[00:00:00] Barry LaBov: Thank you, Dave. I'm very excited. I'm a big fan of the show. So, uh, let's have some fun.
[00:00:58] Well, to answer what I [00:01:00] do is I focus on one word differentiation. And what I've done for the last 40 plus years with my team is we identify and discover the uniqueness in a brand. It could be a personal brand as well. And then we sell it. Name it because it's very important to give it a name, give it some cachet and our third step in that is to celebrate it first before we launch it to the world, celebrate it first with the people closest to us, and that could be employees.
[00:01:32] That could be our team. That could be people that represent what we do.
[00:01:43] [00:02:00] My perfect client is the leader of a company. Who is hungry, who is willing to be vulnerable and feels that their company is just not achieving what it should achieve. And that leader, Dave, is looking around at things and maybe it's their market share isn't great, but also maybe morale. Isn't as high as he or she would like.
[00:02:25] Maybe the quality standards are not high enough and that leaders going. There's something going on here. What can I do? That leader is my favorite type because I got to tell you, we come in and We much of the time inspire that person to realize, look, you're doing a lot of things that are great. Let's focus on what you're doing.
[00:02:47] That's great. Let's make sure you don't change that. And then let's celebrate it internally. Your customers will feel that they'll understand that very clear messaging [00:03:00] and they will see that the people, the employees that represent you are you. Really, really engaged, and they truly feel they have significance.
[00:03:10] Your customers will feel that and they will respond.
[00:03:25] We really should not be. we should be able to say this is what we do. This is where we're just a little different. And I think this will help everybody in the audience. When I talk about differentiation, Dave, let's not confuse that with [00:04:00] superiority. So a lot of times we go, yeah, I do this and that a little different, but you know, I'm not saying it's the best.
[00:04:06] I mean, somebody else out there may like something else different. And I go, hold on. You're doing some things in a unique way, honor that there is a reason you do it this way, and it will appeal to a certain type of customer. So let's allow that uniqueness to shine. Let's Share that story. So the ideal uniqueness and differentiation that you share with your employees is something they could say verbatim to a customer.
[00:04:38] It should never be a dirty little secret. Hey, everybody, we're doing this here. Here. Don't tell the customer. No, it's the opposite. Hey, this is what we do. This is why we do it. This is why you Employee are so important because our customers need such and such. And that's what we deliver. Well, that employee goes and talks to one of our customers.
[00:04:58] Dave, it says, you [00:05:00] know, our customers really look for this and that, and they really care about it. And that's what we deliver. That's why we're here. It is very seamless. It's natural. It's authentic. And that's what we want This process, as I share it, can be applied to a one or two person company that really wants to brand themselves. So as I share this, please feel free to apply it out there. There are five steps. Our first step is what we call a brand assessment. A brand assessment means we're talking to humans about what you do and who you are.
[00:05:56] So we will talk with Customers of [00:06:00] our clients, and we'll say, Hey, we have a lot of questions for you, but here's one that we really need to have answered. And that is what. Do you not want Dave in this case, Dave to change what is he and his team doing that you love that you don't want them to alter now, everybody that's really important because it's so, so common for us as entrepreneurs to change whatever we need to change, right?
[00:06:28] We do not want to change. Those brilliant, wonderful things we're doing. We've got to hold on to those. So we go and we talk with customers, employees, suppliers, could be community about what you are providing. What are you doing? Who are you? Yes, we'll ask what else could he do better, etcetera. But it's focused on what makes you unique.
[00:06:54] The second step. Is what we call a technical immersion. And that is when you look at [00:07:00] the stuff you do. So the first thing was people. Now we're going into things. What are the things you do? And how do you do it? So if you're a service business, you might say, well, I don't have a factory. So it's not like I have machinery.
[00:07:13] Okay. Do you have a technology that you use? Do you have a certain experience that your customers are delivered when you work with them? What is it? And yeah. Find those three or four major differentiators and name them, give them a name, give them an identity. So you can speak about them. Don't call them.
[00:07:35] It's just what we do. It's who we are. No, don't go there. You've got to do better than that. So once you determine. Those two or three different, unique things you do, and they should be in lockstep with what you learn from your clients. So those three things should be one of the three things or some of the three things your clients go, don't change those things.
[00:07:55] Once you do that, you put together a plan on how [00:08:00] you utilize any of your social media platforms, your website, emails, whatever you do. How do you, Communicate those things. It's very, very important that you are consistent. After that. You go to the execution stage. So with me, when I get to the third stage and share, here's what I see you need to do.
[00:08:21] These are your differentiators. Here's the plan. I allow my clients to exhale and I go, look, you don't have to work with my company past this point. You can take it internally. You can do it yourself, give it to the team, uh, that you work with down the street, whatever. If you want us to work with you, we will now actually do the execution.
[00:08:41] So it could be a, a logo or a slogan or a website or social media campaigns, things like that. The final step is launching. This brand and you launch it first internally. So if you're a three person company, the three people there have to [00:09:00] get it. They have to be immersed in it. They have to go, Oh my gosh, I love this.
[00:09:04] This is great. They have to be like wild animals, ready to leave and go out. You know, uh, after you do that with your internal group, you then launch it to the world using your plan. So it's five steps. You do a brand assessment. That's people. You do the technical immersion. That's the things that you do.
[00:09:23] You come up with your plan. You name your differentiators. You then execute, get all the execution ready. And you launch first internally and then you go external. You do not want to launch external first and then later tell your people it's a disaster. You don't want it to be that. Somebody calls up or sends an email and say, hey, I'm very interested in your new such and such.
[00:09:47] And Some of your people go, I don't know what you're talking about. They never tell me anything here. You don't want that. You want your people to go, Oh yeah, I know all about it. I'll tell you about it. So that's how we do it. It's five steps. Uh, timeframe is normally [00:10:00] six weeks to go through the first three steps.
[00:10:03] And then depending on execution, you know, we go from there.
[00:10:07] Well, you talked about Apple, they are the best at this. So for instance, if you asked people, Hey, have you ever owned an MP3 player? They will go, nah, nah. I've never owned one. You go, have you ever owned an iPod? Oh, well, [00:11:00] yeah. I owned one of those. Have you ever owned a tablet? Oh no, no. I don't know. Have you ever owned an iPad?
[00:11:05] Oh yeah. I owned an iPad. They named them. I say this maybe too often, but you know we Those of us who have children, we don't name our kids Child 1, 2, 3, and 4. We name them, and we have a meaning behind why we named them what we named them. There's a story. That's what the great brands do. This is our such and such process.
[00:11:29] The reason we came up with it is so and so. It's like I shared with you a few moments ago, our branding approach is not just called, well, it's just the way we brand. You know, it's us being us. No, no, it's brand. Reengineering. And why did we call it that? Well, it's because we're not recreating. We're reengineering what is already there.
[00:11:50] That's the story behind it. And our process is five steps, but one of them nobody does. So in my situation, it's what you just asked. There's a story [00:12:00] behind it. We name it. We honor it. We never changed the name of it. We constantly reinforce that. And we tell the story behind it. And that's what we have to do.
[00:12:11] I would say any of us in the audience that are primarily service based. We must look at what I would call, what is your customer experience that you deliver? All right. So this is one where almost everybody in our audience, if they're a smaller business, and they're not manufacturing widgets, they're, they're dealing with humans, they have what would be called an experience.
[00:12:35] And my point to you is. What is the experience you deliver? You know, are you the friendly person? Are you the very knowledgeable? Do you do analysis first? Do you collaborate deeply with the client? Do you come up with a lot of creative alternatives? What, what is it? Look at what you're offering because for some reason, Clients seem to [00:13:00] like it and it hopefully is not just, I just do whatever the clients say I take orders.
[00:13:05] So it's gotta be something. And then when you go through it again, try not to worry about being perfect. In my book, we have an entire chapter called the perfect trap, which is the thing we fall into when we try to make everything just perfect. Everything's got to be just right. Well, forget that. Forget that.
[00:13:25] So what you do is do your best to name. This process. Look at the steps. And before you say, No, no, no. Other people do it. Say, Well, hold on a minute. Do every other does every other company in that business in this field that I'm in do every single one of these steps. And you're probably going to say, No, no, no.
[00:13:49] No, no, they all do some of them, but none of them do these four. And you go, okay, that's what you do now. Name it. [00:14:00] And even if the name's not perfect, name the thing. So that you can tell the story behind it.
[00:14:15] That's a differentiator of my
[00:14:16] company. Great question. I have never on the 100 podcasts I've been on ever been asked that question. I love it. Here's how it was created. And I remember it like it was yesterday. Marcus McMillan, who is a vice president and owner in the company with me, and I were in a conference room at a white [00:15:00] board and we were Trying to figure out how we could express what our processes because we had been doing it.
[00:15:08] It was almost kind of like tribal knowledge. It was just, well, we do this and we do that. We do this. So what we did is we got on that whiteboard and we said, okay, well, we do this. And then we wrote another thing. Well, we also do this. Oh, well, wait a minute. When we do the 1st step, we also do that. We started to connect it together and we go, well, then we go to this step, etcetera.
[00:15:28] So what happened was we had maybe 8 or 9 steps. We then kind of reduced it down to six steps and then we said, well, one of them is redone. We moved it down to five steps and we started to look at it and we got energized by it. We started to think, oh my gosh, this is interesting. And we looked at it. And we said, you know, this is pretty fascinating because one step is a step.
[00:15:57] Nobody does, which is our technical [00:16:00] immersion will actually go inside a client's company. Could be their factory could be their design center, whatever it is, and we will send in, you know, A group of technical engineers who will look for uniqueness in the products that are being delivered or the services being delivered.
[00:16:17] We thought, Oh, my gosh. And then we looked at the very end where we do what we call internal branding, which is before it's launched to the world. We, we launch it internally and celebrate. And now all of a sudden, Marcus and I looked at this and said, you know, this thing is. This is really interesting. So we identified and named the five steps.
[00:16:38] So we didn't just say, well, you know, they're kind of different steps. Okay. No, we named them. And then we had to stop for a moment and go, okay, what is this? Well, I live in a world where my competition says, well, you know, we do branding. I go, okay, great. So I'm going, yeah, but I do brand re engineering. And all [00:17:00] of a sudden Marcus and I looked at each other and we thought, you know what?
[00:17:02] Maybe we call this brand reengineering because we work with so many people who are engineers. They'll they'll kind of connect to it, but we're not just calling it the above branding process. We give it this unique name. Once we did that, we then tested it. We then tested it. We went out, we talked with clients, we said, this is what we do, blah, blah, blah.
[00:17:24] we we shared it internally. And I still remember it to this day. We were presenting it to a client in our offices. And I got up and I was going through it and I said, now we have five steps to this process. You're going to meet with a half dozen other companies out there who will talk about their branding.
[00:17:44] Step number two is something nobody does. If you don't think step two is important, that's good because then you should really look at these other companies. If you think step number two is really important, you need to look at us. So that's [00:18:00] how we did it. We actually stopped. And we, we reverse engineered basically how we do these projects and it took some work.
[00:18:09] It took some time and it was incredibly inspiring.
[00:18:28] Mm hmm.
[00:18:32] Right. [00:19:00] Yeah, I think if we put the [00:20:00] energy into doing this, we can stand apart, which also means we can offer a unique product to people that they are willing to pay a premium price for. Otherwise, if we really are generic and present ourselves in that way, then in a way, shame on us. We're, we're degrading what we do.
[00:20:27] Uh, in my book, I talk about the power of words, and that's why I said you got to really look at this seriously and name things. There are too many words that are used all the time in the English language when it comes to business. So it's like solutions, service, value, selection, price, all that. There are 200, 000 words in the English language.
[00:20:53] So we suggest strongly some really Really unique [00:21:00] words for what you do instead of just saying, well, it's just us being us. It's just our branding. Find something that is unique. You know, like when we created technical immersion, I've never heard of that in a marketing process. Technical immersion.
[00:21:17] Immersion. What is that? But we didn't just say, um, discovery because you can discover anything. This was more technical and it was getting deeply involved in what was being produced. So it was an immersion and again, find words that are unique. Push yourself to do that. I like what your blueprint. One thing with the blueprint is it.
[00:21:44] It kind of hits me like a fingerprint, which is very unique. The fingerprint is unique to everybody. Everybody has their own fingerprint. And ideally your brand blueprint would be [00:22:00] unique to you. It would not be a one size fits all. So that's where all of a sudden, if you're selling that and somebody goes, well, wow, that's interesting.
[00:22:07] And they do this and that and nobody else does. You go, well, maybe that is worth something to me. And that's, that's how I look at it. It's, we're, we're doing it much of the time. But we're not identifying the value in it. for 30 years. All we have focused on is one word, and that is differentiation, because we believe the power of that is really the most [00:23:00] inspiring essence of your company. Once you identify your differentiation and you name it and you celebrate it with the most important people first, you literally cannot lose.
[00:23:14] And in addition. You lead an inspiring life because you're doing the things that you are most excited about, the things that are really at the heart of your passion.
[00:23:29] Sure, they can reach out to me on LinkedIn, Barry Labov. You can also go to my personal site, BarryLabov. com, and my company site, Labov. com. [00:24:00] The book, The Power of Differentiation, is on Amazon. Please order it. And give it a rating. Read it, give it a rating, and feel free to reach out to me.
[00:24:11] Thank you, Dave.
