I’m one week removed from my 1-year Twitter anniversary.

And I’m not prepared for it. Not even close. It feels like it hasn’t even been a few months since I started this journey.

Yet, looking back, I have to admit that so much has happened already.

I went from not knowing what to do, what to talk about, or how to do anything, to getting paid $20 in my second month because of random donations I got on some of the free Gumroad products I was sharing, all the way to earning $1000’s a month writing emails and selling my own info products as well as consistently getting paid $249 per hour for my consultation sessions helping clients build & improve their creator business.

I wouldn’t have believed you back in January if you told me this would happen.

Not in a million years.

Back then I was looking for so many ways to do … something.

To build something unique and worthwhile, to spend my life creating something special.

I’d been looking for over a year already, without results. I was still studying for my master’s degree at the time.

A degree I wasn’t excited anymore to pursue, but I felt it just had to be done—That’s how everyone else does it, right? How else am I going to earn money and build a career? But just thinking about the long hours, the lack of meaning and creativity, the unfilling work, and above all, the lack of freedom. Not being able to work on what I want, when I want, and where I want.

That really bothered me.

I just knew I had to give something a shot. To try something else one more time. And that’s what led me here. Or at least to Twitter—even though email followed shortly.

But how did I get to where I am today?

What were the main pillars and lever-moving actions I focused on that allowed me to reach a goal many people, sadly, fail to even come close to?

Well, I broke it down into four separate categories:

1) Your Online Presence:

You need to work on your online presence. Show people what you’re all about. Make them understand what you stand for, and what you stand against.

Make’em feel welcome into your world. After all, people buy you, not your offers.

2) Your Offer Stack:

You need a good converting offer.

Life’s much simpler that way. No headaches wondering what’s holding you back from making money. Get an offer that converts, build multiple levels around it, making sure there’s something for everyone.

Then congratulate yourself with multiple income streams.

3) Abundant Lead Generation

The right offer stack alone isn’t enough. You need to know how to market and who to market to. Find the people whose problems you can solve and know how to make them interested in your stuff.

Then build system that make them appear out of thin air and get them to come to you. There’s no limit to how big you can scale at that point.

4) Consistent and Reliable Revenue

The previous steps made sure you got all the puzzle pieces into place. Now it’s time to glue them together and make them work on overdrive.

This is where you’ll simplify and improve your structure, your funnels, your delivery, and your automation. Guide every single client towards the next step in your journey and deliver on your promise effortlessly.

Get people to be satisfied and you’ll create more happy customers who pay you time and time again, removing the worry of when your next paycheck is coming, and giving you true financial freedom.

This is the exact model I used to get myself to where I am today.

It’s also the same model I make my clients go through to guide them toward a thriving and growing creator business model.

And I can do the same for you.

I have an extremely limited coaching offer (only 3 people at a time can enter) where I’ll help you do exactly this.

Sounds interesting? Reply ‘Ascend’ to this email and I’ll get you sorted and ready to go.

P.S. New Year is just around the corner.

Many would come up with New Year’s resolutions and say “Oh I’ll start doing this next month”. But not you. You’re not a procrastinator. You’re on my email list and I know how you are.

You’re someone who gets things done, someone who doesn’t make excuses.

So here’s your chance to prove it.

Get in now, commit right here, right now. You’ll already have yourself a brand new and improved life by the time January comes around.

Reply ‘Ascend’ to this email and I’ll get you sorted and ready to go.

Someone on Twitter messaged me today (not sure if he wants me to name him) to ask whether they should send their daily emails as actual emails or put them in an ever-growing email sequence.

And while that might seem strange to some at first glance.

That’s actually an amazing question. And there’s more to dissect than you’d imagine.

Before I’ll dive deep into my answer, let’s just make sure everything’s clear.

This guy has an email list which he mails (or plans to mail) daily. Just like I do. The difference however is how and when those emails get sent.

You see, I write my emails every single day.

This email you’re reading right now? It’s written today, December 8th. Everyone on my list will get this same email today. People who join my list tomorrow will never get this email and they won’t even be aware of its existence.

That’s not the only way to do it though.

Let’s say I start a new email list today.

I’ll write my first email but instead of immediately sending it I’ll put it in an email sequence. The sequence everyone will enter once they join my email list. For the people who join my new email list, they’ll receive each daily email just as I write it, no problem.

I’ll write a new email each day for the following 7 days and they’ll still keep getting those emails.

But here’s where everything changes.

I always add those new emails to the email sequence. So after that week, I have an email sequence of 7 emails. If new people then join my email list they won’t get the 8th email I wrote that day, they’ll get the first email I wrote a week ago.

That way everyone who joins receives the same emails, no matter what date it is.

The people who join a year from now? They’ll have 365 emails prepared to be sent to them. They wouldn’t even know if I quit writing emails until a year after the fact.

Here’s the pros and cons and why I don’t use the email sequence method.

The sequence method is efficient. It’s cost/time effective. Every email you ever write gets used to its full potential. Nothing goes to waste.

But you lose the ability to involve people in your personal life as it’s happening. You lose the ability to talk about current trends and certain events. You lose the ability to be there in the moment.

If you’re building a faceless business, a newsletter that sends daily investing tips, health tips, or random history facts for example, then that’s fine.

You might even prefer the sequence method in that case.

If you’re building a business based around you, your interests, and your personality. Around building a relationship with your reading and bringing them into your world, giving them a place of belonging, and a place they don’t want to leave—even a place they’re happy to take out their credit cards and buy from you.

Then you want the connectedness. You want everyone to be on the same page. And you want to be able to talk about things as they’re happening.

Ultimately, the answer to what’s best for you is ‘It depends’—as it is in most cases.

In contrast, no matter what method you prefer, what type of emails you want to send. Writing them daily, writing them simple and efficient, and learning how to get paid and keep your readers reading day after day is always the best option to take.

Which brings me to my email course Email Extraordinaire, which teaches you how to do just that.

Click here to learn more about it: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/EE

I’ve previously written about how I plan to write a fantasy novel.

There was, however, one teeny tiny problem holding me back from doing so—I had no idea what to write about.

Except not anymore.

I made progress.

Lots of it. So much in fact that I’ve got a note filled with ideas, topics, designs, plotlines, characters, creatures, magic systems, and so much more. I might have gone a bit overboard because I’ve already planned multiple books ahead.

Well, I say ‘planned’ but in reality, I have a few themes & topics in mind that I’d like to discover, yet putting them all into one single book wouldn’t do it justice.

I won’t get into every detail for the sake of keeping some things left as a surprise—I could also feel like changing a ridiculous amount of stuff in my story.

That aside, here’s what I’ve got:

Our protagonist is a big beefy-looking, scary, and brutal viking. I don’t have a name for the viking dude yet—so let’s call him Bob for now.

You see Bob is one of the strongest and most-feared warriors in his clan.

He’s a whopping 6’3, 240 lbs, has scars all over his body, a tremendous beard hiding most of his facial features, and body hair wherever you look. He’s got so much body hair the enemy clans only know him as the blood-stained grizzly.

Part of the name comes from the mess of blood he leaves behind on the battlefield, part of it is because of his bright blood-red eyes—which rumors say Tyr, the god of war, himself gave to Bob after his 100th victory in battle.

Bob doesn’t care about getting his hands dirty and will do whatever it takes to keep his people safe and protected.

But everything changes when after a certain battle, due to reasons still partially unexplored, Bob suddenly finds himself waking up in a place he doesn’t recognize.

The grass doesn’t quite feel the same, the ocean breeze is nowhere to be found, and those trees in front of him look weird.

Except, they aren’t trees.

They suddenly transform into a monstrosity Bob has never seen before. He finds himself fighting the unknown monstrosity, only to realize even his battleaxes—his signature style of battle—are missing, forcing him to fight for his life with his bare hands.

Only after barely coming out alive, he starts running around trying to find a familiar place.

But his journey has been doomed from the very start.

What Bob hasn’t realized yet is that he is in fact in a completely different world. A world filled with horrifying monstrosities, strange magic, a whole array of different intelligent species, each living in their own kingdoms, divided by wars, corruption, and a lot of discrimination.

From here on I’ll start coming up with ideas while writing—asking myself at every step “What would happen to someone like Bob in a world such as this?”.

I have no more or less of an idea about what will happen than you do.

But the premise is exciting. It’s interesting. It’s fascinating.

Why?

Because our Viking dude doesn’t belong there. It’s not natural for him to be found in such a place, such a world.

He’s quite literally out of this world. That’s what makes it exciting.

Maybe I bored you with this email, maybe I got you as excited as I am just thinking about this. Either way, I’ll leave you with this golden nugget of wisdom.

Become a Bob in your own market.

Show your readers, your clients, your leads, and everyone that’s part of your market, something they haven’t ever seen before. It doesn’t have to be extraordinary. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be special.

It just has to be strange. Even weird will do.

Be the guy who talks about bananas 24/7 in a market where everyone else only talks about cold showers, coffee, and how to close more clients. Be the stud who puts his face on his banner, and his CTA on his profile picture. Be the old war-driven viking in a world filled with magic and political turmoil.

I don’t care if it sounds weird, stupid, or if you think it shouldn’t work. That’s the point of it.

In a world of beauty, the ugly stands out.

P.S. Don’t know how to stand out or where to start?

Check out my course Email Extraordinaire. I’ll teach you all about the frameworks I use to write simple yet original emails that stand out in a sea of blandness while making sales and keeping your readers reading day after day.

No hand-holding. No step-by-step guides on exactly what to do.

Pure principles and frameworks that you can take and adapt to make them work for your business.

Learn more about it here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/EE

 

Today a daily email reader Gaurav, who bought my Abundant-Client System, hit me up to ask some questions.

He had a few questions about the contents of the course and how best to apply them to his business—and land more of those high-quality clients.

I quickly helped him out and he seemed content with my response.

But then he added something I didn’t expect.

Here’s the reply:

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Also, I’ve been trying to write a review on the product for a while now. But all I see is a way to leave a rating, not write a review.

Is there any link for that?

===

I’m hosting my products on Gumroad—for now—and it only has a built-in “rating” system where people can rate your products from 1 to 5 stars depending on how much they like it.

As he said, there’s no functionality to leave a written review.

But here’s why It surprised me.

I had a Gumroad automation set up where people who bought the product would get an email a week after purchasing the product asking them if they’re interested in leaving a testimonial in exchange for an unreleased module.

That seemed good enough to me so I left it at that.

But it apparently wasn’t the case.

Here was someone who actively went looking for a way to leave a review and he had no idea how/where to do so. The email either got lost or never arrived in the first place.

This showed me the importance of frictionless design.

Make sure your customers, readers, clients, whoever it is, know exactly where to find stuff you want them to find and do the stuff you want them to do. It’s not enough that I know where to leave a review. They have to know as well.

This means exaggerating and doing (what feels like) too much.

Promote your offers daily, ask for testimonials multiple weeks across different mediums, tell the same stories dozens of times every month, and keep doing so until it’s almost impossible for people not to know what to do, where to do it, and how to do it.

Anyway.

Since I’m on the topic of constantly promoting your stuff.

If you want to see what all the hype is about. Why Gaurav has gone through my course multiple times already in just a few weeks. And why he’s so eager and so motivated to find where to leave a review to show his love and support for the product that’s helping him out with getting leads, qualifying his prospects, and landing clients consistently and effortlessly.

Then go see for yourself.

Here’s the link to my Abundant-Client System: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/clients

I’ve been taking it slow for the past few days.

Not creating that much content. Not even thinking or worrying about it either. Just taking some time off.

Relaxing.

Preparing to get back into it again in a few days—creating content fast & furiously again.

And even though I willingly made this choice to get back some creative energy—I’m very much a “working in bursts” guy. It still feels off.

As if I’m not allowed to do this.

As if the universe is screaming at me to “go put in the work”, “get back on the grind”, or “You need to earn that money.” All of which I realize is utter nonsense of course.

I’ve already gone all in.

There’s no turning back for me now. I chose to do this for decades to come.

So what’s the rush?

Yet it’s not that easy. It never really is, is it?

So with that said, let’s do something else today. Something new, something unique, and something a little bit crazy.

Instead of me telling you a story today that includes a lesson, which then connects with some offer that I’ll be plugging.

Why don’t we do something that helps me “take it slow” but still somewhat prepares me to create more content?

So here it is.

Reply back with something that’s been bugging you as of late. Some problems you’re having, or some general questions. Really anything that you’d like some help with—big or small problems alike.

Don’t have any problems?

Great. Just reply with something that’s on your mind. What have you been working on as of late? I’d love to read all about your interests, your passions, your curiosities, or whatever keeps you up at night.

I’ll create content around all the bits I think could be useful for both you, me, and everyone else.

And maybe I’ll even create some medium-big offers in the future that’ll help you out—even if you didn’t realize there was potential to create something that’ll make your life even better.

Anyways, that the gist of it.

I’ll hope to read your response. Feel free to write as much or as little as you want.

Simply hit “reply” on this mail and I’ll get back to you asap.

A daily email reader Aaron bought my Abundant-Client System a while back and left me the following testimonial:

===

This is the sweetest and most value-packed system I've found on Clients and Leads. It's full of action-able advice in a concise manner. Finished it less than a couple hours. Appreciate that it values my time.

===

Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve written a few testimonials here and there in the past.

And the experience is always the same.

“What should I say?”

So I always sit there thinking for a while, wondering what I liked the most about something and what, to me, seems like some of the key points worth mentioning.

That’s what surprised me the most about the testimonial mentioned above.

Aaron found it valuable to mention that he finished the course in less than a couple of hours. And he appreciates that the course respects and values his time.

This, in my eyes, should be the standard for all courses trying to teach people something new.

Yet it unfortunately isn’t.

Too many people try to add so much fluff to their offers. I can only imagine they do it to cover up the fact that they don’t have much to say. Trying to make it seem as though their offer is valuable—while in reality there’s nothing worth reading.

Which coincidentally also holds them back from landing more clients—they’ll notice the lack of substance and quality sooner or later.

That said.

If you’d like to get leads, qualify your prospects, and land more clients consistently and effortlessly—while valuing both your and their time in the process—then get my Abundant-Client System.

Here’s the link: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/clients

Ascend 101

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

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Building a 3-hour-a-day business requires you to be productive.

And there’s no shortage of people on the internet who think they’re productivity experts just because they wake up 2 hours earlier and take cold showers. Yet these people also share all their rules and guidelines as pure fact.

Which results in an overload of awful and terrible advice for anyone wanting to actually be more productive and build a better daily routine for themselves.

Think about morning routines for example.

People will tell you to wake up, take a cold shower, skip breakfast, walk a marathon, take another cold shower, go to the gym, take another cold shower, meditate, do your gratification journalling, walk your dog, hop in the sauna afterwards, and finish it off with yet another cold shower session. And only then should you start your work day.

Don’t get me wrong. You can live your life however you want. But actually think about whether the advice other people give is beneficial to you.

One such things that I don’t see get spoken about often enough is the effect of personality on your ideal routine.

Here’s the thing.

Most people will tell you to do your work in the morning so you’re done by noon. Yet most of those people are introverts.

Why does that matter?

Well here’s the thing.

Imagine you have to split up your day into 2 different phases: the social phase, and the alone phase.

If you’re an introvert—meaning social interactions drain your energy—then you’d want to make as much use of the morning as you can before you drain your energy by attending meetings, getting on calls, or simply engaging with others.

So you’ll do your most important work early in the day, and the social stuff later in the day.

Yet that’s not the case for an extrovert.

These people get their energy from social interactions. If you’re an extrovert, you’ll be better off leaving your most important work for later in the day and scheduling the social interactions early, giving you a boost in energy, making it easier to get into the flow and be productive later on.

The great late Stan Lee had a routine like this.

He’d wake up and immediately go to meetings, meet up with people, make plans about future publications, get all the social stuff over with, and then only at 4 pm would he sit down and do his writing for the day.

So the next time you hear productivity advice without any context.

Think about it. How does your personality affect your optimal routine?

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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 we’ll work on getting you there in the next 60–90 days.

3. Check out my products (free & paid): 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.

I wrote an article about the top 3 tips to pump out more content than 99% of creators 2 weeks ago.

Since then I’ve kept getting asked questions about my last tip. The one about listening to music while working.

More precisely.

I mentioned how I choose 1 specific piece of instrumental music and put it on a 3-hour loop. Many people read this and thought it had to get boring or distracting after a while.

But my own experience has taught me the opposite.

Whenever I hear this piece of music my mind immediately knows it’s work time. As if I’ve trained myself to relate this specific sound to a productive state.

Now whenever I turn this on, it’s almost impossible for me not to get shit done.

Even more.

I can keep on going for hours since there’s no distraction. The music becomes a trance-like background noise which helps me stay focused. So focused in fact that I don’t even recognize it most of the time if I’m really into my writing.

It’s only whenever a song ends and a new one begins or a specific piece of music suddenly changes dramatically that your mind perceives it as a distraction.

Remind yourself that this is for instrumental music only. Any music with lyrics or some sort of chanting in is automatically distracting because your mind will unconsciously try to understand what’s being said.

With that said, I don’t have a specific offer for today.

All I have to say is to think about the arguments I gave. Think about my experience and try it out for yourself. Select a piece of instrumental music, put it on repeat, and see what happens during your working sessions.

And if you don’t know what piece of music to select or you just want to know which one I use.

Then here’s the one I’ve been using for 90% of the time as of late: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1DhwM014vU

You know the drill.

I don’t enjoy writing these super short and straight-to-the-point “watch out for the deadline, little one” emails.

But apparently, they help remind people, often letting me know how thankful they are for it.

So with that said, let this be your reminder.

The price of Email Extraordinaire is increasing in less than 45 minutes from now.

Get it here for the way-too-low price of $49 while you still can: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/EE/EMAIL

P.S. Make sure you follow these steps:

1. Read every single word at the URL below to make an informed purchase

2. Buy it before tonight, December 1st at midnight CET (that’s in less than 45 minutes) to get it before the price increase

3. Use code EMAIL at the checkout

And make sure you see the price change before entering your info

(I technically already doubled the price, but this discount code allows you to get the course at the original price until tonightt)

Here’s the link once again: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/EE/EMAIL

2 years ago, when I was still a full-time university student with not a single dollar to my name, I was given a particularly challenging assignment.

Not challenging in terms of “Oh my god I don’t know how to do this.” But challenging in terms of “I sort of know how to go about it, but they’ve given me way too much time to get it done”.

I can’t explain everything about the assignment, I signed an NDA after all—super cool, right?!

But this was the gist of it:

A local bank we worked with gave us access to a dataset of people who applied for a loan between 2014 and 2018. The dataset had all kinds of information, ranging from where they lived, what type of household they were a part of, how much they earned, how much they were looking to loan, how long the loan would be, some more stuff I won’t bore you with, and the most important one, whether they fully paid back the loan in time or not.

Based on this the task was to create a machine-learning algorithm that could predict how likely it’d be for new applicants to pay back their loan.

So everyone got to work.

Except I of course. We had two months to complete this assignment, so why would I start now?

That’s just stupid, right?

Yeah, that way of thinking was stupid.

Turns out learning all the intricacies of how to build such a model and train it properly takes a while. I didn’t know that when I started this assignment the weekend when we had to finish it.

Yeah that’s right.

The deadline was Sunday at midnight and my dumbass started it that Friday.

Needless to say it didn’t go smoothly.

I didn’t do anything else except work on this single task for 2.5 days straight. I had to drop a bunch of stuff that I wanted to test and add in order to save time and get it done on time.

That said, I did work with an intensity and focus that I’d never seen before—those so-called ‘deadline superpowers’.

Anyway, long story short.

I did everything, including documenting everything I did and my reasoning for it in a 5-page paper, and finished right on time.

And when I say ‘right on time’ I mean, 11.59 pm when the deadline was '11.59 pm’.

So while you could say that I did succeed and so there’s nothing wrong with procrastinating because those deadline superpowers will come and save you.

Well yes, in this case, kinda.

But it would’ve been nice if I started earlier and had more time to do what I wanted, deliver a better product, and get better grades overall—with a lot less stress and pressure.

Also, imagine if something went terribly wrong. What would I have done then?

Anyway.

Why am I sharing this?

Well, tonight’s the deadline to get my Email Extraordinaire before the price increase.

And I’d advise you to be on time.

I get messages every single time I do a promotion or a price increase. Messages from people who tell me that their card isn’t working, they aren’t home at the moment, or their dog at their wifi, or some other just plain that they forgot and the deadline has passed.

And every time I try to help out as many people as I can.

But once the deadline is over that’s it. I won’t make any exceptions. Not even if you reached out to me before the deadline. I’m doing you a favor to help you out. If you decide to wait until the last possible moment to get out your credit card and buy the product, that’s on you.

Don’t blame it on me for not assisting you fast enough.

So take this to heart and please for the love of both you and me. If you want to get the product, please do it now and don’t wait another 4 hours.

Here’s the link by the way: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/EE/EMAIL

P.S. Make sure you follow these steps:

1. Read every single word at the URL below to make an informed purchase

2. Buy it before tonight, December 1st at midnight CET (that’s in 4 hours) to get it before the price increase

3. Use code EMAIL at the checkout

And make sure you see the price change before entering your info

(I technically already doubled the price, but this discount code allows you to get the course at the original price until Friday, December 1st)

Here’s the link: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/EE/EMAIL