 So we are on step number seven of a seven part series on how to build a brand from scratch. Thank you for the amazing question that kicked off this series at the very beginning. I'm very, very, very, very happy that we were asked this question because it enabled us to really put some thought into a whole series on what would help you to take something and really build that business and build that brand from zero to hero and beyond. So we've gone through a whole process. If you're joining in this show now, you're gonna enjoy it, but make sure you go through the other six shows that are part of this series. There are around 15 minutes each per show. The first one was about 20 minutes, and then it's between 10 and 15 minutes for each show thereafter. Just to take you step by step through the process, give you the activities you need to do to go away, work on your business, and then come back to the next step. That's how I work with everything that I do. It's always letting you know, here's what you need to go away and do, go do it, then come back and we'll get the next step. So it's very instructional. I've created over 1,000 mini courses and master classes and over 70 different products and programs where everything is step by step. Because I believe that it's not just about the what. We all know what we should do. You already know what you need to go away and do. It's how do you do it? That's the key thing, and that's what we aim to give you at how to build a brand. So in this final step, we're gonna focus on systemizing and automating the process. Because you're going to have gone through an experience now where you've created your product, you've tested it, you've measured it, you've got feedback, you've built ambassadors, you've got people who are on hand to promote it. Maybe you've even started selling it by this point. Now what we need to do is make sure that you're automating and systemizing things so that you're not getting caught up in the day to day running of all that stuff yourself. I remember when I first launched my brand accelerator program, I mentioned it earlier on in the series, that program was originally, it was 37 steps. I didn't realize, right? What I did was I sat down and I unpacked. How was it that I was taking somebody with no brand and no business and they were just thinking about an idea? How was I taking those people through to thriving business, global thought leader on shows, getting exposure, getting people, everybody talking about them building their credibility in a massive way? How are they going from zero to that in a short period of time? So I sat down and I unpacked that process because clients were paying me 20,000 pounds to go through that process. It was a seven day process to go through the actual brand strategy behind it and then a 12 week process to get it out there and get the program working, getting the experience and expertise out there so that there was a process to getting that kind of visibility strategy, right? So we went through that process and it was like, well, somebody came to me, my very first online customer, Mr. Jem Scrag, who's still within our brand builders club now, all these years later, and Jem said to me, Sammy, I really need your help but and he'd seen me speaking on stage and he came up to me at the back of the room and said, Sammy, I really need your help but I can't afford 20 grand. I don't have that. How can I do it? How can you teach me to do this? And I thought about it. I said, well, just leave it with me because I haven't done that before. So usually I've done it for people. So let me see if I could unpack it in a way that you could go and do it yourself. Let me see. Hello, Bob. Bob's come to say hello. Say hello, Bob. He's been snuggling behind me this whole time. So I sat down and I worked it out and I didn't realize there were actually 37 different steps that I was taking. I was doing completely unconsciously. Obviously I built it as part of a system and I was doing all these things but I was doing them on autopilot. Whereas if somebody had never done it before and they were doing it for the first time, how could I help them to be able to do it but do it in a way, excuse my dog, do it in a way that they would find it easy to go through that process. And when I unpacked it, there were 37 different things that I needed them to do. So I said, Gem, you're gonna be the first person to go through it. What is this kind of program worth to you? What would it be worth to you for you to go through this process so that we can test it so that I've got something that I can then have lots of people go through after you? And he said, well, I've got about 1,500 pounds. And I said, fine, 1,500 quid, not gonna barter with you. Yes, the program's worth a lot more than that but that's what you've got. Let's put that into it. So he paid 1,500 quid and that effectively paid for me to create this program. Now I'm living in France at the time. I've literally moved over to France only a few months before. So most of the videos that you see at the beginning of the Brand Accelerator program are me walking through a country lane with, I've got my tripod somewhere. Here we go. My little tripod with my camera, my phone in there and I lock my elbow in and so off I'm walking along and so the camera's moving at the same time I am. So it's actually still when you're walking along. No fancy equipment. I think this is about 12 pounds off Amazon. Probably cheaper now because we're going back eight years ago. And so I create these videos but I knew that I wasn't saying, Gem, I'm so excited for you. You've completed step one, well done. Now we wanna get you to go through step two. So here's what you're gonna do. I wasn't mentioning his name. I was saying, I was using you and your language and that's what you're gonna need to do is you start to systemize and automate your programs and your processes. So you'll say something like I said to Gem. So Gem felt like I was saying it 100% to him but I didn't have to name anybody. And I just jumped on the camera and oh my God, I'm so proud of you. You went through step one and you completed it really easily. Now you've already got this positioning strategy. This is the skeleton that we're now gonna use to go into step number two. So I applaud you for putting so much energy into it and getting that done. Now let's go to step number two. So Gem was like, wow, he just felt like I'd created the whole program for him. By the time I'd gone through, I think I'd created about six steps and I was always just one step ahead of Gem. I wasn't too far ahead. I just knew the skeleton of okay, to get you from here to here, these are the things you're gonna need to do. I didn't know if they'd be able to do them. So he's gone through them, I'm a step ahead. So we get to about number six and he's already starting to build massive visibility. He's already starting to, I think he got an inquiry from an Australian TV producer that was looking for a personal trainer to be part of this TV series. Now, there are millions of people around the world, at least hundreds of thousands of people in the world that say they're a personal trainer. I mean, it's a saturated market. So for him to be just within the first six steps of this process, already building his visibility and already getting inquiries like that, I was just like, wow, this is a big win. This is amazing. This is really working. And I was so pleased that I could help somebody else to get that and it wasn't me that was getting it now. So already that I'd cut my workload down significantly. So he goes through that process by about seven or eight. He's saying to me, Sammy, I've got a friend who's asking me how I'm doing what I'm doing. Can I refer them to you? You know, this is a great program. You should get them to go through it. Okay, so I have a conversation with them. They then start going through the program. Well, now I'm like seven or eight steps ahead of that person. Then the two of them start referring me. Because remember, I'm focusing on turning them into brand ambassadors and making their experience so good. They can't wait to refer me. So now they're referring me to people. So now I'm 12 steps ahead of that next person that's coming in and they're all starting at the same stage. And they're going through this process. Well, at first, because I was only a couple of steps ahead of Gem, I was typing out the title of the email, the body copy of the email. I was putting them into Word documents and I was, every time I sent an email, I copied and pasted that wording into a template because that was something I could use for the next person. And then I did that for the next one and the next one. So I did that for all of those steps. And it got to the point where I then launched the program. So I had 18 people sign up for the program paying a thousand pounds a month for six months to go through the program. I don't know if I mentioned that at the beginning, but that was what I did with this program. It became the brand accelerator program and it was 6,000 pounds to go through this process. And I just did a split payment for six months with the people that were going through it. Because that was good for me. I loved the cash flow of going through that process. And working with 18 people didn't take me a whole month. So whilst I was going through that, whilst they were working on their things, I could be either creating the next step or by the time I completed the program itself, I was then making videos like this for you. Because I could because I had the time to do it. So that's the brilliant thing about creating something that I call exponential. It's an exponential product. It's something that you could have lots of people going through. I think I've had over 800 people go through that brand accelerator program now over the years. And I mean, it's just a brilliant process. And those people then go on to become Brand Builders Club members or they go on to do other things that we're doing, come to our retreats and stuff. So you create this amazing family of people around you when you start systemizing it. Now of course, I was copying and pasting all that myself at first. And then I thought, oh my God, and I had all these people that were paying me. Now I had enough money to be able to invest in some team. So I got a virtual assistant. Now you can pick VAs up from all over the place. There's a great website called peopleperhour.com. I think it is peopleperhour.com. So you can find people that will just do this stuff. You might only need somebody to take an hour a day just to sort through your emails and respond to people or to set meetings up in your calendar or to proofread things. You know, there's loads of things that you can get a VA to do. My VA also edits all my podcasts. He gets all my podcasts up there. He does the promotion. He goes into LinkedIn and connects with people for me. He does loads and loads of stuff with these videos. He will edit these videos. He'll get them transcribed. He then passes them to my content writer and she then writes blogs from this content. So it's my own words, but she's turning that into blog articles and then into emails. So you could have just one or two members of a team and start to build it up. And as you start to get that income coming in, invest some of that income back in team. Don't take all that money and think, woohoo, I'm gonna buy loads of stuff with it. Reinvest that in team. Because if you say to me, Sammy, I haven't got the time. What you're really telling me is you haven't got the team. And if you say to me, oh God, you know, I haven't got enough team at a certain size of business. I'd be saying to you, actually no, you haven't got enough systems. Because you only really need a few people on your team, especially if you're in an information marketing type business or you're a speaker or an author and you're creating products. Obviously if you've got consumer products, it's a little bit different, but ultimately building your brand and building your credibility and putting systems in place is the same for everybody no matter what business you are. So the things that really helped me was I got that person on board. So Pam was my first VA, so she came on board. And she was then copying and pasting these things out to everybody. And then we realized that actually we could get a system that would do that. So we invested in Infusionsoft. And Infusionsoft is a more expensive option where it comes to automating your customer journey. But then the way I see it is, I would rather pay $150 a month or whatever it is for a system that I know is certain that I know will deliver on its promise because once it's set up, it's just doing things on autopilot than to pay for a human who has sick days and family issues and all kinds of shizzazzle that they bring to work with them even if they don't work for you. They're still working in your business. And if something happens to them, I've had a VA who was in India, I think it was. And at certain times of the day, all of his internet would cut out. You're running a business. You've got to work with people that are able to deliver on their promises to you. Otherwise you can't deliver on your promises to others. So I systemize as much as I can. And I would rather pay $150 or $200 a month to Infusionsoft and have this process completely automated. Then I would to pay a human if I can automate that process. And that way I can have real humans on the other end of the actual customer experience. They're not so busy sending emails that they can actually be asking customers, how are you doing and genuinely meaning it and being fully present with that. So there was another, so Infusionsoft is out there. Active Campaign is a smaller version of Infusionsoft. With Active Campaign, I think it starts at about nine pound or $9 a month even. But just bear in mind that when you hit a certain amount of subscribers, I think it's about a thousand subscribers, the price jumps up massively. So just check on that and be fully up to date on that so you don't get any surprises. Of course you could use something like MailChimp as well. Again, small amount to get you started and then you can upgrade later. What I didn't have available to me, which you have available to you now, is Infusionsoft created a smaller offering called KEEP, K-E-A-P. And so it's still an Infusionsoft product but what it means is it's a lot less investment to get started. And so while your list is fairly small and you're just starting to get people onto your mailing list, it's really not that much money to have the Infusionsoft account. But what it means is when you do grow it and you hit an amount of subscribers where you'd have to go up to the next level of account, all you do is that you then upgrade and everything that's already been created in that account just gets taken with you. Whereas if you sign up with MailChimp for example and then you grow your list to a thousand people and then you want to go to Infusionsoft, you've now got to spend days, if not weeks going through to extrapolate all of that data to get it into a brand new system which is the most painful thing in the world that you could try and do. So I'm just putting it out there so that you're familiar and you're already up to speed on that, you can make your own decision. The other thing that made a huge difference to me was using Calendly to schedule my meetings. So you can go to Calendly, there's a free version of Calendly so you can test it out as well. Again, it's a freemium model, you can just upgrade if you want to do other certain things with your calendar. But for example, I've got different links for different things. Calendly also connects with my PayPal so if you want to have a brand audit with me, you can click on the Calendly link, you can choose the best date for you and you can pay for the service there and then it goes straight into my diary and then I've got all the information I need ready to have a one-to-one hour of power with you and I spend 30 minutes before those sessions going through everything you send me so that when we're on that call we're just getting shit done. So it's a brilliant way if you've been able to schedule things instead of going backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards, it takes so much time saying what days are you available? Oh, I'm available on these days. Oh, actually I'm not available then now. What about, I mean, God, it's such a pain. You can go in, you can pre-populate what times, I mean, I've got set times between two and 4 p.m. every day, that's for customers. Outside of that, I'm on my business. I'm not working on anybody else's business. Two to four every day is working with my customers or having calls with other people outside of the Brand Builders Club because Brand Builders Club is where I spend all my time. So you just got to think about what times do you want to schedule appointments and if you've got holidays coming up or whatever, you need to block them out. But Calendly is really easy and you can set that up. I chose to get the paid version of Calendly. I tested the free one, first of all, but I upgraded because when I upgraded it also allowed me to ask questions. So I can ask questions, how long have you been in business, what would make you a good customer for the Brand Builders Club? I can ask all these questions so that when I get on a call, look, it's already qualified. If somebody answers those questions in a way that I think, do you know what, actually, I don't think our products are the best thing for you. But I'll still jump on a call with them and I'll say, look, I've read through what you sent me. Actually, before you do this, I think the best thing for you to do is this. And I've got a whole load of mentors in the Brand Builders Club. There's 30 mentors in Brand Builders who guide our members, whatever stage they're at, to go to the next level. And so there might be one of our mentors in Brand Builders Club that would be a better person for you to work with beforehand. Or it might be you join Brand Builders and you get them included in the process. Everybody is different. Your business is different to everybody else's business. So your journey will therefore be different. So you've got to think about what is the customer journey for your ideal customers and then automate as much as you can. Anytime you send an email out, copy and paste it into a Word document. Just to start off your templates, make sure that you are systemizing in that way. The other thing is to use the scheduling tools in YouTube and in Facebook, there's scheduling in Twitter. There's scheduling tools that you can use. So you can literally create all your video content for the rest of the week and then you can get it all scheduled and that way it's going out and you don't have to be there to physically upload it and do all of that stuff. You can leave it all uploading overnight. Come in the next morning and schedule it all to go out at the times you want it to go out and then it's done. You haven't got that stress hanging over you. You can be focused on doing other things. So if you do nothing else, just try to schedule your calendar, schedule your social media, but just make sure that when you schedule your social media you do turn up at the time that you've scheduled it to go out. Just turn up and share it in some places and be your best brand ambassador. Social media is called social for a reason. So be social and create engagement around it. So be social and create engagement around whatever it is that you're promoting. Really, really key. But other than that, you are now good to go. We've gone through a whole brand building process where I just am so proud of you for sticking to the end. If you've been with me for the whole process, give me a hashtag here to the end. I'll know who's been through this entire process with me. I just really is an honor to be able to support and serve and to help you to grow. And if you know other people who would really benefit from the content that I'm sharing here, then please do invite them to become part of our tribe and subscribe to the channel. It's been an honor to serve you. I look forward to seeing you in other future shows. And remember, if you need help, we're always here. Get yourself across to samieblindell.com and I'll do my very, very best to support you on this next step of your journey. Take care and I'll see you in the next show.