Walking

The purpose of entertainment

by

Henry David Thoreau, the American essayist, poet, and philosopher once wrote:

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

“For books are not to teach us how to live,” writes Frederic Gros in his book A Philosophy of Walking, “but to make us want to live, to live differently: to find in ourselves the possibility of life, its principle.”

Both Thoreau and Gros argue that true, valuable, and insightful books can only be written when combined with lots and lots of walking.

True walking.

Not the kind you do when you’re out shopping, rushing to get to the train station, or going to the hairdresser around the corner.

True walking is when you’re out in nature without a destination or goal to achieve, with no purpose whatsoever. It’s just you, Mother Nature, and your thoughts. Often for hours on end—even though it’ll only feel like a few minutes at most after you’re done. That’s how time functions when out in the open, connected to the world around you, and without a care in your mind; the flow gets all tangled up and you have no idea how many seconds, minutes, or even hours have passed.

“What’s the point of telling me all this?” you might ask.

Well, it’s simple really.

First, it might be a worthwhile idea to go on more walks, experience life more clearly, and inspire you to write your next masterpiece.

Second, and this is where today’s marketing lesson comes in, the first Thoreau quote I shared helps you answer the question of “What problem does an author solve?”.

To clarify what I mean, take a look at the following quote by famous comic book writer, publisher, and producer, Stan Lee, who single-handedly grew one of the biggest multimedia enterprises to date:

===

“Entertainment is one of the most important things in people's lives. Without it they might go off the deep end. I feel that if you're able to entertain people, you're doing a good thing.”

===

Or in other words, you’re helping people want to live (and live differently).

You can prove this to yourself by looking at people’s expenditures during difficult economic times, filled with doubt, uncertainty, and anxiety. You’d expect people to start saving more and only spending their hard-earned money on basic needs for survival such as food, shelter, hygiene, and transportation.

Instead what you’ll find is, yes people will spend more of their budget on those things (relatively speaking), yet they’ll also start spending a lot more money on entertainment as well.

After all, what good is mere survival without the will to live?

Now, you might nod your head while reading this and think “okay that’s cool”, but not so fast. Because this is truly important news for you to keep in mind as long as you work in the entertainment industry—which, at this point, almost everyone does to a certain extent.

Why?

Because that’s the key to all your marketing!

The big question people always have is “what can you do for me?”, no matter if they’re buying new clothes, booking a vacation, taking a language course, or shopping for new books in their local Barnes & Noble.

You simply cannot succeed in your marketing endeavor if you’re unaware of ‘what you can do for them’, or in other words, ‘what problem you’re solving’—a question that is a lot easier to answer in non-entertainment-related markets.

Speaking of marketing, and more specifically email marketing…

You might want to check out Email Valhalla if that’s something you want to learn more about.

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


What’s the worst that could happen?

by

Many moons ago I went for leisurely stroll of about 30 km.

At one point, in a forest, Google Maps told me to turn right, over the bridge to cross the river and continue walking in the same direction.

Except…

There wasn’t a bridge in sight.

I went back and forth a few times, thinking I must have passed it somewhere and it might be hidden in between some bushes.

But no luck.

The river, however, was small enough for me to consider just jumping over it. It was a big enough river to make it a challenging jump, but the ground where I was walking was also a bit higher than the ground on the other side, so I had some luck there.

After an embarrassingly short time of thinking, I decided to just go for it and jump. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

Anyway.

I got ready, took a step back to get myself a running start, and went for it.

The good news?

I made it over the river, all in one piece, and without getting wet.

The bad news?

I now found myself a foot deep in what turned out to be a wet and barely solid underground of mud (which wasn’t clear just by looking at it). So much so that I lost my shoe right after I jumped and tried to continue walking.

So there I was, happy that I made it and didn’t get wet, yet my feet, shoes, and bottom of my trousers were covered in mud.

Now, I’m not trying to dissuade you from jumping over rivers—I’d happily do it again. But this experience did bring up a good point…

No matter how much you prepare, or how well you plan everything out, there will always be stuff you didn’t (or couldn’t) account for that’ll mess up your plan and alter the course you’ll have to take.

Luckily, as I’ve heard the great Matt Furey say “Nothing bad ever happens to a writer”.

And that’s why I highly recommend you to check out Email Valhalla so you can learn how to write better emails that’ll get you paid ( so nothing bad will ever happen to you).

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


What’s the purpose of entertainment?

by

Henry David Thoreau, the American essayist, poet, and philosopher once wrote:

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

“For books are not to teach us how to live,” writes Frederic Gros in his book A Philosophy of Walking, “but to make us want to live, to live differently: to find in ourselves the possibility of life, its principle.”

Both Thoreau and Gros argue that true, valuable, and insightful books can only be written when combined with lots and lots of walking.

True walking.

Not the kind you do when you’re out shopping, rushing to get to the train station, or going to the hairdresser around the corner.

True walking is when you’re out in nature without a destination or goal to achieve, with no purpose whatsoever. It’s just you, Mother Nature, and your thoughts. Often for hours on end—even though it’ll only feel like a few minutes at most after you’re done. That’s how time functions when out in the open, connected to the world around you, and without a care in your mind; the flow gets all tangled up and you have no idea how many seconds, minutes, or even hours have passed.

“What’s the point of telling me all this?” you might ask.

Well, it’s simple really.

First, it might be a worthwhile idea to go on more walks, experience life more clearly, and inspire you to write your next masterpiece.

Second, and this is where today’s marketing lesson comes in, the first Thoreau quote I shared helps you answer the question of “What problem does an author solve?”.

To clarify what I mean, take a look at the following quote by famous comic book writer, publisher, and producer, Stan Lee, who single-handedly grew one of the biggest multimedia enterprises to date:

===

“Entertainment is one of the most important things in people's lives. Without it they might go off the deep end. I feel that if you're able to entertain people, you're doing a good thing.”

===

Or in other words, you’re helping people want to live (and live differently).

You can prove this to yourself by looking at people’s expenditures during difficult economic times, filled with doubt, uncertainty, and anxiety. You’d expect people to start saving more and only spending their hard-earned money on basic needs for survival such as food, shelter, hygiene, and transportation.

Instead what you’ll find is, yes people will spend more of their budget on those things (relatively speaking), yet they’ll also start spending a lot more money on entertainment as well.

After all, what good is mere survival without the will to live?

Now, you might nod your head while reading this and think “okay that’s cool”, but not so fast. Because this is truly important news for you to keep in mind as long as you work in the entertainment industry—which, at this point, almost everyone does to a certain extent.

Why?

Because that’s the key to all your marketing!

The big question people always have is “what can you do for me?”, no matter if they’re buying new clothes, booking a vacation, taking a language course, or shopping for new books in their local Barnes & Noble.

You simply cannot succeed in your marketing endeavor if you’re not aware of ‘what you can do for them’, or in other words, ‘what problem you’re solving’—a question that is a lot easier to answer in non-entertainment-related markets.

Speaking of marketing…

I’ve been busy working on a paid ad course, specifically for independent creatives active in the entertainment industry, which will help you create profitable ads, built upon age-old direct marketing knowledge, in such a simple and streamlined way that you don’t have to waste years of your life getting a PhD in advertising, so you have more to do what you love most.

It’s not quite here yet, but it will be soon…

So keep an eye out for that.


Do you know how to change a tire?

by

Some 3 weeks ago a friend and I went on a walk.

A 40km walk, during one of the top 5 hottest and sunniest days that month, which took us over 8 hours to be more precise.

About 5 hours in—give or take—we came across a 75-ish man (he told us his age but I forgot the exact number) who was hunched over next to his parked car on the side of the road because he had a flat tire.

He seemed to be struggling to change his tire so we quickly went over and asked him if he needed any help.

I’ve never seen a happier man than him at that moment.

Apparently—this is what he told us—he’d been at it for close to an hour (if not more) trying to change his tire, with little to no luck at all. He had medical problems with his heart, was extremely tired, couldn’t even lift his spare tire anymore, and knew no one in the vicinity to come and help him since he lived in another country (we were close to the border).

Even worse.

This was a street with quite a lot of traffic (for the outskirts of town at least) and almost nobody even bothered to ask the man if he needed any help—and those who did didn’t know how to change a tire.

And don’t worry, this story has a happy ending because we quickly changed his tire, offered him some water, and helped him.

Now, while “learn how to change a tire” is definitely good life advice, that’s not my point.

My point is this:

Plenty of people all around you are struggling with problems at all times—most of which will never ask anyone for help (especially not men, let’s face it).

So it’s up to you to 1) reach out to people and offer your help to solve their problems and 2) actually know how to solve the damn problem.

The second part comes from experience, education, and specific knowledge depending on what kind of problems you help people solve.

The first part can be as easy as building an email list and mailing it daily.

For more information on how to do the latter, check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


Jump over the river, fall into the mud

by

Yesterday I had another long walk scheduled.

More precisely, I mapped out a nice relaxing route, mostly through parks and the occasional forest where I live. The total length was 30 kilometers—that’s about 18.5 miles or around 16,745 refrigerators for the hamburger people—and would take me about 7 hours to complete, including the occasional eating or toilet break.

And so I went on my way in the early afternoon.

It all started well. Amazing scenery, great weather, no prediction of rain at all that day, sunny and warm, but not too warm that I was sweating all the time. Everything was just right.

An hour into my walk I ended up in one of those small forests.

I looked at my phone to figure out my directions, and Google Maps told me to turn right, over the bridge to cross the river, and continue walking in the same direction.

Except…

There wasn’t a bridge in sight.

I went back and forth a few times, thinking I must have passed it somewhere and it might be hidden in between some bushes. But no luck.

Luckily, the river was small enough for me to consider just jumping over it. It was a big enough river to make it a challenging jump, but the ground were I was walking was also a bit higher than the ground on the other side, so I had some luck there.

After a (rather short) bit of thinking it over, I decided to just go for it and jump over. With all the sports and physical activity I do, a little jump over the river shouldn’t hold me back, should it?

Anyway.

I got ready, took a step back to get myself a running start, and just went for it, not thinking about the consequences at all.

Luckily I made it over the river, all in one piece, and without getting wet.

Except, I now found myself a foot deep in what apparently turned out to be a wet and barely solid underground of mud (which wasn’t clear just by looking at it). So much so that I actually lost my shoe right after I jumped and tried to continue walking.

So there I was, happy that I made it and didn’t get wet, yet my feet, shoes, and bottom of my trousers were covered in mud.

Now, I’m not trying to dissuade you from jumping over rivers—I’d happily do it again. But this experience did bring up a good point… No matter how much you prepare, or how well you plan everything out, there will always be stuff you didn’t (or couldn’t) account for that’ll mess up your plan and alter the course you’ll have to take.

Luckily, as the great Matt Furey used to say “Nothing bad ever happens to a writer”.

Read it again and think about why that might be the case—powerful stuff.

And that’s why I’ll highly recommend you to check out Email Valhalla so you can learn how to write better emails that’ll get you paid (and so nothing bad will ever happen to you).

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


My first actual “long” walk

by

With my backpack on my back, a bottle of water and some sandwiches packed, and a destination in mind (to meet up with some old friends) I walked 17km in a little over 3 hours.

That’s what I did yesterday.

It’s the most I’ve ever walked in my life (so far).

And I’m glad I did it.

In fact, I wasn’t quite sure if I could do this right now. The opportunity arose (meeting friends in a location 17km from my house) and I just went for it. Skipping my original 10km practice walk I had planned to slowly build up the distance.

That said.

It wasn’t without challenges. From the 2-hour mark I started seriously feeling it. My body clearly wasn’t used to walking these distances.

But hey, nobody improves without pushing themselves once in a while.

Now, maybe walking just isn’t something for you. In that case this email doesn’t interest you nor motivate you whatsoever.

But you might be interest in learning how to build and write to your email list to improve the relationship you have with your audience, help them accomplish their goals, and increase your revenue in the process.

If so, then definitely check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla


I decided to walk 100km

by

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