2393 - Mindshare Equals Market Share in Building Brand Success with IDealogic Brand Lab’s Ron Netanel

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Ron Netanel. Ron, you are the founder and CEO of Ideologic Brand Lab. You're found on the web at ideologicbrandlab.com. To our friend listening, we've got a direct link to your website. Ron, it's great to have you. Thank you for having me, Josh. I really appreciate being here. Well, because I already know the answer to this question, I'm going to really love what you have to share here. I always love asking what our guests are kind of geeking out on or into when they're not at work.

1:22And you and I share a passion. What is it? So as you know, but I'll tell you the audience as you know, I love food. I love the classics. I love, you know, really fine dining. So now what I do is I just try to take all of these classic dishes and turn them healthy. And the reason being is I was obese at one point. Doctor had to sit down with me and said, you've got to make some life changes. So I got back in the gym, started eating healthy, realized that, you know what, I missed the food that got me in trouble. So I just took it upon myself to try to add substitutions and things along those lines.

2:03I did a lot of research on diet and nutrition and things along those lines and lost 80 pounds in the process. Wow. Congratulations on that. As someone who not quite that many pounds, but I dropped about 57 pounds from my heaviest weight. It just what a difference in life that is. So Ron, first off, congratulations on that. I know that takes a lot of dedication and a lot of page, a lot of patience, you know, just sticking with it. But on the on the kind of the, you know, kind of the commitment in the kitchen to make, you know, healthier versions of things. Usually I find that people have like a few go to hacks that that that that they're big fans of.

2:49I suspect maybe you have a couple of things you're like, dude, these are easy replacements. Help me out. what are some things i could be doing in the kitchen because i'm like you i like really rich dens you know indulgent you know that's that's you know it's it's so good but but how have you been able to hack this system a little bit so it's it's funny because um you know you're absolutely right sometimes you just don't want so what i do is i just cook enough chicken to last for days and i just repurpose that in all of the foods whether i want to eat tacos or my favorites or bowls, you get some spinach, chop it up.

3:27Avocado, you can make an avocado spread. Some cottage cheese is what I found that I really love to make is you take cottage cheese, put it in a blender, put some spices in it. You can even add avocado in there, some hot sauce, and you blend it up until it's creamy and smooth. Take the chicken or even beef, tomatoes and things along those lines, and you just have a protein bowl. So that's usually my go-to very quick. Oh, and sweet potatoes, air fried. Oh, yeah. That's the definitely the best macros or micros you can get. So yeah, so mix it all together. And it's delicious. I don't know how many people were thinking that they would be listening to an episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur.

4:04And now all of a sudden, everyone's tummies are rumbling. But you are making me hungry, my friend. Ron, share with us what you do with Ideologic Brand Lab. So what we do is we're a branding agency. And we focus on, for Idealogic side, we focus with mid-market and large enterprise organizations, creating brand identities, reshaping their infrastructure and their brand model. We actually make the brand infiltrate through every aspect of their operations, all the way down to consumer journey and experience to the end desired goal of being brand loyalists. So that's on that side. However, now I am also, as of the past six months, I'm also kind of making a pivot and I'm getting out into the space to where I am paying it forward, so to speak.

4:57So I am going after smaller SMBs and helping them leverage what they know, what they don't know, in order to help them push towards mid-market and then really catapult and power level their brand that way. And really, this is, I call it the brand shift code. So I created a whole coaching program designed around that. It's helping entrepreneurs to stop thinking small business tactics and think big brand strategy. And so that's where I am right now. That's not brand to human. Is that on your website? Yeah, brand to human is the philosophy that I have that is derived by understanding human nature, psychology, and human behavior, which leads to purchasing behavior, created a science around that, and then created the whole brand model around that.

5:44So the brand model is basically a structure for organization, and it's the framework that we develop all aspects of the brand identity through, not just the visuals. The visuals come at the end and the aesthetic appeal. Yeah. So it's more important to really understand how to leverage the internal components of a brand, really give it a human identity, not just a intangible entity, so to speak. Tell me more about that, particularly like, you know, when you're beginning a brand discussion, like what are those first big questions that you like to ask? And so for a friend that's listening and, you know, they're considering like a brand refresh, you know, I'm hoping that, you know, as they're listening to you, they might be able to ask themselves some of these questions.

6:28Right. Absolutely. That's a great question. So really, it starts off with leadership. And I'm talking CEO down. First thing I do is I don't want to know about the brand so much right away. I want to understand what the CEO's vision is or the entrepreneur's vision. if we're going down below mid-market. Really, it's leadership's idea of what success looks like to them, where they want to go. What does that timeline look like? What are the limitations and the things that are holding you back? Where are the roadblocks? Where are the bottlenecks? And then from that point, I can understand the gaps.

7:03And then obviously transfer that to the gaps in the market, see where we could leverage and what opportunities are there. But ultimately, that is to align the brand's leadership with the brand's internal dialogue, messaging, brand aesthetics, brand appeal, and really the messaging carries throughout the whole brand in itself in a holistic approach. So I would always start with leadership and really just putting it down on paper and just really understanding what are you trying to achieve with the brand? And how, if this brand was a person, how would you like this person to be ultimately? And what we're doing at that point is we're extracting leadership from the brand.

7:48So that way, the brand becomes a gauge and a barometer for how the company runs on its standards and promises. I, Ron, often have conversations with folks that are in B2B, and a lot of times what they're selling is their expertise, a lot of coaches, consultants, agency owners. And I'm a big fan just from my perspective. I do a lot of media consulting and coaching, and I'm just such a huge fan of getting people out front as quickly as possible on the website. You know, it's just the faster I can connect with a human, I feel the better. But that's my take on it. And sometimes I get pushback from folks who are like, yeah, but we want to appear much bigger than just me, the founder.

8:43Like, I don't want to put my face in a big hero shot or, you know, on my front page. And, you know, I'm like, oh, it's your choice, I guess. But how do you, I'm sure you've had similar conversations. How do you address that, that dynamic? And by the way, my advice may not be your advice. You know, again, I'm typically working with people that are wanting to be on stages, be on podcasts, that sort of thing. And so I'm like, well, you know, now audiences are connecting with you personally. So I like to get them, you know, you know, I like once I introduce them to somebody like on a stage, I want to continue that personal relationship.

9:21So that's kind of my bias on this. But how do you address all of this? And that works 100 % of the time in that right category or in that right strategy, right? And so the tactics always have to reinforce the strategies. So it all depends on what the strategy is and what the brand strategy is going to facilitate in the end for the outcomes. So let's just say if it's B2B, and let's just say you're a public-facing executive, and you realize the power of a personal brand and how it can help your career, you should absolutely double down, triple down on that. You should document things. You should put yourself in authoritative roles and positions and authoritative marketing and insights and so forth and so on, just to help reinforce who you are, what you are, and your expertise.

10:06However, if you're looking at it on a B2B side and you're talking about it just being a business, it's very important to make sure that during the customer journey that every step of the way from path to purchase, that's only one part of it, right? That's only the – and that's where I think most marketers fail. It's not only about path to purchase. For me, it's about path to loyalty and mindshare. So if you're doing that, there has to be a lot of reinforcement from the company that really positions the brand in a way that becomes the only viable option in the market. And for that audience, and they have to know that you're either solving their problem or enhancing their lifestyle in a way that they're wanting the outcomes and results to be.

10:54So how do you do this? You can't just have the founder most of the time just speak about it. Although you can in certain segments, if that's the way it's going and if it's becoming an educational based or a very thought driven, thought leadership based strategy, then absolutely. But on the other side, if it's just the business, then really the brand needs to communicate these messages and these ideas and these internal ethics and these internal principles and values and mission and vision and essence and culture. All of that has to be represented in a way that really resonates with the audience and it locks them in saying this is the kind of company that I want to work with.

11:32This is the kind of company I want to buy from. This is the kind of company that I align with. Look at their goals. Even if it's something that has to do with some kind of cause marketing approach. And I always say be very careful on cause marketing because some people look at it like showboating or gloating that you're just doing this for the attention. However, that should be completely out of the equation. You should do it in a sense of this is what we believe. This is what we stand for and make it a mission, not just a campaign. And so there's ways of putting all that out there where you have to allow the brand to speak and communicate.

12:11And when a brand can communicate and speak, it is heard by the ideal consumers that will stay loyal. And that's how they connect. You know, making investments in this work, you know, in my experience, it just makes everything so much easier in business. You know, again, I tend to think about, you know, some of those, you know, I mean, you know, your brand carries over into lots of different places. You know, I think a lot about, you know, the social media presence and, you know, the content you create, your website, you know, and there are many more. Um, but, uh, Ron, um, for, for 2026 now, um, what do you see as the biggest things to pay attention to regarding, Hey, listen, a couple of years ago, I think you could have gotten away with this today.

13:08Listen, I'm going to tell you right now. I think if you're not up to date, you're probably doing yourself a disservice. Anything come to mind other than stock photography? you know it's funny because most people do believe that it's about the image it's about having the the visual aesthetic package and really ultimately it's not it's for me i think one of the most important thing is authenticity a brand being genuine but you don't sell what you do you sell what people become by choosing your brand or your product And if you can triple down on that and understand there is a purpose, the goal is to be really intertwined with someone's life and lifestyle or livelihood, and they use your brand as utility.

14:02Whether that's B2B or B2C. And if you're in their life at that level, you own Mindshare. And the more Mindshare you have, the more market share you have. And I kind of coined the phrase years ago, mindshare equals market share. I love it. I love it. Ron, your website, ideologicbrandlab.com, to a friend that's been listening here and, you know, loves kind of what you're talking about. Do you mind sharing a little bit more about who you work with and to a friend that's listening, you know, who should reach out or who should connect with you? and what would be some next steps if it's not necessarily a conversation?

14:40I don't know if there's any resources that you'd recommend. Sure, absolutely. So, you know, if, like I said, for your audience, if your audience is in mid-market, you know, and I break up mid-market, there's a big spread, right? Because when you're talking SMB to micro, you know, you're talking about a million to 50 million in ARR, an annual reoccurring revenue. As soon as you, and this is the way I look at it, rather than employees, you can either look at employees or through revenue. I like that through revenue because that's a model that I always want to be gauged around. How much revenue are we creating?

15:12So from that point, from$50 million to a billion dollars is what I consider mid-market. That's a huge spread. So I break it up into three different segment categories, downstream, midstream, upstream. I can service every one of those with Ideologic as the brand identity, building, done-for-you services for brand development, all the way from infrastructure, brand architecture, to then strategy to then implementation of all the channels and all the creative. However, what I'm also doing now with BrandShiftCode.com is really helping entrepreneurs that are in, let's just say a million to$10 million bracket, ARR, and they're just really finding a lot of plateaus.

15:56They don't know the things they don't know. And when you really look at it that way, it's incalculable how much money is being lost. And so I decided to take it back to the basics and start to really create some opportunities to help launch or power level entrepreneurs on that end, really trying to help them break the ceiling that they're in. And ultimately, I realized is the reason why so many smaller businesses don't understand how to break that ceiling is because it's what big brands do. And they've been doing it for years. And right now, entrepreneurs at that level and SMB, they're just so focused on everything because they're juggling everything.

16:44And you're having all of these trusted advisors. And I guess there's a whole bro marketing initiative happening right now. Market, market, market, market, feed the machine, the more ROAS, the better ROAS means the more money you spend. So it's, it's, it's about, it's just about marketing. It has nothing to do with branding. And I, I segment branding, marketing, and advertising into three different categories. Totally. They're not the same thing. However, everybody thinks they're the same thing and yet they're not. So the way I look at branding is branding is awareness that leads to adoption, that leads to loyalty, right?

17:18Marketing is, is, is creating recognition that leads to retention. And that's through strategies and things along those lines and creating the campaigns and then advertising about promoting that leads to sales. So the problem is, is everybody tries to bucket everything into one and there's, it gets diluted with what you're really trying to accomplish. So strategically, you always have to look at one of those variables in that way. And so it's, it's, it's really one of those things where the smaller entrepreneur and the one to$10 million range, they can't compete with the brands in mid-market yet.

17:52However, all they need initially is just a mindset shift. It's how to start thinking like a big brand. How do I create a revenue stream that fits with my current model of where I am? And then how do I then sustain a larger scale and jump from the small, eventually jump from the small pond into the river and then from the river to the sea? So it's one of these evolutionary turns. But yeah, so now I'm helping them. And actually I have a free, it's DIY. It has all the prompts that you need. It's a PDF download at brandshiftcode.com. Like I mentioned before, not every company is ready to implement some of these strategies and tactics.

18:38So all I ask is just a quick 10 minute call. We go over where you are, what you're trying to accomplish. And I'm like, yep, this is going to help you. I will send you that PDF download absolutely free. It is actually a breakdown of my coaching course, my program that I have, the branch of code. But by all means, I would love for everyone to have it, take a look at it. And if you ever need me to help you walk through it and do the behind the scenes work that needs to be done, I'm always willing to help there too. All right, Ron Netanel, legendary brand leader. You've been doing this for a couple of decades.

19:18AIDS. Congratulations on 12 years as the founder of Ideologic Brand Lab, again, found on the web at ideologicbrandlab.com. Ron, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Josh. It's been a pleasure.

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