“I don’t know where to start with attracting clients.”

You’re not the only one saying it. And there’s a practical answer.

You qualified to help people. Nobody taught you how to find them. That part is learnable, and this is where it starts.

Show me how
A counsellor at her desk, looking out of the window, thinking about how to reach more of the people she trained to help

You’re doing the work. Your list is still small.

You’re seeing clients. You’re doing the work you trained for. You’re probably posting on social media a few times a week, showing up as consistently as you can manage between sessions and admin and everything else that comes with running a practice on your own.

And your list is still small.

You have tried, and you do care. The trouble is that list building has always been the thing sitting on the edge of your to-do list, waiting for the week you finally have time to work it out properly.

That week hasn’t come. It probably won’t, not unless something changes.

I train, assess and mentor for the Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors and the Life Coaching Institute of Australia. So I meet newly qualified counsellors and coaches constantly. Nine times out of ten they open with some version of this:

“I don’t know where to start with attracting clients.”

If that’s the sentence in your head too, it’s the one I hear more than any other.

And that’s a system problem rather than a motivation one.

The piece nobody joins up

The place to start is an email list.

Before the social media strategy, before the website, before any of it, you need a group of people who have already told you they are interested. That’s all an email list is. A list of people who gave you their email address because they want to hear from you. Every person on it put their hand up and said, in some form, this is me, I want to know more.

Everything else, posting on Instagram, showing up on Facebook, is renting attention from a platform that decides who sees you, when they see you, and whether they see you at all.

Your list belongs to you. Those are real people who asked to hear from you, and they are the people genuinely interested in making a change in their life. That’s where a profitable practice begins.

Let’s name what you’ve already tried.

You’ve probably posted on Instagram or Facebook, consistently enough that it felt like effort, and watched the reach creep along without translating into anything you could hold onto.

You may have put together a freebie. A guide, a checklist, a mini training. Then you set up an opt-in page, which is the page where someone types in their email address to get it. And then you waited. And not many people came.

You might have signed up for someone else’s challenge or course and learned a lot, but then life intervened before you could implement it properly.

None of this means you did it wrong. It means you were given individual tactics, one at a time, without a sequence to put them in. Tactics without sequence are just tasks. And tasks without sequence don’t compound.

Meanwhile, the coaches you follow online seem to be growing their lists without breaking a sweat, and you can’t quite work out what they’re doing that you’re not.

I’ll tell you what they’re doing. They’re using multiple strategies at once, in a deliberate order, and they’re not stopping after one attempt.

The mechanism

The problem was never your effort. It was the missing sequence.

Here’s the thing about list building that nobody explains clearly enough.

There are nineteen different routes into a list in this challenge. Most practitioners know about one or two of them. They try those one or two, get modest results, and conclude that list building is slow and hard and maybe not worth the effort.

But when you work through them one after the other, in the right order, something different happens. Each one builds on the last. Your list starts to grow from several directions at once. And 99 new interested people in 30 days stops being an ambitious number and starts being a reachable one.

That sequence is what Add500 teaches.

Introducing

Add500: The Email List Building Challenge

Add500 is a 30-day self-paced programme, delivered as a daily email with one small, specific action to take that day.

Not a module to watch. Not a workbook to fill in before you can move forward. One email, one action, every day for 30 days.

By the end, if you do the work and apply what you’re given, you could have added 99 interested people to your email list. People who are genuinely interested in what you do, who chose to hear from you, and who are far more likely to become clients than a social media follower who scrolled past a post.

Day one of Add500: a daily email with one small action, and the promise of 99 people on your list in 30 days

You’ll see them called subscribers, in this challenge and everywhere else. It only means someone who has subscribed, which is to say they asked to hear from you. Interested people and subscribers are the same thing, and I’ll use both words.

Carrie Wallis, who wrote and runs the Add500 challenge
Carrie Wallis
For more than twenty years I’ve helped coaches and small business owners build lists of buyers. I’m a qualified copywriter and creative strategist, and I train, assess and mentor for the Australian Institute of Professional Counsellors and the Life Coaching Institute of Australia. These are the strategies I’ve used myself and the ones I teach.

The honest bit

Yes, it’s called Add500. I’m promising you 99.

Let me explain that, because it matters.

99 new interested people on your list in the next 30 days. That’s the number I’m willing to stand behind, because I believe you’ll hit it even if you only do the minimum.

99 is a deliberately unround number. It’s what I think happens when someone shows up, does the work without going overboard, and works through the routes consistently.

Could you add 500? Absolutely. The strategies are the same either way, and some people will get there. But I’d rather tell you 99 and watch you sail past it than promise you 500 and have you finish feeling like you fell short.

I’d rather be honest with you now and earn your trust than impress you on a sales page and disappoint you at the end.

The programme works through nineteen different routes, in sequence, so that each one builds momentum for the next. Some bring people in steadily. Some bring a run of them at once. What makes them work is the order you do them in, and that’s the part nobody has handed you before.

What’s inside

Here’s what you’ll have at the end of the 30 days.

Nineteen routes to more of the right people, worked through in an order that matters. Each one builds on the one before it, which is why this tends to work for people who have tried a tactic here and there and got very little back. You won’t be doing scattered things and hoping. You’ll be building something where each piece makes the next piece easier.

You’ll know exactly who you’re for, and you’ll have something worth giving them

You’ll get clear on the person you actually serve and the problem you solve for them, which matters more than most people realise, because an invitation aimed at the wrong person fills your list with the wrong people and causes you trouble later. From that clarity you’ll build a lead gift your ideal client genuinely wants, not a general PDF that sounds useful in theory. You’ll have the copy for your opt-in page and simple guidance on the graphics, so it’s ready to receive people. You’ll have social posts you fill in with your own words rather than facing a blank screen. And you’ll learn a small addition to the emails you already send that turns your readers into people who pass you on.

Your lead gift will become the reason people say yes

Most lead gifts fail at the title. You’ll learn how to position yours and how to name it so people actually click, and then how to make sure it delivers what it promised, so the people who take it stay on your list and feel good about you from the first day. This is the difference between a gift that collects email addresses and one that starts a relationship.

You’ll have your gift in front of audiences someone else spent years building

There are people who already talk to the people you help. You’ll find them, and you’ll learn how to approach them without the awkwardness that stops most practitioners before they start. From there you’ll set up arrangements where you each share the other’s free resource, and promotions you run together. The effect is that your lead gift reaches a warm audience you didn’t have to build. Most practitioners never do this, and it isn’t reluctance. They simply don’t know how to open the conversation. That gets fixed here.

You’ll be able to bring in a run of new people in a short window

Some of these routes work steadily. This one works in bursts, and it can add a significant number of people in a matter of days. If you’ve watched someone run one of these and end up with a list full of people who vanished the moment it finished, you’ve seen the version we don’t run. You’ll learn how to set one up so it attracts people who actually want what you do, and how to keep the ones it brings you.

You’ll be speaking to rooms already full of interested people

A single appearance in front of somebody else’s audience can put your lead gift in front of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people who are already interested in the very thing you work in. You’ll learn how to find the right opportunities, how to put yourself forward without feeling presumptuous, and what to do once you’re booked so the people listening actually join your list rather than nodding along and moving on.

Your website will be bringing people in while you’re with clients

Alongside all of that, we sort out the parts of your website that should be working for you and probably aren’t. The small box that appears while someone is reading. The thin strip across the top of the page. A line on your About page telling the reader what to do next. Your email signature, doing a job at the bottom of every email you already send. None of it is complicated, and all of it is easy to overlook. It works away in the background and adds up over the month.

There’s really only one question.

Are you willing to take one small action a day for 30 days?

That’s it. That’s the whole entry requirement. Some days it’s five minutes, some days closer to twenty, and none of it needs a cleared afternoon.

You don’t need an audience. You don’t need to be technical. You don’t need a lead gift ready, because the early days walk you through making one.

And you don’t need a list already set up. If you have one, wonderful, and any platform works, GoHighLevel, AWeber, Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Flodesk, whichever you’re on. If you haven’t set one up yet, don’t let that be the thing that stops you. Pick one and you’ll be ready before day one, and if you’d like a hand with that part, it’s exactly the sort of thing I help people with inside Confident Prosperity.

You trained to help people. This is the part nobody taught you, and it’s learnable.

And if you’re right at the beginning, still working out who you serve and what you offer, you’re welcome here too. You may find it easier alongside The Practice Builder Hub, which is where I help practitioners get that groundwork settled. Start wherever you actually are.

The investment

Add500 is $27 AUD.

One payment, no subscription. For $27, that’s a lot of structure for a problem that’s been sitting unresolved for a while.

Add500 · The Email List Building Challenge
$27
AUD, one payment
  • 30 days of daily emails, each with one specific action, so you finish the month with a list of people who genuinely want to hear from you
  • Templates and guides for your social posts and your opt-in page, so you fill in your own words rather than face a blank screen
  • All nineteen routes, in the order that makes each one build on the last, so your list grows from several directions at once
  • Self-paced, so a busy week costs you nothing

What happens if you get stuck

Here’s what I’d rather do than hand your money back. If you work through the challenge and find yourself stuck or unclear, tell me within 14 days and I’ll give you a month inside Marketing Labs, my weekly live laser coaching, at no cost. You bring the thing that’s not working, we sort it out together, and you carry on.

Money back leaves you exactly where you started, still without a list. A month of getting your actual questions answered is worth considerably more than $27, and it gets you moving again, which is the point.

A few questions I hear often.

Do I need a big audience to start?

No. In fact, this programme is specifically designed for practitioners who are starting from a small base. The strategies work whether you have fifty people on your list or five hundred. Several of them, particularly the collaboration and summit strategies, are specifically designed to reach audiences you don’t already have.

I’m not sure I have the time.

Five to twenty minutes on most days, and the programme is self-paced, so the emails arrive daily but you work at whatever speed your week allows. If you have a full client load one week and need to pause, you pause. The actions will be waiting for you.

I’ve tried growing my list before and it didn’t work. Why would this be different?

Most likely because you tried one or two tactics in isolation, without a sequence connecting them. Add500 runs nineteen routes in a deliberate order, so each one builds on the last. That’s the part that’s usually missing.

Will I actually get 99 people on my list in 30 days?

That’s the promise, and I chose 99 precisely because I think it holds at minimum effort. Your results will still depend on your niche, your existing network, how well your lead gift is positioned and how consistently you take the daily actions, and I won’t pretend otherwise. What I can tell you is that the strategies work, they’re in the right order, and 99 is the number I picked when I asked myself what I’d be comfortable promising a stranger.

What if I fall behind?

Most people do at some point, and it’s the single most common reason a challenge goes unfinished. Week two gets busy, a few days slip, and catching up starts to feel worse than stopping. So there’s an option at the checkout called List Building Insurance. It adds 14 extra days to your support window, a check-in from me on days 7, 14, 21 and 28, and the List Building Rescue Guide for the ten places people most often get stuck. It’s a tick box on the checkout, and it means falling behind costs you nothing.

What’s the guarantee?

Here’s what I’d rather do than hand your money back. If you work through the challenge and find yourself stuck or unclear, tell me within 14 days and I’ll give you a month inside Marketing Labs, my weekly live laser coaching, at no cost. You bring the thing that’s not working, we sort it out together, and you carry on.

Your rights under Australian Consumer Law apply regardless, and nothing here affects them.

If your list has been stuck, this is a good place to start.

You’ve been showing up. You’ve been doing the work. You just haven’t had a proper sequence to follow.

Add500 gives you that sequence. Thirty days, one action at a time, nineteen routes that compound.

For $27, it’s worth finding out what your list looks like on the other side.

One payment of $27 AUD. Access within minutes.