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Looking back on 2024

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Yesterday, after reading John Bejakovic’s email in which he reflected on 2024, I suddenly had the urge to write an email reflecting on 2024.

But what, specifically should I reflect on?

Luckily for me, I have a baseline. In fact, it just so happens that last year (December 30th, 2023 to be precise) I wrote an email talking about what I wished to accomplish in the following year.

Apparently, I only had one goal in mind: “To spend more time reading”.

Fair enough. I picked up a new reading habit back in 2022 and this habit picked up tremendous pace throughout 2023.

To give you an example. In the whole of 2022, I read a total of 9 books. This turned into a whopping 31 books in 2023. That’s quite a lot I’d say. Now, I definitely don’t buy into the whole “you have to read one book per week” shtick—especially not considering the size and depth of some of the books I read.

So the question now is, how did this year, when my goal was to “spend more time reading”, compare to 2023?

Well, it turns out, quite badly.

I read a total of 13 books in the entire year.

So much for New Year’s resolutions, huh?

Yet, that said. I might not have completed more books (or even came close to it), I did spend a lot of time reading, or at least as far as I can remember. Most of the books I started are a lot bigger, more in-depth, and require slower reading (that’s a win in my book—pun intended). I’ve also started reading a lot more historical articles, blogs posts, and other types of writing I did not (and will not) track.

But enough about the past. What about the future?

Well, I already have multiple projects planned—which I’m excited to start working on. But in general, I plan to get serious about growth. That means lots of advertising. Lots of new products. For all kinds of markets, in fact. This year is dedicated to becoming a better all-rounded marketer, able to get into new markets at will, research them, create products, grow a customer list, and get paid.

The past two years have been well spent on building a stable foundation.

It’s time to test out just how stable that foundation truly is.

Anyway.

Another idea I came up with (read: stole from John’s email yesterday) is to plug a general store link that shows everything I’ve got for sale at the moment.

Just take a look. Who knows, you might even see something interesting.

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


For my programmer people

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For the past 5 days (I started late) or so I’ve been enjoying getting myself tested an challenged by a coding challenge every morning.

Now, I’m definitely no expert programmer by any means. But I know my way around Python, C#, and a bit of Java on the side.

After all, I did study programming during my years in university (not the main focus, but it was included in my curriculum) and I’ve been honing my skill in game development over the years as a hobby.

If you have no interest in programming whatsoever, feel free to ignore this email—I’m assuming that’s most people reading this email.

But in the small chance you are, I just have to share this with you.

It’s called Advent of Code and it’s a website/event where every year leading up to Christmas, there are daily challenges being put online and you’re tasked to provide an answer—anyway you like.

No specific programming language required. I’ve even seen people do this using Excel.

But in case you like to code or you want to start learning how to code, then this is an excellent motivator and I’m glad to be able to share this with you.

I’m in no way, shape, or form affiliated with the people running the Advent of Code. I don’t get anything from convincing you to check it out.

This is purely a “I just want to let you know because I enjoy it so much” type of email.

Click here to see what I’m talking about: https://adventofcode.com/


When simply buying your stuff isn’t enough

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Let’s talk about consumption.

More specifically.

How to get people to consume your product or service (potentially for a very long time) instead of merely buying it.

But first… why would you bother?

After all, they’ve already purchased the product. You’ve already been paid, haven’t you?

Well, that’s true enough.

But as every person behind a successful business knows, it’s never about the first purchase. In fact, more often than not, most businesses actually LOSE money on the first purchase. Instead, what matters is how many follow-up purchases you can get your customers to make.

Or, in other words, you don’t want onetime-only customers. You want repeat customers.

And the best way to get those?

You guessed it. You get repeat customers by ensuring people consume your products from start to finish and leave them satisfied enough so they’ll come to trust you and what you deliver… and want to keep buying from you.

As for how to motivate consumption, I’m working on something behind the scenes to talk about just that.

But for now, check out this bit from Nir Eyal’s Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products:

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“The more users invest time and effort into a product or service, the more they value it. In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that our labor leads to love.”

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The implications should be clear enough, no?

In that case, do yourself a favor and put some time and effort into clicking the following link, which will teach you more of the same about how to build habit-forming products (and get people to consume, rather than merely buy): https://alexvandromme.com/hooked


Reading recommendations just for you

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It’s no secret I love to read.

If anything, I might mention my reading habits too often. Perhaps even at the expense of making more sales because instead of yapping about what I’m reading (or how I’m reading) all the time, I could instead mention other cool facts, interesting stories, and controversial opinions which would undoubtedly lead to more sales.

But I don’t.

See, most people would greatly benefit from developing a better reading habit (not to be confused with those “you have to read at least 52 books a yaer!!!” type people).

As it stands, I’m a writer.

Sure some purists out there might object and say I'm “not a real writer”. Yet the fact remains, I press keys on my keyboard, which makes words appear on my screen (often quite a lot of them), which I then publish on the internet for many others to read. And this process is getting me paid.

So yes. I’ll call myself a writer.

And, as most people intuitively realize, there are two major “practices” writers do to become better at their craft (and yes, you have to do both).

First is to write frequently and write a lot.

Second is to read frequently and read a lot.

The more types of writing you read, the better. Good writing, bad writing, literary writing, junk writing, persuasive writing, pop culture writing, technical writing, and every other type of writing you can imagine.

A simple method to start reading is to read whatever interests you most.

That’s an extremely underrated (and weirdly effective) method to go about reading.

But in case you still don’t know where to start, no worries—I got you.

Because as of today I’ve created a recommended reading list on my website where I post what I’m currently reading, as well as every book I’ve read so far that I found either extremely enjoyable or insanely valuable (mostly both).

It’s not a big list by any means. (Not yet, at least)

But it’s enough to get some people started and give some honest recommendations.

Anyway.

Check it out here: https://alexvandromme.com/reading-list/


Don’t make this same mistake I made

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Here’s an embarrassing fact about me:

I’ve always thought myself well-versed in everything technology-related. After all, I’ve gone through 6 years of a digitally focused university program (lots of information systems, systems architecture, and even AI stuff before it was cool).

And yet, for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to get my WordPress post tags and categories to look the way I wanted them to when I tried some months ago.

So I gave up on tagging and categorizing my emails (which I post to my blog whenever I send them out). Something that I was ok with back then, but recently got reminded of just how much of a waste that was. All those posts, ideas, and valuable pieces of content, just sitting there, not categorized, no reasonable way for anyone to look them up, and least of all no efficient way to repackage them or reuse them in any way, shape, or form.

Very much an enormous case of what Dan Kennedy called “unused capacity”.

I simply couldn’t keep on wasting all that content like it was nothing. And so, yesterday, gave it another go. And what do you know? I finally figured it out. I almost did so by accident and it was so unbelievably easy I can’t help but feel like my whole life and everything I thought of my ability was a lie.

Anyway.

Long story short, to make use of this I now have to tag and categorize every single email I’ve ever written—manually that is. I’ve looked for a way to automate this somehow. And while there are a few solutions to doing this, none of those do it in a way I like and would want to keep doing in the future.

(Yes I can be extremely stubborn in those situations)

So what am I left with?

A long list—604 to be precise—of emails and valuable pieces of content I have to re-read and manually sort into categories and tag them with keywords I find valuable.

Moral of the story?

If you have an idea you know is important, valuable, and will pay off in the future, don’t procrastinate (or give up altogether) on implementing it. You’re only giving yourself more work in the future when you finally get to it.

Now, this example might not mean much to you.

But another application for this lesson, which I have been doing from the very beginning, is to note down, categorize, and link important topics, people, places, animals, plants, or historic events in my world-building when it comes to fiction writing.

I’ve been doing so with a neat little tool called Obsidian.

It’s like creating your personal Wikipedia inside of a text editor, allowing you to highlight keywords, create separate notes for them, and go from note to note just by clicking on them (among many other extremely useful options I almost can’t live without when it comes to creative writing).

I don’t get paid a single cent to promote Obsidian.

This is a pure and honest recommendation for anyone still looking around for a place to call their home when it comes to writing software.

And while it might be a bit confusing to get it running and set up how you like, there are many great guides and tutorials—including from fellow published authors—about how to easily and efficiently use Obsidian.

Enough yapping.

Here’s the link: https://obsidian.md/


The piece of writing advice that changed George Lucas’ life

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One of my favorite biographies I’ve read so far is George Lucas: A Life by Brian Jay Jones.

There’s a tremendous amount of useful insights and life lessons (as well as high being a highly entertaining read).

For example.

As a young, fresh, recently graduated filmmaker, George Lucas had the golden opportunity to “protegé” under Francis Ford Coppola—famous for films such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now—who was eager to take Lucas under his wing.

The two seemed to connect excellently.

Sure, they had their fair share of drama across the years, but George Lucas wouldn’t be the same—and we probably wouldn’t have gotten the Star Wars that exists today—if it weren’t for the support and teachings of Coppola.

One of Coppola’s teachings, which had an immense influence on Lucas—he often stated he had to be chained to his desk to get any work of writing done at all, and that still wouldn’t be without blood, sweat, and tears, if that tells you anything—went as follows:

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“Don’t ever read what you’ve written. Try to get it done in a week or two, then go back and fix it… you just keep fixing it.”

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Now if that ain’t the truth.

And it’s the same for every type of writing. Whether it’s film scripts, novels, biographies, non-fiction business books, sales letters, email sequences, entire promotions, paid advertisements, and whatever else you can imagine.

It’s all the same.

You start writing it. You try to get it done as fast as possible—no re-reading allowed. And only once you’re done with the entire first draft do you go back to the beginning and start fixing the damn thing.

After all, it’s only after god-knows-how-many revisions that the project starts to resemble a finished product.

Just look at the early drafts of Star Wars.

Some of the scenes are hardly recognizable or non-existent to begin with.

Anyway.

I’ve learned a lot—and still do every time I pick it up again—from Jones’ biography George Lucas.

More.

I’d recommend everyone in business, especially in creative fields, to check out the book for themselves.

Simply the way George Lucas approached his projects, and why he made the decisions he did, is worth its weight in gold.

But enough rambling.

Check out the book here and see for yourself: https://alexvandromme.com/lucas


The numbers, Mason! What do they mean?

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I’m currently in the midst of creating a course about paid advertising.

More specifically, a course about paid advertising aimed towards creatives (including self-published fiction authors).

I’ve mentioned this a couple of times before in previous emails. And everytime I do so I always get some questions from readers eager to get their hands on it.

Sometimes those questions are to ask when the course is coming, what they can expect from it, and whether it’s going to help them in particular.

Other times it’s questions from people wanting some help with their ads at the moment.

One of those “help me” questions I got recently was about how to navigate the enormous dashboard of data, statistics, acronyms, and confusing numbers every major ad platform throws at you.

What’s important, what does it all mean, and how should you decide what to do depending on what those numbers are telling you?

A good (and popular) question indeed.

More.

Watch any video about paid advertising, open any book, go to any course, and chances are you’ll get overwhelmed with all kinds of numbers, acronyms, and terminology to the point of utter and complete confusion where you don’t know what to do.

More often than not people will immediately stop right then and there, thinking this is way too complicated (they’re right) and it’s not for them (they’re wrong).

The truth is, most courses are making it way more difficult than it needs to be (almost as if they’re doing it on purpose, hoping you’ll ask the author of the course if they have a “done-for-you” service—which they almost always have).

But all of that is completely unnecessary.

In fact, there are only really three (3!) numbers/acronyms you need to know to run a successful business powered by paid advertising.

These three numbers alone can help you decide whether your ads are working, if you should let them keep running as is, switch it up, try other variations, add upsells or downsells to your funnel, try another marketing angle, switch up the targeting, adjust your phrasing, limit the daily budget, and so much more.

Even more.

Those course creators I talked about before?

Most of them pretty much only rely on these three numbers as well. They don’t always mention they do, but at the end of the day. Those are the only ones that matter.

Which three numbers I’m referring to and exactly how to approach them for you and your business can be found in my upcoming and soon-to-be-released paid ads course.

For now, you’ll just have to hang tight and keep your eyes open.

If, however, you have ad-related questions or topics you’d like me to address, feel free to reply to this email and let me know.

I won’t promise I’ll have the answer, but chances are pretty high I do.


I lied

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In yesterday’s email, I made the exciting “pre-announcement” that I’ll be announcing something super exciting today.

So exciting in fact, some people already reached out to me with their (correct) prediction of what is was.

But it turns out I lied.

Or more so, life got in the way and I underestimated the amount of things I still needed to do before I could make this announcement the right way while making sure everything is ok and ready to go.

The irony is that I often teach people about the dangers of overly relying on a plan—as plans are nothing more than guidelines, and as practical experience will teach you, nothing ever goes as planned.

Which doesn’t mean plans are useful—far from it.

But that’s just life.

Anyway.

If all goes well, I should be able to make this terribly exciting and amazing announcement tomorrow, or at the very least the day after (more likely tomorrow though).

In the meantime, keep your eyes open for the next email you’ll receive.

I won’t ask you to pay attention to anything else of mine, not a single other offer—that’s how important this coming announcement will be.

Cheers.


Non-money-related reasons to write emails

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In no particular order:

  • It’s incredibly fun and fulfilling

  • Writing emails brings forth more ideas and inspiration which can be used for other projects

  • You get to do whatever you want, whenever you want it, without any platform limitations

  • Your own email list is probably the closest thing you’ll ever got to free speech on a large scale

  • Allows you to talk to and bond with tons of people across many walks of life individually with the benefits of large scale efficiency

  • Incredibly easy to do—especially if you’ve been doing it for a long time already—making it the perfect way to start your day off right by checking something off your to-do list

  • Everything you write is reusable in some way, giving you unlimited benefits that keep scaling indefinitely the longer you do it

  • The best way to notify people about important announcements

Announcements such as the one you’ll see tomorrow.

See keep your eyes open for that one.


Short Email Saturday

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Once in a while, I’ll write an extremely short email.

Today is such a day.

So for your tip of the day: often times, less is more.

For the CTA (call-to-action) of the day: Reply to this email telling me your latest business-related purchase. I’m curious to hear what you’re up to and what peaks your interest.

Just hit reply.