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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.

I have a friend who refuses to drive anything other than a Ford.

He's Ukrainian-Canadian, originally from Odessa, and every couple of years when his lease comes up, he goes and gets another one of those big supercharged SUVs from the same dealership. The kind with an engine that sounds like it could pull a freight train.

Every time we meet up, we end up having the same argument.

I tell him European cars are built better. Higher performance. Better engineering. You sit in his Ford, and everything feels plasticky to me. He tells me Porsches are overpriced and that I'm paying for a badge. He'll defend Ford until the sun goes down.

We've been having this argument for years.

And here's the thing — he's still one of my closest friends.

The disagreement doesn't damage anything between us. If anything, it makes the conversations more interesting. We banter, we counter each other, we laugh at the things the other guy says. Then we move on to talking about business, family, or whatever else is happening that week.

I'll admit something else, too. My actual dream car is Eleanor, the Shelby Mustang from Gone in 60 Seconds. American muscle through and through. So even with all the Porsche talk, there's a part of me that secretly wants to roll up in a roaring V8 someday.

Don't tell my friend that. He'll never let me hear the end of it.

I'm telling you this story because most email marketers have completely misunderstood how disagreement works.

They write their emails like every word is being read by a jury that will throw them in prison if they say anything controversial. They hedge. They soften. They add disclaimers. They take the most boring, most agreeable, most neutral position they can find on every topic, and then they wonder why nobody opens their emails anymore.

Here's what they're missing.

Before we go any further…

Some years ago, I was working at a facility that made pesticide fluids for Central American agriculture.

The kind of place where they won't let you through the front gate without a full hazmat suit and a respirator. The kind of place where they run you through a chemical shower before clocking off to lower the risk of skin cancer.

Some weeks, I worked from 4AM until 8PM and still couldn't pay my bills, so I looked online to make more money.

I tried building a social media following like every guru told me to. I spammed affiliate links across Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Quora for months. Not a single sale.

Then I noticed something while visiting Tony Robbins' website. 

He was running what I now call an e-Farm. I checked Bob Proctor's website. Same thing. Tim Ferriss. Same thing. Robert Kiyosaki, Jordan Belfort, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Every person making serious money online owned an e-Farm, and nobody was talking about it.

I scraped together what I could, borrowed money on my credit cards, and figured out how it worked.

Within a few weeks, I was getting real commission checks in the mail. Within a few months, I walked away from the chemical factory for good.

I wrote everything I know about building an e-Farm from scratch into a book called The e-Farming Manifesto. It covers the complete blueprint from zero subscribers to a profitable asset you own outright, without posting content, chasing followers, or depending on any platform.

Use coupon code SHIP4FREE at checkout to get it for $9.99 before the offer expires.

Now, as I was saying…

What your subscribers actually need from you is clarity. They need to know where you stand on things. Whether they personally agree with you matters far less than people assume. Plenty of folks on your list can disagree with half of what you say and still happily buy from you. The thing that actually loses them is the hedged, careful, focus-grouped language that signals you're afraid of having a real position about anything.

People can smell that from a mile away.

I'd rather read someone I disagree with than someone who refuses to say anything at all. Most of your subscribers feel the same way. They're already drowning in bland corporate emails from cable companies, software platforms, and travel sites. The last thing they want is to open one more message that sounds like it was written by a committee.

Every time I send an email with a strong opinion, I get a handful of unsubscribes.

That used to bother me. These days, I almost welcome it. Because the people who hit unsubscribe over a single opinion were never planning to buy anything from me anyway. They were waiting for a reason to leave. I just gave them one.

The ones who stay are the ones who matter.

Now, expressing opinions doesn't mean being obnoxious about it. There's a real skill to taking a stance without coming across as a jerk, and most people get this part wrong, too.

The best example I can give you is Ronald Reagan. Go and watch some of his old debates on YouTube. The guy was a master at making his opponent look ridiculous without ever seeming mean about it. He'd smile. He'd tell a joke. He'd land the punch with a self-deprecating line first, so by the time the criticism arrived, the audience was already on his side.

That's the skill right there. Soften the blow with charm. Make fun of yourself first. Then say the thing you actually want to say.

Another guy who does this brilliantly is Frank Kern, one of the older direct-response marketers in our space. Find any of his stuff from years back and pay attention to the tone. He's constantly poking fun at himself. His age, his old photos, the way marketers like him talk. I remember one of his old sites had a line above his photo that said something like "much older and slightly slimmer picture of myself here."

It's a tiny detail. And it tells you everything about how he writes.

He's making fun of the standard marketer move where everyone uses a photo from twenty years ago that looks nothing like them today. He's the one telling the joke before anyone else can. That kind of writing makes you trust the guy. The voice feels real. He's just talking.

You can do the same thing in your emails.

Pay attention to what's around you. Spot the silly stuff in your industry — the contradictions, the obvious things everyone pretends not to notice, the gurus saying one thing while doing the opposite. Then write about it. Take a position. Allow yourself to sound a little ironic, a little sarcastic, a little annoyed when something deserves to be called out.

Your list will reward you for it.

They'll know you're writing from a real place. They'll start opening your emails the way they answer a call from a friend, curious about what you have to say this time. That's a completely different relationship than the one they have with the average corporate sender, which usually involves their thumb already hovering over the delete button before the message even loads.

Most marketers will never do this. They're too worried about losing the few subscribers who might disagree with them, so they keep writing bland, agreeable, forgettable emails. And they slowly become invisible to their own audience.

Don't be one of them.

Pick a topic. Have an opinion about it. Tell the truth as you see it. Some people will leave. The right people will stay. And the right people are the only ones who were ever going to buy anything from you anyway.

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