CASE STUDY: How this community management expert DOUBLED her email list (and started establishing herself as THE expert in her industry)

Do you ever feel like…

• you’re great at what you do
• that you have the skills and knowledge that can help thousands of people
• the world NEEDS to hear about what you have to say

…but nobody knows who you are, what you do, and how you can help them?

That’s exactly how Ultimate Guide System graduate Diana felt just 3 months ago.

Diana Tower, “The Community Ninja”

Diana was one of my co-workers at Ramit Sethi’s Accelerator program, where she managed the Accelerator community.

She was always doing a kick ass job, she helped us build an incredible community, and she was literally living and breathing online communities.

She read books about them. She took online courses about them. She spent every second of every day thinking about how to make the Accelerator community better.

While she loves her work in Accelerator, she always wanted to have a side business of her own.

She played around with different business ideas over the past few years, but none of them really clicked with her – until she found the one that did late last year.

She realized just how good she became at creating profitable online communities over the last year, and wanted to help other people create them too.

At first, she was really excited about her idea. She started doing research around it, having conversations with potential clients, and started thinking about building an email list.

She planned out what her business would look like.

She did this for months, but her business wasn’t really going anywhere.

The problem was that nobody outside of Accelerator knew who she was and what she did. She didn’t have any way of SHOWING people that she knew what she was talking about.

She knew she was great at what she did, but didn’t really know how to show and prove to the world that she’s the go-to expert that everyone should talk to and work with.

She didn’t want to spend years writing blog posts, she didn’t have the time to send out tens and tens of guest post pitches, and she felt like she wasn’t really moving anywhere.

She also didn’t want to be one of those people who worked on their business all day long and sacrifice her family to do it. She wanted to have a great side business AND have plenty of time for her husband and her son.

She didn’t want to do 10 things to get her business off the ground. She wanted ONE thing that works.

That’s when she joined the Ultimate Guide System.

Here’s what she said immediately after she joined:

She was ready to create her first Ultimate Guide that would put her on the map as an expert in her niche, help her grow her email list and get the first few paying clients.

Over the next few months, she worked hard to create and launch her first Ultimate Guide:

The Ultimate Guide to Building a Profitable Online Community From Scratch

As soon as she published her guide, everything changed. People loved her guide, read it and shared it

“I published my guide around midnight, shared it on Facebook, and went to sleep. Next morning, 6 people already shared my guide and a lot of my friends were reading the guide and congratulating me on it. It was great!”

A lot of people raved about how awesome her guide is and opted into her email list:

Many of them shared her guide with their friends:

And even top influencers like Selena Soo shared it with their audiences:

She even got an opportunity to talk to a top influencer in her niche about improving their online community

“This wasn’t all though. As I was typing out an email to an influencer that I featured in the guide, I was shocked to receive an email from them. They reached out to ME!”

Here’s what the email said:

“Congrats on your Ultimate Guide! It’s truly phenomenal and really showcases you as the incredible expert that you are. =)

On a related note, I was wondering if you might be available for a call with me and a team member.

We are trying to figure some things out with our course communities, and would so greatly value your input on a few key decisions we’re trying to make.”

“As I got this email, I ran to my husband and I was so excited that I was freaking out! At first he thought that there was something wrong, but it wasn’t. I was just that excited that someone who I admired wanted to talk to me about their online community!”

After publishing her Ultimate Guide, her email list started to grow

Since she published her guide in the end of June, Diana’s email list has been steadily growing:

Her new readers quickly became her raving fans

Her readers have been absolutely devouring her guide, some of them even while eating crepes:

She received emails like this from her readers explaining how much they loved her guide:

As well as with the favorite takeaways from her guide:

These are the kind of people that not only come and check out your website. These are the people that will buy your online courses and work with you in the future.

3 months later: Diana got from 130 to 303 email subscribers and got her first consulting client!

It’s been a few months since I wrote this post, so I asked Diana to share an update with me of where she’s at in her business now.

Here’s what she told me.

Since she’s published her first Ultimate Guide, her email list has been steadily growing (from 130 to over 303 email subscribers):

She’s now got her first consulting client (that reached out to her and asked her to hire her):

Plus, she’s getting referrals to more paying clients!

And the best part? She just recently published her second Ultimate Guide (about engaging your community members):

And I know this guide will do wonders for her business.

Diana’s big transformation: How she feels after publishing her first Ultimate Guide

Diana didn’t just write an Ultimate Guide and get some email subscribers with it. Now she feels completely different and runs her business with a brand new approach and attitude.

She knows that the Ultimate Guide was just the beginning of her online business success. It was a stepping stone for bigger things to come.

Here’s what Diana said about how she feels after writing and publishing her guide:

“I don’t just think I’m an expert… I FEEL and BELIEVE that I’m one.”

“Before I wrote my guide, even though I worked with Ramit Sethi, that wasn’t enough for me to say I’m an expert.I didn’t have anything to show, to prove it.

Writing an Ultimate Guide changed me. It changed the perception of myself. Now I BELIEVE that I’m an expert. I see that people are reaching out to me to work with me.

Now that I get emails from my readers that love my guide, I see that I’m ACTUALLY helping people. It’s not just in my head any more.

Now I no longer feel like I’m good at this but nobody really cares about it. I know and feel like what I do is actually valuable.”

“Writing a 5,000 word article feels like nothing for me now.”

“Before I wrote my guide, I constantly felt like I had to prove myself. Like I was fighting an uphill battle. Everything felt difficult, and not that fun.

Writing an Ultimate Guide was hard in the sense that it was 3 months of writing, but it was also fun and interesting. I learned how to find out what people really want, give them all the information they need, and go to town on it. It makes everything so much easier.

Whatever I do now feels so much easier. I could create another guide. Writing a 5,000 word article feels like nothing. I know how to do it. I know how to write a great guest post. All of my writing feels so much better, even in my every day social media posts. Everything feels better and easier.”

“Now I finally believe I can create and sell a $1,000 online course”

“3 months ago I wasn’t nearly in the same situation in which I was right now. I had doubts that anything would really happen out of my business idea. I knew I was going to do something eventually, but I didn’t feel like these huge things that would happen would be right here.

I wasn’t dreaming big. I thought maybe I could get a few clients. Maybe I could build a $200 course one day. I had really small and conservative dreams. I never thought about helping people who are really influential because I didn’t feel like I was good enough and these people felt so out of reach. I wasn’t sure if I could help them.

Now I know I can get 3 highly influential clients, and by helping them I’ll help them impact thousands of people. I like the idea of a $1,000 product that will help people significantly. I feel like I can help ANYONE now. Any entrepreneur that has an online community, no matter how large their business is. I know I could help them with at least a part of their community.”

So how did she do it? How did she write the Ultimate Guide that helped her go from feeling like nobody really cares about her business to becoming a go-to expert in her niche?

3 changes that Diana made to running her online business that helped her become an overnight success

Diana was one of the first Ultimate Guide System students to publish her Ultimate Guide. And while it was a lot of work, I never stopped believing that she would publish her guide. And she did.

There’s 3 specific things that helped Diana write a 21,000+ word Ultimate Guide over 3 months and become an overnight success.

1. She STOPPED doing everything else to focus her Ultimate Guide

First, she stopped doing everything that she was doing in her business to just focus on writing her Ultimate Guide. This helped her create the mental space and time to do the research, create her table of contents, write and publish her guide.

She was no longer worrying about all of the other things she “should” be doing like guest posting or finding potential clients because she knew that publishing her guide would make that so much easier.

This also allowed her to find the time and energy for her family and friends and take weekends and afternoons of, so she wouldn’t burn herself out.

2. She CREATED something she’s proud of, that people noticed

“I used to spend a lot of time just planning, researching, and not DOING anything. This was the first thing that I publicly released for this business idea. I created something, put it on the internet, and got a great response.

People actually noticed and appreciated it. They read it, commented on it, and shared it. This wasn’t just something in my head any more. It was real, it was out there, and it gave me permission to dream bigger.”

Putting all of her ideas on paper, creating something incredible and putting it into the world allowed people to actually SEE how awesome she is, and start thinking about working with her. If she just kept doing the research and planning, this would never happen.

If you want to establish yourself as the expert in your niche, you need to put something incredible out there that gets people’s attention – and an Ultimate Guide is the perfect way to do that.

3. She found a community of people just like her to support her along the way

In Ultimate Guide System, she found a community of people with the same goals with her who wanted to write incredible Ultimate Guides, and had big visions for their online businesses.

It was with their support that she was able to write and publish such an incredible guide from start to finish (and set up a brand new website in-between).

“I don’t think I would have ever written a 21,000 word guide on my own. I would get stuck in procrastinating it, getting it designed, and spend time on things that aren’t important.

As I wrote my Ultimate Guide, I could always rely on the Ultimate Guide System community to have my back. Whenever I got stuck, felt that one of my chapters sucked, I could just turn to the community to get their feedback and move forward.

The other students really helped me with every step of my guide. From creating the table of contents, designing my guide, to setting up my WordPress website. It wasn’t so overwhelming any more.

When I finished writing my guide, I started freaking out. I had a crazy resistance to publishing it. I thought to myself that this is a shitty guide, that nobody would read it, that I didn’t know what I’m talking about. Deep down I knew that’s not true, but that’s how I felt.

The community really helped me work through that, push through it and successfully publish my guide.”

Writing an Ultimate Guide is a big project, and a lot of people might never finish writing one or get stuck if they try to create one on their own.

That’s exactly why we have an incredibly supportive community and weekly calls in the Ultimate Guide System, so you can actually finish writing your amazing guide.

So what are Diana’s thoughts about Ultimate Guide System?

“Ultimate Guide System is like taking the red pill in the matrix”

“Joining Ultimate Guide System was a no brainer for me. As soon as I joined, I knew it was worth it.

I’ve now published my Ultimate Guide, people are asking me to work with them, I’m positioning myself as an expert, and I know I’ll get more email subscribers from it for life.

But it’s not just about writing an Ultimate Guide. By writing an Ultimate Guide, you are investing in yourself. And if you invest in anything, you should invest in yourself.

I know that my entire business is based on content. Not just one awesome Ultimate Guide, anything else I’ll create will be fucking amazing. I can’t go back to writing shitty and short “top 5 tips” type content.

It’s like the matrix where you take the red pill, you take the UGS pill. You can never go back.

Now I’m writing with my audience in mind. I’m no longer thinking that I’m “supposed to write 3 articles a week”. Now it’s like I’m going to write this article about this problem and it will be so awesome that everyone will read it. I know how to create really good content. It’s easy.”

You can read Diana’s guides to see what incredible Ultimate Guides look like:

• The Ultimate Guide to Building a Profitable Online Community From Scratch
• The Ultimate Guide to Engaging Your Online Community Members

And if you’re interested in using Ultimate Guides to grow your email list and get your first paying customers, you can now join Ultimate Guide System – a one year program where I’ll teach you, step by step, how to create incredible Ultimate Guides and finally get your online business off the ground in 2018.

-Primoz