Hi Reader,

One of my favorite business books of all time?

How to Get Rich: One of the World’s Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets by Felix Denis.

Crass title.

The author admits as much.

If you haven’t heard of Felix, he was one of the UK’s richest and most successful publishers from the 1990s to the early 2000s.

His company, Denis Publishing was behind some of the biggest magazines in the United Kingdom, including computer publications Personal Computing World and lad mags like Maxim.

A great entrepreneur, certainly.

But Denis, with his raspy voice and wild hair, embodied the 1990s and early 2000s excesses.

He blew over £2.5m on cocaine, booze and prostitutes.

After a lifetime of debauchery and getting filthy rich, Denis quit entrepreneurship to become a poet and take up tree planting.

Denis died of throat cancer in 2014.

In his 2009 book, Denis describes the most important lesson:

“Ownership isn’t the most important thing in the getting of money – it is the only thing.”

Now, Denis was writing about founding a business and retaining nearly 100% ownership instead of taking on investors and business partners who want a cut.

But, the principle of 100% ownership applies to digital real estate, too.

One example?

Building an audience on social media.

You can grow an account to tens of thousands of followers. But you don’t own that audience or their attention.

Zucks and Musk sometimes don’t even show your content to your followers.

The other day, I was chatting with a social media guru. He explained follower counts are all but useless these days.

Instead, the algo tests new content with test audiences, some of whom aren’t your followers.

If they like the post, content, or video, the algo pushes it out to a wider audience.

That explains why smaller accounts often go viral.

If they don’t like the content, the algo suppresses it.

That explains why content sometimes gets comparatively little impressions versus follower counts.

Think of what you publish as sitting within an ever-expanding (or shrinking) circle of viewers or readers.

Now, an email list, on the other hand?

You 100% own that audience.

Invest time and money in attracting the right subscribers. No one can take them away from you.

You can ask subscribers to read your LinkedIn posts, watch your latest YouTube video, or reply to your email.

If you write or create content that subscribers like, they’ll keep opening, reading, and even purchasing your offers.

You’ve got 100% ownership, algo or no algo.

This week is my birthday, so I’m doing something special. You can buy all five of my latest workshops for $197. I don’t usually sell these workshops.

If the concept of 100% ownership or growing an email list appeals to you, you’ll love these two workshops.

How to Get Your First 1000 Email Subscribers.

(I used techniques from this workshop to grow my list to 25,000+ subscribers.)

Inbox Precision: Advanced B2B Email Marketing Techniques

(Here, I give you easy-to-implement monetization strategies for your list.)

​Buy now​

Write on,

Bryan Collins