My mother joined my email list yesterday.
She doesn’t speak or understand English. So she never quite got to read any of my emails, articles, tweets, or anything else for that matter.
But apparently yesterday Gmail introduced this new functionality where Google Translate could automatically translate emails from English to Dutch. Or at least, we discovered it could do that yesterday.
So she signed up and will now start receiving my massive amount of spam value and entertainment.
If you’ve been on my email list for a few weeks you might remember the story about how I tricked my father into starting his fitness journey. I even introduced him to Dan Koe. He liked it so much that he started binge-watching some of his YouTube videos.
And he’s on my email list as well.
So it’s safe to say this is officially becoming a small family undertaking.
That being said. With both my parents on my email list.
From now on I’m forced to play the part of the perfect son, the good and virtuous Christian son who does nothing wrong and only thinks nice and peaceful thoughts.
…
On second thought.
No. Fuck that.
I’ll say what I want to say, how I want, and when I went to. No matter who joins my email list or what people expect of me. This is my email list, my territory, my piece of digital real estate, and more importantly. This is my world.
Which brings me to the topic of world-building. Something that’s been on my mind almost 24/7 lately.
How many people do you come across where you can confidently say, “Oh this looks like that guy’s stuff”?
How often do you see stuff that reminds you of Hormozi-inspired short-form videos/Dan Koe-inspired one-person business philosophy/Russel Brunson-inspired funnels/Dan Kennedy-inspired sales letters/Justin Welsh or Tim Ferriss-inspired weekly newsletters?
The list goes on.
Even Alex Hormozi’s $100M Leads book launch screamed “Russel Brunson perfect webinar script”.
Now, I’m not saying all of those people invented all of those things. Far from it. But they for sure popularized it. Funnels and Dream 100s weren’t new when Russel Brunson started using them. But it wasn’t as popular back then.
And that’s my point. I don’t want any of that. I’m not aiming to build my business, my brand, or my world so that people can dissect it and recognize what tactics/strategies/frameworks come from which people who came before me.
No. It’s my world and mine alone. The goal is to build it in such a way that it can’t be compared to any other business out there. If it could, it wouldn’t really be mine. It’d be a cheap knock-off.
But here’s the thing. There are 2 problems with this.
Firstly. Building your own world is hard. Like extremely difficult. There’s no checklist you can use. No framework you can copy. No intelligent imitation you can rely on. No advice you can listen to.
There’s none of that. If there was, it wouldn’t really be yours. If it was as simple as following a roadmap to building your own world. Would it really be your world?
But that’s what almost everyone you know is doing. They’re following a roadmap made by other people. Essentially becoming a knock-off brand of the bigger guy. And indirectly affiliating for their brand.
Here’s a simple example. How many people have you seen who talk about becoming 1% better every day as one of the core tenets of their brand/personality/business/belief? And what does this make you think of?
Exactly. You’ll think about James Clear and Atomic Habits.
All of these people are affiliating, indirectly, for James Clear. They aren’t building anything worthwhile of their own.
This brings us to the second problem.
Becoming a knock-off copy of someone else’s brand works… in the short term.
Sure you’ll get some success. After all, you’re relying on pre-validated ideas. Those people you’re copying are successful. And their ideas are as well.
So it’s only logical people will resonate with what you have to say. And in a way they’ll think they resonate with you as a person. But that’s just it.
You’re not really building anything worthwhile. At least not over the long term.
You haven’t built a world of your own. The relationship and trust you’ve got with your audience is based on counterfeit beliefs.
As soon as something happens, that bond breaks. And you can be certain something will happen sooner or later if you plan on doing this for 10+ years.
I can talk for hours about this topic. It’s one I’m deeply passionate about. And the sole reason why I'll keep fighting to defend my beliefs. My visions. My world view. And my world.
Yes it’ll be slower. But it’ll last longer and be more impactful.
And since you’ve spent the past few minutes in my world now. Here’s another part of my world. It’s called Simple Money Emails and it’s the one and only email system I use to make sales and keep my readers reading day after day.
Check it out here if that’s something you’d like to do yourself: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/SME