Why I Do What I Do 

From KR: “I want you to know that since finding you through the Early to Rise newsletter back in 2001, you have been and continue to be an inspiration for me as a copywriter and as a ‘systems-builder’…. You are a part of my inspirational stack, and I’ll always be in your debt for showing me the ‘freelance light.’ It showed me an amazingly different way to live my life.”

From KM, a reader in Japan: “I have been reading each of your email newsletters since Sept. 13 with great interest. I’m using Grok and Google Translate for them, but I find Google Translate captures the nuances a bit better. The sorrow and confusion over Charlie Kirk’s assassination came through strongly and it touched me deeply.”

About Charlie Kirk 

I believe Charlie Kirk’s impact will be great and long-lasting. And I hope his foresight in naming his project – Turning Point – is realized. I’ve published several reader responses to his assassination. Here are a few more…

From GM: I’ve been trying to “make sense” and manage my feelings about Charlie and the unexpected impact it has had on me. Had I been able to pull it together, it would have looked like this essay written by Steve Patrick, Next Gen Pastor at Daystar Church in Cullman, Alabama, the day after the assassination:

Throughout your life, certain days with unexpected tragedies extremely bother you and stay with you a long, long, time. You never forget how you felt and how that incident shook you. Wednesday was one of those days and moments for me.

The only thing in my lifetime that I can compare the way I feel to, were my feelings on 9/11/01. For most of you, you probably can’t understand how I could compare the two. On 9/11, thousands lost their life tragically. Yesterday, one man lost his. I couldn’t explain it either… at first. I honestly wept at times all evening and I couldn’t sleep. I asked myself why the loss of one man’s life, as senseless and horrific as it was, unsettled me so much. I had seen Charlie Kirk on social media often over the last few years and had seen him on television. I was always impressed, was thankful for what he stood for, and I appreciated the way he invited open and respectful dialogue with those who disagreed with him. But tonight, as I listened to clip after clip of Charlie speaking to various college crowds and speaking via media interviews… I finally understood.

Maybe I can explain it in this way:

I never met him, but I feel like we were warriors together.
I could never speak as eloquently as him, yet I felt we had the same voice.
I was not in his squad, yet I felt that we were on the same mission.
I don’t have his intelligence and talent, but I seek to glorify God in what I have.
I don’t have his charisma and wit, so I put others on the platform.
I don’t desire to speak to great crowds, but I’ve prayed to have an impact.
I never knew him, yet my heart aches like the loss of a best friend.
I can’t articulate truth and thought like him, but I feel that we had the same “heart.”

From Joe Z: It’s insane to me that in 2025, the traditional Judeo-Christian values Charlie used as the basis for his (very reasonable) arguments, whether or not you agree with them, are somehow seen as extreme and even dangerous. So much so that he was murdered in cold blood… in broad daylight… on a college campus… with a microphone – not a weapon – in his hand… for espousing them. And most disturbing of all, this is seen by many as not only a justifiable act, but one worthy of immense praise. An act that many believe should be repeated against other prominent “conservative voices” with whom they disagree.

The one thing that inspires some hope in me has been the general reaction from most, but not all, conservatives. There were no riots. No looting. No fires in the streets. No violent mobs screaming for vengeance. Instead, there were vigils. There were moments of silence at football games. Church parking lots overflowed.

I think that’s a testament to Charlie and the people he inspired.

The Surprising Connection Between Success in BJJ and Success in Business 

II recently came across your work and just wanted to say big respect for your BJJ achievements. As a BJJ brown belt myself, I know how badass that is.

“I randomly got into direct response by helping my partner with her business and now I’m on a mission to get my black belt in direct response and leave my job. What I find most fascinating is how the hardships from BJJ translate into business. And how fundamental positions such as mount, side control, and the dreaded closed guard are just like your favourite tools in direct response – the latest being the 4U’s, which I’ve just picked up from you.

“Thanks for sharing the wisdom.” – KB

My Response: You make a good point about the similarity between the skills we must learn to succeed in BJJ and the skills one needs to succeed in business. One that is rarely talked about is the ability to be sensitive to the weight distribution of and the force coming from your training partner. Once you develop that skill – which is a skill of perception rather than force – you have a tremendous advantage that strong and aggressive combatants won’t even notice. You will be able to find the moments and the spots where you can use your opponent’s momentum to your advantage. You will be able to protect yourself from much larger and stronger opponents and eventually overcome their natural strengths with skill.

This has always been the way I looked at building wealth. When you give yourself the goal of accomplishing what very few people do – i.e., moving to the top 10% or even 1% of the general population of income earners – you are going to run into all sorts of expected and unexpected forces. If your strategy is always to meet force with force, you will eventually fatigue yourself and fall into a set of habits that you probably won’t even recognize, let alone be able to overcome.

Success in increasing your income and growing your wealth cannot be had by being clever. And only a fool would attempt to achieve it with luck. The only realistic way is to gradually improve on the small skills that will allow you to meet and defeat any of the uncountable forces that come against you in your journey.

Why I Do What I Do… 

“You have been a tremendous source of inspiration to me over the years, and I am deeply appreciative of you, your work, and most of all for your ethos of sharing. Countless marketers (myself included) have been able to forge careers built on the ideas and principles you conceptualized and popularized through your books, blog, and businesses. I don’t think there’s an interview, book, or video of yours on the internet I haven’t tried to absorb through repeat viewing.” – DG

“I’ve been using your metaphors to inspire people. You once said writing to a new subscriber is like going on a first date. I said that today to a wonderful trader who struggles with writing. She came away inspired and proceeded to write the best free write up I’ve seen out of her. This is at Options Pit, a small but growing publisher with great traders. I just got a position as editorial director and have used more than one of your metaphors to describe good writing to them. Thank you for telling those stories and teaching those lessons.” – CD

Re my comments on the Charlie Kirk assassination in the Sept. 13 issue: 

“Very sad day with the shooting of Charlie Kirk and the reaction from both left and right afterwards. Your blog has covered it well, and the whole episode reminds me of one of my favorite Orwell quotes: ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’ And I think this is getting lost today.” – DG

“I would like to recommend a book by Allen Guelzo, Our Ancient Faith. Without saying so explicitly, the author draws shocking parallels between today’s political violence and that of Lincoln’s day. I want to offer the idea that this time, this day, our country will change. The scales will fall from enough eyes so that the truth will no longer be deniable.” – JM

From RG re my piece on NYC in the Sept. 5 issue: 

“I have a gut feeling what you said is the truth in most places. The touristy places in NYC are probably as safe as anywhere in the world. The other places, not so much. Wealth gap and all that. I’m afraid jealousy anger and fear are only going to grow as the wealth gap gets bigger. It’s a powerful psychological force. Hard to suppress when it’s so easy to see (news, social media, etc.)”

A few of the many comments on my Sept. 13 essay about the Charlie Kirk assassination: 

“I was waiting for your piece to get your take on the Charlie Kirk assassination and I was not disappointed…. My thoughts have been rumbling around in my head since it happened and you pretty much covered it all. I might have put it slightly differently or added a thing or two more, but I would be quibbling with great to get perfection. Thank you for that piece.” – FC

“Excellent and timely piece. You did right, except the part about getting in an argument with Kathy! I especially like, ‘these dark and deranged Orwellian glasses.’

“Thanks for turning me on to Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro, et al. I listened to him on Bari Weiss’s podcast yesterday about Charlie Kirk.

“Now that I’m in my 70s, I’m more aware of what I call presentism. That is, the cognitive bias of considering our present time to be uniquely special. It is special to us, for sure, since it is the time we are living in. And it is unique in some objective ways, but it is also more like the past than any of us know, both because of the limits of our life spans, and the relatively low knowledge of history most of us have.

“I hear presentism in Bari Weiss when she asks, ‘how can we bring America back from the brink?’ We hear presentism in such tropes as ‘now, more than ever’ and ‘never has the country been more divided.’ It was presentism, luckily, that got the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to set their doomsday clock at 5 minutes ‘til midnight – for years.

“But I’m also old enough to recognize the beneficial effects of presentism. The fact that Bari Weiss really believes that the country is at the brink energizes her. She feels the vital importance of the choices and actions taken by her fellow citizens. And that’s good, because I think her heart is in the right place.

“I believe our country is more robust and durable than the chattering class would have us believe. The incentives of news organizations lean towards painting our times as perilous.

“Presentism has probably always been with us and so perhaps it’s part of the elixir that keeps the species going, despite the perils – real and imagined.” – SL

“I thought your essay on the murder of Charlie Kirk was well-reasoned and well-balanced. Reading it was welcome relief from reading so many partisan pieces.” – PF

From AS: “The news seeps into my house via internet and streaming. It leaves me in fear.” 

“For quite a while, I have been avoiding the news and watching sports. Now I’m sick of sports because it seems to be more about business, contracts, and reports on injured athletes. There are extensive detailed reports of injuries incurred by athletes. It’s like watching that old hospital show ER.

“Sports also follows stories that should be in the Metro section of the news. An athlete punches his girlfriend in the jaw and knocks her out or is caught driving 110 miles an hour with an ounce of cocaine and an automatic weapon under the seat. He gets suspended from his team for two games, four games, or maybe more. If he worked for IBM or Google, he would no longer have a job.

“The news seeps into my house via internet and streaming. It leaves me in fear.

“Illegal aliens who run amok in the streets of America are going to rob and kill me.

“I won’t swim in the ocean ever again, because either sharks or riptides will kill me.

“Every night, before I fall asleep, my last thought is, ‘I hope my house doesn’t explode!’

“I also worry about masked marauders storming my house and taking my wife away because she speaks fluent Spanish. Maybe not, because I have yet to see a single illegal alien being arrested who has blonde hair and blue eyes.

“Every time it rains, I envision my house floating down a torrent river that appeared in a few short moments.

“When the stock market falls to record lows, I immediately see myself sitting on a cold sidewalk in the city with a sign that says, ‘Money for the poor.’ Then I remember that I, along with 48% of Americans, don’t own any stocks. And the stock market is not directly related to the economy anyway.

“Trees, beautiful, majestic trees are killing people. They wipe out countless numbers because of winds blowing them down on top of cars and homes.

“Can’t go to Target or Walmart because a mass shooter lurks in the shadows waiting to kill me and maybe 11 more people before he turns the gun on himself. I wonder, does each shooter decide how many people they are going to kill before they kill themselves? Why don’t they just shoot themselves and avoid driving to the store and circling the lot several times before finding a good parking space?

“Going to school is like being deployed to a combat zone.

“I can’t open emails because I’ll end up selling all my Crypto Currency and sending the money via the US Mail in the form of gift cards. I don’t own any Crypto Currency.

“I have children and I may get an email from one of them telling me to send money because they have been mugged in Barcelona and need a passport and an airline ticket to return home.

“My texts are often job offers where I can earn $200 to $300 a day. No age limit, it’s easy, and I can work from home. All I must do is send them a few thousand dollars for the equipment I’ll need to get started.

“I get texts from unidentified numbers which simply say things like, ‘Hi, haven’t heard from you in a while,’ or ‘I changed my phone number, here’s my new number.’

“Long ago, I responded to one of those. I wrote, ‘You must have the wrong number.’ Moments later, a picture of a sexy, scantily clad 21-year-old woman appeared with the caption, ‘I’m sorry, but do you have time to chat anyway?’

“I thought, ‘What a great idea to start a relationship with picture of a girl 55 years younger than me. I can’t wait to tell my wife and kids about my new friend! Should I send her a picture of me in a Speedo?’

“Much of our food contains broken glass or other foreign objects. Produce has E. coli and meat has salmonella. Water has plastic in it and our cars are being recalled in droves.

“Earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, forest fires, tsunamis, mudslides are heading our way daily. Hikers are getting raped and killed or just not returning from their hikes. The ones who don’t return probably died from Lyme disease.

“If you are flying somewhere and are lucky enough to board the plane the same day your tickets say, it’s almost a sure thing a drunken unruly passenger will beat up a flight attendant and you will have an unscheduled emergency landing in a town you never heard of and possibly be stranded there long enough to establish residency.

“No unruly passenger? Don’t worry, a door could blow off or an engine might catch fire, and you may land in that same small town you never heard of. Wheels are falling off planes, too.

“It seems like once a week a family is killed in a house fire. If that’s not enough, the on-the-scene reporter always asks the surviving family member, ‘Your entire family was killed in that house fire. How does that make you feel?’

“Who writes those questions for the reporters?

“Edwin Starr sang, ‘War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing, say it again.’ There are 56 wars going on in the world now. That’s the most since WWII. Thirty-five of them are in Africa. Can you name even one of those wars? I doubt it, because western news doesn’t report on Africa.

“In the wars our news does cover, you can watch homes, hospitals, and apartment buildings being blown up every day. In the following weeks, stories are told of injured and dead children and families who lost everything, including loved ones. The reporters are there, on the spot, to ask survivors, ‘How does that make you feel?’

“Here is a hypothetical question. Let’s say a fictitious country, we will call it Ukraine, is invaded by another country, we’ll call it Russia. The president of the United States, we’ll call him Trump, is trying to negotiate peace. Russia wants the president of Ukraine to relinquish the land Russia is occupying now, but not for a peace treaty. Simply for a ceasefire. Trump and most of the rest of the world is against giving up land to the invader. After meeting with the leader of Russia, Trump is now in favor of Ukraine giving up that land, and only for a ceasefire, not peace.

“The question is, if Russia invaded the US and was occupying New Jersey and Pennsylvania, would Trump give those lands to Russia for nothing more than a ceasefire?

“Every summer, reports of children left in hot cars often lead the news. It breaks my heart. I always think, ‘If they went to the grocery store and bought ice cream, there is no way they would leave that in a hot car.’

“Almost every week, a young woman goes missing. It’s incredible! Thank goodness I didn’t have a daughter. They get stalked, battered, raped, and murdered. Often by a man they had a restraining order against. Do those even help? It doesn’t seem so.

“I was with an attractive woman I knew a long time ago on her 35th birthday. I asked her how she felt about being 35.

“She said, ‘I feel like I’m getting old and I haven’t accomplished some of the things I set out to do. The bright side is, I think I have aged out of the getting abducted, raped, and murdered phase.’ Sad.

“I wonder how many open cases of missing women and girls there are in our country. I’m too lazy to look it up, but you can. I’ll bet you will be astounded!

“Men can’t imagine the fear women feel merely walking to the store. They must be constantly aware because the fear is real.

“Husbands killing wives and wives killing husbands. Just get a divorce!

“The war on crime, the war against drugs, the war on educating youth, now it seems like we are attacking common sense. ‘The war against common sense,’ seems like the only one of those wars we will win.

“Nonsensical decisions are being made unilaterally by one individual in a government which used to be a democracy. Even when the decision is warranted, its application is horrendous.

“Not a day goes by when something so petty and ridiculous is presented by those in power who vow to make it law. This minutia comes at us in droves. The plan is to wear us down, make us numb, and eventually not see it as an absurd notion. People go into an uproar, but then the next insane idea is put forth and we forget about the last thing we were so angry about.

“A man lost his wallet 11 years ago. He worked in Michigan on an assembly line building cars. He is retired now. Yesterday, he received a call from the man who found his wallet. This man was a mechanic and was working on a car with 150,000 miles on it. He couldn’t quite get one part to fit properly. He moved it around and a wallet fell out. The wallet contained the driver’s license and work ID card.

“The news showed the man, retired now, who got his wallet back, smiling ear to ear.

“I want to start a news channel that only reports ‘Happy News.’

“Would anyone want to watch it? We are all so jaded now, I doubt it.”

Why I Write the Books I Write 

I’ve been getting testimonials from people who got something useful from my books on a regular basis since I began writing them 25 years ago. You can imagine how it feels to discover that the product of the work you do has benefited people you’ve never met. This week, I spent a half-hour looking through those I haven’t read in a while, and I found many that left me feeling like the return I got from my investment of time was more than I could have expected.

Here are a few examples…

“I can apply [The Power of One] to my life today.” 
From LH: “Your chapter on The Power of One was an incredible ‘aha’ moment for me. I can see how I can apply it to my life today. I hope it will stay with me throughout my career!”

A reminder of “the truly important versus the seemingly important.” 
From BS: “I have always thought of you as a genius, but I am now convinced. I will be sending copies of your book to those I know and respect in business. I doubt that many can benefit from your pearls of wisdom because of their egos or mistaken predilections, but for those few who are open minded, your work will be an eye-opening classic. The basic truisms included should be written on the inside of the eyelids of every businessperson so each can be constantly reminded of the truly important versus the seemingly important factors that are crucial to financial success.”

“I got so much from your book.” 
From AS: “As a director and manager of a large group of people, I got so much from your book. I was able to rally the team into seeing the vision of what CAN be if we all do a little bit more with a lot less…. We are coming out with new products almost every month, sometimes more. I continue learning priceless skills that I may not have if everything went as planned with the business or if I would have left.”

“Over $1 billion in trackable results” 
From DG: “As a mentor from afar, your core principles were a tremendous catalyst in my career. Ten years ago, I arrived in the USA with $80 and have since generated over $1 billion in trackable results through copywriting and marketing strategy. Entering an early retirement but wanted to say Thank You!”

“I study them like I do my Bible.” 
From DJ: “I have pored through your books, Great Leads and The Architecture of Persuasion…. I study them like I do my Bible… new adventures, new discoveries unfold… significant… valuable.”

“My husband is super-excited too.” 
From DE: “I am super-excited to be on my journey. Thanks to your book, The Pledge, my husband and I have increased the amount of money we put into savings and paying off our debt. One of the most important ‘takeaways’ I got from it on this incredible journey to increasing our wealth is that increasing our income is the key. By the way, one of my first week’s goals was to talk to my wonderful husband about all of this, which I did. He is super-excited too, and is interested in looking into writing/building websites as his new stay-at-home career.”

From GM: “Thought you’d enjoy hearing about the achievements of one of your students!” 

“Alex Hormozi and I are students of your books, and I knew you’d love to hear about the Aug. 17 launch of his new book: $100M Money Models. It broke the Guinness World Record for ‘fastest sales of a nonfiction book within a 24-hour period’ – 2,970,443 copies sold in that short time!

“The book covers the series of offers an entrepreneur or salesperson can make to attract, upsell, downsell, or convert a prospect on a first transaction and back-end offers + continuity programs. In other words, tactical methods similar to the middle parts of your book, Ready, Fire, Aim.”

My Response: Congratulations to Alex on the success of his book launch. It’s big news in the internet marketing and entrepreneurship world.

From GF re my piece on “What I’m Doing with My Money” in the Aug. 13 issue: 

“Just a note to say I thought this piece was excellent. And though many will not appreciate the transparency, or the clarity of thought, it’s a pleasure to see.”

From JV: “I’m debating whether I should keep the business growing…”

“I’m currently working full-time, and outside of that, I’ve been growing my agency. Right now, I’m managing around 8–10 active accounts, each with their own campaigns, and I’ve brought on two freelancers to help with the operational side.

“Here’s where I’d love your advice: I’m debating whether I should keep the business growing – bringing in more clients and expanding the team – or shift focus for now and work on strengthening our internal systems. Things like tightening up our call scripts, improving quality control, and building better SOPs while we’re still small.

“When I scaled from 4 to 8 accounts, I started to realize how much harder it becomes to change processes once you grow. So I’m wondering – should I keep pushing for growth while improving as I go, or pause new client acquisition temporarily and focus on building a stronger foundation to scale more profitably later?”

My Response: As I explained in Ready, Fire, Aim, the problem you are facing is one of the most common and most significant problems entrepreneurs face when they move into what I think of as the third stage of growth.

But Stage Three for most businesses happens when sales are at around $10 million, with positive cash flow and 50+ employees. The fact that you are asking this question now makes me wonder about the protocols and systems you’ve already set up. I wonder why they are such that you feel you need to be adjusting and revising them when you are so early in your growth.

I can’t answer that question for you outside of a conversation, but you might be able to answer it yourself by answering another one: What is the worst thing that could happen if you ignored the operational issues for the time being and focused on growth?

If the answer is “My company could go bust,” you have a problem you need to address sooner rather than later. If the answer is “My company would continue to grow, but I worry that when I do get around to reorganizing it, the work will be that much more difficult,” my bias would be towards continuing to focus on growing your business, your revenues, and your sales.

I suspect from what you’ve told me that your business is still in Stage Two. And that means you should be focusing on the challenges and opportunities that I outlined in that section of Ready, Fire, Aim. Stage Two is a very critical phase of your business growth. As founder and CEO, it is your opportunity to develop additional vertical and horizontal marketing campaigns that will move your profit margin up to a level where you can afford to lighten your load by (1) hiring a smart, hardworking, and pro-growth person to take over all the operational issues, and (2) promoting a few of your marketing and salespeople to marketing- and sales-management roles.

Hope this helps.

From KD: “Your latest about the exponential rate of AI adoption is going to change my life.” 

“The reason I’m reaching out today is because I wanted to thank you for once again giving me insights that could profoundly affect the quality of our future. Or at the risk of sounding dramatic… our future survival.”