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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.

My AI built me a $10,000 sales page.

I'm not exaggerating. I've been training this tool for months — feeding it my methodologies, my campaigns, my voice, my entire business. I connected it to my email autoresponder so it knows which offers are live, which campaigns are running, when everything goes out. Then I sat down one afternoon and gave it an assignment: redesign the sales page for The List Building Lifestyle.

The result was stunning. Golden-black design, clean layout, high-end typography. The kind of page a boutique agency in New York or London would have charged $8,000 to $12,000 for, back when that's what good design cost. My jaw actually dropped a little.

And then I ran the test.

The beautiful page went up against my original. My original is not glamorous. It looks like something built in a quieter era of the internet, before everyone started obsessing over brand aesthetics and visual identity. But it converts. It always has. I never felt the need to touch it.

So I split the traffic. Gave both pages an honest sample. Watched the numbers come in.

The old page won.

Before we go any further…

Most people spend years trying to make money online and never stop to ask why it isn't working.

They assume they need better copy, a better offer, a better funnel. They buy another course. They try another traffic source. They start over with a different niche.

The real problem is usually simpler and far more costly:

They picked the wrong business model before they ever wrote a word or spent a dollar.

Zero To Online is my Amazon bestselling book that solves this problem at the root.

It walks you through a 7-step framework for evaluating any opportunity before you commit to it, a simple breakdown of 7 different biz models, and the 14 myths that have been keeping people broke.

Right now, I want to send you a free copy plus $737.91 worth of brand new tools, trainings, and breakthroughs you've never seen before and that most people will never get their hands on.

Just cover shipping and everything is yours.

Now, as I was saying…

I reverted every visitor back to the original and closed the experiment.

I wish I could tell you that surprised me. But it didn't — because this exact thing has happened to me more times than I can count.

A few years ago, one of my team members came to me with an idea. We had an automated webinar running every 15 minutes, a funnel I'd pushed well over half a million dollars in ad spend through over nearly two years. Continuously optimizing. It was ugly by modern standards — the kind of setup that makes designers wince — but it converted reliably, and I trusted it.

He wanted to rebuild it. Better video container, easier-to-read chat, emoji-style announcements that fire at key moments in the presentation. Modern, polished, the kind of environment you'd expect from a company with a real budget. His thinking was simple: people want to engage with things that look nice. So we built it.

We pushed 1,000 leads through the old environment. Another 1,000 through the new one.

Identical conversions. Down to a fraction of a percent.

The effect of all that work was exactly nothing.

My best theory is that visual sophistication shifts attention in the wrong direction.

When a page looks incredible, people start looking at the page. The layout, the spacing, the typography. The design itself becomes the experience. And while that's happening, the words — the argument, the offer, the reason they should care — fade into the background.

A crude-looking page doesn't give you anywhere to hide. There's no visual spectacle to distract you. You're left with the message. And if the message is good, it converts.

This isn't a new idea in marketing. David Ogilvy wrote about it decades ago. The words do the selling. The design just frames them. But every generation of marketers has to learn this the hard way, because the temptation to fix visual problems instead of copy problems is almost irresistible. Redesigning a page takes a few days and feels like progress. Rethinking what you're actually saying to someone — and why they should believe you — takes real work and doesn't feel like anything until the numbers move.

So people reach for the easier lever. And then they tell themselves it was a strategic decision.

The same cycle plays out every time a new design tool drops. Marketers get access to something that makes pages look better than they ever could before. They rebuild everything. Conversions stay flat. They scratch their heads and reach for the next tool.

The internet has become extraordinarily good-looking over the last decade. Average pages today would have looked premium ten years ago. And yet conversion rates across the industry have been largely flat or declining. Better design did not save anyone. Beautiful pages and empty bank accounts are not as rare a combination as you'd think.

What actually converts is a reader who trusts you, understands what you're offering, and feels like saying yes is the obvious move. That trust is built through your emails, your content, your consistency over time. The offer clarity comes from your copy — the specific words on the page that answer the question every reader is silently asking: why should I care about this, and why should I believe you? A slicker layout cannot answer either question. Only your writing can.

I'm not telling you to make ugly pages on purpose. There's a floor of professionalism below which design starts hurting you — it signals that you're not serious, that you threw something together and moved on. You need to clear that floor. But beyond it, you're spending time and money on something that won't move the needle and probably never will.

Run the test before you assume otherwise. If your original is already performing, rebuild it if you want. Knock yourself out. But know going in that you're probably not going to improve your numbers. You might maintain them if you're careful. You might hurt them if you're not.

And if you're not testing at all — if you're just replacing things because they look dated and you want to feel good about your business — that's a different conversation entirely.

The AI produced a beautiful page. I'm genuinely proud of what it built.

But I'm keeping my ugly one.

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