Welcome to another issue of the no-BS newsletter dedicated to demystifying the world of passive income, where we share practical, reliable strategies to build and sustain income streams that work for you.

If you want to help someone else make money while they sleep, forward this email to them.

In today's issue:

My phone just wouldn’t stop buzzing. PayPal notifications kept popping up. Ding. Ding. Ding. Every single minute.

I had just launched a new offer and somehow made about $10,000 in three days. I remember standing there, just staring at my phone. It felt like one of those moments you hear about, but never think will happen to you. Honestly, it didn’t feel real.

But on day four, reality hit me hard.

PayPal froze my account. No warning, nothing, just locked. Then the questions started: Where did these sales come from? What exactly are you selling? How do you handle refunds? After a few emails back and forth, they decided to hold 10% of everything I made for six months. So for every dollar coming in, ten cents just sat there, out of reach.

At first, I was pissed off. But then I started to get it.

Banks don’t hate you. They hate surprises. If you suddenly go from making $1 a day to $100 a day, that’s a 100x jump. And to them, that looks like fraud. Most of the time, it actually is. Businesses blow up fast, then crash even faster, and the payment processors end up paying out refunds themselves.

Stripe does the same thing. Some years ago, after my revenue jumped, they wanted screenshots of my bank balance, months of transaction history, refund policies, support systems—the whole package. Not because I did anything wrong, but because sudden success makes them nervous.

Email marketing is the same. If you go from sending nothing to blasting out a ton of emails overnight, your deliverability tanks. One spam complaint on a small list can ruin everything. I’ve seen people have to start from scratch with new domains just because they tried to move too fast.

That’s why I mail my list consistently. Not just to stay in front of people, but to keep my sending volume steady. Slow, steady growth builds trust with the systems you can’t control.

Here’s what most people miss: going fast feels good, but stability is what pays you for years.

So don’t try to sprint.

A while back, I put everything I know about building a massive, responsive, money-making email list into one place — including the mistakes, dead ends, and the exact framework I still use today.

It's called the List Building Lifestyle: Confessions of an Email Millionaire, and it is still the most complete, no-nonsense breakdown of how I actually build email assets that pay me back.

Normally, people pay for this. If you’re getting this email, you don’t.

You also get the bonus bundle that covers the practical pieces most people get stuck on: pages, emails, traffic, and promotion — so this doesn’t stay “interesting,” it becomes usable.

If email has always felt important but messy… or you’ve tried before, and it didn’t click… this is still the cleanest entry point.

(cover handling and shipping fees only)

Most people grow up thinking that happiness comes from finally getting the thing they want. Whether that thing is a prize, a big achievement, or some moment they imagine will change how they feel forever.

But what usually happens instead is that you reach it, feel excited for a short while, and then your brain quietly adjusts until that big win feels as normal as eating lunch on a regular day. 

You still enjoy it, just not in a fireworks kind of way, and that can be confusing if you thought the feeling was supposed to stick around much longer. 

That confusion followed me for years, because I kept thinking the problem was that I hadn’t chosen a big enough goal yet. So I would pick a new one, work hard to reach it, enjoy the moment, and then feel that same flat feeling show up again once things settled down. 

It wasn’t that the goals were bad or meaningless, but that feelings are meant to end, and once they do, your mind immediately starts looking for the next thing to chase.

What finally made this make sense to me is realizing the difference between a goal and a mission. Because a goal is something you can finish, like beating a level in a video game, while a mission is something you keep moving toward without ever fully completing, like becoming really good at the game itself. 

When you think in terms of a mission, every win becomes part of a bigger story rather than the end of it. This makes progress feel satisfying instead of strangely empty.

The point is this: goals help you start moving, but missions help you enjoy the whole journey.

Your challenge is to take one goal and accompany it with a mission. Ask yourself what kind of person you are trying to become by going after the goal.

Dean Holland didn’t start as an expert, and that’s the part most people miss when they hear his name today. Before the book deals and the recognition, he was just a beginner who picked affiliate marketing for a simple reason: it let him start without pretending to be someone he wasn’t. 

No products, no authority badge, just learning how to sell properly and hoping the numbers would eventually make sense.

What makes this conversation worth your time is how blunt he is about the trap so many people fall into, which is spending money faster than they make it. Buying courses, tools, and software while telling themselves it’s “investing,” even though the business itself isn’t profitable yet. 

He breaks down why profit matters more than revenue, how his first real business taught him that lesson the hard way, and why bigger commissions and smart follow-up beat chasing whatever offer looks popular this week.

If you’ve ever felt busy but broke, or productive but stuck, this episode will hit uncomfortably close, in a good way.

This book is perfect for anyone still yelling “BUY NOW!” into the void and calling it a strategy.

Carlos Gil makes a simple, uncomfortable argument:  Marketing isn’t broken. Your approach is.

People don’t want funnels that feel like traps. They don’t want brands that sound like billboards. And they definitely don’t want to be “nurtured” like a lab experiment. They want relevance and a reason to care.

What I love about this book is that it doesn’t sell shiny tactics. It sells a mindset shift. One that says: stop chasing attention and start earning trust. Sound familiar?

If you’re building an online business, this is a wake-up call. Especially if your emails, ads, or content feel like they’re working harder than they should. Read this, and you’ll start seeing why some brands grow effortlessly… and others keep screaming into the algorithmic abyss.

I punish beginners for impatience,
reward veterans for consistency,
and change the rules without warning.

What am I?

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