How to Train Your Dragon is a (musical) masterpiece.

It has one of the best, if not the best, opening scene in all of cinema. And it holds the key to creating the perfect lead magnet.

But first. Let me explain what’s so good about the opening scene. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check it out here.)

The opening scene of any film has multiple tasks to accomplish.

It needs to:

• Hook the audience

• Establish the world

• Introduce the characters

• Create the Inciting Incident (the thing that sets the story into motion)

• Set up the final act reveal (some sort of foreshadowing towards the end of the film)

How to Train Your Dragon’s opening scene checks all of the boxes.

But that’s not the impressive part. It does all of this in the first 7 minutes. There’s so much going on in those 7 minutes. Yet it all works and blends nicely together.

BUT. A big but this time because the film deserves it.

That, yet again, isn’t the most impressive thing either. At least not to me.

The real work of art is what the music is doing during this opening scene.

You see. In film music we have a thing called a Leitmotif.

It’s a short musical idea (called a phrase) associated with a particular person, place, or idea that’s repeated throughout the film to represent said particular person, place, or idea.

Think of how whenever you hear the Imperial March you think of Darth Vader. That’s a leitmotif.

Hiccup, the dragons, the people of Berk, the kids, and Astrid all have their own leitmotif. Their own short piece of music.

The purpose of such a leitmotif is to bring unity to a film and to evoke more emotion from the listener.

Imagine if a certain piece of music always played whenever a certain character comes into view. Whether you realize it or not. Your subconscious will create an association between that character and that musical idea.

Whenever something happens to our character. Bad. Good. Amazing. Terrible. Those emotions will be “saved” into the association with that musical piece.

If you were to hear that same piece of music later on in the film. You’ll automatically relive most of those same emotions.

The music in a film essentially has the purpose of telling the same story happening on-screen to your subconscious.

Now what does this have to do with anything so far?

Well in most films a) those leitmotifs either aren’t properly developed or b) they take ages to develop all the motives. And even if they develop the motives, they aren’t always used as well as they could be.

This is exactly what How to Train Your Dragon does perfectly.

Within the first 5 minutes of the film. You’ve heard every single musical idea used throughout the whole film except for one.

You hear the leitmotif of the people of Berk first when Hiccup talks about his city. Next, you hear the leitmotif of Stoic. Then the group of kids, then Astrid. Hiccup’s theme is next and lastly, we hear the dragon’s theme.

And everything blends smoothly together.

The viewer, both his conscious and subconscious, knows what to expect for the rest of the film.

Whenever a piece of music is played. Your mind knows the correct association. Not a single emotion is wasted.

As for the one musical idea that’s missing. That’s Toothless’ theme.

The reason for this is because Toothless doesn’t “belong” there. He’s an outsider.

He’s part of the unknown world.

It’s up to Hiccup to go on his Hero’s journey and step out of the known world and into the known. (this is peak storytelling by the way, not Twitter wannabe storytelling)

Toothless’ theme is only later heard for the first theme when Hiccup goes out to look for him.

The “outsider” feeling is enhanced as well by the use of “strange” instruments that we haven’t heard before so far. Bagpipes.

But I hear you asking. What does this have to do with creating the perfect lead magnet?

This mail is already long enough and I haven’t said a single thing about lead magnets so far. Fair enough.

Here’s the thing.

The opening scene introduces all the musical ideas that the film will later build upon from the very start. All but Toothless’ theme.

This is how you should create your lead magnet.

Introduce everything there is to know about your offer. Teach people all of the topics you’re covering in your coaching offer/paid product/whatever.

Don’t hold anything back.

But the secret lies in 2 things.

First. The topics, frameworks, methods,… you teach in your lead magnet will be used as building blocks in your offer.

This is how you educate your audience to the point of wanting, even needing your offer if they want to move to the next level.

You educate people for free and sell the solution to the problems that arise because of your free education.

Second. Just like Toothless’ theme wasn’t introduced in the opening scene. You’re not going to include the “how” in your lead magnet. The implementation itself.

You should share the “why” in your content and the “what” in your lead magnet.

This is when people have a choice. They can either spend a long time figuring out the exact “how” by themselves for free.

Or they can pay you to teach them the “how”, the implementation.

Now I could go on. But I won’t. It turned out to be a long mail already. Long for a daily mail at least.

This is a perfect example of me following my curiosity, creating a unique perspective, connecting 2 different domains, and sharing it with you.

So if you would do me a favor. Let me know what you thought of this mail.

It takes a minute or two to write for you and it saves me ages of experimentation. I’d appreciate it if you write in to share your thoughts.

Was it too long? Did you like the topic? Was it understandable?

I’d be glad to hear from you.

A week ago I wrote an email in which I shared my love for music, film, and film music.

And as you might have guessed. I received a few questions about my favorite movies and soundtracks.

Now I must mention that I am an absolute Christopher Nolan fan when it comes to filmmaking and visual storytelling.

As for music. How much of a Twitter bro would I be if I didn’t say Hans Zimmer?

It almost seems cliche as of last. But it’s true.

So whenever Hans Zimmer and Christopher Nolan work together. Oh boy you know I’m going to love whatever comes out.

You might be thinking that I’m going to talk about Inception or Interstellar. And sure those are masterpieces.

Don’t get me started about the introduction of the organ to sci-fi film composing in Interstellar. I can talk about it for hours.

But no.

There’s another literal piece of art that’s way too underappreciated. It should deserve 10x the love it gets now.

And that film is Dunkirk.

From beginning to end it does everything perfectly.

Everything it does "wrong”, according to traditional film writing, it does wrong just right.

Dunkirk is a film that breaks all the rules. It’s not centered on the people in the story. The film doesn’t actually make you care about any of them.

There’s no transformation going on. There’s no internal struggle to overcome. We hop from timeline to timeline and from “protagonist” to “protagonist”.

It’s been long said that if Dunkirk were to be made as a novel it would be one of the worst ever written. It simply doesn’t work as a story.

But that’s the power of film.

Everything about it is carefully crafted to tell you the story of the event. Not the people.

It’s not about emotions, morality, or bravery. It’s about scope.

And most importantly of all. It’s about the fear and horror of it all. That’s what keeps the film interesting.

But here’s the tricky part.

Most of the time. Nothing is actually happening.

So if there’s no story being told about people. And there’s not much happening. How does the film keep you interested? At any point in the film, you’re always on the edge of your seat.

Why?

That’s because of the tension. There might not be something happening. But the film is always implying that disaster is going to strike soon.

Part of it is due to Hans Zimmer’s amazing score and his use of a little trick called a Shepard tone.

The other part of it is Christopher Nolan’s excellent visual storytelling and building of tension in the film.

Tension such as bombs falling in a straight line leading up to the character on screen lying in the sand.

Nothing is happening to our character. He’s simply lying there. But you realize that a bomb might fall on him. Yet it never does.

Or when other characters are swimming in the sea with a layer of oil covering the surface. Nothing much yet is happening. But it’s the possibility of it lighting fire that builds all the tension and makes you cling to your seat.

But. And this is the real kicker. And I say this a lot but it’s true.

There’s another little being used in the film. A trick which without it, all the suspense, and emotions might not be as strong as they are now.

And that’s the fact that the enemy, the Germans, is never shown. They are only over referred to as “the enemy”. An invisible and unknown force. Ready to deliver total destruction at any second.

This works because of how we experience fear.

The biggest fear we have is the fear of the unknown. The unknown is the scariest enemy of them all.

You know something’s coming. But you don’t know what.

Who/what is it? What’s going to happen? How will they strike? When will it occur?

The building tension and unending fear are enough to drive anyone mad.

Imagine if you’d see the Germans on the screen at all times. Imagine if the characters in the film were aware of their every move.

Imagine if the Allies had a respected general that had previous experience with/against the Germans. He’d know how they work, what they would do, when they’d do it, and how to emerge victorious.

Suddenly the whole ordeal doesn’t sound so scary anymore does it?

If you were in that situation you would want that general by your side, wouldn’t you?

Luckily you can. Only in this case the goal isn’t evacuating out of Dunkirk and surviving the Germans. It’s building your creator business and creating a better life for yourself. A life of freedom.

And I’m the commander with previous experience in that battle.

Ask yourself whether you want to live with the permanent fear of not knowing what’s going to happen and how to overcome the obstacles that are heading your way. Or if you’d rather be fighting side-by-side with an experienced general who’s able to help defeat the fear of the unknown and overcome the oncoming obstacles.

Reply to this email if you’d rather stand side-by-side with such a general and we’ll take a look at the enemy you’re battling.

Last Sunday I held our weekly Twitter Space.

The space was on how to network as a creator on Twitter. Which is funny because it should’ve been one of my earlier spaces.

It’s such an important topic to talk about on Twitter. The whole road from 0 to 1,000 followers is nothing more than glorified networking. Both in the DMs and in the comment section.

So we got talking. We shared all our tips & tricks. From who to engage with to how to utilize lists and hopping on calls with other creators.

Overall it was a wonderful success. Lots of people showed up. Many came up on stage to ask questions, great stories were being told, and there was more interaction than I could ask for.

But among all the topics that were being discussed. I brought up one specific ‘hack’ no one had thought about before as being great for networking.

That hack was none other than my obsession with bananas. You could say I’m bananas about them.

And almost everyone who follows me knows it. I talk about them all the time.

Now this has a bunch of benefits. Some obvious, some hidden.

The major benefit is how I take up mental real estate in people’s minds. Whenever someone sees a banana, they think of me. Whenever someone thinks of me, they think of bananas.

It’s a great trick to make myself more memorable.

Today’s society is a game of attention after all. Attention is the new currency. And mental real estate ensures that I stay in people’s minds.

Call it a method to reduce “customer churn” if you will.

Now another benefit is that it increases my networking opportunities.

Both inbound and outbound. I can reach out to so many people and they will react with “Oh that’s the banana guy”. And they’ll respond. That’s outbound networking.

It works for inbound as well. I don’t even have to do anything. People will want to talk to me because of the banana thing.

Don’t believe me? Here’s an example of what I think is one of the best DMs I’ve gotten to this day:

So yeah. It works.

It works both ways as well. Because it’s personalized. I’m more likely to respond than to yet another “Hey I like your content how are you?”.

If you didn’t realize the lesson yet.

Think about your obsession. Pick something. Whatever it may be. But pick something and go crazy about it.

It doesn’t have to be special. Eddy Quan has watermelon. Jeff Nippard has kiwis.

Also it doesn’t have to be fruit either. Dan Koe has going on daily walks. Kieran Drew has his OnlyFans jokes. Alex Hormozi has his peculiar “I don’t give a f*ck” outfit and nose strips.

So just pick something. Whatever you like. Don’t worry about it being unique or special. Worry about it being something personal.

Trust me it’ll be worth it.

ps: I’m a curious individual. So reply to this email with whatever it is you’re going to use as your one thing. I’m interested to see what you’re interested in.

Yesterday I posted my weekly long-form newsletter issue. (Check it out here if you missed it)

The email talked about the 3 most important (and only) aspects to consider when troubleshooting why you’re not landing any clients.

It was also the first long-form email I began by sharing a personal story (as far as I remember).

That’s already a victory for me.

I’ve been studying storytelling and sharing a few stories here and there. But I haven’t been incorporating them into my long-form writing so far.

But that wasn’t the only victory.

I ended the email by sharing the plan for next week and asking people to reply with their current (business) situation.

I’ll use those as real-life examples and show how a few simple changes can make all the difference in the business. My article will be more valuable because of it and the people who reply will get a free mini-consultation session.

Win-win for both sides.

And it seems like people liked this idea because I’ve already been getting a decent amount of replies. (I haven’t responded to most of the emails yet, but I have read them. I’m not perfect either.)

One of the people who responded mainly seemed to struggle with closing clients.

And I get it.

Hopping on a sales call is scary. Every nerve of your body is screaming that they don’t want to be there.

You have no idea what to do and no idea what to expect.

What if they don’t like your offer? What if they think you’re too expensive? How are you going to handle objections? What does “objection handling” even mean??

Little by little you’re starting to doubt whether you’re capable of successfully fulfilling the request and carrying out your service.

It’s daunting.

I understand. I’ve been there as well.

Unfortunately I can’t help you to instantly master the art of closing leads on a sales call. That’s something that takes practice. You need to hop on sales call after sales call to build up experience.

But I can help you calm your nerves a little bit by giving you my 7-step closing framework. This will at least help you understand the general flow of things so you know what to expect.

But that’s not all.

I can indirectly help you with getting sales call practice as well.

A good friend of mine Gio Bezhanisvili is new to the coaching space but he has years of experience hopping on sales calls. He’s closed over $100k+ in deals in the past few years.

He knows how the game is played.

And here’s the best part of it. He’s giving out free closing consultations to help you master the art of the close.

Together you’ll go over your closing strategy, analyze your strong and weak points, and develop a specific pitch outline for your offer.

Just send him a DM on Twitter telling him you’re interested in his free consultation. Let him know you found him through my newsletter and he’ll be sure to help you out.

You can find the man himself here: https://twitter.com/GioBallerz

Ascend 101

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

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Twitter wasn’t my first gig. Far from it.

I’ve been “in business” for multiple years before that.

My family still tells this one story about me way back in primary school.

My mother would always give me some snacks to eat while I was in primary school. One of my favorites was this type of thin and dry sausage. God I loved those.

I was about 7 years old at the time. And I’ve always been quite shy for most of my life. Every teacher I had would say how quiet a kid I was.

But nonetheless when it came to these sausages I had a plan.

You see my mother would buy a package of 5 of these sausages for about 50 cents.

But I noticed that some other kid was always interested in this one snack I was eating. He didn’t have those kinds of snacks himself.

But he had money. I would sell him one of my sausages every day for 1 euro. That’s a 900% markup.

I was making some sweet bank for a 7-year-old.

But then it stopped. The other kid didn’t want my snack anymore. I tried looking for other people to sell to. But to no avail.

Now this might sound like just a funny anecdote. But this is exactly the problem I see many people struggling with. They don’t know how to get clients.

Which is a shame because that’s what keeps their business alive.

Without clients you have no business. You’re unable to experiment and compare different offers. You’re unable to scale your business. You feel stuck with no hope in sight.

But here’s the kicker. Whenever you’re not getting clients it’s always because of 3 things: The market, the marketing, or your offer.

I can tell you from experience it’s almost always one of the first two. Rarely is the problem a poor offer. You can make almost any offer work as long as you’re in the right market and have the proper marketing around it.

1) The market

Let’s go back to 7-year-old Alex.

What did I do after losing my first customer?

I started asking random kids in my class if they wanted to buy my snack. The problem?

My classmates on average:

• weren’t interested in dry sausages

• wouldn’t be carrying money around

• expected their friend (me) to give it to them for free

• had snacks of their own

I was in the wrong market.

It would’ve been easy to sell my snacks to starving adults at a sports event.

• They had money

• They wanted something to eat

• They’d think it’s cute to see a little boy hustling

2) The marketing

How many clothing brands are there? What about watches? Jewelry? make-up? Alcohol?

How about dentists, doctors, hairdressers, personal trainers, and copywriters?

Let’s not fool ourselves. Every brand (person) in that specific industry sells the same thing as any other brand in the same industry.

But it’s their marketing where they make the difference. The different angles they attack. The stories they tell, the goals they’re working toward, and the values they hold.

Harley Davidson and Ducati both sell motorcycles. But Harley Davidson tells the story of community & freedom while Ducati tells the story of speed & Italian elegance.

Jeff Nippard and Noel Deyzel both sell fitness coaching. But Jeff tells the story of the scientific fitness community while Noel tells the story of him growing up without a father and helping boys become men.

It’s not what you do but who you are and why you do it that matters.

3) The offer

The easiest way of having a good offer is to look at what’s out there (and what’s selling). And just doing the exact same thing.

There’s no need to overcomplicate this part.

As I’ve said. Most of the time it’s not the offer that’s the problem.

I’ve written extensively about offer creation before. Check out the following articles if you wish to learn more about it:

• The Value Equation

• 5 Steps to unlimited value

• Enhance your offer with psychology

Next week

I’m going to be honest here.

I planned on ending this mail with a step-by-step roadmap to landing your first client. But I had more to do this week than I had imagined (and I procrastinated more as well).

So I didn’t get around to completing it. And I don’t want to leave you with a half-assed roadmap filled with errors and gaps.

It needs to be clear and actionable for everyone.

So you’ll get the roadmap next week.

As an added bonus for not getting it now. Reply to this mail with your current situation.

What you’re currently doing. What you’ve done in the past. And what you think is holding you back from landing your first client (or your 10th).

Paint me a nice picture and I’ll include the best examples in the next week’s email as real-life case studies. With a step-by-step guide to improve your situation.

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P.S.

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

1. 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.

2. Work 1-on-1 with me: We’ll determine where you stand and where you want to go. Then we’ll devise a roadmap to get you from A to B. And get you there in the next 30–60 days.

3. Download all my products for FREE: Ranging from every resource I ever read to everything I know about content creation. It’s all waiting for you to claim it. Start your journey to financial freedom the right way.

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And if you've got a moment, I'd love to hear what you thought of this edition of Ascend 101.

Send me a quick message – I reply to every email!

I’m a big email fanboy.

You’ve probably realized that already by now. But man I just love writing and sending these emails.

It’s enjoyable to think about and create your story. It’s enjoyable to play this little game of “How can I relate this ridiculous thing to something of value for my audience?”

It’s also fulfilling to see the enthusiastic responses flooding in after you made an engaging and entertaining email. It’s great knowing that you’re able to put a smile on people’s faces by sharing your story via a medium almost everyone nowadays has access to.

Because of that I always convince people to create their own newsletter and experience the same joy that I get to experience.

With that comes the educational part of convincing people why having an email list is so crucial as a creator. But it also includes the technical part of educating people on how to create a newsletter and what the best practices are for growing one.

It’s at this point that I’m often surprised when I hear how many people aren’t aware of Beehiiv yet.

Either they don’t know about the platform and use another one like Substack (eww) or ConvertKit (still slightly eww). Or worse. They don’t have their own newsletter, don’t realize the amazing potential of owning an email list, or worst of all. They aren’t even aware of the possibility of starting their own.

Because of those reasons I deem it my mission to repeat this once again. Very clearly this time. How amazing having an email list is and why you should at least consider trying out Beehiiv.

Beehiiv is slick and it has a bunch of tools that other email providers don't have. Like a nice-looking website, straight out of the box, that doubles as your email archive. This one alone makes it better than ConvertKit already. The ability to archive your past mails.

Nothing is ever lost.

No article, paragraph, sentence, or word is wasted. You can write something once and it’ll remain useful for years to come. You can keep directing traffic to your articles. That’s what the giants such as Justin Welsh and Dan Koe do. That’s where they get the most of their traffic from.

Beehiiv also has an amazing referral program. Recommendations from and to other newsletters. And an ad network if you want to monetize your newsletter that way.

Just as important:

More than any other email platform I've directly used or indirectly heard about, Beehiiv is stable and reliable. It doesn't crash. It doesn't lock up. It doesn't fail to send out emails you meant to send and it doesn't sneakily send out emails you didn't mean to send.

But really, try it out for yourself and see. Maybe it's not for you. Or maybe you will love it.

There's no risk either way. Because Beehiiv is free to start using and to continue using indefinitely — for sending emails and for the website.

You only have to pay something if you wanna upgrade to some of the fancier growth and monetization tools — which I've done because it's well worth the money for me, and because I've decided to stick with Beehiiv for the long term.

So like I said, I encourage you to give it a try. But I know that encouragement, good arguments, and lists of shiny features are often not enough to get people to move.

So I'll give you a bit of encouragement.

And if you try out Beehiiv using my affiliate link, I will hop on a call with you to help you figure out 1) what to write about 2) how to best promote your newsletter 3) and how to monetize it.

If you're interested, here's what to do:

1. Head to Beehiiv using this link: https://www.beehiiv.com/?via=alexvandromme

2. Sign up for a free account. You don't have to sign up for anything paid. I am counting on Beehiiv's quality and service to convince you to do that.

3. Once you've signed up, reply to this email with proof of the confirmation email you get from Beehiiv and I’ll get back to you. There’s a 48-hour deadline on this offer to help you with your procrastination. You’re welcome.

Music is a big part of my life.

Both listening to, playing, and creating my own. Although I’m still in the early stages of learning how to create music.

I’ve been playing the piano for over 7 and I’ve picked up a classical guitar a few years back. But I haven’t made a whole lot of progress on the guitar if I’m honest.

I played a bit of flamenco on that one. But that didn’t last long.

Aside from playing those two instruments I’m extremely into film music and music orchestration in general. I’ve got a whole playlist filled with over 80+ suites of music from different films.

Yes almost everything from Hans Zimmer is included. His music has been a great inspiration for me during this journey.

But it’s much more than that.

For example I recently found myself in a phase of being fascinated by both old Viking-inspired music and Mongolian throat singing.

There’s something of beauty to hear how other cultures developed their music.

The reason why I’m sharing this is to make it clear that my music taste differs vastly and not everything is as widely available.

For that reason I find it almost impossible to use Spotify. All of the music I listen to is from YouTube because Spotify doesn’t have nearly as much of the “weird” music.

I’m also not downloading every single YouTube video I like so I almost always have at least 1 YouTube tab open on my PC to listen to my music.

But this comes with a drawback that I just experienced 30 minutes ago. (And why I’m writing this email). I went to one of my favorite compilation videos of Norse music. Upon arriving at said video all I saw was “Video unavailable”.

Now it might be just temporarily taken down by the owner. Or it might have been taken down permanently for some reason. I have no idea.

But this goes to show you that everything which you don’t fully own can (and will) be lost eventually. Even the audience you’re building on social media.

The news about Zuckerberg’s new social media platform Threads is already spreading like wildfire. We have no idea what will happen to Twitter (or Threads).

We have no idea how long Twitter will keep existing. It doesn’t even have to go so far.

At any moment something could happen to your account. You could lose it. You could get hacked. You could get banned. Any of these situations will end up in you losing everything you’ve built.

That’s where an email list comes in. You are on my list. You are reading this email.

Whatever happens to my Twitter account doesn’t matter. I can always contact you right here.

Even if Beehiiv (my newsletter platform) shuts down. I can always export my email list and start using another service.

This is mine and can’t be taken away.

We think something like this would never happen. Until it’s too late.

So stop wasting time. Don’t be reliant on the social media platforms you’re using. Secure the safety of your work. Start building your email list today.

Here’s a fun fact for you:

Sharks have been around longer than the rings of Saturn.

Yes. Seriously. Sharks first emerged on our planet 450 million years ago. While Saturn’s rings have only been around for a measly 400 million years.

Now I don’t know about you but this baffles me. Especially because you don’t think about stuff like this in your everyday life. Most of us aren’t even aware of how old sharks actually are.

We see them on TV or social media once in a while and say “Oh yeah a shark, cool”. But that’s it. I’m sorry what? We don’t appreciate the fact that they are literally 450 million years old.

But Jurassic Park is all the rage. Because those are dinosaurs. And dinosaurs are so cool because they’re ancient, pre-historic, animals.

Do you realize a Tyrannosaurus rex lived at the end of the Late Cretaceous? A time period that dates back to 90 million years ago. Not even close to the ancientness of our finned friends.

And before you ask. No I didn’t know this either. A friend brought up this fact and a quick internet search expanded and confirmed my knowledge about this topic.

But I get it. I know why this crazy fact isn’t common knowledge. And why the “ancient” dead animals are cooler and more ‘appreciated’ than sharks.

It all boils down to human psychology.

We have sharks. We know all about them. They’re here.

Dinosaurs aren’t.

We’re fascinated by everything that isn’t instead of everything that is. We love thinking about what it would be like to have lived together with dinosaurs. While we can’t fantasize about living with sharks. Because that’s normal everyday life.

We know what that’s like.

We want what we can’t have. You’ve experienced this many times in your life before as well. Ever wanted something so badly? Only to end up not caring about it once you got it.

Or maybe it was the other way around. You didn’t care about something before you lost it. And that’s when it suddenly dawned on you just how much you actually had.

How important it was and how grateful you should’ve been.

Now think about how you can adapt this to work to your advantage. In your business perhaps. Think about how limiting the people you work with or qualifying people before you work with them can actually increase the value of your service.

Even though it’s still the exact same offer. Nothing’s changed. But people will want it more once they realize not everyone can get it. It’s a rare thing to be seen working with you.

So that being said.

I only take on 4 people to work with at a time and you have to fill out a qualifying questionnaire beforehand. I don’t work with people who I feel don’t have what it takes to make it as a creator.

So if you think you have what it takes to make it as a creator. Then apply to work with me to build your business, optimize your funnel, automate your process, and start earning while working less than 3 hours a day.

I went bowling as a team-building event with some people from my chess club yesterday.

You have to know. I like sports in general. I like to be outside and be active.

Mostly because I’m good at most of those activities.

But also because the general vibe is always nice and I’m in love with the feeling of progression. Especially if it’s some kind of physical progression.

Seeing yourself gradually improve at tennis, bowling, baseball, bouldering, and all other sports in existence. That’s got to be one of the best feelings out there.

Ironically enough. I absolutely suck at bowling. My first 5 throws were all in the gutter. I wasn’t off to a great start.

But I didn’t give up.

I started to dissect why I was throwing so awfully and started making small improvements. Throw after throw I started improving and I ended up scoring 1 to 3 points here and there for the next couple of throws.

But then it happened.

I got ready. Ball in hand. Looking at those 10 pins in front of me. I started making that little silly walk you do before you throw your ball. I aimed my trajectory dead-center. Locked my eyes on that middle pin and threw my ball.

As it always happened, I tended to overshoot to the left and it went off course. But I ended up knocking down 5 pins!

That’s nothing to boast about.

But it was the best feeling ever for me. I realized I was gradually improving. 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 3, 1, 2, 5. That’s what improvement looks like right there.

From there on out I became more consistent and started throwing better balls. At the end of the game I ended up scoring a few 7’s, 8’s, 9’s, and even a spare!

Needless to say. I was last for both games we played. But I just know the next game I play won’t be the same.

After our bowling session I played 3 games of pool against one of the friends I was with.

I won all 3 of those.

I always had a better talent for pool. Much more than bowling. The fact that I used to play pool once or twice a month back in high school helps as well.

But I’m not here to boast about my pool skill or (lack of) bowling skills. I’m here to drive home a crucial life lesson.

We all have our own unique talents in life.

Some activities/skills come naturally to us while others don’t. But a lack of talent doesn’t mean you can’t become good or even great.

I (clearly) didn’t have a talent for bowling. But with practice, experimentation, and consistency I, too, can become a decent bowler.

That’s the same with writing, content creation, funnel building, marketing, and sales. No matter your talent, previous experience, or current knowledge. You can become a great creator and build an online business that gets you paid while working less than 3 hours a day.

This Friday I sent out an email explaining how I last half my email list overnight.

In case you missed that email. No worries. Nothing truly bad happened. I simply cleaned up my email list.

But I ended that email by asking people to reply. It could be anything they wanted. A simple “hey”, “banana” or a question you’d like answered. The purpose was to get some more replies to help out with the quality of my newsletter.

This helps me avoid the spam folder in the future.

I didn’t think much of it. I wasn’t expecting a lot of replies. I mean why would you bother? I wasn’t giving much in return. But boy was I wrong.

I got a tremendous amount of responses. It took me hours to respond to every single one. So from the bottom of my heart. Thank you.

I appreciate you. You stuck around in my email list after the clean-up for a reason. And it shows.

Because of that I’d like to give back. It would feel wrong to get so much support and not give 10x as much value back to you.

So with that said. Here’s what I’m offering today.

I’ve written quite a lot of words, articles, newsletter issues, giveaways, courses, you name it.

I’ve been in this game for almost 6 months and I during that time I’ve been building the habit of writing for 1–2 hours first thing in the morning. Long story short. I have a lot of useful resources available to share.

Reply to this email with ANY problem you’re facing regarding building your creator business.

This could be growth, positioning, offer creation, lead flow generation, funnel building, writing frameworks, mindset shifts, automation tools, or even my opinions about certain courses of others.

I’ll probably have something in my arsenal that can help you. And if I don’t I’ll create one right then and there.

You have nothing to lose.

The solution to your problem might be one email away.

Looking forward to hearing your responses.