Creativity

I’m learning to design fancy sales pages

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You may (or may not) have seen a couple of my sales pages already.

They all pretty much have the same 'look’ and feel to it, albeit personalized to the respective product it’s selling. It’s the same template, the same framework, the same structure.

It’s also pretty old-school. Those sales pages won’t be winning a design award any time soon, that’s for sure.

That said.

Things might very well change in the near future. See, I’ve started building a new “modern” salespage for a hobby product, aimed at a mass market audience. But not just any market. A visual and artsy marketing.

Meaning, a creative and visually pleasing design of my sales page can (it’s not guaranteed—nothing is) improve the performance of the sales page.

It’s been a lot of fun so far.

One thing I’ve noticed, for example, was how easy it comes to me. The underlying principles are all the same after all. So it the copy, the structure, and the psychology. All I really have to do is use my design skills to package it up nicely and make it look visually pleasing to the eye.

Luckily for me, I enjoy being creative and designing stuff.

Anyway, enough yapping about.

In case you haven’t picked up on the moral of the story yet. It’s that it pays to understand the fundamentals before you start tinkering about with the fancy stuff.

And when it comes to sales pages, it would be true marketing malpractice if I wasn’t going to mention one of my precious products I’m so very proud of, Sales Page Sorcery, which teaches you all the fundamentals of conjuring up brand new sales pages fast, easily, and effortlessly.

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


I don’t want money

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I want freedom over my time.

I want the freedom to work from wherever I want, with whomever I want, whenever I want, and on whatever I want.

But that doesn’t mean sitting on the beach drinking cocktails all day.

That gets boring quickly.

No, I do want to work.

But it has to be work that allows for creative self-expression and interesting challenges to overcome. I want to keep pushing myself further and achieve more today than I did yesterday.

As the old adage says, it’s about the journey, not the destination—yet it never feels as such.

In short.

I don’t want less work.

I want less meaningless work so I can replace that time with more meaningful work. I might not even call it “work” anymore when it comes to it.

But that’s what it is.

Work I truly and utterly enjoy doing.

And the only way I can think of to get there, and more importantly, stay there, is to start building something of my own. To develop my skillset, build my own offers, grow my customer base, and become my own employer.

The specifics don’t matter. It’s about the big picture here.

That’s the ultimate goal. To be truly free to work on whatever I want while getting paid more than enough—which is only to rid yourself of all the symptoms that come with not being paid enough, not the goal in and of itself.

So no. I don’t want money.

I want the freedom of self-expression and meaningful work.

If you find yourself nodding in agreement right now. Then maybe it’s time to stop wasting any more time and get to it.

Also, if I can recommend an immensely valuable skill to learn that’ll be incredibly useful to you, no matter what path you’re going down, then it’ll be to learn and master the fundamentals of marketing, and more importantly, email marketing. Because that’s going to enable everything else you’ll be doing.

And for that, there’s no better place to be than Email Valhalla.

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


You don’t want money

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You want freedom over your time.

You want the freedom to work from wherever you want, with whomever you want, whenever you want, and on whatever you want.

But that doesn’t mean sitting on the beach all day drinking cocktails all day.

That gets boring quickly.

No, you do want to work. But you want work that allows for creative self-expression and interesting challenges to overcome. To keep pushing yourself further, to achieve more today than you achieved yesterday.

As the old adage says, it’s about the journey, not the destination—yet it never feels as such.

In short.

You don’t want less work.

You want less meaningless work so you can replace that time with more meaningful work. You might not even call it “work” anymore when it comes down to it.

But that’s what it is.

Work you truly and utterly enjoy doing.

And the only way to get there, and more importantly, stay there, in my humble and accurate opinion, is to start building something of your own. Develop your own skillset, build your own offers, grow your own customer base, and become your own employer (this includes working as a freelancer if that’s what you enjoy most).

Then, and only then, when you’re truly free to work on whatever you want while getting paid more than enough—which is only to rid yourself of all the symptoms that come with not being paid enough, not the goal in and of itself—then and only then will you truly live the life you’ve always dreamt of living, even if you don’t realize it yet.

You don’t want money.

You want the freedom of self-expression and meaningful work.

So stop wasting any more time and get to it.

And if I can recommend you a immensely valuable skill to learn that’ll be incredibly useful to you, no matter what path you’re going down, then it’ll be to learn and master the fundamentals of marketing, and more importantly, email marketing. Because that’s going to enable everything else you’ll be doing.

Anyway.

To learn more about my solution to master email marketing fundamentals, check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


I love the Transformer movies

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And I’m not afraid to say it.

See.

Ever since I was young, I remember loving the Transformer franchise, getting multiple Transformers action figures as Christmas and birthday gifts and whatnot, and when I outgrew those action figures, I ended up spending hours playing Transformer video games.

I eventually outgrew those.

But then I started getting fascinated by film music, at which point I was deeply obsessed with—among others—the original Transformer soundtracks by Steve Jablonsky, and later got fascinated by filmmaking as a whole.

And look, the Transformer movies have many flaws—more than anyone could count.

It also didn’t get better as time went on (Don’t even get me started on the most recent releases).

But you know what? That doesn’t matter at the end of the day.

The franchise doesn’t take itself that seriously. And why should it?

It’s making a world of its own. I have no doubt that when Michael Bay was directing Transformers he said to himself “you know what would look totally sick and make for an entertaining picture?” and then did whatever he had in mind.

Without any fear of being ridiculed, of being parodied, of not making “the perfect picture”, there’s no sliver of doubt about the intention behind the films and their entertaining nature.

And it shows in the earlier films (and some scenes of the later ones as well, although arguably less so).

That’s the difference between the artist and the entrepreneur

A true love for the craft—not just the numbers.

And that, to me, is what it’s all about.

See, I don’t care about building the perfect business, the best-optimized funnel, the most automated systems, none of that. It’s not about that.

It’s about the creative freedom. About doing what you love. Thinking something might be fun and enjoyable to do and simply doing it no matter how ridiculous it might seem, how unoptimized it might be, or even how “the public might not like it”.

Authors end up writing the books they wish would’ve been written, simply because they want to experience the joy of reading that story.

That’s the way one should aim to build their creative business.

And if you’re interested to learn one of the ways—if not the best way—to go about building such business, then you might want to check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


The case against AI

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Today I received a sponsor request from some newsletter (which I won’t name for obvious reasons) about using AI to grow your LinkedIn account.

I immediately declined it—no hesitation whatsoever.

But it did get me thinking.

What’s the deal with the latest obsession about everything AI? Why does everything you do, including everything you create, everything that’s personal, has meaning, stands for something, everything that’s priceless in a way, has to be replaced (or at least, people try to replace it) with AI?

It’ll only end up being a cheap knock-off, without any intrinsic meaning, without any deeper intention behind it, without any soul.

Sure use AI were it makes sense.

In fact, we’ve already been using AI for decades in many use cases across countless of domains. Only then people still knew what AI actually meant and nobody was fanboying about it as if it’s the second coming of Christ.

But that aside, why on Earth, would you want to use AI to replace the creative things people do?

And even then, if you’re trying to use AI to grow your LinkedIn brand or whatever, then you clearly haven’t thought about what it means to “build a brand” or what the purpose of trying to grow (anything) on LinkedIn even is.

Spoiler: it’s not to fill a spreadsheet.

Not to mention what’ll become of your reputation if you use AI to do all of your ‘dirty work’ (yes it’s that obvious, and that soulless).

And last but not least.

If you honestly think of growing your brand (or anything else for that matter) as ‘dirty work’ you’d rather outsource to AI (or someone else), then, sorry not sorry, you might be in the wrong business and there’s nothing here for you in the first place.

In case this triggers you. Good.

It’s meant to do so.

I’d much rather you get triggered now, feel hurt, attacked, and shamed by what you’re doing (or what you were planning on doing) while risking you hating me and leaving my list for good (always free to do so), than playing nice, not daring to bring this up, making sure you feel cosy and comfortable, never understanding that ChatGPTing your way to building a brand, creating content, selling products, never to have any success whatsoever, not realizing you were doomed to fail from the very start.

That said, I’m not 100% shitting on AI.

As I said, it does have its use cases.

Mainly internal things you’ve got going on. Use it to transcribe audio recordings you made while on a walk or on a meeting. Use it to summarize those same records or other reports you (or other people) made. Maybe even use it to automate the tracking and reporting of your finances or how you’re spending your time.

But for the love of everything that’s holy.

Don’t use it for anything creative (it’ll single-handedly ruin your ability to be creative in the ways that matter) and god forbid you use it to create any form of final product your customers, readers, listeners, fans, or whoever will ever see.

In short, if it sees daylight (either in the form of an end result or a skill you’re practicing), don’t use AI.

I’ll leave it at that for now.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn how to create content, build a brand, and write emails that have soul and meaning in them, then you might want to check out Email Valhalla.

You can do so here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


I decided to walk 100km

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In 136 days, on the 9th of August, I’ll be joining a long-distance march of 100 kilometers (walked in less than 24 hours) aptly named the “Dodentocht” (Dutch for Death March).

I’ve never done anything like this.

In fact, I’ve never been hiking or going on long-distance walks before. The only “long-distance” walking I’ve ever done before where a few times when I had to walk home after a night out or when I didn’t have any other transport at that time, and those walks never took longer than 2 hours at most.

With that said.

I’ve got a lot of training to do. Walking 100km is no easy feat. But I just know I’m able to do this if I put my mind to it. If I put in the work and start building up slowly but surely.

In fact, I’ve started going on some walks in the past few days already.

I’ll start with some nice 5–10km walks, then bump it up to 20–30 and so on. I’ve got exactly 19 weeks to get to my goal. And that’s more than enough time.

Another benefit, beside the health-related ones, is the increased creativity you get from going on a walk. I don’t know how or why it works. But for some reason, and this has been confirmed to be the case scientifically, anecdotally, and some other -ally I can’t think of right now, something about walking in nature, letting your mind wander, being away from distraction, and going about your ways helps your brain organize everything and heightens your creativity.

Just try it out for yourself.

You’ll get so many ideas you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Emails, sales pages, videos, tweets, LinkedIn posts, articles, products, you name it, going on a walk makes the creation of those 10x easier.

All you need is your feet to move and somewhere to jot down the ideas you get while walking.

Anyway.

I’m off to go walking right now.

And afterwards I’ll write some more content, create some more products, and earn some more money while doing so. If you’d like to learn how to build your Email Empire to get you paid for sharing your ideas through email and creating products or offering your services to people to help them improve their lives.

Then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/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