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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.

Let me ask you something. If you woke up tomorrow and it was all gone — the list, the income, the whole business wiped clean — what would you do first?

Sit with that for a second. Because I get asked it constantly, and my honest answer tends to surprise people. It's almost the opposite of the thing I'm known for teaching.

If I had to start over today, the very first thing I'd do is start a service business.

I'd go out and provide a service to people or businesses willing to pay me for it. I'd pick a handful of tools worth mastering — AI tools, technical tools, whatever the market is paying for right now — and I'd get good at them fast. Then I'd trade that skill for money. Simple as that.

Here's the thing. That wouldn't make me free.

When you're a service provider, you live at the mercy of the client. You're either hunting for the next one, or you're getting a message at eleven at night because something is on fire and they need it handled right now. The phone rings, and you jump. That's the deal you sign when you take the money.

So I'd have no illusions about it. A service business is a job you built for yourself. A good one, a flexible one, but a job all the same.

Still, it would put me on the road.

Because a service business does one thing extremely well at the start: it pays your bills while you quietly save. And that saving is the entire point of the exercise.

Before we go any further…

On Thursday, multi-millionaire investor Darren walked through the three investing strategies he uses to generate between $400 and $1,000+ per day from stocks, forex, and crypto in just 30 minutes a day.

The response was overwhelming, so we're running it one more time this Sunday at 2pm EST.

You'll see the full strategies, not an overview. 

Darren walks through exactly what to buy, when to sell, how to time crypto entries correctly, and why the current environment in global markets has opened up a window he hasn't seen in years.

He's also covering how to build a portfolio positioned for serious long-term wealth alongside the shorter-term daily profit strategies.

This is the last time he's running this live. Seats are limited.

Now, as I was saying…

Once I had roughly a year's worth of living expenses sitting in the bank, the plan would shift. I'd stop taking clients so aggressively. I'd carve out six months of that money and set it aside as a cushion, so I could actually sleep at night. The other six months I'd pour into building the thing I was after the whole time.

Because here's what you have to understand. The service work was never the goal. It was the ladder I'd use to climb toward the goal. And the goal — the actual destination — is an email list.

Let me tell you why I'd bet everything on that one asset, even starting from zero, even with the whole internet to choose from.

A client pays you once, and then they're gone, and you go find another one. An email list pays you again and again and again. You build it once, you take care of it, and it sends you money on the mornings you show up, and the mornings you don't. The client owns you. The list, you own.

When you control a list of people who know you, trust you, and open what you send them, you stop being at anyone's mercy. No platform can shut you down. No algorithm can bury you. No client can hold your rent hostage. You wake up, you write a message, you press send, and the people you've earned the right to talk to respond with their attention and their wallets.

That is the difference between renting your income and owning it. The service business rents. The list owns.

So the order matters more than almost anything else I could teach you.

Most people try to run it backwards. They want to skip the unglamorous part and leap straight to the asset with no money, no runway, and no cushion underneath them. Then next month's rent crushes the whole thing before the list ever gets a chance to breathe and grow.

A young list needs time to find its feet. It needs you calm, patient, and unhurried while you learn what your people respond to. And you simply cannot be calm and patient when you're three weeks away from missing a payment.

The service income buys you that calm. It's the boring scaffolding that holds everything up while the real structure gets built quietly behind it. Nobody admires scaffolding. Nobody puts it on a vision board. But take it away and the whole project collapses into a pile on the ground.

So if you're sitting there right now with more ambition than money, here's exactly what I'd tell you.

Respect the service stage. Use it for what it's good for — covering your bills and stacking your runway. Then take that runway and pour it into the one asset that finally sets you free. Build the list. Feed the list. Earn the trust of the people on it.

Sell your skill first. Buy your freedom second. And freedom, every single time, has a name. It's a list of people who want to hear from you.

That's the order I'd follow if I had to wipe the slate clean and start all over again tomorrow morning. It's slower than the fantasy version everyone wants to sell you. It's also the version that actually ends with you free.

P.S. Want to know why I care so much about this topic? I broke it down on this podcast episode. Listen, and you'll see why it should matter to you, too.