Email Valhalla

Belgium’s new national chess champion

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I’ve been playing chess more seriously for the past few years.

More specifically, two years ago I joined the (then brand-new) chess club within my university. This undoubtedly skyrocketed not only my skill in chess but also my appreciation for the game and the whole chess community—even though the average chess player is 61 years old, there are still a lot of young and enthusiastic chess players eager to socialize with others in their early 20s.

Anyway.

During this time I’ve had the opportunity to meet and befriend many exceptionally talented people. One of the people I met through this chess club (and later on became extremely close friends with) became the National Champion of Belgium earlier this year.

This is an incredible achievement on its own and I’m extremely proud of him.

But it doesn’t stop there—especially not with me.

Oh no, this is also an incredible opportunity for him (and for me as well). See I happen to enjoy marketing, advertising, and the creating & selling of (digital) courses—as you should probably know by now if you’ve been reading my emails for at least a week.

If you’re an attentive reader you might’ve already guessed where this is going, but in case you haven’t yet. There’s an incredible (and lucrative) opportunity to use his newfound status to launch and sell a new chess course with him as the leading personality behind it.

Even more.

I just had a look at Meta’s ad library today and it turns out there’s only ONE (1!) chess-related ad currently running on all of Facebook, Instagram, and wherever Meta ads are shown. And it’s an ad for in-person private lessons aimed at children.

More than enough reasons to conclude there’s a huge untapped market waiting for someone to do something with it.

The funny thing here is that there’s nothing new about the game of chess—quite the contrary, in fact.

And yet a quick search shows me just how easily it could be to enter this market and build ourselves a nice little business (which I’m no doubt underhyping).

But what does this have to do with you, you might ask?

Well, this just goes to show you how easy it is to take things for granted and dismiss any potential opportunities that might be staring you right in the face at all times. I know people who only recently got into the market of selling guitar courses and are now making a killing with it (a guitar ain’t nothing new either).

So make sure to keep your eyes open, don’t dismiss opportunities just because you don’t think there’s anything worthwhile.

Make sure to do a tiny bit of research and who knows, you might find yourself a new lucrative business idea.

And while we’re on the topic of lucrative business ideas, have you tried building a list and writing it daily emails that get sales and keep your readers reading day after day?

If not, be sure to check out Email Valhalla today. Click here for more info: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/


Write down everything you think about

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For the longest time, I’ve been writing down almost any and all ideas I get throughout the day.

As you might imagine, this leaves me with a huge mess of different notes, folders, and other methods of attempted organization to keep my ideas somewhat structured and readable.

In fact, I regularly take time to re-structure my notes and re-think how I save all of my ideas.

But more importantly, I do this because every single idea you get can (and will) benefit you when considered over a long enough timeframe.

For example.

Just today I started working on a project for which I got the original idea somewhere early February this year. That’s 8 months ago… Except at that time I barely had a clue what to do with it, how to go about creating it, or even what I wanted the final product to look like.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I read an article with an intriguing idea I couldn’t stop thinking about.

I kept thinking about that idea and how I could use/implement it for my own business.

Only after a good night’s sleep and focusing on other stuff (to let my brain process the ideas and their potential) that I finally make the connection between the article I read yesterday and the note I created over 8 months ago.

This process isn’t anything special or unique either.

Every great connection or new mental pathway is made this way: by writing down ideas, letting them rest, letting them sizzle on the pan like a good steak ready to be consumed, sometimes for a few hours, other times for months or even years, until they’re finally ready to be used and benefited from.

That’s why writing is such a profitable thing to do.

Yes, you learn to think and express yourself better. But you also allow yourself to make better, more worthwhile, and sometimes wildly lucrative connections you otherwise wouldn’t have made in a thousand years.

So if you’re not doing so already, start writing down all of your ideas.

And while you’re at it, you might as well share them with others who might be interested. Who knows, you might build yourself a lucrative business almost by accident, all by doing something you’d be doing either way.

To learn more about the simple ways of sharing your ideas with people through daily emails that keep your readers reading day after day, while also getting paid because of it, check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Use the difficulty

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I recently watched an interview with Sir Michael Caine where he talked about one of his philosophies of life, which he called “use the difficulty”.

“Use the difficulty” originated from when he was still a young actor rehearsing for a stage play.

In this particular scene, Sir Michael Caine was waiting behind the stage, waiting for his cue to enter the stage, while two other actors were acting out an improvised scene between a husband and a wife. Both actors got carried away during the improvised scene and started throwing things around the stage, including the man who threw a chair that blocked the door through which Michael Caine was supposed to enter the stage.

In that moment he just took his head through the door and went ”I’m sorry sir, I can’t get in”.

To which the other actor replied, “What do you mean?”

“Well there’s a chair in the way, sir” Michael Caine replied.

To which the older and more experienced actor simply replied, “Use the difficulty. If it’s a comedy, fall over the chair, if it’s a drama pick it up and smash it”. He said it in such a nonchalant and simple way, solely focused on acting on stage, sort of like an off-the-cuff comment, but Michael Caine found this such an inspiring and insightful response he took and applied it to his personal life.

So now whenever something bad happens in his life, he immediately goes “How can I work with this, what can I get out of this, and how can I use this to my advantage?”

Even if you only improve the situation 1% by using something bad that happened to you, you’re still further along than you would’ve been otherwise.

This also nicely reminds me of something I’ve heard the great Matt Furey say, “Nothing bad ever happens to a writer”.

Meaning if something happened to you, use it the best (and maybe the only) way you know, write about it. The least you can do is profit from the otherwise “bad situation”.

This goes for everything.

Whether it’s a divorce, a dead in the family, or even your first 1-star book review.

Use it, write about it, turn it into something positive (or at least ‘less bad’), and get something out of it… which in the case of a 1-star book review can be a whole lot more sale if approached from the correct angle… but more about that in another email.

In the meantime, if you want to improve your writing game, more specifically your daily email writing game (and make it easier for you to use the difficulty) then I highly suggest you check out Email Valhalla and see what it has in store for you.

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


Go watch some ball games

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Earlier this year I went to a basketball game for the first (and so far the only) time in my life.

And man what an experience that was.

I found it absolutely astonishing how, during the whole two hours I was there, there was always something going on.

Most of the time, it was the basketball game in question—obviously.

But even when they called a timeout, during the mid-time break, and even during the 10-second windows when the ref calls a mistake and they had to reset the game/give someone a free throw, at every single point, they’d tactically entertain the viewer with something else.

Whether it was a 10-second piece of hype music, asking the supporters to clap their hands or make some noise, or the cheerleaders giving a 30-second performance, there wasn’t a single moment to feel bored.

It’s all very much designed to be as addicting and entertaining as possible.

Now I know next to nothing about sports (to be frank, it’s a miracle I even went to this event, but that’s a story for another time).

But I imagine this level of constant entertainment wasn’t invented/discovered/created from the start. There have been many breakthroughs throughout the years to become as competent at entertaining people as this event proved to be—with all of its different moving parts of the system combined.

Truly a masterclass of entertainment.

And I’d recommend everyone to go to events like these more often themselves to learn how to become a great entertainer—an invaluable skill when it comes to marketing.

Anyway.

That’s enough for today.

If you’d like to start improving your entertainment game today—especially when it comes to written entertainment—instead of waiting to go and see some local sporting event (or watch one on television), then definitely check out Email Valhalla to get yourself sorted straight away.

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


The secret boring life of yours truly

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Many moons ago a curious reader (not sure if he wants me to share his name) asked me an interesting question which went as follows:

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Hey Alex!

I’ve been reading your emails for a few months now and I have to let you know how much I love them. It’s become a daily ritual to read your email right after dinner.

I especially love how you’re able to take these seemingly normal and everyday stories of yours and connect them to business-related lessons. One of the most impressive ones for me was your email about the opening scene of How To Train Your Dragon and how you connected it to creating a lead magnet.

Here’s my question to you: How do you come up with all these topics? How do you have so much to talk about that you can write an email every single day?

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And that’s an amazing question. It’s also one I get quite often.

For one, coming up with stories to share is hard.

Coming up with connections to draw between these stories and valuable lessons is even harder—or at least that seems to be what most people struggle with.

But here’s the thing.

Many people expect some cool and sexy answer. An amazing solution that’ll solve all of their problems. A prompt they can enter into ChatGPT or a framework they can use that’ll spit out ideas and connections for them.

Far from it.

The true answer isn’t sexy at all. It’s boring. So boring that I barely talk about it. So boring that I didn’t deem it worthy to talk about it in the first place.

And yet it’s something I do every single day (which tells you something about how exciting my everyday life is). In fact. It’s one of the first things I do right after I wake up before I start working. And then, when I’m done working. It’s almost all I spent doing for the rest of the day.

I built my whole life upon this boring and simple method to get more stories and make more connections.

What method am I talking about?

I do stuff. I read stuff. I watch stuff. And I listen to stuff.

Exciting, right?

And yet, for me it’s the most fun and exciting thing I do.

You’ll hear me mention this phrase a lot. But I always pursue my curiosities.

I read books I think are interesting, not books others say will make me more money. I listen to podcasts I think are fascinating, not podcasts others say I have to listen to. I watch movies I think are cool as hell, not movies that won Oscars or IMDB says have a high score.

That’s “the secret”.

I consume information I find cool and valuable.

This builds my own world. This gives me my own unique ideas and perspectives. And then after consuming all that information, I do nothing. Literally nothing. I walk. I lie down. I think. I go to the gym. I take a shower. I do fun stuff with friends & family.

And all of that’s vital as well.

Your subconscious needs moments of relaxation to process all that information and give you ideas and inspiration about what it all means. Then those stories and connections come by themselves.

Do this and you won’t have any issues coming up with connections or things to share anymore.

While we’re on the topic of doing stuff I think is cool… have you considered writing entertaining daily emails to your audience to build a relationship, get yourself lifelong customers who don’t dare buy from anyone else, and build yourself a long-term profitable and reliable business?

That’s kinda cool if you ask me.

If you’d like to learn more about writing daily emails, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Steve Jobs’s highly influential way of business thinking

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Anyone can put something together, slap a price on it, spend some money on advertising, and get people to buy it as long as the price is low enough.

But few can create something their target audience not just wants, but desperately needs, allowing them to sell it effortlessly at almost any price of their choosing.

This holds true regardless of the market you’re in.

The moment price becomes the main differentiator between your product and that of your competitors is the moment you lose.

“Ok”, you ask, “so how do I create a product my audience desperately needs?” you may ask.

Except that’s the wrong question.

Instead, you should ask, “How do I get to know my customers better than they know themselves?”

This is the kind of thinking I once heard Steve Jobs talk about in an interview when asked what kind of technology he and his team had been working on (and contributed to society) for the past decade—this question was asked in a “prove my you’re better than your competitors” kind of way.

Jobs immediately pointed out how this “technology first” kind of thinking was an extremely flawed way of doing business.

Instead of thinking “What technology can I create and how can I sell it?”, every business should ask themselves, “How can I deliver the best customer experience?”.

Once you answered that, only then is it time to ask yourself “What technology do I need to make it happen?”.

Who knows, maybe you already have everything that’s required.

Either way, this will set you up correctly.

Coincidentally, even though this interview is publicly available for everyone to watch, interpret, and learn from on YouTube (and has been for many, many years), still so many people spend weeks, months, even years creating something to sell, never bothering to think how the customer will benefit from it or if they even need it at all, only to have to figure out how they’re going to sell it once they’re done building the product.

Anyway.

While I’m unable to help you discover how to best help your target audience, I do know one of the best ways to do so is by staying in frequent contact with your customers.

One way to do so, which my biased ass highly recommends to you, is by writing simple, efficient, and entertaining emails on a daily basis.

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


Star Wars is racist

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Not everyone seemed to enjoy Star Wars when it was first released back in 1977.

Even though it was an immediate success and raked in insane amounts of money, the likes of which had almost never been seen before.

More specifically.

Some critics called the movie “as simple as black and white—and not in a good way,” even going as far as writing “The blockbuster, bestselling movie Star Wars is one of the most racist movies ever produced.”

Another criticism read, “The force of evil in Star Wars is dressed in all black and has the voice of a black man… That character reinforces the old stereotype that black is evil.”

Here’s another example (taken word for word from the book George Lucas by Brian Jay Jones):

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Another critic even ‘pointed out’ that the two droids acted, and were treated, like slaves, all the way down to being sold to a young white man they called “Master”.

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Seriously, I wish I was making this stuff up.

This proves to me one thing and one thing only.

People will hate you no matter what. The more successful you are, the more the hatred will become.

There’s just no pleasing everyone.

One of my favorite quotes (and guiding principles) I’ve learned in the past year is from the great Dan Kennedy himself: “If you haven’t offended anyone by noon each day, you’re not marketing hard enough.”

The more I grow and learn, the more I realize how true this is.

Don’t believe me?

Try it out yourself. The next email you write, the next post you share, or the next podcast you’re on, try sharing your opinion about something controversial without holding back. Truly express your opinion. Don’t sugarcoat it one bit.

Yes, you’ll get backlash, yes people will take offense.

But those people weren’t your audience anyway.

What’s more important is how much more trustworthy you’ll be to the people that matter.

And if you’d like more email tips like this, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


In need of a new fantasy book to read

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It’s that time again.

I’ve finished reading A Clash Of Kings, the second book in the A Song of Fire And Ice series, also known as Game of Thrones.

The book itself was about 800 pages, which shouldn’t have taken me that long.

But I have this habit of always reading multiple books at once—around 8–12 most of the time.

Why do I do this?

It helps me to stay disciplined in my reading habit. Whenever I don’t feel like reading a certain book, I’ve got a handful of others to choose from.

So no matter what mood I’m in or if I don’t feel like reading a specific book that day, I’ll still get my daily reading in (A nice and rather unexpected consequence is how it also helps me make better connections between different topics I’m reading about)

Doing it this way allows me to get through a lot more reading each month than I would otherwise.

The secret isn’t to read fast (I’d argue reading slower is better), nor is it to spend half your day reading.

No.

The secret is best described by the man, the myth, the legend, Rocky Balboa himself, when training Adonis in the movie Creed.

“One step at a time, one punch at a time, one round at a time.”

And so it is for reading, business, and life as a whole.

The goal for most important things in life isn’t to win, it’s to keep playing the game one step at a time.

Another way I’ve been applying this “one step at a time” mentality is with email.

Just one simple email a day, for months, years, or even decades straight has the power to change your entire life.

So why not give it a try yourself?

Check out Email Valhalla here to see what all the fuss is about: https://alexvandromme.com/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