How Do You Build a List When You’re Allergic to List Building

No seriously, I’m asking…

Photo by Mahmud Ahsan on Unsplash

This isn’t a meta advisory post to show off my faux-knowledge of how the internet works.

It’s an honest plea for help!

With a few wry laughs thrown in for your reading pleasure.

I’m Not Stuck on the Mechanics of List Building

Goddess knows I’ve only read, IDK, a billion articles on the topic over the past decade. I think I even took a class on it once.

The reasons for list building aren’t lost on me either.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to know who their audience really is? In that digital kind of knowing way we think of today as “building online community.”

No, my Struggle is With the Energetics of List Building

Before I put my nose to the grindstone of the digital hustle, this is what I really want to know —

Is all the work to get into someone’s already crowded and overwhelming inbox really worth it?

I personally have over 57k unread emails in 6 email inboxes today. Does that make me a digital hoarder? An ADHD email weirdo?

Or just someone saddled with the baggage of 20 years of email subscriptions that I’ve never really managed to unsubscribe from?

Tell me I’m not alone. Please?

When my email inbox load gets really crazy, sometimes I just open a new account and try to start fresh. Inbox 0 lasts about a week before real life paired with my insatiable curiosity for other people's work renders my inbox into the digital equivalent of a particularly bad episode of hoarders.

Fortunately without the rank odor.

I Really Don’t Want to Push. Because I HATE Being Pushed.

Content marketing? Yeah, I get it. Conceptually at least.

Offer high-quality, free content and those who resonate with you will follow, subscribe, and eventually buy.

Shout out to those of you on my Medium subscription list who might, quite ironically, be reading…