645: (Solo) Why Your Email List Is Your Most Valuable Asset in 2026

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0:39Just head to OmniSend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Hey Founder fam, Nathan here. Welcome back to another Founder to Founder solo episode. This is a really good one. It's something I'm passionate about and it's the power of an email list, even if it's small and why your email list is more important than ever in 2026. So this might not sound flashy or exciting at first, but in my opinion, this is one of the most powerful assets that a founder can build in 2026. And that is your email list.

1:14Nathan Chan:Hear the stories, learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

1:51that they can reach out to directly, not through an algorithm or a platform, and it's not rented. And they can do it through a relationship that they control. So in a world where social platforms change constantly, this kind of ownership is super valuable for your brand, especially in the online space. So I never forget, actually, it's a crazy story, actually. I don't know, I can't believe I'm even sharing this. So early days founder, right? I started the magazine, started the podcast, I was starting to interview successful founders. And then I went full-time on Founder and I was growing Founder through Instagram.

2:23And I got 10 ,000 followers in two weeks. And one of the things that I used to do is I like to share everything, just like I'm doing with you guys now. And I wrote this blog post and I posted in a few places like Reddit and a few forums and it actually went semi-viral. And the blog post was titled, From Zero to 10 ,000 Followers in Two Weeks on Instagram. got hundreds if not thousands of comments when blogs were a thing and then a lot of people started to email me and they said hey Nathan do you do consulting I'm like no I don't I don't uh do consulting okay well can you do this for me like do you have an agency or something or like I'm like no no I just want to grow a founder and they're like oh do you have a course and that was how our education platform began and I launched this cohort based learning course it was kind of cool and we had a hundred people sign up for a hundred dollars.

3:11It was really fun. And I was like, okay, now I'm going to, you know, turn this into like an online program. And it was really impactful. So many people gone through that back in the day. And anyways, long story short, I, you know, wanted to do a launch of this new version of the program. And the guy that created the software that allowed me to create the digital magazine, he was like really like a well-renowned marketing type guy. And one of his claims to fame was he was one of the first people in the internet to do a million dollar launch and make a million dollars in an hour. And I thought, wow, how cool would it be to do a million dollar launch?

3:49And pure ego, like so dumb, right? I'll be the first to tell you, it's just so silly and so much ego, so silly guys. Anyways, this is what happens when you're young, right? I've got a bit more age and wisdom about me. And so I caught up with him. It turns out he lives in Melbourne and I caught up with him. And you know what the first question. I said, oh, I want to do a Moondell launch. Would you be open to partnering with me on it? I don't even know how I thought of it, but I was like, you wouldn't partner with me on it. And this guy was like, you know, like a hero of mine. Like he was, he was like my mentor, one of my early mentors.

4:17And he's like, hey, Nathan, okay, so how many names do you have on your email list? And ever since then, that's when I knew, okay, wow, this guy's a smart guy. Funnily enough, we actually ended up, you know, working together. We did, you know, took six months to do this thing. I'd never do it again. And we did, did do a million dollar launch or close to it wasn't far off pretty much depends how you want to calculate it but the way we got there was from the amount of email subscribers and the same thing applies for you as an e-com founder online business right and this is a lesson that I learned right and you know founders had millions of people join our email list in the past decade and one thing I will tell you as well is having a massive email list doesn't mean everything either it's the relationship you have with the people and that brings me to my next lesson an email list and getting names on your email list is great, but what's even better is having a relationship with those people.

5:09And so when someone joins your email list, that's the first thing. But the next thing that needs to happen is you need to have a relationship with that person. So when somebody opens an email from your brand, they've chosen to hear from you. They've given you permission to show up in their inbox. And that level of permission creates a stronger relationship. And this is why so many successful e-commerce brands generate a significant portion of their revenue through email marketing. So a good benchmark for you is you want to be generating at least 20 to 30 percent of your total revenue in email marketing and one of the biggest mistakes so many e-com founders make is they don't optimize their flows they don't do enough campaigns and i want to talk about that now i'm definitely no guru not special and we've got so much awesome training in the founder plus platform with some best in the world like Chase Dimmons and we're talking about these things inside founder operators very soon as well and the thing is right it's a constant game of iteration split testing your headlines making sure you've got a good card abandonment sequence like always always always optimizing this channel and if you right now are not getting at least 20 % of your total revenue from email and that's a good place that you can start generating more sales and here's the cool thing, right?

6:31It doesn't cost you more, right? It doesn't cost you more. Yes, you know, you can use OmniSend. We are big fans of OmniSend. They sponsor this podcast, right? And we highly recommend OmniSend over Klaviyo. We are team OmniSend. Sign up. We've got an awesome code you'll hear about and it's in the show notes. But the thing to take away here is it's not just about building an email list and, you know, we can do the basics around exit intent, pop-ups, giveaways, you know, quizzes are amazing as well and your brand's a bit more sophisticated but it's one thing to build your list it's another thing to build that relationship foster that relationship it's another thing to do more campaigns and optimize your flows so if there's anything that you take away from this particular episode is build your email list please please please please build your email list and treat it like gold because it truly is it's one of your biggest assets in your business I can testify to that founder and you know even our e-commerce brand that I used to own Healthish has generated a lot a lot of money from having a really engaged email list so how can you build emails you know we've got quizzes we've got all sorts of giveaways lead magnets we've got exclusive offers we've got wait lists we've got content we've got education we've got community access there's so many different things that you can do to build your emails we've got excellent tent pop-ups we've got all these cool things right but fundamentally it's the relationship you build with your email list and don't abuse it trust me it will pay its weight in gold so your big takeaway here is while social is important and don't get wrong we have millions of followers on social in 2026 when algorithms change constantly whether it's paid or rented platforms even if your list is small i'd encourage you to have regular communication optimize your flows and if you do want help or you do want to be on an awesome platform, I highly recommend our friends at OmniSend.

8:27You can check out one of our programs on the Founder Plus platform. We have a dollar trial. You can check it out. Founder.com forward slash membership. Designed specifically for beginners. Walks you through how to set up everything properly, setting up your flows, growing your list, all that good stuff. And we have an awesome deal that's just for you guys. But anyways, if you're serious about building this side of your business, I highly recommend checking that out. And as always, thank you for listening. I will see you in the next one. Speak soon.