Something to think about:

As a general rule of thumb, I believe that everything "for the masses" is dumbed down, lacks refinement, and is devoid of intrinsic meaning, value, or thought (that goes for everything from movies, music, and yes, even (especially) the stuff you learn from your favorite big-name guru or whatever’s written inside that New York Times bestseller everyone’s been yapping about for years).

Let me clarify.

Everyone’s different in some way or another.

Everyone has different likes, believes, interests, tastes, opinions, and many other things that shape a person into who they are. Whether this is because of their surroundings, their genes, or something else entirely doesn’t matter in this case.

People are different, and there’s no getting around it.

We, as a species, simply can’t collectively agree with anything (even with this statement—proving the point in the process, as paradoxical as that sounds).

So, to circle back to why this matters, if people are all different, and they can’t agree with anything, then everything that’s trying to appeal to as many people as possible (aka, anything that gets a lot of attention and praise by tons of people—which is always by designs, don’t let anyone convince you otherwise) has to be made as general, as widely accepted, and as simple as possible.

Or in other words.

It has to be dumbed down to the point where it’s (almost—nothing is absolute) devoid of value for any single individual—no matter the lie they tell themself or the lies other people/society are instilling into them (cognitive dissonance is one hell of a force, I’m telling you).

There’s a lot going on here.

Many forces are at play.

Each of which could arm me with many, many emails to talk about each of them in detail.

This email is one of the least precise, and most vague ones I’ve written in a while, by design, because of the nature of the topic.

As with anything, if any of this tickled your fancy, got you interested in something, both positive or negative, whether you agree with what I wrote or not, I advise you to go do some research on your own.

Educate yourself on the words and principles talked about in this email (as well as those I haven’t mentioned), come up with a hypothesis of what’s going on on your own, try to test & design some theories. Then finally see how they stack up with the examples you come across.

Or don’t and just reply with an angry email telling me I’m wrong because you said so—that seems to be what the cool kids do nowadays.

But enough about that.

I don’t have anything to offer to you that’s “for the masses”. Instead I have useful, valuable, and insightful training information that’ll help you write better converting emails to grow your list and sell more products (or services, whatever floats your goats), especially for those who run a business on their own and are looking to scale their business beyond what they’re already doing.

You can find out more about that by clicking this link: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

At least not your ideal customers.

For one, everything useful can be found online for free. There’s no arguing about that. Even more. All of the most useful pieces of information are already known by your customers, your readers, and almost everyone else in the market.

So people aren’t buying value.

They’re buying adventure, cool tips and tricks, exciting so-called “secrets”(which are nothing more than gimmicks that only make up 1%–2% of the final outcome—and which won’t help anyone who doesn’t already have the foundation down), and most importantly, they buy a new perspective, or in other words, new insights.

This is what those “give everything away for free” people are missing (what’s free isn’t being valued, let alone used and implement) as well as the people who swear you need to hard teach, educate, and share as much “value” as you possible can.

Spoiler, you don’t.

Just take a look at my emails (or anyone else running a successful business you admire for that matter). I’m not teaching you how to do stuff (at least not for free).

I’m sharing tips with you every single day, yes.

But not about how to do something.

I’m sharing tips about what to think about, how to look at the things going on in your market, new ways you might consider approaching opportunities you have, or other insightful realizations that lead you towards better knowing what to focus on (as opposed to a step-by-step plan on how to do something).

Speaking about how-to content.

If, by any chance (no idea why that would happen), made the realization, or gotten the insights, that, perhaps, building a list and writing daily emails to better build a relationship with your ideal customer, write better, more targeted content, and sell more high-quality products, and getting thanked for it by your customer, if you realized that might be a good way to go about things…

Then do check out Email Valhalla where I do indeed teach more about the exact steps you can take to do exactly that.

Tickles your fancy?

Then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Here’s a weird observation I made recently:

The more responsibility I take on, aka the more stuff I have to do each and every day, the more work I get done each and every day.

Which, while reading it right now, you might think “uh, yeah, no shit Sherlock.”

But if you’d look at every productivity book out there or listen to any so-called productivity experts, you’ll always hear the same advice of only taking on a couple (2 or 3) of tasks each day, as to not to overwhelm you with the amount of stuff you have to do—for which the reasoning is, the more stuff you do, the more stress you have, the less stuff you get done, so you better take on less responsibility and make sure to only do the important stuff.

But that’s not at all what I found to be true in my own life.

In my experience, it goes something like this:

The less I have to do, the more time I have to do these things, the lazier I am, the less I do, and then because of that laziness I sometimes even procrastinate on those 2 or 3 important things I was supposed to do.

That’s something that, once again, never ever happened to me when I had a lot, some might even say way too much, stuff on my plate.

In that case, I knew there was no time to fuck around, no time to be lazy, and I’d get to work all day every day

Resulting in me getting ten times as much stuff throughout the day as I would otherwise.

Goes to show you to not blindly trust other people’s advice and test things out for yourself.

Anyway.

I thought this might be an interesting observation to share with you.

Speaking of which.

Another observation I made is that people who bought Email Valhalla have, on average, a much more successful business and write much better converting emails that make sales and keep their readers engaged and wanting more.

If you’d like to learn more about Email Valhalla, then click here now: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Today I received a sponsor request from some newsletter (which I won’t name for obvious reasons) about using AI to grow your LinkedIn account.

I immediately declined it—no hesitation whatsoever.

But it did get me thinking.

What’s the deal with the latest obsession about everything AI? Why does everything you do, including everything you create, everything that’s personal, has meaning, stands for something, everything that’s priceless in a way, has to be replaced (or at least, people try to replace it) with AI?

It’ll only end up being a cheap knock-off, without any intrinsic meaning, without any deeper intention behind it, without any soul.

Sure use AI were it makes sense.

In fact, we’ve already been using AI for decades in many use cases across countless of domains. Only then people still knew what AI actually meant and nobody was fanboying about it as if it’s the second coming of Christ.

But that aside, why on Earth, would you want to use AI to replace the creative things people do?

And even then, if you’re trying to use AI to grow your LinkedIn brand or whatever, then you clearly haven’t thought about what it means to “build a brand” or what the purpose of trying to grow (anything) on LinkedIn even is.

Spoiler: it’s not to fill a spreadsheet.

Not to mention what’ll become of your reputation if you use AI to do all of your ‘dirty work’ (yes it’s that obvious, and that soulless).

And last but not least.

If you honestly think of growing your brand (or anything else for that matter) as ‘dirty work’ you’d rather outsource to AI (or someone else), then, sorry not sorry, you might be in the wrong business and there’s nothing here for you in the first place.

In case this triggers you. Good.

It’s meant to do so.

I’d much rather you get triggered now, feel hurt, attacked, and shamed by what you’re doing (or what you were planning on doing) while risking you hating me and leaving my list for good (always free to do so), than playing nice, not daring to bring this up, making sure you feel cosy and comfortable, never understanding that ChatGPTing your way to building a brand, creating content, selling products, never to have any success whatsoever, not realizing you were doomed to fail from the very start.

That said, I’m not 100% shitting on AI.

As I said, it does have its use cases.

Mainly internal things you’ve got going on. Use it to transcribe audio recordings you made while on a walk or on a meeting. Use it to summarize those same records or other reports you (or other people) made. Maybe even use it to automate the tracking and reporting of your finances or how you’re spending your time.

But for the love of everything that’s holy.

Don’t use it for anything creative (it’ll single-handedly ruin your ability to be creative in the ways that matter) and god forbid you use it to create any form of final product your customers, readers, listeners, fans, or whoever will ever see.

In short, if it sees daylight (either in the form of an end result or a skill you’re practicing), don’t use AI.

I’ll leave it at that for now.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn how to create content, build a brand, and write emails that have soul and meaning in them, then you might want to check out Email Valhalla.

You can do so here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Adding to yesterday’s email of realizing the people who engage with your content aren’t the people who most enjoy it, there’s something else, something highly valuable and important, I thought about.

It didn’t exactly fit the theme and adding it to yesterday’s email would only make things more complicated.

Plus I found it valuable enough to give it its own email.

So here it is:

Being liked doesn’t matter, being respected does.

See, many people want to be liked (which goes hand in hand with getting a lot of engagement on their posts). They’re constantly in need of getting confirmation that what they’re doing is good, and they’re sharing awesome stuff. They want people to tell them how much they love what they’re doing and thank them all the time.

Get them a few naysayers and all hell breaks loose.

I hate to break it to you though, but ‘being’ liked doesn’t pay the bills. Being respected does.

What this means is, people will give compliments to the guy they like, they’ll engage with him, reply to all his stuff, and tell him how amazing his content is, but when it gets down to actually taking out their credit cards and buying some new product they’ve been eyeing for a while, they’ll always purchase from the guy they respect rather than the one they like.

In fact, there’s something to be said that your biggest haters and dislikes are actually your most valuable customers, but that’s something for another time.

Now, I don’t know about you but I’d rather be respected than liked if it meant actually getting paid (in real-life money, not imaginary likes or thank you’s) for what I do.

So how do you go about it?

Well, there are many ways to be respected.

But if I were to name one, just one, that you could start doing today, without any issues, without much work, that’ll have an almost immediate effect, and will keep increasing its effect until nobody dares not to respect you, let alone compete with you, for months, years, even decades (not saying you’ll have to do it for decades, just showing you the absolute power of this), then it would have to be, without a doubt, the act of mailing your list daily, showing up day after day, showing who’s the boss, sharing something every day, never taking any shit, proving you know your shit, and doing it your way.

I know, it ain’t exciting.

It’s nothing new.

But it’s by far the best, most effective, and, dare I say, fastest way to become respected instead of merely being liked (something that isn’t as valuable as you might think at first).

Anyway.

To learn more about the most effective way to send daily emails, build up a reputation, show your readers you know your shit, and do it in a manner that’s easy, simple, and doesn’t take any time whatsoever, but has massive effects for you, both in the short-run as in the long-run, then check out Email Valhalla.

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

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:

===

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.

===

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