Episode 322: The Branded Done for You Retreat
The Branded Done for You Retreat is a unique event where we worked closely with a select group of clients to help them build a powerful brand in a short period of time.
In this episode, Adam Stott discusses the importance of branding and how it can help businesses attract more clients and stand out from the competition. He explains that branding is not just about logos and websites, but about the perception a business creates in the marketplace. Adam shares some strategies for building a strong brand, including winning awards, telling your story, and getting featured in the media.
Show Highlights:
- Branding is about creating a perception of success and value in the marketplace
- Winning awards can create brand preference and attract more clients
- Telling your story can help build an emotional connection with your audience and eliminate competition
- Getting featured in the media can increase your brand’s visibility and attract more clients
Links Mentioned:
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
Adams website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod
Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod
Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod
Business owners: Monetise social media, get more clients, increase your following, and make more sales: https://socialmediamonetisation.com/unlockfb?el=Pod
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
Adam Stott:
Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of Business Growth Secrets had an amazing week. So far we have been at the branded done for you retreat. Now the branded done-for-you retreat was a very special unique event. that we were running where we were working really closely with a select group of our clients to show them how to get themselves branded in a short period of time. Now to give a bit of context and to really help you as a listener to understand branding, I’m going to talk a little bit about branding and then talk about some of the cool things we did with all of our clients at this very special retreat.
So understanding branding is quite simple. In the UK, Many people feel like branding is your color palette, your logo your website. What it is not is those things. What it actually is the perception you put of yourself in the marketplace. Now, what this comes down to is how do you build a brand where you become admired, revered, sought after, the market leader?
[00:01:10] And that’s what we really work closely with the clients on is how do you build that brand out? And there are some very specific things that you can do to gain more market share, to get people to see your business in a different light, to get people to see more value in what you do. And that’s what the branded retreat was all about.
[00:01:30] So we went over to Champneys which is a beautiful spa hotel. absolute wonderful location with 20 of our clients this week and we showed them start to finish how to get branded and we actually did it for them so it was an incredible experience and the things that we did is let’s look at some of the things that get people to see you in a different light.
[00:01:56] First of all, if you imagine you’ve got two businesses and of the two businesses, you go and look at two businesses, you’re considering which one to do business with, and you’re not sure. And you look at all of what they’re doing. You go on their website, you check out business number one, and they all look good.
[00:02:12] You go over and you check out business number two, and it all looks pretty similar, except the difference between business number one and business number two is business number two is an award winner. Which business do you want to do business with? Well, of course you’re going to want to do business.
[00:02:27] with the award winner over and above the business that hasn’t won any awards. Simple. Now what is this? This means, this is called brand preference, creating brand preference. So it’s very easy and simple for you to create preferential things about your business that can get people to choose you. over another brand and the more brand preferences that you create within your business and the more evidence and perception of success that you create in your business, the more it magnetizes clients towards you.
[00:03:00] And this is something that businesses just do not work on. This is something they sleep on. It’s something they miss. They try to work on their market and they don’t work on their branding and that means they haven’t ended up having to spend more money. Have less potent powerful conversations because they haven’t fixed this element, the branding element in what they do.
[00:03:21] So let’s take another example. Let’s say you’re going on Facebook and you’re looking at a few different ads and you’ve got a few different options. And let’s say you want, let’s just take a normal business like A beauty business, and you see an ad for a beauty business, you go on, the business looks good, you’re considering having some beauty treatments done, you get onto their site, and you see that they offer the beauty treatments, looks pretty standard, you’re quite interested, and then you move on.
[00:03:49] You go to, you see the next ad for another beauty business, because that’s what you’re interested in the moment, and obviously the algorithm understands this, yet when you go on this beauty business, you see this person has worked with celebrities. You see, this person’s been featured in the media. You see, this person has got a great story.
[00:04:08] All of a sudden you forget the other beauty business existed because this one has created a better brand pack, a brand element that gets you wanting to do business with them. And that’s what branding is. It’s controlling perception is the perception you put into the marketplace of yourself, and it’s about building that perception over time, and there are really simple, easy ways to do this.
[00:04:33] So this is what we did at the Champlain’s Retreat is we wanted to try something new, try something different, where instead of our clients having to do the work and just educating them on these things, we said, Hey, look. Come to this retreat, relax, have an amazing time, and we’ll do all these things for you.
[00:04:52] And we literally, that’s exactly what we did. So we got our clients to have a professional photography shoot with our photographers. And we got professional photographers there. We got them to go around the grounds of this amazing hotel, get all their photos taken, look absolutely amazing and took all these amazing photos.
[00:05:12] Now, why did we do that? Well, very simple. Another branding element is the way you present yourself, the professional aspect of how you present yourself and the consistency of how you present yourself. So now the clients that were there have got these photography shoots and it rolls all the way across their social media.
[00:05:30] So they’ve got these professional images all over their social media. They’ve got these professional images for their website, which all of a sudden ups their level of professionalism. Again, something people miss and it’s a small brand preference indicator. The level of professionalism of which you present your brand.
[00:05:48] What we then did is we did an award ceremony where we showed clients how to enter for awards so they could actually win awards and gain that crucial award winning status for their business. Again massive preference. Indicator is if you are an award winning business over not an award winning business, more people want to do business with you.
[00:06:11] Very simple. So what we did is we showed them how to enter awards, how to build a pack for entering multiple awards. And then we held our own award ceremony where everyone got to enter for different awards. And then awards were given out based on the achievements. And they became that award winning business whilst they were in the room.
[00:06:30] Now, it wasn’t just to give me, they had to compete. They only got the award if they 100 percent deserved it, they needed to evidence it. And now they’ve got that award winning status in the room. And the next thing that really helps businesses in a big way when it comes to your brand is if you look at your competition and you think about your competition, you’ve got that out there in the market, a lot of people run a business and when they start this small, their competition’s got more market and spend than them.
[00:07:02] Competition’s got more staff than them. The competition is more, you know, drilled down. They’ve got more testimonials. They’ve got more success stories. You’ve got lots of other preferential elements, which makes it difficult for you to get business, but there’s one thing that you’ve got that they haven’t got, and we need to highlight that one thing that you’ve got that they haven’t got.
[00:07:24] To get people to align with your values, align with you as a business, take you seriously and want to do business with you. And that one thing is your story. Now, a lot of people don’t realize how powerful this is, but the phrase facts, tell stories, sell has been around for many years.
[00:07:42] And I don’t even know who originated that phrase. And the bottom line is this. Is that when people understand your story, why you started the business, why you’re passionate about the business, why you’re passionate about helping your clients and they get your backstory, it really aligns people with you as a business and eliminates your competition.
[00:08:02] So one of the things that we did is we took our clients through our story framework, our proprietary story framework for building out the story of your business. And what’s really interesting on this became to my, Many years ago and many years ago, I was watching a program. So many years ago, I was doing a lot of coaching in America.
[00:08:23] So when I first started investing in myself and we take you back to sort of 2011, 2012, I was investing myself, attending different courses. And at one of the courses, one of the coaches there said, Hey. Adam, you know, you love business. You should watch this show called The Prophet and The Prophet is a really good show and I’ve recommended it to lots of my clients since and lots of them watch it and love it.
[00:08:45] It’s on CNBC. And as I was watching it, I noticed the same thing happening again and again and again. And what was happening is the person from The Prophet, Marcus Limonis, who’s absolutely amazing, by the way. Goes into these businesses, does turnarounds on these businesses and turns them into successful businesses really quickly.
[00:09:04] And one of the first things he does every single time is he devises what their origin story of the business is. And through devising the origin story, he creates that emotional connection with the clientele that are coming to the business and actually builds a relationship with them based around the why of the business, the values of the business, what the business is doing.
[00:09:25] So what I started to do is build that in to what we did and started building in stories, telling people about the things that I’ve done, where I’ve been, why I started the business, the fact I was passionate about helping entrepreneurs and the fact that I remember back in 2008 starting my first business, it being a real struggle, not having the information, finding 175 And it really aligned me to the clients and built great relationship with the clients.
[00:09:54] So they could see actually, Hey, I’ve been where you’ve been. I know what it’s like. I know what it’s like to go on this journey. I know what it’s like to not have all the answers and feel very frustrated. So I started building that in, saw great success with that because it really connected me to our clients.
[00:10:10] And then I started teaching that to our clients to build that into their businesses. And they started to build it in their businesses. And then they started seeing more success and creating great results. So one of the things that we did on the branded done for you retreat is we helped everyone to devise their origin story for their business, to really look at their successes, look at their struggles, look what skills they’ve built along the way, look at what results they’ve got along the way and look at how their beliefs have changed around what it is that they do.
[00:10:37] Now they can use that. That story within their social media, they can use it on their website. They can use it on their landing page and use it everywhere. Right. And really connect the masses to their business. Really making your business a movement rather than just a transactional business. And it’s really funny when you do this, right.
[00:10:55] Is, you know, you might be a cleaning business. Listen to this right now and go, well, I don’t really need that. Hey, do you want more clients? Do you want to make more money? Do you want to have more success? Do you want to help more people? If the answer to those questions is yes, then this is something you badly want to implement right now within your businesses because it can have a dramatic impact on your attraction appeal.
[00:11:18] And that’s what branding is all about. It’s about attracting, not chasing. You don’t want to be the person chasing after clients. You want them chasing after you, wanting to do business with you. And when you build your brand in the right way, that’s exactly what happens. So we built out their origin story.
[00:11:33] And then what we did was really cool. Next, we got them to go and sit down with professional PR and journalists in the room to write that story up in a compelling way. And then we did press releases on their success to get them featured in the worldwide media. And this is where this event just took a massive turn.
[00:11:56] It was amazing because we were in the room. And this is day two. So imagine this day two, I keep coming into the room every 30 minutes and I’m bringing up on the screen people being featured in Business Insider, The Digital Journal, London Press, Business Malt, Lancashire Press, Manchester Press. And we’ve got people being featured not just once, not just twice, three, four, five times.
[00:12:23] A lot of them in the room got five newspaper. Media articles written about their business written about their story and had their professional Photos that we put in the press and all of a sudden they start getting inquiries They start getting leads people in the room are getting inquiries and leads Off the basis because they’re now attracting rather than chasing.
[00:12:48] So it was a huge breakthrough for people because You know, in the course of two days and people getting emotional in the room because they’ve never seen anything like it. They had these beautiful photos. They had this award winning status. They now had their stories. They now are featuring in the worldwide media, which was absolutely incredible.
[00:13:06] And people just couldn’t believe they said, some of them were saying we’ve made more progress in two days than I have done in the last three years in terms of building their brand, and it really just had this. transformational impact where people were amazed at what was happening. And to put the icing on the cake, I then took All of the people that are at the retreat and I interviewed them on their stories.
[00:13:31] And the reason I’m doing this podcast is you are going to hear some of these stories. You’re going to hear from business owners that have been on a journey that have had ups and downs, that have had challenges, they’ve had fears, they’ve overcome those fears and those challenges and got their businesses out into the marketplace, building their businesses, creating great success.
[00:13:52] So I wanted to do this introductory podcast because some of the next ones we’ll lay them in along with other celebrity interviews and call interviews that we’re doing. You’ll be able to hear what the people experienced, how they built their businesses. And I think it’s really good. And what I think is really cool is this.
[00:14:10] When you’re learning and you’re in the phase that you’re at where you want to build your business. It’s great to hear. It’s very inspirational to hear. From successful people we’ve had on the podcast, like Sarah Willingham from Dragon’s Den or Tej Lavani from Dragon’s Den. These types of people or apprentice winners that have launched like Lee McQueen, all these people that create great success.
[00:14:30] It’s awesome. But what I think is even probably cooler for you as the listener is to hear a business that’s recently broke through seven figures for the first time or just had their first six figure month, you know, and two years ago, They were struggling. They just had an idea and they didn’t know what they were going to do next.
[00:14:52] So I feel like some of these could be the most inspirational stories that really can inspire you to know that if they can do it. You can 100 percent do it too. So no matter where you are, no matter where you’re starting from over these next podcast episodes that you’re going to hear, you will be able to start learning, growing, getting educated from some people that have been.
[00:15:16] On a similar journey and really start to implement these things within your business, which is going to be awesome. So look few key points from today. One, you got to get branded. You got to get your branding done. You’ve got to look at how can you create these preference points over your competition.
[00:15:33] So people magnetize towards you. You’ve got to look at how can I get in the media. How can I become an award winning business? How can I get featured in articles? How can I get featured on podcasts? How can I spread the word about my amazing business that you’re creating? You don’t want to be the world’s best kept secret anymore.
[00:15:55] You want to look at how you can become more successful. Get your message out further. Get more clients, make more money, help more people and grow your businesses. And they’re kind of some of the key considerations and perhaps you’ve not really known much about branding before, but for me, it’s one of the things that’s really helped me to grow is really helping our clients to go.
[00:16:16] And it sprinkles the stardust over your business that has this just magical impact on your growth. So really exciting stuff. And if you would if you would like to get yourself on one of these retreats, we are fully sold out on our next retreat already. But if you would like to get on one of the retreats later in the year send a message into info@bigbusinessevents.co.uk. That’s info at bigbusinessevents. co. uk and we can walk you through how we can get you in the media, get you award winning, get you on the podcast and start to work with you on this amazing journey. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed that you found some value in today’s podcast and I hope you love listening to these upcoming ones, which are going to be really awesome.
[00:17:00] Really exciting stuff and really can’t wait to see how these clients thrive and grow as we go on this amazing journey.