Ascend 101

Lessons about building a one-person business, writing, and self-improvement

I often get asked questions about what exactly my courses cover and what they look like.

I also get questions about the frequency of new material being added and whether those new modules are any good—a good question because everyone can promise “I’ll add new stuff over time”.

So instead of answering those questions one by one every single time. I decided to simply give you a sneak peek of what you can expect.

I just finished writing Module 14: The 10 Email Commandments for making more money than you could ever imagine for my email course Email Extraordinaire.

What follows are the first 3 of those 10 commandments. It’s a straight copy-paste. Nothing held back.

Why don’t I simply share all 10 commandments?

Well first of all, I still want to make sales, don’t I? It also wouldn’t be fair to share this for free while others had to pay for it.

That said, as you’ll see, this is a long email, clocking in at over 1,400 words—I make sure everything is thoroughly explained and understood. So just imagine the sheer size of this email if I had to include all 10 of the commandments.

Anyway, let’s not waste any more time and get right into it.

Commandment 1) Entertain & Promote

You want to make money, so you’ll want to promote your offers.

But you also want people to keep reading your emails day after day, so you’ll want to entertain them day after day.

You need both pieces of the puzzle.

Focus only on entertainment and nobody will buy anything from you because they don’t even know what you’re offering, nor do they get the chance to buy anything from you.

Focus only on promoting your offers and nobody wants to stay on your list because the only thing you’re doing is hard-pitching stuff (which nobody likes).

The result? You’ll stay broke in both situations.

The solution is simple.

You open the email with an entertaining topic. Tell a funny story, involve them in your life, teach’em something new, whatever you can think of. Then segue that topic into what you’re selling for the day and give them the opportunity to buy.

Don’t hard sell them. Just talk about your offer. Plug your link. And say something along the lines of “If you want to learn more about xyz go here: [link]”.

Commandment 2) Email Daily

For reasons beyond my understanding, some people don’t like to hear this.

But it needs to be said: The more emails you write, the more money you’ll make. It really is that simple. There’s no secret trick, no special method, no crazy life hack.

You email more, you earn more.

Why you ask?

Well first of all, you have to realize that most people, especially when they’re new to a market, will subscribe to a bunch of different newsletters and email lists. You’re simply not that special (yet) that they only subscribe to yours.

Now imagine that you’re the only one of those who’s sending daily emails—something that could very well be the case, since most people don’t bother.

In that case one of two things will happen:

1) They get annoyed and bored of your emails and unsubscribe. This is actually a good thing because they would never buy anything worthwhile from you anyway. They don’t see the value in what you’re giving them, so they would never spend a dime on any of your products. It’s good to rid yourself of these people and only keep the people who understand the value you have to offer.

2) They see your name 7x as much as all the other people and build a relationship with you that’s 10–20 times stronger because you’re the only one who’s putting in the constant effort to show up and check in on them. You’re giving value and entertaining them day-in, day-out.

Already they’re much more likely to buy from you than from anyone else.

On top of that, eventually—and this happens to everyone—they get tired of getting so many emails from all these different people, and they’ll unsubscribe to most of the email lists they’ve subscribed to. But because you’ve spent so much time building a relationship with them, you’re one of the few that they’ll keep reading daily—if not the only one.

At that time you don’t have any competition anymore and you win simply because you showed up every single day.

On top of those examples. You’ll be the person who improves the fastest (you’re getting more practice in after all).

But not only that, you’ll also be seen as the one and only true expert—even a leader. While everyone claims to be the expert. Only you’ve put in the work to actually prove it.

Commandment 3) Don’t be boring

The number #1 rule of copywriting: Don’t be boring.

Nobody will like you, nobody will stay with you, and nobody will buy from you.

So how do you make sure you’re not boring? Well for one, you tell interesting and entertaining stories. But that’s not all of it. Even good stories can turn boring.

Imagine if I told you the coolest story you’ve ever heard. You’d be entertained, for sure. Imagine if tomorrow I tell you the same story. It might be fun to hear it again, but it certainly won’t be as exciting anymore.

Now imagine if I keep telling the same story over and over again for the coming 6 months. Yeah. You’ll be long gone by then. It just becomes too boring to listen to eventually.

And it’s the same for your emails.

You need variety.

Specifically, you need variety in your content and your writing.

Variety in your content is easy. You tell a story on Monday, answer a reader’s question on Tuesday, give out a list of fun tips to improve their business on Wednesday, share social proof on Thursday, Friday is when you’ll shock the reader with a controversial opinion, and so on.

If you hadn’t noticed, these topics are based on the 8 subject lines I taught you in Module 6 (see Email Extraordinaire to know what I’m talking about). So make sure you don’t keep using the same one over and over again. Switch it up and keep it fresh.

But then comes your writing itself. Specifically the length of your paragraphs and the use of whitespace.

You want to vary the length of your paragraphs as well.

Too many single sentences and you’ll end up looking like your average Twitter bro who thinks they’re a copywriter because they read 1 thread and doesn’t realize how godawful it reads and how annoying they are.

Too many big chunks of text in a row and you’ll look like your average blogger whose dream it is to become a published author one day and doesn’t realize that nobody’s reading their stuff because it’s too overwhelming and too boring to actually read through it.

So what do you do?

You regularly switch up a paragraph of 3–4 sentences with a single sentence or two. Just look at this very module you’re reading right now. (this is done intentionally)

Extra juicy tip: always make sure the first paragraph of your email is a single sentence.

You want to make it so easy to read it’s almost impossible not to read it. And once they read the first paragraph, they might as well read the next one.

This works the same for tweets, threads, headlines, courses, and literally every form of writing imaginable. Although it’s more forgiving for longer forms of writing if you don’t stick to this rule.

So these were 3 of the 10 Email Commandments for making more money than you could ever imagine.

Again, if you’d like to learn more about how to write emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading, check out Email Extraordinaire.

P.S. Whenever you’re ready. Here’s how I can help you:

Hop on a Clarity Call with me: Remove all of your uncertainty. Get clear on what you have to do, when you have to do it, and how. Let’s get you on the right track to achieving the freedom you deserve.
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