There is a concept called diversity, and diversity does not have to do with your race. Diversity can be your thought process. Years ago, a person by the name of Jack Welch was running General Electric, and he came out with the concept of diversity in the workplace. Mmm. That's good. And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew. And I'm your host, Brett Dicer. And quickly is if you could just subscribe to the podcast on all your favorite podcasts.
And if you can leave a review, it really does help with the show. But with me, I have Barry, and he is a two time earnest young entrepreneur of the year. Is a celebrated authorization brand strategist with core value of differentiation. Barry advocates for leaders to unearth and champion their brand's distinctiveness to win market share and the hearts of people who represent it.
His books, the power of Differentiation, win hearts, minds, market shares attributed by Simon and Schuster and embodies this philosophy. But this week, we're going to be talking about just basically marketing for you guys. Like, understanding marketing, understanding little bit of AI, because it's one of those things that we all have to actually talk about and figure out how to do correctly. So welcome to the show, Barry, Brett. I'm happy to be here. I follow your podcast.
I think you do a great job. So I'm ready. Let's go for it. All right. The first question asks all my guests is, are you a coffee or tea drinker? I'm a coffee drinker. I also don't want flavored coffee. I don't want to go down that path. I want standard coffee the way God intended it. So I like that with a little bit of cream. So, like house plan or, like, single origin. I'm a barista, or I used to be barista. So I know all this stuff. But is it like that from, like, different countries?
You can taste the flavor profiles. Is that why you like it? I won't say I'm that advanced, but I will like that single flavor approach as opposed to adding caramel and chocolates and other things in which, to me, it's, come on, that's a dessert. I want coffee, and that's how I look at it. Fair enough. But I gave a brief summary of your expertise. Can you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do? I am the founder and president of Labov marketing and advertising.
We are out of the midwest, but we also have offices in Dallas, Texas, in Scottsdale, Arizona. We focus on one word, Brett, and that's all we focus on. And that word is differentiation. And it's not a simple word. It's 15 letters. It's six syllables. But it is very important we help discover the differentiation for our clients in their brand. And then the very first thing we want them to do after that is to celebrate it with the most important people in the world.
Not their customers, their employees, the people who represent their products. So that's what our life is about. And whether it's in sports, whether it's alcohol, whether it's automotive, whether it's rail cars, that's what we focus on every single day. So how do they do that? How do they celebrate their customers? Because it sounds easy. And for PR people, yeah, it's called internal communication. You're supposed to do it.
But I feel like a lot of PR people are like, that's the back burner of the thing. And you want to broadcast to your customers. That's very accurate. And what is most important is to not follow that path. What's most important is the very people who represent or build the product. So whether you are a manufacturer, whether you are a service firm, it doesn't matter.
The people who are behind the product or service, you create a must not only know what you're doing, but they must understand the why behind it. They must understand the uniqueness or distinctiveness. And you said it sounds like it's easy. It's not difficult, but it's like exercise. It doesn't require some kind of extraordinary intellect, but it does require time and discipline and care.
It is imperative today, Brett, that with our workforce being most of the time disenfranchised and feeling like I just worked for a living, who cares? I'll be here for a little while. I'll put this on my resume and I'll move on. That those really valuable individuals must be given the information they need to know that what they're doing is significant. You're actually doing something to help people. You're actually doing something that makes a difference.
And some companies out there listening to your podcast may go. I don't think we're doing anything like that. I believe most companies are doing something of value like that. And we have to stop for a moment. We have to cease being so efficient that we don't want to waste our time on stupid little details. Let's make sure people know that what they did has meaning. Let's express why.
Let's talk about the things behind our product, that we do those extra steps, and make sure our people understand it. It sounds like it's a hassle for some people. It sounds like, come on, who cares? But it is very important. And I would have to suggest today it's more important than ever due to the climate we're in. Yeah, that goes into my next question about the climate we're in, is that it's political lines like you're either one side or you're the other.
So how do you, and I say, stick to the product, because I feel like a lot of pr people nowadays are like the little kid that doesn't want to get bullied by the mob online. And so we're like, up, we're sorry, our bad. We don't want to upset the apple cart, whatever it is, but they don't understand what their customers are because their customers can be split 50 50. And so they go, okay, sorry, and then they upset the other half and your sales go dramatically down.
So how do you just thread that needle and stick with the line of, we're just selling our products, guys. We don't care about your, the social issues or anything like that. That's for you personally to deal with yourself. But as a company, we're here to sell to everybody that likes our product. I think we have to realize that we are here, as you said, to sell to anybody who likes our product. So we're not for everybody. I don't believe in political marketing myself personally.
I don't get involved in it. I do think that we have to realize that there is a pressure on companies today, big and small, to commoditize, to cut those rough edges that we have and sand them so they're smooth like everybody else. When we do that, we reduce the uniqueness, the distinctiveness of what we offer. We must make sure that the product we offer is what we believe is right for our customer base.
And we have to explain why we believe that and what we are doing to promote that and to create that offering. After that point, it's up to the client or customer to choose us. We cannot be all things, all people. And one thing I'd like to suggest that we also realize is that there is a commodity mindset that we have to fight. And that includes if you're a PR agency or if you're a manufacturer, if you're a PR agency, you're going to have clientele that go, yeah, you're PR.
You do what everyone else does. And so we think it's very important to eliminate certain words like just or local. I'm just the local people. We're a small pra. We just know you don't just we aren't just another. We aren't a local. This is what we focus on. As I mentioned to you in our opening discussion here, my agency focuses on one word, differentiation. That's it. And we're not a media buying firm. We tell clients what we don't do.
So whether it's PR folks in your audience or their clientele, we have to stand for the brand. It's not a stretch to say that because our clientele, as you mentioned, are like everyone else out there. We're skeptical. We go, oh, everybody's going to tell me the same thing. They're all alike. Let's surprise people. Let's surprise them by making a stand and saying, this is what we do. This is how we do it. If it fits, awesome. And if not, let's remain friends, but we'll move on.
This goes with your employees, too, because your employees aren't going to be like one side or the other. So how do you even thread that needle of look at guys like, you can have your political discussions, you can have your disagreements, but at the end of the day, we're all working for the same company. Mantra is hate the idea of not hate the person. It's like a mixture of the Bible, which says, hate the sin, not the sinner type of a thing, but it's still applies.
Hate the idea, but not the person, because the person is worth more than just one idea. There is a concept called diversity, and diversity does not have to do with your race. Diversity can be your thought process. Years ago, a person by the name of Jack Welch was running General Electric, and he came out with the concept of diversity in the workplace place.
So for all of your audience that is young, you would think, oh, he meant somebody from different countries, men, women, people with other interests, etcetera. No, he didn't mean that. He meant people who thought differently. So you could literally have a room of ten engineers from different parts of the world, but they all had the same mindset. You had no diversity. What he was talking about was diversity of thought. I love and promote and embrace diversity of thinking.
So I think in our workplace, the way I look at it with our team, I have a wide diversity in my company, I love it because they bring different approaches and different thought patterns to what we're doing. And honestly, most of the time, I just have to shut up and listen and learn and go, wow, that's actually valuable. So that's how I look at it. Brett, I think diversity of thought, even if it gets into some politics, who cares? We need that for creativity, to do our very best work.
Yeah. Even again, quoting from the Bible, iron sharpens iron. It's still the same thing as you're sharpening each other. Yeah, it's difficult at times, and you're going to disagree, but like before, it's one thought. The person has many different thoughts. You're going to have many different types of discussions, but you cannot behold somebody to. If you don't agree with me 100% of the time, you are my enemy, which is a weird thought process in general.
And that's where we've gotten to even in business, even in businesses. Like, I've been a part of, like, businesses where I knew I had to shut up because I was not part of the overall, like, political environment. And I'm not going to say anything because I'm just keep my head down and just work because it's easier for me not to upset the apple cart than to be like, really? Are we really talking about this?
I have a group of clients, and many times I thought about if I brought them all in one room, there could be a fistfight because they have very diverse approaches and outlooks, but they're great people. They have tremendous integrity and really inspiring intellect. So I look at it as a positive. I cannot judge. And you've talked about the Bible several times. Jesus embraced the Samaritans, so the Samaritans were not viewed positively by the Jews.
So not only did he embrace people that were not positive in the viewpoint of the Jews, but he actually would get pushback from the Jews themselves for that action. So you just have to realize, look, we're all different. We're not here to run for office. Most of us aren't. And the diversity of our thinking can be celebrated and enjoyed as best we can. That's what I try to do. I don't waste a lot of energy on it because I cannot.
I don't truly believe I can go change somebody's mind on some of these topics. So I don't waste my energy on it. I look at what we can do together, not what we cannot do together. Yeah. And it's even like building your team. And I'll refer back to Jesus this time, as his twelve disciples were vastly different from each other. Nobody agreed on anything. And you saw all the, after he died, you saw all the disagreements within the early churches and how to do this thing.
So you could look at it that way. But moving on to my next question is, so you have your, like, I guess, your core values for your business. How do you stand that ground with people that may disagree with you online and vehemently disagree with you that want you to apologize for something so trivial that you shouldn't really be apologizing for it? Should you stand your ground and be like, look it, I understand you disagree with me, but this is how we stand.
If you don't like it, I'm okay with that. Agree to disagree. Should we go that stance now because we've gone so far with, I'm sorry, dont hurt me, dont do this. But then we lose the people that are like, but that was your core value. Now youre going against your core value. Trey, I think we have to stick to our core values, but we have to stick to the foundation of what they were built on as well. So at my company, we have a handful of core values that we think are very important.
One of them is jamming or collaborating, but like a jam session. So as an example, in my company, if we bring a person on and they say, look, I don't want to collaborate with others. I want to do it on my own. I want to be the face of the company. I want to be the soloist, the star.
We'll have an issue with that, not on a personal level, but we'll say, look, I don't think that fits the way we are because you're not going to be happy because all day long people are going to go, hey, what about this? Hey, let's get together and huddle on this. Hey, let's try. That will drive a soloist out of their minds. So we talk about it from their standpoint when we deal with some of these issues, because it's not about, you've got to fit within my format.
It's that we've got to work together. It's got to be a good fit for each of us. So that's how we look at it. We don't run into many problems because we share in advance before we bring a person on. And I wouldn't say we warn them, but we let them know that, hey, this is the kind of environment, brett, I'll give you one example. Our company works in some very diverse industries on some very diverse projects. And now that may sound exciting and attractive to some, but to others it is nothing.
So what we do is we'll explain right off the bat. We'll go, we work with a wide range of clients, and we actually have a video on our website that you can look at. We'll tell them this. And it's called a day in the life. That video is two minutes, but it shows us doing a project for Harley Davidson in Europe, launching a motorcycle. Then it shows us working with a steel company in Texas. Then it shows us working with a copper company in New Haven, Indiana.
Then it shows us working with an australian mining company, then a food service company, then McAllen Scotch in Scotland. And it ends with us working with airstream coaches in Jackson, Ohio. Okay, we share that and we say, now, I want you to understand that is what we work on in a day. Now, one person's not working on every one of those, but that's the environment. Now, you may think and the audience may go, yeah, but everybody loves that. No, we've had people that go, no, wait a minute.
I like to work only in automotive. I could put up with some of this, but I don't know if I'd like it. And we go, you know what? That's great. It will not really fit because you'll go out of your mind. Because we're going to say, I know you want to work on automotive, but here's a really cool recreational vehicle project to work on with an iconic brand, and you're not going to look at it as exciting.
And I said to a few of our folks that we're interviewing, you have to understand, you won't be excited about it. We need you to be because our clients want to feel your passion. So I think it's communicating it, and it's not good versus evil. It's our approach. Doesn't mean it fits for everybody. And I completely get it if somebody does not find it that interesting. True. You had me perked up in McAllen Scotch because that's actually pretty good scotch.
It is the best scotch in the world, in my opinion. It is the best. They are, and they are extraordinary people to work with, by the way. Nice. Moving on to AI. So we've discussed this before. We actually did this, and I've talked about a bunch of times with a bunch of different people. But what I really want to dive into is, like, the sole entrepreneur that has to do several different things with AI. But we're all told you should edit everything. You should do everything.
Look it, I have so many, so much time in the day. I have so much bandwidth for my brain to switch gears and figure out how to make it sound like myself. And that's a lot of switching. That's a lot of, like, brain powers. How do we do this effectively? Because I feel like even me sometimes, I'm like, you know what? It's just good enough. Like, I know it's not my voice, but it's good enough for people to actually engage with it because that's the whole point is you want people to engage.
So how do you balance this out if you're just like a really small team or just yourself? I think that's a great question and I'll probably be the oldest person you ever interviewed on your show. Take this with a grain of salt. My suggestion is use AI. And for anything behind the curtain, anything that you're customer client is not dealing with one on one saying, wait a minute, this is Brett's work. AI as is probably will do a great job for you.
I think your trademark signature, creativity, what makes you different and unique, you've got to really look at that and say, now wait a minute, that's me. Now the reminder follow ups that are AI and things like that, who cares? The slight imperfections that AI will then be part of, nobody cares. But I think we have to look at where do we really make our mark and we cannot compromise there. Other than that, yeah, use AI. I mean, use it as is. Yeah. Otherwise edit it.
Make sure it's exactly what you want because it reflects you and why your. Customer chose you and you prefer one or the other. Because I know there's 15 or even more different ones. I know about five of them. And it's like Gronk for X Twitter, if you're a premium user, you can only use it if you're a premium user. There's jet, GPT, there's Claude, there's perplexity and copilot, but I think Microsoft uses OpenAI anyway, so it's the same thing.
And then you have Gemini, which used to be barred from Google. So would you say to people, just figure out one and try to use one of them, or just like test out all of them and see which one works for you. It's really about what works for you more than this one's better than the other. The creatives that I know and respect are playing the field and checking out which ones fit their needs. In some cases they end up falling in love with one and in other cases they are playing the field.
They'll have three or four that they're using for different applications. Do you have a favorite one that you actually specifically use? I've used copilot quite a bit. I've used chat GPT quite a bit. Those are the two I turn to. But I have others in my company that are using a number of different AI applications. Got you and do you see that being more of like a hard skill that marketers and PR people are going to have to actually use for AI?
Is it just going to be like job application could be like several years in using AI or figuring out how to use AI right now it's just like we're all figuring it out, but eventually, is it going to be like you're going to have to know how to use these and prompt these or figure out how to implement your own brand voice into it? Is that how it's going to be eventually? I believe it will be that way eventually. And if you go back decades when websites were a new thing, it was the same way.
It was like, oh yeah, hey, is there one way to do it? Oh yeah, there's one way. Then all of a sudden it became something completely different. And so I believe you will have to master it or it will master you. And should they figure out, because it's all about prompts, it's almost like a Google search. If you write the right prompt, you'll get the right answer back in a way. So is it figuring more about those prompts out?
Because those prompts are just like, the thing that people have to know is should they like search for it? Should they search for template prompts just to get them started? Like, how should they be doing this if they haven't really dipped their toes in yet? I've used it extensively, I've used some prompts, but what I do is I actually will collaborate with it. Once I get certain responses, I'll go, okay, do this again.
Give me blank number of them, but with less of this and that and a little more focus on blank. It does that. It goes back and forth and back and forth. I literally will do a half dozen to a dozen generations of those types of prompts and thinking to get what I want. That's how I do it. And then where do you see this all going for marketing in the next five years? Let's say someone's new and they're up and coming.
Like, how do I get into this thing that makes me want to figure out how to create content, maybe video edit, maybe figure out how to be a guest on a podcast, maybe all these things, like what skills should they be focusing on right now to make them successful in the future? We know that AI and technology will constantly evolve. So we know that.
I believe that my focus would be, if I was getting into the business, is I would want to be very technically fluent, but I would be focusing on the relationships with my clientele, because that is one thing the technology cannot touch. So I would start there. I would utilize the technology as my support as a crutch I could turn to in times of great stress and overload. But again, I would ensure that what made me valuable to my clientele would never be replaceable with technology.
And how do we navigate the, I guess, the negatives of AI? Because we're seeing like a lot of scammers, like being able to mimic your voice. We're seeing a lot of these things. And like, deepfakes have been around for longer than AI has been. So how do we navigate that PR crisis in general? Because that's eventually going to be a huge PR crisis if we can't figure out what's real and what's not anymore.
I think that's one of the opportunities for PR companies and agencies to assist their clientele in because their clientele will become prey to that as well. So the PR firm that is able to show leadership there and say, hey, this is what we stand for. This is the uniqueness, this is the genuine nature of what we're doing. And this is why you need to work with us.
And we'll protect you on some of that, because there are going to be some fakes, there are going to be some scams, and what will happen is we're seeing it right now on social media posts. You'll go, okay, that person did not write that post. That's an AI post. Isn't that valuable for us to help our clientele with because they're dabbling in it as well.
We need to be that voice that says, okay, let's use this to support us, but let's not use this to replace our voice, because I, as your PR firm, want to protect and embrace what your voice is so that your customer base continues to subscribe to you, to buy from you. For solo entrepreneurs, like, we've all talked about a bunch of different, we talked about AI and just like making your core value stand and everything.
So what should, if they're just starting up now, what should they be focusing on first? Should be focusing on like, figuring out the AI section of it? Or should they be focusing specifically on their core values and making it known before they use AI? I believe the most important thing as a solo entrepreneur is you are selling and representing one thing, and that's you. Everyone else can go have access to a technology, to whatever, right? But nobody can have access to you but yourself.
So I recommend you really hone in on what it is that you bring to the table that you offer that is unique. And when I say that, I say this with love to all solo entrepreneurs. I'm not saying you're superior in every way. I'm saying, what is unique? What are you doing? What is that approach you use that your customers tell you? Gol, I love that if you can capture that bottle, that gives you an edge, and then, yes, you can use the technology that is available to billions of other people.
Let's focus on the one or two things that make you unique. R1, quick example. My nephew is a brilliant programmer. He was looking to move on and find a new position. He said, what should I talk about? What should I do? I know all these different programs. And I said, okay, but here's what makes you unique. You're the rare programmer who actually loves to work with humans. And he said, oh, yeah, I love working with people. And I said, okay, that's what you focus on.
That's what your resume is about. Oh, by the way, you know all these different technologies and formats and applications and programs? Sure. And there will be new ones tomorrow. You'll learn them. But nobody knows how to work with people like you do. That's what I'm saying to our solo leaders out there. What are you doing that's unique? Because you can always learn the technology and your competition's always going to tout that they have the same technology. So where do you stand out?
And so people are hearing this and they want to know more about you. So where can people find you online? They can find me two different spots. I'm happy to help any solo entrepreneur because I was a solo entrepreneur. So I started out one guy sitting in his house all by himself. My name is Labov. L a b o v. My website is labov.com dot. You can find me, send me a message, or go to my personal website, which is barrylebove, barrylabov.com.
and you can also sign up for information, get some free documents there, and you can leave me a message about my upcoming book if you want to get some information on it. And we'll let you know when it's going to be released. All right, any final thoughts for listeners? I think it's wonderful to be out there struggling, working hard, and giving your best every day, and to realize that, yes, you can make it, yes, it is worthwhile.
But what you have to do is realize you're bringing something to the table that's valuable. Be yourself, express that to the clients. And you know what? If a client goes, I really don't know if that's that special. Don't feel hurt, don't feel depressed. Just think, okay, I'll find somebody who does get me and they'll really appreciate me and they'll get a great performance. All right.
Thank you Barry, for joining digital coffee marketing brew and sharing your knowledge on marketing, printhead, internal communications, and AI. You bet. And thank you for listening. As always, please subscribe to this podcast on all your favorite podcasting apps. Just leave a five star review if you can. It really does help. And join me next week as I talk to another great fellow here in the PR industry. Alright guys, stay safe.
Get to understanding your internal communication, your customers and your employees to get them successful, and AI as well. And see you next week. Later.