Until this year – I’ve kept my business and growth under wraps.

Why? Well, it’s because I didn’t feel like it was “enough” to share with anyone – and was a bit shameful about the lack of growth too.

And if you think it’s easy working with a successful business while growing your own “not just yet” exploding business – well, you’re wrong.

Everytime I look LKR’s numbers – I think about my own. I can’t help it.

And I bet you watch people too – wondering how they got where they are.

How does business growth REALLY happen?

You’ve probably seen all the reports of people building their list to 5 or 6k in 3 months and wonder – I’m cool, too, why can’t I grow my list like that?

What you don’t see is the networking, relationships, work, content creation, thought, strategy and sweat that is generally happening behind the face of that shiny entrepreneur.

This year has shown me the value of all those things – not in excess but in being able to find the most effective way to grow my business without killing myself – and holding down a more than full time job.

Being effective everyday is what has taken for me to see the steady growth spurt I’m finally experiencing.

So – today – I want to share with you the elements that have caused my subscriber list to grow faster than it has in the 3 years I’ve written on this blog and allowed me to start making an actual income from my knowledge about business, launching, and project management.

I’ve used a combination of slower burning, marathon-like activities and faster, easier to see results fast strategies to create a business I can handle RIGHT NOW.

The Slow Burn

The strategies that build on each other, that stick around, the have long term, lasting results are ones that over time create a compound interest effect in business.  Here are the ones that I’ve used most often and most successfully:

1. Guest Posts + Contributed Posts

I started guest posting in 2010 – first on LiveWell360.com, pilates industry sites, and other health sites.  This is when my voice and focus weren’t exactly right yet. Though I am passionate about health and fitness topics, I was trying to speak to a large, diluted audience.

In 2011 – my outreach got tighter – and I had posts on SimpleMom.net, The Mogul Mom, and other sites that were getting me closer to my peeps.  They also got me clear sales for an ebook that I published in Fall 2011.

In 2012 – I amped up everything – had a clear focus for my guest posting – started writing as a regular contributor on The Mogul Mom and then had guest posts on big sites like TinyBuddha, PickTheBrain, LauraRoeder.com.

Over the years – the subscribers and traffic from these efforts have been spikes for sure, but only after I focused my site and guest posted on topics related to my site, only then did I get more of a rush of subscribers for each post.

2. Ongoing education and relationship building

I take lots of courses and some of them I become friends and get to know the inner workings of the people who created the product or program.  That’s just the way I am.  I like to connect past the training.  This is one of those organic things that happens as a result of me investing in my ongoing education.

3. Social Media

This year – I’ve made it a point to balance out sharing links and promoting my work with getting to know people who retweet, share, link, like my work.  It’s proven to be a really great way to get leads and meet some amazing people. Some have become clients – some have become friends… some BOTH.

The Fast Burn

These are activities, systems or strategies I put into place and saw immediate returns in the form of money, subscribers, and engagement.

1. Released Fearless Launching

Launching a program brings attention to you and your business even if it’s your first time.  I released the first round of this program using a very quiet approach – no spiffy launch videos – just 4 blog posts with useful content about launching and then a webinar.  Not only did I hit my mark for 1st time numbers in the program, but I got a lot of new sign ups who are interested in Fearless Launching 2.0.

2. Launched a group coaching program to customers of Fearless Launching

As Fearless Launching was coming to a close, I knew I wanted to continue working with a smaller subset of the larger group in the program.  I sent out 2 emails detailing a simple coaching program — part group calls, part individual check-ins.  I limited it to only 6 people since I’d never done this type of program before… and it was sold out overnight – along with 2 additional people I let in after!

3. Created The Launch Toolkit

I knew for awhile that my site was missing an optin.  So, with a little inspiration from ThinkTraffic.net and LiveYourLegend.net, I decided to put together my own toolkit of resources about launching.  Since putting the resource up – I’ve had a steady stream of signups every single day – ranging from 5 – 30 in any single day.  Prior to this… I had signups usually only around a webinar or after a guest post. Now – it’s consistent.

4. Hosted Webinars

Offering 2 free classes – one on launching and one on building virtual teams was the best thing I’ve ever done – and will continue to use… It gives you those necessary spikes in traffic and subscribers that you dream of if you’ve got little to no action in your aweber account.

In addition to being a great way to reach people and share my knowledge, it was fun! I love teaching what I know…and it was interesting to see the response to the two different presentations – one promoting a product launch, the other content only.

The Dirty Deets

Since I’m not in the business of comparison or bragging, but I do want to share some idea of my growth, here are the main growth points I look at most often.

This is not an exhaustive list of stats to help you track your business but the ones most people understand and look at when monitoring successes.

How much has my business actually grown?

• Traffic – up 36% this month and growing every month!
• Subscriber Growth – spikes and peaks but an average of 8% per month (12% this month so far – and the month isn’t even ½ over!)
• Sales – well, 100% growth since I released my first program in February/March. Sold out the group coaching program – though I did limit it to a very small group.
• Sales conversion – There weren’t a ton of eyes on the first program – which made my conversion much higher than normal – 10%! This makes me really happy – since the connection with you is what’s one of my highest indicators of success. 44% of these 10% opted to continue working with me in my group coaching program. Cool, eh?

Rules of business growth no matter what methods you use:

➡Give your absolute best content no matter if you are launching a product or teaching a live class with no sales pitch or writing a blog post.

➡Understand that your business grows at the rate you can handle it. Believe it or not, no matter how hard you push – if you don’t have room for that explosive growth – you won’t get it.

➡Use a combination of slow burn and faster burn activities to see maximum and consistent growth.

And the woo woo rule – Give more without expecting anything in return and let go of the outcome (just a wee bit).

Now, take a look at your own business and list all the activities you’ve been doing to put your business on the success track.  Are you focused on the slower burning activities or do you spend your time on the faster burn ones?

Share your findings in the comments below – I’d love to know what’s working for you!