How to Grow Your Email List Using Other People's Audiences
"I'll start once I have a bigger audience."
I hear this all the time. And I get it. It feels backwards to try to grow when you don't have many people yet. Like trying to throw a party when you don't know anyone in town.
But here's the move that changes everything: you don't have to build the crowd. You can borrow one.
The fastest way to grow when you're small isn't to slowly gather your own audience. It's to get in front of audiences other people have already built. This is called borrowing an audience, and it's the foundation of how I grow every business I run.
What "borrowing an audience" really means
Borrowing an audience means someone who already has the trust of a group introduces you to that group.
You didn't spend years building their list. They did. But for one summit, one bundle, one collaboration, they point their people toward you. And because their audience trusts them, that trust extends to you, at least enough to give you a look.
Go back to the party idea. Instead of throwing your own party and hoping people show up, you get invited to a party that's already packed. The host introduces you around. You don't have to build the room. You just have to show up and be worth meeting.
"You don't have to build the crowd. You can get introduced to one that already exists."
This is why a small list is not the disqualifier people think it is. Borrowed-audience growth is built precisely for the creator who doesn't have a big audience yet. You start by standing on someone else's.
The four main ways to borrow an audience
There are a lot of flavors, but they mostly come down to four.
Summits
A summit gathers a lineup of speakers, each of whom promotes it to their audience. You either host one and pull in speakers who bring their people, or you speak at someone else's and get introduced to theirs. Either way, audiences stack together in one place.
Bundles
A bundle is a group of creators who each contribute a resource, then all promote the collection to their audiences. Everyone's people see everyone's stuff. You get exposure to every other contributor's list at once.
Collaborations
A collaboration is any time you team up with a peer to create something together. A joint workshop, a co-hosted challenge, a shared guide. You both bring your audiences, and both audiences get value.
Guest spots
Guesting on a podcast, a newsletter, or someone's community puts you in front of their audience with their endorsement. It's the lightest-weight way to borrow, and the easiest to start with.
The step everyone forgets
Here's where most people leave money on the table. They borrow an audience, get a rush of attention, and then... nothing. The borrowed crowd goes home and the creator is right back where they started.
The whole point of borrowing an audience is to keep some of it. That means capturing those new people onto your own email list while you have their attention.
Give them a reason to join your world. A free resource, a next step, a place to keep learning from you. Without that capture step, the audience stays borrowed and drains right back out. With it, a slice of that borrowed crowd becomes permanently yours.
Borrowing an audience gets people in the door. Capturing them onto your list is what makes them yours. Never run a borrowed-audience event without a clear way to keep the people you meet.
This is exactly the handoff between the first two layers of the Revenue Stack Method. Borrowed audiences bring people in. Your owned list keeps them. One without the other doesn't work.
How to get a yes from the person whose audience you want
The honest worry here is, "Why would anyone with a big audience share it with me?"
Fair question. The answer is simple: make it worth their while.
Borrowing an audience works best as a trade, not a favor. You promote them to your people too. You bring real value to their audience, not a thinly veiled pitch. You make them look good for introducing you. The creators who win at this are generous first and askers second.
And you don't need to start with the biggest names. Start with peers at roughly your level. Trade audiences with people growing alongside you. Those relationships compound, and a few years in, you're all bigger and still helping each other.
This is how I actually grow
I'm not describing a theory I read about. This is the engine behind both of my brands.
My education brand, HobbyScool, runs free summits and workshops all year, built on speakers and partners who bring their audiences. Those events pull in large numbers of new people every single month. And over at Creator's MBA, I run a curated event series on the same borrowed-audience model for a totally different crowd.
Different topics, different people, same move underneath: borrow the audience, capture the people, build from there. If you've been waiting until you're "big enough" to grow, this is your permission to stop waiting. You can borrow your way there.
Want help building your borrowed-audience engine?
Revenue Stack Studio is a 12-month done-with-you engagement where my team and I run your borrowed-audience events with you, capture the new people, and turn it into a repeating engine. A small founding group is open now.
See Revenue Stack Studio →Frequently Asked Questions
Borrow other people's audiences. Through summits, collaborations, bundles, and guest spots, someone the audience already trusts introduces you to their list. You grow without paying for cold ads because the trust is already built in.
Yes. Borrowed-audience growth is built for exactly this situation. You don't need a big list of your own to start, because you begin by getting in front of audiences other people have already built, then capture those people onto your own list.
The main ways are speaking at or hosting a summit, joining or running a bundle, collaborating on content with a peer, and guest appearances on podcasts or newsletters. Each puts you in front of an audience someone else built, with their trust attached.
Lead with what's in it for them. Offer to promote them to your audience, bring real value to their people, or include them in something you're building. Borrowed-audience growth works best as a two-way exchange, not a one-sided ask.
Yes, when it's set up right. The point of a borrowed-audience event is to capture new people onto your own email list so they become yours to nurture and sell to over time. Without that capture step, the audience stays borrowed and drains away.
