Here’s something important I realized some months ago:

The people who engage with your content aren't the same people who find your content most valuable/enjoy reading it the most.

(That’s especially true for social media content, but you can easily extend it to any other forms of media)

See, the people who engage with your content on social media are (mostly) other content creators hoping to “boost the algorithm” and get seen in your comment section by your audience, hoping some of your followers find their comments interesting enough to check out their profile, and eventually follow them and their content as well.

And more likely than not, that’s not your target audience.

Your target audience, instead, are most of the time the people who like reading your stuff, sometimes they’ll engage by liking it, but most of the time they won’t even do that.

They’ll just sit back, like they’re hiding in the shadows, browsing through your stuff, enjoying everything you’ve shared, yet never letting it known. Which makes sense if you think about it from their point of view, they don’t get anything in return for clicking like on your stuff or replying to it (unless it’s a question, and even then, most people don’t ask questions that way).

I notice this occasionally.

For example, every time I do a promotion, I’ll get some buyers, many repeat buyers, some new buyers. But each time I go to look at who’s buying, it’s almost always the quiet people. The people who haven’t replied too much (at least for first-time buyers), the people who are lurking in the shadows, almost waiting to make their entree.

It’s also the same with people who join my email list.

I’ll occasionally get messages from people saying they finally joined my list after having consumed a lot of my content for the past months, yet they never interacted with anything because I’d never seen their names anywhere.

So if I can give you one honest piece of advice, coming straight from the bottom of my heart, wishing you the best.

Then it’ll be to not lose your focus by only paying attention to the people who engage with your content. Make sure you keep your target audience in mind, regardless of who you find saying what on your stuff.

Anyway.

Creation content is only one of many methods you can use to build an audience and get some attention. But getting attention isn’t enough. You need to drive that attention, that traffic somewhere to be able to do something with it.

For that, I wholeheartedly suggest you direct all of your traffic to your email list.

And when it comes to building a functional and money-making email list your readers love to be a part of, then for my last suggestion, I’d recommend you to check out Email Valhalla, it’s very much the ideal entry point (for both beginner and advanced people alike) to build an email-powered business.

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

Yesterday’s email about the 5 best ways to pick up a chair (yes I really wrote that) generated a lot of responses.

One of which was from a long-time reader (not sure if he wants me to share his name) who’s been with me for well over a year now, I still find it crazy how I can say stuff like this, who wrote:

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It’s funny, since you built up trust with value before, I “fell for” the phenomenon you highlighted in the email.

If you hadn’t provided value before, I wouldn’t have been curious when I saw your email subject.

In fact there was a time when I ignored your emails and subjects altogether because I “don’t have time”.

I opened one that had a subject based on something I was curious about or was important to me, and that started the trust building.

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For all of you guru-loving fanboys, know “value” can mean a lot of things here.

It’s not purely informative or educational content. It’s sharing insight, getting emotions across, showing you care about your audience, making someone’s day a slightly bit better, proving you're consistent and able to show up every day, and motivating the people you care about (read: your customers) to join your consistency and do better each and every day.

But as with anything.

Not everything you create, write, post, publish, or put out will resonate with everyone (in fact, it shouldn’t). Even your own list of readers, young and new, is divided into many subgroups and subsegments each caring about a collection of different interests—many of those interests will (probably should if you’re doing it right) overall, yet not all of them.

That’s where daily emails come in.

You keep hitting people with a new email every day, a new subject line to catch their attention, a new angle to show them, new insight to share, new opportunities to bond about, and an extra bit of trust you’ve built with that reader.

You build trust every day.

But email daily and you’ll do it more than often enough to get to the point where people open your emails regardless of whether you’re talking about making 343.5T3 bazillion rupees or the 5 best ways to pick up a chair.

And on that note.

To learn more about mastering the art of sending daily emails, be sure to check out Email Valhalla right here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Here we go:

#1: Grab both the back posts with each hand and lift it that way.

#2: Pick up the chair at the top rail with your non-dominant hand while using your other dominant hand to support (and lift up) the chair from underneath the seat.

#3: Turn the chair upside down and hold it by any 2 legs (attention: holding it up by the two diagonal legs, although perfectly possible, might feel a bit awkward)

#4: Sit on the chair and ask someone else (you might need 2 people to do this depending on how much you weigh) to pick up the chair while you get to relax (don’t lose your balance though).

#5: Just leave the chair where it is. No need for you to pick it up. That’s somebody else’s problem now.

Now, I don’t know how useful this information might have been for you.

But there’s just something about reading “X ways to do Y” that makes it so you just need to check out the email/article/video/whatever it is and see what’s inside.

That said.

More useful information (we’re talking 100’s of ways to do many things, mostly revolving around writing emails, growing your list, and getting paid) can be found here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

I’ve worked many jobs in the past 4 years—many of them pure shyte.

Some notable ones are:

Working in nightclubs, raking leaves, vacuuming wedding venues, scrubbing toilets, cleaning windows, loading in trucks, repairing used festival speakers, guiding traffic at private parking, and many, many more odd jobs like these.

Now I didn’t just work weird jobs.

I’ve also worked more “normal” jobs such as a door-to-door salesman and a bartender when I was younger.

Yet that’s beside the point.

The fact is, I’ve seen and experienced many things, worked for/with, and met countless people in all stages of life, and learned to hate different aspects of every job I worked.

But I don’t regret any of them.

I wouldn’t do it over, that’s for sure, I’d rather stay far, far, far away from all of them, never to get anywhere close to jobs like that in my, hopefully, many years I’ll spend on this earth.

But, yet again, all of those jobs helped me develop into the person I am today.

Even more.

All of those jobs made me appreciate “doing the work” and putting in effort for the things I’m doing right now. Sure I might complain once in a while that I’ve got a lot of stuff to write, or there’s a lot I need to think about, or that a certain promotion didn’t do as well (something I learned not to care about at all, because it doesn’t actually matter at all in the long run and whether I make a sale or not, I’m eating steak either way).

When it comes down to it, I’m blessed to be in the position I’m in right now.

In fact, I’ve got no doubt many would kill to be in this position (chances are people would kill to be in your position as well if you’re lucky and blessed enough to be able to read this email—yet that’s not something we ever realize, much less think about).

The reality is.

Everyone (or at least every man) should, at one point in their lives, have worked a terrible job, with shitty pay, awful working conditions, incredibly long hours, little to no recognition whatsoever, and without any (known) hope of landing a better job in the future.

Why?

Because those jobs are what’s needed to be grateful with the better ones you’ll undoubtedly land eventually.

Just as there’s no light without darkness, neither can there be a good situation without bad ones to compare it to—life only makes sense for us in comparisons after all.

Anyway.

I don’t know what kind of jobs you’ve had in the past or what kind of work you’re doing as we speak. But if you’d like to get to know a better opportunity then I’d recommend you to check out Email Valhalla today.

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

"Everybody who makes a lot of money defies industry norms. Everybody who makes average money conforms to them."

Now think about this:

What do most people do?

They all follow in some random gurus footsteps, almost blindly copying whatever he and the rest of the market does. Always doing the thing that seems right and playing the game as most would expect. They follow the rules without knowing why the rules are there in the first place, let alone questioning whether those rules are actual rules you should be following.

They’ll say stuff such as:

"Oh everyone attaches a random picture of themself to their LinkedIn post (one that has nothing to do with the post whatsoever). Let's do the same!"

"Oh everyone is praising "value" (even though most don't know what it means) and giving everything away for free (i.e. not getting paid). Let's do the same!"

"Oh everyone is using ChatGPT to come up with topics to talk about and writing awful hooks that ooze 'emotionless and templates writing'. Let's do the same!"

I hope you can see how that’s a problem.

A problem that’s easily solved if you simply think for yourself one second.

Think about what (and why) you’re doing something. Then stop merely copying other people just because they're doing it. They might be successful with it, even because of it, but that still doesn't mean anything. You won't become successful merely by being a copycat of someone else.

How often has that worked out for someone in history?

So what do you do instead?

You defy the norms.

Here's the exercise Dan Kennedy recommended:

Take out a piece of paper (or whatever you use to write on) and make a list of everything that's an industry norm in your business — how things are prices, how things are sold, how they are deliverd, how they are advertised, how they are marketed, what kind of content gets created, how contracts are made up.

Idenfity and isolate every single thing you can think about that's an industry norm people in your business conform to. (This should be a list of over 100 different items).

Then try and figure out how you can defy as many of them as humanly possible.

"You will transform your income in direct proportion to the number you manage to violate," Dan Kennedy adds.

I've been doing this slowly but surely from the start with how I approach social media, how I write my emails, and how I create and sell my courses. And I call tell you that my income increased in direct proportion with the norms I defied.

I urge you to try it yourself.

Don't delay.

Pick up a piece of paper today and do the exercise.

Then send me a message in a few days sharing how much results you're already seeing that quickly.

On another note.

The best and easiest way to define the norms is to build an email list of your own so you can define the rules of how you work and what happens in your domain.

There where where nobody has any power but you.

This allows you to defy—even define—your own norms.

To learn more about how to grow and monetize your email list, check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Everything is slowly turning into a subscription model.

From your daily entertainment to your groceries, the clothes you wear, the books you read, the music you listen to, the hobbies you practice, the perfumes and fragrances you use, the cars you drive (if that market won’t completely turn into a subscription-based Uber-like “get driven by autonomous vehicles" service eventually), the traveling you might want to do, hell, chances are even the phones you’ll buy and every other gadget or consumable you can think of will become subscription based.

It might not be this year.

It might not even be next year.

But I promise you, everything will and shall turn into a subscription model—even the things you couldn’t believe were possible.

So what should you do when it comes to subscriptions?

Should you follow? Should you be different for the sake of it?

Well, that’s not something I can answer for you. As with anything, it depends. I don’t know what you do, what you sell, who you sell it to, how much you’re charging for it, how much it costs you to sell it, how easy it is to deliver, how often people use it, how many people want it, and a lot more other vital pieces of information you’d need to make a decision like this (anyone telling you there’s a one-size-fits-all answer is trying to sell you horsecrap).

What I do know is that a lot more people are trying to jump into the subscription business (as will I eventually, not going to hide it).

And with that there’s also many people who are making the big mistake (unless they’re already a big industry name, then they can do whatever they want) of trying to sell the continuity as the first thing the customer sees.

In case you didn’t know, it’s a difficult sell to get someone to hand you money ever single month.

A better way to do things?

Sell something low-ticket first (alongside selling yourself). Build up trust. Show them you know your stuff. Help them get a feeling of satisfaction.

Only after that, offer them a subscription to get more of the same (with more convenience and/or a better price) or offer them more (and better/more in-depth) complimentary stuff.

Something to think about and take into consideration.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn how to sell, whether it’s a continuity or not, and more specifically, learn to sell it through email, then check out Email Valhalla where I share all the tips, tricks, deets, and secret sauce.

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

A few days ago my dad looked at the bookshelf I’ve got in my room and started browsing through my collection of the 70-something books I’ve collected and (mostly) read over the past 1–2 years.

Some titles caught his attention—either as interesting titles he’d someday wanted to read or simply as titles he recognized and might or might not previously have read himself.

Either way, he then muttered the following in a way that made it seem he was more so talking to himself than he was to me, “I should really start reading more often”.

The thing is, he’s juggling a lot of stuff currently.

Some examples (purposefully kept vague for privacy reasons):

He recently started a new IT consulting job for which he’s taking a lot of additional training, both at home by experimenting with this new (at least to him) technology to learn how to best serve his customers, as Earl Nightingale would tell you are your real bosses, as well as following different trainings through his employer to collect some new certificates.

At the same time, he’s also working on getting his online business gig up and running, regularly working out (6 times a week right now—he’s actually doing better in terms of fitness than I am right now (and I introduced him to it)) which also includes heavily counting his calories and making sure his macros are correct, reading my emails and almost everything else I write (sorry not sorry for giving you extra work to do throughout the day), as well as being a father and a husband and keeping time for family and leisure.

So that made me realize something.

We all have so much stuff we want do, stuff we don’t want to do, and stuff we simply need to do no matter whether we want it or not. A lot of stuff, yet not a lot of time to do everything. Let alone all the stuff we spend our time on that we neither actually want nor need to do (these are the real time-wasters).

You’d be surprised how much time of our day we spent on that last type of activity (I know I waste a ton of time every single day).

Anyway.

I won’t claim to know the solution to fixing your time schedule and being able to doing everything you want to do—I don’t know.

What I do know is the importance of recognizing the problems in your daily schedule and actively sitting down trying to come up with 1) your current schedule (including the time you waste) 2) your ideal schedule and 3) a better, improved, and realistic schedule you could start working towards to make your life and the world you live in a better place.

That said.

Another thing I know, when it comes to working on improving your business AND saving time, is that you can do both of these by applying the tips and principles I teach in Email Valhalla to write faster while also writing more persuasively so you can build a bigger list, make more sales, and build a bigger, better, more thriving business, all while spending less time selling.

Don’t believe my biased ass?

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

And I mean seriously short, this book is only 41 pages with a ginormous font.

Not to mention, It’s an old gem as well.

It was first written and published in 1902, yet still relevant and published today (a rule I picked up from Naval Ravikant is that if an old book is still around, it’s got something inside of it that’s worth reading).

Anyway.

The book I’m talking about is As a Man Thinketh.

As the title suggests, it’s all about the power of your mind, and how your thoughts, and their quality, influence and decide everything about you, your life, your surroundings, and the things life rewards (or punishes) you with.

What I like most isn’t just how it’s practical, relevant, very clearly written, easy to read in one quick sitting, or even how it broadens your mind and shows you a new way of thinking.

No.

It’s how it conveys complex ideas, in an understandable and easy-to-grasp manner, yet still wording it beautifully and poetically.

Everyone who has ever written knows how simple language and poetry don’t easily go hand in hand. Yet As a Man Thinketh seems to have cracked the code because it does it on every. single. page.

Here’s an example:

“Man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth.”

That, to me, reads beautifully.

And I hope you can share this joy with me by seeing the beauty in it as well.

On another note.

While it might not help you write as beautifully or as poetically, Email Valhalla will help you write valuable and entertaining emails in a simple and easy-to-understand manner to keep your readers interested, sometimes even obsessed, making them come back each and every day.

If that sounds like a skill you’d want to develop, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

But I finally did it.

I’m talking about something so crucial, so important, so absolutely vital to my business (and more than likely yours as well), yet so overlooked by almost everyone out there it’s not even funny how overlooked this is.

Entire businesses can go from thriving one day to having lost everything and going completely broke the next if they don’t do this one simple thing.

And it really isn’t that hard.

In fact, it took me all about an hour or two to do this thing and I’m not set up for life. I never have to spend any time on this, never even have to click on anything, hell I don’t even have to ever think about it ever again.

All it took (and all it ever will take) is one to two hours.

And it could probably take you a whole lot less (maybe a bit more) depending on how much experience you have with stuff like this. But then again, it’s something anyone could easily figure out by reading a guide or watching a free 10-minute video explaining EXACTLY (and I mean to the letter) what to do.

The reason why it took me (and many others) so long to do (remind yourself, some people never do this and lose everything because of it) this, yet it’s so incredibly important is simple.

It doesn’t do anything unless it’s too late.

See, what I’m talking about (which I’ll reveal in just a minute) is more of an insurance. Not an actual business benefit. Yet it’s the most important insurance you can have for your business.

But that’s just how insurances go. Nobody ever wants one…

Until it’s too late.

Ok enough teasing for now.

The insurance I’m talking about, and what I finally did today that was long overdue was to set up an automation that backs up my email list in real-time (for those interested in the technical side: I do this by adding the emails to a Google Sheet whenever someone subscribes to Beehiiv, using Make dot com—as well as adding unsubscribes to another spreadsheet (and removing them from the original one)).

This way I’m making sure I’ll never lose my email list no matter what.

Yes building your own list is great since that’s something you “own”. But that owning part only goes so far if you never take it off the platform you’re using. Every single day is another chance for you to get de-platformed (it happens a lot more than you think, especially in today’s age of cancel culture), let alone if the platform suddenly shuts down (no business lasts forever).

So the final layer of protection is to back up your email list.

Anyway, enough of that.

Speaking of email lists and protecting your business. Another vital step of this equation is to master the art of daily email writing and list building to get yourself a valuable list you’re afraid of losing enough to get the motivation to back it up in the first place.

And for that, let my biased ass tell you this, there’s simply no better place to start than by checking out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

I haven’t been hand-copying sales letters anymore.

This bad behavior of mine has been going on for almost a month now (25 days to be precise). Truth be told, I have no excuse for it either.

It all started when I messed up my shoulder a while back (even though it wasn’t my writing shoulder). Still, my mind found it a good enough reason to convince myself that it’s ok to “take a break” because of it.

Yet it wasn’t until I sat down recently and looked at my daily goals and tasks I was supposed to do that I finally noticed how I still hadn’t gotten back to doing this daily practice of mine (a practice I have no doubt has been helping me develop as both a (copy)writer and a marketer).

This might sound recognizable to you, it might not.

Who knows.

Either way, let this be a reminder to check back in on your (positive) habits once in a while to make sure everything’s in order.

Another such habit that I’ve found to immensely improve my life ever since the day I started doing it—and it has only continued to improve my life more and more the longer I keep on doing it consistently and religiously, day in, day out—was the practice of writing an email every single day.

No exceptions.

I was writing daily emails when barely anybody was reading them, when I had nothing to sell, and yes, even when I thought I had nothing to say or write about.

Even more.

All of these so-called “problems” are solved by writing daily emails and staying consistent.

Day after day.

Email after email.

Do this for at least 30 days and you’ll soon realize 1) people will start listening/reading your stuff 2) you’ll figure something out that you can sell (and something your readers need/want 3) the more you write, the more things you’ll have to say to the point where if you’ve been writing for a long enough time you’ve got too many things you want to say/write about and not enough time/days/emails to write about them.

Anyway.

If you’d like a head-start to properly get this habit of daily email writing going then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla