You might know I'm a big fan of the "10 ideas" practice: Every day, make a list of 10 ideas. (To start, make a list of 10 ideas for lists of 10 ideas.) I've been doing this for years. Today I did something different. My prompt for today's list was "1533. 50 of my own assets." So 50, rather than 10. I made a list, without being too nitpicky about what constitutes an "asset." It was surprisingly easy. (I only started to slow down after item 42.) If you really really want, you can find my list attached. But more interesting is to make your own such list. You might think, "Oh but I don't have 50 assets! I could never..." All I can tell you is, that's exactly what I thought when I started writing today's list. Why might you want to make such a list? To make yourself feel better... For ideas for new offers or bonuses... For valuable connections you might not have made otherwise... For time that you will save yourself by reusing assets you already have. Highly recommended. And if you like, paste in your results below in a comment, as a kind of public accountability.

We need a thread for gratuitous fun: Stuff that has nothing to do with marketing, business, copy, daily emails... but that is fun for fun's sake. (Even a little bit of fun is better than none.) I'd like to kick things off with the attached (and real, not AI) photo of a beaver, which I put in an email a long time ago, apropos of nothing. If you have jokes, funny pictures, memes, ideas for "disconnected infotainment," put 'em in here. On Fridays... or really on any other days.

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.

All you freelancers out there... do you find it odd for an agency client to bill by hourly rate with you? CONTEXT: I'm a copywriter and an agency who's looking for a contractor to off load their client work asked for my base hourly rate -- and involved multiple things like email, work flows, landing pages, etc. I was hesitant to give it, but I did anyway (the range I internally use in my head to come up with pricing). They ended up declining because they couldn't' afford that rate. I find that odd unless I'm missing something. How I see it is my "$200 an hour" might be more efficient & labor saving than someone else's "$50 an hour".

A DEH subscriber (not sure he wants me sharing his name), writes in over email: === I'm signed up for the DEH, but sometimes I'm just sort of a bit lost because the questions are a little bit deep and require a lot of thinking when I receive it. Maybe this is unwanted feedback but is it just me or do I have to think about the question a long time before i answer it. hahah === I followed up and asked which prompts had him thinking for a long time. He wrote: === Alright never mind, it's only one lol. What reader question about my background can I answer today? --> this one for example took me a while to answer. But I would say I'm super like focussed on writing these emails and tying it to my offers, which I find hard to do haha. === So I'd say a few different things going on here: 1. If you do have reader questions, then it's a matter of having a quick way of getting at those questions. I personally use gmail tags. Whenever a reader replies with something that I imagine I could use in an email, I tag it with bej-email-fodder. Then later, when I'm looking to answer a reader question, I can cycle through those tagged emails quickly and find one that fits. 2. If you try to pull stuff out of your head, this is where the "a lot of of time thinking" and struggling happens. One fix for this is some kind of notetaking or journaling system (point 1 above). Another fix for this is the "10 ideas" practice. In my experience, it's much easier to come up with 10 ideas, without judging them for quality, than it is to come up with one "good" idea. The thing is, among those 10 ideas, there are sure to be 2 or 3 or more that are good, and often much better than what you would come up with by trying to come up with one good idea. 3. If you don't have any reader questions, then no amount of thinking or notetaking will help. In that case, the fix is to answer a question that wasn't asked of you directly. It can be a question you saw somebody else answering in a different newsletter... or in some online forum... or on the Dr. Phil show.