Do you ever get so many grandiose ideas in your brain that it stresses you out? Do you ever come up with an idea and just start doing it without regard to how it will affect every other area of your life? Do you ever put the cart before the horse, so to speak?
I hired a business coach in the fall of 2015 (the fabulous Vicki Fitch) because while I know everything there is to know about build websites, I don't know much about how to build a sustainable business.
I had some downtime over Christmas and plenty of time to let my mind fill up with all kinds of crazy ideas for growth in 2016. After taking an amazing premium 8-week long course last year, I thought, “I can totally do something like this!” but the content and how I would teach WordPress live has been elusive, but after a couple glasses of wine with family (you know how that goes, right?) it finally gelled in my mind!
So I'm on my coaching call and I'm talking really fast about all the modules and what results people will get, blah, blah, blah and I tellVicki that I want to launch it in July.
Without taking a breath, I listed off about five other ideas of things I want to do in the spring and she says to me, “Shannon, I'm really excited for you, but over the past six weeks that we've been working together, with the plans you've already made, I know how much work you still have to do now!”
She went on to say that she wants to make sure that I lay a solid foundation so that when I reach my goals, I'm not burned out or overwhelmed. She reminded me that the reason I said I wanted to build my own business is so that I can have complete control and freedom over my time… Um, yep!
I bet a lot of you are like me. And I don't want us to end up completely burnt out with no time for fun and hating our lives because we piled too much stuff on! Or at the other end of the spectrum, I don't want us to become paralyzed because we don't know where to start!
So instead of doing everything in the first three to six months of the year and getting overwhelmed and stopping, let's spread it out, and make sure that we're focusing on building a super-solid foundation – and you know what that starts with?
Growing your email list! Not launching an online course or a new product, but simply increasing the number of people we serve. Simple as that – and the rest will follow naturally.
So I invite you to join me in taking Nathalie Lussier's 30 List Building Challenge. That's how I built my email list from 0 to 1500 people in 2015.
I'll be blogging about each day's lesson to give you my experience about going through it last year and give you some tips, tricks and new ideas to help you grow your email list.
Here's to sustainable growth and still having a social life in 2016! *Clink*
