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“Trust First, Sales Second” — Dr. Sam’s guide to social media that actually works.

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#AIForEntrepreneurs #Leadership #BusinessEthics #VisionaryLeadership #EthicalAI

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Keywords

social media, community building, e-commerce, content creation, branding, patience, persistence, time management, online workshops, marketing strategies

Summary

In this conversation, Dr. Sam Berne shares his journey from being a doctor to becoming an entrepreneur and building a successful e-commerce business. He emphasizes the importance of creating value through social media, building a community before launching products, and the significance of patience and persistence in achieving long-term success. Dr. Berne also discusses effective time management strategies for social media and the difference between branding and transactional selling.

Takeaways

Sam Berne emphasizes the importance of creating value for your audience.

Building a community is essential before launching products.

Patience and persistence are key to long-term success.

Social media offers underpriced attention for entrepreneurs.

Storytelling is a powerful tool for content creation.

Time management is crucial for social media success.

Branding provides insulation from competition.

Course corrections are necessary for growth and learning.

Engaging with your audience builds trust and loyalty.

Utilizing various social media platforms can expand your reach.

Titles

Building a Brand in the Digital Age

The Power of Community in Business

Sound bites

“Create value for your audience.”

“Social media is underpriced attention.”

“Patience is crucial in business.”

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Dr. Sam Berne’s Journey

02:37 Building a Brand Through Social Media

05:36 The Power of Giving Value

08:22 Creating Content and Engaging Your Audience

11:19 Integrating Sales with Community Building

14:07 Patience and Persistence in Business

16:55 Time Management for Social Media Success

20:09 Branding vs. Selling: The Long Game

22:51 Expanding Your Social Media Presence

25:35 Utilizing Email and Text Marketing

28:04 Conclusion and Next Steps

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Sam Berne (00:00 .558)

So everybody, I’m really excited to be here just a little bit about myself. You know, I grew up in a middle-class family and we emphasized education. So I ended up becoming a doctor. I was always interested in natural healing. So I combined the two and I started two private practices. One I sold the other I still have. So I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit in me. And in 2016, I started my

brand on the internet and I’ll talk about that and actually in 2020 is when I launched my e-commerce right around covid. So I’ll go into more details about that and I’ve been a client of score for the past three years. So here we go.

So when I started I began to think of myself as a media channel and the key thing in if you’re going to do social media in my opinion is to create value for your audience. And what I did early on is I gave away my best information like everything for free and it’s kind of like this idea of give give

give and then you can ask. Okay. This is a really important aspect in building a brand and it’s very different than say being transactional and I’ll kind of go into more detail on that in a minute. But if you are going to do social media, my advice would be start with your strengths. Are you better at writing? Are you better at talking for me? I loved videos. So I loved

doing video. also love doing audio and I actually started this this process called morning walks with Dr. Sam and so I would I love to hike so I be hiking in the National Forest and somebody would ask me a question and so I would stop and go. All right. Let me give you the answer here and it became a huge way to build my following. Another thing that I did was I created

Sam Berne (02:17 .496)

four to eight content pieces a day and I posted them across all the social media platforms Facebook Instagram LinkedIn YouTube tick-tock and Twitter. If you’re independent interest, you could do that. You could also do snapchat, but I was very disciplined about creating content and Posting them and people ask. Well, what do you do for content? What’s the best thing and I would say storytelling?

I would also say documenting. like for an example in my own case, you know, how did I get to the place of developing my products? How did I get to the place of you know, I might share a story about a client or a patient who had a success story in terms of documentation. Recently. I did I love whitewater rafting. It’s one of my passions and I did a trip in central and South Southern, Utah.

And I documented the whole trip video audio and then I posted that and so this is another piece. Your content doesn’t just have to relate to your business. People might want to get to know you like for example, you know, let’s say people aren’t interested in my health and Wellness brand, but they’re interested in whitewater rafting. So I ended up getting some people who were now following me.

but it had nothing to do with my professional brand. It had to do with my, you know, personal interests. So you could put your children on if you’ve got animals. I mean, you you could just think about not just posting about your business, but doing some personal things as well. So I feel that we are living in a golden age and what I mean by that is that, you know, if you think about

say 20 years ago, the Kingmakers were the celebrities that we saw on TV, you know, the actors, the sports celebrities or the people who wrote best-selling books. But now the internet is the Kingmaker and what this means is that we can use the internet as entrepreneurs to build our business.

Sam Berne (04:41 .254)

And the other thing is you don’t need to spend a lot of money in creating content. In fact, when I first started I was the only one in my company. I did the videos. did the editing. I did the posting. I did the same thing when I would write a blog. So I learned how to do all of those things. And if you’re starting out and you don’t have a lot of money, you don’t need

to spend a lot and especially the way the economy is right now. It’s kind of soft. We may be in heading towards a pretty deep recession. You don’t want to go into debt, but you can do all of this on your own and as the internet using the internet and social media you can start to build your community.

Sam Berne (05:31 .498)

So as I said social media reduces or eliminates spending money on ads and you know hiring social media agencies. I don’t recommend any of that. But the thing that you want to consider is whatever product and or service you would like to sell using organic reach is easy and possible for all of us.

And this next point social media is underpriced attention. So what do I mean by that? Well, when I started my philosophy was I am going to give give give I’m not going to ask for anything in return. I’m going to create value for people. I’m going to answer their questions. I’m going to I’m just going to give away the information and start cultivating a relationship.

And as I did that people started to follow me. This was the underpriced attention. I wasn’t paying anything except my sweat equity and in doing that over time what ended up happening is I started to grow my social media. I remember when I started my Facebook live shows. I would do those every Wednesday night and for the first three months nobody tuned in. It was very humbling to me.

And so I would write out questions and I would say, hey, Johnny asked this question. Let me answer it. And so that’s how I started. And then after a few months, a few people started trickling in and one of the aspects of give give give is that number one, you’re going to have more retention of your customers as opposed to hitting them up and you know, asking them to buy something right away.

And the other thing that happened is word of mouth on on social media. This is really amazing. In fact, I just did a post. This is very interesting because I was up in the mountains on Saturday and I was hiking in the deep snow and I had this idea. wow. Let me do this video. I pulled out my phone 20 seconds. I shared my idea. I posted it on tik-tok Saturday night.

Sam Berne (07:54 .743)

And I just looked on tik-tok and I have 300,000 views of this 22nd video that I had. I didn’t prepare for it. There was no script. It was just something that came to me. That’s the underpriced attention. It can happen. You can go viral in a nanosecond and that’s what’s exciting about this for all of you. Okay, in this webinar, I want to share the following.

Number one, how to build a social media community. Number two, how to integrate selling products and services using social media. You know, in my case, I spent about three years just cultivating my community. I didn’t sell anything and it was actually at a mentor meeting a score meeting that I had in March of 2020 and one of my mentors said, well, what do you think about

Starting your e-commerce business and I went. that’s a great idea. So I actually launched it June of 2020 and it exploded and of course it is so robust now just I’m in like a year and half two years in but I have the community first and then I lau