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On book-cleaning duty

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Just the other day I was cleaning my wishlist for future books to buy and read.

And with ‘cleaning’ I mean deleting all of the overrated junk books I added to that list over 2 years ago when I didn’t know what actual good quality books—both fiction and non-fiction—looked like and I purely followed whatever was hot at the time or whatever the “top 10 books to read” listicle of the month was being shared on Twitter.

That’s how I ended up with books such as Think and Grow Rich, Atomic Habits, The 48 Laws of Power, How to Win Friends & Influence People, The Four Agreements, The Daily Stoic, and many, many others like it on my bookshelf.

Some of them I read, some of them I only read a few pages before dumping them and moving on to the next.

But all in all, I’m glad to be able to remove all of these books from my wishlist and to recognize the quality of the books I once read, and sometimes even adored, in the past. It shows me how much I’ve grown. How much I’ve learned and come to realize what matters and what doesn’t. And most importantly, how much I’ve trained my bullshit, or in kinder words, my flawed-argument-aimed-at-a-mass-market-audience detector.

Now, I have no idea how many books I removed or how many were on my list when I started—I didn’t check.

But I do know how many I’ve got on my wishlist right now… over 500 books!

Just to give some perspective: I only really started reading, collecting, and wishlisting books in the past 2 years or so and my current collection of books in my bookshelf is just shy of a 100.

I might have said this before, but if you would’ve told me about this just 3–4 years ago I would’ve called you crazy. Me? Reading books daily? And having a ginormous list of books I want to read??

Truly absurd.

Anyway. I don’t really know where I’m going with this except for sharing a fun and perhaps insightful anecdote about your ability to predict to future.

As for another future prediction I feel a lot more confident in than the knowledge of what I’ll enjoy doing in 5 years time: despite people saying email has been dead for years and years now, email doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere. In fact, even with Google’s latest announcement of making it easier for people to check their current email subscriptions all in one place, and allowing them to easily unsubscribe, this will only make it so much more lucrative for people who know what they’re doing, who write engaging emails people want to read, and who aren’t seen as yet another newsletter filling their inbox with spam.

As time goes on, the competition will only get smaller.

So now might just be a great time to improve your email writing ability and prepare for what’s to come in a way that’s all but guaranteed to grow your skillset, your business, and your wallet.

To do so, check out my flagship course, Email Valhalla, right here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla/


My long-forgotten past of playing the social media content creator

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I used to be active on Twitter (I’m never calling it X) for over a year until I got banned and then player around on LinkedIn for a while.

But I’m no longer active on either.

Or any other social media for that matter.

I realized that I don’t actually enjoy the whole social media content creator thing as much anymore. A lot of stuff I read feels (and often is) fake.

It’s all the same dumbed-down information (if it isn’t outright BS advice that’s actively hurting every single person who’s reading it).

Don’t get me wrong.

Social media can be a good thing. It’s a tool like any other, after all.

It’s probably one of the best practice fields for newcomers.

But it shouldn’t be the only thing people depend on. In fact, you shouldn’t depend on it at all.

I’ve seen so many people fall into the social media echo chamber only never to get out again. They skip (or simply forget to learn) so many business fundamentals necessary for their career.

But that’s not even the worst part.

What’s by far the biggest danger is how it feels like you’re doing stuff and achieving something, while in reality, you probably aren’t.

Likes, shares, and follows feels nice. Sure. And so do, one-off clients here and there.

But recurring and predictable revenue, something most social media content creators don’t have, is a whole lot nicer.

So how do you get recurring and predictable revenue?

Well, some ways include but are not limited to, running paid ads, getting on podcasts, driving traffic to your website, writing articles, working on SEO, getting referrals, and so on.

The key here is, however, to make your email list the center of everything.

As the saying goes, “All roads lead to email”.

And if you want to learn how to build and monetize that email list effectively, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


My love-hate relationship with social media

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Once in a while, I’ll enter this period where I’ll write up some social media post guiding people to join my email list.

This, however, never lasts long.

Sometimes I’ll do it for 2-3 days. Sometimes I’ll keep it up for a few weeks. But eventually, I’ll disappear from the platform, without any notice. Only to pop up, unannounced and as if nothing happened, a short while later.

And it’s not because I can’t stay disciplined enough to keep it going. In fact, I used to write 5 post a day on Twitter for over a year, without missing a single day. That’s how I got started with all of this.

So it’s not that.

Simply said. I just got tired of playing the social media game and how fake and unfulfilling it is (ask anyone in the social media business who’s making real money—it’s shallow, its repetitive, it’s boring).

That’s just how it goes when social media is only good for top-of-funnel content (aka, aimed at the 95% of the population who are beginners in your market).

And it’s the same for the consumers as well.

Eventually that social media content gets boring—especially once you’ve read the same 10 beginner lessons a hundred times over and over again.

So for the entirety of 2024, I’ve been working on making my business work without requiring leads from social media—it helps a bit here and there, that’s why I write the occasional post, but I don’t rely on it.

How have I been doing this, you ask?

Many different ways. But one of them is through paid advertising—an incredible alternative source of guaranteed (and often high-quality) traffic that’s easily customizable to whatever you require.

It’s easy to keep going as well.

Far more rewarding and less shallow than social media content creation, at least.

Coincidentally, I’m also working on a new product that’ll teach my paid advertising framework so you can rely on a more stable and higher-quality form of traffic generation that, once you get it going, requires dramatically less time investment than anything else out there.

But that won’t be for now just yet.

In the meantime, if you already have traffic, but you don’t have a great product or service to do something worthwhile (aka, get paid) with that traffic, then I’d highly suggest you check out Product Creation Made Easy.

It ain’t cheap, but it’s damn worth it and you might find it to be just what you need.

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


Start doing more doing

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One of the biggest improvements I made in my email and business career was when I started telling more stories everywhere I went.

In my emails, in my X or LinkedIn posts, during X spaces (when I used to do those), during consultation calls, in the DMs to explain concepts and close prospects, or simply outside of business when talking with friends or family members.

No matter when or where.

It’s always a good time to be telling stories—not to mention how good of a practice it is to develop your own storytelling and, in turn, your copywriting abilities.

I've never come across a situation where sharing a well-told and relevant story didn’t help me out in any way, shape, or form.

And I don’t want you to read this and think you have to become a guru who doesn’t shut up about storytelling tips, tricks, tactics, or god forbid, teaches you how to use ChatGPT to tell better stories, yet never actually tells any stories.

Seriously, there’s a direct inverse relation between how often someone shares storytelling tips and how often someone tells relevant stories.

That’s good life advice as well.

Don’t listen to the person doing the most teaching.

Listen to the person doing the most doing. (take that grammar nazis)

And talking about people doing a lot of doing—I happen to do a lot of doing, especially when it comes to sending emails, they get a lot of doing from me.

So much doing.

I sometimes even do the doing multiple times a day, like I’m doing right now.

That’s a lot of doing.

Anyway.

If you want to learn how to do the doing as well, then check out Email Valhalla: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla