The Laziest Email He Ever Wrote Made $240,000

Yeeeehaaaaa. $240,000.

Question:

What would it mean for your sales, if the hardest part of selling, the close, was already done before you wrote a single word?

What if your email list or salesletter was so dialed in, so primed, so pre-sold on you and your world, that a casual mention of your daughter's birthday(or any mundane event in your life) generated six figures in sales by end of day?

Let me tell about someone who did just that:

His name is Matt Furey.

If you don't know him, here's the quick sketch: former world kung fu champion(Beijing, 1997), student of Chinese and Eastern martial arts philosophy, a guy who trained in a spartan gym in Tampa while the rest of the internet was busy trying to figure out what a "squeeze page" was.

He is, by most accounts, eccentric. He sells fitness programs built on old-school eastern martial arts and conditioning like Hindu pushups. He writes about Zen. He quotes ancient emperors. He talks to his list like they're sitting across from him at a diner at 2am.

And he was early. Brutally, obscenely early to email marketing. I wasn’t even born when he launched his website. And while most businesses were still mailing paper catalogs, Matt Furey was building a list, writing daily emails, and generating millions of dollars from a niche so specific it had no business being that profitable.

I've spent a long time studying him.

How could I not?

And about two years back, I got access to something rare, a holy grail within the copywriting world.

It’s a 10+ CD audio recording of his "Emperor of Email" original training and seminar from 2004(he's only done a handful). Originally costing $10K a pop, with only 300 copies ever made and I have 1 of them. It’s a complete training and unfiltered breakdown of how he built his empire email by email.

It was recommended to me by a senior copywriter and is a treasure trove.

Along with this rare copy sitting on my desk, I also have in PDFs, hard copies and swipe files, most of Furey's material, including one his books “How I Went From Rags to Riches on the Internet”, where he breaks down exactly how he built the kind of list that makes a move like that possible. This book also contains his short story of the email that casually generated 6 figures for him. It was titled “Double Happiness Birthday Sale”.

And here's the single most important thing I took from it, the lesson buried underneath all the tactics and templates and subject line tricks:

Matt Furey could assume the close because he'd already done all the work.

Every day, he showed up in his readers' inboxes. He told stories. He shared his life. He gave value. He revealed his personality, the quirks, the philosophy, the Eastern martial arts obsession that most marketers would've ignored. He let people in.

So on May 5th, 2005 — 05-05-05 — he sat down and wrote an email.

No long copy. No elaborate launch sequence. No 14-part nurture funnel.

The subject line? His daughter's birthday. His own birthday(hence the double). A sale. Done.

The email itself was small, maybe 150 words max. He opened with "Oh my. This is HUGE. This is MEGA." He announced the "Double-Happiness Birthday Sale." He told his list his daughter Faith had him wrapped around her big toe from day one. He called them "mang." He signed off with "Yeeeehaaaaa."

The P.S. warned readers that failing to click the link "may cause you to have a day that is akin to double-hell."

That was it.

The sale opened before noon on May 5th. By midnight on May 6th — not a minute later, deadline was a deadline — it had generated $240,000 in online sales.

Not including phone orders. Not including faxes.

$240,000. From a birthday email. In 36 hours.

Not because of a brilliant CTA.

Not because of a scarcity countdown or a bonuses stack.

Because the relationship was already built. The trust was already banked. The ducks were already in a row.

The close was easy because the front end was airtight.

THE LESSON

Most copywriters treat the close like it's the hard part. They agonize over the call to action. They split test button colors. They rewrite the P.S. seven times.

Meanwhile, they've skipped the actual work.

The truth Matt Furey understood, and the "Emperor of Email" recordings make crystal clear, is this:

The backend works itself out when the front end is built right.

Your close is only as powerful as the relationship behind it. Your CTA is only as effective as the trust you've deposited. Your offer only lands when your reader already knows, likes, and expects to buy from you. The ‘from’ address is more important than the CTA.

When you get organized. When you show up for yourself consistently. When you build your foundation, story, personality, value, voice, the sale doesn't feel like selling. It feels like a natural next step.

You don't push the close. You assume it.

What This Means For Your Copy

Here's what separates the Matt Fureys of the world from the people refreshing their sales dashboard in a panic:

• You can assume the close when you've earned the right to — and you earn it through weekly/daily presence, not manipulation tactics
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• The "birthday email" works because months of relationship-building made it work — a stranger mentioning their daughter's birthday doesn't move you; a trusted voice in your inbox does
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• Personality is not optional — Furey's Eastern martial arts niche should have been a ceiling; instead it became a magnet that filtered for perfect buyers who stayed for years
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• Consistency is the compound interest of email marketing — one great email is a blip; 500 ‘ok’ emails over two years is a business
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• Your close is downstream of your positioning — if you're always struggling with the CTA, the problem isn't the CTA; it's what came before it
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• Organization and foundation-building aren't boring back-office tasks — they are the reason some people can generate six figures on a Tuesday mentioning a birthday while others can't move product with a 40% discount
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• The backend — repeat buyers, high-ticket sales, referrals — is a result, not a strategy — you don't build the backend directly; you build the front end so well that the backend is inevitable

If you've been wrestling with your closes... if your CTAs feel like you're pushing a boulder uphill every single time... I want you to ask yourself some honest questions:

Have I actually built the front end? The right niche?

Do I solve a problem for your readers? For my market?

Have I built a consistent presence? A recognizable voice? A relationship with my readers where they feel like they know me — the way Furey's list knew him — before you ever ask for anything?

If the answer is not yet, that's the work.

Not "do I have a list." Not "do I send emails sometimes."

Not a better headline formula. Not a new P.S. structure.

The work is showing up, day after day, building the foundations for your business, lining your ducks up in a row, solving problems, being the go-to guy, until the day comes when you can mention something small and personal, and your readers reach for their wallets before you've even finished the sentence.

That's when you know you've built something real.

And the close? The close takes care of itself.

Now you take care of yourself

Till next Saturday,

Fathi