Email Valhalla

How to enjoy doing the stuff you dislike

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A fair warning first.

I’m no psychologist, therapist, or any other type of person who formally studied any of this.

I can only tell you about my experience.

But if you pick something you don’t enjoy doing (yet don’t absolutely despise doing either) and just do a lot of it?

Well then you’ll slowly but surely start becoming better at it.

A lot better even in certain cases.

You’ll start to discover the hidden intricacies of the skill you’re pursuing and you’ll start to appreciate everything you’re doing—and can do—a whole lot more.

Which almost always leads to you starting to like and sometimes even come to love what you’re doing.

It’s extremely rare that your enjoyment doesn’t increase when you actually put in the time and effort to develop the skillset and understanding that goes along with what you’re doing.

And so it is for writing emails (or any other form of writing even).

The more you do it, the better you’ll become, and the more fun you’ll have.

This brings me to remind you of my flagship course Email Valhalla which will show you how to write extremely quick and easy emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading for years to come.

Check it out here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Brandon Sanderson’s 3-question character writing rule

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The quality of a story depends almost entirely upon the quality of the characters and their development.

Even more so if your story is told from the perspective of one main character the audience follows throughout the story. No matter how deep you explore real-life relatable topics, how detailed your worldbuilding is, how new and exciting your magic system is, or how epic your large-scale battles are, none of it will help you if the characters are lifeless, unrelatable, and devoid of true meaning, emotion, or ambition.

Writing good characters, however, is a whole art in itself.

But, luckily you can get almost 80% of the way there by simply asking yourself the following three questions, which I’ve first heard mentioned by Brandon Sanderson, best-selling author known for his works such as the Mistborn series or the Stormlight Archive (as well as many, many more):

  1. What does your character desperately want?

  2. What does your character need?

  3. Why can’t they have both?

Answering this will not only set you up with a good, lifelike character, but if done correctly, it could potentially help you create your entire story from start to finish with just these three questions in mind.

More.

You could ask the same question about your readers/customers/clients/whoever and come up with interesting and valuable information about how to 1) treat them as best you can and 2) dramatically improve your business because of it.

Hell, I’d even argue this could be the base of your entire marketing strategy.

  1. What does your average customer want?

  2. What does he actually need?

  3. What stopping you from giving them both of these?

Figure out the answers to these questions, entice your customers with what they think they want, then include the thing they actually want, and you’ll have yourself your golden ticket to success.

Let’s take you as an example.

I’m guessing, since you’re on my email list, you’d want to earn more money selling your own products, books, courses, art, services, whatever. But what you actually need is a simple and reliable way to get your stuff in front of your target audience so you can make sales while focusing on the stuff you do best—creating.

Well, the thing that’s been stopping me so far from giving you both is the fact that my paid ad course (which would give you both of these things) isn’t out yet… but it’s almost here!

All that’s left to do is for you to wait a little while longer and for me to finish the last bits and pieces of the course.

So definitely keep an eye out for that.

In the meantime, check out my flagship course, Email Valhalla, which makes for an extremely powerful—and profitable—addition on top of said paid ads course I’ll be releasing shortly.

Click here to learn more about Email Valhalla: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


The best confusing piece of advice for new and upcoming writers

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When asked about advice for new and upcoming writers, the great George R. R. Martin often goes into a story about how, when he was still a “new and upcoming writer”, he’d get advice along the lines of, “Write what you know.”

This always confused him.

Because here he is, wanting to write about dragons, medieval empires, large-scale military battles, lots of politics, shady spy networks, and all kinds of weird and ancient magic. Yet he’s told to “write what he knows”, which, strangely enough, doesn’t include any of the above, let alone dragons and magic.

Fair enough, right?

But it wasn’t until George got older, wiser, and more experienced that he truly started to understand the meaning and intention behind “Write what you know”.

It’s not so much about the big central topic as it is about the underlying emotions and relationships that carry the story—after all, as the great Chris Claremont, who single-handedly revived the entire X-Men series when nobody thought anything of it and turned it into the giant that it is today, used the say, “the fights are bullshit”

For example:

You might not know anything about dragons, magic, or the ruling of kingdoms but you might know how it feels to be disconnected from a loved one, to be scared to death not knowing if you’ll ever see a relative again during a period of war and chaos, to be raised in a broken family full of alcohol and abuse, or even to do everything you can, hoping for someone to tell you they’re proud of you, only it feels like nothing is ever good enough.

Those are the things you know which you should write about.

Do this right and other people will be able to relate to a dragon-riding, empire-ruling, 5,000-year-old vampire assassin. Because it’s never about what’s on the cover. It’s always been about what’s underneath.

Coincidentally, “Write what you know” isn’t only good fiction writing advice.

It’s good writing advice in general, including writing emails that get you paid and keep your readers coming back day after day.

If that’s something you’d like to learn more about, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


My long-forgotten past of playing the social media content creator

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I used to be active on Twitter (I’m never calling it X) for over a year until I got banned and then player around on LinkedIn for a while.

But I’m no longer active on either.

Or any other social media for that matter.

I realized that I don’t actually enjoy the whole social media content creator thing as much anymore. A lot of stuff I read feels (and often is) fake.

It’s all the same dumbed-down information (if it isn’t outright BS advice that’s actively hurting every single person who’s reading it).

Don’t get me wrong.

Social media can be a good thing. It’s a tool like any other, after all.

It’s probably one of the best practice fields for newcomers.

But it shouldn’t be the only thing people depend on. In fact, you shouldn’t depend on it at all.

I’ve seen so many people fall into the social media echo chamber only never to get out again. They skip (or simply forget to learn) so many business fundamentals necessary for their career.

But that’s not even the worst part.

What’s by far the biggest danger is how it feels like you’re doing stuff and achieving something, while in reality, you probably aren’t.

Likes, shares, and follows feels nice. Sure. And so do, one-off clients here and there.

But recurring and predictable revenue, something most social media content creators don’t have, is a whole lot nicer.

So how do you get recurring and predictable revenue?

Well, some ways include but are not limited to, running paid ads, getting on podcasts, driving traffic to your website, writing articles, working on SEO, getting referrals, and so on.

The key here is, however, to make your email list the center of everything.

As the saying goes, “All roads lead to email”.

And if you want to learn how to build and monetize that email list effectively, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


The social media game is fake.

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Attention is the new currency of our current time.

Whoever gathers the most attention, wins.

And so everyone is fighting to get a piece of it—as am I right now with this email you’re reading.

There’s no way around it.

You could say it’s wrong, there’s definitely an argument to be made for it. But how are you going to spread your message without gathering attention? How are you going to make an impact and make positive changes in the world?

Bottom line: getting attention isn’t evil.

But let me warn you about this: everyone on social media is playing the same game.

As with everything, there are evergreen strategies to get engagement and capture attention. One of those is to pick a fight. To choose an enemy and attack them. It can be anything: people, concepts, trends, ideas, beliefs, whatever you want. The more popular, the better.

Controversy gets attention. Controversy sells.

Which means people are fighting all the time. Coffee, morning routines, cold outreach, 4am club, cold showers, cohorts, daily emails, meditation, tweet templates, platitudes, ‘authenticity’, storytelling, copywriting, 18-year-old life coaches, best and worst markets to be in, unhealthy mindsets,…

The list goes on.

This is the sad cycle of social media:

Something rises in popularity → A lot of people talk highly about it → It becomes hugely popular → people start attacking it for attention → attacking it becomes popular → the thing itself is unpopular again → people start defending it again because now that’s the ‘unpopular’ thing to do (which gets attention) → it becomes popular again.

And the cycle repeats.

What I’m trying to say is that you’ll always have people hating everything on social media—it quite literally pays to start new fights and pick new enemies.

The only way to get out of this mess?

Building your own world. Doing your own thing.

The #1 worst mistake you can make is to listen to other people’s advice. Seriously.

Experiment with stuff you come across, get inspired by others, try stuff you think is cool, and stick with it.

Don’t let other people tell you what you can post and what you can’t. Don’t let other people tell you what’s going to make you successful and what won’t. And don’t let other people tell you how many emails you can send before people ‘get annoyed’ at you. Test it out and go see it for yourself.

If you think sending daily emails sounds stupid, boring, a waste of time, then don’t listen to me and do your own thing.

But if you think sending daily emails to get paid sounds cool, exciting, and something you’d like to test out for yourself, then check out Email Valhalla here to learn more: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


If it’s mainstream, it’s wrong

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As a general rule of thumb, I believe that everything "for the masses" is dumbed down, lacks refinement, and is devoid of intrinsic meaning, value, or thought.

That goes for everything from movies, music, and yes, even (especially) the stuff you learn from your favorite big-name guru or whatever’s written inside that New York Times bestseller everyone’s been yapping about for years.

Let me clarify.

Everyone’s different in some way or another.

Everyone has different likes, beliefs, interests, tastes, opinions, and many other things that shape a person into who they are. Whether this is because of their surroundings, their genes, or something else entirely doesn’t matter in this case.

People are different, and there’s no getting around it.

We, as a species, simply can’t collectively agree with anything (even with this statement—proving the point in the process, as paradoxical as that sounds).

So, to circle back to why this matters, if people are all different, and they can’t agree with anything, then everything that’s trying to appeal to as many people as possible (aka, anything that gets a lot of attention and praise by tons of people—which is always by designs, don’t let anyone convince you otherwise) has to be made as general, as widely accepted, and as simple as possible.

Or in other words.

It has to be dumbed down to the point where it’s (almost—nothing is absolute) devoid of value for any single individual—no matter the lie they tell themself or the lies other people/society are instilling into them (cognitive dissonance is one hell of a force, I’m telling you).

There’s a lot going on here.

Many forces are at play.

Each of these could arm me with many, many emails to talk about each of them in detail.

This email is one of the least precise, and most vague ones I’ve written in a while, by design, because of the nature of the topic.

As with anything, if any of this tickled your fancy, got you interested in something, both positive or negative, whether you agree with what I wrote or not, I advise you to go do some research on your own.

Educate yourself on the words and principles talked about in this email (as well as those I haven’t mentioned), come up with a hypothesis of what’s going on on your own, try to test & design some theories. Then finally see how they stack up with the examples you come across.

Or don’t and just reply with an angry email telling me I’m wrong because you said so—that seems to be what the cool kids do nowadays.

But enough about that.

I don’t have anything to offer to you that’s “for the masses”. Instead I have useful, valuable, and insightful training information that’ll help you write better converting emails to grow your list and sell more products (or services, whatever floats your goats).

You can find out more about that by clicking this link: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


I freed myself from using social media to grow my business

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Here’s how I did it:

The first thing I did was create and host my very own WordPress site on which I could publish all of my emails online.

Combine this with learning some SEO basics (a whole lot less than you might think) to get visitors to my page and teasing Email Valhalla course on sign-up… and you’ve already got a semi-passively (I still have to write the emails after all) functioning business right there.

Not only that, but I’ll keep earning based on past emails I’ve written—emails that will only grow in numbers and get better in quality the more I write.

To me there’s truly no better business model out there.

Find me another business where you can earn a living by writing whenever you want, from wherever you want, all the while helping people accomplish their own dreams, getting thank-you emails on the regular, and, last but not least, doing all of this without an income ceiling limited by any one resource such as time, distribution, money, or costs.

I’m not saying other business are bad (they’re not), or people doing things differently are stupid (they aren’t).

Just saying that’s not the way I like to run things.

I like to keep it simple, efficient, and with a freedom-first aspect.

Anyway.

If you’re only using social media to grow your business, you’re seriously missing out.

Go get your online real estate up and running.

And if you’re not even building your own email list yet, what are you waiting for?

Check out Email Valhalla today and get started right away: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Don’t write to yourself

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A popular piece of content-creation/email writing advice is to “Write to your past self”.

What people mean when they say it is to think about where you were 2 months ago, 2 years ago, or even 10 years ago. Then think about all the problems you faced, obstacles you had to overcome, and wrong beliefs you held. And address those. This way you write as if you were writing a note that was about to be put in a time capsule and sent to your past self.

It sounds great in theory. It really does.

I used to follow the same advice myself.

But I stopped.

The first reason for this is simple:

I can’t remember what my past self used to struggle with. And even if I could, I don’t understand the feelings that accompanied them. My whole perspective is different now than it was even 5 months ago.

It’d be foolish of me if I tried talking to that specific person.

And that’s exactly why the creator economy is so great. You learn from the people 1–2 steps ahead of you, not someone 5 whole years ahead of you—another popular piece of advice.

So if you learn from someone right in front of you, why would I write to someone way behind me? It doesn’t make sense.

Another reason is that I simply can’t be bothered anymore.

The advice my past self from 5 years previous would need doesn’t interest me anymore. I’m at a different level right now. I’m interested in other topics.

If I were to talk about topics that didn’t inspire me, then my content would be bland and uninspiring, which directly hurts you, the reader. The energy wouldn’t be the same anymore.

So I simply don’t speak to my past self.

I write about what I currently find interesting. What I’m discovering in real-time.

This makes my content interesting and engaging. And I can take you with me on an adventure. A real-time adventure you can see unfold right in front of you.

Neither you nor I know the ending. Nobody knows where we’ll end up. That’s what makes it all so exciting.

So let this be a reminder not to blindly follow every single piece of advice you get. Think for yourself, carefully judge everything you hear, see, and experience.

Then decide what’s best for you and your goals.

And if you decide building an audience that loves to listen to you, longs to follow you on your adventure, and wants to buy your products is what’s best for you and your goals. Then you might want to check out Email Valhalla: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Me write words

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Humans say “People dumb. Write simple.”

Me not agree.

Yes, difficult bad. But people dumb no.

Still write simple? They notice. People insulted. Not good relationship. People go. You zero sales. Business bad.

Better:

Write entertaining. Respect people. Do special. Yes write short. But use occasional difficult word.

Diversify.

That how humans like you.

Good relationship. Good business. Good sales. They happy. You happy. Everyone happy.

Yes.

For learn more good tips.

Go: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


How to effectively monetize an email list—the right way

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It only takes you one Google Search to be bombarded with dozens of articles, blogs, videos, courses, podcasts, interviews, or social media posts telling you how to monetize an email list.

More.

90% of those (if not more) will tell you to get as many people as you can onto your list (or newsletter as they’re most likely referring to), disregarding the quality of the readers you’re inviting to be on your list and then to continuously run ads or accept sponsorships.

And while this isn’t a bad business model per se—especially not for people who just like to write long articles and not have to worry about anything else—it’s far from the most effective, reliable, or even the simplest method there is.

Again, I’m not saying that type of model is bad.

It’s just not for me.

I would much rather build a small but extremely focused and high-quality (quality over quantity here) email list filled with readers eager to read what I write and buy what I offer them.

The only downside to this type of business model?

You need something of your own to sell your readers. But seeing as you’re on my list, chances are you’ve got that covered already (or will have soon enough).

In this case, many of the so-called “list-building hacks” other people can’t shut up about don’t actually work for us. Running paid ads to your (free) email opt-in won’t do you any good. Neither will social media giveaways where you ask for people’s email addresses in exchange for some random freebie they’ll receive—most, if not all, of the social media game will actively work against you since that’s very much a quantity over quality type of medium.

You might have noticed that all the above methods I mentioned share one common theme.

They all focus on getting people on your list by promising them FREE (!) stuff.

Unfortunately, the people you’ll attract this way are the same type of people who’ll get angry at you for trying to sell them something—even if it’s a $5 product that might literally change their lives forever.

These types of people won’t help you run a business—which is what you’re trying to do after all.

A better way is to pre-qualify and pre-sell people as soon as they enter your world through one of the many portals you’ve scattered around the internet (I’ll dive deeper into this specific topic of “building your world and opening portals” in other emails—as well as in an upcoming course all about business worldbuilding).

That means, to immediately let them know you plan on selling them something.

Don’t hide this fact. It’s not only stupid, crooked, and absolutely visible to everyone with half an eye sticking out their ass. It’s also the smartest thing you could do. Doing so sets the stage for the future and it repels any and all cheapskates who won’t ever buy anything from you anyway.

This doesn’t mean you HAVE to sell them something straight away… but a simple tripwire (before or after joining your list) or one-time offer when they subscribe to your list (even if they choose not to buy) goes a long way.

I’ll go deeper into how to grow an email list in my flagship course, Email Valhalla, which teaches you everything you need to know to run your own email-centered business as a creative, including how to write simple and effective daily emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading day after day.

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