Bamboozled By The Cow People?

When I was growing up in North Dakota, twice a year my dad would buy a quarter of beef from a local farmer.  A full side of beef is around 500 lbs. of meat.  This means that every fall and spring we would get 125 lbs. of animal goodness in the gigantic white freezer in the garage.  Hamburger, steaks, and even a cow heart thrown in for good measure.

(We did not go full barbarian and eat all the organs.)

We also grew chickens on the farm, so between these two approaches we had the protein side of things handled.

Now that I have a family of my own, I wanted to do something similar for nostalgia reasons but also so I can have more control over what my family eats.  We don’t have a property where we can have chickens (yet) but I can handle buying meat.  I went out and found a grass fed, grass finished, rancher where you are basically getting a cow from the 1950s.

The next step was convincing my wife, who grew up in Virginia Beach, that this was a good idea.  It is pretty expensive to do this but I did get her to agree to let me do it if I could pay for it completely through new writing projects and only did an ⅛ of a share.  I called it the Cowshare Copywriting Challenge.

I rustled up some new clients, bought a freezer, and the ordered the cowshare. 

“Great success!”

My plan was to get another cow share this fall from the same place.  Super pleased with their fulfillment and mission.  I still had the clients from the original Cowshare Challenge (the benefit of getting monthly recurring revenue clients and not one-off projects ←—-this tip is for free) so I deemed my wife’s consent as still being in force.

Then my email inbox dinged with some scarcity!

My contact at the ranch said they were going to raise prices soon.  I knew I was going to buy in October so I pulled the trigger to lock in the lower price and ordered it in early July.  I then went along my merry way.

Scarcity is a funny thing, however.  It can trigger a psychological desire to check out what kind of good deal you got for some free dopamine and a self-pat on the back. A couple of weeks later I wanted to see how much the price had been raised.  I brought up the website and the listed price for the cowshare I had purchased was actually lower!  I ruminated on this for a bit until I took action.  Then, I sent them an email.

Word Spells

Here is the email I sent:

So first off, I am not annoyed or mad or any level of negative emotions lol.  This is purely an informational email if that makes sense.  You had sent out an email generally, and to me personally, that the bulk price of the cowshares was going to go up.

I was waiting to buy my share for later in the fall but decided to pull the trigger because I wanted to get in before the price went up.  It looks like the price went down.

I know you may not control pricing and I am not asking for a refund or anything.  I am just curious as to what happened.  I do email marketing for businesses and this is kind of a no no.

I love the beef and am looking forward to the cowshare.  Just curious more than anything.

Again not mad.

Wade

I dashed this email off in one minute but I had three main goals:

• I really was curious about what had happened so I could close the loop in my head.  I did really enjoy their beef and I did not want to stop buying it unless something truly nefarious was afoot.

• I wanted to subtly put in there that I ghostwrite for businesses so I can follow-up with them later, or put it in their head to reach out to me if they think they need someone.

• Give them the opportunity to make it right if the price went down but also give me some wiggle if I misunderstood what had happened.

I got this reply back pretty fast:

Hey Wade! Thanks for bringing this up and communicating so well, I really appreciate it. 

The total weight of the 1/8 cow has gone down from 65lbs to 60lbs. 

The price per lb has increased from $15/lb to $16/lb. If we kept our same weight the cow share would be

$1040 total. All of our cow shares have shifted up the per lb cost.

Hope that clears things up Wade! And thank you for your curiosity about this matter.

They decreased the lbs. in an ⅛ a share but increased the cost per lb. so the total on the website ended up being less than before.

(I understand what I wrote in the previous sentence but every time I read it I want to engage in self-harm.  Also, I was told there was no math in today’s Dispatch.)

The good news is they told the truth.  The bad news is that they missed a chance to write a great email with the subject line “Math and stuff”.  The other bad news is that they confused the buyer (me) unnecessarily.

Scarcity is a good thing in business but it must be used judiciously because if you screw it up once you can break trust with your people.  I chalk this situation up to bad email writing and still love the company.

“But Wade, a more math inclined person would have picked it up immediately. Scarcity is more important!” Only the math inclined financial copywriters may be saying reading this may be saying.

Sure.  Ok. 

But that is a transactional view of writing.  People who look at copywriting this way think primarily of the human psychology aspect of the game.  Put another way, their writing is a word spell to be cast on a potential customer to get them to act, otherwise known as advertising.

“But it is for their own good if the product is good for them so getting them to act as soon as possible is the moral choice!!!!”

Sure.  Ok. 

But then you are always in a persuasion loop with your people where they must be re-closed every single time with your well-oiled jibber jabber.  There is another way.

Word Leverage

When someone hires me, the first thing I do is get my client to buy into my philosophy of writing fundamentals.

Notice I did not say copywriting.

I have nothing against copywriting but it is a subset of writing.  This means that the core principles of good writing work in the copywriting universe.

(The reverse is not always true OBVIOUSLY as Hamlet did not have "The Weird Trick Ophelia Learned To Take A Bath" in it.)

There are more than a few business owners out there who think that copywriting is some magical art where you can hypnotize people into buying whatever you want.

The purpose of copywriting should not be to cast a word spell on people.  Instead, good copywriting creates the conditions for the right people to buy.

If you don't have the right people reading your copy, the Bard (Big B Shakespeare) himself can't get the sale.

The question is:  How do you get the "right" people to read what you are putting out there?

One way is to downshift to the writing principle of entertainment leverage.  The more entertaining your content is, the more people will read it.  The more people that read it, the more likely the people you want will be reading it: aka the "right" people.

Put another way, you can’t control what one person does (copywriting/word spell) but you can control what a large enough group does (entertainment leverage).

Now, I do use copywriting principles. 

(They are principles for a reason.)

But, I use them to augment my writing.  This approach also creates connection over time because it is not launch or sale based.  It is reps based.  You are constantly putting out content and building the relationship one word at a time.

“But Wade, that sounds like a lot of work.”

Yes, it is.  But are you a writer or not?  Singers don’t complain about getting to sing all the time.

If you want shortcuts then be a marketer who writes.  If you want to practice a craft, be a writer who markets.  Just make sure you are on the path you think you are on.

Both are fine, but only one of them results in having the finest meats in the freezer in your garage. Choose wisely.

An Entry Point To The Path

James Shrimpton, aka @getpaidwrite on X/Twitter, and I are doing another group cohort of The Ghostletter Seminar in early to mid August.  He will teach how to improve your writing and I will teach on my newsletter framework, client acquisition, and how to build a writing as a service business with one offer (top of funnel newsletters for businesses, CEOs, and founders).

This is not the only way to make money as a writer who markets but it is a good start.  I was able to leave my legal career with the principles I teach and I use them in my “writing as a service” business every day.  Spots will be limited so if you want to get on the waitlist you can do that here:  Ghostletter Seminar Waitlist

Either way, challenge yourself to leave the word spells behind.  I can tell you from personal experience it is a glorious thing to be the same person all the time.

More in a bit . . . Wade, The Understory Bard

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