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.

===

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”?

===

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.

I recently checked up on someone who bought my Simple Money Emails course a while ago. (Someone I won’t name, for obvious reasons)

The claim I make with Simple Money Emails is that everyone, including you, can make money from writing simple emails that take you less than 20 minutes to write and will make your readers want to keep reading day after day.

The course teaches you all the necessary fundamentals, separated across 11 different modules.

It’s a written course showing you the ins and outs of everything I do, and why it works. It even gives you practical steps you can take to start writing your emails, even if you haven’t even written an email before. Hell, you don’t even need an offer of your own to start selling. That’s how low the barrier to entry is.

But here’s what I noticed while checking up on the before-mentioned customer.

He wasn’t getting any sales. His email list wasn’t even growing. He stagnated. He lost all hope and motivation. He felt betrayed by the course.

So I asked him what he was currently doing, what lessons he was focussing on, and how he approached the course in general.

His answer? He went through the course once and under 2 hours, never went back to it, and just started winging his emails.

He showed me some of his emails as well.

There wasn’t a single lesson in the course that he was using. Nothing at all. Except maybe for the ideation part, but I highly doubt he'd have taken the time to only implement that specific module.

His emails were bland, no personality, nothing to learn from, nothing to be inspired by, nothing entertaining really, and not a single part furthering the sale.

There’s one module in particular where I talk about the holy grail of email selling. The one rule you must always follow. The one mistake you must never make. The one thing necessary to make sales.

He didn’t even consider reading that one twice. Let alone implementing it.

So here’s my response to this.

If you want to buy a magic pill. If you want to buy something that will help you make money immediately. If you want to get rich quick. Aren’t willing to put in the work. Never finish a course. Think re-reading certain parts is stupid. Or just simply never implement something you read.

Then I simply don’t want you to buy my course. I don’t want you anywhere near it. In fact I don’t even want you on my email list. That’s not what we do around here.

But if you want to learn how to write simple emails that get you sales and keep your readers reading day after day. And you are willing to do some work to learn the skills, put in the reps, and sit down to actually think about what the course is telling—even showing you—what to do.

Then click here: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/SME

I often get asked why I’m sending daily emails.

The short answer: I like it.

The longer answer: I like it and it makes me more money.

And that’s pretty much it. I could go over all the reasons daily emails help me make more money. Being top of mind, having a better connection with you, my reader, and getting better at writing 7x faster than someone writing weekly emails are just a few of those reasons.

But I won’t go into that today. I trust in your undying support and will take it for granted that you’ll believe me when I say writing daily emails helps you earn more than writing weekly emails will.

But aside from that. I find it motivating as well.

First of all, I get more responses. More people reply sharing how they liked my emails. And if you haven’t yet, what are you waiting for? Reply right now telling me I’m the greatest email writer you’ve ever seen and you love reading my emails and I’m helping you build the greatest business the world has ever seen. You ungrateful reader.

Jokes aside. It’s more fulfilling.

It also helps me stay accountable. I can’t take a single day off. I have to show up every single day. Even on days I sometimes don’t feel like it. I still have to write something. Come up with ideas. Write a (hopefully) engaging story. And share the lesson in a way that it’s hits in just the right way to be impactful so you’ll want to read my email on the next day as well.

I’ve also made quite some discoveries during the past months that I’ve been writing these emails.

One of those discoveries is that, in all honesty, open rates actually aren’t that important. Now yes, listen, I know email deliverability is a thing, but obsessing over open rates isn’t the solution.

It’s not even that important for making sales either. Some of my emails with the lowest open rates have made me the most amount of money. And this seems to be an opinion many other professional email marketers hold.

But. And this is a big but. There’s one reason why I still think opening rates do—sometimes—matter.

And that’s when you’re starting out. Writing your first emails. You haven’t got a big list yet. You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re figuring things out as you go.

You’ll want to see some things go well to make you keep going. Well, in that case open rates do matter. They show you that you’re probably doing something right.

People are reading your emails. And it’s so much easier to keep showing up if you know people are reading your emails.

So with that said. I’d say it’s a nice thing to optimize your open rate early on to ensure your success and make it easier to stay disciplined and keep showing up, day after day, week after week, month after month.

Now, I hear you asking “But Alex, how do I improve my open rate?”.

Well, don’t worry because that’s exactly the plug you’re getting from me today. I’ve got nothing to sell you today.

All I’ve got is a thread I posted today on Twitter showing you 8 easy tips you can use starting today to ensure your emails get opened.

Check it out here: https://twitter.com/VanDrommeAlex/status/1699014581115326501

This Friday I wrote one of the shortest emails I’ve ever written.

It was 2 sentences or 31 words long. It will probably remain my shortest written email for quite a long time.

And yet, it was a tremendous success. I’ve received at least 28 replies so far showing interest in my proposal.

We often see professional copywriters write these elaborate sales pages with thousands upon thousands of words. So much copy you have to scroll for ages until you reach the bottom.

You could’ve made yourself a cup of tea, done the dishes, finished writing your next email, scheduled a week’s worth of tweets, eaten a banana, and read $100M Leads in the meantime. That’s how long some of them are.

So it’s only natural that we think longer copy is always better copy.

Except that’s simply not the case. Lucky me because I suck at long copy. It’s something I still have to practice for quite a while before I become good at it.

But lucky you as well. Because that means you also don’t need to know how to write long copy before you can get some sales. Some of my biggest paydays came from 300-word emails.

And that’s the essence of my course Simple Money Emails. If you hadn’t noticed it yet, it teaches you how to write SIMPLE (read: short & easy to write) emails that get sales and keep your readers reading day after day.

It’s what I do for a living. It’s my bread & butter. And I’ve included everything I learned in that course.

If you want to learn how to:

• Build a genuine relationship with your audience

• Be in constant connection with your audience

• Express yourself deeply and show who you are

• Build trust that'll last for a lifetime

• Don't be limited by an algorithm

• Easily promote your offers

• Get paid every single time you send an email

• Ignore the competition

• Receive the full 100% attention of your audience

• Build a world of your own

• Become irreplaceable and impossible to forget

Then Simple Money Emails is for you.

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

Ascend 101

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

---

One of the most common questions I get asked is “What do I talk about?”

And while I can’t tell you exactly what to talk about. I can tell you how to talk about it.

You see, there are so many factors to take into account in every industry and with every person. And there are thousands of ways to frame every topic.

There are more marketing perspectives than there are people in the world. So go nuts.

That’s where having a content strategy comes in. It gives you a blueprint of what to talk about and how to frame your content.

A good content strategy is vital to your success. And it’ll make creating (documenting) content so much easier and save you hours every week.

In what follows, I’ll show you different tweet types that you should consider adding to your content plan if you want to build your creator business.

While this won’t be a complete list by any stretch of the imagination, it should show you what to think about when creating content and how to balance everything.

And if you want to learn more about my content strategy. Be sure to check out the referral reward at the very bottom of this email.

10 tweets to include in your content strategy

Personality

Personality tweets do exactly what you think they do.

They show my personality, my opinions, my perspectives. The aim here is to show my audience who I am and what I believe in.

Your audience can’t love you if they don’t know you.

Story

I’ve talked about the power of storytelling numerous times already.

And for good reason, it’s incredibly powerful. People love a good story. And they can’t get enough of them.

Using a well-crafted story is great to teach and entertain at the same time.

I use those to show some authenticity. You could call them a more specialized version of the personality tweet. But I like to keep them as different types.

Thread

Threads are just that.

Twitter recently introduced long-form tweets. Tweets without the old 280-character limit. And they do just the same.

The kind of long-form tool you want to use is up to you. No real difference here.

Good threads can bring in A LOT of followers, email subscribers, or even sales if done right.

the best topics are those where you talk people through a story or a specific framework.

AutoDM

I call them AutoDMs. Others call them giveaways. They’re the same thing.

You give away something in return for a follow, like, comment, and/or retweet. After which you’ll DM the person with whatever you promised in your post.

The most important factor here is what you’re giving away.

Make it too broad and you’ll gain lots of low-quality followers. Make it too specific and you won’t get any attention.

These are great to do, but don’t rely on them too much.

Authority

Authority tweets are those tweets where you want to flex with your achievements and/or knowledge.

Teach people something new. Or show them some of your impressive results.

Even better if you can show the results of your clients.

Prove that you know what you’re doing. And this is how.

Newsletter

Even though you can always plug your newsletter link under high-performing tweets.

It never hurts to post something about your newsletter directly.

Whether it’s an update about a new post you made, a preview of your upcoming mail, or simply informing people that you have one.

These always bring in a new bunch of subscribers. Don’t sleep on these.

Actionable

Actionable tweets are similar to authority tweets.

You're flexing your knowledge and teaching people something. But there’s a vital difference here.

The aim is to teach something people can immediately implement and get results with.

A 5-minute hack to get more conversions on their landing page.

A simple writing tip to catch more attention.

Or a mindset shift to set bigger goals.

Whatever it is, make it actionable.

Question

Questions are great engagement farmers.

People love replying to questions. Especially when they get to talk about themselves.

The best type of questions are those that spark discussions in your comments. It keeps people coming back and pushes your tweet to virality.

If done right, they’re also a great way to learn more about your audience. And good marketing information never hurts.

Meme

Memes can go viral.

Everyone loves memes. People want to be entertained. So entertain them.

Talk about common (mis)beliefs in your industry. Common things people get wrong. Or even unpopular opinions you have.

Don’t be afraid to be a little controversial.

Boring people never win after all.

Handraiser

Handraisers are tweets where you make people raise their hand and say “I’m interested”.

These are perfect when looking for new clients to work with. Simply do a specific callout, mention what kind of people you’re looking for and how you’ve got a wonderful opportunity for them.

Then include a CTA asking them to DM you.

This is the power of a personal brand and where inbound marketing truly shines.

The days of sending 100 cold DMs are over.

---

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 that’ll get you there in the next 30–60 days.

3. Check out my products (free & paid): Ranging from every resource I ever read to everything I know about content creation. It’s all waiting for you to claim it. Start your journey to financial freedom the right way.

I had a clarity call with a client of mine yesterday. (No idea if he wants me to name him)

We were discussing offers toward the end of the call. Different pricing ranges, to be more specific. I mentioned a good rule of thumb I use to price my consulting calls.

“Think about how much you want to charge per hour. Then double that.”

There are a few reasons for this.

1) You’ll always undervalue your own competence and experience. This is a fact. The knowledge and experience you hold seem logical to you. You’ve forgotten how much it took for you to learn them. You’ll take that experience for granted and overestimate how much other people know. And so you’ll believe your help to be less valuable than it actually is.

2) More money helps you provide a better customer experience. It doesn’t matter what type of offer you have. This is always the case. You can use that money to reinvest and educate yourself on certain topics. This will improve your advice and it’ll improve the likelihood of your client’s success. More money also allows you to take fewer clients. This means each client will get more attention and focus. And this is far from a full list of improvements.

3) The ultimate goal is always for the client to achieve success. In most cases, especially consulting and coaching offers, the client needs to commit and actually implement your teachings themselves. And the best way to ensure the client will take action is by asking for a higher monetary investment. If the investment is too low to matter, their investment in the project will be too low to see results as well.

Now there’s just one drawback to my rule of thumb. It could be better. A better rule of thumb to use would be to 3x your original price. This will get you closer to the actual price people want to pay you.

The problem with that, however, is your own mindset. You need to believe in the price yourself. The client will feel your doubts. And nobody is going to work with someone who doubts themselves.

And if you think I’m crazy, consider this. During the clarity call, we talked about my rate. Which currently sits at $199 per hour. And this is what he told me (paraphrased):

===

When you mentioned your price of $200 per hour, I thought that was a steal and I just had to book a call with you.

I’ve been following you for so long and I’ve seen you build your business with my own eyes. I knew it would be worth it.

I would’ve happily paid $300 as well. You could definitely increase your prices.

===

And so that’s exactly what I’ll be doing. It was about time to raise my prices yet again. 

But not without a proper announcement.

As I’ve said. The investment for my clarity call is $199 for the moment. I’ll be taking on one more client for the same amount, after which I’ll change it to an investment of $249.

If you had considered hopping on a clarity call with me before but weren’t yet sure. Don’t hesitate any longer.

Click the following link to learn more about my clarity calls (and book one as well): https://calendly.com/alexvandromme/clarity-call

Would you be interested in working with me to build your creator business and start earning $1,000 to $5,000 per month?

Reply to this email if you’d like to hear more.

Many tales are told about the Roman emperor Nero.

For more than two millennia people have been telling stories of how Nero set fire to his own majestic imperial capital. A fire that we to this day refer to as the Great Fire of Rome, which occurred on the night of July 19, AD 64.

Yet it’s likely that almost none of it is true.

That’s the premise of one of the books I recently picked up. It’s a book I picked up a few weeks ago when I went to visit the Gallo-Roman Museum.

And I don’t exactly remember who mentioned it, but I came across a rule somewhere of forcing yourself to buy at least one book every time you enter a bookshop. It doesn’t matter which book. Just one. The first one that catches your eye.

It so happened that the museum had a bookshop. And so I had to get myself a book. I couldn’t decide between 2, so I just bought both of them.

Trajan by Nicholas Jackson and Rome is Burning by Anthony A. Barrett.

The latter one talks about Nero and the Great Fire.

It’s a fascinating read and I’d recommend it to everyone slightly interested in historical events that shaped the future of mankind.

But back to Nero.

He’s commonly been called a tyrant who ruled with ruthless impulsiveness. Yet he was for most of his rule liked by the general populace of Rome.

The people loved him. He did good. He entertained the people. He often took part in plays and would sing together with the other performers. Nero was a liked and popular emperor.

Yet his popularity plummeted after the fire because of all the rumors. Rumors of how he started the fire. Rumors of his lack of leadership and correct behavior. Some rumors stated he himself started the fire, others stated he could be seen singing on his balcony while Rome stood burning for 6 days straight.

Whatever the case was, he didn’t rule—or even live—much longer after that.

Was Nero to blame for all of this? Did he deserve it? Was he actually insane and tyrannical? Was his popularity and gentleness before nothing more than a facade?

We will never know.

But one thing we do know is this: he could’ve used some lessons on personal branding.

You see. Being the emperor of Rome or building your own brand isn’t all that different. There’s a huge importance in maintaining a strong and likable image, building a strong connection with your ‘audience’, and even building your own world to ensure you’re unreplaceable and effectively ‘cancel-proof’.

Clearly Nero didn’t succeed in this. But you can.

There are a thousand different ways to succeed. And I’ll talk more about those in the future.

But one of the ways to succeed is to get properly informed. To learn from other’s mistakes. To learn what works and what doesn’t. To follow your own curiosities in a way that attracts fans and is efficient so you can keep doing it for a lifetime.

And I happen to know of one particular solution to do exactly that.

The Creator Logic newsletter. Where they give you updates on market insights and interviews with other successful creators.

The goal here isn’t to copy them. The goal isn’t even to get a step-by-step roadmap to creator success.

No. The goal is to get inspired. And there’s no better to get inspired than to see how others achieved their success.

Subscribe here:

I bought my climbing shoes today.

I spoke about planning to buy them in an email a few days ago.

Thought I’d give you an update that I did so. I’m ready to at it for real now.

Firstly, as I said last time. It’s an investment that pays for itself in the long run. But there’s also another benefit at play here. A benefit Cal Newport called The Grand Gesture in his book Deep Work.

And while €55 (the price of my shoes) isn’t necessarily a ‘Grand’ gesture. The underlying principle works the same.

I buy something related to a hobby I’m practicing. In this case bouldering. This will motivate me to go more often. I am already mentally committed to this decision.

I’ve got multiple examples of how I use this small phenomenon to keep myself accountable and to make sure I keep doing the activities I want.

A few months ago I bought a subscription to a fitness logger app. I had a few moments where I stopped going to the gym for a while. So I purchased this subscription to an app I was already using. Which was quite an investment at the time, since I didn’t have a lot of money back then.

And that ‘grand gesture’ made me get my ass back in the gym.

It’s the same for when I bought some courses related to building my business. Especially the more expensive ones. I bought a $999 course back in January. And I can’t say for certain whether I’d still be here if I didn’t get that course.

But I’m 100% certain it played a big part in how determined I was and how far I’ve come already. Partially because of the contents of the course. But also simply due to the (mental) commitment I made.

Because here’s the thing: willpower and discipline are great and all. But you can always make it easier for yourself.

Your willpower is limited.

This isn’t my opinion, this is a fact. It’s a scientifically proven fact that people’s willpower is limited.

That’s why it helps to do the hard things first. To do the most important (and often less fun) tasks early on, when your willpower reserve is at its fullest. Your habits at night are the hardest to sustain.

Speaking of making commitments.

Have you heard about Simple Money Emails? It’s the latest course I’ve created teaching you all about writing daily emails that get you paid and keeping your readers reading day after day.

It’s one of the best investments you can make if you want to get paid for sending a simple email that takes you 20 minutes to write.

And it’s going to prepare you mentally to go all in on this opportunity. The simple fact of buying the course, whether you go through it or not, will make it so much more likely that you’ll reach your goals. (Although I’d still recommend you to go through it.

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