Back in 2017 I lived in a country I’ve never been to before — Ukraine.

That was a busy year for travels before anyone had ever experienced a Pandemic Lockdown. I flew from Toronto to Vancouver, then Paris, Nice, Monaco, Lviv, Kiev, back to Paris for the French Open tennis, London, Valencia, Barcelona, Warsaw, and then back to Lviv, in Ukraine.

Traveling that frequently is not new for me as I’ve been living the laptop lifestyle for almost two decades. However, those six months were unique for another reason…

I stopped working on my business.

Okay, that’s not entirely accurate. I still communicated with my team via Slack and created a blog post or podcast every two weeks to a month because I love writing and interviewing interesting people. But that was it.

What was especially different about those six months was I did not do a single promotional campaign, nor was I preparing for a future one, or creating a new product.

I stopped doing affiliate marketing or joint venture campaigns years ago, so I wasn’t doing any of that either.

To put it simply, I left my business to its own devices, with my team in charge of things, while I explored Europe.

After those six months were over and I logged into my online marketing platform Ontraport to look up my sales reports, I was surprised to see this number…

$153,428.00 USD

That’s the total revenue figure from March 1st 2017 to September 1st 2017 (refunds during this period were $3,190).

I didn’t do anything new to generate that revenue. I didn’t send any new emails, run any webinars, no joint venture campaigns, I didn’t suddenly get a wave of new traffic from press coverage, or any other new marketing campaign.

Of course, I had to pay my team and I spent a lot of money on things like AirBNB accommodation and flights during this time, but I still managed to put a good chunk of that money into the bank/investments as well.

While this money is much less than some other online entrepreneurs claim in their income reports or Facebook status updates, most of them are very active – constantly creating new products, recording videos and podcasts on a daily basis, speaking, writing books, running webinars, tweaking Facebook ad campaigns, working with clients, participating or running mastermind groups, hiring new team members, and the list goes on.

They make big money and put in big hours to get those results, always looking for the next level of growth — the next launch campaign.

There’s nothing wrong with that, I’ve spent many years working hard during ‘growth’ phases in my life too, and enjoyed big financial rewards as a result.

However, for me during those six months, I was interested in the result of a different experiment…

I wanted to know what would happen if I did NOTHING to grow my business.

Planting Seeds For Stability And Autonomy

The seeds for my ‘no work’ experiment were planted years ago.

In 2013 I started the year with no products and no email campaigns. I had my blog, my podcast and my email list, and some small income coming in from very old affiliate promotions.

My plan was to execute the vision I had years ago, to build the business I always knew I could, but never did.

Thanks to blogging, I discovered a love for writing and creating content. I knew for certain that writing and content were going to be a part of the rest of my life.

What I wanted to build next was an income generating machine that worked even when I was not working. It sounds cliche, but I knew it was possible thanks to technology.

The formula I was going to apply was simple. I had already used it before to make a lot of money:

Blog + Email List + Digital Products = Online Business

I knew how to attract an audience with content, grow an email list, and then use a blog and email list to sell digital products — like ebooks, membership sites, and flagship courses.

I’d also helped many of my coaching members copy my methods and enjoy huge success too.

The system works, there is no doubt there.

However, there was one thing I had neglected to do because I was always focused on the ‘next launch’, which is dangerous…

The ‘Always Be Launching’ Trap

Does this seem familiar?…

You spent a long time working on your online business, patiently producing content and growing your email list.

One day, you finally take the leap and release your first product.

You do your best to run a ‘launch’ campaign to your audience, feeling a mix of excitement and fear, wondering if anyone will buy what you are selling.

You send some emails, write articles and/or create videos, promote on social media, buy ads, and then open the doors to your new product.

The process is exhausting, but eventually you’re rewarded with your first customers, providing validation that all the work was worth it.

You see the money drop into your bank account, settle in and serve your customers, feeling tired but excited — you have a business you built yourself!

Success is addictive. You find yourself thinking of another product you could create and launch, or another promotional campaign you could run for your current product to bring in more sales.

New doors open. People want to partner with you, to do cross promotions, joint venture webinars, co-create products, and the list goes on.

Suddenly you’re drowning in things to do. Your income has gone up for sure, and you’re excited by the potential to finally live all those dreams you had back when you had little money, yet something has changed.

You’re feeling overwhelmed because of all the potential.

There’s so much you want to do, yet your calendar is already full. You go from launching to delivering what you launched, to preparing for the next launch — and the cycle repeats.

In between all of this you try and hire people to grow your team so you can ‘create more time’, yet really it seems that hiring more people ends up sucking more time than creating it.

It’s a trap, and every single successful online information marketer I have ever known — including myself — has fallen into it.

It’s not a bad place to be, you’re successful, but eventually the cycle loses its appeal.

   It feels like you’re running very hard just to stay in the same place.

Something has to change.

How I Built A Money-Making-Machine Powered By Email

Heading into the second phase of my blogging business life I planned to tap into what I already knew how to do — launch digital products.

However, this time, rather than launch something, deliver the product, then move on to another launch, I would add an additional step…

I would turn the launch I just did, into an evergreen campaign powered by automatic emails.

This would, in theory, mean I could turn a once off sales process into a campaign that continues to bring in new customers for years to come.

Best of all, the campaign would run without me, using the same launch emails set up in an email autoresponder to go out on autopilot to new subscribers.

However, automating launch campaigns wasn’t the only new step in my strategy… I was aware of many advanced techniques I could tap into, especially with multiple products.

I’ve spent many years studying sales funnels, yet I had only implemented just the surface of what was possible. There’s so much more you can do to increase your sales, and I was finally going to do it!

I began to create more advanced campaigns, tapping into powerful techniques that were available to me thanks to advanced internet marketing tools like Ontraport, and because I had crafted multiple products.

I created new email campaigns to do things like offer upsells, automate cross promotions, bundle products together to create packages and offer subscription product trials.

I also created campaigns designed to ‘fix leaks’, like payment decline campaigns, expiring credit card campaigns and abandon cart campaigns.

While individually, each of these campaigns didn’t significantly move the needle in terms of incoming revenue, but as I slowly created new automated product sale campaigns, upsells, bundles and cross promotions, the compound effect became significant.

The $20,000 to $30,000 in sales per month I used to make from running labor-intensive manual launches was replaced by automatic sales.

I was making the same amount of money, but the sales came from emails I had written months to even years ago, all set up to run on autopilot.

I was free.

Now It’s Your Turn: Focus On These Two Goals

Looking back over the previous years after I began setting up the email-powered machine that runs behind my blog, there are two key milestone moments that revolutionized my mindset about my business…

1. The first time I made a sale from an automatic campaign (NOT a live launch campaign)

I remember hearing the ‘ding’ noise on my phone as I received the Paypal notification that money had come in.

In this case, the money wasn’t from a launch I was manually running at the time, nor was it subscription or payment plan rebill income.

This sale came from someone finding one of my blog posts, signing up to my new automatic email campaign, receiving emails and buying my product (an ebook in this case).

It was a new customer sale triggered on autopilot.

2. Seeing $10,000 In Sales Come In One Month Without Lifting A Finger

Much later after that first automatic ebook sale, after I worked hard to create more automatic sale campaigns to sell other products (plus create the products!), and creating email campaigns to fix leaks and integrate product offers, I logged into Ontraport to check my stats.

For the first time I’d made over $10,000 in new sales, and that money was NOT recurring subscription income, payment plan income, or income from paid advertising campaigns — and certainly not from any manually-driven launch campaign.

I was making sales of my ebooks, short courses, flagship course, and membership site, all on autopilot.

My customers were saying yes to second chance offers on free trials, returning to buy products after initially abandoning my shopping cart, and going through automatic launch campaigns without me being a part of any of it!

Once you set up these email campaigns, they begin to work together.

For example, an ebook sale that came from an automatic campaign triggers a free trial of a membership site. A once off sale turns into recurring income.

That’s just one example, there are many others I want to share with you.

What matters now, is that you want to experience these milestones — Your first automatic product sale, and your first $10,000 month from automatic campaigns.

I’m Revealing My Email Campaigns

I’m about to teach a new short course to my Laptop Lifestyle Academy members.

It’s called ‘Emails Revealed‘ and as the title suggests, I’m taking you behind the scenes to show you the automatic email campaigns that power my business.

I’ll reveal nine different automatic email campaigns, including the exact emails I currently send, which can be used as concept templates to sell virtually any product or service online.

If you want to build an online business that makes sales without being dependent on manual launches or broadcast emails and instead is powered by automatic email campaigns, this new short course will be incredibly valuable to you.

To take part, you must be a member of my Laptop Lifestyle Academy.

To find out all the details, sign up to the special ‘Emails Revealed’ email list I’ve just created right here –

• Signup To The Emails Revealed Notice List

I’ll share more details about the course, including what email campaigns I will reveal to you, plus details on how to sign up, in the next few days.

I’ll speak to you soon,

Yaro