Such an epic speech to remind us all that life is full of ups and downs, and in my experience, the downs are harder than the ups. The trick here is to reset as quickly as possible to your baseline and then continue to move forward. In business, the highs are very high, and the lows are very low. I think resetting your baseline back to neutral is key if you are to last for any length of time. Learning to do this is painful. The process is painful and uncomfortable, especially when the outcomes are uncertain. ...And you need to find a way to reset to move on to 'the next point'. But if you can master this inner skill, its only a matter of time until something does work and you get some momentum back. "The real sign of a champion is not that they win every point. It’s that they lose again and again and again… and have learned how to deal with it. Negative energy is wasted energy. Cry it out if you have to. Then force a smile. Move on. Be relentless. Adapt. Grow. Work harder — and work smarter.” - Roger Federer

You see Sarah in that chair? Sighing? She's editing. At midnight. After handling customer service all day. We were one episode ahead of 45,000 people watching The Gut Solution live. One. Sarah knew how to edit. That wasn't the problem. The problem was she was also writing email sequences, handling customer support, finishing designs, managing affiliates who needed assets yesterday, and somehow trying to edit episodes in whatever minutes were left. This Is What "All In" Actually Looks Like Everyone talks about wearing multiple hats as an entrepreneur. Nobody talks about wearing seventeen hats while the building's on fire and 45,000 people are watching you try not to burn. I was scrambling with copy, managing tech disasters, trying to run my first affiliate competition and basically watching the server buckle under the load of traffic. We'd pass each other in our tiny Sydney apartment at 3 AM, both heading to different computers, both with that look of "please tell me nothing else broke." Something else always broke. And through it all, we stayed exactly one episode ahead. One episode between success and 45,000 people realising we were held together with duct tape and desperation. The Truth About "Systems"... You know what our system was? Sarah editing from midnight to 4 AM because that's when the emails stopped coming in. Both of us fixing whatever caught fire that day, then starting over tomorrow. We didn't have systems. We had stubbornness. We didn't have processes. We had panic. We didn't have a team. We had each other and whatever hours we could steal from sleep. But Here's What Nobody Tells You... That chaos? That impossible juggling act? That's where real businesses are born. Not in perfect systems and well-funded launches. But in moments like this - Sarah laughing at midnight because if she didn't laugh, she'd cry. Perfect is the enemy of done. And done, even barely done, even held-together-with-prayer done, beats perfect every single time. That docuseries went on to touch people all around the world. It ultimately attracted over 200,000 people over multiple releases.

I remember being blown away when I first heard this quote: "When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar," - David Ogilvy Even though we have been doing this for 10+ years, I'm still blown away at the power of the headline... It can literally make or break a campaign. We did a recent headline test across 60,000 people on a recent launch, and it increased the conversion rate on the page by around 24%. Take Action Today vs. Huge Savings Today Which one won? 👇 (before I get there, quick rant) Takeaway for you: Always be testing. Never stop testing. If you think you have tested a lot, test again. We have launched events like these around 20 times ...and we are still testing! So often, people will launch with the minimal amount but expect maximal results. Don't be that person. The winner...? "Huge Savings Today" at 24%. This doesn't seem like a lot, but it has just increased our affiliates' revenue by 24%, improved our return on ad spend by 24%, and the downstream impact of running at a higher scale is even more significant. What feels like an “overnight result” is usually just the compound effect of lots of little improvements that finally add up.

Hey, I'm part way through the Million List Playbook and so far not hit anything about how you built the email list. There's a lot of theory about what to put in emails etc, but i thought the thing I bought was about how you build your list. I am probably missing something, would love a pointer as to where I'll find it.

You know what a close relative said when I told her I was trying to learn internet marketing full-time? "That's not a real job, Matt." I was in my 20s, earning over $120,000 per year. Walking away from more money than most people see at 40. And here's the thing that nobody tells you about taking that leap... It wasn't the money that terrified me most. It was the thought that if I failed, I'd have to go back underground. That shame of crawling back to the "safety" I'd rejected. That haunted me more than any financial fear ever could. But then something beautiful happened. I started meeting other people who'd taken their own leaps. And not one of them - not a single one - ever questioned my decision. Because here's the truth nobody talks about... The athletes understand the first painful day at the gym. The entrepreneurs understand the terror of that first sale. The artists understand the vulnerability of that first performance. There's this unspoken brotherhood (and sisterhood) among people who've actually done 'the thing'. When I meet someone who's built a business from scratch, we don't need to explain the 2am anxiety attacks. The moment when you're doing laps around your kitchen counter, your last bit of savings invested, wondering if this crazy bet on yourself will actually work. We just know. When a musician tells me about their first open mic night, I get it. Different stage, same terror. Same vulnerability. Same courage. When an athlete talks about showing up to the gym after years away, feeling judged, feeling weak, feeling like everyone's watching - mate, that's exactly how I felt sending my first marketing email. We're all just beginners at something. And the people who've been beginners before? They become your biggest champions. They see your struggle and remember their own. They see your small wins and celebrate them like championships because they know what those first victories cost. My wife Sarah and I built Goodness Lover from nothing. 45,000 people registered for our first event. But before that? We were just two people in a tiny Sydney apartment, burning through all our savings, hoping like hell this would work.