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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.

Back in the days of Warrior Forum, I came across this incredible PDF report that no one was selling.

Just a download link sitting quietly inside a forum post while the rest of the internet tried to sell something.

The document was a breakdown of two long-form sales pages, and the author had gone through both by hand, circling sentences, drawing arrows to the margins, annotating in plain language what each line was designed to do and why.

"This statement taps into the prospect's fear of losing money."

"This sentence implies scarcity."

Reading it felt like someone had lifted the hood on a machine that had always looked like magic. Suddenly, there was a mechanism underneath. Cause and effect. A reason for every word.

Sitting there alone with the glow of a screen and a coffee going cold, something moved.

The appetite was for more of this particular person's way of seeing. More of how they thought, more of their framework, more of the specific lens they brought to copy.

That distinction, wanting more of the teacher rather than more of the subject, is the only reliable signal that someone is worth pursuing as a mentor.

The author was Ross Bowery. A freelance copywriter who had posted the breakdown on the Warrior Forum to give back to the community and, probably, to quietly demonstrate his expertise to anyone who might one day need a copywriter.

He wasn't advertising coaching. He wasn't running a mastermind. He had simply shown his work, which is the oldest and still the most powerful way to prove that you know what you are doing.

A message went out. Did he coach? Did he take students? Was there a course?

He did. Over the following two years, Ross Bowery became the first real copywriting mentor, and the total cost of that relationship was about thirty thousand dollars.

One-on-one calls. Watching copy get written in real time. Rewrites, homework, feedback.

A proper education in the craft, built entirely around practice rather than theory. (This was before AI existed as a writing tool. There was no shortcut. The only way through was through.)

It was expensive enough to feel like a risk. It was one of the best decisions made in this entire career.

The relationship paid for itself many times over. Later, Ross came on as a freelancer on a revenue share basis, writing copy in exchange for a percentage of sales. At the peak of that arrangement, the checks going to him were somewhere between five and fifteen thousand dollars a month.

The thirty-thousand-dollar investment had a very good return.

Before we go any further…

YThis ClickBank Super-System skips the hard part entirely.

Most people spend months building an email list with nothing to show for it.

They set up funnels, buy traffic, pay for autoresponders, and wait for the money to eventually show up.

Except it doesn't. 

The bills keep stacking up while the bank account stays empty, and eventually they run out of money and quit.

The entire model is backwards. 

You're told to build first and earn later, but "later" never arrives when you're bleeding cash on tools and traffic with zero return.

My buddy John Thornhill built a system that flips this completely upside down. 

He's a 9x ClickBank Platinum Award winner who figured out how to get paid WHILE building your email list instead of hoping it pays off someday.

I used his ClickBank Super-System to make $214,186.36 while building a 17,081-person email list.

We just recorded a training where John walks through exactly how this system works. 

You'll see the done-for-you ClickBank membership funnel that collects commissions from day one without creating products, writing sales pages, or handling support tickets…

And how you can clone his super-system for yourself without having to build anything yourself.

The replay comes down soon, so I urge you to check it out now:

Now, as I was saying…

Here's the thing about how that mentor was chosen, and why most people never find the equivalent. The conventional advice is to build a team of mentors. Diversify your influences. Collect wisdom from many sources.

It's advice that sounds strategic and feels completely wrong every time I hear it.

What actually works, at least in this experience, is depth with one person at a time. One relationship, fully committed to, where there's enough trust and honesty to say the things that don't make you look good. Where the filter comes off completely.

That kind of relationship with thirty people is impossible. With one person, it's just barely possible, if you find the right one.

And not every mentor chosen was the right one. Some of them, it became clear quickly, were good enough to teach the craft at a basic level but had stopped growing in it themselves. There is a version of this that exists in many fields: the person who went close enough to become a teacher but never quite far enough to still be a student.

The ones worth paying for are the ones still actively doing the thing they teach, at a level you haven't reached yet.

Finding the right one requires a specific test first. Read their book. Watch their course. Consume everything free and low-cost before paying for their time.

Then ask an honest question: Do you want more of this subject, or more of this specific person teaching it?

Ben Settle is the clearest example of what the second answer feels like. Reading his material on email marketing makes the subject more interesting, yes, but it also makes his specific way of thinking about it feel like the only framework worth going deeper into.

That pull toward a specific teacher, toward their particular way of seeing the craft, is the green light. The subject alone is never enough. It has to be them.

Over about ten years, the process of choosing one mentor, extracting everything possible, then moving to the next, became something close to an automated habit. And then, somewhere after the ten-year mark, something shifted.

The hunger for a mentor disappeared.

It was more like looking at a shelf of books and realizing most of them covered ground already walked. The novelty was gone. What remained was execution, state management, and the daily challenge of showing up regardless of how the day was going.

Those things cannot be taught in a course. They have to be lived through.

Which brings up the thing about being a student that nobody talks about clearly enough.

Every mentor over those ten years eventually said some version of the same thing. That this was the most consistent student they had worked with. The most dedicated. A machine.

And what they were describing, every time, was not intelligence or talent.

They were describing implementation.

Every single lesson, call, and every piece of advice went straight into the real world. Into an actual campaign, an actual test, an actual piece of copy put in front of real people. Then back to the next call with real feedback about what worked and what didn't.

Most people who hire coaches use those coaches as therapists. (I understand the impulse.) There is something genuinely comforting about being heard by someone who knows the terrain.

They talk about their challenges. They discuss the obstacles.

They feel understood, and then they go home and do nothing different. The coach gets paid, the student stays stuck, and six months later, they are looking for a new coach who will help them understand why the last one didn't work.

The coach almost certainly worked fine. The student just never implemented anything.

That gap, between knowing what to do and actually doing it in the real world before the next call, is where the difference between a student who gets results and a student who collects certificates actually lives. It is not a small gap.

It is almost everything.

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