 What's the most important thing in your business? Business mentors and marketing experts will tell you the most important thing in your business is your email list. Have you heard this? And why did they say that? Well, it's because your email list is the only real asset you control in terms of communicating with your audience and the profit is in the email list because you can email your audience about your products and your services and that's really where you get their attention. And I understand and I used to think that way too and over the years I come to realize that this kind of myopic focus on growing an email list is what ironically makes people grow in effective and unresponsive email lists. So let me explain. It's kind of like, if you say, well, what's the most important thing for your health? Oh, the most important thing is to make sure you have lots of food and so you end up eating a lot of food and like missing the point that no, no, it's not food, it's the nutrition, it's the nutrition from the food is really what keeps you alive and keeps you healthy and well. That's the same thing with when people say email list is the most important thing. So then you say, well, George, what's the alternative? If you're gonna tell me not to fixate on this myopic focus of building an email list, well, what should I focus on then? Here's what to think about instead. Focus on building an engaged and true audience. Yes. Okay, so how is that different from building an email list? If you focus on building an email list and you start studying that kind of stuff, you're gonna end up doing things like having a pop-up on your website to kind of get to grab, to capture their email address. You're gonna end up using methods like certain freebies. Certain freebies, it's like, oh, download this amazing special report or video series. Oh, but before you can download it, you have to give me your email address. By the way, I call that holding people's desire for ransom. Let's talk about this, right? So when you tell people you have this wonderful free thing, like I said, either a great PDF that they can download or a video series or some other gift, gift, except they can't get it unless they give you their email address. Is that a gift? No, it's not a gift, people. They paid for it with your email address and they don't even realize how steep the payment is because you're gonna start sending them a bunch of emails and if you use the marketing funnel idea, you're gonna not just send them emails, but you're gonna send them manipulative emails that make them want to salivate and buy the low-cost offer which then triggers your system to sell them on the mid-cost offer, et cetera, et cetera, all the stupid, not stupid, but mercenary marketing with funnels. So instead of doing that, like I said, holding their desires for ransom, meaning you build up this interest in your freebie and your lead magnet, I mean, all of these phrases are so divorced from the relationship we're actually trying to build with our audience, right? Like you build up this and then you say, well, we can't get to it unless you give me your email address, essentially paying for your PDF or your video series with their ongoing attention or the clutter that they're gonna get in their email inbox from emails from us, right? So instead of doing that, if we take a step back and realize what we really want is the nutrition, not the food necessarily. Yes, we want the taste, we want both the taste, the flavor and the nutrition, not the food. We want the engaged audience, we want the relationship with an audience rather than their email addresses, which are useless if they don't even open it. Because remember, even though marketers say that that's the only thing you control, do you realize that the average open rates for email newsletters or email broadcasts are under 25%? Do you know that? Go ahead and Google this. Google average email open rates and you will be quite surprised that it's under 25%. And by the way, the larger a person's email list grows, the smaller the open rate tends to get because a lot of people grow their email list being fixated on getting email addresses rather than the relationship they have with their audience. And it makes all the difference your intention because if you say, okay, hold on. I care about the relationship I'm gonna build with an audience. I want them to trust me. I want them to want to learn from me and I want it to be a uplifting and respectful experience of consuming my content. Then are you gonna use a pop-up on your website? Probably not, because let me ask you this, do you enjoy pop-ups when you go to other people's websites? I mean, maybe you don't hate them but it's slightly annoying, isn't it? I mean, most people close pop-ups. Do you realize that? Most people don't go, oh, great, a pop-up. Oh, let me put my email address in. Wonderful. No, people don't usually have that experience. Ask your friends. Do you love when you go to websites and there's a pop-up? Maybe people go, it's not my favorite. Nobody goes, yes, it's wonderful, it's a great experience. Nobody says that unless the pop-up is really attractive and whatever. I mean, we could talk about having a timer for the pop-up so that it doesn't come up until later. But even so, it's like, I'm reading something right now. This thing, oh, I gotta close it. It's just, it's not, it's like the person who does the pop-up cares more about the email address than about the relationship. Let's be honest about it. Oh, no, no, no. I care about email just because I care about the relationship. You care about the email address because if you cared about the relationship, really, this is what you would do. You'd be like, I want to respect you, your space, and give you such a good experience that you, dear reader, dear visitor, actually look for how to stay in touch. Imagine that, imagine that, that kind of abundance thinking and open-heartedness rather than I'm gonna control you as soon as possible. I'm afraid. It really, doesn't it come down to fear versus love? Yes, it does. And in this case, I'm grateful to tell you and you could be grateful to know that you can go with love on this one. You don't have to go with fear. But George, what if they leave my website without giving me their email address and I'd lose the contact forever? Really? Is that really what you think? What if they see you again on social, you don't think they're ever gonna see you again on social media? No, I'm too small to fish, George. You'll never find me again on social media. Well, maybe guess what? Maybe it's not meant to be. Have you ever thought of that? Like, why do you have to control everyone who comes to your website? Seriously, why do you have to freaking control everyone's experience who comes to your website and grab their email address before they leave? I have a very hands-off, I have a, well, and by the way, I understand how you might feel the fear and why you might wanna control and fear because I used to do that too because that's how most of the marketers, experts we learn from, come from a place of fearful control of their audience and trying, which is why sales funnels and marketing, sales pipelines and marketing funnels are so big because people are, well, it's, I know maybe it's a trauma response from not having enough. And so it's like, I got to control people who come by site, I got to get them to sign up and then I got to make them, after they sign up, give them a series of carefully manipulative design messages that makes them wanna buy, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, that's one way of dealing with people. And I used to do that too, trust me, I used to do that. And I built up a list of 13,000 people, most, like I said, I have the average open rate, my open rate was 22% at that point. And I said, you know what? I don't want to relate to my audience from this place of authoritarian control. I actually went through kind of a spiritual breakdown, breakthrough back in 2012, 2013. And I, in 20, basically I took it, took me a while to integrate that in 2014, I completely restarted my business from a new place of finally coming back to my heart again because that always felt wrong to me. The whole thing of fear and controlling one's audience always felt wrong, but I didn't know there was a better way. And it was after the spiritual, kind of breakthrough experience that I'm like, no, no, I can trust in life. And I can trust that I will get good enough, my content will get good enough that people actually want to stay in touch with me rather than me using tricks to make sure they stay in touch with me. Instead of me making sure they stay in touch with me, I create the best that I can, I let go, I bless and let go, and trust that if it's good enough for them or if it's aligned enough for them, they will want to stay in touch with me. They would actually look for me. And this is the difference between an email list and a true audience. A true audience will actually look for you wherever they are. If they really enjoy Instagram, they're gonna say, oh, I wonder if George Cow is on Instagram too. Let me look him up. Oh, he is on Instagram, let me follow him. You see the difference versus, okay, how am I getting this guy's emails? I don't know why this guy, right? Like they forgot that they opted in for the freebie some time ago, which they never even downloaded. It sounded good at the time, but now you're just another series of emails that they're getting in their inbox and they don't really open your, so an engaged audience goes, okay, they're on YouTube. They watch YouTube videos. And I wonder if George Cow is on YouTube as well. Or maybe they don't even wonder, they just see me, my videos suggested on their YouTube because people like them who view other types of videos that are related to mine also watch my videos and my videos therefore pop up. Like that is the kind of relationship I want with my audience where they either look for me or when they see me suggested, oh my gosh, that's right. Yeah, I did go to that guy's website. I was, I was, I'm glad he popped up because now I wanna watch his videos. Or they see me mentioned on Facebook and they're like, oh, that's right, George Cow. Yes, I had heard of him before. Let me check out this stuff again. And because, if they see me on Facebook and they go to my Facebook business page, now I'm able to run ads to the people who have visited my business page before or my Instagram account. I can run ads to people. So this is what I hope we can shift our mind toward. And let me, I will explain, well, then how do you grow an email list? Okay, because I'm not saying an email list isn't important. I'm saying that before you fixate on that, you first need to understand, okay, how is, how am I relating to an audience? Is my doing out of fear? Because if I'm doing out of fear, it's gonna come through in different ways, in subtle ways or whatever, it's gonna come through as grabbing, well, literally people say grab people's email addresses. I mean, not even that phrase grabbing is so, it's been ruined by our past president, right? Let's not grab, let's not grab anyone's email addresses. Let's allow them to eagerly say, I'd like to receive your ongoing communications because your content is the right fit for me. Okay, so instead of email list, let's think true audience, which means meeting them where they hang out. So this is why I recommend, that's why I'm always telling you authentic content consistently because it's like, it's like to show up consistently wherever your audience is means that they will inevitably keep seeing you. And if it's your content's the right match for them, they're going to engage with your content, which means they will consistently see you because that's how the algorithms work. They engage with your stuff, the algorithms will make sure that you keep being seen. Including your offers, including saying, hey, I have some one-on-one coaching available or I have this upcoming event that I'd like you to sign up for. Okay, so email list, that's not the fixation we want. We want a true audience. We want a relationship with an engaged audience, which means we show up consistently wherever they are, of course, balanced with how much time we have. You don't have to be everywhere, okay? You don't have to do every platform. Just do like the few or the one that you really are fascinated by, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever it is, okay? All right, so then just say, George, well, I started watching these videos. I want to grow my email list and you told me that growing email list is not that important. I didn't say that. I said that that's the wrong focus. The audience is the right focus. Now, so do I have an email list? Do I grow my email list? Yes, I do. And I'll tell you how I see my email list. I see my email list, my email newsletter, as a service of convenience, a free service of convenience for my audience who says, I want to make sure I receive George's best content once a month or George's newest content once a week. I have two different email lists. Actually, I have a third one, which I'll explain. My third one is I want to make sure I know about when George's new courses are being announced and maybe any coaching openings or something. That's a third list. But people usually, they come to my website. They will join the monthly list because that's the most obvious one that they can click newsletter. There's no pop-up. They have to look at the nav bar and go, oh, there's a newsletter. Let me click on that. And even before they opt in, they can, in fact, let me go ahead and show you so that you can, I'm not just like talking about theoretical here. Let me actually show you my screen right now. Okay, so on my website, right? People, they can surf around. They can read different things. They could check out my articles, no problem, et cetera, et cetera. And then if they're interested, they'll click on the newsletter and then the newsletter will bring them to, and then they can even see what the archive of newsletters looks like. They'll go to my archive and they'll go, I wonder, before I even sign up, what does it look like? Ah, okay, this is what it looks like. This is what I'm gonna be getting. Got it, right? So, and then anyway, so this is, then they're very informed before they sign up. I even asked them how they discovered me, which is a really helpful response that, and then I let them choose whether they want to receive it once a month or once a week. So, yes, it's true that therefore, I get probably fewer email signups than a peer who has the same audience as me, same sized audience as me. It's true. I'm sure I get fewer signups on email list. However, I'll tell you what my open rate is. On an email list of almost 4,500 subscribers, actually it's, I think surpass 4,500 now, I get a 45% to 50% open rate. Let me say that again. The industry average in my industry, the industry average is between 20 and 25% open rate, meaning you send an email out to 100 people, you're lucky if 25 people open it. I get almost 50 people opening it. With an email list size of 4,500, which is considered larger than most people in my industry, that's pretty damn impressive. Because like I said, the larger your email list, the more it goes towards the 25%, 20%, maybe even 15% open rate. And I have a relatively large email list compared to many of my people in my industry, 4,500 and I get a 45 to 50% open rate, which means whatever I'm doing is working. And my unsubscribe rate is quite low whenever I send email newsletters, less than industry average. So all null to say, if you wanna learn how to build a good email list, follow my method. My method is basically care about the relationship more, which means don't force people to join your email list, allow them to, allow them to. And now I do have to say, I do have to say there's an exception. When people buy my courses, I automatically add them to my monthly email newsletter and my upcoming, my launch list, which I send about two emails saying, here's my upcoming course. And people don't seem to mind. I've been doing this for now for about five years and people stay subscribed. So it's okay to, okay. Except for those of you in Europe, those of you in Europe, you're not allowed to do this. Unless when people buy stuff, you have a checkbox, this is yes, please add me to your newsletter or something like that. But those of us outside of Europe can automatically add our customers to our monthly email. I say monthly, not weekly. Some of you send too many emails to people who didn't ask for these emails. If you're gonna automatically add your customers, people who bought from you, your clients, you can add them to a monthly newsletter where you share your best content. You can also see how I do my newsletter is very simple. I keep it real simple. Look at my email newsletters. It's just basically a quick summary and then they get to read what I posted on social media, whether it's on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or watch a YouTube video. So it takes me 10 to 15 minutes every time, 10 minutes, really, to do my email newsletters. How long does it take you? When I hear from people, they tell me it takes them too long. It takes me 10 minutes. And yet my open rate is just about double what the industry average is. So whatever I'm doing is working, please copy everything I do because it's working. And of course I also sell through my email list and I get lots of sales through my email list as well. But remember, I build my email list by being consistent on social media, sharing content, creating things like this video, for example, and sharing content out of a genuine sense of wanting to help and wanting to uplift. And you should, I recommend you do the same. Whatever your field is, whatever it is you advise you give to people, whatever stories you tell, do it on a consistent basis. This is where you might not be, this is why your audience, you're not consistent with. If you're consistent, ideally twice a week or whatever, it's up to you, I mean, depending on your schedule, but once a week is a minimum, but twice a week is good. If you're consistent, then people are continually seeing you, sharing your stuff, go into your website and go, gosh, I wanna make sure I receive this person's best content via email once a month, it's very, very, very reasonable. It's not too costly for them to receive it. So I hope this is helpful. Email list, yes, it's important, but you'll only build an effective one if you respect the audience enough to let them chase you rather than you chasing them and wanting to grab and control and make sure they don't leave your site without signing up. Let them leave. If you love someone, if you love something, love someone, let it go. If they come back, then truly it was meant to be. That's been my view about audience building. It's like, hey, some of you might, this is the only video you'll ever watch from me and you'll leave and you'll never forget, remember me again, I bless you and I'll let you go. Chances are if we're meant to work together, you're gonna see me again and again, whether it's on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram or wherever, you're gonna keep seeing me every now and then because we're meant to work together. Do you see that? Like I trust in destiny and I wish that you would trust in destiny. I wish everyone who wants to build in the true audience will trust in destiny. Now, the thing that you could, like I was saying earlier and then I'll end this video is getting a bit long here. You think you can control your email list? No, you can't. You can't control whether they opened your emails. You sure you can control whether they, you grab their email, but you can't control whether they open the email and even if they open the email, you can't control whether they care, right? Whether they actually want to read your stuff and click on things and buy things from, you can't control that part. I mean, you could just, you think you can control through your funnel messages but you can't control people. All you can do is control your own consistency. If you control your authenticity and consistency, meaning you keep on controlling yourself to show up with as much care and heart as possible, right? To say, wait, I'm now in fear again. Let me do my practice, whatever energy reboot I need to get rid of the fear and to bring love again and to control myself in that way, to keep bringing love on a consistent basis. You will grow your audience. I guarantee it. You will grow your audience and you'll make plenty of money, but you have to be consistent. Consistently authentic will make you truly one of the top in your field. And this is how most people can't, most people can't be consistent for many, many, many, many, many, many reasons, but it's almost always internal reasons of, I'm not good enough or, you know, who am I or I don't feel like doing it today. You know, it's these things of self-control that's preventing people from truly growing a true faith. And that's what I want to leave you with is the thing that you truly must control is yourself. Is your authentic expression consistently with heart. If you control that, your audience growth will be no problem. So I hope this is helpful. I hope this is encouraging. And if you ever have any questions, you can always comment below. I can't write long answers, but I'll try to answer briefly if I can. And thank you for joining me. I'm so grateful that you watched all the way until the end here. I wish you well. And I wish you the consistency of authentically serving your audience, which naturally results in a larger true audience who makes all your business goals come true. Thanks again for watching.