TLDR; Win one of my favorite books. Deadline Thursday, June 3, 2026 at 11:59 Eastern Time. Read anything good recently? Something that’s not very mainstream, but nonetheless entertained you, made you feel something, or taught you something. I don’t want recommendations for bestsellers or Kindle pirate werewolf romance smut. Whichever THREE people send me the best recommendations win a fantastic prize. 👉 I will mail you a copy of the most surprising and entertaining book on influence I’ve read in the past 10 years. (No, it’s not Influence by Cialdini. That would be lame.) You don’t need to be a marketer to get value out of this book—in fact, I believe it should be required reading for every business owner and digital entrepreneur. Let me have your recommendations—top three contestants by 11:59 PM Eastern Time on June 3 WIN. Drop a comment in this thread to participate (email replies don’t count):

It's everyone's favorite holiday--US Tax Day! For my biggest business expense? I was about to put "ads," but then I remembered it's not an expense...because they pay for themselves. Second biggest? I think it's a tie between BerserkerMail and Manus. Again, are these really "expenses" if I can't run my business without them? 🤔 Literally can't send emails without BerserkerMail...and Manus does so many things I can't even list them all. Look at this one-page website it built to help me study tourist Japanese for our trip in May: Learn Japanese with Nick-sama What's that one big biz expense you just can't quit?

How I Get Facebook to Add 56+ CUSTOMERS (No, Not LEADS) to My Email List Every Month Like Clockwork—at a Slight Profit Only takes a couple hours of effort per month and it’s way lower stress compared to hiring an ad agency or watching Zuckerberg siphon money out of your bank account while his cold lizard tongue laughs and laughs and laughs… Read the report in stunning Google Doc formatting here ### I’ve got a stable ad campaign running to a low-ticket product on Facebook and Instagram. Since March of 2025, this campaign has been working with little intervention, slightly profiting to the tune of 1.21x ROAS for over a year. That means for every dollar I put in, I’m getting $1.21 back. This is… ABYSMAL. I’m bragging about an ad funnel that barely profits when all these cool media buyer gurus are promising 1000x returns if you buy their $27 course? Lmao. I’ve bought a couple of those products before. They’re just lead magnets to whet your whistle, make you feel overwhelmed at running ads yourself, then you hire the agency who made the lead magnet to run YOUR ad campaign…which, by the way, somehow needs $500 a day to “test” ads. And they’re gonna need 2 months to test. And don’t expect to be profitable yet!!! Results are just around the corner. I even hired one of these agencies to improve my campaign last summer. They came in on my BEST month ever…and delivered my two WORST months ever, back to back, after implementing all of their amazing “INDUSTRY BEST PRACTICES.” Then I fired them, switched all my campaigns back to what I used before, and guess what? It worked again. 🙄 If I had to spend $500 per day to “test” something I’m going to be taking blood pressure meds and clutching my desk every morning worrying about going bankrupt. With the funnel I’ve built, I only spend between $50 and $150 per day. That’s enough to avoid consecutive days with no sales—which feels discouraging—and also not TOO much that you feel stressed about your budget.

The auction has ended! Congratulations to @Gasper Crepinsek for taking home my very own "Upwork Retirement Proposal" and a big stack of bonuses for the very nice sum of 35,000 pennies! JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, HERE'S WHAT WENT DOWN... Get the exact Upwork proposal template I used to land $159,000 in low-stress retainers while I work 15-hour weeks and travel the world. ⬇️⬇️⬇️ I don't freelance on Upwork anymore. Not because it stopped working. Because ONE proposal template worked so well it retired me. 👉 $159,000 in contracts. 👉 Clients who hired me over 50+ other applicants. 👉 Clients who APOLOGIZED for wasting my time when they couldn't afford me. 👉 $12k retainers from people who'd never met me. Now, I hire people to push the buttons while I look at graphs and tell jokes on Zoom calls. In May, when we go to Japan for 2.5 weeks, other people will keep my machine running while I eat raw fish next to Mt. Fuji. All from Upwork clients. The place everyone says has zero high-paying clients. 🙄 Here’s what we’re gonna do. Grab a walker. Amble on over to the cafeteria and snag a cup of prune juice. Then meet me in the day room and let’s reminisce about the good ol’ days when Upwork was still Elance… 🎉🎉 Welcome to the Upwork Retirement Auction! 🎉🎉 Winner gets the Upwork proposal template that retired me from Upwork—plus, I’ll show you how to “reverse engineer” it for any job your heart desires. Bids start at one cent. Bids can only go UP by one cent. AND... EVERYONE who bids at least one penny in the auction gets a free bonus: The Profile Rescue Kit, which'll fix everything wrong with your profile (that clients actually care about) so you can stop obsessing over which angle to take your next headshot pic. 🤯 But wait, there's more...lol. 🤯 IF... If we get a ton of action on the auction, we'll unlock truckloads of additional hot bonuses for you to stuff in your pockets. One more thing: You're getting the exact proposal structure that pulled six figures out of a platform I no longer compete on.

What else could I throw in to this auction to make it a complete NO-BRAINER for you to bid a penny? Quick recap: This penny auction is going down on Thursday. For a single cent, you could win the exact proposal template I used to land $159,000 (and still counting) worth of contracts from Upwork. Friggin' fantastic! But what ELSE do you want? Here's a few ideas I had, and feel free to drop a comment with whatever YOU'D love to get.