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Hey, our today’s creator has 415.3K followers on Twitter & 129,268 on LinkedIn.

We, who love having more people in our email list, more than social media followers, will ignore the numbers as usual.

But the most important thing is he has 140K people in his email list. He is one of the most renowned names in the writing industry and runs the biggest writing education business. So without delaying it any further, let’s say hi to our today’s creator:

Dickie Bush

Creator Spotlight:

A Princeton University graduate with a major in Math & Computer Science. He then landed his dream job at a global investment firm, BlackRock. For the next 4 years, he worked as a hedge fund trader in the bustling streets of Manhattan. But like we all have the same growth mindset, Dickie had it too. He didn’t see the future there, so he left and started writing which evoked from BlackRock.

Later he met with internet famous Nicholas Cole and that was the best thing ever happened in the writing industry. They both made the world’s biggest writing education business, ship 30 under 30.

They also co-founded:

1. Typeshare, a SaaS platform for digital writers with Sam Shore and Nicolas;

2. Premium ghostwriting academy with Nicolas.

How did he grow his email list?

A. Educational email courses as lead magnets

No one gives anything for free, especially when it comes to their email. So, you’ve to offer them something valuable, which should be more than others’ paid stuff, and in exchange, without any friction, they will give their emails.

Dickie does the same job, he gives away a lot for free then ask you to pay for the execution, because people are too lazy to implement.

His newsletter subscribers more than doubled overnight. It took him nine months to grow from zero to 400 subscribers, but just nine hours to jump from 400 to 1,000.

As Chenell always says, focus on reverse engineering. That’s exactly what Justin Welsh did.

Dickie followed the same approach with his content. He experimented, generated a lot of ideas, and figured out what worked for him, rather than trying to position himself as an expert right away.

And he said the best. No one is here to judge you, you should keep doing your job, and everything will happen with time.

B. Deep industry knowledge:

Dickie used to work in BlackRock. Unlike Cole, he has no knack with online writing, but when he started in January 2020 and got $5K as a reward for it, he changed his mind to become a writer. Till then he tried a lot of writing styles and types like atomic essays, blogs, social media posts.

So people easily trust him and think of him as the person who knows it all. And that’s why it is easy to get people on his email list.

C. Omichannel presence

I too am active on

• LinkedIn

• Twitter

• YouTube

• Instagram and

• Have newsletters

But as a solo business owner, I find it difficult to manage it all alone.

The same goes with Dickie, he is active on Substack, YouTube and X.

Two long-form Threads/LI posts per week.

On X, he adds his free EEC under his posts and threads as a helpful resource and lead magnets, which help him drive more people.

How Dickie makes money using email

Dickie nurtures and make most of his money just because of his emails.

You can check his digest here.

$1MM evergreen email sequence

After the 5 days EEC, Dickie Bush starts his 20 email sequence.

You can check the edition of Nicholas where I mentioned this too.

Here is how it looks like:

1. Pitch

2. The story

3. Problem and solution

4. Social proof

5. Value proposition

6. Objection handling

7. Offer

8. Urgency & scarcity

9. Case Study

10. FAQ

11. Testimonial

12. Bonus

13. Reminder 1

14. Reminder 2

15. Last chance

16. Reengagement

17. Thank you

18. Upsell

19. Follow up

20. Feedback

I joined his EEC just to understand the pattern, and yeah, that’s how he built his million-dollar business.

It never stops working for them, that’s why they named it $1MM evergreen email sequence.

Paid subscription

He runs two newsletters. Write with AI and Dickie’s Digest

And the monthly pay is shown below ⤵

Key takeaways

After reading his emails, and following him for the last 1 year. Here are my 3 takeaways:

1. Be an expert to get paid is the biggest myth. Start now, people pay for solving their problems, not for anything else.

2. Consistency beats everything.

3. People who will buy from you, they will be in your email list no matter how many times you send the email.

Thanks for reading the 73rd edition of Dark Chocolate.

I will see you the next week at 10:00 AM sharp.

Till then, byeeee.

Your “email guy” Anirban.

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