Business World-Building

In which business are you, really?

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After the initial success of Episode IV: A New Hope (then simply titled “Star Wars”) in 1977, George Lucas decided to create the next Star Wars his way.

That meant controlling as much as possible: filming, editing, merchandizing, sequel rights, and even the funding—which he could now afford.

He wanted to control pretty much everything except for the distribution. For that, he still had to work with a bigger studio—something he always despised. Standard studio negotiations would almost always favor the studio. Often giving them as much as 50% to 80% of the profits.

But not this time.

First, George Lucas already secured his own funding with his prior profits as collateral for a loan. Secondly, pretty much every big studio wanted to get their hands on the next Star Wars release… meaning the negotiations would look a lot different than studios were used to.

Ultimately Lucas closed a deal with 20th Century Fox, giving them only a 22.5% share of the profits in return for handling the distribution (and putting the Fox logo before the opening credits).

In a later quote, Steven Spielberg said:

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“If you’re an executive, suddenly you realize that if you’re going into business with George Lucas, you are no longer in the 20th Century-Fox business, you are in the George Lucas business.”

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Read that quote again. Take it in. Then pause and think about it. Try to truly understand the implications. Because if you understand what’s going on here. Which forces are at play. And if you do everything in your power to build your business in a similar manner—to create your own business universe in a way. Then I can guarantee this will be one of the most profitable lessons you’ll ever learn.

Don’t think of yourself as being in the “personal-branding”, “copywriting”, “life-coaching”, “web-design”, or even the “marketing” business.

You’re in the you-business.

Just as everyone who works with me is in the Alex Van Dromme business.

There was no competing with Star Wars back in the day because of that. They weren’t in the movie business, nor were they in the fantasy or science-fiction business. They were in the George Lucas business.

Luckily for you, one of the fastest and easiest ways I know to start building your own business universe is to build your own unique, world-driven, and valuable (and profitable) collection of (digital) products and services that you and you alone could offer.

I urge you to try this—I even dare you to try and not be successful after thinking this through and building your own business universe step by step.

Anyway.

If you want to learn how to get started building your collection of products.

Then click the link here: https://alexvandromme.com/pcme


How Dune teaches the perfect business-building formula

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I saw Dune: Part Two a few days ago in the theater.

I won’t spoil anything, so no worries

But I can tell you this: it was an amazing experience. Excellent storytelling, wonderful world building, and an incredible score that perfectly blends in with every other aspect of the world of Dune.

Long-time readers know about my love for everything Hans Zimmer so I won’t go into yet another deep dive of the score.

Instead, I want to talk about world building.

More precisely, how everything just fits together—including the shots, the filming style, the dialogue, the music, the VFX, the sound design, and everything else that has to be taken care of when adapting a book into a movie.

Now don’t get me wrong.

Frank Herbert put a lot of time and effort into creating a huge, complex, vibrant and interesting world. But adaptation is a whole different beast of its own (case in point, the many, many previous Dune adaptations that all failed miserably).

But no.

Everything just felt right this time around. As if this could have perfectly well been a new and original work.

There’s enough detail into every scene to make the world feel alive and real.

The exposition is done in a natural way, which does not overwhelm the viewer while perfectly bringing everyone up to pace to understand just enough to follow the story, yet leaving out a lot of information to make the viewer wonder about what’s actually going on behind the scenes.

Who’s who? What do some of these things mean? Even though you don’t understand everything and everyone (unless you’ve read the books), you can still feel when something’s off, when people have ulterior motives, when there’s more going on behind the scenes (which there always is).

It’s the combination of just enough explanation combined with a giant, complex, and living world that creates the feeling of curiosity and intrigue.

And that formula of creating the curiosity to learn more, to stick around, to want to find out what’s happing, and to become obsessed with the world you’re getting sucked into, well, that formula isn’t restricted to film or story alone.

You can apply that same formula to your business and create a world of your own.

A world that captures people’s attention, brings them in with just the right amount of exposition, and keeps them there by leveraging the power of your well-blended collection of characters (offers), worlds (media), music (personality), and entertaining teachings (storytelling).

(Read that paragraph over and over until it sinks in)

And while it’s not something you’ll create overnight. You can start building your world today.

How?

By learning how to write emails and creating the perfect environment to introduce everyone to your world—all the while building your email empire.

Check out Email Valhalla today if you’d like to learn how.

Here’s the link: https://alexvandromme.gumroad.com/l/valhalla


Music composition, game design, and business

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For the past few days, I’ve been busy learning game development (again) and creating music to go alongside it.

It’s been incredibly fun, exciting, and especially rewarding.

I don’t know exactly what it is, but every type of creative work is always extremely rewarding, no matter how slow your progress might be. Going from a few consecutive notes that sound nice to a well-crafted chorus with multiple instruments or going from a pixel on your screen to a moving character (both of which are only small parts of the final deliverable) gives you so much motivation to keep going.

It’s one of those few types of work where progress can actually be seen (and felt) no matter how insignificant it may seem.

Part of why I’m doing this is because I just genuinely enjoy doing so.

Another part is to develop the skills to build out my own universe of the novel I’m writing, bit by bit, in different media, and creating the entire feel of it myself, from the storyline to the character art, to the music, video game adaptations, cinematics, and much, much more.

All of which will boost my email game (and business) as well.

But this whole process reminded me of something important.

The more progress you see yourself making in the early stages, the faster (and better) your results will be. Now this might just be anecdotal proof for me. But I’ve never seen this not to be the case for me, or anyone else for that matter.

Working on something for months on end, without seeing any actual progress to be proud of is demoralizing for everyone and almost never helps to make a well-put-together final deliverable.

Which brings me to Product Creation Made Easy.

In it I teach my simple PCME framework that shows you how to create a product from start to finish, with a big emphasis on getting actual results early on, so you can see (and feel) the progress you’re making—helping you deliver a better end results and keeping you motivated throughout the whole process.

Check it out here to learn more about it: https://alexvandromme.com/pcme


Why I don’t care about numbers, data, or statistics

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I know many a entrepreneur who live and die by their numbers.

Every offer they make, every email they write, every decision they make is all backed up by market research, customer surveys, focus groups, testing groups, and everything else you can think of.

And I’m not saying it doesn’t work.

It does. In fact, it might even be the best thing to do. It might even be the most profitable (especially in the short run).

But it’s not how I roll.

For one thing, you become a slave of the market, always chasing where the demand goes—always testing, always iterating, always dependent on the whims of your customers.

You’re essentially choosing to be the one who chases instead of the one who is being chased.

You’ll never truly lead your market (which is a whole discussion on its own).

But more.

You’ll never truly have the freedom to do exactly what you want, when you want, and for how long you want it.

You don’t build a business that survives—even thrives—for years, decades, even generations, by being the one who chases.

Still more.

I doubt anyone who does business this way can ever feel truly fulfilled—which is one of the main reasons I don’t do data.

Everything I do, everything I create, everything I sell is stuff I think is cool (and helps my customers, important not to overlook this part). It’s stuff I’d do regardless of whether I get paid for it or not (the only difference is that I can do a lot more of it when I do get paid).

So here’s something important for you to consider.

If you’re a data person. And you’d like to optimize everything you do for maximum profitability. And you’re prone to chasing whatever the market wants (i.e., you saw AI is “the next new thing” and jumped on the bandwagon, until the hype dies down and you’ll jump to something like VR when it’s “the next new thing”).

Then it’s probably not doing you any good to listen to anything I have to say. Let alone try to implement what I do for your own.

Our businesses (and business philosophies) function differently.

Which isn’t a bad thing. But it’s something to consider.

That said.

If you do share the same philosophy to business. If you aim to build something that’s truly yours, to do the leading instead of the chasing, to think long-term, to stick to whatever you think is cool regardless of what others say.

Then you should check out Product Creation Made Easy.

It’s my entire product creation framework where I show you how to create products you think are cool and stuff you want to create—while still making sure it’s something people would want—all the way from ideation to having a profitable launch and beyond (i.e., to keep getting sales months and even years after the initial launch).

Here’s the link for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/pcme


Do what you think is cool, even if no one else does

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But that goes with an important caveat.

One that many people (myself included) forget. And one that all but guarantees your business will fail and you won’t make any money.

Before I get into that, I do want to say that I absolutely, completely, undeniably, and with every cell of my body agree with the first statement I made.

You have to do what you think is cool, even if no one else does.

If you think dinosaurs are cool, then talk about dinosaurs, include dinosaurs in all of your designs, create a whole line of different offers, and name them all after different types of dinosaurs.

Truly bring your reader into their world and make it known how cool you think dinosaurs truly are.

But that said.

And this brings me to the fatal caveat.

You can’t forget the number one rule of business, selling something people want. If nobody cares about what you’re selling, then nobody is going to buy. And no, merely talking about what excites you won’t magically excite other people.

You have to do your homework and figure out what people are buying.

Then you build your version of that thing people are buying and sell it as your own.

I can build the coolest banana peeler the world has ever seen. But nobody is buying banana peelers and the kitchen gadget market is already filled with useless thrash nobody buys (and even they haven’t built a banana peeler—as far as I know).

So the rule would actually be:

Do what you think is cool, even if no one else does, but make sure what you do is also something people are already buying in some way, shape or form.

But that’s not as sexy, is it?

Anyway.

I teach more about building products that people want to buy—while doing it your way (the way you think is cool)—in Product Creation Made Easy.

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

In what business are you?

by

George Lucas decided to do the next Star Wars his way after the initial success of Episode IV: A New Hope (then simply titled “Star Wars”) in 1977.

This meant being in control of as much as possible: filming, editing, merchandizing, sequel rights, and even the funding itself—which he could now do with the profits from the first movie.

He wanted to control pretty much everything except for the distribution.

For that he still had to work together with a bigger studio—something he always despised.

Standard studio negotiations would almost always be in favor of the studio. Giving them as much as 50% to 80% of the profits.

But not this time.

The fact that 1) George Lucas already secured his own funding with his prior profits as collateral for a loan and 2) pretty much every big studio wanted to get their hands on the next Star Wars release meant that the negotiation would look a lot different than studios were used to.

Ultimately Lucas decided to work together with 20th Century Fox, giving them only a 22.5% share of the profits in return for handling the distribution (and putting the Fox logo before the opening credits).

In a later quote, Steven Spielberg said:

===

“If you’re an executive, suddenly you realize that if you’re going into business with George Lucas, you are no longer in the 20th Century-Fox business, you are in the George Lucas business.”

===

Read that quote again.

Take it in. Then pause and think about it.

Try to truly understand the implications.

Because if you understand what’s going on here. Which forces are at play. And if you do everything in your power to build your business in a similar manner—to create your own business universe in a way.

Then I can guarantee this will be one of the most profitable lessons you’ll ever learn.

Don’t think of yourself as being in the “personal-branding”, “copywriting”, “life-coaching”, “web-design”, or even the “marketing” business.

You’re in the you-business.

Just as I and everyone who works with me is in the Alex Van Dromme business.

This is why there was no competing with Star Wars back in the day.

They weren’t in the movie business, nor were they in the fantasy or science-fiction business.

They were in the George Lucas business.

And one of the fastest and easiest ways I know to start building your own business universe is to build your own unique, world-driven, and valuable (and profitable) collection of (digital) products and services that you and you alone could offer.

I urge you to try this—I even dare you to try and not be successful after thinking this through and building your own business universe step by step.

Anyway.

If you want to learn how to get started building your collection of products.

Then click the link here: https://alexvandromme.com/pcme/