Everything is slowly turning into a subscription model

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From your daily entertainment to your groceries, the clothes you wear, the books you read, the music you listen to, the hobbies you practice, the perfumes and fragrances you use, the cars you drive (if that market won’t completely turn into a subscription-based Uber-like “get driven by autonomous vehicles" service eventually), the traveling you might want to do, hell, chances are even the phones you’ll buy and every other gadget or consumable you can think of will become subscription based.

It might not be this year.

It might not even be next year.

But I promise you, based on how things are currently going, everything will and shall turn into a subscription model—even the things you couldn’t believe were possible.

So what should you do when it comes to subscriptions?

Should you follow? Should you be different just because you can?

Well, that’s not something I can answer for you. As with anything, it depends. I don’t know what you do, what you sell, who you sell it to, how much you’re charging for it, how much it costs you to sell it, how easy it is to deliver, how often people use it, how many people want it, and a lot more other vital pieces of information you’d need to make a decision like this (anyone telling you there’s a one-size-fits-all answer is trying to sell you horsecrap).

What I do know is that a lot more people are trying to jump into the subscription business (as will I eventually, not going to hide it).

And with that there’s also many people who are making the big mistake (unless they’re already a big industry name, then they can do whatever they want) of trying to sell the continuity as the first thing the customer sees.

In case you didn’t know, it’s a difficult sell to get someone to hand you money every single month.

A better way to do things (as far as my personal experience goes)?

Sell something low-ticket first (alongside selling yourself). Build up trust. Show them you know your stuff. Help them get a feeling of satisfaction.

Only after that, offer them a subscription to get more of the same (with more convenience and/or a better price) or offer them more (and better/more in-depth) complimentary stuff.

Something to think about and take into consideration.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn how to sell, whether it’s a continuity or not, and more specifically, learn to sell it through email, then check out Email Valhalla where I share all the tips, tricks, deets, and secret sauce.

Click here to learn more: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Not to be a Dan Kennedy fanboy but…

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Here’s a golden piece of advice from the great Dan Kennedy that everyone in business, no exceptions, should read, print out, tape to their wall, remind themselves of every day, and seek to apply to their business as much as possible:

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"Everybody who makes a lot of money defies industry norms. Everybody who makes average money conforms to them."

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Now think about this:

What do most people do?

They all follow in some random gurus’ footsteps, almost blindly copying whatever he and the rest of the market do. Always doing the thing that seems right and playing the game as most would expect. They follow the rules without knowing why the rules are there in the first place, let alone questioning whether those rules are actual rules you should be following.

They’ll say stuff such as:

"Oh everyone attaches a random picture of themself to their LinkedIn post (one that has nothing to do with the post whatsoever). Let's do the same!"

"Oh everyone is praising "value" (even though most don't know what it means) and giving everything away for free (i.e. not getting paid). Let's do the same!"

"Oh everyone is using ChatGPT to come up with topics to talk about and writing awful hooks that ooze 'emotionless and templates writing'. Let's do the same!"

I hope you can see how that’s a problem.

It’s a problem that’s easily solved if you simply think for yourself one second.

Think about what (and why) you’re doing something. Then stop merely copying other people just because they're doing it. They might be successful with it, even because of it, but that still doesn't mean anything. You won't become successful merely by being a copycat of someone else.

And yes this includes the above piece of advice by Dan Kennedy himself as well as every other thing he said or wrote.

Do your due diligence. Defy the norms (or don’t if defying the norm is the norm—there’s a paradox for you). And see what happens.

To give you something more practical to work with.

Here's the exercise Dan Kennedy recommended:

Take out a piece of paper (or whatever you use to write on) and make a list of everything that's an industry norm in your business — how things are prices, how things are sold, how they are deliverd, how they are advertised, how they are marketed, what kind of content gets created, how contracts are made up.

Idenfity and isolate every single thing you can think about that's an industry norm people in your business conform to. (This should be a list of over 100 different items).

Then try and figure out how you can defy as many of them as humanly possible.

"You will transform your income in direct proportion to the number you manage to violate," Dan Kennedy adds.

I've been doing this slowly but surely from the start with how I approach social media, how I write my emails, and how I create and sell my courses. And I call tell you that my income increased in direct proportion with the norms I defied.

I urge you to try it yourself.

Don't delay.

Pick up a piece of paper today and do the exercise.

Then send me a message in a few days sharing how much results you're already seeing that quickly.

On another note.

The best and easiest way to define the norms is to build an email list of your own so you can define the rules of what you do, how you work, who gets to join, and everything else within your very own corner of the internet.

This truly allows you to defy the norms—and even define your own.

To learn more about how to grow and monetize your email list, check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


I shaved my head

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If you followed me back in my Twitter days, you might remember how long my hair used to be whenever I shared a picture or some video of me bouldering for example.

In case you don’t, you’ll just have to believe me for now.

In fact, I once let my sister straighten my hair with some sort of steam-powered hair straightener (I think she called it a steam pod but don’t ask me about that type of stuff, I know nothing about it at all). Anyway, I still have a picture of how I looked back then and I’m not joking when I say my hair was so long it went all the way to my nipples and beyond (you’re welcome for making you think about my nipples by the way).

That said, this was when my hair was at my longest—I also exclusively walked around with a low-hanging man bun at that time (strange times those years were).

As of late, my hair was quite a bit shorter, but still quite long for men's standards.

Anyway, that’s a lot of context just to make you understand the drastic difference when I tell you I completely shaved my head to the point of almost going bald (my mother would probably have gotten a heart attack if I did, in fact, go completely bald).

The running joke used to be that my everyday “style” was that of an intellectual hobo—whatever that looks like in your mind.

Nowadays, I’ve been told I resemble Justin Timberlake's appearance in the movie ‘In Time’.

A drastic change to say the least.

And yet, it took me no longer than a few hours to go “Oh that’s what I look like almost bald, alright that’s nice.” and roll with it as if nothing even happened.

But that’s not at all how the events leading up to me getting an incredibly short buzz cut went.

You see, while not that serious and somewhat half-jokingly, I’ve had the idea to get a buzz cut for probably over 6 months, potentially even longer than a year (I can’t remember when I first thought about it, but it’s been a while).

Whether it’s fear, uncertainty, doubt, or something else that kept me from doing so, I can’t actually tell (probably a combination of all of the above), but the most important part is realizing how much I ‘suffered’ (constantly thinking about it, doubting the decision, and never going through with it) and how much time I wasted that way.

And for what?

Worst case scenario, I don’t like it and it just grows back, no big deal really.

Now, this might just be a silly little story for you, however it’s about much more than just “some hair”.

In fact, I’m guessing that this story will hit close to home to you in some way, shape, or form. I can almost guarantee there’s been something in your life or something on your mind that you’ve been thinking about, wondering whether to go through with it or not. Something you have many, many doubts about, even though, when it comes down to it, relatively little bad can ever happen (especially considering nothing bad ever happens to a writer), and in most cases, something you’ll be immediately glad you did afterward, yet you’ve been making yourself suffer immensely for far too long.

Something else.

How often have you procrastinated doing a task you really didn’t want to do for days, weeks, or potentially even months, yet when you finally got to it didn’t take longer than 5 to 10 minutes to complete and be done with for good?

Yeah…

Nothing to feel bad about though. We’ve all been there. Nobody is special when it comes to these types of experiences. Sometimes it’s as if we’re all living the same lives just in different times and places.

If there’s one thing to take away from this email, it’s to just get on with it and shave your head, because who knows, you might really end up enjoying it…

Speaking of which, if you’ve been on the fence about building an email and writing daily emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading day after day (which I know many people are) then this might just be the one thing you needed to hear to get you going.

Even more.

Check out Email Valhalla here to shave your figurative head and learn everything there is to know about writing simple and entertaining daily emails just like this one.

For more information, click here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/


Belgium’s new national chess champion

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I’ve been playing chess more seriously for the past few years.

More specifically, two years ago I joined the (then brand-new) chess club within my university. This undoubtedly skyrocketed not only my skill in chess but also my appreciation for the game and the whole chess community—even though the average chess player is 61 years old, there are still a lot of young and enthusiastic chess players eager to socialize with others in their early 20s.

Anyway.

During this time I’ve had the opportunity to meet and befriend many exceptionally talented people. One of the people I met through this chess club (and later on became extremely close friends with) became the National Champion of Belgium earlier this year.

This is an incredible achievement on its own and I’m extremely proud of him.

But it doesn’t stop there—especially not with me.

Oh no, this is also an incredible opportunity for him (and for me as well). See I happen to enjoy marketing, advertising, and the creating & selling of (digital) courses—as you should probably know by now if you’ve been reading my emails for at least a week.

If you’re an attentive reader you might’ve already guessed where this is going, but in case you haven’t yet. There’s an incredible (and lucrative) opportunity to use his newfound status to launch and sell a new chess course with him as the leading personality behind it.

Even more.

I just had a look at Meta’s ad library today and it turns out there’s only ONE (1!) chess-related ad currently running on all of Facebook, Instagram, and wherever Meta ads are shown. And it’s an ad for in-person private lessons aimed at children.

More than enough reasons to conclude there’s a huge untapped market waiting for someone to do something with it.

The funny thing here is that there’s nothing new about the game of chess—quite the contrary, in fact.

And yet a quick search shows me just how easily it could be to enter this market and build ourselves a nice little business (which I’m no doubt underhyping).

But what does this have to do with you, you might ask?

Well, this just goes to show you how easy it is to take things for granted and dismiss any potential opportunities that might be staring you right in the face at all times. I know people who only recently got into the market of selling guitar courses and are now making a killing with it (a guitar ain’t nothing new either).

So make sure to keep your eyes open, don’t dismiss opportunities just because you don’t think there’s anything worthwhile.

Make sure to do a tiny bit of research and who knows, you might find yourself a new lucrative business idea.

And while we’re on the topic of lucrative business ideas, have you tried building a list and writing it daily emails that get sales and keep your readers reading day after day?

If not, be sure to check out Email Valhalla today. Click here for more info: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/


Write down everything you think about

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For the longest time, I’ve been writing down almost any and all ideas I get throughout the day.

As you might imagine, this leaves me with a huge mess of different notes, folders, and other methods of attempted organization to keep my ideas somewhat structured and readable.

In fact, I regularly take time to re-structure my notes and re-think how I save all of my ideas.

But more importantly, I do this because every single idea you get can (and will) benefit you when considered over a long enough timeframe.

For example.

Just today I started working on a project for which I got the original idea somewhere early February this year. That’s 8 months ago… Except at that time I barely had a clue what to do with it, how to go about creating it, or even what I wanted the final product to look like.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I read an article with an intriguing idea I couldn’t stop thinking about.

I kept thinking about that idea and how I could use/implement it for my own business.

Only after a good night’s sleep and focusing on other stuff (to let my brain process the ideas and their potential) that I finally make the connection between the article I read yesterday and the note I created over 8 months ago.

This process isn’t anything special or unique either.

Every great connection or new mental pathway is made this way: by writing down ideas, letting them rest, letting them sizzle on the pan like a good steak ready to be consumed, sometimes for a few hours, other times for months or even years, until they’re finally ready to be used and benefited from.

That’s why writing is such a profitable thing to do.

Yes, you learn to think and express yourself better. But you also allow yourself to make better, more worthwhile, and sometimes wildly lucrative connections you otherwise wouldn’t have made in a thousand years.

So if you’re not doing so already, start writing down all of your ideas.

And while you’re at it, you might as well share them with others who might be interested. Who knows, you might build yourself a lucrative business almost by accident, all by doing something you’d be doing either way.

To learn more about the simple ways of sharing your ideas with people through daily emails that keep your readers reading day after day, while also getting paid because of it, check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Use the difficulty

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I recently watched an interview with Sir Michael Caine where he talked about one of his philosophies of life, which he called “use the difficulty”.

“Use the difficulty” originated from when he was still a young actor rehearsing for a stage play.

In this particular scene, Sir Michael Caine was waiting behind the stage, waiting for his cue to enter the stage, while two other actors were acting out an improvised scene between a husband and a wife. Both actors got carried away during the improvised scene and started throwing things around the stage, including the man who threw a chair that blocked the door through which Michael Caine was supposed to enter the stage.

In that moment he just took his head through the door and went ”I’m sorry sir, I can’t get in”.

To which the other actor replied, “What do you mean?”

“Well there’s a chair in the way, sir” Michael Caine replied.

To which the older and more experienced actor simply replied, “Use the difficulty. If it’s a comedy, fall over the chair, if it’s a drama pick it up and smash it”. He said it in such a nonchalant and simple way, solely focused on acting on stage, sort of like an off-the-cuff comment, but Michael Caine found this such an inspiring and insightful response he took and applied it to his personal life.

So now whenever something bad happens in his life, he immediately goes “How can I work with this, what can I get out of this, and how can I use this to my advantage?”

Even if you only improve the situation 1% by using something bad that happened to you, you’re still further along than you would’ve been otherwise.

This also nicely reminds me of something I’ve heard the great Matt Furey say, “Nothing bad ever happens to a writer”.

Meaning if something happened to you, use it the best (and maybe the only) way you know, write about it. The least you can do is profit from the otherwise “bad situation”.

This goes for everything.

Whether it’s a divorce, a dead in the family, or even your first 1-star book review.

Use it, write about it, turn it into something positive (or at least ‘less bad’), and get something out of it… which in the case of a 1-star book review can be a whole lot more sale if approached from the correct angle… but more about that in another email.

In the meantime, if you want to improve your writing game, more specifically your daily email writing game (and make it easier for you to use the difficulty) then I highly suggest you check out Email Valhalla and see what it has in store for you.

Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Go watch some ball games

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Earlier this year I went to a basketball game for the first (and so far the only) time in my life.

And man what an experience that was.

I found it absolutely astonishing how, during the whole two hours I was there, there was always something going on.

Most of the time, it was the basketball game in question—obviously.

But even when they called a timeout, during the mid-time break, and even during the 10-second windows when the ref calls a mistake and they had to reset the game/give someone a free throw, at every single point, they’d tactically entertain the viewer with something else.

Whether it was a 10-second piece of hype music, asking the supporters to clap their hands or make some noise, or the cheerleaders giving a 30-second performance, there wasn’t a single moment to feel bored.

It’s all very much designed to be as addicting and entertaining as possible.

Now I know next to nothing about sports (to be frank, it’s a miracle I even went to this event, but that’s a story for another time).

But I imagine this level of constant entertainment wasn’t invented/discovered/created from the start. There have been many breakthroughs throughout the years to become as competent at entertaining people as this event proved to be—with all of its different moving parts of the system combined.

Truly a masterclass of entertainment.

And I’d recommend everyone to go to events like these more often themselves to learn how to become a great entertainer—an invaluable skill when it comes to marketing.

Anyway.

That’s enough for today.

If you’d like to start improving your entertainment game today—especially when it comes to written entertainment—instead of waiting to go and see some local sporting event (or watch one on television), then definitely check out Email Valhalla to get yourself sorted straight away.

Check it out here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


The secret boring life of yours truly

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Many moons ago a curious reader (not sure if he wants me to share his name) asked me an interesting question which went as follows:

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Hey Alex!

I’ve been reading your emails for a few months now and I have to let you know how much I love them. It’s become a daily ritual to read your email right after dinner.

I especially love how you’re able to take these seemingly normal and everyday stories of yours and connect them to business-related lessons. One of the most impressive ones for me was your email about the opening scene of How To Train Your Dragon and how you connected it to creating a lead magnet.

Here’s my question to you: How do you come up with all these topics? How do you have so much to talk about that you can write an email every single day?

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And that’s an amazing question. It’s also one I get quite often.

For one, coming up with stories to share is hard.

Coming up with connections to draw between these stories and valuable lessons is even harder—or at least that seems to be what most people struggle with.

But here’s the thing.

Many people expect some cool and sexy answer. An amazing solution that’ll solve all of their problems. A prompt they can enter into ChatGPT or a framework they can use that’ll spit out ideas and connections for them.

Far from it.

The true answer isn’t sexy at all. It’s boring. So boring that I barely talk about it. So boring that I didn’t deem it worthy to talk about it in the first place.

And yet it’s something I do every single day (which tells you something about how exciting my everyday life is). In fact. It’s one of the first things I do right after I wake up before I start working. And then, when I’m done working. It’s almost all I spent doing for the rest of the day.

I built my whole life upon this boring and simple method to get more stories and make more connections.

What method am I talking about?

I do stuff. I read stuff. I watch stuff. And I listen to stuff.

Exciting, right?

And yet, for me it’s the most fun and exciting thing I do.

You’ll hear me mention this phrase a lot. But I always pursue my curiosities.

I read books I think are interesting, not books others say will make me more money. I listen to podcasts I think are fascinating, not podcasts others say I have to listen to. I watch movies I think are cool as hell, not movies that won Oscars or IMDB says have a high score.

That’s “the secret”.

I consume information I find cool and valuable.

This builds my own world. This gives me my own unique ideas and perspectives. And then after consuming all that information, I do nothing. Literally nothing. I walk. I lie down. I think. I go to the gym. I take a shower. I do fun stuff with friends & family.

And all of that’s vital as well.

Your subconscious needs moments of relaxation to process all that information and give you ideas and inspiration about what it all means. Then those stories and connections come by themselves.

Do this and you won’t have any issues coming up with connections or things to share anymore.

While we’re on the topic of doing stuff I think is cool… have you considered writing entertaining daily emails to your audience to build a relationship, get yourself lifelong customers who don’t dare buy from anyone else, and build yourself a long-term profitable and reliable business?

That’s kinda cool if you ask me.

If you’d like to learn more about writing daily emails, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Steve Jobs’s highly influential way of business thinking

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Anyone can put something together, slap a price on it, spend some money on advertising, and get people to buy it as long as the price is low enough.

But few can create something their target audience not just wants, but desperately needs, allowing them to sell it effortlessly at almost any price of their choosing.

This holds true regardless of the market you’re in.

The moment price becomes the main differentiator between your product and that of your competitors is the moment you lose.

“Ok”, you ask, “so how do I create a product my audience desperately needs?” you may ask.

Except that’s the wrong question.

Instead, you should ask, “How do I get to know my customers better than they know themselves?”

This is the kind of thinking I once heard Steve Jobs talk about in an interview when asked what kind of technology he and his team had been working on (and contributed to society) for the past decade—this question was asked in a “prove my you’re better than your competitors” kind of way.

Jobs immediately pointed out how this “technology first” kind of thinking was an extremely flawed way of doing business.

Instead of thinking “What technology can I create and how can I sell it?”, every business should ask themselves, “How can I deliver the best customer experience?”.

Once you answered that, only then is it time to ask yourself “What technology do I need to make it happen?”.

Who knows, maybe you already have everything that’s required.

Either way, this will set you up correctly.

Coincidentally, even though this interview is publicly available for everyone to watch, interpret, and learn from on YouTube (and has been for many, many years), still so many people spend weeks, months, even years creating something to sell, never bothering to think how the customer will benefit from it or if they even need it at all, only to have to figure out how they’re going to sell it once they’re done building the product.

Anyway.

While I’m unable to help you discover how to best help your target audience, I do know one of the best ways to do so is by staying in frequent contact with your customers.

One way to do so, which my biased ass highly recommends to you, is by writing simple, efficient, and entertaining emails on a daily basis.

If that sounds like something you’d want to do, then check out Email Valhalla here to learn more: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Star Wars is racist

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Not everyone seemed to enjoy Star Wars when it was first released back in 1977.

Even though it was an immediate success and raked in insane amounts of money, the likes of which had almost never been seen before.

More specifically.

Some critics called the movie “as simple as black and white—and not in a good way,” even going as far as writing “The blockbuster, bestselling movie Star Wars is one of the most racist movies ever produced.”

Another criticism read, “The force of evil in Star Wars is dressed in all black and has the voice of a black man… That character reinforces the old stereotype that black is evil.”

Here’s another example (taken word for word from the book George Lucas by Brian Jay Jones):

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Another critic even ‘pointed out’ that the two droids acted, and were treated, like slaves, all the way down to being sold to a young white man they called “Master”.

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Seriously, I wish I was making this stuff up.

This proves to me one thing and one thing only.

People will hate you no matter what. The more successful you are, the more the hatred will become.

There’s just no pleasing everyone.

One of my favorite quotes (and guiding principles) I’ve learned in the past year is from the great Dan Kennedy himself: “If you haven’t offended anyone by noon each day, you’re not marketing hard enough.”

The more I grow and learn, the more I realize how true this is.

Don’t believe me?

Try it out yourself. The next email you write, the next post you share, or the next podcast you’re on, try sharing your opinion about something controversial without holding back. Truly express your opinion. Don’t sugarcoat it one bit.

Yes, you’ll get backlash, yes people will take offense.

But those people weren’t your audience anyway.

What’s more important is how much more trustworthy you’ll be to the people that matter.

And if you’d like more email tips like this, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla