Ascend 101

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

---

The great thing about owning an email list is the absolute freedom you have. It’s yours and nobody is taking it from you. You can never lose it.

The added benefit of having absolute freedom is also having plenty of opportunities to monetize it. No one is going to tell you what you can & can’t do.

All kinds of people have all kinds of problems all the time. And you can get really creative about how you want to solve them. And as you know, solving problems translates to money.

There are far more possibilities than I’m able to cover. But I’ll cover the 7 most practical and useful methods.

7 ways to make money with your email list

Method 1) Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is by far the easiest to start with.

You don’t need anything. You don’t have to go through the troubles of making a product or helping people out with a service of yours.

All you do is take a product or service of someone else and advertise it to your audience.

Then whenever you make a sale you’ll get a cut of the profits. Depending on who you’re working with this might be anything from 20% to 50%.

This won’t make you rich by any stretch of the imagination. In order to make a lot of money doing this you’ll need a tremendous audience. But affiliate marketing shines in the ability to start practicing your copy immediately.

You can get experience trying to sell stuff without having to spend the time to create anything yourself.

Definitely recommended to people early on in their journey.

Method 2) Promote your services

If you want to go to the next level after affiliate marketing, I’d suggest that you offer and promote your services.

Whether that’s freelancing, consulting, coaching, or something else entirely.

These services will be high-ticket, giving you a lot more cash in your pocket to invest in your education and raise your money-making capabilities.

Next to simply earning you a decent income, you’ll also start gaining more experience by working with clients hands-on. You’ll see where your strength lies and what you still have to work on.

You’ll discover the methods & frameworks that work as well as those that need some fine-tuning depending on the feedback you get from your clients.

Through this process, you’ll also build up some authority which will help you land more clients and continue to grow even faster.

Method 3) Promote digital products

Once you’ve gained enough experience offering your service, you can start selling products.

These products are your methods, systems, or frameworks that you were using/teaching in your service, but packaged nicely in a digital product.

The reason I recommend first starting with a high-ticket service before selling a product is that you have no idea whether the product actually works for other people as well.

You also don’t have any social proof to back up your claims.

Because of this it’s better to first gain experience, social proof, and results/case studies before wasting time building something that nobody actually needs.

Method 4) Promote physical goods

You don’t have to be limited to just selling digital products. You can sell physical products as well.

There are many people who use their email lists to sell various products from their Shopify store.

While physical products do come with the added obstacles of production and storage, they are and will remain a viable option.

Method 5) Paid Ads/sponsorships

If you’ve got a large audience, then that means you’re getting a lot of eyes on your content.

And as you know, in today’s day and age, attention is the new currency.

One of the ways you could utilize this is by getting sponsorships and basically giving “shout-outs” to different businesses, products, newsletters, services, people, you name it.

There are services that provide easy matching with sponsors or you can talk to different people who would be interested to get sponsored in your newsletter.

Method 6) Boosts/recommending other newsletters

Beehiiv has this amazing feature called Boosts.

It allows you to opt-in to a network of hundreds of newsletters that are paying you to recommend their newsletter.

And it couldn’t be easier to set up. All you have to do is select the newsletters you like and that’s it.

Now whenever someone subscribes to your newsletter they’ll get a pop-up asking them whether they’d be interested to subscribe in your recommendations as well.

Whenever someone does subscribe to one of your recommendations, you get paid a fixed amount. It’s as easy as that.

There are other services as well that offer a similar process, but Boosts by Beehiiv is by far the easiest one to set up.

Method 7) Paid newsletter

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to include this method.

Having a paid newsletter is definitely viable. But it’s difficult to build enough authority, hype, and trust with your audience to pull this off.

It’s basically a subscription to a community, except you only ever hear from 1 person.

Building and maintaining communities is already difficult enough. Imagine how challenging building and maintaining a paid newsletter is.

I wouldn’t recommend you do this until you’re absolutely sure you’ve got enough traffic and authority in your space to make it last.

---

PS:

Don’t forget that today is the last day you’ll be able to book a Clarity Call with me for $149. The price will increase to $199 in less than 7 hours.

I’ve already 3 calls scheduled on my calendar for next week. And I can only fit in so many calls.

More people will book a call. I can promise you that.

If you want to get in soon and enjoy the lower investment of $149. Then I’d highly suggest you don’t procrastinate on this decision and book your call now.

---

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!

I got to where I am today through pure luck. I was at the right place at the right time.

There are multiple distinct events that all had to have happened in succession in order to be here today. So many that I can’t possibly cover them all.

But there are 2 in particular that did most of the heavy lifting. It wouldn’t matter how much conviction I had or how consistent I could be. It wouldn’t matter what opportunities came to me or which doors life opened for me. None of that would’ve mattered without those 2 events.

It wouldn’t even have mattered if one event took place without the other. I needed both of them. And that’s what I got. Both events simply happened without me manifesting them in reality.

I’m talking about 1) coming across Dan Koe on YouTube and 2) coming across Alex Hormozi on YouTube.

Here’s why in a nutshell:

• Dan taught me about the possibilities of online business and social media, Twitter in particular

• Alex Hormozi taught me the importance of investing in myself and increasing my earning capacity

Before I discovered both of them, I had quite a history of trying to make money online already. But nothing that actually worked—or at least nothing that felt ‘right’ to me and I wanted to keep doing, no matter what.

I always had the desire to earn more and live comfortably in the future.

At the time I worked as a door-to-door salesman (along with some other one-off jobs). Most of the money I earned would go straight into an ETF I was investing in.

While there’s nothing wrong with investing. It’s a viable strategy for sure. But it wasn’t going to pay off until I was a retired 50-year-old dude with nothing to do anymore.

I first discovered Dan’s YouTube and his ideas spoke to me. I got interested in this new Twitter opportunity and wanted to give it a go.

It didn’t go well in the early days.

I didn’t know what I was doing, neither did I know where I was going. I had no clarity, no direction, no nothing.

I then discovered Alex Hormozi on YouTube and started binging his stuff. He kept talking about increasing your earning capacity. And investing in the S&Me instead of the S&P.

So that’s what I did. I took out ALL of the money I had invested. Not a single penny remained.

And I invested it in all the books, courses, and educational opportunities I could find. Not all of those were useful. I wasted a good amount of money doing so.

But I gained so much knowledge and experience over the past 6 months from doing so.

It was luck that taught me the importance of hopping on opportunities when you get the chance. And it was luck that taught me to invest in myself instead of the stock market.

But it doesn’t have to be luck for you.

It doesn’t have to take you 6 months and thousands of dollars to learn what I learned either.

All it takes is the willingness to improve, a few hours a day, and a mere $22 to get access to all of the best resources I discovered and used myself to build and monetize my creator business, which gets me a consistent stream of clients, the ability to work wherever and whenever I want, and a job I love and wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.

That’s right.

I’m talking about my Ultimate Content Creator’s Toolkit V2.

An upgraded and completely overhauled collection of the most valuable resources to help you build your creator business. If you dream of building and monetizing your audience. This is for you.

Even if you’re already on your journey. This is still for you. It’s filled with the most important resources teaching you all of the necessary fundamentals. You’re bound to pick up something new.

Here’s the link one more time: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/UCCT

PS: Definitely click the link before you decide. I’ve added some amazing bonuses that’ll help speed up your growth and allow you to skip the experimentation, which will cost you both a lot of time & money otherwise.

I’ve heard some great marketers say you can’t have enough links and CTAs, so here’s the link one very last time: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/UCCT

Today, I was reading through The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy.

If you perhaps don’t know who Dan Kennedy is. He’s a consultant, business coach, advisor, and author. He’s not just some simple advisor, he’s one of the most highly revered business advisors worldwide and helped many entrepreneurs catapult their businesses.

He founded the system of Magnetic Marketing, the strategy that pulls customers in instead of pushing out advertising and pitching offers to customers, back in 1970.

He wrote multiple Amazon bestsellers direct-response marketing and advertising books, including the popular NO B.S. book series.

Honestly, I could spend ages talking about what the man did. But that’s not what this email is about. Just know this: he knows his stuff.

No, as I was saying. I was reading through his book The Ultimate Sales Letter. Which is a must-read for anyone wishing to sell anything through marketing/advertising/copywriting.

One of the most vital things I read today was the importance of having a PS at the bottom of your sales letter.

Dan Kennedy himself wrote this:

That’s quite the statement.

How would such a tiny detail determine your success?

Here’s why it matters:

Many people simply skip to the end of your letter. Whether that be a sales page, an email, physical mail, or even a Twitter thread or a LinkedIn post.

Why do people do this? Well, they all have different reasons.

Some know there’s often a recap at the end and want to know whether the whole thing is worth reading. Others are simply lunatics and want to know how it ends before they start. Believe me, they exist. Some people look up the ending of movies before they watch them. Lunatics.

Anyway. People do weird stuff. But that’s a tremendous opportunity for you.

By summarizing your offer/promise/most important takeaways in your PS, you can inspire the reader to read the whole thing.

And even if you’re dealing with someone who reads your stuff in the order you intended it to. Even then, it can serve as a great incentive to make people respond or commit to your offer.

You can compare it with having a second headline in your sales letter. One of the best high-impact tools any marketer has access to.

PS: In case you’re interested in growing your personal brand, monetizing your audience, or getting paid to write emails, check out my clarity calls. We’ll have a 1-hour call where we’ll look at where you are and where you want to go. Then we’ll create a roadmap that’s going to get you from A to B in the next 90 days. I’ve already helped 18 creators build their businesses and you can be next. You can schedule a call for the low investment of $149 until Sunday, when the price increases to $199.

In verse and rhyme, a truth untold,
A force of persuasion, ages old.
Beyond the substance, lies the form,
In rhythmic words, ideas transform.

A course I took, a $100 spent,
To grasp the art of email's intent.
It taught me well, the rhythmic art,
To win the soul, to touch the heart.

Through history, we can see,
The magic of poetic glee.
In rules and logic, verses play,
Their wisdom guides us every day.

The alphabet, a childhood song,
Its rhythmic tune, forever strong.
We learn with joy, the letters flow,
In melodies, they come and go.

And then the apple's healthful sway,
An adage rhythmic, easy to say.
An apple a day, keeps doctors away,
In minds ingrained, it found its way.

Now, dear reader, grasp the chance,
A clarity call, a life-changing dance.
For $149, this week it's wise,
But come Sunday, the price will rise.

So take the step, don't wait, don't cower,
Embrace the chance, embrace the power.
Follow the link, and you shall see,
Where you can book your call with me:

http://calendly.com/alexvandromme/clarity-call

August is officially here.

So it’s time for me to reflect on July.

I look at what happened and what didn’t happen. Where am I making progress and do I need to improve?

It’s an important practice to have, as it makes sure you’re always making progress, no matter what happens.

July has been a good month. I’ve made plenty of progress on a course I’ve been working on. My Twitter profile saw some nice growth. Nothing to boast about, but I’m happy with what I achieved.

The business side of things also went well. I didn’t promote my offer for the first 2 weeks of July. There were some things I had to figure out so didn’t expect much profit this month.

I did, however, make $816,40. (I have some calls already planned for August that I’m not including here)

Not bad for 42 hours of work. (3 hours a day for 14 days)

I’m expecting August to go better. Many times better, in fact. Everything seems so promising. I’m filled to the brim with excitement, joy, and motivation.

Because my aim is freedom, I can’t take on an unlimited amount of clients. And in order to limit that number, I’ll increase my consultation prices at the end of this week.

My current hourly rate is $149 which I’ll be increasing to $199 this Sunday at 4 pm EST.

So in case you were still on the fence about hopping on a strategy call with me, here’s your reminder. There are exactly 121 hours left at the time I’m writing this email.

If you’re not sure whether I’ll be able to help you and would like some more information or if you simply want to hit me up before making a decision, that’s totally understandable.

Reply to this email and we’ll see if we’d be a good fit together and how I’ll be able to help you out.

Just for good measure, here’s another link: https://calendly.com/alexvandromme/clarity-call

10 weeks ago, I started hosting regular Twitter spaces with Tomas, a creator friend of mine.

We’ve been hosting a space every single Sunday, and it’s been a blast so far.

I hosted 9 myself. I couldn’t make it last week, the 23rd, but that’s the only one I’ve skipped.

So I was glad to be able to host another one yesterday. And boy, did I miss it.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Our spaces aren’t fully packed all the time. We don’t get 100’s concurrent listeners, not at all.

But the people who do listen are incredible. And the value that’s getting shared is incredible as well.

We titled yesterday’s space “Closing your first high-ticket clients with ease in 30 days“.

We’ve covered a lot. From positioning to offer creation, funnel building, and outreach methods. But one of the major topics became sales.

Especially how what to do on the sales call itself.

Luckily we had 2 insane salespeople on our call, and they gave us an invaluable sales masterclass.

One of the topics they covered was how being an introvert can be especially beneficial for a high-ticket closer.

Which is strange because most salespeople you see are highly social, outgoing, and generally extroverted people.

But they made a good point. One of the biggest rookie mistakes when it comes to sales is talking a lot. The aim should be to let the prospect do 80% of the talking. All you have to do as the closer is to ask the right questions and let the prospect come to the conclusion of wanting to buy your product or service.

So as an extrovert. You have an unfair disadvantage because you have to practice holding back your need to keep talking.

Long-time readers might expect me to talk about the offer of today.

And they’d be wrong.

Instead, I’m going to listen to Stefan, my most recent client, who’ll do the talking: (I transcribed this from a video testimonial)

Ascend 101

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

---

“Making money in the DMs is hard.”

You’ve probably heard this before. And let me tell you how wrong it is.

Making money in the DMs is by far the easiest and fastest way. It also has the highest success rate for me.

The problem, however, lies in the fact that most people lack a good process. They don’t know how to approach it.

Now, you might say “Well actually, isn’t it necessary to close people on a sales call?”

And yes, that’s partially true. But that’s only for the highest-priced services. (And why I have this framework to get them on a sales call.)

The beauty of this process, however, is that you can book 1-hr consultation calls or even multiple ones.

And at the end of these calls, after you’ve proven your skills, you can pitch a follow-up offer or long-term coaching contract.

Even if the prospect isn’t interested in long-term coaching. You didn’t leave empty-handed. (and neither did they)

So here’s my 7-step process to close consultation calls in the DMs. I talk more about how to use and adapt this system to your own business in my Abundant-Client System, which teaches you all about getting leads, qualifying your prospects, and landing clients consistently and effortlessly.

7-Step DM Script

Step 1) Find someone to DM

As with every framework. You need someone to DM.

I’m not suggesting you start cold DM’ing people. That, to me, is a waste of time.

No I’m saying you should 1) find people who’ve previously shown interest in your services or 2) direct people to DM you.

With the latter being the easiest of course.

If you want people to DM you first. Use the hand-raiser strategy. This can easily be done by adding something like this to the end of your tweet and/or emails:

“If you need personal help with [pain point], DM me “banana”."

This works better than having people book a call. It’s hard to get people to commit to something. Asking them to send a DM is low-effort and brings in more results.

Step 2) Opener

If they reached out to you, greet them with something like:

If you reached out to them, thank them for something they did. Whether it’s liking your latest thread, replying to a tweet you posted, or joining a space you hosted.

Then ask them how they’re doing and transition to asking about their situation like in the example above.

Step 3) Find their pains

You could ask them something like:

Sometimes it’s good to be straightforward. Otherwise, it’s not and they have no idea what’s currently holding them back. In those cases, you’ll have to play the detective and try to discover what’s actually going on.

Step 4) Find the easy goals

A wonderful way to continue is to ask what result they’d like to see in the next 30 days.

This gives you a target to help them achieve. People like quick solutions to problems they have.

So if you can help them really quickly, even with something small, they’ll trust you immediately.

Keep this in mind because this will be essential.

Step 5) Find the long-term goals

You can’t solely base your services on an easy fix.

Try to find out what their long-term goals are as well.

Ask them:

This will give you a better perspective of the prospect and allows you to understand them more clearly.

This is key to having them resonate with what you're saying and planning out your service in such a way they can’t possibly refuse.

Step 6) Pitch

It’s time. Time to sell.

Here’s an easy template to use to formulate your offer:

The purpose of the “We’ll go over…” sentence is to give a glimpse of how you’re going to solve their problems, as well as repeat what you’re going to solve.

Make sure you slightly alter the wording so it’s not obvious you’re saying the exact same thing twice.

This helps to reinforce the belief that you’ll actually help solve their problem.

After you send this message you simply wait for their reply.

Step 7) Close

In 90% of all cases, they’re going to be asking you about the price.

That’s good. It means they’re interested.

Even if they don’t ask you about the price. That’s no problem.

Simply send them the link to your booking page and mention how much it’s going to cost.

In almost all cases they’ll simply book a call and that’s that.

Most people don’t have price objections for 1-hr calls.

And that’s it.

If you’d like to learn more about getting leads, qualifying your prospects, and landing clients consistently and effortlessly, then be sure to check out my Abundant-Client System.

In it, I’ll show you my entire system, every single framework I use, and how to adapt it to your business, so you can get paid (with or without having to hop on sales calls).

---

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 (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.

---

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!

I’ve been going to the gym for almost 2 years now.

The very first time was in December 2021. I honestly don’t even know why I started.

I noticed that I was eligible for a student discount because of a partnership my University had with the local gyms in my area.

And I immediately went thought “Discount? Well damn, now I have to start working out.”

Looking back it was a strange and funny origin story. But I’m grateful for the choice past me had made.

Fast forward 1 year to January 2023 and I convinced my father to join me in having a fitness obsession.

I had tried multiple times in the past, but they failed.

Nonetheless, I didn’t give up and tried again. But this time. I did something different.

Usually, I simply mentioned how great working out is and what benefits it would bring him.

I tried to talk him into working out. To no avail.

Until one day. I discovered that we had some dumbbells lying around in the house. They probably belonged to my sister who doesn’t live at home anymore and left them here.

Even though I had a gym membership and went to the gym all the time. I thought it’d be fun to take those dumbbells and place them somewhere in our living room.

I’d place them in just the right spot not to be a nuisance, while still being in clear view of everyone who was sitting in the living room.

To do even more. Sometimes I would do some exercises with those dumbbells at home. Not because I needed to. But just because I could.

And just like that my father eventually thought he’d give it a go and see what all the fuzz was about.

By now he’s even more obsessed than I am. Counting all of his calories every single day, educating himself on proper form through YouTube fitness content, and making sure he never misses a single day of his training split.

If I would’ve kept trying to talk him into it. Chances are he still wouldn’t have picked up even a single dumbbell.

And that’s the power of Show, don’t tell.

Stop trying to persuade people by talking. Whether it’s features, benefits, problems, or transformations.

Show them what your product/service/solution is like.

Place it in front of their noses and just start using it.

Make them interested and curious to find out more.

At this point, you might be expecting me to plug and offer by showing you something.

And you’d be right.

So check this out:

This is one of my latest clients who paid me $499 for 4 consultation calls.

He was already 80% sold simply through reading my emails.

That’s it.

I won’t tell you anything about the benefits of having an email list or how to build one.

This is all I’m going to show you.

If, by weird chance, you suddenly want to start building your email list.

Here’s a link to what I think is the best ESP (the thing that allows you to create an email list) out there: https://www.beehiiv.com/?via=alexvandromme

I closed another few clients this week.

5 calls total to be precise.

And here’s the crazy part: I didn’t hop on a single call to close them.

I did them all through Twitter DMs.

No fancy sales tactics, no special offers, no crazy guarantees, not a single bonus added.

Want to know how I did it?

Simple.

I asked questions to discover their goals and their current obstacles. And then I mentioned how we could solve it and proposed to hop on a call and figure it out together.

That’s it.

It turns out. All you really have to do is listen to people and help them.

Yet, that’s what 90% of people on Twitter miss.

They create “an offer” whatever it might be. Shove it under everyone’s nose and try to convince people they need it.

That’s not how you make sales.

I’ll let you in on another secret.

All of those 5 calls are different. I advertised each just slightly different.

Why? Because everyone needs different solutions.

Offers shouldn’t be a “one-size-fits-all”. And you shouldn’t try to create one.

The way it works is that you build an offer foundation. Come up with some stuff you can help people with. And combine them to fit your needs when the time comes.

An offer isn’t one big thing. An offer is a combination of many puzzle pieces.

I’ve got a lot of secrets such as those that I learned through practical experience.

Tell you what.

Here’s what we’ll do for today’s email.

If you currently have an offer that’s not selling. Respond to this email.

Explain to me EXACTLY what your offer entails and what your current approach is when looking to close clients.

I’ll give you some quick tips so you can get on your way and actually start making sales.

I’m always learning.

Day in and day out.

I have dedicated time slots in my day specifically reserved for reading books, going through courses, watching videos, and listening to podcasts.

He’s a film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked on films such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, WALL-E, Up, Cars, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Coco, and many, many more.

Long story short: he knows what’s up. He’s a master of his craft.

One of the storytelling devices he spoke about is what he calls The Unifying Theory of 2+2. 

What this means is that when telling stories, you don’t simply give the audience the answer.

You don’t give them 4. You give them 2+2.

The audience wants to work for their meal. They just don’t want to know they’re doing it.

Basically, don’t tell the audience everything that’s going on.

Give them just enough information that they’re able to put the pieces together themselves.

If you’re writing a character in a story who’s running late for a job interview and has to wait for the bus.

Don’t make him say, “That damn bus is always late. I’m never going to get to my job interview in time.”

Make him pace around nervously. Have him look at his watch repeatedly and wipe some sweat off his face while adjusting his tie.

He’s in the same scenario, but it’s so much more enticing to watch. The audience has all the necessary information to deduct what’s going on.

Make your audience invested.

Now, you might be thinking. “That’s great, Alex. But I’m not a screenwriter. I just want people to buy my productivity coaching.”

And I get that. But here’s the thing. This works for you as well.

This works for anyone.

Don’t tell your audience “Hey I’m a productivity coach and I’ll decrease your time spent working by 30% after implementing my system”

No.

• Show testimonials from previous clients saying “I decreased my time spent working by 30%”

• Share tweets about how you’ve developed a new system

• Create case studies about what kind of journey you're taking your clients on and what industries they work in

Give them so many pieces of the puzzle that help them make the conclusion “If I work with this guy, I’ll be able to decrease my time spent working by 30%”

You’ll be so much more captivating. And your audience will become much more invested in your message and your products.

With that said.

Here are a few testimonials people have given me:

And on another, totally unrelated note. I also offer strategy calls for people who want to build a one-person business on Twitter and monetize their audience.

Check it out here: https://calendly.com/alexvandromme/clarity-call