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Every issue of this newsletter gives you the exact systems, strategies, and principles I’ve used to generate 8 figures (almost entirely) with email marketing. So you can build your own systems that will carry you through the next algorithm change or recession. This is what actually works.

For about a year, I ran a lead generation agency.

By the time I started it, my e-Farming business was already producing multiple six figures. I had amassed enough experience to know what I was doing, and the agency was a home run from day one. Revenue came in fast. The model worked.

On paper, everything looked exactly the way it was supposed to look.

Then I realized I had accidentally created the worst job of my life.

When you run a client services business, the actual service delivery is often the smaller part of the work. The larger part is managing the client. I was spending 80% of my time on calls, on emails, on the endless negotiation of expectations with people who needed constant reassurance that the work was being done correctly.

I had become, in effect, a high-paid babysitter.

I am an introvert. Deeply, constitutionally, in the bone-marrow kind of way. The energy required to manage other people's anxieties all day is not something I can replenish overnight. I burned through whatever reserves I had within months and spent the rest of that year grinding through something I had built with my own hands that was quietly making me miserable.

I shut it down.

Coaching was next. And coaching turned out to be genuinely lucrative and, for a while, deeply fulfilling. There is something real about watching a person have a breakthrough — something you cannot replicate with a dashboard or a revenue number. I got into it and stayed in it because the work felt meaningful in a way that agency work never had.

Then the phone calls started stacking up.

Before we go any further…

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Now, as I was saying…

Most coaches structure their business around calls. Lots of them. At my peak, I was averaging six calls a day, every single day. Different people, different problems, different contexts, different energy levels walking into each conversation.

The calendar Tetris of rescheduling and no-shows alone was enough to make me want to close the laptop and never open it again. I did that model for about a year before I burned out completely.

Here is what those two experiences taught me about how to choose a business model in the first place.

Every model has an upside that is obvious and a downside that is specific. The upside is what gets you excited enough to start. The downside is what determines whether you will still be doing this a year from now.

Most people evaluate business models almost entirely on the upside. They look at the revenue potential, the margins, the scalability, the lifestyle the successful version of this business would produce. They barely look at the recurring problems the model requires you to tolerate in order to get there.

That is the question worth asking. Which model's daily misery can you actually live with?

I have a friend named Eugene who is a lawyer. Sharp, ruthlessly logical, and a die-hard Ford guy. He drives an Explorer ST and cherishes it like a member of the family. Every time we meet, he gives me grief about my Porsche.

"I still don't get it," he says. "My truck has more space, just as much power, and costs half what you paid."

He is not wrong. On a pure value-per-dollar calculation, Eugene wins every time.

The thing is, I did not buy a Porsche on a value-per-dollar calculation. I bought it because I believe the car you drive says something about who you are, and that matters to me. Eugene bought his truck because maximum capability at minimum cost matters to him.

We each got exactly what we wanted. We just had different parameters for the decision.

Business models work the same way. Eugene would probably argue otherwise — he usually does — and that is what makes the conversation interesting. The point is that the right model is the one that fits how you are actually wired.

The e-Farming model — building an email list, promoting products to it, collecting commissions — has its own particular set of problems. The feedback loops are slower. The income can feel inconsistent when you are starting out. Building a list from scratch requires patience that most people discover they do not have.

These are real, recurring frustrations that anyone in this business will face regularly.

What this model does not require is managing a room full of anxious clients. It does not require six calls a day with six different people and their six different problems. It does not require me to perform extroversion on demand from eight in the morning until six at night.

For someone like me, that trade-off is obvious. For someone else — someone who is genuinely energized by client relationships, who finds phone calls generative rather than draining — the calculation might run entirely the other direction. There is no universal answer. There is only the answer that fits you.

The mistake most people make is choosing a model based on what it looks like at the top and never seriously reckoning with what it feels like in the middle. The middle is where you spend most of your time. The middle is the 80% of client management that nobody mentions in the income screenshots.

The middle is the sixth call of the day when you have nothing left and still have two hours to go. (I know exactly what that feels like. I lived there for a year.)

Every business model has its own recurring form of misery. The question is never which model is misery-free — that model does not exist.

The question is which model's specific misery you can tolerate long enough to master it. That is a deeply personal question, and nobody else can answer it for you.

The upside is what sells you on a model. The downside is what you are actually signing up for.

Figure out which daily misery you can genuinely live with. Then build there.

P.S. If you enjoy these ideas, you’ll love the deeper conversations we have on the List Building Lifestyle podcast.