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This wasn’t supposed to grow my email list
A funny thing happened this month.
My email list started growing again. Nothing crazy. But if done reliably and consistently, the kind of growth most list owners would be very happy with.
The interesting part?
It happened without me doing the thing I said I was going to do.
Last month I told you I was going to refocus on list growth using Threads.
I’d ignored it for most of 2025, took it for granted, and let the proverbial well run dry. And after refocusing and getting some results last month, I set a goal to double them.
But instead of relying on the usual tactics…
I got distracted.
I started running an experiment with myself and with clients that wasn’t designed for email list growth at all.
And yet… that’s exactly what started happening anyway.
You can see that I nearly doubled last month’s results without putting much effort into list growth at all by clicking here.
One of my clients did even better.
She more than doubled her following and picked up her first 77 email subscribers using the exact same “zero list-growth effort” approach. If you scroll through my Threads timeline, you can probably get a rough sense of what we’re up to.
From the outside, it looks pretty basic.
But behind the scenes, there’s a deeper experiment unfolding, and this is only phase one. What’s especially interesting is who is showing up. Not random followers. Not identity-based engagement that’s irrelevant to our niche.
But people who are actually relevant to the offers we’re building.
And here’s the part that surprised me most…
In my case, this is all happening while sending people to the worst-converting opt-in page imaginable. A plain newsletter signup on my homepage. No freebie, no email course, no bribe… just a simple question: “Do you want to hear more from me?”
Apparently, the answer is yes.
Which tells me something important is happening upstream.
This is the exact process I’ll be formalizing and running intentionally inside Client Discovery Lab starting mid-January. It’s a small group cohort where we use content as a client discovery tool instead of just a follower growth tactic.
If that sounds like something you want to be part of, you can signal interest here and I’ll get you more details within the week:
All who apply, even if you don’t join the cohort, will receive a valuable consolation prize.
More soon,
Kevin Hood