 Many people ask me how to build an email list and in this video I'm gonna talk about why that's a bad question and what is a more preferable one instead So if you are thinking about building an email list Maybe you got the idea from another marketing expert who says oh the most important thing you can do in your marketing Is to build an email list because then you have an asset in your business a list of subscribers that you can really Control in terms of how you communicate with them. Don't rely on Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube and all the other algorithms to get your message out I get it. That's the message. I used to preach as well in the first couple years of my business But in the past few years my thoughts have evolved around question of email list building and now instead of build an email list My focus is now how do I grow and engaged audience? And more specifically of course my focus is how do I give to my audience in the most relevant authentic and consistent way possible? It is a very different set of actions when you're trying to build an email list versus trying to develop a relationship with an engaged audience Okay, when you're trying to build an email list, you will do things like Create a tele-summit invite a bunch of speakers require those speakers to promote the tele-summit to their audience and Require the audience to give you their email address before they can access the tele-summit and Unknowingly to the audience you're going to keep emailing them going forward. You're going to be selling things to them over the emails and things like that so The start of the relationship with the audience is already They already feel a little bit annoyed that they have to give you their email address in order to get the promised free thing right and It is entirely different when you are Trying to grow a relationship with an engaged audience The difference is that when you are When you're trying to grow an engaged relationship with an audience You are thinking about how do I give and serve and therefore your your actions and your Way of interacting with them is totally different than just looking at that email address as the thing that you want Right so that's how I've changed my strategies over the years instead of Forcing you to give me your email address in order for me to give you my best free thoughts I just meet you where you're at a lot of you are watching this either on YouTube or on Facebook or you found the link somewhere else. I reached you where you are I didn't require you to join my email list to get this now. I I do have an email list I do have an email newsletter, but the way I think about it is very different I think about my email newsletter as a service of convenience To my audience for those of you who say well, George, I don't want to miss George's best articles Once a month or his newest article once once a week I want to make sure I get that and I want to get it through email Do you have that service available George now they might be thinking and yes They go to my website they can find the newsletter link and they can sign up, but it's not required To get my best free content. I will meet you where you're at whether you're on Facebook or YouTube or You know Twitter or LinkedIn or wherever I'm at. I don't use every single social network, but I do use a few of them So that is my recommendation to all of us heart based entrepreneurs is to think focus in terms of Giving relevant Authentic content and then allowing our audience to spread the word for us. I Ever since I started doing this my email newsletter open rates have skyrocketed I'm now about two times the industry average in terms of the open rates and my click rates are now four to five times So it's almost like I have an email list That's two to five times larger than anybody with my size of subscribers It's evidence to me that my email subscribers trust me instead of Instead of mere merely tolerate my marketing they're looking for it. So I hope this is helpful and The one more thing I have to say is that there's no guarantee That just because you have an email list that you'll be able to reach your people because a lot of people find a lot of marketers Find that their emails are going into the spam folder of their subscribers So there's no guarantee with that and even if your emails aren't going into the spam folder people just might not be Emails, right? So really it's about the relationship and if your audience trusts you and feels your care They're going to be looking for your content wherever they are and wherever you are you