It’s that time again.

I’ve bought yet another 4 new books. For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway and the first 3 books of The Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.

That last one was a recommendation I got from Elle Cheron—someone I met a few months ago on Twitter.

And that’s not all. I’m planning on buying a course from an email marketer I like. As well as some other books and a few upgrades to my tech stack.

All of this is crazy to write. At least for me.

I never used to spend ANY money whatsoever. My parent educated me on the importance of saving money when I was younger.

While I appreciate the life lessons they taught me. I’m not going to follow the savings lessons anymore.

I made myself a new rule. To never regret spending money on me. And to reinvest almost everything I earn.

This is crucial. True money comes from the skills you developed and the experience you acquired.

You don’t earn lots of money by saving. You earn lots of money by improving yourself and learning high-income-generating skills.

It’s the best investment anyone can make.

Alex Hormozi calls it investing in the S&Me instead of the S&P 500. The return on investment is 100x higher in the long run.

So that’s exactly what I’m doing.

I earned a decent payday for myself this month and I’ll be reinvesting almost everything. I’m here for the long haul after all.

I ain’t cashing out after a few months.

Now, the question remains.

Are you in it for the long haul? Are you determined to invest in yourself and increase your earning potential?

Do you want to build high-value skills and start living the life you dream of? A life filled with freedom. Freedom to follow your curiosities and get paid for sharing your ideas?

Then reply to this mail with “I want to invest in myself”.

We’ll figure out the best possible plan for you and start increasing your earning potential immediately.

Don’t waste these chances. Don’t let life pass by you. You’re meant for more.

Reply to this mail and take action.

Ascend 101

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

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The long-awaited case study mail is finally here.

It was supposed to get sent out yesterday. But I was away for the weekend and apparently didn’t have it scheduled. So I won’t take up any of your time with a long introduction. Let’s get into it.

As you’ll see we have 3 real-life situations from my readers.

I first started by giving a quick summary of their situation. Then I’ll dive into explanations as to how they could improve their situation based on the information I’ve gotten.

I want to mention that I didn’t dive deeper into the mails I’ve got and am purely working with the base information. This makes it harder to give concrete advice and solve the root of the problems.

But I’ll nonetheless tackle what I perceive to be the problem at hand.

Once again I want to thank everyone who sent me an email with their situations.

Let’s get started.

Case Study #1 — Alex

Current status: 

• Working part-time writing content for clients to keep up with college expenses (forensic psychology)

• Not interested in pursuing the standard career path of finishing the degree and working in that field

Goals:

• Achieving freedom, flexibility, creativity

• Pursuing writing, psychology, research

• Building a one-person business

Struggles:

• No idea what to do

• Struggling to choose between blogging, coaching, content creation, or copywriting

• Too many interests to choose from

This is a great scenario to use as a case study because the obstacle here is one of the most common ones.

Not knowing what to talk about or thinking you’re forced to pick one of the popular “niches” such as copywriting or coaching.

The good news is that the solution is simple. So simple that most people have the answer but overlook it.

In this case Alex gave the answer in the mail. The exact sentence read:

That’s your niche. That’s what you want to talk about.

You are interested in writing, psychology, and doing research. I always talk about following your curiosity instead of your passion.

And lucky for you, having an immense curiosity is the complete opposite of a downfall. At least when you’re in the education/entertainment business. Which all of us are.

The problem here is that you seem to be confusing your content with your offer.

And I get why it happens. It’s easy to think you have to talk about your offer all the time. How will you get money after all?

But that’s simply not true.

You want to talk about your curiosities. Whatever they are.

Show people what you’re pursuing and talk about why it’s interesting.

Show how psychology is improving your life. Give your audience a taste of how writing is making you live the life of your dreams.

The internet allows us to build according to an audience-first approach instead of the product-first approach most traditional businesses use.

Instead of making a product, marketing it, and looking for people interested in said product, we do the opposite.

You get to build an audience based on your curiosities. You get to educate them on all of your different interests. Then discover the common problems your audience is facing and create an offer to solve them.

This is what 90% of content creators miss. And this is why most of them quit and never get anywhere.

Action step: Talk about your curiosities. Then afterward figure out your offer. (and only talk about your offer in 10% of your content)

Case Study #2 — Harry

Current status: 

• Working full time

• Trying to scale capital through trading

• Creating content, engaging daily, building a landing page

• Growing a discord community and doing (free and paid) coaching

Goals:

• Scaling to 10k/month through coaching

• Growing a newsletter

• Gaining more clarity

Struggles:

• Too many tasks, too little time

Many will relate this to Harry’s case. There’s so much to do, yet so little time.

And the solution to it is two-fold.

Unfortunately, the first part is counter-intuitive. That’s why so many people struggle with it.

And it’s simply to do less. Shocking, right?

But I hear you. There’s so much to do. Surely doing less won’t magically solve everything.

And that’s right. You will feel like you’re missing something. You will feel like you could be doing more. You feel like you could be growing faster or earning more sooner.

And you’d be correct. But here’s the thing. You’ll always feel that way.

Even if you’re working 24/7. Not taking any breaks. Not eating, not sleeping, and in some way still functioning 100%. Even then, you’ll still think that you’ll be able to do more.

So the first part is to do less. And be ok with it.

The reason to do less is so you can focus on doing it better. To come close to perfecting the tasks at hand. And turn them into a system. A repeatable system that you can do without thinking about it.

Maybe you could even automate it. Speed is the name of the game in business. But you don’t get to speed everything up at once.

You get to pick one thing. Work on it for a long time, and hone your skills. Then speed it up. And only then repeat the process for something else.

(This is why you shouldn’t start posting on multiple social media platforms in the beginning. It takes too much time early on and it’s not worth it)

One such example for Harry would be to start creating content in batches. Right now he’s creating for the next day. This takes a long time because he has to reserve some time at night — every night.

A better, more efficient method would be to take an hour or two every Sunday evening and batch-create your content for the upcoming week.

Another example would be how Harry is using free coaching calls hoping to get paying clients. That’s fine if you’re starting out and don’t have testimonials yet.

But I’m quite certain he already has some social proof + he’s even had a few paying clients already. So there’s no point in doing free coaching calls anymore.

They take up too much time and most of the time they attract the total opposite of the type of client you want. You want high-quality clients who see your worth. Not free-loaders hoping to scrape together free information.

Even worse, you’re probably scaring off the clients you want.

(Don’t get me started on building both a community and a newsletter at the same time as someone starting out in the space)

Action step: Do less, but better & develop systems.

Case Study #3 — Adam

Current status: 

• Improving his (email) marketing skills

• Approaching (local) gym owners

• Thinking of switching to the real estate market for more success

Goals:

• Land his first client

• Improve his offer

Struggles:

• Positioning problem

• Doubting the value of his offer

• Not knowing how to address price objections

The biggest problem I see with Adam is not seeing the full value of his offer. Which translates into him not being able to show the client the full value either.

Here’s an excerpt from the mail he sent me:

Now, I don’t know about you. But my alarm went off.

How would it only be worth $500?

I did a quick Google search and sure enough: “The average customer's lifetime value of a gym member is approximately $720.”

However, I do understand what’s happening here. He gets the gym owner 10 new clients. And each client pays maybe $50 for a membership. 10x$50 = $500.

Except that most don’t leave the gym after only a month, right?

Gymgoers, on average, stay for approximately 14 months.

They could stay even longer, especially when you have a good email marketer who’s motivating people to get in shape and educating them on how to do so.

Email marketing isn’t only about acquiring customers. It’s about building a long-lasting relationship. It allows for a lot of aftercare after the original purchase.

We haven’t even spoken about upselling your customers with additional supplements, gym gear, and personal training. Which most (smart) gyms do.

Imagine if Adam could make all of this clear to his prospect.

Imagine if the prospect understood that he could potentially earn a whopping $10,000 from those extra 10 customers with good email marketing.

Now, I don’t know how much Adam is charging for his services. But I’m willing to bet the gym owner won’t be losing money.

And this is only from email marketing. Imagine if Adam could add some design, offer creation, funnel building, or other high-value skills to the table.

It’s easy to charge a lot of money if you start building your skills and convincing people of the value you bring.

There’s a reason Alex Hormozi got insanely rich doing this. (seriously, check out his first book “gym secrets”)

There are some other aspects we could talk about when it comes to this case study. But I’ll leave those for another day.

The mail is already getting long enough.

Action step: Fully understand the true (long-term) value of your offer and make your prospect understand it.

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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 get you there in the next 30–60 days.

3. Download all my products for FREE: 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.

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And if you've got a moment, I'd love to hear what you thought of this edition of Ascend 101.

Send me a quick message – I reply to every email!

It’s 10:53 (GMT+2) as I’m writing this email.

Which is a lot earlier than I normally do.

I schedule my emails to be sent at 3:12 PM every day. And most of the time I only start writing them 20 to 30 minutes before.

Don’t ask me why. Maybe I like the stress of an artificial deadline coming closer. Maybe I’m an obsessive procrastinator.

But I won’t be able to write my email at the usual time today. I switched up my schedule and now I have to write my email earlier.

And that’s exactly why email is so powerful.

I can write something whenever and wherever I want. And it can serve me whenever I want.

It can even serve me multiple times.

I could use this particular one in an email sequence that might still be in use 10 years in the future.

And it’d still be making me money.

That’s the power of email. It’s the power of digital leverage.

Nothing you write is ever lost. And the more you write, the bigger your empire gets (and the more you get paid).

There’s no limit to it. Literally none.

So why haven’t you started yours yet?

And don’t give me any of these excuses:

• I can’t write

• I don’t have an offer yet

• I have nothing to write about

• I’m waiting until I have more followers

• I don’t have enough authority to have an email list

• I haven’t gotten permission from Huitzilopochtli, one of the four main Aztec gods

I’ve heard all of them before. (Okay, maybe not ALL of them)

But I’m here to tell you that all of those excuses are a load of BS.

• The only way to improve your writing is to start writing now

• You’ll develop an offer and even a curriculum through the culmination of your emails

• You do, you just don’t know it yet.

• Why? Better to start early. If you can’t help your 100 followers, how do you expect to help 10,000?

• You build authority by having an email list, not the other way around

• This one might take me a bit longer to fix

If you haven’t realized the core message of this email by now.

Start your email list today.

Not next week, not tomorrow. Do it today.

You’ll thank me later.

Cheers

P.S.: I’ve been helping people launch & monetize their email lists for the past couple of months. Do you want to learn how to write emails that take you less than 10 minutes to write, but will get you paid for years to come?

Schedule a call with me here: https://calendly.com/alexvandromme/clarity-call

I received one of my favorite types of messages today.

Compliments about my emails.

As you know. I love writing these emails.

They can be difficult sometimes sure. Idea generation is a thing. And it’s not always there. Especially when you send daily emails like I do.

So I try to put a lot of thought and effort into these.

It’s only logical that these types of compliments mean a lot to me. More than “I like your latest tweet”.

That’s because chances are, I put a lot more effort into these emails than into that specific tweet.

It was Arlo today we tweeted at me with the following:

So obviously I followed up and asked him what his favorites were and whether he had certain topics he’d liked to see more of.

He had this to say:

And that’s true.

I haven’t talked a lot about beta clients specifically.

And while I have covered how to craft an offer. I haven’t spoken about testing it.

There’s a lot to cover when speaking about these topics.

But to give you a quick preview of what’s to come I can give you a realization I made myself.

A realization about “testing” your offer.

You see many people want to create the perfect offer and they get fixated on using every single trick, optimizing every single aspect, and appealing to their dream customer as best as possible.

But here’s why it fails so often.

Your offer is already good enough.

Sure it’s not perfect. But that’s not needed. It needs to be good enough. Especially in the early phases.

Most people are simply procrastinating. They think they’re doing valuable work while they aren’t.

They’re working, but they aren’t adding any real value.

The secret lies in creating an MVO. A Minimum Viable Offer.

Create something that’s barely ‘good enough’. Any more is a waste of time and effort.

And then go out and start promoting it. And I mean really promote it.

Mentioning your offer in 5 tweets, 2 emails, 3 DMs, and your bio isn’t enough.

Promote it again and again and again.

The goal is for EVERYONE to know about your offer. Talk to 100 people. Promote it multiple times per week in your emails. Tweet about it every 2 days.

Don’t stop talking about it.

Do this for a month or two and then look back and evaluate. How did it go?

How many people tried your offer? What did they like? What didn’t they like?

How many people didn’t want your offer? Why was that?

The reason 90% of people’s offers never succeed is because they do this for a few days and then conclude that their offer isn’t good enough. And they go back to the drawing board.

No.

Volume is king. You need a big enough sample size to have meaningful information about the value of your offer.

P.S.: With that being said. Here’s me promoting my clarity calls. The perfect opportunity for you to build a winning strategy, monetize your account, and automate the process. 

It’s a 1-hour call where we talk about your vision, goals, and obstacles.

We’ll talk about how you can best move forward and make sure you have a clear and fully fleshed-out vision, strategy, and roadmap on how to continue for the following months, start getting clients, and build products/services that will bring you a consistent cash flow, all while working less than 3 hours a day.

My father is subscribed to my email list. (Hi dad)

He reads every single email. That’s a whopping 49 till now!

He doesn’t read them every single day though. He saves a few days of emails and then reads them in batches. It always differs how many he saves and when he reads them.

But I believe there’s a method to his madness.

But just yesterday he was reading his latest batch of emails made by his favorite email writer.

He never said that last part but I’m just going to imagine that to be the case.

One of the emails in his batch was an email from last week where I was talking about How to Train Your Dragon and how the opening scene can help you to create better lead magnets.

After reading it, he immediately stepped into my room and said the following:

And honestly. I loved that question.

First of all. I was ecstatic when I finished writing that email.

It’s one of a few emails with a genuinely original idea of mine. Nowhere on the internet will you find someone who connected these two topics. You won’t find that lesson anywhere else. It’s mine and mine alone.

(That’s the point ChatGPT writers are missing by the way. But I won’t delve deeper into this topic.)

I was proud. I really was.

So getting asked about that showed me it made an impact. It showed me that MY idea had at least some intrigue.

As for my answer?

I simply told him, “I read a lot” and left it at that.

But that’s not entirely true. It’s not the full story.

I don’t just read about topics. I immerse myself in the topic.

I read books, articles, and newsletters. I watch YouTube videos, movies, and series. I listen to podcasts, interviews, and lectures. I even play video games and listen to music almost 24/7.

Entertainment isn’t bad. It’s how you use it that can be damaging.

If used correctly, entertainment is the best thing to observe.

Especially when it’s created by a master of the art.

But the real secret? I do all of these intertwined. I read multiple books at once and listen to multiple podcasts when traveling.

Flood your brain with information from all different sources about all kinds of topics.

And then give it plenty of time to rest and do something with it.

Go on silent walks, get enough sleep, do some meditation, and perhaps even some journalling/brain dumping.

Your subconscious mind will take care of the rest.

PS: On another unrelated note. Yesterday I released and gave away a 7-page pdf explaining everything I know about hosting Twitter spaces.

They’re one of the best and most underrated ways to boost your authenticity and build fans instead of followers.

Check it out here: http://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/TSP

It’s that time again.

I’ve finished reading Lord of the Flies. 

Now, I have this habit where I’m always reading multiple books at the same time. Around 8–12 books to be precise.

It helps me to stay disciplined in my reading habit.

Whenever I don’t feel like reading a certain book, no problem. I’ve got a handful of others to choose from.

No procrastination. I always get my daily reading in.

It also helps loads with being able to make better connections between different topics that I’m reading about.

And as you should know. Making those connections is where the real value comes from.

Which is funny because I used to hate reading when I was younger. But that’s a story for another time.

At any given time I would have 1 main fiction book that I’m reading. My main book for the past weeks was Lord of the Flies.

But here’s the ‘problem’ I had just today.

I only have one other fiction book left on my shelf.

And that’s The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky. Which is a HEAVY piece of literature.

I ‘started’ reading it back in February but dropped it quite quickly. The book left me confused and I couldn’t understand much.

Even now when I am forced to resume where I left off. It scared me to see just how many pages I have yet to read.

But then I thought about it in a different way.

There’s actually no difference between reading a book that’s 80 pages vs one that’s 800 pages.

You just read. You read one word, one sentence, one page at a time.

Do you know who taught me that?

Rocky.

It’s what he said when training Adonis in the movie Creed.

“One step at a time, one punch at a time, one round at a time.”

It’s true for boxing. It’s true for reading. And it’s true for all of life.

Even for building your creator business. The aim isn’t to make $10K/month. The aim isn’t to get to 10K followers.

It’s to keep playing the game step by step. One idea, one tweet, one offer, and one client at a time.

We often get blinded by the grand scheme of things. Looking at the peak of the mountain instead of the trail right in front of us.

Take a step back.

Zoom out. Look at the bigger picture, yes.

But don’t stay stuck.

Figure out what you’re lever-moving tasks are. What can you do on a daily basis that’s getting you closer to your goal?

Are you closer to your goal this week than you were last week?

Great. You’re making progress. That’s what it’s all about.

Now excuse me I’ll be reading my book one page at a time.

So get out there and start putting your steps in.

PS: If you’ve got any recommendations for your favorite fiction books. Feel free to reply to this mail and let me know. I’m always open to new suggestions which I hadn’t heard of before.

I’ve been offering consultation calls for a few months now.

And there’s one problem that keeps popping up. Time management.

Everyone has responsibilities outside of Twitter. So how much time can you really spend on building your business and how can you make the best use of your time?

I struggled with this same problem myself early on.

I’d find myself not engaging AT ALL because I had too many other I needed to do.

I’ve also found myself on the other side of the coin.

I had plenty of time, but no idea how to bust use it. I’d open Twitter, start engaging here and there, and before I knew it I’d been scrolling through my timeline for 1–2 hours.

And let me tell you. That’s time not well spent.

There are better lever-moving tasks.

So I started looking into the issue. Which tasks yield the most results? And which tasks do I spend the most time on?

I found I was mostly spending my time engaging with others and replying to all the comments I’ve gotten.

Necessary tasks, yes. But not the ones that will move my business forward.

So next question. How do I reduce the time I spent engaging and replying to my comments?

The answer?

TweetHunter

For those who don’t know. TweetHunter is THE tool all of the biggest creators use to manage their Twitter.

It originally started as a Tweet scheduler, but it’s so much more.

As I’ve hinted. It completely solved my problem of time spent (wasted)replying and engaging.

What took me an hour to do before now takes me 15 minutes max.

Now I don’t know about you, but I like the time I have available to me.

But that’s not the only thing.

TweetHunter has other fancy tools I can’t live without anymore.

• I use it to schedule all of my tweets for the week ahead (I batch-create them every Sunday, another timesaving hack)

• It automatically retweets my tweets 3 times every 5 hours (more reach and engagement)

• It handles all of my giveaways because of its AutoDM feature (I don’t like to send 300 DMs manually)

• It automatically plugs my newsletter under high-performing tweets (the best way to grow your email list)

• It has an insane library of high-performing tweets for you to look through, get inspired by, and study

Oh and did I tell you about the detailed built-in analytics tool?

It’s much better than the Twitter analytics website. And it allows me to examine which tweets performed the best for my business and which ideas I should talk about more often.

Now I could keep talking about how great of a tool it is. But you won’t fully understand and experience the greatness of the tool yourself.

So here’s a proposal I have for you.

I have a gift for you if you sign up through my TweetHunter link and try out the 7-day free trial. (It’s actually a 37-day free trial because it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked)

I’ve mentioned how I TweetHunter to schedule my tweets.

But the cool part is that you can give every tweet a “tag”. And you can create certain times when you can only post a tweet with tag x.

It’s a built-in tool to create your own content plan.

So here’s my offer.

If you sign up for the free trial through my link, I’ll send you the content plan I’ve developed on TweetHunter.

It’s the content plan I’ve been carefully adapting over the last 7 months.

I’ve constructed it to give me the perfect balance between growth, authority, and authenticity. It’s gotten me to 1,800 followers, previously 700 email subscribers, and some good money in my pocket as a creator.

So once again, here’s what you have to do:

1) Sign up for the free trial through the following link: http://tweethunter.io/?via=alexvandromme

2) Reply to this mail with proof (a screenshot for example) that you signed up

3) I’ll send you my content plan that I’ve carefully constructed over the last 7 months that got me to where I am today

P.S.: I’d advise you to do so now because we’re all forgetful creatures. I’m also going to put a 48-hour deadline on this offer, starting from when this email goes out.

The deadline isn’t because I like to torture you by not giving you the opportunity to get my content plan next week. It’s instead because I know how people procrastinate and this makes it more likely that you’ll actually do it. And in turn free up more time so you can focus your efforts and more important tasks that actually move your business forward.

In case you wanted to see the link once more, here it is: http://tweethunter.io/?via=alexvandromme

Ascend 101

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

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From Zero to Hero: The One-Person Business Roadmap to Landing Your First Client

Let me start off by saying this isn’t the only way to do things.

There are a multitude of methods and strategies that you can use.

But this is the one I use and the one that has the most leverage to scale in the future. My goal is freedom. My goal is independence.

This is the one that has the most potential to get me to my goals.

I’m known for not liking cold outreach and not spending any time doing so.

Do you want to go down that route without building yourself a personal brand? Perfectly fine. But then this roadmap isn’t for you.

With that said, let’s get into it.

Step 1) Your brand

As I’ve said. We’re going to be building a personal brand.

But what is a brand?

Well first, your brand is NOT your Twitter profile. It isn’t the color scheme in your profile picture, banner, website, or products either.

Your brand isn’t even the type of content you write.

Your brand is your story.

It’s the vision, mission, and values you have. It’s why you’re doing what you’re doing, how you got here, and where you want to go.

That’s what makes a (personal) brand so powerful. And what 90% of people on Twitter get wrong.

They create an account, pick a random color, select a niche, and become yet another ghostwriter, growth coach, email copywriter, graphic designer, or fitness coach.

Only to end up as copies of one another.

But they don’t have a brand. They have a traditional business. A soulless one at that.

People often talk about being “authentic”. Yet fail to be authentic.

That’s because they missed this vital step.

You can’t be “you” if there’s no “you” infused in your brand. Simply sharing your opinion isn’t enough. People have no clue whether you’re actually authentic.

Being authentic means being consistent with the story you’re telling. It means fighting for your values while defending your vision. And doing everything in line with your mission.

You can only “be authentic” when you’ve carefully crafted (and shared) your story, vision, mission, and values.

Step 2) Profile optimization

Now that you’ve got your brand. It’s time to build and optimize your profile.

And please don’t skip this. I don’t care whether it’s right or wrong. But people judge a book by its cover.

So it’s up to you to accept the fact and make your cover as flawless as possible.

A winning Twitter profile needs 3 things:

• It needs to be immediately understood (who you are)

• It needs to offer value (what you do for them)

• It needs to have a unique angle (why they follow you)

How you do this is up to you.

This is an extension of your brand. So play around and use your creative freedom. But don’t go overboard.

Remember that it needs to be clear, not clever.

Don’t worry about getting it perfect the first time around. It won’t be.

You simply need to get your first iteration out ASAP. You can (and will) improve it later on.

Step 3) Your content

Your content drives your business forward.

It’s what educates your audience, grows your brand, and proves your authority.

But first, you need to know what to write about. And, you guessed it, this comes from your brand.

Your real brand. Your mission, vision, and values.

Throughout your journey, you’ll have different goals, obstacles, systems, and benefits from those systems.

These are the things that’ll shape your content.

• You talk about your goals and share why you care about them

• You talk about the obstacles you’ve faced and how you overcame them

• You talk about the systems you’ve used and why they mattered

• You talk about the benefits your current lifestyle got you and how others can get them

If you talk about all of those, you’re already halfway there. The last step for great content is talking about it from different perspectives.

Not all content serves the same purpose after all. You’ve got content for growth, authority, and authenticity.

All of which are important. And all of these can include the same big ideas that we’ve listed above.

Step 4) Building your audience

You won’t have enough followers early on to get eyes on your content just by writing tweets.

You’ll need to work on building your audience. Which you shouldn’t confuse with simply posting content.

We’re talking engaging and networking with other creators. Borrowing their audience, hosting spaces, and even liking tweets of smaller accounts.

The ultimate goal is for your customer to find you. This saves you time, energy, and effort that you’re able to put into other higher-leverage activities.

I won’t go too deep into building an audience in this email. There are 1001 different growth coaches with their own courses to teach you all about it.

Step 5) Crafting Your Offer

This is where the fun begins.

Crafting your first offer. I called it step 5 for simplicity, but ideally, you’ll start doing this from day 1.

There’s not a single reason to wait before you craft an offer. Having an offer from the start makes it easier to grow, in fact.

You need to have a project to work on. Some type of progress to share on the timeline.

You build authority by showing your results. And you can only get results by building something.

The easiest way to know what to build/offer is to start by looking at your own problems and looking for a solution.

Then all that’s left to do is talk about your solution and how it improved your life.

You’ll naturally attract people similar to you who are a few steps behind you and who’ll probably have the same problem in their lives as well.

All that’s left to do for you is to package up your solution into a compelling offer.

Keep in mind the 4 factors of The Value Equation:

• Dream outcome

• Perceived likelihood of achievement

• Time delay

• Effort & sacrifice

Add in some psychological tricks as a cherry on top and we’ve got your offer.

The easiest type of offer to start with is a high-ticket one (freelancing, coaching, or consulting.)

It pays the best, gives you the most amount of experience the fastest, and it’ll be easier for you to build a course/cohort curriculum out of it afterward.

While I’m not covering email lists and newsletters in this email. After you’ve created your offer is the perfect time to create your email list.

It’ll allow you to practice writing copy and it’s so much easier to know what to write about.

Step 6) Getting leads & prospects

Everyone thinks you need a fancy landing page and some sick copy to get leads for your high-ticket offers. (I used to think the same)

But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s all done in the DMs. Even Kieran Drew said so in a recent webinar of him.

And don’t worry. I’m saying you’ll have to send 100 cold DMs a day.

No. I’m talking about sliding in the DMs of your warm audience.

The people who already know and like you. Those who already respect you as an authority and have shown interest in your services through your content.

And no you don’t need thousands of followers for this step. All you need is a few people who engage (like, comment, retweet) with your educational content.

The next step is to get them on a call via my 8-step framework:

• Find someone to DM

• Send the first message

• Transition into uncovering their goals

• Identify the roadblock(s)

• Dig deeper into their problems

• Pitch your offer

• Send a form or calendar link

• Follow up

Step 7) Closing your first client

This is what you’ve all been waiting for in this roadmap.

Closing your very first client. It’s always exciting the first time you hop on a sales call.

But the funny thing is that, if you followed all the previous steps, this is actually the easy part.

Once people arrive at this stage, they’re already interested in your offer. They already made up their mind to improve their situation and get help from someone. That someone being you.

All they want is a bit of information about how things will continue.

Nobody jumps on a sales call without some part of them willing to pay for your services.

You’ll have no trouble closing them with my 7-step closing framework:

• Start the conversation

• Frame the call

• Discover their motivations

• Understand where they are

• Understand where they want to be

• Show them the promised land

• Close’em

If you think you’re at this point and not able to close any of the leads you get. Then you skipped some of the earlier steps.

Chances are you skipped the very first one.

Skipping step 1 turns you into a commodity and people feel no difference between working with you and another person offering a similar service.

The goal is to become a category of one. Where there’s simply no one else who’s able to offer the exact same thing as you.

Wrap-up

I’m going to wrap this up here.

I know I said that I’ll include practical examples of readers who sent me their current situations. And I still intend to do so.

But this mail is already much longer than I anticipated and I don’t feel like turning this into a 3,000-word email.

So I’ll keep the case studies for next week. This way it’ll get its own newsletter issue and go deeper into every single one.

This also means that you can still reply with your current situation if you didn’t do so last week. (and thanks again for those who already did)

So once again. If you want me to look at your situation (and feel ok with me sharing it with my email list) then send me a big picture of what you’re doing right now.

What strategies are you using? What’s your offer? What results were you hoping for and what results are you currently getting? And lastly, what do you think is the biggest obstacle holding you back?

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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 get you there in the next 30–60 days.

3. Download all my products for FREE: 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.

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And if you've got a moment, I'd love to hear what you thought of this edition of Ascend 101.

Send me a quick message – I reply to every email!

It’s 2025.

You arrive back home from your trip.

Before you park your car in the garage, you start to think.

You really made it.

Here you are in your dream car. Living in a home you couldn’t have ever imagined.

Coming back from trips you’d never thought you’d be able to make.

Your mind drifts back to 2 years ago.

That’s when you decided to change.

Life had to change. You had to change.

No more excuses. No more procrastination.

You worked tiresomely on your craft every single day.

You learned as much as you could. You experimented with different methods, frameworks, tools, and platforms.

The beginning was rough. You didn’t know where to go or what to do. But that didn’t matter.

You made a promise. A promise to yourself. A promise to your loved ones. A promise to your family and to everyone who cares about you.

You were going to make it.

Not everyone believed you. Not everyone supported you.

But that didn’t matter. You didn’t blame them either. You knew they simply didn’t understand. They didn’t see what you saw. They couldn’t.

You simply said, “I’m going all-in”.

You showed up day after day. You took it one step at a time.

Becoming slightly better every single day.

Your goal was getting closer and closer.

Soon you achieved your first victory.

You landed your first client. Then your second. Then your third.

Business started to speed up, and you finally started getting the hang of it.

Before you knew it, you were there.

You made it.

You’ve earned financial freedom. You’re able to travel to where you want. Do whatever you want. When you want. And with whom you want.

You’re able to support your family and everyone you care about.

You no longer have to worry about the bill at the restaurant. You simply swipe your card without even looking at it.

You always knew you’d be able to achieve this. But now it feels so surreal.

You look back at the past years of struggle. The hard work and the late nights.

The mistakes and missteps you made.

The people you met on the way. Both those who are still by your side and those who quit.

All of this started 2 years ago.

You still remember the day as if it was yesterday.

A silly little email titled “You made it” popped up in your inbox.

It showed you the possibility of the future. How you’d be able to achieve the life you dream of.

All you needed was a little push. Some clarity and what to do and how to start building your business.

You made up your mind right then and there that you’d give everything you had.

You booked the consultation call mentioned in the email.

You didn’t think much of it at the time. But you said, “F*ck it I might as well give it a go”.

That simple sentence changed everything.

That single call changed the trajectory of your journey.

Suddenly you knew what to do. You knew how to move forward.

The only obstacle left standing in your way was your own inability to act. Your own procrastination.

But that didn’t matter. The roadmap given to you on the call prepared you for the battle ahead.

And look at you now. You’re still, to this day, recommending other people to hop on that same call.

You smile.

Imagine if you had never booked that call at https://calendly.com/alexvandromme/clarity-call

How to Train Your Dragon is a (musical) masterpiece.

It has one of the best, if not the best, opening scene in all of cinema. And it holds the key to creating the perfect lead magnet.

But first. Let me explain what’s so good about the opening scene. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check it out here.)

The opening scene of any film has multiple tasks to accomplish.

It needs to:

• Hook the audience

• Establish the world

• Introduce the characters

• Create the Inciting Incident (the thing that sets the story into motion)

• Set up the final act reveal (some sort of foreshadowing towards the end of the film)

How to Train Your Dragon’s opening scene checks all of the boxes.

But that’s not the impressive part. It does all of this in the first 7 minutes. There’s so much going on in those 7 minutes. Yet it all works and blends nicely together.

BUT. A big but this time because the film deserves it.

That, yet again, isn’t the most impressive thing either. At least not to me.

The real work of art is what the music is doing during this opening scene.

You see. In film music we have a thing called a Leitmotif.

It’s a short musical idea (called a phrase) associated with a particular person, place, or idea that’s repeated throughout the film to represent said particular person, place, or idea.

Think of how whenever you hear the Imperial March you think of Darth Vader. That’s a leitmotif.

Hiccup, the dragons, the people of Berk, the kids, and Astrid all have their own leitmotif. Their own short piece of music.

The purpose of such a leitmotif is to bring unity to a film and to evoke more emotion from the listener.

Imagine if a certain piece of music always played whenever a certain character comes into view. Whether you realize it or not. Your subconscious will create an association between that character and that musical idea.

Whenever something happens to our character. Bad. Good. Amazing. Terrible. Those emotions will be “saved” into the association with that musical piece.

If you were to hear that same piece of music later on in the film. You’ll automatically relive most of those same emotions.

The music in a film essentially has the purpose of telling the same story happening on-screen to your subconscious.

Now what does this have to do with anything so far?

Well in most films a) those leitmotifs either aren’t properly developed or b) they take ages to develop all the motives. And even if they develop the motives, they aren’t always used as well as they could be.

This is exactly what How to Train Your Dragon does perfectly.

Within the first 5 minutes of the film. You’ve heard every single musical idea used throughout the whole film except for one.

You hear the leitmotif of the people of Berk first when Hiccup talks about his city. Next, you hear the leitmotif of Stoic. Then the group of kids, then Astrid. Hiccup’s theme is next and lastly, we hear the dragon’s theme.

And everything blends smoothly together.

The viewer, both his conscious and subconscious, knows what to expect for the rest of the film.

Whenever a piece of music is played. Your mind knows the correct association. Not a single emotion is wasted.

As for the one musical idea that’s missing. That’s Toothless’ theme.

The reason for this is because Toothless doesn’t “belong” there. He’s an outsider.

He’s part of the unknown world.

It’s up to Hiccup to go on his Hero’s journey and step out of the known world and into the known. (this is peak storytelling by the way, not Twitter wannabe storytelling)

Toothless’ theme is only later heard for the first theme when Hiccup goes out to look for him.

The “outsider” feeling is enhanced as well by the use of “strange” instruments that we haven’t heard before so far. Bagpipes.

But I hear you asking. What does this have to do with creating the perfect lead magnet?

This mail is already long enough and I haven’t said a single thing about lead magnets so far. Fair enough.

Here’s the thing.

The opening scene introduces all the musical ideas that the film will later build upon from the very start. All but Toothless’ theme.

This is how you should create your lead magnet.

Introduce everything there is to know about your offer. Teach people all of the topics you’re covering in your coaching offer/paid product/whatever.

Don’t hold anything back.

But the secret lies in 2 things.

First. The topics, frameworks, methods,… you teach in your lead magnet will be used as building blocks in your offer.

This is how you educate your audience to the point of wanting, even needing your offer if they want to move to the next level.

You educate people for free and sell the solution to the problems that arise because of your free education.

Second. Just like Toothless’ theme wasn’t introduced in the opening scene. You’re not going to include the “how” in your lead magnet. The implementation itself.

You should share the “why” in your content and the “what” in your lead magnet.

This is when people have a choice. They can either spend a long time figuring out the exact “how” by themselves for free.

Or they can pay you to teach them the “how”, the implementation.

Now I could go on. But I won’t. It turned out to be a long mail already. Long for a daily mail at least.

This is a perfect example of me following my curiosity, creating a unique perspective, connecting 2 different domains, and sharing it with you.

So if you would do me a favor. Let me know what you thought of this mail.

It takes a minute or two to write for you and it saves me ages of experimentation. I’d appreciate it if you write in to share your thoughts.

Was it too long? Did you like the topic? Was it understandable?

I’d be glad to hear from you.