I recently rewatched an old movie called Seconds. Uncomfortable, but also very interesting. I won't give away the plot here, in case you ever want to go see it yourself. I'll just share a quote I wrote down, because it was relevant to what we all do: "You know son, when I began this business, I was a young man with an idea. I wasn't aiming to make a lot of money. Helping others, help them to find a little happiness. Oh heck, not just the rich. You see, I got tremendous comfort in the thought that in my small way I was waging a battle against human misery. And I was, too! Except we do have a high percentage of failures. I guess that's to be expected, but it hurts me." If you are in the information selling business... I reckon you got into it at least in part to wage a battle against human misery, in your own small way. I also reckon that you have a high percentage of failures. Regardless of how good your information is. Regardless of how accessible you try to make it. Regardless of how hard you try to motivate people. People just don't get the results that you know are possible, or any results at all. Does this hurt you? Do you just shrug it off and say, "That's to be expected"? I'm curious about your experiences, what you think about this, and what if anything you do about it. Let me know. And if you like I can share what my experiences are and what I think and do.

For the past few months, I've been subscribed for free to a Substack called Dead Language Society. They finally got me. Last week I upgraded to paid. It's the only newsletter subscription I pay for. Dead Language Society is about English, as in the language. The history and the structure of English. I find myself reading each post from beginning to end finding myself enlightened. A few recent examples: - The ancient logic of “snuck” ("sneaked" is what the English say, so where did Americans get "snuck"?) - No, Shakespeare didn’t invent those words ("assassination," "eyeball," "obscene," ...) - How far back in time can you understand English? (a story told in progressively older variants of English to show you where the language becomes unrecognizable to modern speakers) With a paid subscription you get all the articles... and there's a book club. Where you read middle- and old-English texts. In the original. I'm looking forward to joining. It takes a special kind of perversion, leaning towards masochism, to take pleasure in this stuff. But if you swing this way, I got 5 free 1-month subscriptions to give out when I signed up for paid. If you genuinely want one, comment below, and I'll get you one. While supplies last.

In a thread from last week, @Neil Sutton wrote: === I’ve been in some accountability groups that were very successful. It’s not an “all of us” getting together kinda thing, but those created an opportunity to bond with and become friends with people I might never had met otherwise. The best one was when I was in Brian Kurtz’s Titans group. He assigned the groups of 3 or 4 then we went off on our own and met monthly. We came up with 3 questions we took turns answering in each call and the others would offer feedback and support if needed. It was definitely optional. You put your name in to be assigned to a group if interested. Then you'd be grouped with a few others. I had to look back, and there were just four groups of 3 each. (I was teamed up with the amazing Kira Hug & Shannon McCaffrey.) === Are you interested in this? More importantly, will you actually participate? I'm happy to put the pods together. But ultimately, this is about you, and having a regular little mini-mastermind with two or three other folks in this group, and helping each other out, and socializing, and keeping each other on track. It won't work unless you participate, and regularly. So do you want this? Let me know below.

I'm hoping to get your help growing this community. I've never tried to grow Daily Email House beyond the people who were initially subbed to my Daily Email Habit service... and more recently, to others on my email list. Part of the reason was that the concept of this community was murky to me, and I wasn't even sure how to describe what this group is about to people who didn't already know me well via my emails. But I've since put in a placeholder mission statement — "use your email list to pay for a house." I like this mission statement. Maybe you do too. And maybe there are more people out there who have email lists... or who want to start and monetize an email list... and use those to pay for a house? So here's the deal: I am planning on running a campaign here inside Daily Email House, with the goal of growing this group to some new record number of members. Up to a certain point, the more good people we have in the group, the better it is for all of us, because there will be more interaction, more possible partners, more ideas and comments being floated about. But in order to give you even more motivation to help me spread the word about this group, I'm committing to giving out incentives and bonuses for everyone in the group when we reach the magic new record number (still tbd)... ... and maybe, some unique incentives and rewards for individual people who actually step up and promote the group. To start with, can you tell which of the following free bribes appeals most to you? I will use that to guide what I end up doing or creating first. Thanks in advance.

Following the recent discussion of list swaps: Lots of people in this group could do list swaps, and get new subscribers to their list for free... but they aren't doing it. I've learned one thing through cold, cruel experience: In situations where people won't take something for free... they will take it if you charge for it. So I got a question for you. I have long been itching to try running an auction, the way marketer Travis Sago teaches and practices. An auction works just how you think: Different people bid what they are willing to pay... the winning bidder takes the prize. In this case, the prize would be a solo ad in my newsletter. (Basically, a single email I'd send to my list, dedicated completely to building you up and to promoting your unique offer.) I would also work with you directly to define and refine the offer in your ad... so as to entice the greatest number of qualified subscribers or buyers to go to your page and sign up or buy... ... and I'd work with you to come up with a back-end offer you could offer right away, so you could liquidate your ad cost, and maybe then some, on DAY ZERO. I've never offered an ad in my newsletter before. I also don't have a huge list. But when I did run a list swap with @Alin Dragu a few months ago — basically the same kind of thing I'm offering here, but getting paid in cross-promotion instead of cash — I drove about 200 clicks and got Alin about 120 new subscribers. When I did something similar with Lawrence Bernstein last year, and promoted Lawrence's $7 offer as part of a list swap, I drove 157 buyers to Lawrence's list. If those kinds of numbers get you interested even a tiny bit, here's my question to you: If I were to make this offer, and make a monkey out of myself by running an auction to sell it... ... would you bid at least $1? Full transparency: