AL 008: Are Partnerships Better for Growth than Posting Daily?

AL 008: Are Partnerships Better for Growth than Posting Daily?

Liz Wilcox: What is up? Liz Wilcox here, and you are listening to AskLiz, the bite-size weekly bonus episode to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where I answer your online business, entrepreneur, lifestyle design, personal development questions, all that jazz. I am here for you.

As you know, each episode, I’m gonna feature a question from you, whether you’re coming from our main SPI Podcast, our SPI Community, my EMM community, or someone who has recently discovered the SPI universe.

And to honor our founder and the original AskPat show, just like he did before me, anyone featured on the show is definitely getting a T-shirt, because who doesn’t love free swag? I’m super, super excited about this. Today we’ve got Melissa. Let’s get into the question.

Melissa Davis: Hi, Liz. I’m Melissa Davis from Australia, HelloPrimeLife.com, helping women 40 plus move from faded to fully alive.

I’ve just launched my podcast, and I’m building my email list from scratch. My question: What’s the single highest leverage thing a new creator can do to grow their list faster beyond just post more content?

Liz Wilcox: Well, first of all, Melissa, I’m gonna give you a round of applause. Yay. Can we add some sound effects here?

Yay. Congratulations, you just launched your podcast. And second congratulations because you are asking a very specific, poignant question. I love this. This means you are going to succeed. You– I hate when you get on a podcast and people say, “That’s a great question,” but that really is a great question, and one that I feel is a marker of success because you’re asking the right questions.

What is, like, that one thing that’s gonna move the needle, right? And it’s not create more content. If you, if you go to Instagram, @thelizwilcox, you can see I am so sporadic with my content. Pat Flynn, I could never be him, not in a million years if I tried. So what I am gonna tell you, the number one way to start growing your list fast and your reach really is strategic partnerships.

But first I wanna back it up. I wanna give you, like, a level zero, right? So the first thing I want you to do is create an irresistible lead magnet, that, that freebie, that opt-in, right? If you are… Let’s say you have a blog about dog food recipes, right? Don’t just give them five recipes. That’s not working anymore.

Twenty twenty-six and beyond, that’s not working, right? So instead of five recipes, think a five-day food challenge, how to add one ingredient every day to your dog food bowl so that your dog can blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Like, see how verse just this list of five recipes, they can go to ChatGPT, they can go to Claude to get those five recipes, right?

But they have to go to you to get that five-day food challenge. So make it irresistible, baby. Make it irresistible. Then before we get to the strategic partnerships, because that is the one thing that’s gonna move your needle fast, why do you think I’m on this podcast? Why do you think I’m hanging out with Pat Flynn, right?

This is a strategic partnership for both of us to grow, right? I want you before that, before I ever reached out to Pat, right? Of fine-tune your ecosystem. So fine-tune that podcast feed, your show notes, fine-tune that. Make sure you have that irresistible lead magnet in there, right? So when you get eyeballs from those strategic partnerships, everything is all set up.

It’s like if you– you’re a kid, you want to have a bake sale, right? You don’t wait until somebody comes to make the brownies, right? You’ve got to make the brownies first, right, baby? So fine-tune our ecosystem. Look at your homepage. Is it set up for leads? So when somebody like me, somebody like Pat sends people to your website, are you set up?

We don’t want, you know, they call it like the Oprah effect, right? You don’t want Oprah to promote your stuff if your stuff is going to break with that many eyeballs. So look at your homepage. Is it set up for leads? Are you asking people to join that five-day food challenge, right? Are you telling people on the homepage?

Are you leading people to that lead magnet? Do you have that lead magnet? I would suggest three to five times on your homepage, okay?

Your About page. Listen, your About page, you’ve probably heard this. It’s not about you, it’s about your customer, right? But really, the homepage is not about you, and it’s not about your customer. It’s about your customer’s first step. And guess what your customer’s first step is? To join the email list, to get that lead magnet, right? If you go to LizWilcox.com/about, you’ll see I’m telling a story about, “Hey, I did this. You can too. Here’s the first step.” And that first step is my irresistible lead magnet.

It’s a welcome sequence already written for you, by the way. Anyway, again, that About page, it’s not about you, it’s not about your customer, it’s about your customer’s first step and telling the story of, “Hey, you need this thing.” Right? So that’s your About page. If you’ve got a blog, putting your lead magnet in the sidebar, your socials, put it in the bio, your pretty link, whatever.

Making sure in your Instagram, when you get those eyeballs, you know, you’re posting stories, you’re posting Reels. Oh, I know Liz is gonna promote my thing today. Or I’m sorry, I know she’s gonna promote it tomorrow. Today, I’m gonna start posting so that people have something to land on tomorrow, and I’m gonna be posting about my lead magnet ’cause I want those emails.

Melissa, you are so smart thinking about growing that email list from day one. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Even the Mr. Pat Flynn has an email list for his Pokemon channel, right? Because he knows he doesn’t own YouTube. YouTube could change the rules tomorrow. Pat knows that, so he’s growing an email list, right?

You need to grow your email list too. So Melissa, smart cookie over here. So now that we’ve set the field, we’ve established that foundation, now we can talk about Melissa’s original question. What’s that one thing that’s gonna move the needle for me, Liz? It’s going to be strategic partnerships. Strategic partnerships are gonna increase that visibility and point people to your lead magnet for you.

So think about who you can link arms with to get bigger together faster. So don’t network up, right? Like little old Liz Wilcox did not go up to Pat Flynn in year one and say, “Hey, bro, I think I could have value to your, to your business.” He would’ve been like, “Who? Who? How?” You know, you got, you gotta work up, right?

So network across. Network, you know, somebody… If you’ve got 200 subscribers, who’s got 180, 250, right? We’re networking across, right? Link arms with them. Do things with these people so that you appear bigger together, so people start seeing you in multiple places within your industry.

The easiest way I know how to do this is freebie swaps. I share your lead magnet, you share mine. If we’re new and we don’t have many people on our email list, we can share them on socials. But once you have, you know, 50, 100 people on your email list, you can start doing these freebie swaps with other people that have 50, 100 people, and so on, right? You share mine, I share yours.

That’s a low effort. I have gotten, just in 2026 alone, I’m recording this, we’re about halfway through the year, I’ve gotten about 4,000 new leads doing freebie swaps, and I’m doing another one this weekend. Also, if you’re just starting out, if you’re like, “Okay, but Melissa just told you she’s just starting. She can’t do a freebie swap,” do a live swap. I’m gonna go live on my TikTok with you. I’m gonna interview you. You go live on your TikTok, you’re gonna interview me, or whatever social, right? Swap on social as well. Or even, I’m gonna make a post about you, you make a post about me, right? Let’s get things moving.

You can also co-create products. This is highly underrated. My very first digital product, I had like 300 people on my email list, and I, I knew I wanted 1,000, right? I was just trying to get to 1,000, and I was trying to do it as fast as I could. So I went up to other bloggers, other podcasters. I was an RV travel blogger.

And I was like, “Okay, who else is an RV travel blogger? I’ve been kind of, not loud, but I’ve been kind of noticeable in some Facebook groups. Who are some other people that are in those groups that are also bloggers, also content creators?” And I asked them, “Hey, I want to create a book-” And y’all, this was a book, can I say it?

It was, it was about poop. I want to create some crappy stories about RV life because everybody’s doing Instagram, and I want to keep it real. So if you want to keep it real too, will you write a story? I’m gonna put it in a chapter of my book. Now, this worked super well because we were all bloggers. We were writers, right?

So we’re writing a story together. So every– I got 12 bloggers, 12 chapters, right, plus mine, and I put it together, and I created the, the sales page, and I said, “If you sell it, you can get 50%. I sell it, you know, I get 100%. Like, I don’t have any money to give you, but we can split the profits.” So you can do that.

And shout out actually ThriveCart, thrivecart.com. It’s a cart. They actually have what they call JV products, joint venture products. So you can have two creators of a product, and it can split the money between you equally. So, like, let’s say you and I create a product, and, you know, it’s like, “Oh, well, I don’t want to host it. How can we host this thing so we both get equal pay without stress about taxes or whatever?” ThriveCart is the way to do it. It’s actually crazy. Google it. Okay. So co-create products.

Also, you could go local. Okay, Melissa, I don’t– Maybe Melissa is in the wellness industry. I can’t remember if she said. If she’s in the wellness industry, how can she partner with a yoga studio to create, like, a digital guide or, you know, a playlist to listen to?

And then it also, she’s a podcaster, right? So maybe it’s a short mini podcast, five episodes of affirmations to listen to before you hit the yoga studio, right? How can you partner with that yoga studio to get that out there? You can also feature content creators and tell them. Pat was really good at this back in the day.

So when Pat first started out, you know, maybe he did a roundup post. So let’s say Melissa’s in the wellness industry. She’s making a, a roundup podcast about, you know, her top five wellness creators, and she’s talking about each one, or she’s giving them an award. Make up your own awards if you want, right?

Like, these are the top five of the year, 2026 finest, right? And then you share that with the bloggers, with the other creators, right? Say, “Hey, I did a podcast, my top five favorite. You were in my top five. Here’s the podcast.” Don’t even ask them, right? Don’t even ask them to promote it. The chances are they’re probably gonna promote it.

They’re gonna put it in their Facebook group, their newsletter, shout you out on social, tag you, whatever, right? So that’s another great way to not only get people to share your stuff for that increased visibility we talked about, but also to create your network, to create those opportunities for strategic partnerships.

Also, if you’ve ever heard of bundles, so this is like, I’m the host. I ask Melissa to give me a product that is normally paid, but she’s gonna give it to me for free. Matt is gonna give me one. Pat’s gonna give me one. Shahara’s gonna give me another. Lakendra is gonna give me another. Nahaku another, right?

And I bundle them all up And let’s say Lakeisha signs up and, ooh, I like Nahaku’s and Lakendra’s. You know, now that I’m signed up for the bundle, I have access to those things, and I’m gonna sign up again, and Nahaku and Lakendra get those emails, right? So you can do a bundle like that. You could also host your own bundle.

If I’m the one hosting, if Melissa hosts that, she gets Nahaku, Lakendra, Lakeisha, Pat, Matt. She gets all of them to give her free things for the bundle. Melissa’s gonna get all those leads that sign up to get access to the bundle, right? So hosting your own event, like a bundle, a summit, a challenge, things like that can be a great way because you need partners, right?

You need to be reaching out, “Hey, do you wanna be a part of my bundle? Can you be a speaker at my summit?” Right? And they’re gonna promote for you, and you get all the leads. That’s a great, great way to do things. Pat and I are doing a list-building virtual audio summit in August, right, of 2026, and this was a great way to reach out to people to partner.

“Hey, do you wanna speak? Do you wanna speak? Do you wanna speak?” And let’s say we had John Lee speak. Now, people listen to John’s talk. They sign up for John’s thing because they like what he said. That’s co-creation. That’s hosting our own event ’cause we get a ton of leads ’cause people like John say, “Hey, I’m a part of this event.

Come sign up.” John gets some leads in return. It’s, it’s a great strategic partnership. So speaking of, that’s also virtual speaking.

Virtual speaking is how I, Liz Wilcox, have built my list organically to over 15,000, you know, with no ads, no creating consistent content. I’m, I’m not consistent with the content.

I’m not on social media very much. But I’ve done it through virtual speaking, so getting on other people’s podcasts. And I didn’t just get on SPI. That took me years. I actually, Smart Passive Income was my dream show, but I started very small, and I worked my way up. I got on, it was something like 100 podcasts before I even got an email that said, “Hey, do you want to be on Smart Passive Income?”

So again, network across, don’t network up. Start very small with the podcast and move from there. Do virtual summits, like I just mentioned Pat and I co-hosting one. Do summits like that, private trainings and groups. I mentioned live swaps, right? You go live with somebody on your channel, they go live with you on their channel, right? Lots of virtual speaking.

Okay, Melissa. Whew, that was a lot. Let’s recap. Melissa wants to grow her email list, and she’s tired of the advice, “Well, just create more content.” You could create content till the cows go home. Nobody’s going to join your list. You got to be strategic about it. So number one, create that irresistible lead magnet.

It’s not five recipes. It’s a five-day challenge to introduce a new ingredient every day. Then once you’ve got that lead magnet, fine-tune your ecosystem. Are you set up for leads? If I landed on your homepage or social, listened to your podcast today, am I going to get on your email list? Are you enticing me with that lead magnet to join the list?

And then number three, strategic partnerships are going to increase your visibility and even promote your lead magnet directly, like bundles, virtual speaking, freebie swaps, live swaps, co-creating products, going local, and even featuring content creators and reaching out to them about the feature. All right, Melissa, and you listening, I cannot wait to see you growing your email list.

It is a thousand, a million percent more important than anything you’re doing online because you own that email list. We do not own these platforms where we post our content, but we do own our email list. So I’m very excited for you to get going with this. Thanks for listening to another episode, and I’ll see you next week.

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