Introduction
Welcome back to the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast. I am thrilled that you’re here with me today because today we are going to talk about something that feels like a really big bugaboo for quite a few entrepreneurs out there. And maybe you’ll include yourself in this category, I’m not sure. But chances are, you know someone who is impacted by this challenge. The challenge of building an email list.
Now, did your heart start beating a little bit faster because you’re thinking, oh, not that topic again. Or did your heart start beating faster because you’re thinking, ah, I love what an email list has done for my business. Either way, today we are going to talk about the concept of building your list and the idea of visibility. So if you are ready, let’s go ahead and jump into this topic.
Build Your List
Many of you know that we have a growing preteen in our home, and it was time to take a look at the bike that he had. And lo and behold, you know, after growing like six or seven inches in the last year, he has outgrown the bike that he was riding. And so we had to all traipse off to the store and look for a new and bigger bike. And one of the first questions, we always go to the same store. We love them, they’re great with our family. They always take time to answer questions.
And one of the first questions that they asked us is, well, actually asked my son is, are you a strong rider? Do you feel confident on a bike? And he said, yeah, I do. And so he said, great. All right, let’s go take a look at some bikes and some options knowing that he’s going to keep growing. And we have been buying new, new bikes for him, getting new bikes for him fairly frequently. So we’re, we’re aiming for a little bit longer this time. He pulls out this bike and it is huge, as in my kiddo has to jump up onto the seat almost. And it reminded me that even when you know how to do something, you’re strong at it. You feel good about it, you feel confident.
Anytime you make a little bit of a change, there’s that period of, Ooh, am I going to fall? What’s going to happen? Am I okay? Am I safe? Is this going to work? And he had that moment on the bike. The person at the store was holding the bike, it was super solid. He was not going anywhere. We had our hands on his waist to make sure he di wasn’t going to fall, didn’t fall as he’s getting up on this bigger bike. And it was just such a reminder that a lot of times as entrepreneurs, we pivot or we make a slight shift in what we’re doing, or we try something new and we forget to give ourselves permission for that. Am I going to be okay? Moment? Because it’s going to be slow going for a little while.
It isn’t going to feel as comfortable as it did before in that previous niche that you were in or that previous offer you were making or that previous way of communicating with your potential clients and your clients. Now, why do I tell you this when I’m talking about visibility and email lists? Well, here’s the thing. Building your email list can feel big and scary.
Even if you have a great list already in your C R m, it can feel scary to try something new. So maybe you’re used to sending out PDFs and you’ve decided to do a mini workshop, or perhaps you are used to live things as a way to build your list and you are switching over to an ebook or a video series that’s prerecorded. It feels a little bit scary, doesn’t it?
But the reason that we focus on the concept of an email list is that we want to have the opportunity to create relationships with our potential clients and our clients. This is what leads them to buy. This is what leads them to giving you the opportunity to help them make their lives a little bit better with your service, your offering, your product, whatever it happens to be. So lead generation is all about building visibility so that you can build a relationship and email lists allow us to do that. And you might be thinking, but Maura, I’m active on social media. I don’t really need an email list except that you do. Because what happens is that social media can go down. We saw this about a year ago.
Social media was down for about a day and everyone panicked, and the people with email lists said, Hey, have you noticed that social media is down? Here’s how you can actually connect with your potential clients. I’ve got this resource for you. And those people, they made a ton of money that day, and it wasn’t about the money, but it was about the stability that having an email list brought to their business when social media was down.
And you might be saying, yeah, but that doesn’t happen very often. You’re right, it doesn’t. But email doesn’t get taken away from you. You own your email list, social media, the powers that be can take away your Facebook account, your Instagram account, your TikTok, your LinkedIn, your Pinterest, your YouTube accounts. They can close ’em down for any reason and no reason.
And if your only interactions with your potential clients are on social media, the moment your page or your profile gets deleted or hacked or taken away from you, you lose access to all of those people. You lose the opportunity to serve them when you have their email address. You have an opportunity to continue serving them seamlessly. So this next few weeks, we’re going to spend some time talking about lead magnets, lead generation with an I toward building an email list. Because everyone always says, and it’s true, your email list is worth so much more than your social media profile. And I can feel some of you tensing up with the, but that’s about to come out and that, but is, I don’t have a list.
I’ve tried, but it doesn’t work. I’m frustrated. It’s hard. I don’t know the steps. And I hear you. We all started at zero. And that is probably one of my least favorite things people tell us about List building. We all started at zero. We all started somewhere. We all started in your spot. That doesn’t help a whole lot does it?
So throughout this series of episodes, I want to bring to you some really tried and true steps to list building so that you can get your materials out there, whether it’s a pdf, an ebook, a video series, a workshop, or something else. You can get all that stuff out there and start actually building your list because yeah, we all start from zero, but it’s not a comfortable place to stay, and that’s certainly not where I want you to stay with your business. And alongside talking about lead generation in terms of building your email list, we are also going to talk a little bit about, a lot about visibility. And visibility allows you to build your list because one of the steps of list building, getting your lead magnet out there is sharing your lead magnet.
It is about getting it onto social media, it’s about sharing it, it’s about getting it into the hands of the people who need it, and that requires you to be visible. So we are going to talk a lot about visibility. And in fact, this week, I have a second, I have a bonus episode for you all from an expert who makes video seem so simple, he breaks it down so that no matter what, as long as you have a smartphone, you can start building visibility. As soon as that episode on Thursday ends, Atiba walks us through step-by-step how to begin building your visibility and the simplicity behind doing that. And what happens is as you build your visibility through video, you now have an opportunity to reach out and share even more valuable ideas and insights and materials with your following, which is of course going to build your list. So that is where we are headed over the next few episodes of the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast. And what I would like you to go ahead and work on this week, so I want to keep today short because we do have our bonus episode on Thursday that I really want you to listen to.
Action Item
Today’s action item is to do a little bit of reflection.
I’d like you to explore how you feel about the idea of building a list, and I want you to ask yourself the hard questions. I want you to notice where the resistance is coming in. Is it when I talk about being visible on video, or is it being active on social media? Is it writing emails so that once you have people on your list, they actually get something from you? I want you to go ahead and start noticing where the resistance is. It might be around creating the actual lead magnet. It could be about creating the landing page. So kind of the tech behind the lead magnet might be about creating an email nurture sequence so that you are welcoming people as they join your list. It might be about how you get your lead magnet out into the world, or it might be kind of on the back end of things, knowing how to adjust things so that your lead magnet actually performs and drives leads to your business so that you can in fact start building those relationships. So I want you to really dig a little bit deeper today.
I want you to reflect on where those resistances are in terms of list building. And it might be that you’re just not familiar with list building. It could be that it makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable, explore that because what we’re going to do is start breaking down the process for building a lead magnet and getting it out into the world. And over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some resources, some new opportunities with you that I cannot wait to see what you do with them.
Conclusions
So like I said, I wanted to keep today short. We are going to be talking all about lead generation and visibility in your business over the next few weeks. The goal is for you to build a list of potential clients with whom you are building a relationship so that when the time comes when you make your offer, they raise their hand with a heck yes.
Where can I sign up? Because they know that anything that you put in front of them is going to help them make progress regardless of what product, service or offering you have in your business. They know even without all of the details that they need to say, yes, I have a few people that I follow that I purchased from, and they definitely leave me with that feeling.
I don’t always know exactly what I’m getting when I purchase one of their services, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is going to be well worth the investment. And that’s how we want our potential clients to feel. That is what we are going to work on over the next few episodes of the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast. Right now, we’re going to work on getting that mindset ready to welcome the challenge, welcome getting outside your comfort zone so that you can build the list that your business needs to thrive. Are you excited? I know I am. I love this concept of list building. I love the idea of being able to build relationships. And the way we do that is to get our value out into the world through list builders, lead generators, and boosting our visibility.
So I look forward to seeing you back here on Thursday for a bonus episode with Atiba as he shares his best video tricks for keeping everything super simple as you are building your visibility and starting to build that trust and relationship with your potential clients.
And I will see you back here next week for another episode of the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast, where a focus on mentoring, community, and implementation removes the overwhelm of building your successful and profitable business and adds in a dose of momentum.
Until next time, have a healthy, safe, and happy week.
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