Alyson Lex 0:00
On today's episode, we're answering the question, how do I build my email list when I feel like I can't?

The big question is this as entrepreneurs, coaches and business owners, how do we consistently sell our products, programs and services without making our customers feel like we're only in it for the almighty dollar? How do we serve the way we know we're meant to serve and still run a profitable business? How do we put good into the world while we put dollars into our pockets? How do we change the lives of our community while also bettering the life we lead?

Jennie Wright 0:34
It's not a zero-sum game. It's not an either or scenario. It is possible to thrive while serving your clients to the best of your ability. This podcast will show you how. I'm Jenny Wright.

Alyson Lex 0:46
I'm Alyson Lex.

Jennie Wright 0:47
And welcome to the System To Thrive.

Alyson Lex 0:58
All right, let's face it. Email List Building is something you will just never stop doing. You're gonna always want to attract new followers, subscribers, and ideal clients into your business always.

If you guys have any hang-ups and putting yourself out there, then this is absolutely the episode for you. Now you're talking to two entrepreneurs who at various points in either one of our careers, would rather have stayed in the shadows than in the forefront in building our businesses.

One thousand percent

Jennie Wright 1:32
Absolutely.

Alyson Lex 1:33
I was behind the scenes all the time. And there were a lot of reasons to tell me if any of these sound familiar, because some of them do for me, and I'm sure some of them do for Jenny too. One, I'm too busy to list build. Two, no one wants to hear from me, I'm a “nobody”. Three, there's always someone who's bigger than me and my niche. There's no point. Number four, I can't figure out all that technical mumbo jumbo. I just give up. Number five, I don't know what to list, go on, or where to start, or how to do any of it. Number six, what do I do? Like a webinar, a freebie? How do I position the content that I have so that people find it valuable? Number seven, I'm not a good writer. I don't know what to write emails about to keep in touch with the email list that I'm building. Number eight. I am terrible on video. Terrible. Nobody wants to see me. Number nine, no one knows who I am. And nobody's going to sign up, and I'm going to feel like coop about it. Number ten, don't know who my audience is or how to target them. Number eleven, does this mean I need to know how to do Facebook ads? Because those are overwhelming and I've heard they're expensive. Number twelve, I'm afraid that I'm gonna build a list and then everybody's gonna hate me and leave. That was me. Or number thirteen, I'm afraid that building my list isn't going to make a difference in my business or work for me.

Jennie Wright 2:56
Hmm, I've heard that one a lot. I have so we're going to break this list down. You know, I like to think that thirteen is a good lucky number. So we're going to go with it.

Alyson Lex 3:09
We're going to break this dow. I've been list building and Alyson in every single way even as a copywriter list builds for her clients for herself. This all is in our wheelhouse. You know, when it comes to list building, I've done a lot of list building just a tad. So, just a few, you know, well over 250 summits, list a couple of hundred webinars, challenges, you name it, freebies out the wazoo. So we're going to pull on some of the knowledge that Alyson and I both share to help you overcome these objections. And this is exactly what they are. They're the things that are keeping you stuck where you are right now versus where you could be in your business. And let's just face it, we all have them. There's some in this list that I guarantee you that I've done multiple times. And so as Alyson

Oh, yeah,

Jennie Wright 3:10
And here's the ways to overcome it. A lot of this is a mindset. And there's going to be a little bit of a suck it up buttercup kind of feel here and there.

Alyson Lex 4:06
That's one of my favorite phrase,

Jennie Wright 4:09
Right? And it's like, I'm not sorry to say that. So part of being an entrepreneur, because it is so hard to be one is just literally he's just saying, “okay, I give up. I accept. I'll do it. What's next?” Right? And so, let's dive in. Let's talk about that.

We're going to tackle the first one, which is I am to list I'm on two lists too busy to build no. I

‘m too busy, to list build . I hear this so much. I have people. It's a great excuse. It's a wonderful excuse, you don't have to try?

Alyson Lex 4:46
No.

Jennie Wright 4:47
You don't have to do anything hard. List Building is never 100% easy in the beginning. It's always a learning curve. There's always that ability to stretch yourself, which is great. But here's the thing and this is where Jennie pulled out the suck it up Buttercup a little bit, you really don't have a choice. You need to grow your list. It's essential to your business. It's essential to scaling. If you have those goals of, you know, I want to wake up and be able to go on a beach, and my bank account just fills with money while I'm sitting reading a book, and my toes are in the sand. We'll do an entire thing about that at some point because that makes me giggle. But if that's your dream, you have to list build to get there. Okay? Has to be. You have to make it a non-negotiable. There are things in life in your business that are non-negotiable, right? Paying taxes, making your bed, feeding yourself and your family you know, being able to do things that you desire that are a non-negotiable, make list building a non-negotiable, and then like automatically your brain just goes, Okay, got to do it. And it goes. What's next? That's how we overcome the big issues, right? We just go this is happening. I don't know how it's happening yet. But it's happening. And then your brain just kind of wraps itself around it. Okay? It's pretty simple. I'm not a psychologist, I'm not any of those things. But I've gone through this with myself with Alyson even trying to get her to do it and, and with tons and tons of clients. So

Alyson Lex 6:12
I can. Go ahead, I interrupted you.

No, please go.

I can actually speak to this because this was my excuse. I'm too busy. I don't need to. I'm too busy as it is. I don't have the time. And what I realized when I took stock of my business, I realized that most of me being busy was out there hustling for clients. And so, I was. And I mean, I still do. I put myself out there on Podcasts and things like that. I wasn't using it to build lists. I was using it to book calls. But if I had built a list, then I have people who have already shown that they're interested in what I've got to offer. And I don't have to hustle quite as hard for new clients. Instead, I can start hustling for leads. And so think about.

Are you really too busy? Or is the fact that you don't have a list keeping you busy doing other things?

So I had this excuse as well. And I'll quickly tell my little story. So back in the day, when I was a virtual assistant, a VA. I was busy working on everybody else's business. And I've had no time for my own. I developed this whole almost like mindset, which I called Jennie-rella, which was I was so busy, you know, getting everybody else to the ball, that I had no time to go. And it kept my business. It was great. And there were bad things. It kept my business manageable in a way like I was like, “yeah, I can handle the business that's coming in because a lot of my business was coming through referrals.” And at one point I had so many referrals coming in I even told Alyson this I'm like, “I don't have to do anything. This stuff is great.” Referrals dry up eventually.

Mm-hmm. And you never know when that's gonna happen either.

Jennie Wright 7:55
Absolutely. And we've just experienced A huge global shift in the way that business is being done in the way that people are interacting with each other and the way life is at the moment. And this entire shift has really shone a light on the fact that, you know what, you do need to have an email list, you do need to have a list of reliable potential leads that you can call on. So if I if you're saying that you're too busy, then it's time to do some little gut checks on why you're saying that and start to overcome those.

Alyson Lex 8:32
Another excuse that I had, and this was really a confidence thing was the nobody wants to hear from me. I'm a nobody thing. Right? Like, “who the heck is Alyson Lex?” And I was gonna have a webinar with anybody and it was terrifying. It's terrifying. And then I don't know exactly when but I realized that we all have to start somewhere. And if I never get started, I'll never be not nobody.

Jennie Wright 9:05
Yeah. Right?

Alyson Lex 9:07
I will never put myself out there, I'll always be nobody. And that's a sobering thought.

Jennie Wright 9:14
If you say you want to have an impact on the world, if that's one of your mantras for what you're trying to do in your business right now, then part of that has to be getting out there so that more people hear about you. If you truly believe that you have a gift. And I truly believe that entrepreneurs do have a gift and that's what they're trying to do get it out in the world. If you truly believe that, then you have to shift your mindset into the fact that unless I do this, I'm literally robbing the world of my gift. I'm keeping people who could benefit from this. You know, if you're a relationship coach, marriages that could be healed because of your techniques. If you're a weight loss coach, people who could have a healthier life. If you're in naturopath helping people lower their hypertension, you could be saving lives. And you want to look at it from that aspect versus who am I? I'm a nobody. People want you. And they need you. They need you. They need your information and they need your help. They just don't know it yet. And they won't know it until you're out there.

Alyson Lex 10:19
Exactly. And I think that, I just wanted to mention that we talked about list build, and I think we should maybe back up for a second and talk about what we mean by that. We don't necessarily mean hosting this huge 25 day 30 million speaker event. Right? Have a webinar. Put your name and your information and your knowledge on display somewhere. Start doing Facebook Live every day. Start you know, create a PDF lead magnet that your blog subscribers can download. It can be a small thing to start putting yourself out there when I started putting myself out there back when I was a nobody. I was on a podcast. A brand new podcast that had no listeners. Eventually, by the time that podcast was. By the time that podcast series ended, I was I think the number two most downloaded episode with over eleven thousand downloads.

That's amazing.

So, and that was, I mean over a couple years, I'm not saying it was a month away, but it took time to not be nobody anymore. And it's okay to start small. Where that podcast has nobody yet it was, I was episode one. That's why I had no listeners. I was the first episode. But that's okay. But just practice putting yourself out there because after that, I started doing more and more and more now I have my own podcast. I regularly put myself out there. People tend to know who I am. Not trying to brag but like, I'm not nobody anymore.

Jennie Wright 12:04
No, it makes a huge difference. It makes a massive difference. I'm the same way. Absolutely the same way. I was loving the fact that I could build other people's businesses. You know, I've a history of doing stage managing for productions replays. You're completely behind the scenes. Nobody knows who you are. You're the person literally telling the light guy to turn the lights on the curtain person to pull the curtains and you're telling, you know, the actors are all like, marked on their stuff, right? So I'm really freaking good at it. Which transpose really, really well to helping my clients build their businesses, but when it came to my own, oh, heck, like I was quite happy not to post on Social Media and I have every excuse in the book. Truly do you know and I go

Alyson Lex 12:46
Oh yeah, we didn't make this list up.

Jennie Wright 12:47
Oh, no, no, no, these are all personal things that we have done. Are you kidding me? This is like, right from my own personal psyche. And it's and it's been a challenge and this is going to be a challenge but we're here to try and help you guys evolve and create and you know learn and all these wonderful things growth and all these, you know the things that are actually gonna help your business. So, if you can glean some of this, some helpful things out of this list and apply them to your business or if you have to come back later and listen to this episode again, just because you may be got, you know, you may be figured out number three on the list, but you never figured out number nine, but you're gonna come back toit and do that.

Alyson Lex 13:25
Absolutely. So kind of related to the whole nobody wants to hear from me. I'm a nobody is there's already that somebody. Right? There's already somebody who's bigger than me than my niche are bigger than me in my niche. There's no point they already have it on lock. They already have the court they have their share of the market, whatever. And it can be really intimidating. I think it's intimidating to try to say I'm going to, to stand up and say that I serve the same people that- it puts them on a pedestal Almost

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, all the time.

But here's the thing they can't and they don't serve everyone.

Jennie Wright 14:07
No, they don't.

Alyson Lex 14:08
I mean, even in the copywriting world, which is super hyper competitive guys, right? There are people that are not a good fit for me. And I tell them that because I don't serve them. They're not the right industry or they just are looking for something that I don't provide or they're looking for languaging that is not my, that sort of thing. And so not everybody serves everybody, there's a marketing maxim or saying or whatever you want to call it, “if you try to serve everyone, you'll end up serving no one.”

Oh, yeah, that is one of my favorites

Then so you know, niching and well, I'm sure we'll talk about this on future episodes. But niching is something that can really help you here because you can create that community and that connection. But also, to speak to the intimidation of it. They started right where you are. They didn't I mean, unless they were literally born into the family that runs started the business. They're running right now. They had to start from somewhere. And so what happens is you compare yourself to them, but you're only seeing their highlight reel. And you're most likely to compare your bloopers to their highlight reel. And even though we think bloopers are hilarious, sometimes you can feel like I'm nothing but a screw up and they're nothing but a success. But you're looking at two different movies.

Okay, that one needs to go a little bit deeper. You need to go deeper with that one because that is a huge, huge point. The big people, the big you know, the person that you're looking up to and that you've put on a pedestal, they probably at this point either have a team, they, you know what I mean? They've probably polished, they've polished themselves, they Polish their video. They've done you know, and I'm sure if you scroll back on their Instagram or their Facebook You either might see how it was a little bit rougher in the beginning or they actually may have even deleted it. I know some people who like deleted the rougher points back in the beginning but, their highlight reel. I mean, Alyson you need to talk about a bit more because their highlight reel, like you said, is not even comparable.

No. I remember a few years ago, I was watching a video from a pretty well known, a coach person in the industry. I'm not going to name names or anything like that. And I remember thinking that her set and her videos were so polished, and so perfect. And I just thought they were the best things that I had seen. And there's no way I could do that. So I'm not even gonna try. That was literally what happened. There was no way I could set up that kind of studio. I couldn't look like her. I couldn't be as polished as her. Well, yeah, because I didn't have a makeup artist and I didn't have a videographer on standby. And I didn't have a wardrobe stylist and I didn't have a spare bedroom in my house to build a set like,

Yeah.

And that's okay. But what I also wasn't considering is that's not the first video she ever shot. I'm sure of it. It probably wasn't even the first hundred video or the thousand. She probably shot a thousand videos before that. And so I'm at a different part of my race than she is. I'm at the starting line, and that's okay. Because and I was talking to somebody about this too, her race is not my race. That's not me. I don't necessarily want to have that business. So it's okay that she's where she is. And I don't need to be intimidated by her or anybody else who appears more successful. Take that with a grain of salt by the way. I don't want to harp on this too much. But take it all with a grain of salt because people post their highlights. To post the good stuff and they don't show you the mess behind the scenes.

No. Kidding there, which is why we use “hashtag transparency.”

Hashtag transparency. And if you're watching this on video, my backdrop is curated to look a specific way. And what that means is that all of the junk that would normally be in the view of the video is pushed this way forward. So my camera doesn't pick it up. Trust me, it's still there. You just can't see it.

Jennie Wright 18:27
Oh, yeah. And same with me. This is a curated if you're seeing this on video. This is a curated background. I've recently moved. There are boxes and bins, off camera. And because currently we don't have any carpet in this room. There's blankets and cushions, all over the floor to absorb as much possible sound as possible. Like, yeah. So, don't compare, all right? And that's, we won't harp anymore on that, but just understand that, your journey is your journey and where you are is perfectly fine. And where they are is after years of work and, you know, trial and error and all those wonderful things.

Alyson Lex 19:09
Absolutely.

All right. So let's move on to the one that I love. Hi-hi, I can't figure out the tech. I give up. I just can't do it. I'm not. I'm not a techie person. I've heard this so many times. I'm not a techie person. And they do it almost like they're clutching pearls when they do it. Just not a techie person. And I say, “Bullpucky” it's very Canadian thing. Bull.

Hashtag bullpucky. Got it.

Jennie Wright 19:36
Got it? And I suggest people reframe. Okay. So there's two ways of going about it when you don't know how to do tech and it's legit if you don't know how to do tech, okay? It's totally legit. However, you've got two ways to go. One. You can say I can't figure this out. Therefore, I will go and find somebody who can who will do it for me. Okay? You can hire that stuff out. Awesome. Or you can go get a piece of paper and run a piece of string through it and write on the piece of paper. I am a student of tech and put that sign around your neck and say going forward “I am a student of tech”, as opposed to “I am tech adverse” and reframe that in your mind and then start googling and going on YouTube, because they are your friend, every single thing you could potentially possibly want to know about creating anything is on YouTube and on Google. Completely. I taught myself a brand new piece of technology on how to edit these episodes. You know, in the beginning, first couple episodes, tell myself this brand new piece of technology. And then Alyson, I realized that we are breathers, or the microphones were picking up on our breaths, let's just say and there's a whole blooper reel, we can show you for that. And I had to figure out how to remove the sound so that people weren't hearing these exasperated inhales. And I found a YouTube video actually found like six YouTube videos. And I just chose the most recent one that was pertaining to the technology that I needed. And bam! I had my solution five minutes it was done. So either farm it out, find somebody who can do it or become a student now, caveat. What is your time worth? Oka? Is your time best spent learning how to build a website? Or is your time better spent serving your clients and growing your list and growing your ideal, you know, group of people, your raving fans and finding somebody who is very tech savvy, reasonably priced or in your market and having them do it. So figure that out. You've got to find that balance. Okay? All right.

So, we want to kind of get through this list a little bit for you.

We're going to drop down and we're going to talk about where do you start and we already talked about this Alyson already dipped into the where do you start and that is You have to figure out, I always look at people and say “you've got to, again, got to find that balance right?” Is it pick the low hanging fruit, something that you can easily create like a PDF download like a video series. If you're good on video, what is that you can create that your people need and that solves a problem? So, start making a list just grab a piece of paper, and start writing out the things that either you already have in your tool belt that you can use a video series that you've created a Facebook Live that you did a webinar you did, you know a PDF that you created a blog post that you've created, and how you can repurpose that. And there's lots of ways to do it. So start with the list, move forward from there.

Alyson Lex 22:39
And you can always join us in the Thrive Collaborative Podcast Community / www.facebook.com/groups/thrivecollaborative on Facebook and post some of these questions we're here to help you. So that is absolutely a resource that you can use to figure out what you can offer as a lead magnet or list build option or what have you. Additionally, on this, a notes page, which you Is https://systemtothrive.com/6, the numeral six, we'll have a resource that will help you kind of go through some of these things as well.

Another thing that I hear is “I'm not a good writer. I don't know what to write emails about to communicate with my list. I feel like I might be uniquely qualified to speak to this?” You'll get better. Just be you. Just be yourself. It's not It's not rocket science.

Jennie Wright 23:28
It takes time. It just takes repetitiveness. So just stick with repetitiveness.

You know, one of the tricks that I like to use is if you really suck at writing and find yourself avoiding it, record an audio or video and then get them transcribed and use that as your writing. So.

Alyson, secret

Alyson Lex 23:46
Alyson secret…

Jennie Wright 23:47
Let's talk about how people feel when they say “I am terrible on video. I suck.” So, I Jennie Wright have what they call resting B** face. I do, I can't help it I always have when I was in horseback riding my coach would always say “smile, smile.” I'm like, Dude, I'm literally riding a horse, like a million miles an hour going over jumps in a forest and you want me to smile? Like, because there's photographers taking pick No, I'm riding dude, like leave me alone. And I hate being on video. Honestly, I used to be, I used to hate it now. I reframed or wrote on a piece of paper, put it around my neck. And I said “I am a student of becoming really good at video.” Everybody starts off not perfect on video, you might have some natural talent, yey you or you could be like me where this was all learned. Have to figure this stuff out. Okay? So it takes time to hone your skills but you have to start somewhere just like everything else. Do you want to get good at it? You practice so start doing little things if doing a Facebook Live literally makes you quiver, like from fear? Then, pre record, unload it. Try something like that. Now you can start now and get better and you can do what a lot of other people have done which is eventually go back to the beginning where you've posted those early crappy videos that you absolutely cannot stand how you looked or sounded and delete them. And that's okay. Now I've kept mine up because I think it's hilarious. And I have my first Facebook Live from like, 2017 I think, I literally have it and I giggle because it's just like, it's so bad. We'll have to put it up sometime. So. yeah, anyways,

Alyson Lex 25:26
Well, and a story that I have about that just really quick is my first. My only summit. I could tell the difference between my first interview and my last interview. I had fourteen experts, and the first one was abysmal. And the last one was alright, it was pretty good.

Jennie Wright 25:48
Because you got better

Alyson Lex 25:48
Because I got better. I practiced. So, that's just my quick little anecdote there.

I love it. I love it. Alright, so we're going to talk really quickly about how you know when you say you Don't know who your audiences and you're not sure who to target.

So when you are coming up with your audience, I want you to look at who you're currently serving, right? Who's getting referred to you. Who's your client, who's your customer already? And find. Those are your people. What do they have in common? What are the problems they're coming to you to solve? And that's how you start to build your audience. As you get further into it, you're going to learn more about them. And that's great to start with the basics. what problem are they coming to you to solve? And what major things that they have in common? Are they all women? Are they all men? Are they all business owners? Are they all divorced? What do they all have in common? And go from there.

Jennie Wright 26:42
Go for the common thread. Love it.

Alyson Lex 26:43
Absolutely. The other thing that people tend to worry about when it comes to list building is Facebook Ads, or any Ads, right? Do I need to know how to do ads? No. No, you don't.

Jennie Wright 26:57
No, you don't.

Alyson Lex 26:58
So Jenny, and I love organic promotion, am I knocking Facebook Ads or paid Ads? No, if you can get them to work for your business use them. There are fabulously valuable tool. But there are organic ways to promote yourself. And actually, instead of spending time talking about it here, I want to encourage you to visit https://systemtothrive.com/3 the numeral three and sign up for the replay of our webinar that's linked on that page in the resources section. Because we're going to walk you through ways to organically promote yourself, instead of spending the time here we've already got that for you in a way that you can do it.

Jennie Wright 27:32
Absolutely. So go check it out. But the you know, the basic tenants are no you don't necessarily need to know about it. Eventually at some point in your business, it might work for you. But if you're brand spanking new, then I don't recommend. I personally don't recommend Facebook Ads because Facebook has or any ad platform doesn't have any basis to actually to find your ideal client because there's been no activity yet. So work on building. I say work on building your following, your growth, and then eventually you can add that paid part of it in.

Okay, so I'm afraid of list. I'm afraid of building a list and then everybody's gonna leave me. Okay, so we call those unsubscribe.

Alyson Lex 28:12
Unsubscribe. Yeah,

Jennie Wright 28:15
Exactly. So I've done the summit's. I've done hundreds of summits with clients, I've done hundreds of webinars, and unsubscribes. You can use the word attrition, meaning that there is growth. And then there is you know, a series of peopl, a bunch of people that actually leave and it's going to happen. I've had clients who literally have lost their crap when they saw people unsubscribe from their list, like “I lost 10 people today. Oh my gosh, Jenny, what are you doing to me? You're ruining my business.” And I'm like, “Whoa, chill. unsubscribes are natural.” You know, people come on board, they check you out. They see your things. Sometimes they just come along for the ride to get something for free and then They're Out-sees, and that's okay. Right? Because your ideal client if you're doing things correctly will stay. And you want the people who want to stick around, you actually want to say, “Go in peace, my friends” to those who leave and say, “Have a nice journey. I wish you well”

Alyson Lex 29:11
Lovingly release them.

Jennie Wright 29:12
Lovingly release them, Because you don't have to pay for them anymore on your email list. Let's just be honest, and let them go because they're going to find the right person for them. You're not the right person. That's okay. Focus on the people that you can help.

Alyson Lex 29:26
Yeah. And I think the last big objection that I hear is that “I'm afraid it's just not going to work for me. I'm afraid that it's not going to do what I want it to do.” And it does work for everyone when it's done, right? I think first getting expectations in order. You're not going to add 100,000 people to your list with a PDF.

Jennie Wright 29:48
Oh, God. No

Alyson Lex 29:49
You're not. Setting reasonable expectations is the first step. But then take it step by step by step. And if this one little webinar didn't work, try something slightly different. If you listen to this podcast, you're going to find lots of resources on list building and other things for your business. Just take it one day at a time, step by step. You don't have to do all the thing.But do one thing and see what happens. Do another thing and see what happens. Do another thing and see what happens. And eventually, you'll come to realize that X, Y, and Z strategy is what works for me in my business. You can also again, join our Facebook group, the www.facebook.com/groups/thrivecollaborative on Facebook, and we're happy to walk you through some of these as well.

Absolutely. We hope that you've gotten a lot of information from today's episode that you received some really good value on these points. And then it's reframed how you view list building and how you view you know, growing your business in this particular way. List Building is around, it's not going anywhere, trust me, email marketing is not dead, and it's not going to be dead for the foreseeable future. So buckle up, get on board, start doing this now. So helps your business in the future. And thanks so much for listening you guys. We will be back the next time answering a really big question for you and we'll talk to you all soon. Take care.

Bye.

Jennie Wright 31:18
Thanks again for watching or listening to this podcast. We hope we've answered some of your big questions today. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast anywhere you're listening and leave us a review.

Alyson Lex 31:27
Also, make sure you've checked out www.facebook.com/groups/thrivecollaborative. Our Facebook group for listeners and entrepreneurs. Find us on Facebook or online at https://systemtothrive.com