“Is this what I’ve been studying for these past 5 years?”

I was at a networking event. Speaking to alumni, big consulting recruiters, CEOs of smaller financial and technology forms, and recent graduates who landed a job a year earlier.

It was an event to get more clarity on the various job opportunities I would have after graduating.

I looked around me and saw so many people I’ve been studying together with for the past 4–5 years. Yet all of them seemed happy and interested in a dozen working opportunities.

Am I the only one who wasn’t excited?

Something just didn’t seem right. Is this truly the only way? Applying to a job I barely enjoy, working 8 hours a day, being tired when I come home, and doing this every day until my retirement?

No.

I wasn’t going to go down that path. There had to be more to life. I wasn’t going to end up like everyone else.

I’m going to make a difference. To do it differently.

That’s when I decided to drop out. Right then and there.

I only had 1 more year of university to go. Yet that didn’t matter. If I didn’t do this now, I’d regret it for a lifetime.

This was a huge risk.

I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do—except that I was going to start an Internet business. I’d do something with marketing and sales.

But that was about it.

So immediately after that networking event, I began to educate myself.

I was reading books, browsing YouTube, and buying courses, all to discover the best way to earn a living while working 3 hours a day and achieving True Freedom.

I experimented with lots of different approaches: agency work, freelancing, consulting, and coaching.

But all those approaches were missing something.

Too much time went into getting leads, hopping on sales calls, overcoming objections, doing the actual work, creating new offers, building an audience, and more.

Whatever I did, working for 3 hours didn’t seem possible.

I then started looking for the behind-the-scenes of other businesses.

How were other people monetizing? How many hours were they putting in daily? What did their schedule look like? What are their lever-moving tasks?

I realized a lot of the biggest accounts were big solely because they were making a lot of noise. They were putting in a lot of work to grab attention, grow their brands, and sell their offers.

I was following the wrong game plan from the very start.

A while later, I came across a few humble creators. They didn’t have the biggest following, but they were making almost 5–10 times what those big guys were making. While working less than half the time of the bigger creators!

The difference?

They had created a world of themselves.

They were in constant connection with their audience through writing daily emails. And their audience couldn’t get enough of it. Every offer they send, every product or service they made, their audience would buy it.

And they kept coming back for more.

All these guys had to do was spend 10–20 minutes writing an email.

So I started doing the same.

Within a few months, I doubled the size of my audience, 4x’ed all of my important metrics, and earned a consistent income while working less than 3 hours a day.

And all of this by building a freedom-focused and email-centric business that takes care of everything and keeps money coming, no matter what!

Now, you might be able to figure out how to do all of this yourself simply by carefully going over this email a few times and reading between the lines, figuring out the intricacies of what I mean.

And I’d highly recommend you to give it a go yourself.

But if you’re anything like me and you value the time and effort required to achieve success. Then you might be interested in this course I created, which walks you through the entire step-by-step process that’ll show you how to build a world of your own by writing simple emails that get you paid.

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

Ascend 101

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

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Learning to write good emails is one of the most profitable skills to learn.

It allows you to make (a lot) of money online. And it’s a cornerstone to build your whole business around.

The best part is that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, can learn how to write good emails within a few months.

That’s what you’ll always hear me say.

But surely email isn’t the only profitable skill in the world. So why should you bother building a list, learning how to write emails, and creating a whole business focused on this one simple medium?

Well, I’ve got seven reasons for you.

Reason 1) It’s simple

Business is complex.

You have landing pages, intricate funnels, attention battles, algorithm changes, and much more.

Yet none of that matters with email. You start slowly building your list and that’s it. You write good emails and get paid.

That’s all.

Reason 2) Easiest to sell

Think about it.

Email is the perfect medium to sell everything. It’s long-form.

Meaning you can write the perfect sales letters. It’s personal. People feel a connection to you.

And you have multiple guaranteed touchpoints with the customer.

Nothing. And I mean nothing, comes as close to the simplicity and effectiveness of selling through email.

Reason 3) Nothing is wasted

Email is digital real estate. It’s an investment for decades to come.

You can create automated sequences that will run automatically without you having to do anything. This is the closest to passive income you can get. Every email you write can also be reused somewhere else in your content ecosystem or you can integrate it into your email sequence.

Simply said: Every single mail you write has the potential to make you money for years to come.

Reason 4) There’s no market saturation

There’s no competition.

None.

Not only are most people overlooking email for the latest and coolest shiny object. But email is such a unique medium.

No two people’s lists are alike. You can let your authentic personality shine through and nobody can compete with being you.

There’s only so much personality you can put into a 280-character tweet.

But with email? There’s no limit.

Reason 5) Best way to build true fans

You could grow as fast as you want on social media.

But you’ll never truly build meaningful relationships with your audience. You need to build depth behind your content.

That’s what email is for.

To go deep into certain topics. To show more of who you are and what you do. People will never get to know the “real you” from a tweet or a thread.

True fans are created in your email list.

Reason 6) Email writing will always be useful

There won’t ever be a time when email isn’t useful anymore.

It’s been around for over 50 years and it will remain for longer than most of the current social media platforms we’re using. It’s almost the universal way of modern communication.

Everyone has an email address. Everything requires one to sign up. When you learn how the source of all information, the foundation of the digital economy, works.

That’s when you know you’ll be set for life.

Reason 7) You own your audience

You can lose your Twitter profile.

You can get hacked on Facebook. You can get blocked on LinkedIn. You can get demonetized on YouTube. The Instagram algorithm can suddenly decide to stop sharing your content. None of that can happen with your email list.

You can’t lose it.

No one can take it from you. It won’t get blocked. It’s the only safety you have. (trust me, I speak from experience)

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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.

Yesterday my Product Creation Made Easy course surpassed every other product I’ve ever sold in total profit earned.

But that’s not all.

That course is also my worst-selling product of all time.

Not what you expected huh?

How could that be? It’s my worst-selling product (also the most recently launched I have to add), and yet it made me the most profit out of every product I’ve sold so far.

That’s the realization I made yesterday.

And while to some, especially beginner—trust me, I was one of them—creators, this might sound absurd. It’s also fairly logical.

You see.

Product Creation Made Easy holds one other title—the one that made all of this possible.

It’s my most expensive product to date, it’s currently 2.5x times as expensive as my other 2 courses (Email Extraordinaire & Abundant-Client System), and it even started out as such, even when I launched it at a $120 early-bird discount.

Now I’m not telling you to take all of your bad and outdated products you’ve got lying around and slap a 10x price tag on it.

No, far from it.

But I am telling you to start increasing your prices. That goes for everything: courses, consultation calls, workshops, sprints, group coaching, freelance projects, and the stuff you sell during a garage sale.

I’m not entirely sure about that last one but my point still stands.

Increase the value you give. Increase the prices you charge. Target higher-paying clients. Earn more profit.

It’s that simple.

And if you don’t know where to start. Don’t look any further than my worst-selling course, Product Creation Made Easy. Which shows you in an easy and step-by-step manner how to ideate, create, and launch your very own digital product in 21 days or less and actually make it high-quality so you can slap a nice expensive price on it and get yourself your very own best-earning, worst-selling product.

As I’ve explained in this email, it ain’t cheap.

It’s not for people who just want to look around and see what I’m talking about without implementing anything. If you’re not serious about creating and selling your own products, don’t even consider it.

If you are serious however, click the link here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/launch

One of the leading causes of death for professional skydivers, ironically, is the diver becoming too comfortable falling.

So comfortable that they forget to pull the chute—or pull too late.

Another case.

One of the leading causes of death for professional freedivers is also becoming too comfortable. But this time too comfortable in the water, too comfortable holding their breath.

Due to frequent practice of holding their breath, they become ‘immune’ to the negative feelings paired with a lack of oxygen.

They become so used to it in fact that it’s entirely possible for a diver to keep swimming, holding their breath comfortably and without any issues until suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, their brain shuts off and they lose consciousness altogether.

Both of these facts sound surreal and almost fake to the non-professional.

Yet we experience it everyday with everything we do.

I don’t fear falling when riding a bike anymore—while I used to be extremely scared to do so when I was younger.

Most people aren’t anxious 24/7 while driving. Hell, most experience drivers repeatedly doze off while driving, not even thinking about what they’re doing. Yet people who just started learning will tell you how scared they are—they couldn’t imagine NOT paying attention.

I once saw a documentary about snake venom.

And there are these people whose job it is to breed snakes and drain their venom to help with medicine and antidotes and whatnot. Extremely venomous snakes as well. It’s a dangerous job. One bite can kill you for good if you’re not paying attention.

There was this one guy working there we said, and I still remember this well, “The day I stop being scared is the day I resign”.

And it even happens in his profession where people stop being scared, only to doze off and accidentally get bitten.

My point is this.

The more used to get to something and the more experienced you become, the less you’re aware of the risks involved in what you’re doing.

This is also true for social media.

I’d been posting on Twitter religiously ever single day for the past year. I’d often see people getting banned and such, but most of them were in the earlier stages. You start to think “this will never happen to me, I’m not doing anything wrong.”

And yet, it happened to me yesterday. I unexpectedly woke up to a notification telling me my account had been suspended.

See, everyone has the same chance to just happen to get unlucky.

In fact, the longer you stay, the more likely you’ll get banned, hacked, or something equally terrible happens to your profile.

Moral of the story: It pays to be scared.

Build your email list.

And if you want to know how I built mine, how I write my emails, and more importantly, how I get paid for doing so.

Then check out Email Extraordinaire here to learn more: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/EE

When I woke up this morning, I was greeted by multiple people all saying something along the lines of “I can’t find your account, it seems you’re suspended. What happened?”

I had no idea what had happened.

Within minutes I went to check and, indeed, I couldn’t log into my account. There was a message telling me “Your account is currently suspended. For more information …”

I then checked my emails and noticed I had an email from X support informing me I was suspended for ”Violating our rules against evading suspension”.

Here’s what that means and why it doesn’t make any sense:

In order to “evade suspension” you first have to 1) get suspended and then 2) create a second account to circumvent your suspension and get back on the platform—which is against the rules.

The thing is.

I only have one account. And I've never been suspended before.

Needless to say, I submitted an appeal and now all I can do is wait. They said I can expect a response in the next 3 to 5 days, but having listened to other people’s experience with X support, this likely translates to “you can expect a response never”.

Either way, I’ll just have to wait and see.

No idea what I’ll do if I don’t get my account back. Also no reason to worry or think about that for now.

With that said.

Let this be a sign for you. A real-life cautionary tale told—and experienced—by yours truly, about the dangers of relying on a social media platform.

Imagine if I hadn’t put in the time and effort to build my email list.

Maybe you’d have realized I was suspended, as many seem to have, maybe you didn’t. Either way, without this email list I wouldn’t have been able to get in touch with you. I wouldn’t be able to get paid anymore, my whole business would DISAPPEAR overnight. Everything I’d done for the past year would’ve been for nothing.

And as my tale now shows you. This can happen to anyone, for reasons that don’t even make any sense at all.

Don’t let it happen to you.

Build your email list. Get your digital insurance. Make your business rely on email, not on a social media account, and learn how to sell through your emails while you’re at it.

This perfectly leads me to my Email Extraordinaire which will teach you exactly how to do all of the above and more.

It is my duty to promote this course and help you avoid that such a terrible fate would destroy all of the efforts you’ve put in.

If you are making money online and using social media to power your business, you need to turn it into an email-centered business. And if you want to build your email-centered business, there’s no better place to start than Email Extraordinaire.

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

One of my all-time favorite stories/parables is the one of the Mexican fisherman and the investment banker.

It goes like this:

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An American investment banker was taking a much-needed vacation in a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. The boat had several large, fresh fish in it.

The investment banker was impressed by the quality of the fish and asked the Mexican how long it took to catch them.

The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.” 

The banker then asked why he didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish.

The Mexican fisherman replied he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The American then asked: “But what do you do with the rest of your time?” 

The Mexican fisherman replied, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos: I have a full and busy life, señor.”

The investment banker scoffed: “I am an Ivy League MBA, and I could help you. You could spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats until eventually, you would have a whole fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to the middleman, you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You could control the product, processing and distribution.”

Then he added: “Of course, you would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City where you would run your growing enterprise.”

The Mexican fisherman asked, “But señor, how long will this all take?” 

To which the American replied: “15–20 years.”

“But what then?” asked the Mexican.

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You could make millions.”

“Millions, señor? Then what?”

To which the investment banker replied: “Then you would retire. You could move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

===

This story is my entire life & business philosophy in a nutshell.

It’s why I do what I do. To build a life I can enjoy. To actually live life. And not merely work with the hopes of living life sometime in the future.

It’s also what I help my clients with.

I help them in building a freedom-focused business. No 18-hour work days, no offers you don’t feel passionate about even though they get you paid.

We work together and talk about your curiosities, your passions, your prior experience, and the dream life you’d like to have. Then we create your winning offer, the one that allows you to get paid doing what you love while optimizing your free time to live your life now rather than later.

I’ve helped 19 people build their business so far.

And you could be the 20th.

I’m currently opening up more spots to my one-on-one coaching program where I’ll help you do exactly that.

It ain’t cheap, let me tell you that.

But the best things never are. If you’re someone who’s willing to invest in their future, willing to change the way things are going, and ready to take the next step and scale your freedom-focused business.

Then reply with “Freedom” and I’ll get in touch with you, give you more information about the offer, and figure out whether we’d be a good fit to work together.

I love the Transformers movies.

Ever since I was young, I remember myself loving the Transformer franchise, getting multiple Transformers action figures as Christmas and birthday gifts and whatnot, and when I outgrew those action figures, I ended up spending hours playing Transformer video games.

Eventually I outgrew those as well.

But then I started getting fascinated by film music, at which point I was deeply obsessed with—among others—the original Transformer soundtracks by Steve Jablonsky, and later got fascinated by filmmaking as a whole.

And look, the Transformer movies have many flaws—more than anyone could count.

It also didn’t get better as time went on.

But you know what? That doesn’t matter at the end of the day.

The franchise doesn’t take itself that seriously. And why should it?

It’s making a world of its own. I have no doubt that when Michael Bay was directing Transformers he said to himself “you know what would look totally sick and make for an entertaining picture?” and then did whatever he had in mind.

Without any fear of being ridiculed, of being parodied, of not making “the perfect picture”, there’s no sliver of doubt about the intention behind the films and their entertaining nature.

And it shows in the earlier films (and some scenes of the later ones as well, although arguably less so).

That’s the difference between the artist and the entrepreneur

A true love for the craft—not just the numbers.

And that, to me, is what it’s all about.

See, I don’t care about building the perfect business, the best-optimized funnel, the most automated systems, none of that. It’s not about that.

It’s about the creative freedom. About doing what you love. Thinking something might be fun and enjoyable to do and simply doing it no matter how ridiculous it might seem, how unoptimized it might be, or even how “the public might not like it”.

Authors end up writing the books they wish would’ve been written, simply because they want to experience the joy of reading that story.

That’s the way one should aim to build their creative business.

Which leads me to that stage of the email where you’d expect me to link some offer because that’s the most efficient and profitable thing to do—which it is.

But I won’t.

Instead I have a question. One out of pure interest to get to know you better (and maybe to get some inspiration for myself).

What’s series, franchise, standalone story, myth, folktale, or creative work you absolutely love, are obsessed with, or have fond memories of?

Simply reply to this email and let me know.

Cheers.

It’s crazy to think how it’s already 2024.

That means I’ve been doing this Twitter thing for almost a year now.

I went from having absolutely no idea what I was doing. If you’d told me back then that I’d be writing an email every single day, sometimes even multiple emails, all the while helping other people monetize their business, and yet still be able to joke around, talk about bananas, write my own absurd Viking fantasy novel, and create whatever I thought was cool, exciting, or outright impossible at first glance, then I would’ve done a lot more than merely call you crazy and lock you up in a mental asylum.

Yet here we are.

Man did we achieve a lot. And I say ‘we’ because it’s not just me that achieved a lot.

I’ve been blessed to be able to work alongside so many awesome and like-minded people to help show them the way, to teach them the ropes of the game, help them from their earliest steps in the only business world, to the later stages of scaling and expanding their offer stack, building a true value ladder, and making sure they get paid for the time & effort they put in, and be able to live the life of freedom they so dreamed of.

One of the most crazy facts, to me, is how different every single person was.

Here are but a few of the people I helped build profitable businesses:

• A professional copywriter of 10+ years wanting to enter the personal branding industry and build his own email marketing agency

• A digital nomad building his life-coaching business

• An electrical engineer wanting to leave his 9–5 and start his own accounting-focused consultancy

• A long-time financial trader turned motivational speaker

• A student who went from getting paid $7 an hour to closing $10,000 deals with his B2B outreach agency

• A medium-sized YouTube personality who created his own game development studio and is now actively creating games, while teaching others how to get into the same industry

• An independent music producer turned relationship coach (while still having lots of free time for his music)

• A CTO in a Fortune 500 IT company growing his AI-focused newsletter to thousands upon thousands of subscribers

• and many, many more…

The thing is.

All of these people made the jump last year and got rewarded for it.

The question is.

Will you make the jump this year?

If so, why not start out by jumping on a clarity call with me?

I’ll help you build a winning strategy, monetize your business, and provide you with a clear and step-by-step roadmap so you’ll know exactly what to focus on for the following months.

After our call, you'll have FULL confidence AND clarity in your next steps to build & monetize your creator business.

Enough talking, let’s get to it and start 2024 the right way.

Click here to book your call: https://calendly.com/alexvandromme/clarity-call

Ascend 101

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

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Imagine this:

You’ve made an offer to a potential client. Hopped on a sales call with them, they absolutely love the sound of the offer. Everything goes well.

But then they ask you “So how much does it cost?” You share your rate.

And their smile fades.

They aren’t happy with the price and make an objection?

What will you do?

How will you handle it?

If you said “Negotiate my prices” you just made the biggest mistake most people make and something you should never do.

Big mistake.

Always remember the golden rule: NEVER lower your prices. (or make it seem as if you’re open to negotiate)

I can’t tell you how important this is. Lowering your prices shows you that 1) everything you offer is negotiable (it isn’t) and 2) you don’t value your own stuff (you should).

Lowering your prices is the fastest way to become a commodity. To become the same as everyone else to the point where you’ll have to compete on price instead of value.

So what should you do instead?

Well, you’ve got 2 options—assuming you want to still think the prospect can make for a high-quality client, if not, just drop it.

Option 1) Adding value

This first option requires that you do some work upfront.

More specifically, you have to think about things you could do to make your offer more valuable. Or create products, tools, templates, or other stuff that complements your stuff and increases the value as well.

Now when a prospect has price objections. You can offer an additional services or an extra tool/product on top of what they were already getting. This will increase the perceived value the prospect has about the offer. And when that perceived value is higher than the price, they’ll buy.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to hold back certain bonuses for people who have objections. No.

It could very well be the case that you were intending to give them access to your bonus stuff anyway—something that can work wonders as a surprise effect and exceed people’s expectations.

In this case you can simply shine light on those bonuses and make your prospect aware of them. Notice how we’re not making our offer seem “less valuable” by agreeing to a lower price.

Never lower your prices.                

Option 2) Downselling & Removing features

While the first option is perfect to get the prospect to agree to the price you’re asking.

That’s simply not always possible if the prospect simply doesn’t have the money to pay for your service—which can happen if you sell high-ticket services. But that doesn’t mean you simply have to disregard the prospect altogether.

In this case it’s useful to try and downsell your prospect.

Downselling refers to presenting them with a different offer of yours. Instead of a 3 month long coaching offer, try a 4-call consulting package. Instead of a 4-call consulting package, try a 1-hour group workshop. Instead of a group workshop, try a low-ticket digital course.

The aim here is to offer something that’s in their price range, while still being relevant and helpful for the prospect’s situation.

This does mean, however, that you do need to have an existing value ladder.

In the case you’re not at that stage yet, you can simply remove features of your main offer.

Instead of checking up daily through Telegram for your 3-month coaching package, remove it altogether and only have a weekly zoom call. By removing features you’ll make the offer itself less valuable and you can change the price to reflect that. (Important distinction between changing the price of the offer itself)

As an added bonus, you may find people agreeing to your main offer for the full price after removing features because your prospect will come to realize just how much value they place on the features you suggested to remove.

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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

You probably know the drill by now.

I’ve got an offer ready with the potential to change your life.

To build the business you dream of and achieve the freedom you long for. To rid yourself of the chains of your 9–5, your constant client work, your pesky boss, your awful deadlines, having to work over hours, not being able to spend quality time with your family, hell not even being able to choose whenever you take a day off.

I’m not saying it’ll be easy.

It won’t.

I’m not saying it’ll be fast.

It won’t.

But I can promise you that this will lead you in the right direction. Maybe you’ll see fast results. If so, more power to you. Maybe it’ll take you a few months of trial & error.

But isn’t that worth it?

See this is the last email I’ll be sending you. I deem it my utmost duty and responsibility to get my course Product Creation Made Easy in as many hands as humanly possible.

Not merely because I want to get paid.

But because I know how powerful the knowledge inside is.

I’ve seen it firsthand. I know how it can transform lives. How it can create an entirely new business from scratch. How it adds meaning and purpose to your life. And how you, with the time and resources it’ll bring you, you’re able to build yourself a new life. The one where you can pursue your passions and make the world a better place—whatever that means to you.

I know because I lived it.

So with that said.

Here’s the last time you’ll ever see this link.

And the last 60 minutes of time you have left to get Product Creation Made Easy at a $120 early-bird discount ($129 instead of the full $249).

Here’s what to do to get it:

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

2. Buy it within next 60 minutes to get it at the discount

3. Use code PRODUCT at the checkout in case the discount didn’t get added automatically and make sure you see the price change before entering your info

Once again, here’s the link: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/launch/PRODUCT