Here’s an interesting fact I’ve found out to be true:

The more tasks, projects, and responsibilities you take on, the more productive you become.

Coincidentally, becoming more productive also allows you to enjoy whatever it is you’re doing a lot more.

Do with this information what you want.

But if you’re interested in learning how to not just enjoy but absolutely adore and love the writing process, then you might want to check out the book I wrote about it.

Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/loving

Back in early 2021, a couple of buddies and I went on a city trip.

Nothing fancy, just discovering a “medieval” style city in-country which was close by and easily accessible by train.

I still have a bunch of pictures from that specific trip.

Pictures of the old cathedral, the food we ate, some funny street names, ducks, and a particular weird monument or art piece that I still, to this day, have no idea what it’s supposed to resemble.

But none of those pictures compare to a particular picture I took of a simple shop we happened to stroll past.

More specifically.

It’s a picture of a Valentine’s store all dressed up in pink, decorated with hearts, teddy bears, swans, and glitter everywhere. But that’s not all. Not by a long shot.

See, right next to our lovey-dovey pink little store was the entrance to the torture museum, all in black, decorated with human skulls, spider webs, and some other wooden contraptions which I don’t wish anyone to be trapped in.

Either of these storefronts might catch the attention of the occasional passer-by.

But put both of those together? And, well, I doubt anyone could resist the urge to see what’s going on, or at least to do a double take to check whether their eyes weren’t deceiving themselves.

This, truly, was one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of how the power of contrast can be used to its full potential when it comes to catching attention and building interest.

It wasn’t until just recently that I got reminded of this example when I learned about how extremely powerful contrast can be when used correctly. Just think of all the possibilities when it comes to writing, advertising, or even the names of popular books, TV shows, or video games for that matter (I very much doubt the classic hit video game Little Big Planet would’ve become as popular as it did if it wasn’t for it’s extremely obvious and effective use of contrast).

So with this, I challenge you.

The next time you sit down to create something, regardless of what it is, focus on adding more contrast to it than you would otherwise. See what the results are.

I’ve got an entire module dedicated to the usage of contrast in my upcoming course about running profitable paid ads to consistently and reliably grow your email list—including real-life examples of the tremendous results it has gotten me—and for a good reason.

In the meantime, you might want to check out Email Valhalla where I also show you some tips and tricks of how to add more contrast to your writing to make it demand instant attention and actually help you get paid.

Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

These past few days I occasionally mentioned the new paid ads course I’m working on.

While doing so I’ve gotten a good amount of replies from people.

Some were eager to know when they could expect the course to be finished, others wanted to share their experiences running paid ads and ask for my advice about what I would do in their situation.

Either way, it seems quite some people are enthusiastic about running paid ads (now or in the future).

This got me wondering.

What are your thoughts about using paid traffic to consistently and predictably grow your email list, build a stable income stream, and free up more time which you can spend writing, drawing, fishing, raiding along the shores of Madagascar, or doing whatever your heart desires?

Are you currently running paid ads by any chance? Have you experimented with them in the past but couldn’t make it work? Or are simply planning on playing around with paid traffic in the future but haven’t gotten around to it yet?

If you’ve answered yes to any of the above questions, then I’d love to hear more about you and your situation.

What you like about it, what you struggle with, what you’re afraid of, and especially what you’re hoping to accomplish with your paid ads endeavors.

Simply hit reply and let me know.

“Working for free” is a coping mechanism for not daring to get rejected.

Many people will work for free or for testimonials before they feel comfortable getting out there and charging for their offer. Even though the only thing they have to do is to get the right offer in front of the right person and they’ll say yes.

And sure.

You might get 5 people who say ‘no’.

You might even get 10, 20, or even 50 people who reject your offer.

But why should that get in the way of you making more offers and getting closer to your next yes—your next client?

I’ve worked with many people who didn’t see any proof of work of mine. No testimonials. No prior results or projects. Some of them didn’t even read my emails to see whether I actually walked the talk.

At the end of the day, it’s a numbers game.

Learn the fundamentals of creating a great offer, getting leads, qualifying prospects, and ultimately landing clients. Do this and you’ll be golden.

And on that note.

Arguably, the best and most effective way to communicate your value, build trust with potential clients, and get them to want to work with you and you alone is by getting them on an email list and mailing them every single day.

For more information on how to best to just that, check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

One of the leading causes of death for professional skydivers, ironically, is the diver becoming too comfortable falling.

They become so comfortable they pull too late—or forget to pull their chute at all.

Another case.

One of the leading causes of death for professional freedivers is also becoming too comfortable (in the water). More specifically, too comfortable holding their breath.

Due to frequent practice of holding their breath, they become ‘immune’ to the negative feelings paired with a lack of oxygen.

They become so used to it in fact that it’s entirely possible for a diver to keep swimming, holding their breath comfortably and without any issues until suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, their brain shuts off and they lose consciousness altogether.

Both of these facts sound surreal and almost fake to the non-professional.

Yet we experience it everyday with everything we do.

I don’t fear falling when riding a bike anymore—while I used to be extremely scared to do so when I was younger.

Most people aren’t anxious 24/7 while driving. Hell, most experience drivers repeatedly doze off while driving, not even thinking about what they’re doing. Yet people who just started learning will tell you how scared they are—they couldn’t imagine NOT paying attention.

I once saw a documentary about snake venom.

And there are these people whose job it is to breed snakes and drain their venom to help with medicine and antidotes and whatnot. Extremely venomous snakes as well. It’s a dangerous job. One bite can kill you for good if you’re not paying attention.

There was this one guy working there we said, and I still remember this well, “The day I stop being scared is the day I resign”.

And it even happens in his profession where people stop being scared, only to doze off and accidentally get bitten.

My point is this.

The more used to get to something and the more experienced you become, the less you’re aware of the risks involved in what you’re doing.

This is also true for social media.

I used to post on Twitter religiously ever single day. During that time I’d often see people getting blocked, restricted, or outright banned indefinitely.

Yet for some reason I thought “this will never happen to me, I’m not doing anything wrong.”

What a young an naive person I was.

Just a while later I unexpectedly woke up to a notification telling me my account had been suspended. It can happen just like that—without you even knowing why^.

In fact, the longer you stay, the more likely you’ll get banned, hacked, or something equally terrible happens to your profile.

Moral of the story: It pays to be scared.

So build your email list.

And if you want to know how I built mine, how I write my emails, and more importantly, how I get paid for doing so.

Then check out Email Valhalla here to learn more: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Before I dive into today’s topic, I want to preface this with the following:

Building a high-quality product that delivers on its promises and leaves the customer with the feeling they got ripped off is essential.

That said.

The quality of the product, in 99% of cases, by definition, is never the reason why you’re not selling anything.

Simply put: people can’t experience the quality of your product (or lack thereof) if they didn’t purchase it in the first place.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, because I see it all too often how people build a product, write some ads, run those ads, barely get any sales, and go back to working on their product hoping a better product will fix all of their issues.

All of which couldn’t be further from the truth (again, don’t sell shitty products—but it’s important to know what’s causing your lack of sales).

The true issue, more often than not, comes from your marketing… more specifically, from the fact you’re trying to create demand that doesn’t exist for a product, nobody wants instead of channeling the demand that’s already there into a product people simply didn’t realize they wanted yet.

Big difference right there.

This doesn’t mean your product isn’t good. I’m certain it’s got its uses.

But nine times out of ten you’re highlighting the wrong features, solutions, and especially problems (I can’t tell you how often you’ll see people creating products looking for a problem instead of looking for a problem and creating a product to help solve it) associated with your product.

Long story short:

Find out what people want or struggle with, then communicate your product in such a way it’ll fulfill what people are looking for (this goes for every type of product or server, whether health, fitness, financial, technological, arts, hobbies, entertainment, or anything else for that matter—nobody buys a product that doesn’t look like it solves a problem or fill a need.)

I’ll go deeper into how to go about this process in my upcoming course all about writing and running profitable ads to sell your products and bring you consistent and reliable income.

In the meantime, if you don’t have a product of your own to sell yet, consider checking out one of my best-selling (and definitely one of the more expensive ones) courses, Product Creation Made Easy.

Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/product

Yet it’s also the most overlooked, often thought of as “unhelpful”, and sadly not even considered to be “good advice” by most people.

Sucks to be them I’d say because there truly isn’t a better way to become a better writer—or a better anything for that matter.

See, this piece of writing advice isn’t just applicable to becoming a better writer.

No, no.

It’s applicable to every single thing you’ve ever done, everything you do, and everything else you will do in both the near and distant future alike.

This is the closest to a “Theory of everything” we’ll ever get.

Now, that I’ve got the preliminary pieces of warning out of the way, it’s finally time to share with you the best piece of advice you could ever get which, once again, can be applied to everything you can ever think of.

Yet, it’ll also be the most obvious and boring thing you’ll ever hear me say—probably to the point where many people will dismiss it altogether, only to go chasing newer, shinier, and cooler (yet a whole lot less effective) ways of improving at their craft; only to end up asking themselves why they’re barely making any progress after putting in, what they claim to be, "tons and tons” of effort.

The golden piece of advice?

Here it is, exactly as it was written in the gem of a book, “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser:

“You learn to write by writing. It’s a truism, but what makes it a truism is that it’s true. The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain number of words on a regular basis.”

I told you it was boring.

Yet I’ve never heard better advice than this, nor do I think I’ll ever hear something better in the future.

But so it goes for everything else you do in life.

For example.

It’s been the exact same for me recently when I got into the world of creating and running ads online.

My first ad was shit. My second one was shit. And my third one was shyte.

But the fourth one?

Also shit.

It wasn’t until I got enough practice in. Learned what makes people click, what makes an ad demand attention, how to get people to finish reading the ad, click through on the offer, match the landing page to the ad, make sure there’s enough hurdles for the customer to jump through (to pre-qualify them so you don’t end up wasting more money than necessary), but at the same time limit the amount of hurdles so you don’t scare away the good customers, and much much more.

Sure I devoured everything I could get my hands on when it came to creating ads.

But none of it would’ve mattered if I didn’t get my hands dirty and experimented dozens of ads to compare what worked (and what didn’t).

True knowledge can only ever come from practical hands-on experience.

Which is why I’m putting a heavy emphasis on practical experimentation in my upcoming course all about how to successfully run ads that get you paid, while making sure those “practice ads” remain as cheap as possible so you’re not punished simply because you want to learn.

But more about my course in the future.

For now, if you’d like to learn how to write daily emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading day after day, a practice that’s invaluable if you combine it with the power of running online ads to sell your products and grow your list at the same time, then consider checking out my flagship course Email Valhalla.

Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Imagine if I’d ask 100 people the following question:

“Should you run ads if those ads aren’t making you any money?”

Now, I’d imagine all 100 of those people would answer “no”. You’d probably give me the same answer (at least I hope you would).

But then you look at what people are doing, and boy it’s a mess out there.

The amount of people who are running ads to their free lead magnets, straight to their opt-in page asking people to join their (free) email list—without making any upsells or qualifying their readers—or, and this is the worst of all, asking them to follow their social media page.

See, I get it.

The thought process goes something like this: “Me want make money. Guru says build following with big numbers. Me run ads for big numbers. Big numbers give me money.”

Although I might have explained the thought process in too much detail and made it too complex to follow—especially for the types of people who follow that type of thought process.

That said.

I hope you can see the issue. If not, let me explain it to you step-by-step.

Let’s say you are in fact running ads straight to your free lead magnet. You probably already understand the importance of building a list and good for you. But you clearly misunderstand what it means for a list to be “high-quality” (spoiler alert: big numbers isn’t it).

In this case, you’d be building a list filled with people who only joined your list because of the free stuff you were giving away.

The result?

You’ve got a list full of freeloaders and tire kickers, none of who will ever pay you a single penny, no matter how good of an offer you make them. They simply won’t pay and they won’t care.

(This is the same reason why you never run “Engagement” Facebook ads if you’re hoping to get some sales—you’ll only get people who like, comment, and follow everything they see, but never, ever buy something. But that’s another story for another time.)

“But Alex, I’ve seen plenty of famous and well-known entrepreneurs such as Russel Brunson, or big multinationals run ads “selling” free stuff”.

Do you have the same budget they do? Do you know your numbers as well as they do? Have you been in the game for as long as they have?

No?

Then stop comparing yourself to them. They’re quite literally playing a whole other game than you are.

The point is this.

Ads are an incredibly powerful (and surprisingly simple) tool you can use to build an effective, consistent, and reliable business. As long as you’re using them to to get clients or sell your offers.

In fact, I find them so useful myself that I’m building an entire course teaching you how to write, run, and profit from ads in a simple and straightforward manner—specifically focused on creatives and those who work in the entertainment industry.

I’ll let you know more about this course later, so definitely keep an eye out for this one.

It’s going to be worth it, I guarantee it.

My sister came to visit yesterday and said something to me, totally off the cuff—I doubt she even thought about it for 2 seconds or pondered about the significance of what she said—yet incredibly insightful and meaningful if you truly look into it.

At least, insightful about how I approach business, personal matters, and literally everything else I do in life. As biased as it may sound, I also think this is the superior way of working, experimenting, making progress, approaching every problem and obstacle you’ll ever face, and generally living life a productive, meaningful, and successful life.

What was it that my sister said to me?

Well, before I get to that, I’ll have to give you a bit of context first.

See, I’ve always believed that, at least for me, the most important task(s) should be done first thing in the morning. Whatever my top priority is at a certain period in life, that’s what I should be focussing on immediately when I wake up.

As of late, that priority was more often than not writing something, whether a sales page, an email, a digital course, or a book I’m working on.

Early 2021 to 2022, that would’ve been going to the gym.

But a few days ago I came across someone (can’t remember who it was) who talked about the benefit of going on an hour-long early walk first thing in the morning, preferably before the sun is up so you’ll see the sunrise during your walk.

So that’s what I did.

As for how well it’s fairing, no idea, I’ll have to keep on doing it for a few more days to adapt to this routine and see how it compares.

Anyhow, I told my sister this and she replied (translated & paraphrased) “You’re always living the extremes, aren’t you? One moment you’re on a walk at 6 am, the other you almost sleep until noon”.

Now, the waking up/walking part isn’t what matters here; instead, it’s the “living in extremes”.

It’s incredibly insightful and absolutely true.

I love experimenting with how I approach life and fill in my day, partially because I haven’t quite found my ideal and optimal way of life yet (who truly has?) but also because, as I’ve heard Alex Hormozi once say, who probably got if from someone else, who got it from someone else yet again, “If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well”.

Now I don’t often listen to Alex Hormozi anymore, but this little jingle is something that stuck around.

If I commit to trying out some new thing, whether that’s learning a new skill, building out a new offer, or even trying out a new daily routine, I’m going to give it my all.

No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

This, however, also means that whenever I give something my all and it doesn’t work out, then I’m completely burned out and need some time off to recharge—meaning I’ll wake up at noon and do nothing at all for a day or two,

In other words.

I’m, as my sister correctly stated, always living life in the extremes… and I couldn’t have gotten to where I am today, nor can I go to where I want to go (at least as far as I know, because who truly does?) if it wasn’t for this specific way of life.

This is also why people who ask me whether it’s good enough to email their list monthly, weekly, or worst of all, whenever they feel like it, will never truly be successful with their email marketing practices.

Email is something worth doing, so treat it like a priority and take the time to do it well (read: mail every single day).

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn how to come up with and write daily emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading day after day, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

I was watching an interview with Christopher Nolan on the ReelBlend podcast the other day.

One of the most interesting things Nolan said was how he didn’t go to film school.

Just imagine that. One of the biggest, best, and definitely one of the most popular, directors currently around. Yet he didn’t go to film school or any other form of formal training in the art.

Instead, he simply got in there and started practicing making films at an early age.

Nolan was seven years old when he first borrowed his dad’s Super 8 camera to play around with.

He loved watching other films, thinking about the narratives, and just indulging himself in the world of cinema.

But that’s not where our story ends.

Christopher Nolan isn’t the only person where this is the case. Coincidentally, another big industry name who works closely together with Nolan, and someone who, as you may (or may not) know, I can’t seem to shut up about, also didn’t have any formal training.

More specifically, Hans Zimmer.

Zimmer never went to music school. Instead, he used to play in rock/punk band when he was younger and loved to improve music on the piano or create his own compositions.

Now, this isn’t to say the only solution for you is to start young.

Maybe it is if you want to compete at the highest level of Hollywood. But I’m guessing that’s not your gig. And it’s not mine either.

Instead, I want you to realize the importance of going out there in putting in the work. Getting the practical experience. Getting your hands dirty so to say. You don’t have to get some formal schooling to be good at your craft (this isn’t medical advice).

I don’t care how if you’ve gone to business school, med school, music school, or no school at all.

The only thing that matters is how often you’re practicing your craft.

And that’s one of the many, many, seriously many, reasons why I recommend you and everybody else to start mailing daily and start doing so today. The amount of growth you’ll experience is almost unfathomable—both in personal ability as well as in business and revenue growth.

You don’t need to go to email or business school to get started.

But getting a quick 1–2 hour introduction to point you in the right direction never hurts.

With that said.

Check out Email Valhalla to learn the foundations and avoid the early pitfalls so you can focus on getting in there and getting that practice starting today.

Here’s the link for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla