You spend all week creating a valuable, high-impact free resource. Tons of people opt-in to receive it, and your email list grows (hell yeah).
Instead of simply saying, "Yay, the benefit was a larger list." You get to say, "Yay, the benefit was all the sales I made BECAUSE of that free resource and the funnel that followed."
Here's the thing: A bigger list is great (and will serve you for launches to come). But that free resource should be treated like an offer—with a strategic sales funnel that follows and prompts people to take another step (purchase something).
This easy-to-customize and easier-to-implement sequence does that for you and can be re-customized and applied to any/all of your free resources.
TBH, that's working smarter, not harder.