I’ve been gradually getting more passive email subscribers the past few days.

All because I took the time to create and host my very own WordPress site, publish all of my emails online, and learn some of the basics of SEO and making it so my emails (or “posts” as WordPress calls them) show up in search engines.

This combined with Beehiiv’s Boost function, and me teasing my Email Valhalla course on sign-up also means I’m semi-passively (I still have to write the emails after all) earning an income because of it.

Not only that, but I’ll keep earning based on past emails I’ve written—emails that will only grow in numbers and get better in quality the more I write.

To me there’s truly no better business model out there.

Find me another business where you can earn a living by writing whenever you want, from wherever you want, all the while helping people accomplish their own dreams, getting thank-you emails on the regular, and, last but not least, do all of this without a income ceiling limited by any one resource such as time, distribution, money, or costs.

I applaud anyone building a coaching business, working as a freelancer, owning their own agency, or any other service-based business for that matter—let alone selling physical products.

But that’s not for me (at least not yet, who knows when the Banana Viking merchandise might be released?)

I like to keep it simple, efficient, and with a freedom-first aspect.

Anyway.

If you’re only using social media to get leads, you’re seriously missing out.

Go get your online real estate up and running.

And if you’re not even building your own email list yet, what are you waiting for?

Check out Email Valhalla today and get started right away: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a high school reunion.

There I saw so many of the recognizable faces who made up the bigger part of my 6 years in high school quite a while ago, some of whom I’ve kept in touch with and have regularly seen after high school, others I hadn’t seen for over 5, 6, or 7 years.

And the craziest thing to me wasn’t how much some people have changed, that’s certainly fun to see (and talk about). No, the craziest thing was how LITTLE some people changed.

Which is quite saddening to think about.

Here are people who had something going for them, who were developing themselves in high school, had support all around them, yet somehow, someway, that same support suddenly stopped after high school graduation.

They got pushed into a career they weren’t keen about, were forced to do stuff they didn’t want (but other people wanted for them) and they lost their spark.

They stopped innovating. They stopped experimenting. They stopped trying.

Essentially, they stagnated.

Which, just as in business as in life, means death.

If you’re not growing, you’re dying goes the saying. And that’s absolutely true in every regard.

You could be the biggest business in your market for years, even decades. But the moment you stop growing, you start to crumble and fade away. Others will start catching up. Others will pass you by. You will become forgotten and obsolete.

There’s also no point arguing or getting mad about this.

That’s just the way things go.

It’s up to you to decide what to do with this information. Realize this truth and try to make the best of it or act as if it isn’t true and slowly, sometimes even unknowingly, wither away until there’s nothing left.

So many people are alive, yet not living.

And like so, many businesses exist, yet aren’t functioning.

Now, I don’t know about you. But I’d rather accept this truth at face value, and rightly act upon it—growing both my business and myself.

Anyway.

I’m not the personal guru teaching you self-growth (maybe I sometimes do, if so, that’s an accidental benefit). But I can help you grow your business, especially when it comes to your marketing and your email game.

If that’s your jam, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Yesterday I promoted my clarity/consulting calls.

At first, I was hesitant to do this—which is ironic because that’s how I first got started building this business, as a consultant.

The thing is, I’ve since grown.

I adapted my business to better suit my needs, likes, and wants, while keeping it valuable, interesting, and (where possible) optimal for you and everyone else who benefits from my products and services.

During that process, I’ve come to learn a couple of things.

One of those being: I don’t enjoy building a consulting business. I do offer such calls once in a while, but I never (not anymore at least) take on long-term clients, let alone advertise a long-term coaching program.

Those don’t do it for me.

They’re a massive time-suck, they limit your ceiling, and lastly, but not least importantly, I don’t enjoy doing them—which is one of the main business pillars I base every decision on.

I’ve come to learn that productizing your business, aka turning your knowledge, experience, and everything service-related you provided into products, especially digital ones you can reproduce and sell infinitely without any time or resource investments.

You build it once and sell it twice so to say.

This is the true way to scale your business, alongside your freedom (and your enjoyment as well if you keep it simple, which is always the most optimal way to function).

I made ok money back when I focused on consulting.

But it wasn’t until I focused all of my efforts on building my email list and productizing my experience that everything truly started to pick up pace and I was finally heading in the right direction.

Now, I’m not saying to do a full 180 and turn your coaching business, your agency, your freelance service business, or whatever you have into a 100% productized business.

But it’s definitely something you might consider to slowly start doing.

None of this happens overnight.

All that’s to say.

There’s no arguing that taking this approach, productizing your service-based business, is the optimal long-term move, and you’ll ultimately be very glad you made that choice.

And if you’d like to get started ideating, building, and profitably launching digital products in a way that makes it effortless, efficient, easy, and faster than anything you’ve ever seen.

Then definitely check out Product Creation Made Easy.

Click here to read more about it: https://alexvandromme.com/pcme

With my backpack on my back, a bottle of water and some sandwiches packed, and a destination in mind (to meet up with some old friends) I walked 17km in a little over 3 hours.

That’s what I did yesterday.

It’s the most I’ve ever walked in my life (so far).

And I’m glad I did it.

In fact, I wasn’t quite sure if I could do this right now. The opportunity arose (meeting friends in a location 17km from my house) and I just went for it. Skipping my original 10km practice walk I had planned to slowly build up the distance.

That said.

It wasn’t without challenges. From the 2-hour mark I started seriously feeling it. My body clearly wasn’t used to walking these distances.

But hey, nobody improves without pushing themselves once in a while.

Now, maybe walking just isn’t something for you. In that case this email doesn’t interest you nor motivate you whatsoever.

But you might be interest in learning how to build and write to your email list to improve the relationship you have with your audience, help them accomplish their goals, and increase your revenue in the process.

If so, then definitely check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

It’s really ironic how I’m the person saying this.

See, I used to hate reading books. School forced me to write book assignments on stuff I didn't even care about, sucking all the joy out of it and making it feel like a job instead of enjoyment.

But I gave reading another go in late 2022.

And boy how everything changed. First of all, I got recommended to read the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson and immediately fell in love. I then bought myself the Stormlight archive and I'm already through the first two books.

In fact, I loved it so much that I bought a whole load of other fantasy novels and even started writing my own.

(I’m currently reading LOTR and ASOIAF)

But enough about that.

Why should YOU start to read?

Well, for one, marketing essentially boils down to telling a great story.

And if you want to be good at telling stories, then you'll first need to learn what makes up a great story and truly surround yourself with them.

You'll also learn what makes people emotional, how to use your writing to not just make people know what happened but to make them FEEL what happened.

To make them part of the story, almost as if it's happening all around them.

You want to grab their attention and suck them into your world so hard they'll never want to leave again and won't even think about buying from someone else.

That's what true writing is capable of.

And that's why, if you look it up, many of the top marketers and copywriters would spend hours reading, listening, and watching stories—many of them even write their own fiction.

So go get yourself a book (preferably one you truly enjoy) and start reading.

And if you want a place where you can apply what you’ve learned and share it with others, while getting paid for it. Then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Complexity seems to be “in” right now, unfortunately.

And it makes no sense at all.

Everywhere you look, you’ll see some new social media influencer praising his new 50-step funnel, his 30 different opt-in pages, with 15 different lead magnets, for which he’s using 100 different ads, each meticulously being tracked to determine the optimal copy, creative, targeting settings, and every other option you could ever imagine.

The irony is that the same influencer, in reality, has no idea what they’re doing, is putting in hundreds of hours to get this all to work, and might only be getting a 5% increase in total revenue for his effort (if he’s even getting an increase in revenue at all).

See, both in live and in business, it’s always the simple solutions that perform best.

I’m obviously biased when I say this.

But I’ve never seen it not be the case, where a simple solution not only allows someone to 1) free up more time to work on more important things or not have to work at all, and instead spend their time doing the things they love most in life 2) understand how everything functions a lot better and a lot clearer, making it not only much easier to make their solutions perform better but almost guaranteeing the success of the effort they put in and 3) if they happen to work with clients, they’ll undoubtedly get better results because of how easy and simple it is to both explain their frameworks and implement the framework in the client’s business.

While complexity looks cooler and might attract newbies and shiny object addicts…It’s the simple solutions that attract the best customers, get the most optimal results, and make for a more enjoyable experience.

See, I have three main business pillars: simplicity, freedom, and enjoyment. If something doesn’t align with one of those pillars, I don’t do it.

And that should tell you a lot about my business models.

Anyway.

If you’d like to see for yourself how to thrive with a simple email business, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

In 136 days, on the 9th of August, I’ll be joining a long-distance march of 100 kilometers (walked in less than 24 hours) aptly named the “Dodentocht” (Dutch for Death March).

I’ve never done anything like this.

In fact, I’ve never been hiking or going on long-distance walks before. The only “long-distance” walking I’ve ever done before where a few times when I had to walk home after a night out or when I didn’t have any other transport at that time, and those walks never took longer than 2 hours at most.

With that said.

I’ve got a lot of training to do. Walking 100km is no easy feat. But I just know I’m able to do this if I put my mind to it. If I put in the work and start building up slowly but surely.

In fact, I’ve started going on some walks in the past few days already.

I’ll start with some nice 5–10km walks, then bump it up to 20–30 and so on. I’ve got exactly 19 weeks to get to my goal. And that’s more than enough time.

Another benefit, beside the health-related ones, is the increased creativity you get from going on a walk. I don’t know how or why it works. But for some reason, and this has been confirmed to be the case scientifically, anecdotally, and some other -ally I can’t think of right now, something about walking in nature, letting your mind wander, being away from distraction, and going about your ways helps your brain organize everything and heightens your creativity.

Just try it out for yourself.

You’ll get so many ideas you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Emails, sales pages, videos, tweets, LinkedIn posts, articles, products, you name it, going on a walk makes the creation of those 10x easier.

All you need is your feet to move and somewhere to jot down the ideas you get while walking.

Anyway.

I’m off to go walking right now.

And afterwards I’ll write some more content, create some more products, and earn some more money while doing so. If you’d like to learn how to build your Email Empire to get you paid for sharing your ideas through email and creating products or offering your services to people to help them improve their lives.

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

I was watching an interview with Christopher Nolan on the ReelBlend podcast the other day.

One of the most interesting things Nolan said was how he didn’t go to film school.

Just imagine that. One of the biggest, best, and definitely one of the most popular, directors currently around. Yet he didn’t go to film school or any other form of formal training in the art.

Instead, he simply got in there and started practicing making films at an early age.

Nolan was seven years old when he first borrowed his dad’s Super 8 camera to play around with.

He loved watching other films, thinking about the narratives, and just indulging himself in the world of cinema.

But that’s not where our story ends.

Christopher Nolan isn’t the only person where this is the case. Coincidentally, another big industry name who works closely together with Nolan, and someone who, as you may (or may not) know, I can’t seem to shut up about, also didn’t have any formal training.

More specifically, Hans Zimmer.

Zimmer never went to music school. Instead, he used to play in rock/punk band when he was younger and loved to improve music on the piano or create his own compositions.

Now, this isn’t to say the only solution for you is to start young.

Maybe it is if you want to compete at the highest level of Hollywood. But I’m guessing that’s not your gig. And it’s not mine either.

Instead, I want you to realize the importance of going out there in putting in the work. Getting the practical experience. Getting your hands dirty so to say. You don’t have to get some formal schooling to be good at your craft (this isn’t medical advice).

I don’t care how if you’ve gone to business school, med school, music school, or no school at all.

The only thing that matters is how often you’re practicing your craft.

And that’s one of the many, many, seriously many, reasons why I recommend you and everybody else to start mailing daily and start doing so today. The amount of growth you’ll experience is almost unfathomable—both in personal ability as well as in business and revenue growth.

You don’t need to go to email or business school to get started.

But getting a quick 1–2 hour introduction to point you in the right direction never hurts.

With that said.

Check out Email Valhalla to learn the foundations and avoid the early pitfalls so you can focus on getting in there and getting that practice in starting today.

Here’s the link for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Once in a while, I’ll receive a question similar to the following one I received recently:

===

I don’t feel ready and don’t think I have enough knowledge to create something to sell as a product. I don't want to rip people off by making a course that won't help them.

What should I do?

===

And I get it.

I’ve been there myself.

It’s so easy to get stuck in your own echo chamber of people you know, things you do, tips & tricks you know, experiences you’ve shared with others, and overall knowledge you’ve learned.

Everything you know seems obvious to you because you know it.

But that certainly isn’t the case for other people.

I can guarantee this: you can many facts & figures others do not, you’ve done countless things others haven’t even thought about, you’ve picked up hundred of lessons, went through thousands of small periods of trial & error, and talked to god-knows-how-many people from all sort of backgrounds, with all sorts of experiences, who all left their imprint on you, leaving you with a 100%—this isn’t even up for debate—unique perspective on life and everything that (doesn’t) interest you.

Yet you still wonder if you’ve got anything useful to offer to people?

Answer me this:

Is there something, anything, you know in life that helps you?

The answer is yes. Obviously. There are many such things you know.

Now think about stuff you know that helps you on a daily basis, doing things you like, things you’re passionate about and could talk about for hours.

That’s useful information.

Especially for people who want to do the same things—not the ones who’re already doing the same things, the ones you know and look up to, the ones you’re surrounded with who got you thinking “everyone knows this” in the first place.

Now your next question should be: “So how do I get these people together, show them I know my stuff, and sell my new product?”

Well, I’m glad you asked.

Because I’ve got just the thing for you. Let me introduce to you Email Valhalla. It’s my flagship course which will teach you how to build your Email Empire where you can grow your list, build your authority, get people to trust you, and consistently and efficiently sell your products—ones that’ll actually help them.

Click here to find out more about Email Valhalla: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/valhalla

I spent 3 hours working on a tiny logo for the new website I’m creating to host my blogs and products on.

Why did I spend 3 hours creating a logo (especially when the website isn’t even finished yet)?

There’s no doubt in my mind that I could’ve spent my time a whole lot better, working on more productive tasks, doing stuff that actually gets me paid, and creating content that actually adds value to other people’s lives.

In fact.

This is the first time I’ve ever taken time out of my day to work on creating a proper logo (or at least for this business).

I never bothered before simply because it’s not profitable. A logo doesn’t make or break a business. No matter how good the logo may look, it won’t help you increase your monthly revenue.

Most people would be better off focusing their attention elsewhere.

Improving their offers. Getting more traffic. Creating more products. Talking to more leads. Everything but creating a logo.

But here’s the thing.

I’ve been doing a lot of that already. For quite a while actually. And just recently I gained a whole new understanding of the direction I want this business to go—something that’ll no doubt change again eventually.

But I’ve got big plans, a grand vision, and a ton of clarity for now. Not to mention a lot of motivation (and discipline).

So what does this logo have to do with anything?

Well, it’s a token.

A sign of a new beginning. A new page in my adventure. The start of the next chapter. It embodies everything I’ve achieved, learned, and experienced so far. It’s a reminder of my past journey and, more importantly, everything that’s still to come.

Looking at it makes me smile as well put me in the right mood, the right setting, the world that I’ve built so far.

And if there’s anything I’ve learned so far about (online) writing. It’s that your writing transcends the pure literal meaning of the words you share.

Your readers quite literally get a glimpse of your vision, your feelings, and if you’re doing things correctly, then they might even be able to join that world (and if that world is built with care and dedication, then they might love that world so much they don’t ever want to leave anymore).

Anyway.

That’s a lot of high-level, big-vision, philosophical business advice.

So let’s keep it practical for this last bit.

None of this could’ve been made, realized, and built if it wasn’t for my religiously building a list, writing it every day, and plugging my products that help improve my reader’s businesses (and lives by extension).

If you’d like how to build and write to your own email list, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/valhalla