One of my earliest coaching clients had an incredibly common problem.

He had one hell of a skillset, was able to generate social media impressions like crazy, yet couldn’t for the life of him get any leads or clients.

Imagine if you were in his shoes.

You’ve got your skills. You know you’re good at it. You generated over 30 million impressions in the last year alone. And yet the only payout you got was some money from the platform for running ads. A measly $500–$1,000 for your troubles.

Not a single client. None whatsoever.

This to me sounds almost laughable nowadays.

But it happens all too often. I literally see it all the time.

And the worst part is that most “experts” who try to help only make it worse.

They’ll tell you to “give more value”, never explaining what value actually means.

They’ll tell you to “give away the sauce for free”. Do you know what happens when you give stuff away for free? No. People won’t “ask you to cook the meal for them”. People will take your free stuff and do everything themselves, or worse, and I’ve seen this happen, they’ll take your free stuff and go to your competitors with the stuff you gave them.

Giving everything away for free is the easiest way to, well, become known as the “free guy” and never get paid. It’s as simple as that.

The problem isn’t your authority. It isn’t a lack of value you’re putting out. It isn’t even that you’re not selling enough. 9 out of 10 it also isn’t your niche or your target market.

All those things are fine just the way they are.

What’s the actual problem you’re dealing with? And how did I solve this for my client?

Simply said.

He followed all the bullshit advice I just listed above. Advice given by people who aren’t even running the type of business he wanted to run.

So I explained to him all of the rookie mistakes he was making—mistakes that only took him a mere 5 minutes to fix. Fixes everyone could make in their business right now and would immediately increase their profit within the next 24 hours.

Then, as a cherry on top.

I taught him something I call the problem mechanism.

Many people know and have a unique mechanism, but they never pay any attention to their problem mechanism.

And what do you know? He started landing clients and making actual money left and right.

I’ve since then used this same method for multiple clients with multiple businesses.

From email marketers to ghostwriters, fitness coaches, course creators, and even someone selling the short-stories they wrote.

It works every single time.

And if you’d like to see a similar transformation in your life, then you’re in luck.

I’ve still got one more spot left for my coaching program where I’ll help you build and grow a successful creator business, covering everything from branding, to offer creation, sales & marketing, and even automation and funnel building.

It ain’t cheap, but I’ve never had someone join the program and not make more money (by a mile) than what they paid me.

If you’d like more information simply reply “Transformation” to this email and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.

I recently got my hands on a small little book called “The 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters” by John Bejakovic.

One of the most interesting paragraphs I’ve read so far is this one:

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I personally think of curiosity as an IOU. You give a couple of IOUs to your reader right in your headline. “I promise to pay you some valuable information,” each IOU says, “just give me a bit of time.” As long as you’re in the reader’s debt, as long as he’s holding one of your IOUs, he sticks around. He wants to get paid. The good thing is that you can give your reader a new IOU before paying off an old one.

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Which brings me to my offer of today—one organized in a unique way you won’t see many other people offer.

(This is probably the most blatant sales pitch you’ve ever seen. I can’t imagine me sending a more blatant sales pitch and talking about my offer more directly than I’m about to do now. Not even the old infomercials you saw on TV could compare to this one. If this bothers you, click away now. I’m telling you. Click away. I’ve warned you. Whatever happens now is because you decided to continue reading. Got it? Ok here we go…)

I’ve got 2 new spots to help creators or business owners like you add $1,000–$5,000/month to their revenue in 3 months or less—regardless of where you’re coming from.

I call this my Ascend Your Business Program where I focus on building simple but effective systems to help you land clients, sell products, and get paid consistently and reliably.

Here’s how it works:

We’ll first create a personalized roadmap just for you. We’ll look at where you are, what you’ve already done, and where you want to go so we can craft the best possible route from A to B.

Afterwards we’ll work on 1) Getting you the right traffic 2) Improving (or creating) your offer 3) Systemizing your client acquisition and 4) Productizing your knowledge so you can get paid even while sleeping.

This process allows you full flexibility.

Whether you want to keep scaling with your 1-on-1 offer or you want to eventually transition out of it and focus solely on selling (digital) products to maximize your freedom. The choice is yours.

To make all of this possible we’ll hop on weekly calls to keep up with your process and guide you to making a hell of a lot more progress (and profit) the next week. Aside from that you’ll have permanent Telegram access to me to ask whatever questions you have whenever you have them.

What’s the investment you ask?

I want to make the offer as affordable as possible for you while also making sure you’re invested in it so you’re bound to make progress and achieve your goals.

So instead of asking for monthly payments like most people do.

I’ve put the investment for the Ascend Your Business Program at $250 per week.

What’s so special about that you ask?

Well, I want to make you feel at ease at all times. You’re the one in control after all. So on top of that, you’re free to leave whenever you want and stop making further payments. No questions asked. If you feel like you’ve got the gist of it after just 3 weeks and feel like you can continue on your own—the ultimate goal of this program—then that’s the end of it.

No more extra payments.

You’ll also be able to start earning early so you don’t have to make a big investment, merely hoping for the best.

Absolutely no risk to you while having an unlimited upside.

How to join the Ascend Your Business Program?

1) Reply “Let’s do this” to this email

2) I’ll get you onboarded

3) We’ll schedule the first call where we’ll create your entire business strategy and get you going at a date & time that best suits you

I posted my very first LinkedIn post yesterday.

More specifically, a story post recapping my journey from January 2023 until today.

It did well—receiving over 40 likes and 1,000 impressions

Better than I expected.

And definitely a lot better than the first X post I’d ever written. Both in quality and engagement.

The quality is nothing surprising.

Who would’ve thought that your writing skills after a year of non-stop daily writing and content creation (going as far as 10+ pieces of content a day sometimes, both long and short-form) would improve—giving a noticeable increase in post-quality?

Funny how that works.

But the engagement part is different.

First, the network I’ve built up over the past year has helped me tremendously.

When I first opened up LinkedIn I immediately found dozens of creators I’ve met and befriended on X, which meant I didn’t have to start from zero—I was even welcomed with applause and open arms, talk about an entrance.

Second.

I didn’t create a ‘fresh’ LinkedIn account.

I already had an old one lying around. One I made a few years back as a sort of resume and to slowly build up my network of people I met in and because of my university—including some of my professors.

Which made for a funny feeling.

See, I’ve never really been very public about what I’m building here.

Aside from my close friends and family, nobody really knew. Twitter (at the time) was completely new for me so that worked out perfectly well.

I also wasn’t going to create a new LinkedIn profile for the sake of it.

So that meant I had a lot of engagement from people who ‘knew’ me, yet had absolutely no idea what I’ve been doing for the past year—which will definitely make for interesting conversations in the future.

I’m still getting the hang of LinkedIn and figuring out what to post and how to do everything.

But it’s looking great so far.

There’s a big lesson in this email if you read between the lines. But other than that, I’ll leave you to it.

Here’s the link to my story (and first LinkedIn post): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/alexvandromme_371-days-ago-i-started-my-online-business-activity-7152708870715424769-hcpC

(and go connect with me while you’re at it)

It’s the 16th of January today.

I’m sitting at my PC, once again, just minutes before this email has to go out. No specific idea prepared so what do I do?

I simply start writing and talk about whatever comes to mind, trying to find a nice story to tell, a lesson to tell, or a principle I discovered to share.

One thing comes to mind.

A few months ago I learned of a new way to instantly create tons of engagement, no matter where or when—but especially on social media. And especially since Zuckerberg’s recent changes to the X algorithm.

You may know (or may not) that recently the algorithm has received plenty of updates.

Updates that made most people who were merely playing business shit in their pants because they noticed their follower count—the only metric that means anything for them since they’ve got nothing better to offer than growing a follower count—isn’t going to grow anymore as it was in the golden days of social media.

No longer does a “10 Google chrome plugins that feel illegal to know” thread give you thousands of followers overnight.

But there’s still one tactic that has the potential to give you a shit ton of engagement.

A tactic rooted in deep human psychology, one powered by a principle so strong people have been using it since the dawn of time when the first humans walked the earth (source: trust me, I was there).

What tactic am I talking about specifically?

Well, it’s the same tactic really that makes grammar nazis wake up every single day, ready to blast you whenever you misplace a comma, whenever you capitalize a word that doesn’t need capitalization, or, god-forbid, whenever you misspell “your” as “you’re” or vice-versa.

It’s the need to correct.

The need to feel important because you’ve got nothing better to do.

Which—luckily for you—makes for great email fodder, engagement, and even tons of profit if you do it right.

Anyway, I’ll keep it here.

Wouldn’t want this email to drag on too long and not get it out on time, would I?

That said.

As you might know if you’ve been reading the last couple of emails. I lost my X account so I’ll be starting anew on Instagram where I’ll probably start posting consistently from tomorrow onwards.

So if you’d like to be a part of this adventure, learn some business, or just chill and hang out with me there, then go click this link right here and follow me: https://www.instagram.com/alexvandromme/

Ascend 101

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

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When I first started creating offers I always omitted bonuses.

I wasn’t aware of them as a marketing tool—let alone know how, when, where, and why to even add them.

But after more than 365 days in the business (yes I’ve officially passed my first year of business anniversary), I now realize just how much value they can add to an offer and how much they can improve your promotion, launch, or whatever it is you’re doing.

This goes for both your own products as well as affiliate promotions.

That said, let me get one thing clear before we start:

No amount of bonuses can make up for a terrible product. If people don’t care about your product, nobody will even bother checking out your bonuses—much less consider purchasing it.

But a few carefully crafted (or curated) bonuses can increase the value of your total offer a hundredfold.

Hell, some people (me included) will buy certain offers or products just to get their hands on one of the bonuses.

With that out of the way, let’s look at some inspiration for the types of bonuses you can add to your product (or someone else’s).

Be aware that this is far from an exhaustive list.

There are an infinite amount of bonuses you could add, especially considering this shouldn’t be limited to just your stuff. You could easily partner up with other people and come up with bonuses you could create, curate, or organize together.

But I know how difficult it can be to come up with ideas if there’s too many options to choose from, so that’s why I’ll limit this section to just 5 examples.

Example 1) Different formats (audio vs written)

This one is fairly straightforward and doesn’t require a lot of work.

If you’ve made a written course, then add an audio version of it where you record yourself either going through the course and explaining certain topics or adding additional information and personal insights/examples.

If you’ve made an audio or video course, then simply transcribe it (which takes no time at all and can be fully automated) for those people who much rather consume the contents of your course by reading than by listening (I’m one of them).

Nothing much more to add here.

If you can give multiple formats of your product or make it accessible through different media, then it’s almost always a good idea to add this as a bonus (or an upsell — I know both Ben Settle and Russel Brunson often add these types of upsells with great success).

Example 2) Checklists or roadmaps

Adding a checklist could be a great idea to make your product a lot more accessible and easier to finish/apply/implement.

It’s like a guiding light showing people what to do, in what order, while making sure they’re not missing or forgetting anything else.

I’m calling this a checklist.

But you could very well create a step-by-step roadmap for people to follow and it’ll have the same effect.

Depends on what problem your product is solving.

Example 3) Swipe files

While swipe files (a fancy word for a document full of examples) don’t always attract the best customers, they can be a great and valuable bonus addition to learn from if done right.

They’re also incredibly easy to create.

If you’re building a product to solve a certain problem, you should have plenty of experience in that market/dealing with that problem. This means you’ll also have more than enough of prior work/results/whatever it is you’ve been doing to show to people as examples of how a good quality deliverable looks like.

Whether it’s prior emails, workout plans, landing pages, crochet designs, cupcake recipes, or entirely something else.

A document like this could add an enormous amount of bonus value to your offer.

Example 4) LIVE Workshops

This could very well be one of the most fun (and profitable) examples on here—especially during a launch.

You could organize a live workshop/presentation/discussion/… about a topic related to your product as a bonus for everyone who buys your product before a certain deadline. This is immensely valuable because live workshops like these are always a goldmine of information—especially if you reserve time for a Q&A at the end of it.

More.

Even after the launch is over, and the workshop has taken place, you can still use the workshop recording as an upsell for everyone who buys your product.

In this case I’d argue it’s best not to make it a free bonus as it might upset previous customers who feel cheated because their “buy before the deadline bonus” is now available to everyone.

Example 5) Tools

And last but not least. Tools.

Whether it’s a calorie calculator, a tool to help build new funnels, a chart of beautiful color combinations for people’s brand designs, or an Excel spreadsheet people can use to track their expenses.

All of them are wonderful additions to your already valuable product (as long as they complement one another of course).

They’re also not super difficult to create.

Even better, you might already have them without even knowing it. Think about all the stuff you do on a daily basis (in regard to the problem your product is solving) are there some tools or solutions you’ve created to make your life easier?

If yes, that’s a tool right there.

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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 get you up and running, ready to earn $1,000–$5,000 per month in the next 60–90 days

3. Check out my products: Ranging from every resource I ever read to my entire framework to land clients consistently and effortlessly. It’s all waiting for you to claim it.

Why do you call a bad email marketer when you’re having trouble opening a pickle jar?

Because they’re obsessed with constantly improving their open rates.

*cue the laughing track*

Jokes aside, this is something I see all the time. Some wannabe “email expert” who’s barely making any money with his own list, or worse yet, he doesn’t even own his own list and only works for other people. And one by one they all obsess over open rates.

Which, everyone who’s actually any good at their job in the industry knows, is nothing short of absolutely idiotic.

Not only are open rates a vanity metric. (why care about them instead of your actual sales?)

But they’re also widely inaccurate.

Many phones, most Androids and lately iPhones as well, have images turned off by default when browsing their emails. And as you may (or may not) know, those images (called tracking pixels) are used to determine whether or not your email has been opened in the first place.

No images = no ‘open’.

An example:

I’ve regularly seen it happen in my list where someone buys one of my products, but when I go and look at their recent email interactivity it says they’ve only opened 3 emails out of the total 152 I’ve sent them.

Incidentally, they’re click rate is 100%.

I shouldn’t have to spell it out. But this means that those three emails were only identified as being ‘opened’ because they clicked the link. All those other emails? They probably read them as well. They simply couldn’t be tracked.

It works the other way around as well.

Some services make it seem as if every email is being read simply because of how their spam detection works (outlook is famous for this). This means that a subscriber could’ve read 0 emails of yours, but they’d still show up with a 100% open rate.

And now when you introduce the fact that people might read their emails on different phones, tablets, computers, or whatever else they have, whenever they’re in a different environment, then there’s simply no knowing what your supposed open rate is actually showing you.

But I get it.

The thing is, this simply doesn’t get talked about enough.

People (who have no idea what they’re doing) are still recommending others (who also have no idea what they’re doing, and even have less of an idea of who to listen to for advice) to re-send to unopens, segment your list based on open rates, or worst of all: implement a re-activation campaign where you send a “do you still want to stay on this list?” email to people who haven’t opened your mail in a while, only to remove them if they don’t click a link (spoiler: some of those people could very well be your best customers).

All awful advice and none of which will actually help you get more sales and earn more money—which I’d assume should be everyone’s actual end goal.

So now the choice is yours:

You can either continue listening to your favorite email marketing “expert” who has no idea what they’re doing and obsesses over open rates.

Or you can learn what actually matters while writing emails, how to really build a list of qualified customers, people who love to buy from you no matter what, and how to write emails that entertain people for weeks, months, and even years to come, helping you make sales day after day.

And luckily one way to do so is by getting my Email Extraordinaire course.

You won’t find me bitching or whining about stuff that doesn’t matter such as open rates or segmenting your list.

Only cold hard facts, proven systems, and the best-performing money-making principles to help you make sales and keep your readers reading day after day.

Check it out here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/EE

One of the most important lessons I learned in the past months was something I picked up from Ben Settle.

I don’t remember if I read it in one of his emails, his paid newsletter, one of his numerous books, a podcast, audio training, or wherever.

But it’s an insight, a principle, something to pay attention to, that has made me countless amounts of sales and one that most creators get wrong—especially beginner creators, but even many seasoned ones still make this same mistake.

The first time I heard of it was during the promotion of my Product Creation Made Easy course—my best-selling course where I teach you my framework to ideate, create, and launch profitable digital products in 21 days or less.

Upon hearing I immediately switched gears.

I changed my approach to writing emails, edited the modules of the course itself, rewrote the sales page for the product, and had a completely different mindset when it came to writing the modules that still had to be written.

The result?

More product sales for my Product Creation Made Easy course. But that’s not all. No no, far from it, if that was all it wouldn’t have been nearly this special. No I also made a lot more sales on all of my other products and services as well. Even my coaching and consulting calls.

The true change was a drastic change in my customer LTV, which stands for life time value and measures the total value I receive from each and every buyer.

Meaning?

People not only bought the one course. They bought more products and signed up for my higher-ticket offers more often, while staying longer than before.

A true win I’d say.

What were those magic words Ben Settle imprinted upon me?

“Interweave content with sell.”

Yeah yeah, it sounds obvious but let me explain.

Too many people separate the two. They’ll tell a story which teaches some lesson or something and only afterwards will they link the story or the lesson to whatever they’re selling.

The content and the sell aren’t harmoniously linked. They’re separated.

Often times the gap between content and sell is so big even a mouse who’s fighting for his life because an eagle captured him still notices the gap across the country without even looking for it

Don’t mind the quality of that analogy, just remember the key point.

Interweave your content with sell.

Tell your story well, inconspicuously sell inside of it, and you’ll find people to even like getting sold to.

Try it out next time you try selling one of your products.

And if you haven’t got a product of your own to sell yet, then check out Product Creation Made Easy so you can build yours and make a guaranteed profit in 21 days or less.

Check it out here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/product

I love Nordic culture, all the viking stuff from their everyday lifestyle, to their pantheons and folklore.

I also love fantasy, big magical worlds filled with bizarre and otherworldly plants, wildlife, cultures, religions, and everything you could imagine.

And magic—a whole buttload of magic.

Another big thing.

I’ve been a big RPG fan ever since I was young. Been playing Skyrim for 12 years since it came out in 2011 and I can’t even explain how big of an impact that has made.

So naturally I had to combine all of this stuff.

As you may (or may not) know, I plan on writing a fantasy novel (a trilogy even).

Yes, I plan on writing it. I haven’t started yet. Call me a procrastinator all you want. I’m currently just gathering a bunch of ideas, getting inspired, and working on other stuff in the meantime until I get around to starting in a month or so.

That said.

Everything I’m building and writing down as notes so far is related to my interests and whatever I think looks, sounds, feels, tastes, and smells cool, interesting, and outright extremely entertaining to even think about, let alone create or experience.

Which gave rise to the premise of the story:

The main character, this big old beefy dark and gruesome Viking chieftain, warlord known across the seven seas as the conqueror & protector of the North finds himself in a precarious situation where his beloved wife, along with his children, gets brutally massacred—the only way his enemies could inflict any real damage onto him.

This sets him up on his quest to create a world where no one should face any such disasters, never go through any pain again, and live a happy and peaceful leave, where one can properly raise a family respectfully and virtuously—everyone except himself.

The only way he knows how to do this?

By brutally disposing of everyone who does not belong in such a world. And so he goes on his quest.

Then things happen, bla bla bla, all very interesting, but not right now.

Eventually he finds himself in another world—by means which I won’t get into now. A magical place, one he does not recognize. One where creatures 100x larger than the largest animal he’s ever seen freely roam the lands.

But also a land ruled and fought over by multiple kingdoms, of barely-humanoid species so bizarre he has no words for them.

There’s a lot of racism, corruption, discrimination, and especially gore, violence, and destruction.

Not long after he discovers more about the world and comes across a fellow dressed in weird dark looking robes, a true lunatic always talking to himself as if he’s hearing voices, and… is he carrying bones and human remains with him everywhere he goes?

The weird fellow—who later turns out to be a necromancer—does turn out to be useful after all and so the real journey begins.

A revenge-driven murderous viking from another world and an exiled and mentally insane necromancer roam the lands looking to improve the world they live in, while only ever having known the opposite of a good and peaceful life.

And while you might not come across murderous vikings or mentally insane necromancers here, be sure to follow me on LinkedIn where I’m starting my own personal quest to a better world: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexvandromme/

Just yesterday I finished reading George Lucas’ biography, George Lucas: A life, by Brian Jay Jones.

And I must say, from start to finish. It’s an amazing read.

It’s remarkable how much knowledge you can acquire from reading biographies—much more than reading your average business book will teach you. The knowledge itself is also vastly different.

You’ll pick up on principles, life lessons, and the intricacies behind most business lessons that never get talked about, but which you just have to ‘get’ by experiencing them—or by reading about how other people experienced them.

I’m also a big fan of cinema—and your occasional Star Wars.

Which made this a natural must-read for me.

Yet I never realized just how much George Lucas had done for the industry. Squeezing all of his accomplishments, which required a 472-page book to explain, into one single email would be a lot. But as a paragraph of the book reads:

“He changed the way people watch movies; he demolished, then reinvented the way movies were made, marketed, and merchandised. He changed the way fans embraced and adored not just movies and characters and actors but directors, producers, and composers—all of whom Lucas made active and visible collaborators on his films. He redefined the way movie studios financed, distributed, and controlled—and then ultimately, didn’t control—the art of filmmaking.”

Some people even called him “The Thomas Edison of the modern film industry”.

There’s no telling what would’ve become of the industry without a George Lucas in it. But one of the things I remember most is his answer to an interviewer who asked him what he thought the first line of his obituary might say.

In the old Lucas fashion, he didn’t waste any words and just said this: “I tried.”

Which holds one of those big life lessons, those big principles, and intricacies I referred to. Out of the dozens of notes I took, this surely was among the top 3 most memorable and impactful to me.

This begs the question: what are you currently trying?

As for me, I already accepted my fate and the fact it’s highly unlikely that I’ll get my X account back anytime soon. But instead of staying still I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to get on LinkedIn and keep building over there.

I’ve still got my skillset after all, so let’s put those to the test and see what I can do starting (more or less) from scratch.

With that said, go and follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexvandromme/

I won’t be posting anything yet, that’s for next week. I’m taking some time off this week for personal stuff. But I will gradually get my profile and branding on point. Maybe I’ll do some crazy stuff and use this ‘fresh-start’ to change it up a little bit, maybe I won’t. Who knows?

But anyway, go and follow me here and let’s tackle this new adventure together: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexvandromme/

I have this habit where I read a lot of books (surprise surprise).

I do this both for my enjoyment and my daily education—that’s one of the main lessons I’ve picked up from other extremely successful writers, creators, and simply anyone whose lifestyle I admire and want to recreate (they all spend a ton of time in their day reading).

And during this daily reading, whenever I read something that tickles my fancy I like to highlight the sentence or paragraph and slap a page marker (these see-through colored type of sticky notes) on them.

This allows me to regularly flip through some books, immediately go to those pages where I highlighted interesting stuff, and reread them.

Today I opened up The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel and read this sentence:

“A good rule of thumb for a lot of things in life is that everything that can break will eventually break.”

This seemed oddly befitting my current situation.

My X account could ‘break’—and so it did.

And yours will too. I don’t know when. It might be 2 years from now. Or it might be next week. Whatever the case, let this be a reminder to be ready.

Do you have an alternate source to contact your audience?

Do you have an alternate source of income aside from hitting people up on DMs or driving traffic from X to wherever it is you make your money?

I found myself stagnating at the moment.

Yes, I do have my email list. But no it’s not growing anymore. My one and only traffic source was X. This is something life showed me. Something I hadn’t been thinking about.

And something I’m currently working on improving (hit me up if you have suggestions).

That said, if you don’t yet have an email list, aren’t able to grow it, or aren’t making money with it. Then check out Email Extraordinaire and learn exactly how to do all of those.

Click the link here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/EE