LaBov gains recognition as it continues growth in marketing, training fields | Business

The moment that put Barry LaBov on the path to his greatest hits was one of the worst of his life.

He was 28 and living like an actual rock star. His band, Mark Urgent – formerly LaBov and Beyond – had been featured on “American Bandstand.” The group had hustled its way into a gig backing up John Cougar – later Mellencamp – in a Fort Wayne concert to thank local youths for helping fight back floodwaters. He even found success in using his musical talent to write advertising jingles.

Then LaBov’s father suddenly died after a brief illness, and he found himself on a late-night walk reevaluating everything.

“I just thought, ‘I don’t know how long I’m going to live. Nobody does,’ ” LaBov recalled. ‘ “What do I really want to do with my life?’ ”

For a guy who wrote a rock opera at age 18, the answer he came back with was surprisingly not musical – or at least that’s how it initially seemed.

“In that conversation I was having I gave myself permission to follow the path of running a business,” LaBov said.

Today, the Fort Wayne-based LABOV is an advertising/marketing/training company on the verge of marking 45 years in business. It counts businesses around the globe as clients, ranging from Harley-Davidson and The Macallan scotch to the Fort Wayne Ballet and Steel Dynamics.

Training Industry Magazine named LABOV on its 2024 Learning Services Watch List. It was the second consecutive year LABOV earned the distinction.

“The list represents a unique and emerging set of companies that also provide strong and capable solutions to meet market demands and help solve business needs for their clients,” said Tom Whelan, director of corporate research at Training Industry Inc. “These companies provide their clients with comprehensive solutions, utilizing different learning strategies and solutions to satisfy the needs of their clients and learners.”

The services LABOV provides are centered around an idea LaBov explains in-depth in “The Power of Differentiation,” a new book he published June 25. His team uses what it calls a “total immersion” strategy to familiarize themselves with all the minute details and unique aspects of every company it works with.

Sometimes these unique things go unnoticed because they have become an everyday aspect of doing business the organization takes for granted. LABOV once worked with a small manufacturing company that made a product that resembles a manhole cover for tanker trailers. Over the years, the company engineered a safety latch to release built-up pressure inside the tanker to prevent explosions from happening. It was a unique product, but no one inside the organization had ever thought to market it as an exclusive offering.

Then LABOV takes those unique aspects and celebrates them with the client’s employees in a companywide party to increase their enthusiasm about coming to work every day. LABOV believes employees who understand and believe in what the company is doing become the best ground-level marketing force. It’s only then that LABOV leverages the unique aspects they discovered into marketing for the larger, outside audience.

But the part of LABOV’s approach that is unique ties back to Barry LaBov’s rock star days. It’s called a “jam session.”

If that sounds musical, that’s because it is. The approach comes directly from LaBov’s rock star days, teaming up with his bandmates and just playing music. Often, they would stumble across a new sound or song idea from misplayed notes or chords or seemingly silly ideas.

“Many of the greatest songs were accidents,” LaBov said. “We look for inspiration everywhere and through everyone.”

Greg Johnson, regional market president of Parkview Health in Fort Wayne, participated in a jam session with LABOV that pushed his company to lead a trend of health care systems bringing services to patients in their homes and workplaces.

LABOV led a jam session with all kinds and levels of Parkview employees to generate innovative ideas about new and better ways to provide health care.

“It created ideas like, ‘Why do we expect a patient with diabetes to come to five office visits to accomplish their health care plan? Why can’t we bring those things to the patient and accomplish the goals in a shorter period of time?’ ” Johnson recalled.

Similar “jamming” led to Parkview becoming more involved with bringing health services to large employers so workers could achieve what they normally would at a doctor’s visit without taking significant time off work.

“With today’s challenges in the labor workforce, I think employers, including Parkview, need to be innovative in how they help their workers remain in the game to be productive and healthy,” Johnson said. “Finding innovations like that took coming consciously together to create stuff we didn’t know was possible. Barry’s team at LABOV is exceptional at bringing that creativity out.”

LaBov said his company is increasing revenue at a 40% clip every year. It is currently acquiring an office and recruiting new employees in Dallas, a new market for the company that already represents about half of LABOV’s business.

LaBov also named Harrison Swift and Marcus McMillen as partners in LABOV, establishing them as the future leaders of the organization. They both agree the heart and future of LABOV is tied to Fort Wayne.

“Fort Wayne is always going to be our home and our headquarters,” Swift said. “We have a base here.”

That base will remain no matter how LABOV grows, McMillen said, because everyone at LABOV believes in and invests in the community.

“It’s been fruitful here,” McMillen said. “We have a lot of community interests that benefit all parties, and it’s a really great place to live. We want to continue to support all the growth that’s going on here. At no time in the future will we be moving.”

LaBov own activities are long tied to the Fort Wayne community. He is a founding member of Sycamore Hills Golf Club. LaBov and his wife, Carol, have a charitable foundation that is active in funding a promoting a number of local causes including Erin’s House for Grieving Children, the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership and the Little River Wetlands Project.

LaBov also still curates a website dedicated to his old band, Mark Urgent. But in nearly 45 years of running his business, he says he’s never looked back. Maybe that’s because in many ways, with the practices he’s instilled, he’s never actually stopped being a rock star.

In lyrics he wrote as a young man, LaBov poses introspective questions one can only answer as a less-young man:

“For countless years, I’ve tried my best,” the song goes. “Was it all worth it? Time to be myself again. At times I feel I’ve lost my roots. Where did I hide them? I’ve changed my tune, but will it change me?”

For LaBov, the answers seem clear.

“I’ve never really transitioned,” LaBov said. “I still run the company like a rock band.”

Originally Appeared Here