Cow Tools

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“We give up. Being intelligent, hard-working men, we don’t often say this, but your cartoon has proven to be beyond any of our intellectual capabilities… Is there some significance to this cartoon that eludes us, or have we been completely foolish in our attempts to unravel the mystery behind ‘Cow Tools’?”
— Reader, California

Maybe you’ve heard about Cow Tools. It’s a cartoon that appeared in October 1982. It showed a cow, with some strange implements in front of it. Beneath, the caption read, “Cow tools.”

Cow Tools was done by Gary Larson, as part of his The Far Side comic, which was syndicated in newspapers around the U.S.

Larson’s The Far Side was well-known for its strange and even absurd humor. But Cow Tools missed the mark and left a buncha people confused, or worse. Hundreds of them wrote messages like the above to Larson, asking for an explanation and maybe some peace.

“Off days are a part of life,” Larson likes to say, “whether you’re a cartoonist, a neurosurgeon, or an air-traffic controller.”

Here’s something else Gary said:

In the first year or two of drawing The Far Side, I always believed my career hung by a thread. And this time I was convinced it was finally severed. Ironically, when the dust had finally settled and as a result of all the “noise” it made, Cow Tools became more of a boost to The Far Side than anything else.

So in summary, I drew a really weird, obtuse cartoon that no one understood and wasn’t funny and therefore I went on to even greater success and recognition.

There you go. If you’ve been looking for a permission slip to get going with your own bit of daily content — a cartoon, a dirty limerick, a newsletter email — then I don’t think you will find a better one than the story of Cow Tools.

​​The message is clear. When your thing is good, good. And when it’s not good, even better.

By the way, would you like to get the next issue of The Bejako Side? It’s my own daily cartoon strip. Actually, newsletter. Sometimes off, sometimes it hits the mark. If you’re curious, you can sign up for it here.

Sales copy written by hallucinatory voices

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True story:

An otherwise healthy woman, identified only as AB, suddenly started hearing voices in her head.

The year was 1984. The place was England.

The voices reassured AB they were medical professionals trying to help her. They even gave AB some convincing secret info to prove their claims.

But AB concluded she was going insane. She went to a psychiatrist and was prescribed an antipsychotic medication.

The voices stopped. AB, relieved and happy, went on holiday.

​​But then the voices returned. They told her to head home. They sent AB to an unknown address. It turned out to be a medical center specializing in brain scans. The voices told AB to get one of those brain scans on her own noggin.

AB’s doctor was initially reluctant — brain scans are expensive and the woman was crazy — but in the end, AB got her brain scan. And then another.

It turned out that, even though she showed no symptoms, she had a large tumor inside her skull.

One brain surgery later, and the tumor was removed.

After AB regained consciousness following surgery, the voices told her, “We are pleased to have helped you. Goodbye.” AB never heard from them again, and she continued to live a normal and healthy life.

AB’s psychiatrist, who wrote up this report, said that his colleagues fell into two camps:

Group one thought this was proof positive of benevolent telepathic communication.

Group two thought AB was a big ole grifter, and that she was inventing this story as a way of getting free access to the UK’s health services (AB wasn’t born in the UK, but she had lived there for 15 years before this case).

The psychiatrist offered a third explanation. Even though AB wasn’t manifesting any symptoms, it’s likely that the large tumor in her head made her feel somehow off. It’s possible that her unconscious started slyly gathering relevant information and making its own diagnosis. Eventually, this erupted in AB’s head as hallucinations.

I find this third explanation plausible. And I bring it up for two reasons.

First, it meshes well with how I imagine my sense of self. And that’s a flimsy wooden raft, floating on the surface of a dark and deep loch.

Reason two is that this might help reduce your workload.

Because writing is work. But you know what’s not work? Having ideas pop up in your head without any effort.

For example, I sometimes just “visit” what I want to write. I look over the topic and any research I might have collected. I then go do other stuff and allow the monsters under the surface to digest that information.

For me, there’s no work. I don’t have to do it. All I have to do is simply write it down.

Maybe you can try the same. Just put a lump of an idea into your head. Then go about your day. When you start hearing voices, calmly reach for a writing apparatus and take dictation. And when the voices finish, don’t forget to say thank you, and invite them to visit you again.

“Sign up,” a voice in your head is saying right now. “Sign up to this guy’s email newsletter. He has interesting and valuable things to say.”

What’s that? You say you want to sign up to my email newsletter? Well, I don’t usually do this, but all right. Here’s how you can get in.

Turning into the people you hate the most

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Last month, Al Jazeera reported the following curious fact:

“Right-wing Israeli Jews dress as Muslims to enter the Al-Aqsa compound in efforts to change the status quo at Islam’s third holiest site.”

The Al-Aqsa compound, known by Jews as the Temple Mount, has been restricted since the year 2000 in the interest of public safety. Only Muslims are allowed to pray there.

Trouble is, while this 37-acre area is the third holiest site in Islam… it is also the number-one holiest site in Judaism.

Many Jews want the Temple Mount back. They want it back bad.

How bad? From the Al Jazeera article:

“The 26-year-old swaps his orthodox Jewish clothes with a thobe – a traditional garment also called a dishdasha or jalabiya, worn by many Palestinian men, and his black kippa for a white prayer skullcap. Peering into a mirror, he slicks his long, dark sidelocks back with hair gel to hide them under the cap, mumbling a few Arabic words to refresh his memory.”

It’s not just comsetic changes, either. The article says that the Jews sneaking into the Temple mount will take Arabic classes and study the Quran to be able to get past the security guards screening any non-Muslims from the Al-Aqsa compound.

So what?

So maybe you’ll say I’m taking an unwarranted leap here, but this brings to mind a quote from Eric Hoffer’s True Believer:

“Though hatred is a convenient instrument for mobilizing a community for defense, it does not, in the long run, come cheap. We pay for it by losing all or many of the values we have set out to defend.”

Hoffer’s argument is that in fighting the enemy, you often become the enemy.

I don’t know how universally true this is. Maybe it just sounds good because it’s shocking and counterintuitive. But I feel there’s definitely a kernel of truth there.

In any case, it brought something else to mind also. It’s the most valuable thing I got from Ben Settle’s Villains book (actually from Ben’s promo emails for that book):

Villains are proactive, and heroes are reactive.

In other words, Villains make the heroes and authorities react to them, while heroes wait for something to happen, always chasing after the fires set by the Villain to distract them as they carry out their machinations. (And notice when a hero does try to be proactive, you end up with Ultron…) If you look around at the most successful people in business and life, they may not be evil, but they are Villains, and do the same thing.

You might not like the idea of being evil… of being anybody’s enemy… of being a villain.

Fine.

Just remember Eric Hoffer and Ben Settle above. And at the very least, make sure you’re not cast as a hero.

​​Instead, set your own agenda, and then follow it.

Otherwise, you’ll end up playing catchup to other, more proactive people around you… and the shame of it is, in time, you will end up dressing, acting, and even thinking in ways that you hate the most.

On an unrelated note:

I have an email newsletter where I often write about persuasion, marketing, and psychology ideas. If that kind of thing fills you with religious fervor or at least some curiosity, you can sign up to my newsletter here.

Unique, slightly gross positioning through “whale fall”

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A whale is denser than water. When a whale dies and stops breathing, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean. It then forms something called a “whale fall.”

A bunch of shrimps, crabs, and sea cucumbers suddenly appear. Some of these creatures specialize in eating the whale’s soft tissues. Some suck the fat out of whale bones. Others colonize the whale skeleton. In short, a whale fall creates a whole new ecosystem, which can last for many years.

Do you think this could be a way to create a business?

I once read Craigslist was basically an Internet whale that sank to the bottom. When it did, a bunch of creatures crawled out and started feeding off its carcass. So Airbnb scarfed up the vacation rentals. Indeed.com sucked in the job listings. Tinder ate the “casual encounters” section.

Maybe that’s a way for you too to start a business right now. Today’s whales like Facebook and Google are becoming less popular. Many of their services don’t work well. Maybe you can peel one off, and simply do a better job.

Or if you want personal positioning, why not turn your hungry eyes toward a whale influencer?

Guys like Jay Abraham or Frank Kern have been around for a long time. Over the years, they’ve had lots of different angles and ideas. They can’t focus on all of them. So you could pick one that appeals to your appetites, chomp into it, and make it into a steady stream of nourishment.

Maybe this whale fall discussion is getting a little gross. But the basic idea is sound. Few things are new in the world. We mostly take what came before us, and recycle it to new purposes. So go forth and prosper, you ambitious sea cucumber, you.

Are you still here? I don’t have any more whale facts for today. But if you want more marketing and business ideas, click here and subscribe to my daily newsletter.

\/\

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Today I’d like to tell you about the time I forgot how to write emails.

In the interest of keeping this story under 130,000 words, let me just give you four quick snapshots:

1. Friday, Oct 22 2021. I’m walking along the sea in Opatija, Croatia when I have a bright idea.

All these people have been telling me I’m so good at writing emails. So why don’t I finally offer a training on how I write emails?

​​Yes! I take out my phone, and write down a bunch of ideas for the offer, the sales page, and the actual content of the training.

Later that evening, I send out an email about it. Then I watch in wonder as thousands of dollars start to pour into my PayPal account from people who trust me enough to preorder this training.

2. Two weeks later. I’m sitting at my desk, head in hands, a pained grimace on my face. I’m staring at the pages of notes I’ve taken in preparation for the training, which is now called Influential Emails. But all I see are a bunch of half-baked ideas and vague fluff.

I start to despair that I will be able to give people their money’s worth. And the deadline is nearing.

3. Thursday, Dec 2, 2021. The Influential Emails training has completed. It consisted of me talking about a bunch of writing techniques, which I’d unconsciously used for a long time, but which I’ve now identified and given names to, such as stacking… layering… S. Morgenstern transitions… and bait-and-switch email closes.

According to the feedback I get, people loved the training. I’m amazed and very happy with how well it went.

4. The gray, rainy weeks and months that follow. Real despair sets in. After the Influential Emails training, whenever I sit down to write one of my daily emails, I am filled with confusion and doubt. Instead of writing spontaneously and enjoying the process, I hesitate.

“Should I stack something here? Or add another layer to the email? Maybe I could take out this whole section and replace it with an S. Morgenstern transition?”

Each email takes forever to write. I hate the process. And from what I can see in terms of engagement, people don’t love reading the results either.

I curse that Influential Emails training that I gave. “Why is fate like this?” I ask out loud, but nobody answers. I wish I could forget the techniques I have identified so I could enjoy writing my email newsletter again.

Let’s cut the story off at this point so I can tell what I just tried to show you. It’s the last of the six canonical story formats.

This one is called the Oedipus format. It goes like this: \/\. ​​Start high… go low… then go back up… and finally end down, way down.

And now that I’ve told you that… and now that you know about all six canonical story formats… maybe it’s best if you forget all about it.

Because these story formulas are fun to learn about. But they are not good to consciously follow. At least in my experience.

From what I’ve seen and tried myself, when you consciously write according to a formula or recipe, something feels wooden and off. And people can sense it, particularly in an intimate setting like daily emails.

Besides, there are a lot of fun stories that work well as anecdotes, which don’t fit any of these canonical structures, not unless you really give it some brutal massage.

So if you wanna have fun writing, and produce something that’s fun to read… then forget about the canonical story structure formats. Let them sink into the darkness of your subconscious, and let them guide you from there.

But if you really insist on conscious guidelines to help you write better stories, then remember the higher-level points I brought up over the past few days.

Be mindful of where you start your story… where you end it… what details you choose to include, what you omit… and of course, make sure there is drama, conflict, contrast, twists and turns of some kind.

Do this, and you won’t need an exact recipe. Your brain will surprise you with how creative you can be. And you’ll even enjoy the process.

And finally:

For more structural advice you can enjoy and then forget, sign up to my email newsletter.

/\/

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A poor, motherless, neglected boy is sent off to wizard school, where he discovers himself to be this generation’s—

“Oh what the hell is this?” I said to myself. “What did I get myself into? Is this some cheap Harry Potter imitation?”

It turns out no.

Late last year, I took one of my slow and creeping steps through my ever-expanding to-read list. I picked up a copy of A Wizard of Earthsea.

It turns out the book was published in 1968, 30 years before the first Harry Potter book.

The story might be familiar to you — and not just because of the Harry Potter similarities. It goes like this:

1. A poor, motherless, neglected boy is sent off to wizard school.

2. There he discovers that he has immense wizarding talent, and the promise to become his generation’s greatest and most powerful wizard. As a result, his hubris and his recklessness grow.

3. While abusing his still uncontrolled wizard skills, the boy lets an evil shadow into the world. The shadow almost kills the boy and leaves him scarred for life. The boy runs around the world, trying to escape the shadow and the evil that it brings.

4. Finally, the boy gives up running. He turns to face the shadow. He confronts it. And in so doing, he confronts his own dark side, and sets the world aright again.

The reason why this story might sound familiar to you is because it’s basically every story ever told. Well, at least it’s every story ever told in every fairy tale, every Disney movie, every Marvel movie, every Bruce Willis movie, every rags-to-riches sales letter, and every “horror advertorial” I have ever written.

The story template is called “Cinderella.” Maybe you can see why. It goes down-up-down-up and can be represented graphically by /\/.

Over the past few days, I’ve given you a lot of these canonical story templates. They started out simple — just a single / or \. Then two. Now three.

The bigger point is that in any good story, you gotta have contrast, emotional manipulation, surprise, twists.

In fact, that’s why you will often not see the typical rags-to-riches story, as I described it in my first email in this series. The contrast and drama in / is just not enough. Things are bad, then they get better, and then they get best. People feel let down. Where’s the conflict? It sounds too easy and too predictable.

You don’t want predictable. So give people twists and drama.

Which is a lesson I should take myself — this mini-series on canonical story types is starting to get predictable. So I will end it tomorrow, with the sixth and final canonical format for storytelling… along with a bit of storytelling advice that you might find to be a surprising twist.

If you want to read that when it comes out, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

/\

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I was tearing my hair out and gnashing my teeth and shaking my fists at the sky.

​​Ok, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic but things were really bad. I spent a long time trying to come up with an example to illustrate the “Icarus” story template — and I still had nothing.

And then I had this brilliant idea. I would write about pickup artist Tom Torero.

​​Tom went from a shy, nerdy, anxiety-ridden Oxford student… to a professional pickup artist, living a life of confidence, adventure, and freedom… to finally being doxxed, deplatformed, and driven to suicide this past December.

​​Pretty Icarusy, right?

But here’s the thing. Maybe you notice I am sending this email out later than usual.

​​That’s because I spent an unholy amount of time trying to tell Tom’s story. But I couldn’t do it right, not without running into pages of text, completely obscuring the Icarus structure I was supposed to be illustrating.

​​After hours of fruitless work, crushed and defeated, I raised my fist up at the sky one last time, shook it weakly, and then gave up. All I can do now is report on my failure to write today’s email.

So remember there is such a thing as a canonical Icarus storyline. It can be represented graphically by /\.

And also, remember to be mindful of what details you include in your stories.

There are details — like the oversized brown corduroy pants that Tom used to wear, which emphasized his girlish hips and his narrow shoulders — that can give your story sticking power.

But there also details — like the many too many details I couldn’t keep myself from including today — that just sidetrack your story.

So learn from my mistake. Be conscious and continent with your detail sharing. Your stories will be more impactful for it — and you will be done writing much sooner.

If you want more advice on storytelling, including about the most powerful story template to use in online selling, you will want to read my email tomorrow. You can sign up to get it here.

\/

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In May 2014, I quit my secure, full-time IT office job and I started spending my mornings writing stock analysis articles for the Motley Fool.

It was great. I was working from home. I was working for myself and doing work I didn’t dislike. I could organize my own schedule, my rates were quickly increasing, and the future was looking bright.

Then in July 2014, just a couple months after my new barefoot writer lifestyle had begun, I got the following email from the managing editor at the Motley Fool:

it is disheartening for us to say that effective today, we will not be able to continue our writing relationship and further this mission together.

This is no fault of your own; it is the simple result of our business model and the corresponding structure we’ve built. It has been our pleasure to work with you, and we hope you consider yourself a Fool for life. We certainly do.

“Well, shit,” I said to myself. “Fool for life, indeed.”

I wrote to the MF editor I had been in touch with. I asked if there was any chance I might be kept on — while hundreds of other writers were being let go. I never heard back.

I wrote to my friend, who was also writing for the MF and who got me this gig. “It sucks,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s not looking good.”

So there I was. I had no job, and I needed money. I had rent to pay, food to buy, plus I had a cat at the time, and maintaining those things in life is not exactly free.

What to do?

Getting an office job again was inconceivable. For one thing, I wasn’t sure anyone would hire me — certainly not the people at my old job. For another, it was just a matter of pride, plus the fact I had always been a bad match for office work.

I looked at my arm, and briefly considered sawing it off. But I soon realized that’s another story, although with the same structure. In any case, losing the arm wouldn’t help.

So I took a deep breath. I gritted my teeth. And I did what I always do:

I made a list of ideas. In this case the list was titled, “10 ways I could make money by the end of this month.”

#6 on that list, between #5 (stealing) and #7 (begging) was “Write and publish some Kindle books.” And that was my start as a Kindle publishing magnate.

I’ve written about this history before. But the gist of it is:

That first month, I wrote three short Kindle ebooks, on three related niche topics. The total word count was around 15,000, and 10,000 of that was reused among the three ebooks.

I sold $285 worth of books in that first month.

The next month, I wrote 3 new tiny books. And then some more. Within a few months, I had a stable of a dozen titles, and I was making a steady income that was getting close to what i was making at my IT job just a few months earlier.

Ta-da! Who needs the Motley Fool? Who needs a stupid office job?

​​I had a found a way to survive and even thrive, working for myself, on my own terms, with “up” as the only direction to go.

​​The end. Well, almost.

Yesterday, I told you about the riches-to-rags story type, which can be represented by \. The day before that, I told you about rags-to-riches, represented by /.

Combine those two, and you get \/ aka the “man in a hole” story type.

“Man in a hole” is a common format for complete stories — like that of Aron Ralston, who sawed off his own arm to survive after being pinned down by a boulder.

“Man in a hole” is an even more common plot element of bigger stories — think James Bond losing $14.5 million in a poker game in Montenegro, because he’s been suckered by the fake tell of the main villain.

Which brings up the following storywriting rule:

It matters where you cut you your story off.

For example, after those first few glorious months, my Kindle sales cratered. It turns out I wasn’t going to make a living selling $2.99 ebooks. So I got into writing sales copy for other business… then a few years later, I got back into Kindle publishing but with a different approach… then I met this guy who told me about crypto and we went to London for a conference…

You know what that’s called? That’s called rambling. It’s definitely not called storytelling.

Human brains want neatly tied-up episodes, and they want the satisfaction of having story elements fit and click.

One powerful mechanism you have to make things fit and click is the stop button. So think of the effect you want to have, and use that to decide where to cut your story off. Speaking of which—

Sign up to my email newsletter. That’s been the point of this entire email. To show you I have something interesting to say about writing and persuasion more broadly, and that I can even be entertaining about it. Are you convinced? If you are, here’s where to go.

\

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Boris raised the famous golden trophy over his head, and the crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

​​They had never seen anything like this before.

Boris had become the youngest man ever to win the most prestigious tournament in tennis, Wimbledon.

For 17-year-old Boris, the acclaim was nice. The $169,000 prize winnings — equivalent to $446,000 in today’s money — didn’t hurt either.

Throughout the rest of his tennis career, Boris Becker won 48 more tournaments, including 2 more Wimbledon titles.

​​When he retired from tennis, in 1999, his entire career winnings totaled over $25 million. Combined with various endorsements and sinecures, his total earnings came to over $50 million.

But it’s not hard to squander a fortune. And over the years, Becker has worked hard to squander his.

Luxury apartments around the world… expensive divorces… a child begotten in the broom closet of a Nobu in London… by the mid 2010s, Becker’s resources were strained. And his debts were mounting.

Finally, it became too much. In 2017, Boris Becker filed for bankruptcy.

The tennis world, and the world at large, shrugged. It’s hardly a new story — a talented star makes millions in his youth, then squanders it all in middle age. Besides, bankruptcy is not the end of the world. People routinely recover from it.

But then just this past week, things got a lot worse for Becker.

It turns out he has been under criminal investigation for failing to report some of his assets during the bankruptcy hearings.

So now, not only will those assets be seized, but there’s a very real possibility that on Apr 29, Becker will be sentenced to jail time for his bankruptcy jiggery-pokery.

​​He might have to spend the next 7 years in prison… pushing the library cart around, fighting off advances in the shower, and trying to get used to the gruel — no Nobu behind bars!

Yesterday, I told you about the first canonical story type, rags-to-riches, which can be represented by /.

Today is about the second canonical story type, riches-to-rags, \. There are plenty of illustrations of this format. But I had been reading about Becker only a few days ago, and so he popped into mind.

And here’s an extra tip if you are massaging a story, whether riches-to-rags or any other type:

It matters big time where you start your story. Not just for sucking the reader in and getting his attention. But for the total effect.

For example, I could have started today by talking about the struggles Becker experienced only weeks before his first Wimbledon. Or I could have talked about the sacrifices he made as a kid.

Those might be valid places to start — if I were after a different effect.

​​But if the point of my story is to get you depressed and scared about losing everything you’ve got — after all, if it can happen to somebody as talented and blessed as Becker, why not you — then the best place to start is the highest, most pure moment of his career and life.

“Yeah about that,” I hear you saying, “this riches-to-rags structure is kind of depressing. It’s also kind of preachy. Who wants to read this kind of thing? I feel like you’ll just turn people off.”

Fair concern. But the fact is, some of the most influential and powerful stories in human history basically follow this basic riches-to-rags structure.

Adam and Eve had it really good in the Garden of Eden and then—

King Lear had three fair daughters who loved him and then—

And an Ikea lamp had a happy home and—

​Well, maybe you don’t know the most famous Ikea commercial ever.

​​It was directed by Spike Jonze. And people still talk about it today, 20 years after it came out.

​​You can find it below. And if you watch it, you will find a second crucial thing you need to do to make your riches-to-rags story work well.

​​In fact, it’s something I screwed up with my story of Boris Becker above.

​​It’s too late for me and my story in this email. But it’s not too late for you. Watch below and learn. Oh, and sign up for my email newsletter — I will write more about story types tomorrow.

/

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Today I’d like to tell you the story of a boy who became known as Thee-Thee.

When Thee-Thee was just ten years old, his father died. The family wasn’t rich before, but now they were poor. Thee-Thee had to go to work — every day, before and after school, weekends too — to help support himself and the rest of his family.

Thee-Thee kept working. And he kept studying. He finished high school and even some college.

But his first job out of college paid so poorly that Thee-Thee couldn’t afford a meal every night. His budget could just support the room he was renting, occasional laundry service for his two shirts, and dinners only five nights a week. The other two nights he had to go to bed hungry.

But Thee-Thee didn’t stop, and he didn’t quit. He kept working hard and being honest. He made his employers more and more money. And as a result, he himself progressed, further and further.

Thee-Thee started getting paid higher wages. Then he got commissions on the money he was earning his employers. Then he was given shares of businesses he helped grow.

In time, Thee-Thee became rich. He bought an ocean-going yacht. He lived in a palatial house surrounded by flower gardens admired across the state. He died a multimillionaire, back when that was the equivalent of what today is a billionaire.

You might recognize who I’m talking about. It’s a famous marketer and copywriter. Perhaps the most famous and influential of them all:

Claude C. Hopkins.

(Thee-Thee? Hopkins had a lisp. When he introduced himself — C.C. — it came out as Thee-Thee. This became his nickname around the Lord & Thomas offices — behind his back of course.)

I’m telling you the story of Thee-Thee Hopkins for two reasons:

First, because it shows what you can earn — “at a typewriter which you operate yourself, without a clerk or secretary, and much of it earned in the woods” — if you get really dedicated to this marketing and copywriting thing.

The second reason is that Hopkins’s life is a perfect illustration of a rags-to-riches story.

Back in 1995, scientists from the University of Vermont looked at 1,700 popular stories, spanning all eras. The scientists used some fancy computering to analyze all these stories.

The upshot was they found these 1,700 stories all boiled down to just six fundamental structures.

The first of these can be concisely represented by the character /. It is the rags-to-riches story, which I just told you about.

If you’re curious about the other five fundamental story structures, you can go look them up for yourself. Or you can just sign up to my email newsletter.

Because over the coming five days, I will illustrate each of these five other canonical story types in an email. And will tell you some extra storytelling tricks and ideas that can help you also.

So if, like me, you get off on the hidden structure behind everyday things, my next few emails might be interesting for you. And who knows, they might even be profitable for you. As Thee-Thee Hopkins almost said once:

“Our success depends on pleasing people. By an inexpensive test we can learn if we please them or not. And if some guys from the University of Vermont have already done that testing for us, all the better. We can guide our endeavors accordingly.”

In case you want to read those emails when I send them out, here’s how to get a spot on my newsletter.