The Internet almost has TOO much information about starting and growing a lifestyle business. When you start to research, you can easily get overwhelmed with what you’re told leads to success online. Worse, we have social media. Every day, you see a Facebook ad or a post from someone you know talking about how they achieved some awesome result by using a certain strategy.
They talk about Snapchat, Facebook Live, webinars, podcasting, and a bunch of other stuff. You want the same results as them, so you spend days/weeks/months trying to figure out how to mimic what they did. But, it rarely works out the same way and you realize that you’ve wasted too much time on a strategy that you’re probably not ready for. After spending all that time and effort, you are frustrated at and about everything. All you want to do is build your dream and it feels like everything is conspiring to keep you from making progress.
The One Change
There are a lot of things you can do and strategies you can try. You can have the most beautiful website in the world that has Rusell Brunson funnels set up. You can have the Jeff Walker three video series set up when people sign up for your email list. You can have the Michael Hyatt theme. You can have everything successful Internet marketers tell you to have, but it will be useless without an audience. The ONE change you should make this year in your lifestyle business is to focus on building an engaged audience.
A True Audience
First, social media is NOT an audience–it is part of your audience. Social media has billions of users and is necessary but you can’t put all your eggs in the social media basket. The organic reach of social media is low–VERY low. You have to pay these days to reach people on social media. More than that, social media is a rented platform for you. The people on those networks are the audience of those platforms.
An audience–a real audience that’s yours–are the people on your email list. The world could fall apart, but if you hit send to your list, those people still have a chance to see that email. The reach is not limited as it is on social media. When I say to focus on building an audience, I mean to focus on building your email list.
Last year my old website was hacked and destroyed. I had no website for months but my income didn’t take a hit at all. I consistently generated $12,000 a month in revenue because, over the last two years, I’ve built an email list of over 40,000 people.
Even though I had no website, I could still send sales messages and offers to the people on my email list. Imagine what would have happened if I had no email list and only had social media to depend on? My income would have taken a severe hit because the reach of my sales offers would have been very limited.
Second, there are many ways today to build an email list that will also lead to organic growth in your social networks:
1. Start a Facebook group.
The one area of reach that Facebook hasn’t limited is Facebook groups. Members of a Facebook group can see your updates. Not all of them will have notifications turned on, but the reach isn’t limited.
Abbie Unger provides a great example of this. Unger helps people become flight attendants. She started a Facebook group that has grown to more than 35,000 members. The group is so active that Facebook sent a camera crew to Abbie’s house to talk about the group. She has also been featured in BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post, Yahoo Travel, Mashable and many other media outlets. Her business has skyrocketed because of her Facebook group. A Facebook group can be a great place to connect with your audience and convert them to customers.
2. Get interviewed on podcasts.
It’s no secret that podcasting has exploded in the last few years. Two years ago, I got to attend Podcast Movement and meet celebrity podcasters such as Marc Maron, who interviewed President Barack Obama. Today, podcasts get more listens than radio shows, and you can access them anytime. If you’re not sure how to get interviewed on a podcast, resources such as Radio Guest List and HARO can help.
3. Write for authoritative publications.
This is one of the best and most underutilized ways to build an audience online. Writing for publications such as Entrepreneur, the Huffington Post, Business Insider, Fox News, Mind Body Green and more has grown my business by 94 percent. The exposure from these publications has led to opportunities such as paid writing, book sales, paid speaking and consulting, and people who have hired me as a coach. Too many people are focused on building an audience in the “online space.” There is FAR more opportunity and reach in the mainstream space that these publications cater to.
If you take away anything from my content this year, it’s that you can do anything when you have an audience. You can get a book deal, make money and book amazing opportunities. Make this shift and you will start to see progress in your lifestyle business. Don’t let fear keep you from the bigger opportunities. The world needs what you have:
Are you focused on building your audience?
The Results Mentorship will teach you how to start, build, and scale a lifestyle business that makes $5,000 a month and beyond. It will teach you how to write for large publications, get a traditional book deal, how to sell books, how to book paid speaking and consulting, and more. Much more. There is one spot left in this group and the early bird price ends on Thursday. See if this program is a good fit for you this year.
