April 25, 2024

Living the dream with former rock musician turned branding maestro Barry Labov

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Tune in to an electrifying episode of 'Living the Dream with Curveball' as I sit down with Barry Labov, a former rock musician turned branding maestro. Barry takes us on a journey from his days on MTV to becoming a two-time Entrepreneur of the Year, sharing his secrets on how to carve out a unique brand identity that wins hearts, minds, and market share. Whether you're a solo entrepreneur or steering a corporate giant, this episode will strike a chord and amplify your branding strategy!
www.barrylabov.com

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> Speaker A>Welcome, um, to the living the dream podcast with curveball. Um, if you believe you can achieve Chee Chee.

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> Speaker B>Welcome to the Living train with Curveball podcast, a show where I am, um, interview guests that teach, motivate, inspire. Today, we're going to talk about setting up your brand to make it do the most for you, as I am joined by author, speaker, former rock musician, and is also a brand strategist, Barry Lavov.

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> Speaker B>Barry is a real, uh, big entrepreneur. He's won awards, and he's going to be talking about branding day and his book and everything that he's up to. So, Barry, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> Barry Lavov>Herbal, it is a pleasure. I'm a big fan.

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> Barry Lavov>I've listened to your podcasts, and I think you're doing a great job. So throw, uh, anything at me, I'm ready.

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> Speaker B>Oh, I appreciate it. Uh, first thing I want to throw at you is start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself.

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> Barry Lavov>My background is pretty standard. I grew up, uh, in the east part of the United States, and my love was, uh, baseball and also music. So I grew up dreaming to be a baseball player, but, um, I wasn't able to have that kind of talent. So then I focused most of my teen years and my early twenties on music, writing songs, being in a rock band, putting together some videos that were on MTV and VH one, and also a song that was on the Billboard charts and American Bandstand.

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> Barry Lavov>Now, it was fun to do all of this curveball, but I have to always say, my music sold well under 1 million copies. So it was fun, but I would say it was not financially lucrative. And I looked at other areas, other things I could do, and I had a client come out of the blue and just say, look, I want you to take over all of our marketing. And after about a year of saying no, I finally said, okay, I'll take on, um, all your marketing for your company. And all of a sudden, I became an advertising marketing entrepreneur. That was 40 years ago, and I've never looked back.

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> Barry Lavov>I've enjoyed it. And what I found was it was not so much music that I loved. It was being creative. So this company, for 40 years, has been my creative outlet.

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> Speaker B>Okay, well, that's amazing. You went from rock musician to entrepreneur of, uh, the year. So kind of tell us about that award and how you won that.

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> Barry Lavov>I was named entrepreneur of the year, actually, two different times, which is really kind of cool. The situation was a company called North American Van Lines, which is a moving company, great company. Had approached me to take on all of their marketing and I alluded to them earlier and what happened was I was able to help them. My team, I grew my team. And we received a lot of accolades. And Ernst and Young holds an annual award in each state of the union. And in Indiana I was named the small business entrepreneur of the year.

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> Barry Lavov>What was interesting was the first time I won it, the national award show was in California. I went out there, it was a lot of fun. But I met one of my future clients that to this day I still work with. And that is Volkswagen. So Volkswagen was out there as a sponsor. I connected with some people there and they then got a hold of me after it said, hey, we think you're a pretty good guy, we trust you, why don't you do our work? So I've worked with Volkswagen and some of their other brands now for all those years.

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> Speaker B>Okay, speaking of brands, talk about why brand differentiation, if I got that right. It's so important, more important than ever to today.

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> Barry Lavov>The book I have coming out, curveball, is called the power of differentiation.

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> Barry Lavov>Its subtitle is win parts, minds and market share. And that subtitle kind of tells what is so important, which is its very, very critical today for a brand. And a ah, brand could be a small company, a two person company, a brand could be a personal brand. But let's say it's a large brand like Harley Davidson or some other clients that we work with. It's very important today to identify what makes your brand unique.

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> Barry Lavov>And that does not mean you're superior in every way. It just means there are a couple of areas where you do something that's distinctive, something that's unique, something that's different and that you promote that. The next step in all of that though, is the most inspirational. And that is before you share that information with the world, before you promote it to everybody else, you celebrate it. And I mean celebrate it with the most important people in your world. And that would include your employees. It could uh, involve some of your suppliers. The most important people in the world need to understand what they're doing and why. Because curveball today, many of us are going, look, I just work for a living. It doesn't really matter. I'm um, just making some money. And what we must do if we're leading a group of people is we have to let them know what they're doing is significant.

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> Barry Lavov>It has a meaning so that the person feels better about themselves. They are more likely to be retained in that job and they'll do a better job every single day. So not only do we want to differentiate what we offer, we want to make sure our people, our team, our employees, our enterprise understand the significance behind what they are doing.

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> Speaker B>Well, you work with some of the most famous brands. Tell us about some of those brands that you work with, and why do you feel like they picked you to, uh, work with them?

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> Barry Lavov>We work with brands that include McAllen, Scotch Stole Vodka, uh, Audi, Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz.

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> Barry Lavov>I could go on and on carrier H Vac, Ingersoll, Rand. Lots of wonderful, wonderful brands out there. We are not guiding them every step of the way. We are part of their team.

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> Barry Lavov>You know, we're there to support them, and we play different roles with these different companies.

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> Barry Lavov>But, for instance, in the case of Harley Davidson, they felt that we had that entrepreneurial energy and spirit that could help them tackle some very big launches that they were going to put on in the United States and throughout the world. So they approached us, and we created a launch campaign to help them promote their very first electric motorcycle, as well as other motorcycles after that. So, Kurt Ball, I think what they do, the clients we have, they look at us and they feel that will bring humanity to what they do. Because they're so large, when you have thousands and thousands and thousands of employees, it's very, very easy for it to become impersonal.

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> Barry Lavov>So they look at us as a small company, a group of entrepreneurs, as people that will humanize, people that will have passion to help them succeed in the challenges they have. So we take it personally. We are the people behind the great brands and the great people. And our clients seem to feel that we bring value to them doing that.

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> Speaker B>Well, what role, uh, the customer experience play in brand imaging?

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> Barry Lavov>I'm glad you brought that up. One thing I think is very, very interesting, and this is all of us as people, we do not realize how important the brand experience is.

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> Barry Lavov>I'll give you an example. If you walk into a car dealership and you're looking to buy a brand, and let's say that the experience is not good, let's say you're not, uh, treated with respect, let's say you're not shown the attention you feel you deserve, you'll walk out and you'll not only say, hey, I'm not going back to that dealer again, you're more likely also to say, I'll never buy that brand. They don't care about me. And the sad truth is, that brand, which may have produced a great car that you were excited with, doesn't even know that you had that bad experience. And that's because all of us do not distinguish the difference between a brand experience and the brand itself. One example I'll, uh, share with you is when Harley approached us, they said, you know what we need to do? We need to be more inclusive with our brand because our dealers are very used to the same type of person coming in and buying our motorcycles and it's very comfortable for them. But there are people of all races, people of all ages who could be riding our motorcycles and we need to embrace them. So, as an example, we worked with them on their brand experience at the dealership level and we helped educate their dealers all throughout the nation on stepping out and offering their time and their suggestions to anyone who walks in. Not assume that if somebody walks in and doesn't look like their normal customer, that that person's just, you know, you know, hanging around and looking at things. Instead treating each individual as a unique person and meeting them where they are, that's an example of brand experience. So the more inviting they are at that dealership, the more likely we will buy the Harley Davidson product.

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> Speaker B>What do you feel like makes your branding process unique from any other branding strategies out there?

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> Barry Lavov>We have two differentiators ourselves.

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> Barry Lavov>So when we work with a brand, we do many of the things that other marketing and agencies will do.

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> Barry Lavov>So, uh, as an example, we'll interview people at the company, we'll interview customers. Lots of brands do that. Lots of companies in my field do that.

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> Barry Lavov>Where we're different is, number one, if it's a factory or a plant or a manufacturing facility, my team will go in and we will actually get involved with what they are doing. From a technical standpoint, we look for their technical uniqueness. So we get immersed inside their plant, their manufacturing facility. Now, we do the same thing for service companies, but it's not quite as graphic as that, diving in and looking at machinery, but we do that. So, number one, we find what is unique in the process, the product or the experience that they offer. So that's number one, which is a far more technical approach than other agencies do.

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> Barry Lavov>And the second one is when we have now created that new branding and it's reflecting what that company is all about, we guide them to that first step that's so important, which is celebrating it and launching it internally with their people. What ends up happening, Curtis, is not only are their people excited, but their people are now ambassadors for that brand moving forward after they are worked with and celebrated and engaged and trained in what makes what they do so unique, we then launch it to the world. So it's the two different areas we dive into the technical aspect that nobody normally does, and we make sure it's celebrated with their employees first.

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> Speaker B>Well, tell the listeners about your notebook. Tell us what we can expect when we can read it and where to get it from.

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> Barry Lavov>Well, thank you. My new book, which is the power of differentiation, will be distributed by Simon and Schuster.

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> Barry Lavov>Its launch date is in June.

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> Barry Lavov>The book will be not a memoir, but it will be a series of stories and I believe very interesting insights and journeys of how people at, ah, great companies, big and small, found the differentiation, discovered the uniqueness of what they did, and were able to transform their organizations.

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> Barry Lavov>So it's filled with great stories of people.

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> Barry Lavov>I'm not in the book very much. I don't talk about me. It's about my clients. It's about the great things they did. The best way for anybody to learn more about it is to go to my website, which is barrylabove.com. So it's b a r r y, Labove, labov.com.

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> Barry Lavov>And ah, I have some gifts for anybody that's listened to me on podcast.

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> Barry Lavov>Some free PDF's that you don't have to sign up for.

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> Barry Lavov>You just can go download. Plus you can leave me a message to either talk or suggest that I can let you know when the book will be released and we'll let you know. So those, those are really the things I can offer anybody that wants to talk. I get dozens of emails every week. It's great. A lot of times it has nothing to do with business transactions, but if I can help, I love it. And then on top of it, you can download some free documents and sign up to learn more about the book launch.

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> Speaker B>Are there any upcoming projects that you're working on that people need to know about?

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> Barry Lavov>I'm working with. It's a very exciting project. I'm working with a, uh, healthcare company that has 16,000 employees throughout a region here in the United States. And we're meeting with 29 of their locations in person to talk with their people and learn what they're most proud of and what they do not want that organization to change, as well as some of their suggestions for the future. And our goal is to help transform 100% of those people that are in that organization. So that's 16,305 people we want to transform in the next four months. So we're very excited about that project.

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> Speaker B>Okay, so we got your website, barrylabov.com. Um, so close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to touch on, that you would like to talk about it. Just any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

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> Barry Lavov>My final thought is this, is that no matter if you're a solopreneur or you run a 30,000 employee organization, no matter if you are a startup or you have been in business for 200 years, there is something you're doing that is unique and valuable or you would not be succeeding. First, identify what it is. Don't try to discover or, uh, don't try to create brand new things that may not be who you are. Discover what you're doing that is unique.

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> Barry Lavov>Celebrate it with those closest to you.

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> Barry Lavov>Give them significance, and in so doing, it will help propel your success as well.

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> Speaker B>All right, ladies and gentlemen, marylabove.com dot. Please be sure to follow rate review share this episode to as many people as possible.

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> Speaker B>If you have any guests or, uh, suggestion topics, see Jackson 10 two Ah Net is the place to send them.

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> Speaker B>Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Barry, thank you for joining us and sharing your expertise.

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> Barry Lavov>Curtis, thank you so much. I loved it. I hope I did a good job for you.

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> Speaker A>For more information on the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

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> Speaker A>Until next time, stay focused on living the dream.

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> Speaker B>Dream.