What is the easiest way to grow your business? Yes, you can have more strategy sessions, hold more webinars or build up your audience on social media. But, if you don’t have a decent sized list to begin with, you won’t see the results are you are hoping for.

I have good news and bad news for you…

The bad news is that your coaching business won’t make money until you have built up a decent community and list. The GOOD news is that if you know why your list isn’t growing, you can start taking steps to help it grow. In this blog post, I will show you how to diagnose your list growth problems so that you can fix them and start growing your list, and your coaching business again.

I totally understand the frustration of selling a coaching program to a small list. When I first started coaching, I came up with a deluxe, comprehensive social media boot camp. Of course, I violated the most important rule about creating products and got it all ready before a sold it. When I sent my first email – I had already invested hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars into getting the product ready to sell. I slaved for days on “the e-mail” and nothing happened. I didn’t sell a single one.  Eventually, I sold 2 or 3 – but that was because of personal contact.

My list was not big enough to support my dreams 🙂

So, I worked on my list, following the tips, I’m about to give you. Over a year, with some hard work, the list grew from the hundreds to over 10,000. My launches started making money. It was because I had a community (and I had their email addresses).

Want to get started growing your list? Here are the 5 reasons your list is not growing.

1. You don’t have an opt-in on your site. I know this seems really obvious, but I am always surprised by how many people don’t have a single opt-in offer on their home page. Also, make sure you have an opt-in form visible on your blog post pages. You can do this by creating a widget in the sidebar, or even having a pop up on your site.
2. Your opt-in isn’t enticing. A rookie mistake coaches make is to create an opt-in for a “free newsletter”. In today’s ‘too much info” world – offering more info isn’t going to get you subscribers. You want your opt-in to solve a problem for your client – preferably in 5 minutes or less. Checklists and resource sheets make great initial opt-ins.
3. You never send people to an opt-in page. The best way to get people to opt-in is the send them to a page that was specifically created to get their email address. The mistake I see people making here is to send people to their home page. Home pages are great, but it is hard to have a single, clear call to action when you are trying to give people a big overview of your services. Create a simple page to highlight your opt-in. Send people there in your social media posts, in your speaking engagements, and in your e-mail signature line.
4. You never e-mail your list. What I’m going to say here is going to sound VERY counter-intuitive. But, if you don’t email your list consistently, you’ll lose them. People get used to seeing the same names pop up in their email list day after day. If you haven’t sent an email in a month (or two), they are likely to unsubscribe because they don’t remember signing up for your list in the first place.
5. You don’t have a plan. It all goes back to the fact that people do business with coaches they know, like and trust. If you don’t have a plan, you don’t e-mail on a schedule and your topics are all over the place, how can people trust you to coach in them their business?