Introduction
Welcome back to the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast. I am thrilled that you are joining me here today. If you have been following along the last few episodes, you’ll know that we’ve been talking about lead magnets. We’ve been talking about building your audience, and the fact of the matter is that no matter what stage of business you are in, list building is always going to be a prime activity that you need to engage in.
And that is what we’re going to talk about today. But we’re gonna talk about it with a different little bit of spin because you’ve heard the spiel. You know, we need to list build. You know, you need lead magnets, whether they’re paid or free, whether they are a PDF, an ebook, a video series, a private podcast, or something else. You know, all of these things. But today we are going to talk a little bit about what it looks like to build a list and why it’s so important as an entrepreneur and what it means for our health as an entrepreneur. So if you’re ready, let’s go ahead and get started.
Build Your Business with Balance
I know that many of you are entrepreneurs, but you’re probably also solopreneurs. You are your business. It’s you, yourself, that’s it. You don’t necessarily have any employees. You probably don’t have a va, a virtual assistant yet. Or even if you do, the bulk of the work is still falling on your shoulders. And today is all about lead magnets.
But I want to start by talking a little bit about our health and exhaustion as an entrepreneur is a real thing. We have really limited time and we try to fit as much stuff into that limited amount of time as possible. I don’t know about you, but I have other things that I’m working on as I’m working to build my business. Building my business is not the only thing I do.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I teach several college classes every semester. We homeschool our son. I am working in this business, and I’m also just a wife and a mom, right? I get to have a life too. So building a business has to really work for us as entrepreneurs, and it’s especially important because we need something in place.
We need a list building mechanism in place so that we can take time off and time away from our businesses. We were recently on vacation and we try to unplug as much as possible during vacation last year. I ended up having to host a few calls during the week, and I was really kind of bummed because our vacation is one time a year.
Our family just truly doesn’t do anything but just be together. And it’s one of my favorite times of the year, as you can imagine. It means we get outside a whole lot. We go on bike rides, 10, 12, 20 mile bike rides. We are exploring, we’re playing on the beach. We are doing all kinds of fun things and also taking time to just sit back and relax.
And so vacation has always been about relaxation. This year when we were on vacation, I had managed to not schedule any calls for the entire week of our vacation. I protected that time. My husband left his work computer at home, and our kiddo didn’t have any schoolwork to do because it was vacation, right? And so we took just one laptop, my work laptop with us because you have to check in on things sometimes, and there are sometimes a few things that I had to just make sure got posted or went out appropriately. So I took my laptop and one morning I pulled it out to do about five or 10 minutes of work on it, and my kiddo looked at me.
He says, you aren’t supposed to have to work. It’s vacation. Now he’s young, so he doesn’t always know that sometimes vacation as an adult, especially as an entrepreneur, doesn’t mean I’m unplugging completely, especially in the early years. But I looked at him and I said, you know what, buddy? You’re right. I’ve just got about two more little things to do. I’ll be done in about 10 minutes. I quickly finished up and I shut my computer, turned it off and walked away from it. But he brought up a really good point in that as entrepreneurs, we need to be able to unplug. We need to be able to walk away and know that our business is still running and still doing what we need it to do, even in our absence or even in our unplugged state, because we have to protect ourselves.
We have to protect our energy and our mind, body, and soul so that we can plug back in and show up to support our clients in a very real, authentic and impactful way. So how do you do that? How do you keep your business going when you’re not sitting there looking over it every single moment of the day?
And the best way to do that is to grow your list. The other reason that we want to grow our list is that this past week, Instagram went down once again. Now you guys may remember it was maybe a year ago, Instagram was down for the entire day. It might have been Facebook too. I can’t quite remember, but you guys probably know what I’m talking about.
And everyone panicked. Everyone who didn’t have an email list on the day that Instagram went down, the entrepreneurs who had an email list said, no problem. I’ve got you. I’m gonna email my list and I’m going to create connections and build relationships that way today. And the people that grew all of their audience solely on social media panicked a little bit, and I could see that panic yesterday when Instagram went down. I saw the post in some of the groups that I’m in saying, what am I gonna do? I’ve got this masterclass coming up. I’ve got a webinar coming up. My ads aren’t running. Oh my gosh, how do I get in? I need to be able to connect with my followers, with my supporters, with my potential clients. And all I could think was, this is the moment you go to your email list. This is the moment you engage with the folks who have trusted you enough to give you their email address. And it doesn’t matter if social media is down, because now you can go engage with them, right?
Okay, so two big reasons why we need an email list. We want to make sure we protect ourselves, mind, body, spirit in our health and our wellbeing so that we can unplug sometimes. And the best way to unplug is to know that our business is still growing. We are still adding people into our ecosystem so that we can nurture them when we return from our break, our time away from our business. And we also need an email list because sometimes social media just doesn’t work. It goes down. Something happens. And so when you take time to create a list builder, a lead magnet, a lead generator, whatever you want to call it, you are safeguarding your business.
And the easiest way to do that is to have a process in place that allows you to simply rinse and repeat, you heard me rinse and repeat. You need a process that allows you to create your list builder and then go out and create a second list builder and a third list builder, and a fourth. As you learn more about your audience, as your business grows and evolves, as you shift your offers to meet the needs of your clients over time, you’re going to consistently be building list builders or lead magnets in your business as an entrepreneur.
And so you need a rinse and repeat process. And that is exactly what we’ve been talking about over the last few episodes. We’ve been talking about the fact that you need to have a process for creating the actual lead magnet itself. Then you need to have a process for creating your landing page, the components that go on it, a template so that you know exactly what to plug and play and hit publish.
You need to have an email sequence. And I find oftentimes this is where people get stock. It’s writing that email sequence that follows up on the request for your lead magnet. And the reason we use an email sequence is because we are working to help our potential client use that resource that you’ve just shared with them. Make use of it, get something out of it, and see some success. See some progress in that pain that they’ve been experiencing. After all, that is why we created the lead magnet.
We want them to experience some relief. And our email sequence is going to help them do that because it allows us to check in. It allows them to feel like we’re on this journey with them, and we are. We’re watching, we are interacting with them. We’re adjusting things along the way based on how they respond to our emails. And so when you think about an email sequence, yes, I use templates that I’ve created to make those email sequences a little bit easier to churn out.
But here’s what I want you to remember, and this is where the magic comes in the email sequence.
I want you to picture that person that’s receiving your email, what it means to them to have your words, your support, your wisdom in their inbox. They are experiencing some kind of challenge, some kind of pain point, and you have stepped in to offer them a solution, a way forward. And you haven’t just said, Hey, here it is, thrown it out the window at them. Kind of like the newspaper delivery person you are saying, here it is. Let’s link arms and walk together. That’s what your email sequence is doing. It’s not about selling your next thing. It’s not about bombarding your potential client and saying, Hey, here I am. Here I am. Here I am. Remember who I am. Oh, I’m still here. It’s not about that at all. It’s about creating the relationship. And this is that first step. These are those tentative moments when you say, I think I like you. Could we get to know each other a little bit more? Let’s go out for some coffee sometime. Well, let’s just kind of hang out at the park while our kids play. Let’s have a book club together. It’s something small. We’re creating that connection point.
And so when you sit down to write your email sequence, I don’t want you to get caught up in the number of emails or when you make your next offer or what to put in the PS or any of those things, the or the or the but, the and the, I don’t know, the things that keep you from hitting publish. What I want you to do is sit down and think about that person that has just gotten your resource. What do they need? What do they need to hear from you to be able to put this into action?
What do they need from their new friend (you), their new friend to be able to say, ah, I’ve got this. I can do this. That’s what your email sequence is all about. It’s about creating a relationship. So yes, I use templates so that everything is rinse and repeat. However, I always sit down, especially at the email sequence part, and remember the person I’m helping. And it’s not this big mass of people.
I’m thinking about the single person who’s sitting at their laptop on their phone, on their iPad, opening up my email and saying, okay, I can do this. I know what to do next. And that email just provides the courage, the encouragement, the pep talk to do it.
We have to build our list. We have to have an email list as an entrepreneur because it allows us to protect ourselves from exhaustion to re-energize, to reinvigorate ourselves to help our clients. And it protects our business in a very real way when social media goes down. So we’ve spent time talking about the process of creating a lead magnet. We have talked about the key components. We’ve talked about choosing a topic.
We have talked about the fact that you need a rinse and repeat solution, a process, a strategy, so that you don’t have to pull your hair out every time you need to create a new lead magnet or want to create a new lead magnet.
Action Item
And today, what I want you to do for your action item is to look at where you’re at in your lead magnet creation process. And I want you to ask yourself, what can I do today to take a step forward?
Knowing that someone is sitting on the other side of that screen saying, I need what you have. I don’t care if it’s perfect. I don’t care if the email is just right. I need what you have. How can you take that next step today? That’s your action item. I want you to take a step tiny as tiny can be as just fine.
The key is to take action, which is why it’s your action step for today.
Conclusions
Alright, to kind of wrap up, we have been talking about lead magnets. We have been talking about the importance of getting your lead magnet out there and the fact that having a list is what allows your business to grow even when you are unplugged. And that is exactly what we want.
Coming up next week. In fact, May 30th and June 1st, I have a rinse and repeat lead magnets live workshop that I am hosting, and I would love for you to join me. We are going to be talking about topics and landing pages and email sequences and what to do to get your lead magnet out there so that people actually see it. This is going to be an interactive workshop.
I am so excited to be doing this with you all. So if you are interested, please check it out. I’ll pop the link in the show notes for you so that you can find it really easily, and I’ll see you in that workshop.
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.
Show Resources:
Save Your Seat:
- Rinse & Repeat Lead Magnet Workshop:
https://thrive.coachinghive.com/rinse-and-repeat-lead-magnet/
DM me on Facebook or Instagram if you get stuck:
