 Building an email list takes time and effort. Some say it’s the hardest work an online business does. But the benefits are well worth it. It’s an excellent way to gather and qualify leads and build relationships with your audience. While it takes a bit of work, here are some ways to speed it up and grow your list faster. Make Your Sign-up Forms Stand Out Create sign-up forms that grab people’s attention and place your forms in a prominent spot on your site. Design the form so it’s different from the rest of the page and surround it with benefit-laden calls-to-action telling people what they can expect from signing up. Placement is also important for getting people’s attention. Put your sign-up form multiple places on your website. Put it in a sidebar but also at the bottom, and add an exit pop-up to catch people before they leave. Name and Email Address Only Your form should have just two fields to fill in – name and email address. Don’t ask for anything more than that. This personal information is already a big ask and if you make it harder or more complicated to sign up, people won’t do it. Advertise Your Email List Everywhere In addition to your site, tell people about your email list everywhere you talk to your audience. Advertise it on social media (including your profile), email signature, marketing materials, and anywhere else people might potentially see it. Emphasize the Benefits of Your List What unique value does your list offer? Identify this and explain it everywhere you talk about your list. Understand your target buyer well and offer them something irresistible. Frame it in terms of how your email content will improve their life. Use a Lead Magnet You can entice more people to sign up by using a lead magnet. This is a free piece of content that people can get in exchange for their name and email address. The lead magnet also gives people a taste of the value they can expect from your list. Offer a Content Upgrade Another way to offer a taste of your list’s value is to offer a content upgrade. Give people a blog post, podcast, or other free content that shows what they’ll be receiving from your list. Then, tell them if they want more help with issues they’re facing, they can sign up here. Tell People Offline Don’t forget to tell people you meet offline about your list as well. If you have an offline store, advertise and tell customers personally. Include it on offline marketing materials as well as online. Monitor Your Marketing Results Keep track of where the bulk of your new subscribers are coming from. For example, if you find that your Facebook page is driving more traffic, focus your efforts there. You may also try other social media sites to see if you get similar results. Alternatively, if you find that some marketing channel isn’t sending new subscribers, drop it and try another. This is how you discover what works best for your market. Ready to supercharge your business growth and learn more about growing your email list faster? Check out Innovate Academy Membership course “Lead Magnet Lab” which teaches you the A to Z of building your email list to help you achieve your business goals. Don’t Wait! Transform Your Business: Explore the Lead Magnet Lab Course! Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger, Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.
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 Goals are difficult on their own. Add conflicting priorities, pushy people, shiny objects, and entertaining distractions to the mix and goals can start to feel difficult and draining. Make the process easier by consciously setting yourself up for success by learning strategies to prioritize your goals. A long list of unrelated, goals will only sabotage your best efforts. Don’t put something on your list because it ‘should’ be there. Only include goals that you are passionate about and are aligned with your core values. Discover ways to set goals you’ll want to achieve. Tailor them to your passions, personality, and unique outlook. It’s not ‘cheating’ to customize your goals and make them perfect for you. And it’s not selfish to prioritize what’s important to you. Get Rid of Goals That Don’t Make the Cut Eventually, you need to prioritize. Too many competing goals drain your energy. One of the biggest blocks to achieving goals can often be the other goals on your list. Your goals are competing for your time and attention. Each goal you add to your list takes away from the ones that are already there. If you are having trouble achieving your goals, you need to eliminate some from your list (or at least pause them). Rethink and reorganize the things that are truly important to you. And then pick 1 or 2 goals to focus on. When you give goals your complete attention, you’ll start to see some movement and progress. Learn How to Say No Learning how to prioritize your goals means learning how to say no. Declining commitments that don’t further your goals is crucial to your success. Saying no to distractions gives you room to focus on your goals. Saying no can be difficult if you’re not used to it. Here are some tips that can help. Just Say No Don’t provide excuses or delay your answer. If you don’t want to do it, or it doesn’t further your goals, a firm but courteous ‘no’ will suffice. Be assertive, saying something like “I’m sorry I can’t do this, but I will let you know if that changes.” You are setting ground rules but also demonstrating a willingness to review at a later date. Stand Your Ground You will probably get pushback from the people in your life when you start saying no. These can lead to feelings of doubt and guilt: Doubt about the value of your goal and guilt around letting people down. One way to turn this around to reframe it. You’re not saying ‘no’ to other people and opportunities, you are saying YES to your goals. It is empowering to prioritize your goal and stand your ground. Put a Value on Your Time It’s easy to brush aside a couple of hours here or there. But when you divert energy from your goals and put it towards tasks that don’t help you achieve them, it’s actually costing you something. You can even literally price it out. How much are you ‘earning’ from lesser priority tasks and how much are you gaining from saying no to them. Eliminate Distractions Sometimes it’s not other people who are knocking us off course – but ourselves and our environment. Eliminate distractions in your work space. Limit hours on your phone or install app blockers that control how much browsing you can do. Renew your commitment to your goals by removing the competition. Create a Vision Board It’s not only helpful to put your goals in writing, adding images can yield powerful results and help you prioritize your goals in your day to day life. A vision board contains images and short one-liners that represent your goals, keeping you focused and motivated. Represent each one of your goals with an image and add them to your board. You can create a physical board or a digital one, but just make sure you put it somewhere visible. Accomplishing goals isn’t easy and can take a lot of time and commitment. Customize and prioritize your goals and cross the finish line. Introducing..
SET GOALS, NOT LIMITS MASTER CLASS Learn to prioritize goals that challenge and excite you, take actions that keep you focused, and develop manageable tasks that will eventually get the job done. Invest in Your Success: Join the Master Class Today  Every important agreement or deal starts with a contract. We’re routinely counselled to “get it in writing” when we want to ensure that the terms are clear, not open for debate, and 100% official. Goal-setting is an agreement you make with yourself to improve your life and achieve your vision. It’s only fitting that you put it in writing. Describing your goals in written form gives them power and increases your chances of success. You set out exactly what you want to achieve, which acts like a homing device, guiding you from where you currently stand, to where you want to be. Not only does this intuitively feel right and make sense, research backs it up: Writing down goals makes you more likely to achieve them. Why is a Written Goal So Powerful? Writing down goals helps to make sense of the ideas swirling around your mind – the dreams, vision, and hopes for your future. It provides clarity and direction. We are more likely to commit to a goal if we document it in writing. Five benefits of writing down your goals: 1. It keeps you motivated Seeing your goals in print, reviewing them daily, and setting out the next action step helps you stay focused and on track. 2. It provides clarity Recording and reviewing your goals helps you clarify where you are and where you want to be. It provides direction. It forces you to focus on the specific goals you’ve set for yourself and prioritize them over things, activities, and habits that aren’t as important. 3. It narrows your focus Writing down specific, measurable goals allows you to focus on the important things. It gives you a clear plan to follow in a world full of distractions and choice. 4. It provides a time frame Goals without a time frame are simply dreams. Writing down time-bound goals gives you something specific to work towards. Deadlines help you manage your time, take your goal seriously, and prioritize what’s important to you. 5. It allows you to measure success When you put it in writing, you now have something to shoot for and can recognize when you’ve achieved it. It gives you the opportunity to celebrate milestones and stay motivated. Writing your goals down makes them tangible and real. It gives you the opportunity to describe your goals in detail, incorporating all the senses. It allows you to engage with your goals emotionally and intellectually. Writing Goals That Inspire You When you write down your goals, not only should you make them SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), you should make them dynamic and written in a way that will inspire you. To write goals that inspire you, make them: Positive Goals should emphasize a positive outcome, not the thing you want to avoid. “I will increase sign-ups and sales of my online courses” instead of “I will no longer struggle to enroll people for my monthly courses.” Personal Goals are more motivating if you use the first person and relate the outcomes to yourself. “I am fulfilled and excited when I increase sign-ups and sales of my online courses” is better than “Readers sign up for my online courses.” Keep it in the Present Tense State your goal in the present tense. It demonstrates ongoing progress towards your ultimate goal instead of referring to a distant, murky future. “I am leading successful online courses that consistently sell out” versus “I will lead successful online courses…” One sounds like an affirmative statement, the other sounds like a vague hope. Writing down your goals, in a way that’s uniquely suited to you, is an essential part of the planning process. Make a commitment to your success – put it in writing! Learn a step-by-step process to set goals IN WRITING! Register for the Master Class SET GOALS, NOT LIMITS MASTER CLASS Adopt game-changing goal-setting best practices that will get results for your business and take it to the next level of success Empower Your Journey: Click Here to Register! Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.
 Sometimes it feels like simply having goals is good enough. So many people go through life without direction. The fact that you have carefully crafted a list of goals feels like a win. While goal-setting is critical, it’s not the whole story. To achieve your goals, they need to be part of your daily life, not just a list you tuck away, or a document you save in a file called ‘goals’. If you have a list of goals and no idea how to achieve them, here are 5 common mistakes that could be holding you back. Looking at Your Goals as a Static List Many people think that once you’ve set your goals, that’s it. They are written in stone. Or, they only set New Years’ goals and then see how it goes. We are constantly evolving and our goals need to change with us. Schedule time to regularly assess your goals. We often assume that we are the problem – we aren’t working hard enough, or we aren’t talented or skilled enough. But sometimes the issue is with the goal itself and it needs to be adjusted to align with what is important to us. Periodic reviews will help with this. Your Goals Lack a Sense of Urgency After the initial rush of goal setting, we often settle back down to ‘real life’. We feel like we have plenty of time to achieve our goals when the time is right. A sense of urgency contributes to successfully achieving your goals. It motivates you to perform, it provides focus, and it promotes consistency. Be clear about the negative consequences of inaction and set a timeframe for completion. This will create a sense of urgency and kick your goals into high gear. You Have Too Many Long-Term Goals To continue to feel motivated and focused, you need to have short-term goals related to your big picture goals. Create some quick wins to keep you upbeat and confident. Let’s say one of your long-term goals is to phase out one-on-one coaching and focus on producing live courses and reaching thousands of people. Take part of that goal and make that your focus. Decide to create your first online course in three months’ time. You are still working toward your big goal, but you are breaking it down into manageable chunks. You Have Not Set Good Expectations Our overall goal may be positive and actionable, but perhaps the timeframe for achieving it isn’t. We often underestimate the time it will take us to achieve the goal and complete the tasks related to it. This can undermine our confidence, cause stress, strain relationships, and cause us to give up on the overall goal. You Don’t Have a System of Accountability Once you set your goals, you should also develop an accountability plan. This could involve working with a coach, a friend, mentor, or business partner. Having outside support and encouragement is critical if you start to lose motivation and need someone to help you see the situation from a different angle. Working towards your goal in isolation is difficult. If you have a small business, often you are the employee, manager, and CEO. There is nobody to keep you accountable. You are often tempted to let daily, goal-oriented tasks slide. Enlisting the help of an ‘accountability buddy’ can help. You can keep each other focused on your goals, provide feedback, and hold each other accountable if you don’t meet the goals you’ve both agreed to. Sometimes it’s the goals that need to be reworked – not you. Revise your goals, maintain a sense of urgency, break your big picture goals down into micro-goals, set good expectations, and find a way to hold yourself accountable. Ready to learn a step-by-step process to set achievable and inspiring goals that will keep you motivated? Join the LIVE course! Click Below and Learn More SET GOALS, NOT LIMITS MASTER CLASS Set goals for success, achieve them through action, and make your goals more powerful Design Your Destiny: Grab Your Master Class Pass Pat Simes is a Business Strategist, blogger, course creator and Founder of Innovative Business Solutions and Innovate Academy. She currently resides in the Midwest and is committed to inspiring and empowering entrepreneurs to transform their vision to reality.
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