AP 1152: How Do I Grow My List and Grow My Business? I Have All the Pieces, but It’s Not Clicking?

AP 1152: How Do I Grow My List and Grow My Business? I Have All the Pieces, but It's Not Clicking?

Pat Flynn:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1152 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you. Today we're speaking with Kathy Robinson from Athena Wellness. She is an author, she's a speaker, she's very, very proficient with her knowledge in the space of helping people become well, and she has all the pieces that she needs to succeed, but things just aren't seemingly clicking. She is coming out with a podcast soon, but she wants to grow her email list and, of course, as a result, grow her business with this new podcast that's coming out. I don't know why I said it that way. With this new podcast coming out, she also wants to be able to utilize it for growing her list. So she asks a lot of questions about that, and this will be an all around great episode no matter what level you're at and what your business is.

Email list growth is massively, massively important and today we're going to uncover some strategies and tips that are going to help not just Kathy, but help you too. So sit back, listen in, here's Kathy from AthenaWellness.com.

Kathy, welcome to AskPat 2.0. Thank you so much for coming in today.

Kathy Robinson:
Thank you, Pat. It's great to be here.

Pat:
Absolutely. I'm really excited to learn more and why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do and we'll go from there?

Kathy:
Sure, yeah. I am an author, a wellness coach, a writing meditation teacher and the founder of Athena Wellness. It's a company that focuses on optimizing women's wellness at mid-life. Prior to that, I spent 18 years on Wall Street, which is where I started my career, and then the last 15 years, I worked for a Fortune250 half, of the time as its chief audit executive and chief risk officer. So it's been a big shift these last couple of years.

Pat:
Wow.

Kathy:
I began building Athena Wellness, the business foundation, while I was still working in corporate. In 2018, I became a certified coach, worked with a digital marketing coach, built the website, and started blogging, which continues today. In 2018 was my last year of corporate and my big project for that year was writing a book, which I did. It's called The Athena Principles, Simple Wellness Practices for Overworked Professionals. Then this year was the first year that I got to work full-time on my business and I've been focusing on building the brand. So the book, the ebook and the audio book came out in May and I had no idea we were going to be in the middle of a global pandemic, and so my promoting over the summer and the fall was through a podcast tour. It turns out that I actually loved that. More on that in a minute.

Over the last few months, I also started to post articles to sites like Thrive Global and LinkedIn to try to grow my audience, and I've pitched to Help a Reporter Out to try to become a trusted source in my field. It seems like the topics that the podcasts, guests, and the reporters are interested in are twofold. One is my business background, so that journey of going from corporate to an entrepreneur, and the other is my wellness journey. So how do you feel fitter in your 50s than you did in your 30s? So those are kind of the two storylines. My big project for next year is I'm going to launch the Athena Wellness podcast with the tagline Reclaiming Our Warrior Spirit. I'm halfway through your course, Pat, the equipment, the artwork, the music, thank you so much for those links. I'm going to be outlining and recording my first episodes later this month for a January launch. Lastly, I've got a couple of speaking gigs that are just starting to get traction from my old business contacts for 2021, they're on the calendar.

Pat:
Wow. Probably one of the best sort of just bios, if you will, that we've heard on the show. Just story, plans, everything. I'm like, "Wow, I want to take this a different direction," because it sounds like you have a lot of things that are going well, and you have this plan ahead of you, and I see you shaking your head and I'm sure we're going to get into some stuff in a minute. I do want to ask you really quick, though, with your background on Wall Street, what do you think you learned there that you are now applying to business that has helped you the most?

Kathy:
It's really interesting because I hired the digital marketing coach, because while I know a lot about corporate life and navigating that terrain, I don't know anything about the digital space. What has helped me, though, is that being a chief audit executive and a risk person I'm good at seeing the strategy. I've helped companies. I've actually ... The link that I made was I spent all these years working in risk management helping companies stay well. I just shifted the lens to people and I'm helping people stay well now, but it's the same philosophy, and that's kind of what I outlined in the book. How do I use this philosophy and this methodology to help people create their own action plans for wellness and hold themselves accountable? So I actually think, to answer your question, it's really the strategy and then putting the action behind that. I think that's been really helpful.

Pat:
I love it. Well, the brand sounds very clear. I'm excited for the podcast. I'm glad you're making headway through the course. I'm looking forward to that launch, let me know when it comes out, I'd love to share it. Athena Wellness, and is it Athena Wellness as well, is where to go?

Kathy:
Correct. Yes.

Pat:
Perfect. So let me ask you, what is on your mind? What, might I help you with?

Kathy:
So I've got a main challenge and then I've got a couple of related questions. So I'm struggling to turn all of these efforts into email list subscribers. I have a lead magnet, which is where I've been sending listeners to when I've been a guest on podcasts, all three versions of the book have a companion PDF that is a workbook for the book material, and my blog posts all have opt-in boxes. But it's been really slow going. Currently, I have less than 100 on my list. Now the good news is it's more than the zero that I started out with, and I purposely didn't go out to family and friends. I mean, I really feel like these folks are truly interested in what I do, which is great, and I started sending out a newsletter in September twice a month when a new blog post is posted to start to get to know them, and nobody has unsubscribed.

So I feel really good that I'm building something, but I was really surprised that it's been so slow. So I feel like I'm doing the right things to build a successful business and the pieces are there, but something doesn't feel to be clicking just yet. So my two questions are: one, is how do I accelerate the list growth? And the second thing is when I do launch my own podcast in January, how do I drive listeners to the website to join the list?

Pat:
Perfect, thank you for this. This is great. Let me ask you really quick before we get into specifically the list and lead magnets and all the things that you're doing, what would you say for your target audience is their number one biggest struggle?

Kathy:
I think a lot of the women are very Type A and kind of on that ... As I was, on that treadmill of trying to keep all the balls in the air, whether it's family and career, and they get to be at the bottom of the list. So trying to reprioritize themselves and actually thinking that it's important enough to do that. So I think time is a big factor for my target audience.

Pat:
Perfect. Does your lead magnet that you are promoting reflect that struggle and challenge?

Kathy:
It's a great question. The lead magnet is actually an overview of the Athena principles, as well as an action plan to help them take a small step forward toward their wellness, but the wording around it probably doesn't ... it probably doesn't lead them to that.

Pat:
Right. So you see where I'm going with this, right? It's like, in order to best ... And I think the lead magnet is still great. It doesn't mean it's bad. It's just was a medium level sort of one in terms of getting people excited. Plus when you pitch the name of something, we need to best describe what this is actually so that people will understand how it can actually help them. But to tie into my earlier question, when we discover what the biggest challenges are, we just hit them head on to a point where people can go, "This is absolutely what I need right now." That can then start the conversation for learning more about them, getting feedback, promoting something, launching your podcast, et cetera. So there's a lot of things that can happen when we nail that. So an interesting thing that we might be able to do would be to perhaps create even just something simple that could help in a very, very impactful way.

A lot of times it could be even just a worksheet or a guide or a quiz even, in fact. Quizzes are very popular these days. There could be a really interesting ... I'm imagining time management quiz for women to take to then ... And the cool thing about this is quizzes are very popular because it's like, "Okay, well where do I land here and how might that information help me?" It can often just take seconds, but now you have their information. There's a quiz tool out there that may be worth exploring called Outgrow.co. I interviewed one of the members there on the podcast recently and that can unpack some more information for you. So that could potentially work well.

Another thing that could spur on some really amazing leads would be something similar to what I did in the world of email specifically, ironically enough. Starting an email list is very important and it was a struggle to just tell people to do it. They needed some additional help.

So to help out, we created a three day challenge and this three-day challenge was initially live-launched, and we made a big deal about it. We used all of our resources to make as much noise about it as possible. We had people sign up, they were able to even join a Facebook group to kind of rally each other, and the premise of the challenge was in three days, you're going to go from zero emails to 100 emails. So really important that this is seemingly achievable, something that a person can imagine doing. The importance of the structure of it was three days. "Okay, I got three days I can dedicate to this," versus, download this thing and do it, but there's no sort of deadline or timing factor within it. We had a bunch of people go through it, get results and immediately it was very simple to go, "Okay, here's your next step. Get ConvertKit, or go to this article or listen to my podcast or join this course," or whatever the next step would be.

We had an amazing influx because it was a challenge. People need a group and they need structure to be able to do things sometimes. So I can imagine a ... it doesn't have to be three days. It could be more if you need more or less if you need less, but it could be, I don't know, 48-hour time management challenge where we're going to get rid of three things we do in our life within two days to open up more time and breathing room in our life. I don't know, I'm just kind of making this up, but you know your audience better, right? Then everybody's working in there, and the cool thing about this is this is something that can then be repackaged to be an evergreen lead magnet. So now we do this live once a year and make a big deal out of it, but throughout the rest of the year, it's not closed. Anybody can go to 100Emails.com and literally because it's driven through email, number one, they have to sign up to get access to the challenge, so there's the email being collected, right?

Then number two, the emails are automatically dripped out. All the teaching that I do in that challenge is, they're already pre-written and the fourth email on day four pitches the thing or tells them what to do next. So number one, nailing the lead magnet, whatever it is, to the big struggle or challenge to get them a quick win is key. The nice thing about a time-based challenge is now you can help people open up more time and a lot of people with this open new time will want to continue working with you. So I think that's a beautiful challenge that you can help people with. If you can help them unlock more time and get more balanced there, they're going to want to continue to go deeper with you, whether that's a simple download worksheet or a challenge or a quiz or something like that. That was a lot, but how is that resonating with you?

Kathy:
Yeah, well I'm thinking it really ties in nicely with the book because I've got simple wellness practices there and we're coming into a new year. So to be able to do this probably at the beginning of January, or leading into that, of like, "How do we get more time for ourselves in the new year?", it might be a really great time to do that. So that's exciting.

Pat:
Try not to over-complicate it. We often tend to over complicate these kinds of things. If it were simple, what would it look like? I would stay sort of within that realm. So hopefully that helps with your lead magnet stuff. Again, it just ties into getting something so good that a person can't help but want to sign up for it or get that thing. Right?

Kathy:
So I can do that challenge in ConvertKit?

Pat:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. We have a landing page for the challenge, and when people sign up to that challenge it's just obviously connected to that page or form. Then I can have emails pre-written in a sequence such that if a person goes through this form, they get this email sequence. Step one on day one, send the next one on the next day, the next one on the next day and you're good.

Kathy:
That's great. That's great. Thanks.

Pat:
Let's talk about the podcast, right? So you have a podcast. How might we get people who are listening to the show to come and subscribe? Now there's a few ways to do this, but mind you, it's a little bit more difficult than having people who are already on your website subscribe because on a website, there's the opt-in forum. People are listening on the go, they're at the gym, they're in the car, they're on travel or what have you. They don't necessarily have easy access to just clicking a button to subscribe to something. So again, in a very similar vein to what we just talked about, creating something that when you mention it is so perfect for them or speaks directly to what they might need help with right now, allows for a person to go through the extra hoops to then want to go and subscribe to it.

Now, of course we can make their life easier by maybe having a quick, easy access link that they can remember instead of SmartPassiveIncome.com/ebooks-the-smart-way. We just have EbookstheSmartWay.com. Literally a domain that they can go to. It forwards to that particular page. We don't have to create anything new. It's just a landing page where people can go and get that, and it's easy to remember, right? So that's sort of tip number one. We have to make it as easy as possible, the least amount of friction to go and subscribe to get the thing.

Number two, and this is a page out of Amy Porterfield's book, is having a lead magnet that is not just great, but perfectly aligned to that particular episode. What she does often is she creates — and she has a template for this to make it easier — but she'll make unique lead magnets or giveaways for some of her individual episodes. Not all of them.

But for example, if she's doing an episode that's specifically about, I don't know, the new Facebook editor or something, she'll say in the beginning, in the middle and at the end, " Pay for this episode in particular if you want some easy access pictures and a walkthrough on how to use this tool like I'm describing here today. Just go to, AmyPorterfield.com/134gift." And that's just a PrettyLink that goes to her show notes page, in fact, where there is a opt-in form there to, again, get the thing that's really helpful with the person who you know is listening to that particular episode. That is something that over time you can to begin to sort of add on, to go, "Okay, this upcoming episode, this is a big one. There's a lot more to it. So I want to create something valuable, specifically just for people who listen to this."

If you try to do that for every episode, it's going to be a lot. But every once in a while doing that can be a really nice gift for people. Yeah. I think that's what we call a content upgrade. Here's the content, you can go get the upgrade in exchange for the email, right?

Then third and finally, the best way to get people excited about doing something is to show how that thing has helped other people. So if you have a lead magnet or a challenge ... Maybe, let's say you do this challenge, right? And you want it to be an evergreen challenge that you can kind of get people in on later. Invite one of those challengers, maybe you have a star student, somebody who's unlocked everything that you've ever wanted to unlock, invite them on the show and ask them what their life was like and what it was like before now, what is it like after. Just naturally through that you are going to have your lead magnet be the featured solution, right?

You don't even have to ask for it sometimes. When you can juxtaposition where they were before, which is really, really going to connect with that audience, to where they are now, and of course the common factor being getting that lead magnet or going through your program or reading your book or what have you, people on the outside are going to go, "Okay, this can work for me too. I'm going to go get it." Or, "I'm going to try it right now." Right? Because we could sell the things that we have as much as possible. We can hire the best copywriters in the world. There's nothing like having a person who is just like the listener go, "This is how you've helped me, and yeah, you all should do this too." Right?

Kathy:
Mm-hmm. That's great.

Pat:
So that was a lot and I see you're taking notes, so that's good. How are you feeling?

Kathy:
I feel great. I mean, I think these are great suggestions because there's ... Part of my feeling was, and I actually had this as another question that I decided not to ask but you actually answered it, was I feel like I also have these assets like the methodology, like the practices, and I don't feel like I'm leveraging them. This gives me a great way to do it. So I think when I say that I had all the pieces but they weren't clicking, I felt like I had a missing piece, this kind of ties it all together, which makes me feel really good, that I'll be able to get some good traction there. We talk a lot about doing a beta. I can get a small group of folks to be able to try this challenge, so maybe in one of my first episodes, I actually can have somebody that has gone through that already before I launch again.

Pat:
Yeah, so smart.

Kathy:
So I'm excited. I think that's great.

Pat:
That's super smart. That, of course also reduces the risk. Let's say this doesn't go as planned. Well, then you can reassess and try something different before making it super public. Right? So we're right there in reducing your risk and that's part of what you normally do anyway. So this is great. I love how we're not necessarily adding a whole bunch of new pieces. You're kind of taking things that you already have and just kind of moving them around a little bit. Right? Like you said, as a part of your program, there's probably stuff in there that could be the challenge or be featured on the podcast. I love what you also said about a beta group, not just for the challenge, but also if you have people in your circles and in your audience already have them be a part of a launch team for your podcast.

When your podcast comes out — and you'll probably get to these points in the podcast course later, which is maybe why you haven't done this yet and that's okay ... but you can get even just a small group of people to support you when your show comes out so that you have some reviews on day one and people can come and when they see it and they hear it for the first time, it's not just like a ghost town. There's already people there sharing how awesome it is. Maybe you can, in exchange, give these people who are a part of your podcast launch team early access to episodes, and maybe even collect some feedback, make them feel like they're a part of the process with you. That's always really fun to do and to give people early access makes them feel special and then they'll want to support you back.

Kathy:
That's a great idea and I can do that in my December newsletter. So the timing is really good. That's great.

Pat:
Well, there we go. I'm glad we connected.

Kathy:
I have one related question and it's probably a very simple answer, and that is when I look at my analytics on my website, I see that I have RSS subscribers. I don't know what that is. Is there some way to identify who those folks are or are they just feeds of the ... the website's just going out somewhere in cyber land?

Pat:
It's the latter. You won't know who those people are and the way to reach them would be through that blog content really. Hopefully, we can get them on our email list is really what we want to try to do, but RSS, I think it stands for "real simple syndication" or something like that. It's just a sort of older form of staying up to date with content. Back in the times when I used to blog more often, I would often wake up and every website that I was subscribed to, they would have an RSS feed and I would import all those things through a tool called Feedly and I'd wake up in the morning and every RSS thing that I was subscribed to would show up in that, almost like an inbox but from websites that I subscribed to. So that's how people ... it's not a bad thing. It's a great thing. That means people are subscribed to your stuff, but unfortunately just in a way that you can't manage or control that.

Kathy:
There's more that are sending in that way then that actually are on my list. It's like, "Who are these folks?"

Pat:
Yeah. No, and that's great, and if you can ... Maybe that's a clue for ... maybe it reflects the generation or maybe it reflects just maybe these people aren't necessarily that knowledgeable about signing up to an email list, in which case maybe it might make sense to, once in a while, just pop in and say, "Hey, by the way ..." Instead of just like, "Subscribe to the email list," just be like, "Hey, I have some other content that would be helpful for you as well as some free worksheets and giveaways. I can send them right to your inbox. All you have to do is put your name and email in the form below. Here's a video to show you how to do it and what happens," just to kind of ease people's minds a little bit, who may be a little bit less familiar with that.

Kathy:
Gotcha. That's a great idea.

Pat:
This was great, Kathy. Thank you so much for this. I hope we were able to serve you and I can't wait to see you put this into action. It sounds like even before the end of the year, there's going to be some stuff rolling, and I'm really excited and I appreciate you for what you do.

Kathy:
Same here. Thank you so much. This has helped tremendously. I really appreciate your time.

Pat:
Good. Good. Where can people go to find your stuff?

Kathy:
Yep. It's Athena Wellness and for an overview of the principles and an action plan, it's AthenaWellness.com/actionplan.

Pat:
See? Look at that. You're bringing people to your lead magnets already. I love it. Your book is there as well, I'm sure?

Kathy:
It is. There's a link to the book on Amazon. All three versions. Yes.

Pat:
Awesome. Thank you, Kathy. Well done and we'll chat soon.

Kathy:
Thank you so much.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that coaching call with Kathy. Again, you can find her at AthenaWellness.com and wow, I think we uncovered a ton of strategies that she and hopefully you can use as well. Perhaps you're doing some of them already and maybe this unlocked some new things that you can try out here in early 2021, or maybe bake it into your plans for the rest of Q1 or Q2.

Anyway, again, first of all, I'm just so thankful that you're here listening to the show. It's the start of a new year. You're learning, you're educating yourself no matter where you're at. Maybe you're in automobile university. That means in your car. Maybe you are in dishwasher university because you're washing the dishes, that's when I listen to podcasts. Or mowing the lawn or on a walk or whatever. I don't care where you're listening, I'm just super grateful for you and the fact that not only you're listening and choosing to spend time with me, but you are choosing to spend time on you. To grow, to educate yourself, and the final component of this is you need to take action. So hopefully this is actionable stuff that you love, and if this is your first time listening to the show and you haven't done so already, now would be the time to subscribe so that you don't miss any other episodes that come your way too. We have AskedPats coming out weekly.

You can also potentially get coached here just like Kathy did today. If you go to AskPat.com, you can click the application button there to apply, fill out the forms. I might reach out to you in the future to have you on the show and it's going to be awesome. Hopefully it will happen, it might not. There's a lot of people who call in or want to come in, but hey, it's not going to happen if you don't try. So one more time, AskPat.com is where to go. Make sure you hit subscribe if you haven't already, and once again, thank you so, so much for listening in.

I appreciate you. Take action. Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next one. Peace out, Team Flynn for the win.