The tragic story of the 6 year follow-up

I got an unusual email the other day from someone I didn’t recognize. I’ve noticed this trend popping up more as the economy slowly crashes (kinda) and business owners get desperate. 

But usually when I get an email from an unrecognized brand it’s some kind of agency using cold email to SEO my site or sell me an app or some business who obviously just bought my email from a list and decided that their business is such a unicorn snowflake type that the laws don’t apply to them. 

Well, my unusual email I received the other day didn’t meet either of these criteria - it was strangely somehow even worse:

Y’see, back in June of 2019, which was a full two months before I quit my full-time job to start my email bidness, I must’ve signed up for this jabroni’s list. 

Then, over the following 6 years (or 74 months if you prefer) I received 

Not 

A 

Single 

Email 

It took this guy a full 74 months to grow the cajones to send one email! 

Yeeeesh. 

It’s also very, very, very obvious that he used AI - the email sent in 2025 was full of em dashes galore. And em dashes were inconspicuously absent from the email I received in 2019. 

Now, since email is my profession and because I like to zig where others zag and don’t believe in the silly “Inbox Zero” concept, I was able to see the complete dereliction of duties from our unnamed biz owner here. 

But everyone else who joined his list in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and yes, even 2025 (since it took him until August to finally press “send”) probably won’t remember who he is nor have the receipts to see that he did send one email once. 

Such a massive missed opportunity that could’ve easily cost the business a few grand to a few thousand grand to mayhap even a million and some change. I have no idea how much money was lost from, again, the complete dereliction of duties because I don’t know how successful the business is. 

But you can bet that sweet arse of yours that it’s a large chunk o’ change. 

Not only for the raw revenue, but also on the opportunity cost of neglecting your #1 marketing channel and of failing to build a relationship with your list. 

And it’s too late and too GPT’d out to do any of that now. 

In fact, I can’t imagine he received good open rates or ANY action from this AI email he sent 6 years after I joined his list. 

Which means, he existed in the rare space where it might’ve been better to just not send an email at all. 

Here’s the good news (for you at least):

Your one reply away from preventing yourself from falling into this revenue-crucifying trap. 

So, hit reply, and let’s chat. 

John