A few months ago, a loyal reader of my emails asked:

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“Hey Alex do have any resources on how to grow & monetize an email list? Or any recommendations I should check out?

I want to start my own and would love some advice from you to know where and how to start.”

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At the time I responded with a simple answer talking about the tools I use and what kind of email I had the most success with so far. I also mentioned how I was in the process of creating a resource of my own on that exact topic.

Fast forward a few months, and it’s here—my course Simple Money Emails.

This course teaches you 7 benefits of email, the 3 steps to create your email list, 6 rules to write a welcome email, 6 methods to get new subscribers every single day, the power of storytelling, 6 rules to tell great stories, how to keep your readers engaged no matter how long your email is, the best 4 types of subject lines to get your emails opened, the only email formula you need to get people to buy your products and keep them wanting to read more day after day, 7 additional methods to earn money with your email list (even if you don’t currently have an offer), the pro’s and con’s of every standard frequency type of emails and the one that stands above all of them, the 4 best-performing email types to send (and how to write them), and an in-depth guide on the exact structure you need when writing long-form email articles to keep your readers engaged, entertained, and educate them to point of wanting to buy your services.

And that’s not even all of it.

Did I overdo it? Probably. Could I have made more money if I had spent less time on the course and instead spent my time on other things? Most definitely.

But am I proud of what I created? Absolutely.

This is my life’s work so far. This is my one true masterpiece. I’ve spent many hours, days, and full months on this.

I’m proud of the effort I’ve put in. I’m proud of what the course has become. And I’m proud of the results it’s gotten for both me and other people.

It’s everything I do.

It’s all there, waiting for you to claim it.

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

Back when I was 15 I overheard this fun fact about denim.

Apparently standard denim jeans would be fire resistant or fireproof. (I don’t know the difference)

This sounded crazy to 15-year-old Alex.

I used to wear jeans only. Nothing else.

I had filled my closet with jeans. Which is funny if you think about it because I barely wear any jeans today.

But still. Jeans? Fireproof? I couldn’t just believe that without testing it out myself, could I?

So little old me devised a genius master plan. Or something like it.

Me and some friends from school at the time wanted to do a ‘scientific’ experiment and test the hypothesis that jeans are fireproof.

This was our plan:

I would take my jeans, spray them full of deodorant, and light them on fire with a lighter. Sounds simple enough right?

But here’s the thing. I was at school. This was during our lunch break.

I obviously didn’t bring separate jeans with me. I was wearing THOSE jeans.

So there I was. Spraying my jeans with deodorant. How else would we light it after all? We had to REALLY test it.

So here it went, I had my lighter ready.

3.

2.

1.

Fire!

Immediately my jeans lit on fire. Everyone looked at me and we were all equally amazed, “Wow! Fire!”.

So cool I thought.

But then it got hot. REALLY HOT!

My legs were burning, obviously. Why didn’t I think of that?

I panicked because I was literally on fire. So I did the only thing I could think of.

I pulled down my pants and got out of them as fast as I could. There I was. In the middle of my school, in my underwear because my jeans were on fire.

After taking of my pants, we immediately stopped the fire and that was that.

I had some burns on my legs, but not much. Just first-degree burns.

My jeans had blackened in some spots, but that was about it. They weren’t really damaged.

So in the end, it turns out: my jeans were fireproof…but my legs weren’t.

But I learned something that day. I learned experiments can cause harm. Especially if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Sometimes it’s better to learn and accept the lessons others have discovered before you.

In this case my legs were burned. But in business? Imagine the damage you could do by not learning from others and having to discover everything for yourself?

How much money would you miss out on over a month? A year? 10 years?

How much, really? $10,000? $100,000? $1,000,000? $10,000,000??

I’m not quite sure. But it’s a lot, let me tell you that.

But luckily for you, you don’t have to discover everything for yourself.

I did the testing and experimenting for you. I’ve been writing emails for 7 months now. I’ve written plenty of emails that made sales. And so many more that didn’t.

I now know which ones bring results, which ones don’t, and most importantly, I know why.

And if you want to learn how to get paid by writing emails, check out my course Simple Money Emails here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/SME

Here’s a quick tip for you.

Yesterday I posted a short tweet. Here’s what it said.

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Are you a creator who’s ready to take their one-person business to the next level?

DM me ‘Ascend’.

I’ve got something you might find interesting. (Not free)

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It got 9 likes, 1 comment, and a few hundred impressions.

But most importantly: it got me 3 DMs.

3 leads I’m currently talking to. And it looks promising.

Do with this information as you want.

Yes, I meant what I wrote in the subject line. I’m not joking.

Do you know how people often post a tweet like:

“Unpopular opinion: [insert a popular opinion]”

Yeah, this isn’t one of those. This is by far one of the most unpopular opinions I’ve ever expressed.

And I’ve been getting attacked for it every single time that I said it.

But you know me. So you’ll know that 1) it doesn’t bother me. I’ll stick to my beliefs and I’m not afraid to get attacked. Neither am I afraid if people will unfollow me for it. If you can’t handle different perspectives, that’s one you.

You'll also know 2) I don’t say stupid shit without thinking about it. I’m here to inform, explain, and entertain.

So let me explain why I say tracking email open rates is a waste of time. Or at least mostly.

First of all, the biggest factor: You’re not in business to get your emails opened, are you? You’re in business to make money. And don’t try to be humble and say you just want to help people. We’re all in it for the money. It doesn’t mean you can’t do good. But we’re still here for the money.

So what does that tell you? Well if you had to choose between making $100 per email while having a 50% open rate or making $1,000 per email but having an open rate of 12%, which one would you choose?

Right. The second one, of course. No doubt about it.

That tells us we’re optimizing for sales, not for opens. Which is a big and important distinction to make.

“But Alex, if you increase your open rate from 12% to 50%, wouldn’t you make more money?” In theory yes, in practice no.

This is something I first learned from email marketer John Bejakovic who shared his odd discovery that all his emails with the highest profits had the lowest open rates. A discovery I share as well.

Why does this happen? Well who knows? There are (and could be) multiple reasons.

One of the most logical explanations has to do with the subject line. If a subject line is highly specific, then less people will open your emails. But the people who do will be better-qualified buyers, and thus earning you more money.

On the other hand. It’s not just all about money > open rates.

Open rates themselves are flawed. Over the years many ESPs have taken different privacy actions to protect their users. This means that the methods used to track if people opened your emails aren’t working anymore.

How do you even know if people opened your email in the first place? Well, that’s done through embedded images.

Whenever I send an email, my ESP (Beehiiv) embeds a tiny image, just one single pixel. If you open the email, you’ll automatically send a request to download that image.

But here’s the thing. A lot of people have images disabled. Aka, you can’t track them. And here’s the new change. Google, outlook, and many others intercept these images and alter them before showing them to you in your inbox. Also disabling the tracker that’s embedded.

So yeah. You can’t trust email open rates. And you shouldn’t take drastic measures regarding them.

But there’s something else you can trust. Those are the fundamentals of email marketing. Learning how to write quick and easy emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading everyday. No longer do you have to follow rules and metrics made up by people who know nothing about email. Just do you, write engaging emails, and get paid.

Interested? Learn more about how to do so here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/SME

Drama. Everyone says they’re above it, yet everyone loves it.

And boy oh boy did we get some of it on Twitter yesterday.

If you know, you know. If you don’t, well, I’m not going to go on about it. Let’s just say people were proudly sharing how they manipulated their audience.

But this entire ordeal did pose a good question.

You see, everyone on social media is portraying themselves as a persona. Or at least, every successful social media figure is.

I don’t care how often people tweet about being authentic and all that crap. That’s true. Authenticity is important, not denying that. But at the end of the day you can’t portray your entire self. (That would require you to know fully who you are, which is an almost impossible task as you are an ever-changing complex organism with limited powers of thought because of your own self-imposed perspective through which you see the world.)

So you will always end up showing a carefully designed image of yourself. An image that hopefully fits with your personality. An image that hopefully shares the same beliefs, perspectives, and opinions. And an image that aligns with your moral compass. But an image nonetheless.

That’s not even limited to social media. This holds true for all social interactions.

But here’s where it gets tricky.

You’re on social media for a reason. Maybe you want to get more clients for your agency, maybe you want to get people to buy your products, or maybe you just want to get your daily and ever-increasing dose of dopamine by seeing the number of likes and followers go up every single day.

Whatever it is, you have a goal.

But often times people don’t make the connection between your goal and your persona. Most people don’t even want to acknowledge that they’re portraying a persona in the first place.

You have to align your persona with your goal consciously, or you’ll do it unconsciously, with awful consequences as a result.

So what does all of this mean? A lot actually, but let me break it down by asking a single question.

Where do you draw the line in regards to crafting your persona in order to reach your goal?

Everyone will agree when I say that there are some lines you do not cross. Tactics, methods, or strategies that you know will work for the goal you’re trying to reach, but you won’t indulge in, no matter what.

This caused the drama yesterday.

Let this be your warning. This could happen to you as well if you don’t carefully think about it.

As for where I draw the line? I immediately think of the infamous Spiderman catchphrase, “Great power comes with great responsibility”.

As a creator, you will have people looking up to you. You will inspire others, no doubt about it.

The bigger you are, the more power and thus responsibility you hold. Don’t abuse it.

Be noble. Be honest. Be virtuousness. Be a force of good for the world.

That’s what drives me. No matter how much results I can get. If I have to be dishonest to get them, it’s not even an option.

And if you want an honest way to get sales and keep your readers coming back day after day, then check out my course Simple Money Emails here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/SME

I’m seriously tired as I start writing this email. I’ve got 20 minutes before this email is supposed to go out.

So this is the perfect opportunity to prove how I write entertaining and interesting emails in less than 20 minutes.

How did I get myself into this situation?

Well, I took yesterday off. No work, whatsoever. I had prepared my long-form Sunday email as well as scheduled my tweets a day beforehand.

I made sure I had an empty email inbox as I went to sleep Saturday evening, something I don’t have very often. Especially not now that I make a living writing emails—something about the law of attraction I guess.

But why did I take the day off? First of all, because I went to the beach with my parents, sister, and brother-in-law.

The weather was amazing and as far as I can remember I haven’t been on a beach for ages. The last time I can remember was in 2018 somewhere in Italy.

But secondly, and most importantly. I took a day off simply because I could.

This is what I’m working toward. This is why I’m sharing what I’m sharing, so you can do the same.

Take your days off whenever you want. Be wherever and do whatever you want. To live a life worth living.

To not be dependent on other people. To have freedom of time and location.

To be truly independent. To be autonomous.

I’ve recently seen some people call freedom a “shallow & short-sighted” goal. Giving the argument that simply rotting away on a golf course, a beach, sitting at home, or partying every week isn’t meaningful.

But I say that perspective is short-sighted.

Saying chasing freedom is short-sighted because there’s more you can do with your life (create meaning, have an impact, change the world,…) is like saying starving children are short-sighted because they want food.

No. This is how the world works. You work your way up.

You don’t simply start working on self-actualization, the highest category of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Of course not.

It’s a checklist to fulfill. You start at the bottom and work your way up.

I even had a conversation about a similar topic yesterday on the beach. About how many people underestimate or even ignore the notion of spirituality.

And that’s totally logical. See, there’s nothing wrong with spirituality. In fact, it’s a vital aspect of everyone’s life.

But there’s no point trying to build yourself up spiritually if you still have to worry regularly about having water, food, and shelter. It’s only after you take care of your basic needs that you can focus your attention on goals further up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Attentive readers know where I’m going with this.

This is more than a silly little story of how I went to the beach and why I care about being able to go whenever I want.

This is a marketing lesson:

Your audience has needs. Every human being is wired in almost the exact same manner. We all follow Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Know where your audience stands. Know about their current struggles, but more importantly, their current needs.

Knowing those needs will allow you to reframe your content accordingly through the right lens. Every interest, skill, or offer you have can be portrayed in a thousand different ways. Knowing what perspective to show depends on where your audience is at in Maslow’s hierarchy.

The same could be said about their awareness and sophistication levels. But those are for another time.

What’s not for another time is a way for you to solve your need for safety; especially your safety needs for employment and resources.

This is where my course Simple Money Emails will help you. It teaches you how to create engaging emails—just like this one—in 20 minutes or less, while getting paid for it and leaving your readers wanting more.

If that sounds interesting, aka if you currently are at that stage in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, then check it out here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/SME

Ascend 101

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

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Last week I shared 10 Tweets to include in your content strategy.

One of those was the question tweet. I talked about how great they are for both engagements as well as market research about your audience.

And they are.

But not all questions are created equal. A question such as “What’s your favorite food?” won’t do well. I can assure you.

There are certain rules and guidelines to keep in mind when writing questions to your audience. Following these rules and guidelines will be the difference between struggling to get 5 likes and going viral without any problems.

Here are 4 things to keep in mind when creating question tweets:

1) Stay within your niche

This one should go without saying.

But don’t ask questions about food if your content is all about email marketing. Are you a personal trainer? Then by all means ask questions about food.

Asking questions that have nothing to do with you, your offer, or your audience is one of the ugliest sights there is.

People know what you’re doing. And people will lose respect for you.

There is one exception here, however. And that’s if you can relate the, seemingly unrelated, question to the type of content you usually create.

If you’re an email marketer and you’re able to use questions about people’s favorite foods as a way to illustrate market research and sales tactics. Then that’s fine.

But be aware of how you frame it. Your audience needs to be able to realize what you’re getting at.

2) Ask what’s on your mind

The best type of questions are those questions you’re genuinely thinking about yourself. Or questions you’ve asked yourself in the past.

Let’s take the food question again as an example. If you’re a person who just can’t be bothered thinking about food, let alone caring about what food other people like. Then why the hell would you ask about it?

On the other hand. If you’re passionate about movies and you talk about them all the time. Then please ask your audience questions about their taste in movies.

3) Constraints are key

You might think it smart to ask easy and open-ended questions. But you’d be severely mistaken. There’s nothing as bad as asking such questions.

Imagine if you came across a tweet that said, “What do you think about the importance of an email list?”

Yeah, I’m willing to bet you’re not going to respond to that one. But what would happen if instead, you posted, “In 5 words or less, what’s the #1 best thing about having an email list?”

Yeah, that one’s going to get answered. (In fact, I might even schedule this one)

But why is that?

Simple, people like a challenge. It’s fun to play a little game. Here the game is to answer the questions “in 5 words or less”.

Also, and no less important, I’m asking you about the ‘#1 best thing’, which is a lot more precise than “the importance of”.

The aim here is to:

• Be specific

• Make it fun

• Challenge the reader

On that note, the “in 5 words or less” works wonders. But it’s being abused by everyone. Think about other ways you could make it challenging.

Be creative.

4) Use ‘either-or’ questions

This one isn’t as much of a rule as it is a useful trick to know.

But it’s one hell of a cheat code.

It’s the “either-or” question.

I mentioned how important it is to be specific. Broad open-ended questions are difficult to pull off. The fewer choices people have to answer—the less they have to think about their answer—the more likely you’ll be to get a response. And the better your tweet will perform.

So an easy trick is to only give them 2 choices:

• If you could only have 1, would you rather have financial freedom or time freedom?

• You only have 5 hours a week, would you spend your time doing outreach or posting content to get clients?

There are only 2 possible answers to both questions. But there’s a lot of room open to interpretation and reasoning behind those choices.

This is the ideal scenario because people will answer very quickly, but there’s a huge possibility of big discussions. Something that can easily make your content go viral.

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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. 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.

P.P.S. Once in a while I post my tech stack.
For those interested, these are all the tools I use:
(These are affiliate links, so if you sign up, I'll get a small referral bonus.)

1. Beehiiv for my newsletter: One of the biggest, easiest, and best providers for people wanting to build their newsletter. A logical choice to make with its abundance of integrated solutions for easy growth. (e.g., an integrated referral program)

2. Tweethunter for everything Twitter: From scheduling tweets to gathering inspiration and engaging with others. TweetHunter has everything you need if you’re serious about building your business on Twitter.

3. Carrd to build my landing pages: You’re building a business. You need simple and effective landing pages for your funnels. Carrd is an easy-to-use website builder that does exactly that.

4. Testimonial to gather testimonials: Simply drop your clients a link where they can leave a testimonial. Gather everything in one place. And embed it on your landing pages as you wish.

Algorithm this, algorithm that.

You can’t open Twitter (X) anymore without seeing someone complain about it.

In case you’re not aware of what’s going on. Apparently Twitter changed how the algorithm works. The thing that decides who sees your posts and who doesn’t (and thus decides how many impressions you get).

So almost everyone is getting far less engagement than they used to. And—not surprisingly—everyone is bitching about it.

Some people are acting as if the whole world is about to explode. A lot of them have quit altogether.

And if you ask me, all those people weren’t supposed to make it anyway.

The problem with these people? They’ve been thinking too short-term.

No matter how many “consistency is key” posts someone makes, or how often they paraphrase Alex Hormozi saying the most successful people think in timeframes of 10 years, not 10 weeks.

No matter how many of those platitudes someone posts. If that person complains about the algorithm and lets it affect them. They didn’t internalize those lessons. They forgot to think about the bigger picture.

In my world, all of these occurrences don’t matter. It doesn’t matter how many likes, retweets, comments, impressions, or any other surface-level metric you get. Those are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

You’ll keep going either way. You’ll get there eventually. To the promised land. Who cares if it takes you a month longer?

“Oh but Alex this is how I do business and earn a living”.

Then you clearly haven’t thought about it much. Because that’s a joke.

You’re on a platform. A platform that’s not yours. Anything can happen. You knew this when you signed up. So it’s your job to be prepared for the worst. To do the best you can, no matter what.

In the grand scheme of things, you’re building your own world.

You’re building a place filled with people who want to be with you, hear from you, and buy from you. They’ll go to the end of the world to find you. They don’t care about the platform, they care about being where you are. So why are you keeping them ON the platform?

So if the algorithm fucked your business, that’s your fault.

As with any world you’re creating, you should have a place where people can gather. That place shouldn’t be a social media platform you don’t have any control over.

Imagine Disneyland (undoubtedly a world of its own, and one set on creating a long-lasting legacy) renting land instead of buying its own. How stupid would they have to be?

No you secure your own safety.

What does that mean for your online business?

You either create your own platform, which for many of us won’t be possible (yet), or you simply create an email list. Nobody can take it from you, no matter who decides what on some social media platform.

There are many other tips and practices that you can follow to not be affected by changes such as these. But this should undoubtedly be your first step.

If you don’t have your own email list, then create yours now. Like right now. This second.

And not knowing how to do so isn’t an excuse. Because I’ve got just the thing for you.

It’s called Simple Money Emails and it’s a course I created to teach you everything you need about creating, growing, and even monetizing your email list. Nothing held back.

Get it here to secure the future of your business: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/SME

Last week I had a clarity call with a client of mine, Vince Mao.

He’s a wholesome and inspiring up-and-coming creator. Helping parents working a 9–5 to create video content that inspires others. It was a wonderful and educational call for both of us.

As the call was coming to an end I reminded him that he could always reach out to me if he had more questions. To which he seemed to reply hesitantly, explaining that he respected my time and tries not to ‘overstep his boundaries’ by asking too many questions and making it feel like he’s just using me.

And I can see the reasoning behind this. You do not want to abuse people and your relationships with them. Especially regarding the service they provide to others and make a living with.

But I still found this a bit odd.

In my mind, if you’ve got a question, you just ask. If you’d like some help, you just ask. In case you happen to “cross the boundaries” of someone else’s hospitality, they’d just tell you.

At least I would. I’d say so and we move on. No biggie.

I’d probably never need to do so, especially not if we know and respect on another. But still.

And maybe it’s a culture thing.

I’m from the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium after all. And it’s a well-known stereotype that Dutch-speaking people come across as direct, commanding, and maybe even a bit condescending at times. I’ve gotten people mentioning those things to me before, so they appear to hold some truth.

We just sound direct, that’s all. We don’t mean it; I promise.

But back to my point. Helping others, answering questions. That’s what I’m here for. That’s what most of us are here for.

To help each other. To learn, discover, and grow together. Even as I’m writing these emails. I’m doing so to help you think about things differently. I’m writing so you can learn something in a few minutes that took me months to figure out—if not years.

I’m also writing to sell some stuff and make a living, of course. But even then, I’m only selling what I believe to be valuable and what I had wished to have had when I just started. Again, with the purpose of helping others.

So it doesn’t matter if it’s a DM I get, a reply to my tweet, someone asking a question on a space, or you replying to this email with a certain question you have—a question that could have nothing to do with the contents of this email—I’ll gladly answer all of those.

If you’re on my list, and you take the time to read my emails, and then take even more time to reply to my emails, then I’m 100% convinced you respect me and my time, no matter what.

That’s enough reason for me to answer your questions.

And that answer might be a few sentences if that’s all there is to it. But at the same time, I’ve written emails longer than some of my weekly articles to people asking questions.

Because I respect you and your time. I want to help you and your business. And I will answer you and your questions no matter what.

And if your question were to be, “Hey Alex, I want to start my own journey of writing emails. I want to build a relationship with my list, sell my products, and write emails for a living just like you. Do you know some good resources to get me started?”

Well, in that case, look no further. Because yes I do know of a good resource to get you started.

In fact, it’s my very own Simple Money Emails course.

If that sounds like something you want to learn how to do, click the link here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/SME

I’ve been reading a lot more fiction books lately.

Multiple hours a day even.

Whereas just a few months ago I didn’t even have a single fiction book in my collection. My bookshelf was filled with non-fiction books on writing, business, self-improvement, mindset, psychology, whatever.

Everything except fiction.

But that recently changed. I started off reading some classics like 1948, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and multiple books by Dostojevski and Hemingway.

It originally started because I wanted to improve my writing. And so the best option was to learn from the greats.

But now I’ve been reading a lot more general fiction. General fantasy books. Not necessarily classics anymore.

A big focus on that is worldbuilding, which I’ve discussed at length before and will probably discuss again quite soon, but not today. But another big reason has been general enjoyment.

I quite like reading nowadays. Something younger me would have never predicted.

It’s refreshing. There’s so much to explore and discover. There are so many wonderful stories to read. The writer is able to transport you to a whole other world and evoke all kinds of different emotions. It truly is incredible.

Often times all I want to do is read all day. Luckily I can read a lot. But even I can’t read all day.

Yet that’s not the point.

All of this got me thinking. I enjoy so much more than I ever imagined. There’s not just 1 type of book I like. And I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface.

But that’s just me with books. Surely that’s not limited to me. And surely that’s not limited to books. Right?

That got me thinking about what I offer. The content I share. The services I provide. The products I have for sale. And the stuff I freely give away.

Surely there’s a lot more that I could be offering. Something I haven’t thought about before.

As of right now the only product I’m really selling is my Simple Money Email course. I’ve got more free stuff on my gumroad, but those are quite limited as well.

So I won’t leave you with a plug to any of the things I can offer today.

I’m leaving you with a question.

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What’s something you’d like to see me offer/provide?

What’s a problem you’re currently struggling with and you wish I provided a solution for?

Is there something on your mind such as “god I wish someone had made X for me to use/learn from/buy”?

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Alright those are multiple questions. But any of those will do since the answers all come down to the same thing.

I’m genuinely curious to hear from you.

Reply to this email and let me know what you’d like me to cover/offer/provide.