[00:00:00] What if the reason your business isn’t growing isn’t because your audience is too small? What if the problem is that there aren’t enough ways for new people to find you? Because I think we’ve become completely obsessed with audience size. More followers, more subscribers, more downloads, more people.

[00:00:16] But I’m starting to think that there’s a much better question we should be asking. Not, “How do I get a bigger audience?” But, “How many ways can the right person discover me?” Those are not the same thing. And today, I want to explain why I think building more doors into your business might be one of the smartest things that you can do right now.

[00:00:34] Let’s talk about it.

[00:00:35] Are you a female business owner frustrated with battling the algorithm and looking for growth strategies that don’t involve awkwardly pointing or dancing online or throwing cash at paid ads? Welcome to the Email Growth Show. I’m your host, Kylie Kelly, visibility and email marketing strategist. I grew my email list from zero to almost 10,000 subscribers in less than two years, and the same is possible for you, too.

[00:01:02] Are you ready to build your email list and start making more money in your online business? Let’s head into today’s episode.

[00:01:11] Hey, hey. Welcome back to the Email Growth Show, my loves. So last week we talked about what I would actually do if I wanted to grow my email list without Instagram or paid ads, and I gave you two lanes. One was a borrowed audience strategy, one was an evergreen discovery strategy. And then we talked about a strong bridge that brings those people onto your email list in the form of a lead magnet or a free resource.

[00:01:36] But there’s something underneath this whole conversation that I want to talk about today, because I think we’re often trying to solve the wrong problem. We look at our businesses and we think, “I need a bigger audience. I need more Instagram followers. I need more email subscribers. I need more podcast downloads. I need more people in my community.” And yes, growth of course matters. You’ve heard me banging on about this for weeks now. I think audience growth should be one of our biggest priorities. But I don’t think the goal should necessarily be to build one giant audience in one place. I think the goal is to build an ecosystem where the right people have lots of different ways to bump into you.

[00:02:00] And I want to explain what I mean by that. The internet is really big, right? Like, sometimes I think we forget just how enormous the internet is. There are millions of people out there who could potentially benefit from what you do.

[00:02:31] Let that sink in. Millions. And most of them have absolutely no idea that you exist. They’re not rejecting you. They’re not looking at your offer and thinking, “No, thanks.” They haven’t actually seen it. They don’t know your podcast exists. They don’t know you’ve got that brilliant free resource. They don’t know you have a course that solves the exact problem that they’re struggling with.

[00:02:55] They do not know you. And I think this is such an important distinction, because I’ve seen business owners recently make some pretty painful conclusions from that. They launch something, three people buy, and immediately it’s, “No one wants this. My audience doesn’t want this. Maybe I’m not good enough. Maybe my offer isn’t good enough. Maybe I should change my niche. Maybe I need another certification. Maybe I need to create something else.” And sometimes I look at what actually happened and think, hang on. How many people saw it? Because if 80 people saw your offer, we cannot use that as evidence that nobody wants it.

[00:03:31] We can use it as evidence that 80 people saw it. That’s it. Sometimes what looks like an offer problem is actually a discovery problem. Again, think about a physical shop. Now, we talked about my imaginary little boutique in the previous episode. Apparently, I like dreaming about the Beauty and the Beast shop fronts. But let’s go back there. Imagine that you’ve created the most beautiful shop, right? You’ve got something people genuinely want. Your prices are good, the experience is amazing, your customers love it, but your shop is hidden down a tiny side street.

[00:04:00] There’s no sign, you’re not on Google Maps, nobody has recommended you, there’s no foot traffic, you don’t advertise, there’s no website, and then at the end of the month, you say, “Huh, no one wants my products.” Well, do we actually even know that, or does nobody know your shop exists? Those are two completely different business problems.

[00:04:25] And online, I think we’re incredibly quick to change the products inside the shop when what we really need to do is just have more traffic leading to your shop, right? Now, knowing this changed the way I think about visibility. I used to think visibility very much was, I need to get visible. Kylie needs to show up. She needs to send the email. She needs to post. She needs to speak. She needs to promote. And yes, there’s always an element of that. We are business owners. People need to know we exist. But increasingly, I’m thinking about visibility more as infrastructure.

[00:04:58] I don’t want my visibility strategy to depend entirely on me waking up every morning and saying, “Right, how am I gonna get seen today? Like, how am I gonna get more traffic? How am I gonna get more eyeballs?” I want to build things that create opportunities for discovery. And you’ve heard me talk about my word of the year this year is systems. How can we touch this and make a system for it? And that is a completely different perspective to come at this problem with. I want a podcast episode somebody can find six months from now. I want a Google search to lead someone to my website. I want someone else’s newsletter to introduce me to their audience. I want someone to hear my name on a podcast.

[00:05:38] I want someone to come through a summit. I want a previous customer to tell their friend, “Oh, you should go and see Kylie.” I want someone to stumble across an interactive tool I’ve created. Maybe they see an ad, maybe they see Pinterest, maybe they hear a podcast. Like, I don’t really care which door they use, I just wanna make sure I have more than one. Why? Because one door is pretty fragile. This is the piece I really want you to hear. If 90% of your new audience comes from one platform, that is fragile, right? Even if that platform is working fucking brilliantly right now, if you don’t own it, it’s fragile.

[00:06:15] And this connects directly to the story I told you last week about the business owner with the huge Instagram following. She did what everyone tells us to do. She built the audience, a massive one. But when Instagram stopped showing her content to her followers, she had to look around and think like, “Okay,” like, “What else can I do?”

[00:06:35] And I think that that’s such a useful lesson, because we could look at somebody with 150K followers and think, “Oh my God, she’s sorted. Like, what an amazing size audience.” And it is, but audience size isn’t the same thing as audience security, and it isn’t the same thing as having a system for ongoing discovery.

[00:07:00] So here’s how I’ve started thinking about this, which might be helpful, and I mentioned this a little bit in the last episode. Imagine your business is a house. Or actually, let’s use my gorgeous fictional boutique again, because I’m emotionally attached to it now. You’ve got the beautiful brick walls, the old books, the coffee, the homewares. I think I said there was lace curtains last week, right? We’ve established this, it’s gorgeous. Now imagine there’s one door, right? One entrance. Let’s say that door is Instagram. Every single person who discovers your business has to walk through that door.

[00:07:30] Then, one day, Instagram changes something. Reach drops, people aren’t clicking, your account gets restricted, your audience changes its behaviour, like, whatever it is. Suddenly, the door isn’t opening properly. That’s a problem. But imagine instead you’ve got 10 of those doors. One says podcast, one says Google, one says guest recommendation, one says summit, one says referral, one says Pinterest, one says PR, one says email from a friend, one says Instagram, one says collaboration, right?

[00:08:00] Like, imagine all the doors you can have. Now, if Instagram has a bad month, annoying, but we’re okay because people are still walking through the other doors. That is the business that I’m building. That is the business that I want. Now, before someone listens to this and starts taking me literally and decides they need 10 traffic sources by Friday, no. That is not what we’re doing here. This is something you build over time. You build one door, you get it working, then you build another, you get it working, then you build another. And look, some doors will turn out to be rubbish.

[00:08:33] Close them. Break them off. Create a new door, right? Like, some will bring in loads of people, but they might be completely wrong for you. Maybe close that door too. Some tiny little door you almost didn’t bother building will somehow send you incredible customers again and again. Amazing. Let’s make that door bigger. This is why tracking matters, because over time you start understanding, where is my perfect person actually finding me? And this is where the compounding gets really good, right? This is where it gets really exciting, because these discovery channels don’t necessarily operate independently.

[00:09:06] They start feeding each other. They start creating this ecosystem that we’re building, right? That we’re wanting. Someone might hear me on another person’s podcast. They search my name, they find this podcast. They listen to a couple episodes. They join my email list. Two months later, they attend a summit I’m hosting. They join my Skool community. Then eventually they buy. Which channel gets credit for that customer? The guest podcast? My podcast? Google? Email? The summit? All of them really could take credibility for that, right? They all played a part, and that is the ecosystem.

[00:09:52] I think we’re making marketing much harder than it needs to be when we demand that every individual piece of marketing creates a sale. It all needs to work together. When we can get this working as an ecosystem, when each of the doors start to kind of help each other, then it’s not one action equals one sale. I see this all the time where it’s like I sent one email and no one bought, or I did one launch and I didn’t get the sales I wanted, or I posted and I didn’t get any sales.

[00:10:10] Like, whatever that one action is, we can’t put the pressure on that one thing to do all the work, because again, they all complement each other. So if we take the example of I posted and nobody bought, right? Let’s say you’re on Instagram. Let’s say you love it. Let’s say I can’t talk you out of using something else. That’s fine. Let’s use that as the example, I posted and nobody bought. Okay, but what did the post do, right? Maybe somebody saw it and then three days later they saw an email, then they listened to your podcast, then they might have came to a workshop, then they might have bought six weeks later.

[00:10:43] That first Instagram post wasn’t pointless. It’s one touch point. The same goes for any touch point, right, that we might do at the very beginning of a customer journey. And again, this is why having multiple discovery channels is so powerful. People start seeing you in different places, and something changes when that happens.

[00:11:01] You go from who’s this? To, oh, I’ve seen Kylie before, to, oh my gosh, Kylie keeps popping up, I keep seeing her everywhere, to everyone seems to know her, to I should probably listen to what she’s saying, and then they end up purchasing, right? Like, that’s authority being built through repetition, through your repeated actions, through your consistency.

[00:11:22] I want to make this distinction here because when I say more ways to be discovered, I don’t mean you need to be internet famous. Like, absolutely not. I don’t even want that. You don’t need millions of people seeing you. You just need enough of the right people seeing you repeatedly.

[00:11:37] Like, that’s very different. I’d much rather have five hundred highly aligned people discovering my work this month than fifty thousand completely random people, because I’m not trying to win the internet. I am naturally an introvert. The thought of going viral actually scares the shit out of me. I would not wanna deal with all of the crazy comments you can get.

[00:11:57] Like, I’m too busy for that. I’m trying to build a profitable business, and a profitable business needs enough of the right people moving through it. Full stop. That is it. Focus on what’s working, make more money, serve the people. Like, that’s all we need to be thinking about.

[00:12:12] So I really want all of you, my loves, to start considering the fact that your audience isn’t just one number. It’s not just your email list. It’s not just your podcast listeners. It’s not just your Skool community members, right? It’s not just people who find you on Google. It’s not just people on Instagram.

[00:12:27] It’s not just your customers. It’s not just people who attend one of your events. Technically, your audience is all of them. They’re just at different levels of the relationship. And this is why obsessing over one number can be a little bit misleading. Someone can have 100,000 Instagram followers and barely any email subscribers.

[00:12:44] Someone else could have 5,000 email subscribers and an incredibly profitable business. Someone could have a podcast with 300 listeners, and those 300 people absolutely fucking love them, right? Like, the number isn’t the whole story. It’s the relationship that matters, the path that matters, the number of ways people can enter your world, the number of doors that you have that matters.

[00:13:13] Now, if you wanna use my podcast, it’s a great example, right? Right now, I’m consistently doing around 2,000 downloads a month, and I’m creeping towards my next little goal, which is 500 downloads a week. Last week, you guys knocked that out of the water. I’m at like 650 downloads for last week, which is incredible. I’m very grateful for that.

[00:13:26] And obviously I love watching these numbers. I absolutely do. I’m a data nerd through and through. But what is more valuable to me than the number itself is what the podcast creates, it creates hundreds of these little discovery points. This is episode 263. That means there are now more than 260 opportunities for someone to search something, find me, hear how I think, and potentially come further into my world.

[00:13:52] Some of those old episodes are still being downloaded. That is an asset. That’s why I’m not sitting here thinking, “I need 50,000 podcast listeners.” I mean, I’d love more listeners, of course I would, but I’m also asking, how do I give more of the right people opportunities to find these 260-plus episodes I’ve already created? Very different question.

[00:14:10] So my loves, I want you to sit with this fact that maybe you don’t need more content. And this loops beautifully back to episode 261 about stopping creating new offers all the time, along those same lines, maybe you don’t need more content either. Maybe you’ve already created enough stuff. Maybe you have 100 blog posts, or 50 podcast episodes, or a brilliant lead magnet, or three workshops, or YouTube videos, or amazing free trainings.

[00:14:39] Maybe the question isn’t, what should I create this week? Maybe it’s, how can I create another path to something I’ve already created? That might mean guesting on a podcast and linking to an existing resource. It might mean updating an old blog post for search, right? Optimizing it for SEO. It might mean creating some Pinterest pins that point to something you already have.

[00:15:00] Maybe it means doing a freebie swap. It might mean pitching yourself for PR. You’re not creating more stuff, you’re increasing distribution, and that is a really important shift. Distribution right now is becoming more important. We are entering a period where distribution matters more and more because creating stuff has become incredibly fucking easy, right?

[00:15:21] Like AI can help you create an e-book in literally two seconds or a course or an email sequence or a blog post or a lead magnet or a sales page or 100 social posts, like whatever you want, content is fucking everywhere. Information is everywhere. So simply creating something isn’t enough. The question has to become, who is going to see it? Because you can create the greatest thing in the world, and if nobody discovers it, it’s not gonna help anyone.

[00:15:46] And then, of course, we need somewhere to send them. Now, this is another piece of this, right? Because I don’t want to build 17 doors and have all of them lead nowhere. Every discovery path needs to eventually bring people somewhere. For me, of course, that’s my email list. That’s the center of this entire ecosystem.

[00:16:05] Guesting can send people to email. Summits send people to email. Pinterest sends people to email. Google sends people to email. You get it, right? Like, everything leads back to my email list because once somebody joins my email list, I don’t need to keep hoping they’ll discover me. I’ve got permission to continue the conversation, to build the relationship. That’s why email is still the thing holding all of this together for me.

[00:16:23] Now, this does not mean that email is the discovery channel, and this is an important distinction. Your email list generally isn’t where discovery happens. It’s where the relationship gets to continue. So that means I need people to find me somewhere else. Then I need to give them a reason to join me there. So when people say, “I wanna grow my email list,” what they’re often really saying is, “I need more ways for new people to discover me.” That’s the problem upstream, and that’s what I want us all to be solving.

[00:17:02] So my loves, your action from this episode, I want you to audit your doors. I want you to do something after this episode, like always. I want you to write down every way somebody can discover you today, right now. Don’t write what you want to be doing. I want you to write what actually exists. Can they find you through Google, Pinterest, a podcast, Instagram, someone else’s podcast, a referral, a collaboration, a bundle, a summit, PR, YouTube, a newsletter recommendation?

[00:17:32] You know all the options, right? We went through that last week. I want you to think about, where can somebody find me right now? Where are the doors? And then I want you to ask, which ones are actually open? Because you technically might have a blog, but you haven’t published anything for two years, and none of it is ranking. That’s not really an open door. You might have Instagram, but you’re barely using it, and you haven’t set it up to be passive. So that means it’s not actually an open door either.

[00:18:03] Again, audit your doors. How can people be finding you? Which doors are actually open? Then I want you to ask yourself, “Which door is bringing me the best people?” They are the doors, the discovery channels, I want you to be paying the most attention to. Then I want you to build one more, and this is the bit I want you to resist overcomplicating.

[00:18:23] You don’t need to fix everything. Just build one more door. That’s it. If collaborations right now are your only discovery source, maybe you start building SEO. If Instagram is currently it for you, maybe you start pitching podcasts. If Google is doing all the work, maybe you start creating relationships with other business owners. Just build one more door, then focus on getting it working. Maybe six months from now you build another, right? We wanna get it working first before we layer more on. This is how we create something sustainable that can actually work for us when we’re not creating content, when we’re not at our desk, when we’re not actually working.

[00:19:03] This is how we build something that doesn’t rely on one specific discovery channel. And I have to say, this is perfect timing. Of course I planned it that way, but this is perfect timing because next week I’m actually hosting something specifically around this conversation. It’s an audience growth pop-up, and I’ve brought together a small group of business owners who are each talking about audience growth from different perspectives. Not because I think you need to do everything they’re talking about. Actually, quite the opposite. I want you to hear what’s possible and find the strategies that make you think, “Huh, that could work for me. That could be my next door.” Because there isn’t one correct way to grow an audience, right? That’s the whole point.

[00:19:58] You guys know that. Everything works. Your business does not need to look like mine. Your visibility strategy doesn’t need to look like somebody else’s. You don’t need to become an Instagram person because somebody told you Instagram is where business happens. You don’t need to start a podcast just because I love podcasting, right? You need to find the doors that make sense for you, and aligned for you and what you’re building.

[00:20:11] Now, if you wanna join in on the audience growth pop-up, it’s all gonna be done in a private podcast. You can simply go to listen.kyliekelly.com to sign up, or the link is in the show notes below.

[00:20:20] Now, what I want you to take from these two episodes, if we put this episode and last week’s episode together, last week I gave you the practical framework, borrowed audience strategies, evergreen discovery strategies. We talked about a strong bridge into your email list and how email builds the relationship. This week, I want you to zoom out and see what you’re actually building. Remember, you’re not trying to win at Instagram, you’re not trying to win at podcasting, you’re not trying to win at Pinterest, you’re building a discovery ecosystem.

[00:20:50] Lots of little roads that eventually lead the right people into your world. And over time, those roads can become highways. They can compound. So no, I don’t necessarily think you need a gigantic audience. I don’t think you need 100,000 Instagram followers. I don’t think you need a million podcast downloads.

[00:21:08] I don’t think you need to go viral. I think you need enough of the right people discovering you consistently from enough different places that your entire business isn’t dependent on one platform, one algorithm, or one strategy continuing to work forever. That’s the goal. And if you’re listening to this thinking, “Oh, Kylie, I definitely need another door,” come and join us for the audience growth pop-up next week.

[00:21:35] It’s running from August 24 through to 28, and I’ve deliberately kept it small. Seven speakers, short focused conversations, all on a private podcast, and they’re gonna share different approaches to getting discovered, growing your audience, and bringing more of the right people into your world.

[00:21:52] Again, the registration link is in the show notes for you. And when you’re listening, don’t come in thinking, “I need to do all of this.” I want you come in asking, “Which door do I want to build next?” That’s it. One more door. Because the goal isn’t to be everywhere, my loves, it’s to make sure there are enough ways for the right people to find you.

[00:22:13] I hope you come and join us. That is all I have for you this week. I love you so much. I hope you have found these last two episodes really helpful, and hopefully I will see you in the audience growth pop-up next week.

[00:22:24] All right. Love you loads, and bye for now.

[00:22:26] Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Email Growth Show. I hope you found valuable insights into the next steps you can take to grow your email list and boost your business without relying on social media or paid ads. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show and share it with others.

[00:22:44] Your feedback helps me reach more female entrepreneurs just like you, who are ready to say goodbye to social media and leverage email marketing to grow their business and make a bigger impact. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll see you in the next episode.