Defeating the Commodity Monster | Barry LaBov | Ep 216

Barry LaBov  00:00

Well, there's a big pressure that we all feel, and that is the pressure to become commoditized. In my book, we call it the commodity monster, because it will eat you alive. We have to realise in business that let's not worry about perfect let's try some things. Let's come up with some ideas that at first we go, oh no, no, we're not going to do that. No, no, that's stupid. No, no, no, let's try them.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:35

Thanks for joining us again on the Better Business better life podcast. I'm your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor, and I'm passionate about helping entrepreneurs lead their ideal lives by creating better businesses, because, as I like to say, life is too bloody short.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:55

I'm a certified EOS implementer. I'm an FBA credited family business advisor, and most importantly, I'm a business owner myself with several business interests, which means all the things I talk about on this podcast, with my guests, with my clients, with my experts are very much practical and pragmatic. There's no theory in here at all. I work with established business owners and their leadership teams to help them live their ideal entrepreneurial life using EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, and also tips and tools from our expert guests. Today's guest is a two times Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Recipient. He's also been inducted into the Ernst Young Hall of Fame. He's got over four decades of experience in his field, and he talks to people about how to keep great employers and give them real meaning. Today he's going to share with you, I love this, how to fight the commodity monster and win hearts, minds and market share. And if you listen closely enough, he'll also be talking about why we should be like The Rolling Stones. Today's guest is Barry LaBov. He is the founder and CEO of LaBov Marketing Communications and Training, and is also the author of the book, The Power of Differentiation, Win Hearts, Minds, and <arket share. So welcome to the show. Barry, it's great to have you here. Thank you for joining us.

Barry LaBov  02:10

Debra, it is an honour. You are so charming. I'm looking forward to this. I think we should have a really great conversation.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:18

I have no doubt we have a great conversation. We've already established a whole bunch of things in common, but I know a little about you, but my listeners don't, so I would love you to share the Barry story. I'd must just share that. When I was reading about Barry, it was like he's had 44 years of experience in his in his business. He was telling me they actually run on EOS. They do level 10 Meetings. I'd love to learn a little bit about how you got to where you are and what you do.

Barry LaBov  02:40

Well, it was a mistake. I didn't mean to do it. Debra, I was a musician. I wanted to write songs and have hit songs and a hit band. And as I went down that journey, I started a jingle company, you know, those irritating little ditties, and I had a band which was doing well, had a minor hit song, let's say, and had some songs published. And then one day, my father passed away. He was young, 63 years old. I was under 30 years old, and Debra. What happened was I thought, you know, I'm playing both sides here, you know, I'm in a band, and I'm also running a little company. I gotta realise, I don't know how long I'm going to be around. So let's commit to something. So that was long time ago, but I committed to running a company, and what I've done over these 40 plus years is I've run a company, kind of like a rock band, where I look at each person, I try to find out what they do really well and give them a chance to do that.

I realise that anybody, no matter what their position, can come up with a really great idea. And every day, one of our core values is jamming like a jam session. And we are so collaborative. It's really off the wall. We're so collaborative. So what that has brought us is we've been able to win a couple of Entrepreneur of the Year awards. We have wonderful clients that include McAllen Scotch in the UK, Harley Davidson, Audi, Volkswagen carrier, heating and air conditioning, all I could go on and on wonderful, wonderful clients, and we focus on one thing, and that is differentiating, finding out what makes a brand, a product, a company, unique or distinct, and we'll talk about it today, but that's the only thing I focus on in my entire life.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:48

It’s great to have that kind of clarity, isn't it, in terms of what you what you're good at, and I think it's something that a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with, particularly early on. I think we try to, tend to try and be everything to everybody, and we try all different. Things and then we've sort of suddenly realised that we're spread so thin that we're not doing anything particularly well.

Barry LaBov  05:05

Yeah, I think it's easy. I do think what you said is really, really insightful. I think it's easy to say yes all the time in the beginning and try to be all things, and I'm okay with that. But I think as leaders, there is a point where we have to realise we cannot do everything. We can't promise to do everything. But on the opposite side Debra, we have to realise there are 1,2,3, maybe 4 things we're doing as a company, as a brand, that are really unique and valuable. And you know what? We have to make sure we know what they are, and we have to be able to communicate them.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:43

I'm going to use some EOS terminology. But, you know, we talk about the go to market strategy, and I think we talk about three uniques. What are the three things that together make you completely unique? Your competitors may have one or two of them, but actually they are unique things, and people struggle with it. Because, you know, if they're trying to be everything to everybody, and everything's important. Nothing's important. They can't actually understand that. Even established businesses that I work with and some of the brands you've talked about, they've been around for a long, long, long, long time, but it takes a while for them to get really clear about what makes them really different.

Barry LaBov  06:13

Well, there's a big pressure that we all feel, and your clients feel this. Every company feels it to some extent, but a lot of mine do, and that is the pressure to become commoditised. In my book, we call it the Commodity Monster, because it will eat you alive. It will eat you up. And it's your pressure. It's the pressure that you feel that says, Okay, let's lower our price, let's make our product look, taste, smell, be priced like the next product that someone else is making. And what happens is we lose our uniqueness, our differentiation, and we lose the hearts and minds and souls of our employees.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  06:59

I was going to say that one of the things I love when I look at your book was actually the subtitle. Of it, which is win hearts, minds and market share, because that is the distinct opposite of the commodity monster, as you call it, in terms of being really clear. But it has additional benefits beyond just the customer benefits. Right?

Barry LaBov  07:15

When you fight this commodity monster and you discover you don't try to create a brand new uniqueness. You discover what you're doing that is distinct, and you capitalise on it. You name it. You know, we might say, we do this and that, because, well, that's just what our company does. No, we have to name it, because those of us who have children don't have child one, two and three. We have children with names, and we tell people why we named those kids that, and then we tell you all about our kid, right? Same thing about your unique differentiators, your two, three or four things, they should have a name, you should explain why you named them that, and you should tell all about them. But then what's really, really great Debra is, before you launch that to the world, you launch it to the most important people, your employees, the people who design it, sell it, market it, fix it, service it, whatever they do. You've got to give them a sense of significance. They've got to feel like, wait a minute, we're doing something special here. And once you do that, you mentioned the advantages Debra, once you do that, you have an army that's going to battle for you. You have people who are actually going to do a good job. Because, hey, we're doing something important people, and they might just stay a little longer and, oh, by the way, when it comes to your customers, the customers will feel that from your employees. And this is all good news to entrepreneurs and leaders. You can charge a premium for it because you're standing out. Nobody's doing it quite the way you are doing it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:59

Yeah, I think this is particularly important. So I live in New Zealand. I work between New Zealand and Australia, and have a couple of overseas clients as well. But generally, my work is in New Zealand, Australia and the marketplace over here they they're so driven by price. And I have this fight with clients a lot of the time. It's like, but why do you want to be part of that, everything else that everybody else is, sorry, part of what everybody else is doing. Don't you want to be different? And it's never about price. We don't buy we, I shouldn't say never. We very rarely buy on price. Do we?

Barry LaBov  09:28

We very rarely do. If we buy on price, it's because we don't think any of the products are unique, and that's because somebody, or somebody's have succumbed to the commodity monster. They have all turned into a same old, same old. But we've got to realise, unless you are a brand new product that was created somewhere during this podcast, you probably have been around for a year, 10 years, 212 years, whatever it is, and you're doing something good, and you need to stand up. For it. One of our clients, Harley Davidson, is a great example over 100 years, all right? And if you talk to the Harley Davidson leadership, they they're so smart, they're brilliant people, they're the first to say that their product is not always perfect. There is no perfect product. But what they will also say is that nobody offers what Harley does. So they offer this beautifully designed bike. They offer a sisterhood and brotherhood of owners who embrace you when you buy that brand and you become part of their family. Now nobody else is going to give you that, and if you value that, you're joining that Brotherhood or sisterhood, and you'll pay a little bit of a premium, or maybe a lot of a premium, because of how great that product is and how wonderful the experience is.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  10:52

I think that's a really valid point. And I have a couple of friends who own Harley Davidson as I know that it's a little bit like a cult, but in a good way, as in, you know, that they feel like they belong, and they have. They are so well looked after, if anything goes wrong, they can take the bike back in. They're looked after like a king or a queen, but also that they proudly wear Harley Davidson branded everything. It's like you actually have you actually expand your reach by your customers becoming your advocates, the people who are singing from your songbook.

Barry LaBov  11:18

Well, many of their customers, their owners have tattoos on their body parts that say Harley Davidson. So if you've got a tattoo of your brand on that's on somebody's body parts, you've done well, but there are no commodities that are tattooed on people.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:39

That’s so true. Okay, so we've chosen an example which most people listening will say, but that's easy. You know, Harley Davidson is really unique. Can you give me another example of maybe a product or a service where it wasn't, didn't appear quite so unique in the beginning, until you delve deeper to find out what was really behind it?

Barry LaBov  11:54

Sure, we work with a copper processing company. Okay, so that's not exciting to most people. When we first started to talk to them, they said, Look, their reputation was they were the cheapest product. They were commoditised. In fact, their customers just used to call them the cheap copper guys. I mean, that's what their nickname was. Hey, the cheap copper guys. Well, what we learned was they had a number of great differentiators, but they had one that was extraordinary, and that was their copper was made from recycled or reclaimed materials. Okay, what does that mean? Well, it means it's very sustainable, it's earth friendly. Yet they were not charging a premium. They were charging less. And in this world, if you have a sustainable product versus one that is not, you have an advantage. So they named it, they told the story about it, they celebrated it, and today they are the number one market share in their industry, and they are the number one premium product, as the CEO said to me on a podcast, he said, we've made a lot of money from this, and he deserves to make a lot of money. So that is a product that we don't even know. Like, for instance, those of us watching this on a laptop or on a phone, you probably have copper wire that has been processed by that company inside that phone or that laptop. Okay, so that's that's a story of a really wonderful company who discovered what they had been doing already, and they capitalised on it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:35

And I think that's the important things. I picked that up when you were talking earlier. It's not about trying to invent something, it's about discovering what already exists, and, as you said, naming it, telling the story around it, really bringing it to life. It's not about trying to find the next greatest whatever to kind of say, well, that's what we do. It's about something that area already is there.

Barry LaBov  13:55

Well, it’s easier for you as a leader and for your individuals at the company to live up to what they are doing and doing well than it is to say, okay, you know what? We're changing everything. We're going to be the cheap people. We're going to lower prices, we're going to sell 10 times as much. We're not going to make hardly any money, but we got to push it out the door. And all of a sudden, everything those people came to work to do has been thrown away. All of a sudden, your customers, who have been turning to you for something, are going, Wait a minute. You guys have completely changed. I don't want to go give you my money. So what I'm saying to people is, it's easier for you to wake up in the morning and say, You know what we're going to do, what we do best, and we're going to charge for it, and we're going to have employees that are part of this excited, excited culture right there with us, and they're going to love it, and they're going to do a better job, and they're going to stay with us for years and years.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:52

I love it. Absolutely love it. I want to give you a high five to if you want to post, I'll give you a high five because I think that, yeah, cool. Thank you, because I think that you. Know, it's it. I love it when people actually embrace this kind of thinking and actually really search for what's going on and are happy to kind of look at it. So, yeah, any other examples? I think we should have a couple more examples, if you can around, yeah, maybe things that are not quite so sexy. I mean, I work with some clients, you kind of think, you know, metal recycling and growing fruit and vegetables, and you kind of go, actually, some of those do feel slightly commoditized. But my metal recycling firm actually decided that what they did better than anybody else was experienced. It was the experience of dealing with them, the joy that you had when you were into their yards and the people that they had. It wasn't about the metal at all. Not quite sure about the fruit and vegetable people. Yet, what are you? What are you? What other examples can you give us?

Barry LaBov  15:40

Well, we can go food. I work with a family run but very large regional Bread Company, and I was inside one of their facilities, and I said, Hey, what do you do that's unique? You've been around 120 years? And they go, we do nothing unique. I said, Okay, well, what's at least a little different? They go, we do nothing different. We're no better than anyone else. There's nothing special about us. I went, Okay, this is not going the way we want. I said, let me ask a different question. Is there any thing you do, any ingredient you have that you spend more time on or pay more money for than your competitors do. And the CFO said, oh, yeah, we have this grain that we ship in from Northwestern United States. It's much more expensive than the grain we could get right here. But, you know, we put it in our bread and it's, you know, it's it makes our bread taste very, very nice, very sweet and smooth. It's not a harsh tasting grain. I said, okay, and you pay more money for this? They go, yes, because we want our bread to taste that way. I said, Okay, what do you call that grain? And they said, We just say it's grain. I said, Okay, how do you promote it? And they go, we don't. I said, Okay, that's a differentiator. We are doing that. I said, Now, how do you share this with your employees that you actually spend three times as much money on this grain? And they said, We never really mentioned it. We didn't think it would be that important. I said, Well, you're spending extra money and time to ensure that your bread is the most tasty, delicious bread. I think it should start with your employees, knowing it. We need to name that grain and we need to promote it. So that's another example. It was right there. They've been doing it for decades. It's just they were not utilising all the good things they're doing to share it with their employees and their customers.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  17:42

What did you call the grain? By the way, I'm really intrigued.

Barry LaBov  17:46

Well, I can't tell you what it is. It's right in the middle of some changing and naming and yeah, but it's, it's the type of thing that you you've got to look at it, that it's so important for us to identify what we're doing and why? Because there are reasons behind it, and that's what I like to do with clients. But like in my book, I describe how we do it so somebody could read the book and try to do it themselves. I just want to see people identify the magic in what they're doing.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  18:20

What you're saying is, you know, it's about really asking the right questions of that in itself, is a skill, right? I always liken it to people who I'm gonna use my EOS example, but, yeah, you've got people who self-implement EOS, and they can do a fantastic job. And for some people, it works really, really well. But in reality, learning the tools and things is just you could learn that from YouTube. You could learn it from wherever you can apply them yourselves, having somebody externally come in and ask the right questions is actually where you get the most value, because you and I, we're not in that day to day, business day in, day out, very blinkered in terms of what we're doing. We're coming in for an outside perspective, and we're prepared to actually challenge the assumptions. We're prepared to ask some questions, and really did that out of them. And I'm guessing that's what your team does when they work with a client.

Barry LaBov  19:01

We do. I think I'll jump a little bit on that concept, a tiny bit, and tweak it. Let's say I think it's asking the right questions, but it's also listening between the lines as to what people say, to where their emotion gets very high, where their excitement is evident. We ask a question of our clients, their employees, their customers, their suppliers. We ask among others, we ask, what is it that this company should not change? What should they not change? And what's interesting is Debra, and I'll give you a specific example, and I can share the name of what we found. We worked with a law firm, and they were viewed as an old, stodgy group of expensive people in in a particular city. And we. I thought, oh, boy, that doesn't sound too exciting. They were in competition with a very, very large amount of younger law firms that were cooler, hipper and a little cheaper.

And we went and talked with various customers, employees, and we just said, Hey, what should they not change? What are they doing? Well? And we heard a lot of different things, but we heard one person say, Well, you know, it's their bandwidth. And I said, bandwidth. I thought, Hmm, that's interesting. So we're talking to somebody else. And I go, Well, what is it that they do? Or why do you work with them? This was a client. They said, Well, you know, they've got great bandwidth. And all of a sudden we're hearing this word bandwidth, bandwidth. Debra was their differentiator because it explained why they could charge a premium, why they could have kind of an older office. You know, they're over 150 years old as a law firm, but you know why they did virtually every type of law. And so if you wanted to go to one firm and have a group of men and women that understood your business, whether it was going to be employment law, technology law, trademark law, whatever this was the firm, yes, you could go to the younger, hipper, cooler firm, but they would be more likely limited. This firm had bandwidth, and that is what they built their reputation around.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  21:34

I love it, yeah. And as you said, it's an insight, not necessarily from inside, but it's an insight from the customers who will actually can tell you what they love about them.

Barry LaBov  21:41

Well, came from their employees too. See, their employees said, Yeah, I love we have all this bandwidth. I'm going, huh, bandwidth.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  21:51

Love the concept. Okay, that's great. So if somebody's sitting here and listening at the moment and going, oh, you know, I think we are just part of the commodity monster, if you like, what would be the first thing you would suggest that they do?

Barry LaBov  22:06

I mentioned it. I'll give them a couple things they could do. Debra. Number one, go to the people who understand your brand the most. So that can be your employees, that can be customers, your leadership, sure, former customers. That's fine, too. And ask them, what is it that you do or you create that you should never, never change? What is it if they say, Oh, you're, you're great people. Okay, get a little deeper. What does that mean? If they say, Well, I like your truck, that you do, okay, but what about the truck that we should never change, and you're going to start hearing things. You have to listen, though, because you want to find out, what are those strange words, like bandwidth, strange words that keep cropping up. So that's number one related to that, that I think is very important. I want people to listen to this great, great slogan, words create worlds. Okay, I did not create it, but words create worlds.

So I want them to do this once you learn at least some basic idea of what your uniqueness is, find words that are not typical. Find words that are specific, that describe you uniquely. Don't go with the typical words. So don't go service, selection, quality, value. Don't do it because, you know what, nobody will listen. Don't say, Oh, we have high quality don't say, Oh, we really care about doing a good job. Okay, guess what? You're going to put people to sleep. I had a client, and we were talking to them, and they kept using one word, and I said, Okay, this has to be in your core values, and we'll use it in your language. And it was the word Rigor, R, I, G, O, R, and it was because they say, You know what, we've got rigor. We're going to make sure our truck is tested and tested, because it's got to go through really rugged situations. It has to be there, and we have the rigor to do it. I said, Okay, you own rigor. Don't say, Oh, we like to do nice things and we want to do quality. No, we deliver rigor. And the point is, look at the words that describe what you do uniquely push yourself.

Barry LaBov  24:27

Now, Debra, I'm not going to ask you this. I'll ask the audience, how many words are there in the English language? I'll tell you two, 200 200,000 words, 200,000 let's look for words. You ask me, what should they do? Let's look for a word that's not in the seven or eight that I mentioned, like service, selection, quality. Find your version of rigor. Find your version of bandwidth. Find it and hold on to it and do it. Like I Say, when I'm meeting with new clients, they go, Okay, well, what about you? You know, there are marketing agencies and gurus all over the place. I say, Yeah, we only focus on one word, differentiation, that's it. And they go, Oh, you're the differentiation people. And I go, Yeah, it's six syllables, 15 letters. It's hard to pronounce, but that's us. Differentiation. And I have had, and I want the audience to hear this, I've had prospective customers say to me, yeah, we already know what makes us, different. We don't need that. And I go, great, you don't need me. You don't need my company, because we will find and we will help promote and we will help celebrate your differentiation. If you already got it, you don't need us. And my point is you gotta realise can't be all things, all people, but find those very, very few words that you own, and don't have to be the same words your competitors own, because then it doesn't count. If your competitor has rigor, don't go well, we got rigor also. You got to come up with your own version. But stand out, identify your magic, take those extra steps to dig in and really honour what you're doing.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:16

It certainly is a process, and I suppose it there is definite benefits and having an expert involved, because you do know the right questions to ask. You know how to get to those things. But also, I suppose, in terms of articulating it as well, because you obviously finally attuned to the language that they're using, you're picking up on the bandwidth or the rigor, which maybe they wouldn't but then it's also about how you tell that story as well, isn't it? So you've got the we've nailed the word, but how do we tell the story, and how do we actually articulate that to our internal people and also to our external people?

Barry LaBov  26:45

Well, here's a message to the audience. It's not enough to have a story. So if you say, yeah, about 20 years ago, three people came together and, you know, they bought a bunch of equipment and blah, blah, okay, you're putting people to sleep. What you have to do is tell the compelling story that shares your differentiation. I'll give an example. I'll do it off top my head. Three, three medical technicians banded together 40 years ago and decided they were going to create an ambulance that would not only be safe for the occupants, but would allow the patient inside to potentially have their life not only protected, but saved. So we came up with technology and medical advancements that are inside our ambulance, and every year we produce an ambulance that will last 10 years, and this, each one of our ambulances that we produce will save or protect 100,000 lives. Okay, now my point is, you go, wow. They care about people. It was formed by people who were medical experts. They are developing something that will protect people and save lives. Now, you tell that story, that's great. It's not, well, we do a pretty good product. We sell it. It's cheap. It's like other people. You know, we're a local company. We're just another ambulance. No, here's why we do it. And so your story has to have, your story has to be interesting, because I'll work with people. They go, Yeah, we need a story. I said, No, you need your story, not a story. Don't give me a story that if you put your competitors name on the on the in the story instead of yours, that it would be just fine. No, no. This has to be a story your competitor could not tell, because it belongs to you.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:48

And again, I think that's the benefit of working with as an expert in this field, is that you can pull that stuff out that most of us can't see, because we sometimes lose it in just the day to dayness. And so it becomes the, yeah, the vanilla, the vanilla flavour that everybody kind of tells and or worse still, they try and follow a formula that was somebody else's formula.

Barry LaBov  29:08

Well, Debra, you do this. You're a leader in your field. What you do is you help your clients understand things that are right in front of them, but they're not seeing them because they're so close. That's what I do. I work with brilliant engineers and manufacturing geniuses, and I am not going to out sync them on their designs. I'm just going to say, Hey, did you know that what you have here is pretty unique? Why don't we do something about it? And they go, Well, it's just us being us, and that's what you deal with too. We have to find those unique, genuine aspects of a company, and we have to make sure they hold on to them, they honour them, and that's what my job is, and I believe that's very similar to what you do with your clients.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:53

Yeah, absolutely, and I think it is. It's very much about they already have the answers. But they're just, they're so close to it that they just don't see it anymore. And I think you think the expertise, sometimes the things that we just take for granted, that I assume, the things I know, I assume everybody knows, and when I share something, they go, oh my goodness, that's genius. Like, it's not really, it's just common knowledge, isn't it? It's not common knowledge. And because it, it's stuff that you've actually learned over a long time, I suppose, with your businesses, similarly, they are. They just think of themselves as great engineers. We're just great engineers. What we do, but what they don't see is the is the uniqueness, the differentiation that they actually have, because they're doing it day in, day out, right?

Barry LaBov  30:31

It's like you're dealing with an artist who painted this beautiful painting. And the artist goes, yeah, it's okay, it's nice. And you're going, No, it's the most beautiful painting I've ever seen. And the point is it's up to us to identify that in our role, because the artist or the engineer or the brilliant person who started the company is really great at doing those things, but not really great at identifying and articulating how to celebrate and honour it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:02

Perfect. Okay, I'm really curious. It's got nothing to do what we've been talking about. But I was looking at notes here, and I'd say, musician, do you stop doing music by any chance? Because that's a very creative art form, isn’t it?

Barry LaBov  31:11

It is a great creative art form. I do music. I played music just last night, just for fun. I can play by ears so I can hear a song, and I go, okay, and I can go to the piano or guitar and play, and I'm one of those guys. I do. Music is really great. It's it showed me that, and I'll share this. I hope this is valuable to people. It showed me that perfection is a wasted journey. You don't want to be perfect. So I will share this. I don't know if people realise this, but imagine your favourite song, whatever it is. I grew up the Beatles as an example. So let's say it's the song, something which is like the number one, two or three most recorded song in the world, in history, okay, well, when Paul McCartney was playing guitar One day, his fingers made a mistake, and they moved to the wrong part of the fretboard on the guitar, and he stopped and he looked, and he go, Wait a minute, what is that? And he goes, that's that sounds beautiful. It's magic. And he went back and back and forth, and he created the song around it. Okay?

Most songs started out as a mistake, something where somebody was playing something and went, Ooh, what's oh, wait a minute, that's not bad. That's interesting. We have to realise in business Debra that let's not worry about perfect. Let's try some things. Let's, let's come up with some ideas that at first we go, oh, no, no, we're not going to do that. No, no, that's stupid. No, no, no, let's try them.

Barry LaBov  32:47

In the United States, there's a and I know you have it in New Zealand, but there's a very popular campaign for GEICO Insurance. Okay? And it's, it's a little gecko, of all things, okay? It's a gecko. Okay. Well, the people who created that idea came to the leader of GEICO and said, We think this could be a great campaign. The leader was so afraid that the board of directors would be furious with it. He didn't show them the campaign. He just let it go out there because he knew they would hate it. Turns out, it turned into one of the most successful ad campaigns in history. But had he shown it to them, it's likely they would have said, This is stupid. This is a mistake. Don't do it. You gotta try things. Give things a shot. And that's what I learned in music. It's called jamming. That's what a jam session is. And you get into a jam session with other musicians and you have no idea how it'll turn out. It may be a waste of time, or you could write something that is the best piece of music ever written. You just don't know. So go do it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:56

I love it. It's also about being able to kind of let go a wee bit as well, because as entrepreneurs, we can often be control freaks, and we, you know, I've got, I'm working well at the moment. I won't say it is, but you know, every time anything leaves that business, he has to put his eye over it. He has to make sure it's perfect. And he's hampering, he's hampering the growth of the business because it takes too long, and things don't get put out there. And, yeah, it really is. Was a perfection. There is a there is a saying, I come what it is now, but it kills you. 80% is often good enough. And as you said, mistakes are often some of the best things that can possibly happen to us.

Barry LaBov  34:29

Well, we live in a world that is filled with mistakes, but we don't think about it. So every time your iPhone or your EV, if you own an EV, has an update over the cloud. Much of that are mistakes being fixed. They're called fixes by some people, right? But you know what? We're okay with that. And my point is, in your business, why not try it? Why not give it a shot? Why not pilot that the Rolling Stones? I'll go back into old rock and roll the Rolling Stones. Would write songs in their early days, and before they would record them on an album, they would go to the local clubs in London, and they would barge in and say, Hey, we're the Rolling Stones. We're here. So whatever band was playing would say, hey, it's the Rolling Stones. And the Rolling Stones would get up and play a couple of those songs to see how people receive them. And some of those songs that they thought were going to be big hits, Debra never, ever, ever saw the light of day because they thought, Oh, these go over terrible. But some of the songs that they had very little confidence in, like, I can't get no satisfaction. Oh my gosh, that became one of the greatest hits you don't know, pilot them. Give it a shot.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:45

I love it. Be like The Rolling Stones.

Barry LaBov  35:48

Be like The Rolling Stones. Yeah, why not?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:50

Okay, cool. Hey, you've already given a huge amount of value so far, and I have no doubt that your book goes into a lot more detail. But if we just had to leave here with three things that you'd really encourage people to do, what would those three things be?

Barry LaBov  36:03

I'll give you three. One thing is I talked earlier about this words. Listen to the words that you use in describing your business, and I want you to never use certain words like just or only or kinda or sorta, show some respect to your business. Don't say, Well, we're a local manufacturer. No, no, no. Don't say, Well, we're a small look. Don't say we're a family. Well, we're a family. Okay? Please, please show respect to your business in the way you talk about it, and don't allow your team to do that. Don't be a just a kind of a local business. You're not in business for that. I mean, McAllen Scotch has been in business for 200+ years. I know the people at McAllen, they don't say, you know, we're just another local Scotch whiskey. No, they are the premium Scotch whiskey in the world. All right, so really pay attention to how you describe your business. All right. So that's number one.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  37:11

We have this thing, the tall poppy syndrome in New Zealand, Americans don't suffer from it. Australians don't suffer from it. New Zealanders, unfortunately, do, and we're always very nervous about sort of putting ourselves out there, because somebody will shoot us down. And so you do hear that kind of language a lot in New Zealand, where people are nervous of owning who they are and saying to people what they are. How would you encourage them to overcome that?

Barry LaBov  37:38

Well, I think there's a difference between saying I think we're the coolest, greatest, smartest, which I think is garbage, and saying we produce 15 of the top 20 highest ranks, such and such as in the United States, New Zealand and Australia, or we have a process that no other company has to do blank, blank and blank. That's factual. If you use adjectives and hyperbole, I agree with you. If you're just saying we're really great because it's us, I agree that's bad. But facts are facts, and I think that if you're doing something, if you've been in business for 2-12 years, that's a fact. You're not it's not the tall poppy. It is the truth. So that's what I say. I say you don't have to use hyperbole, adjectives and flowery language, but let people know what you do. Like I said, we focus on one word differentiation. I didn't say we're the coolest, neatest, best looking, wackiest group of people. We're not, and I'm certainly not, but I focus on one thing, and I have a process that has one step nobody does Okay, that's factual. That's all I'm saying.

So I think that's important. A couple of other things that I think are really important is I mentioned a little bit, but I really want the leaders to understand that you do not launch a new product without doing two things, relaunching your brand. So here's what I'm saying. Let's say I have a brand new product, and it's really going to be great, and I can't wait don't be the company that launches that product spends the money on it, and a year later, the brand itself hasn't really gained anything, because everything was about that product. When you create that new product, it should be a reflection of your brand, and you should do a relaunch of your brand. Now you say, Oh, that's a lot of money. It's not a lot of money. Make sure your brand is part of the message. Our new product features blank, blank and blank, which is an improvement on dot, dot, dot. That's because our brand believes in this, this and that. So all of a sudden, yes, you're launching that new product, but you're relaunching your brand. So do that.

Barry LaBov  40:01

The second thing, which will add up to then three things I've given to you when you launch it, is, celebrate it, not just educate your people. Celebrate it with your people first, and then anyone who is connected to your business, meaning if you have distributors and dealers right after you work with the employees and maybe their families and celebrate it, have the dealers and distributors understand, have your suppliers understand what you're doing, share it with them, so they feel a sense of ownership. If you do that, it's great. I'll throw a bonus into here's the bonus one your experience, your brand experience, or your customer experience. Okay, your customers, this is really important. Do not distinguish between the experience they get from you and your brand if they are treated poorly by your sales reps, or if you have a distributor, they think poorly of your brand. If it's a car dealer, and you go in and, let's say, Debra, you're not treated with respect at that car dealer, and you wanted to buy that car, you walk out say, I'm never going to buy that brand. Well, that brand didn't do that. That dealer did. So the brand needs to know whether it's a in house salesperson or distributor, dealer, we as customers look at that experience as your brand. So make sure you have consistency in your brand. If you're the great, warm, loving brand, that you have to make sure your sales people and customer people treat customers like that. They have to be treated that way, you know. And that's why it's so important. You don't want to be a commodity, because commodities have no personalities, so you have a chance with your experience to stand out and have differentiation. So those are some of the things I can suggest.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  42:07

That is absolutely fantastic. It's been a wealth of information here, not just those three, four tips, but a whole bunch of stuff we've talked about. I've taken copious amounts of notes here, but I think the biggest thing for me is we've got to fight the commodity monster if you really want to realise value for your brand and for your company and also improve the engagement of your internal team and your people fight the commodity monster. Yeah, differentiation. Hey, Barry, look. Thank you so much. If people do want to find out more, I know you've got your book that is the power of differentiation. Win hearts, minds and market share. How do they find that?

Barry LaBov  42:40

They can find it anywhere. Simon and Schuster exists, which is all over the world, but you can go right to Amazon, go to your bookstore. Look for the power of differentiation. My name is LaBov, L, A, B, as in boy, O V, as in victor. So L, A, B, O V. Now they can reach out to me, anybody in the audience, and I get, I do get reach outs, and I love it. You go to my LinkedIn, I will respond to anybody that that says, Hey, I heard you on Debra's podcast. I have a question. If it's Debra's podcast, I'm saying talk to me. So do that, and you can check out my website, barrylabov.com, you'll hear some of my music on there, if you want, and some of my other books and my company's website, labov.com, so lot of ways to reach out. I'm happy to talk to anybody. I'm happy to help anybody.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  43:33

Yeah, absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much for your time. I've really enjoyed it. I look forward to keeping in contact and following your music jamming.

Barry LaBov  43:42

Well, I appreciate it. The goal that my company has with our messages, we want to inspire 1 million people worldwide, and you're helping us.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  43:52

Great. I'm pleased that we can help with that, and that is a great goal to have good luck with that. We'll talk again soon.

Barry LaBov  43:58

Thank you.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  43:59

Thank you.