that to really build up the culture. And I love the sentiment of what you’re talking about with the culture book. I think that by the way, another company that another couple companies that have done a really good job of this, whether we like them or hate them.
Amazon has done a great job of having their culture front and center in front of every single employee. So even if you are driving for Amazon, you know, their company culture and their mission, vision, values. That’s pretty incredible. And this is an international organization. I know they’re small companies that consistently run monthly town halls, just 20 minute town halls to circle back to it, or at the beginning of every meeting. They have somebody like read off their their mission and vision statement and their tagline. So somebody takes turns. These little ways make a huge difference in empowering your employees to own it.
Nicole: I love it. Yeah, as when you were saying that, I just thought of this thing. So holding in my hand, this charge, this adapter that I stick in the side of my laptop, and it has four more USB ports on here, because you got to have all your stuff plugged in. And it came from the National Speakers Association and it says recharge your business. So they’re telling me hey, you know, this is how you get connected. So I love the idea of the of the mouse pad and things like this. I think that is absolutely seriously helpful. And this is a seriously helpful thing. I’m sitting right here using this thing every day.
Kate: How many how many of us know the difference between junk swag that we got from a client or partner or vendor, and then the kind that you like, if you lose that you’re gonna be so upset. You’re going to be googling how you find another one. I mean, when you find really good things like that, it’s actually pretty cool. So yeah.
Nicole: All right. So, we’ve talked about the company getting a brand, right? And then we’ve talked about the culture and now let’s talk about leaders themselves having a brand so my story is Kate, is that I was at this meeting, and it was a coaching meeting and they were like you give a word to this person that describes what it’s like to experience them. And so I got the word vibrant, and I just ran with it. I was like, oh my gosh, it was such a gift to me that somebody called me, that she’s very vibrant. Well, now it is the whole brand, right? But you know, it’s working when he says, what’s your name again? You’re the vibrant something. What is it? Aren’t you the vibrant gal? And I’m like, yeah. And so that’s fantastic. So leaders get your head wrapped around this, you need like a brand. So how does a human being get a brand? Mine was kind of gifted to me, but how do you get one? What should I do to get one?
Kate: That’s such a great question. So good question. It’s, by the way, I do love that they can call you like you’re the vibrant, the vibrant lady. I randomly started and I had no idea where this came from, for the life of me. All of a sudden, I would get on like, connect call from a connect from you know, like, so and so introduce you to so and so, to so and so. Like five people got on the line right. I get on the call. And this has happened multiple times, they go, oh, so you’re the brand queen? And I’m like, what are you talking about? Oh, you’re the brand lady. You’re the brand queen. And I just, you know, I sat there and just laugh. I said, apparently, it’s great to meet you, you know, who are you? Um, but I will tell you, reputation goes very far. And sometimes for those of us that maybe don’t have this big social media presence.
I know so many amazing leaders that go Kate, you think I have time to be on LinkedIn. And then I know other leaders that it’s part and parcel, you know, with their daily activities. And regardless of maybe where you’re at on the spectrum, I just want to encourage you, you do have a brand already. It’s who you are. It’s who you are, as you show up in the world. What’s often really difficult though, is to articulate that story. And to write that story, we do a very good job of writing a resume, like you could put your resume out on LinkedIn never go, Wow, they’ve got great background. But that doesn’t necessarily tell the story of who you are, and why you’re different. And so for example, for me, people call me the brand lady. But the other thing that I get called all the time as the accidental brand strategist.
And I had put that out on LinkedIn as my title, because I didn’t start off going to school for branding. Branding kind of found me in my first sales job after the market crashed, and I was cold calling IT professionals to sell them training classes, right? Because that’s a smart idea. Not at all, when you’re 22. But neither here nor there. My story was one that where I’ve come into my career, I’m an accidental brand strategist, I’ve had this exact path, like every other person in the planet, especially being an older millennial. And the reality is, is that was a part of something that I started to hear resonated with everybody that I talked to. So you need a personal brand. And it starts with your story. It starts with really understanding how did you get to where you are? What really made you unique and different in that what will you come through.
And I think recognizing that you also do need to own your expertise. Own where you come from, and you have to own your expertise to be able to say, wow, I have worked with XYZ number of brands and over XYZ sectors. That’s not cocky. That’s confident because it’s truth. And there’s a difference in how you can approach that right. You can let the facts speak for themselves. And not be afraid that by building a brand that you’re being pretentious. Building a brand is not pretentious, it’s it is going to be provocative, but provocative is what you’re going for. Provocative is the thing that gets the other person to go. They’re different, I would love it to talk with them.
They sound like a great human. Leaders, you have to have this nailed down. It’s critical for your personal growth, and to help support the growth of your organization, by the way, it does both, okay. You’ve got to start with a really great personal story bio. Where you’ve come from, why you love what you do. What’s your expertise, you can write that. And then invite people to want to have a conversation, you’ve done a beautiful thing. Now after that, Nicole, if they really want to get savvy and wordsmithy. I mean, they can work with a brand person or copywriter to really like, do what they’ve got to do. But most people they can write this on their own.
Nicole: Yeah, I absolutely love what you’re saying. So I think too, is, you know, the the part about the story, I think that is so essential. And I think sometimes leaders don’t want to tell their story, because they might seem like they’re bragging or full of themselves, or whatever. But here’s what I know. I mean, like, I’m much older than you. I mean, but when I was younger, when I was trying to get up where I was trying to go, you know, try to get promoted and stuff. I always I would always think to myself, how did he get where he is? What did he do? What did he study? What books does he read, you know, I mean, I wanted to know how my boss got in that position, so I could do the same thing. So it’s really, when you get your brand straight, you get your stories together, and you can tell people where you’ve been and your area of expertise. It gives me hope that I can get that same stuff in place. Right. So I love that. Yeah, absolutely.
Kate: I think along that note, it’s really important to remember that telling your story with authenticity is very different than trying to sell somebody through your story. And people can sniff the difference a mile away. Like let’s be honest, like we all know when we’re reading a sales pitch versus a story. There’s times and places for sales pitches, you guys, and that’s where your website can come into play and you’re running ads because your buyer, by the way already knows that they’re coming to you for a sales message, okay? They’re not stupid, okay?
They’re like I’m here to buy, let me look at this. However, if they’re connecting with you on LinkedIn, that’s probably not the place for you to have some really like buy now type of a message. This is where you share who you are, where you’ve come from, what makes you a human that they want to meet. So knowing that and being okay with the fact that yes, they’re tied, there are places and times where you’re there to sell. That’s okay, you’re here in the business world. And then there’s times in places where it’s more about your personal story.
And knowing that your personal story is incredibly powerful, because it may be the thing that somebody else needs to hear, to literally spark them into their journey. And so you can’t ever take for granted how little or how much you’ve gone through. In fact, I was talking with a guy the other day. And he said, I know we’re gonna write my personal brand. But it’s not that extraordinary. I said what do you mean, Steve? And he goes, oh, I went to school for accounting, and worked in accounting for 20 years. And then I started an accounting business. And here I am, not that extraordinary. I said, well, that’s an interesting perception, however, is that what people say when they meet you? And they say no. So what do people say about you?
They say, they can’t believe how dedicated I’ve been, they can’t believe how strong I am to see to my career, they can’t believe that I’ve ridden the waves of all the recessions and everything else. I said wow, that’s a different story, isn’t it? But people see in you, is a level of consistency and a level of fight and a level of tenacity that maybe you’re not even thinking about. Because it’d be super easy in a career of 25 plus years to just quit, right? You didn’t. You kept going. Own it. You may not have had, you may not have built the most innovative company in the world, you may have been an accountant your entire life. Own it and write that story of what has made you so great. Doing what you’ve done for so many years.
Nicole: Oh, absolutely. And the thing is that sometimes our gifts and our talents, and the things that make us amazing, are so close to us, we can’t see them. And we need somebody like Kate to come in our life and say, hold on, I heard fight and I heard consistency. And I heard all these things. And so now, Kate helps you work on getting your words together to get your script together that gets your tagline together. And you know, you can even have all that those things in your personal life. You talked about mission and vision. And I know my listeners have heard this before, but you’re gonna hear it again. I think having a personal mission statement is essential. You have to figure out your personal core values, right?
Kate: Yes. Absolutely. Preach. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You have to have a personal mission and vision. When I decided I was gonna leave corporate america and I had been side hustling for so many years. I was I was like a professional side hustler. Okay, like, I’m gonna do this over here and this over here and work my way up the corporate ladder. Okay. Everything that I did to start to build my brand actually went back to the beginning. And I actually had to ask myself a very big question. It was not what my professional vision was, interestingly enough. I actually had to be bold enough to ask, what’s my vision for my life? Right.
Now, Nicole, that’s really scary, because I have to admit that I wanted to like live a certain lifestyle, and I wanted to provide for my children this way. And I wanted to impact communities that way. It was much bigger than leaving my day job. But I wrote it down. And that was the beginning. That was the impetus of writing my story. People want to know you beyond your job. If they see something that resonates with you, by having that personal mission and vision, they’re going to support you. And anytime you have 15 failed ventures or 15 successful ventures, if you don’t have a personal mission vision values, you’re not going to know what your keep you’re continuing to go on. But it grounds you if you can have that written down your your compass, it’ll always point you back to where you’re going as a leader.
Nicole: I absolutely love it. Okay, so here’s my final question for you. I know there’s somebody sitting out there maybe a marketing leader, a sales leader, and they’re, they’re listening, they’re like, okay, I have got to get us nailed down on the brand. I gotta get all this going. I gotta get my personal brand working. And let’s pretend you are mentoring this single special listener. What final piece of advice would you give them about their career and their leadership journey?
Kate: You absolutely have what it takes and you already have been living your life on brand and on purpose. And my encouragement to you is do not deviate. Do not deviate to what the marketing world tells, you what the sales world tells, you what every leadership book in the world tells you. What every podcast even tells you. Keep your blinders on and recognize that you’re in a path for you and you alone. You do not need to hear everybody else’s advice as to how you’re supposed to run your race. You have your race keep your blinders on. And remember that you can live your life on purpose and on brand.
Nicole: Hmm I love it. Back to the authenticity. That’s fantastic. So Kate it’s been absolutely a delight to talk to you about brand. Don’t miss this everybody. We hit three kinds of brand. You know the company’s brand, the culture brand and also personal brand. So a lot of great content in here for you today. Kate, if we want to work with you, and we have a company and we got to get our brand messaging straight. How do we find you? What, how do we do that?
Kate: Yeah, the best way to reach out to me, and certainly you can find me on LinkedIn. Kate DiLeo and DiLeo spelled d i l e o. However, easiest way to get ahold of me is through my website. It’s ennobble.com and I’ll spell it for you. E n n o b b l e.com. Yes, it is in the spelling intentionally. E double n, o, double b, l e .com go ahead and fill out the form there. I get those personally in my inbox. Happy to connect with you to have a conversation. And just would love to hear your story.
Nicole: Okay, fantastic. Thank you so much, Kate, for being on the Vibrant Leadership podcast. Have a great rest of your day.
Kate: Thanks, Nicole.
Voiceover: Ready to up your leadership game? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her unique SHINE method to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Email speaking@vibrantculture.com and be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com/TEDTalk.
