World Building

Impoverished wizard tries to sell me, a hobbit, on playing a game

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During the last crescent moon, before I had set out from the Shire on my great quest to the Western Isles, I, Bejako Baggins, was packing my traveling trunk full of cheeses and dried meats, when when an impoverished-looking wizard burst through the doors of my hobbit-hole and held his arms out as if to beg me to hear him out.

I stared at this wizard, both because he had just barged into my hobbit hole, and because he seemed somehow familiar.

And sure enough, I knew him.

This wizard had already burst through my doors once. But back then, his peak hat wasn’t squashed like now, and his cloak wasn’t torn at the sleeve.

Back then, this wizard offered me advice about my circular letter. I had even written about him before, in a letter that became one of my most popular of the past year.

Now the wizard was back, just looking a little beat up. He stood by the door, his arms still up in the air. And he spoke in a deep but cracking voice:

===

Bejako Baggins!

I have a proposition for you mate

Don’t turn me to a troll again in one of your circular letters this time!

What do you think of framing the writing of magical sales spells as a Game then creating a ware to teach its principles and rules.

Basically something in those lines:

“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”

===

The impoverished wizard went on to say how he even had a good name in mind for such a ware. “Let me know what you think mate,” he said.​
​​​
I frowned. I genuinely couldn’t tell if this impoverished wizard was trying to ask me an honest question, or if he was in fact using whatever wizarding skill he had to turn himself into a troll.

In any case, I stepped away from my trunk, and I escorted him to the door.

I told him his idea is marvelous.

We hobbits love games, and we also love learning magical spells.

That’s why, many years ago, I did exactly what he is suggesting now.

I read through many ancient books. I collected hundreds of powerful written sales spells in a great leather-bound tome. I called this tome Copy Riddles. And I turned it into a Game.

I was even fortunate enough to get one of the great wizards of this age, Daniel Throssell the White, to say that Copy Riddles “the most brilliant course concept I’ve ever seen… literally a gamified series of sequential puzzles that teaches you written sales magic.”

If you’d like to find out more about this Game that teaches you how to turn plain written words into magical spells:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Slutty email

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Yes, the subject line of today’s email includes the word “slutty.”

If that didn’t outrage or shock you so much that you marked this email as spam already, then read on, because I will tell you how to turn any shock and outrage you did feel into profits, regardless of what you sell.

I’m making my way through a backlog of old New Yorker magazines that have gathered under my living-room coffee table.

​​The one I’m currently on is from April 2023. The main article is about Pinky Cole, the founder of a fast-food chain called Slutty Vegan.

The Slutty Vegan menu features no-meat burgers such as Fussy Hussy ($13) and Super Slut ($15).

When customers step forward to order, a Slutty employee announces through a microphone, “It’s Slutty Saturday!”

​​If it’s the customer’s first time at the restaurant, and they admit it, then the employee adds over the microphone, “We have a virgin slut!”

There’s a bouncer at the Slutty Vegan entrance, and a DJ plays Drake and Aaliyah inside. On the wall, there’s a bright sign that reads, “EAT PLANTS YA SLUT.”

As one investor in the company said, “It’s this very unusual juxtaposition of veganism, which is often connected to what I’m not allowed to eat, with sluttiness, which is all the things that I’m gonna do even though I’m not allowed to.”

And it’s resonating.

Most people who go to Slutty Vegan are not going because they are militant vegans. In fact, most are not vegans at all, or really going for the food.

Slutty hamburgers seem to be middling — “better than American McDonalds,” as one interviewed customer put it. Or in the words of the author of the New Yorker article, who was trying to quit eating factory-farmed meat when he first went to Slutty Vegan, “Like most people, though, I went back in equal parts for the vegan food and for the vibes.”

You might wonder whether it’s viable long-term business strategy to sell people middling food while calling them sluts.

As of that April 2023 article, Slutty Vegan had 10 locations around Georgia, Alabama, and New York. It’s had investment that valued the company at $100 million (the first location opened in 2018).

Slutty Vegan has since opened a new location in Texas and is opening a new one in Baltimore, one of my adopted home towns.

Pinky Cole, the founder, is also launching an entrepreneurial reality show, and Slutty Vegan has had partnerships with designer Steve Madden and was planning one with Lululemon.

The point I’m trying to illustrate is the power of creating a sense of place around whatever and wherever you sell, whether that’s a slutty drive-through or your own slutty website.

Of course, you don’t have to get all crass and sexual with your sense of place, like Slutty Vegan does.

This idea of sense of place has long been practiced to perfection by another restaurant franchise, Unslutty Starbucks.

As the Starbucks website says (under the “Stories” subdomain), Starbucks is the Third Place, a place of warmth and connection and belonging, a place apart from work (presumably, where coldness and alienation reign) and home (filled with mess and stress).

And if you need reminding how valuable that Third Place concept has been, Starbucks now has 35,000 locations worldwide and is valued at $104 billion.

So if you felt any shock or outrage at today’s “slutty email” subject line, then good.

It will help you remember today’s email, and apply, in your own business, the lesson of creating a sense of place — a gift-box-and-bow around whatever you sell, which elevates your product from a commodity to a price-elastic emotional experience.

You might wonder what kind of sense of place I aim for with my emails, and with the products that I sell.

Or maybe you don’t wonder. Maybe it’s obvious. Because I’ve written emails about it before, and I’ve even created paid courses about my chosen “sense of place” in the past.

But if would like to hear me spell it out, you can do do so on the free training putting on later this month.

The training will cover how I write and profit from this newsletter that you are reading now.

It will happen on Monday January 22, 2024 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. But you will have to be signed up to my list first. Click here to do so.

The folly of “show don’t tell”

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I wrote yesterday about worldbuilding. Well, here’s an anecdote that built a world:

Some time in the 1960s, artist Norman Daly created a tall and narrow sculpture. Daly taught at Cornell University, and so he placed his sculpture, without any fanfare, in a faculty dining room.

Daly expected his tall and narrow sculpture would spark commentary. Provoke emotions. Engage viewers.

But the sculpture didn’t spark any commentary or provoke any emotions. As for engagement, it did prove to be mildly engaging:

Faculty members interpreted it as a hat rack and treated it as such. Hats hung, they didn’t give Daly’s sculpture another look.

It was then that Daly realized he has to create a whole lot of supporting documentation to make sure his art is interpreted as art.

Point being:​​

It’s popular to say, “Show, don’t tell.” But that’s profoundly foolish.

You have to tell ’em, and tell ’em again, and tell ’em still some more. At least if you are after a given outcome — provocation, status, sales — and if you’re not okay with spending time and effort to create something that can then be dismissed as a hat rack.

I said the story above built a world. And I ain’t foolin’.

The story above was one of a few formative experiences that led Daly to create a whole new, made-up, Iron-Age civilization, including physical objects, works of visual art, music, as well as volumes of scholarship, commentary, maps, and even art catalogues for the whole thing.

Daly exhibited all this in art museums. People came, flipped through the art catalogue, nodded at the curious artifacts, and walked away feeling enlightened about a milennia-old civilization that never existed.

If you want to find out more about Daly’s project, you can do so at the link below.

It can interesting on its own merits.

It can prove useful if you are after crafting your own worlds.

And if you read just the section describing the other formative experience that led Daly to do create all this, it might be valuable if you yourself write or create content.

In case you’re interested, here’s the link:

https://theconversation.com/50-years-ago-an-artist-convincingly-exhibited-a-fake-iron-age-civilization-with-invented-maps-music-and-artifacts-189026

A primer on worldbuilding

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Thanks to my space-age “Insight Exposed” system, which allows me to retrieve interesting and valuable information that I came across hundreds or thousands of Earth-days ago, I was reminded that in November 2022 I came across a unique, rare, and precious document.

This document shoulda been titled,

“A Primer On Worldbuilding For Content Creators With Ambitions Of Creating Multi-Billion Idea Franchises”

As it is, this document has no title. It jumps straight into the meat of it.

You can find a way to get at this document below. But first, a word of warning:

This document is written in what is known as “experiential learning” style.

In other words, this document won’t spell out ABC how to build a world of your own.

Rather than telling you, it will show you.

That means you will have to put on a little light Marvin Gaye, and as Marvin builds up in the background, you will have to look at this document and ask yourself, “What’s going on? What is really happening here?”

I did this exercise myself just now.

​​I took about a page-and-a-half of notes from this document on how to build an effective and engaging world.

For example, based on the first sentence of the third paragraph on page 12 of this document, I wrote down to myself:

“Keep the setting utilitarian and unobstructive, except for a few key details to signal novelty.”

I suggest you do the same. That is, if you can see the value in building your own expansive, coherent, and exciting world.

If you want this unique, rare, and precious document, as a first step, you’ll have to get onto my email list. Click here to do so. And when you get my welcome email, reply to it and say, “I want the primer on worldbuilding please.”

Even numbers are for the dead

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Last week I was visiting my home town of Zagreb, Croatia. It was my mom’s birthday. I went into a flower shop to buy her some flowers.

I pointed at some sunset-pink roses. “Six of those,” I said to the flower shop girl.

She shrugged as if to apologize. “We really only sell them in odd numbers. So five… or seven…”

I stared hard at her for a moment. “Fine,” I said. “Then give me seven.”

While she was tying the roses up I was pacing the flower shop and inspecting the orchids and potted eucalyptus plants. My irritation was growing.

“And can you tell me please,” I finally blurted out, “why exactly you only sell them in odd numbers?”

The flower shop girl looked at me patiently, the way she might with a child. “Because even numbers are for the dead. Odd numbers are for living people.”

I was taken aback. But I’ve double-checked since. The girl is right.

At least in this part of the world — Croatia, Serbia, and possibly a dozen other tiny countries with a shared cultural history — you buy an even number of flowers when you go to a wake or a funeral. You buy an odd number for weddings, graduations, birthdays, etc.

Why? Why not the other way around?

Who knows. Perhaps some practical reason. Perhaps symbolic. Or perhaps entirely arbitrary, set by some highly OCD person once upon a time who managed to enforce his will on the rest of us.

One thing’s for sure:

People love these kinds of rules. They live by them. It gives structure and coherence and even meaning to an otherwise chaotic existence.

People love these rules so much they will seek them out if they are missing.

My friend Sam sent me an article last week about Brandon Sanderson, one of the best-selling fantasy authors in the world.

Sanderson sold $55 million worth of books last year. But unlike with J.K. Rowling or George R.R. Martin, practically nobody, outside Sanderson’s sizeable audience, knows who he is.

The reason, as the article will tell you, is that Sanderson is not a very good writer.

​​So why the devoted following of millions of people?

One reason, according to Sanderson’s fans, is his characters. And then, from the article:

“The second answer to Why Sanderson? is his worlds. This is probably what he’s best known for. Worldbuilding, as it’s called. Sanderson dreams up far-off lands—sometimes cities, sometimes whole planets, with rules and systems and politics—and then he populates them with characters whose fates are also the worlds’.”

So there you go:

People are shopping for worlds to inhabit.

They might enjoy yours, and even pay to be inside.

In order for that to happen, one thing you will need is a strong and elaborate set of rules.

For example:

One of the rules of my world, as you might know, is that deadlines are deadly.

You don’t want to miss them.

Because I don’t extend them and I don’t make exceptions to them.

My deadlines also come exactly at 8:31pm CET.

Such as my deadline tomorrow, Tuesday, at 8:31pm CET, to get my MVE course before the price goes up threefold, from $100 to $297. That’s less than 24 hours from now. In case you don’t want to be struck down by the law:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Ben Settle’s secret three-act content strategy revealed

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A few days ago, I sent out an email with the subject line:

“Ben Settle emergency emails in support of Copy Riddles?”

That email officially had the highest open rate of all my emails over the past 10 days. I don’t know if that was because of the subject line. But for my own reasons, I will run with it and pander to your apparent tastes, by telling you a three-act Ben Settle story:

Back in 2016, Ben released a tiny Kindle book titled, Persuasion Secrets of the World’s Most Charismatic & Influential Villains.

The villains book turned into a sleeper hit.

As I write this, the book has 286 Amazon reviews and an Amazon ranking of 42,849. From what I know of Amazon publishing, that means the book continues to sell 4-5 copies every day, six years after its publication.

I reckon the villains book didn’t make Ben a tremendous pile of cash, not directly, not compared to other parts of his business.

But it almost certainly got him a large and constant new source of highly qualified leads. And it certainly gave him positioning and exposure in the direct response industry.

For a while, everyone associated Ben with the villains concept. It truly made him unique. And this probably led many more highly qualified leads trudging towards his hut, banging on his door, and demanding to be sold something.

So what did Ben do next? Perhaps you know act two. In 2018, he released Persuasion Villains, volume II.

Act three came in 2019. That’s when Ben released Persuasion Villains, volume III.

Which brings us to the present day and a tweet I came across a few days ago.

The tweet was written by one Matt Koval, who was apparently a big face at YouTube for over 10 years. Koval was the one whipping those early and confused YouTubers into the all-consuming media machine that YouTube has become.

Anways, Koval was tweeting in response to some YouTube influencer’s new video, and he wrote:

“One of the earliest pieces of content strategy advice we used to give at @YouTube was to try and turn your viral hit into a whole series – and it’s great to see @RyanTrahan do just that. It’s a TON of work, but no doubt a huge boost to his channel.”

But really, what is Koval’s “series” idea more than the standard DR practice of testing out different sales appeals in your ads? And then doubling down on the winners, for as long as they continue to pay for themselves?

As far as I know, Ben isn’t releasing any more villains books. This probably means he has milked this franchise to the point where putting out a new villains book isn’t worth the opportunity cost.

But maybe you’ve had a hit idea that you haven’t milked dry yet. Whether in your YouTube videos, Kindle books, or email subject lines. So rather than trying to be creative and have an all-new hit, turn your proven hit into a series.

In other news:

As I write this, I only have one Kindle book out there, my 10 Commandments book.

The 10 Commandments book hasn’t been as much of a success as Ben’s original villains book. But it has sold a lot of copies, and it continues to make sales. More importantly, it continues to drive highly qualified prospects to my email list.

And who knows? Maybe I will take my own advice.

Maybe I will lumber up the mountain, get a few more stone tablets of copywriting commandments, and write a second installment in this series.

Meanwhile, if you still haven’t read volume I, here’s where you can get your very own copy:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Reddit vs. Hacker News: How to get better customers, clients, readers, and business partners

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Paul Graham is a computer programmer, writer, and early-stage tech investor.

His startup fund, Y Combinator, helped start a bunch of famous companies, like Airbnb, Dropbox, DoorDash, Instacart, Zapier, and Reddit.

The total valuation of all Y Combinator companies is now over $400 billion. Y Combinator owns 7% of that, or roughly $30 billion.

Really, the only reason I know this is because I’ve been a regular reader of Hacker News for the past 14+ years.

Hacker News is a news board. Graham started it in 2006 as a way of sharing interesting ideas and getting connected to tech talent. Today, Hacker News gets over five million readers each month.

I’ve been thinking about creating something similar, just with a different focus. So I was curious to read Graham’s 2009 article, What I Learned From Hacker News, about the early experience of creating and running HN.

This bit stood out to me:

But what happened to Reddit won’t inevitably happen to HN. There are several local maxima. There can be places that are free for alls and places that are more thoughtful, just as there are in the real world; and people will behave differently depending on which they’re in, just as they do in the real world.

I’ve observed this in the wild. I’ve seen people cross-posting on Reddit and Hacker News who actually took the trouble to write two versions, a flame for Reddit and a more subdued version for HN.

Maybe this only stood out to me because something I’ve thought and written about before.

Your content, marketing, and offers select a certain type of audience. That much is obvious.

What is less obvious is that your content and marketing and offers also change people. Because none of us is only one type of person all the time.

So if you want an audience that’s smarter, that’s more respectful, that’s more thoughtful and less scatterbrained, then make it clear that’s what you expect. And lead by example.

This can be transformative in your everyday dealings with clients, customers, readers, and prospects. And who knows. It might even become the foundation on which you build a future online community.

If you found this interesting, you might like my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

Gary Halbert’s ghost determines the hand-in-cap odds

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In my email yesterday, I offered you a wager if you wrote in and picked the winner of this year’s SuperBowl.

The betting office is closed now.

But if you wrote me in the past 24 hours, and if it turns out you picked right, you’ll get my upcoming Copy Zone offer for 50% off.

As things stand right now, the Bengals are the clear favorite, with 17/10 odds. That’s according to all the picks I got from people on my list.

But maybe it’s not yet time to run out and put real money down on Cincinnati. Because the most persuasive handicapping analysis I got came from copywriter Thomas Crouse:

“I know nothing about football, so I will bet on the Bengals purely on the basis that tigers are superior to sheep.”

This simple comment set me off on a search for the strange origins of the word handicap.

It turns out it comes from an old trading and betting game, called hand-in-cap. Here’s how that worked:

Imagine for example, that you and I each own a football helmet. You own a Bengals helmet… I own a Rams helmet.

We want to trade. But you think your Bengals helmet is worth more.

“Come on,” you say, “look at those amazing stripes!”

Fine. But how much more?

“Let’s not haggle like lettuce-peddlers. We’ll get somebody else to decide.”

So you get out your A-List Copywriters-edition Ouija board. And, holding hands, together we summon the great ghost of Gary Halbert.

Gary will be the umpire who determines the odds — how much more the Bengals helmet is worth than the Rams.

In a flash of light, Gary appears from the after-world, wearing flip flops, a torn t-shirt, and a red baseball cap that says, “CLIENTS SUCK.”

He looks over your football helmet and mine. He strokes his beard.

“It’s a damn tough one,” Gary says. “I was born and bred in Ohio. And so I have a soft spot, I mean real soft, quite mushy, for the Bengals. But then I made Los Angeles my adopted home. And I gotta say the Rams are looking good this year.”

He thinks some more.

“So let’s just say the odds are $70. The Bengals helmet is worth the Rams helmet plus seventy bucks.”

At this point, Gary takes off his CLIENTS SUCK cap.

You and I each put $5 of forfeit money in the cap. And we each also put our right hand in the cap.

The rules are this:

If you agree with the odds, you pull out your hand from the cap, palm open.

If you don’t agree with the odds, you pull out your hand from the cap, with a closed fist.

The same for me. Result:

If we we both agree, the trade happens. We exchange football helmets. I give you an extra $70. Gary pockets the $10 worth of forfeit money as reward for umpiring, and he flies off to copywriter heaven.

If we both disagree, the trade doesn’t happen. And Gary still pockets the $10 worth of forfeit money.

And finally, if one of us agrees but the other doesn’t, the trade also doesn’t happen.

Except in this case, the $10 of forfeit money goes to whoever agreed to the trade… and poor Gary goes back to copywriter heaven empty-handed. (Really, it’s okay. He can write a new sales letter tonight and make a million dollars by tomorrow morning.)

So that’s hand-in-cap.

People played it for hundreds of years.

The term then got transferred to horse racing — an impartial umpire chose the odds between different horses — and sports betting in general.

​​Eventually, it morphed into the modern word (disability, disadvantage) we know today.

I’m telling you all this because 1) I like etymologies and 2) I’ve long been fascinated by how a few simple, well-chosen rules can produce complex, interesting, and valuable behaviors.

Like hand-in-cap.

The rules are simple. And yet they make it so you and I and Gary each have a stake in working towards, and agreeing to, a fair trade.

That same idea can be applied much more generally.

You might want to manage a few people who work for your business… or create a thriving online community… or just mold a group of your customers into a tightly-knit, devoted “herd.”

So my advice to you is to start by thinking of a few simple rules to drive the behaviors that you want.

That, and sign up for my email list. Sure it’s a wager. But maybe you can win some valuable insights.

What ARGs and QAnon can teach us about marketing

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Two days ago, I sent out an email with a simple engagement device:

I promised to give away a story with a marketing moral, in exchange for people writing in and telling me their zodiac sign. (Virgos came out on top, by the way. And pisces. So few aquarii.)

I got inspired to do this by hearing Dan Kennedy say he’s been making his own engagement devices simpler and simpler with each passing year. “Send us a piece of paper with a big black mark on it… and you win!” (Even so, I had a few birds-of-paradise write me to say, “I don’t do horoscopes. Can I still have the story?”)

This is part of a general trend.

“Reduce friction,” many high-level marketers will tell you. Tell stories that are as widely appealing as possible. Make your writing as simple as possible. Echo your prospect’s values back to him as clearly as possible.

Well, that’s one way to do it.

But I read interesting article today about the exact opposite way. The article was written by Adrian Hon, who is a successful game designer who has influenced the lives of millions of people.

Hon compared his own field, augmented reality games, with the allure of QAnon and the world of conspiracy theories. The conclusions were these:

1. “But there’s always been another kind of entertainment that appeals to different people at different times, one that rewards active discovery, the drawing of connections between clues, the delicious sensation of a hunch that pays off after hours or days of work. Puzzle books, murder mysteries, adventure games, escape rooms, even scientific research – they all aim for the same spot.”

2. “Online communities have long been dismissed as inferior in every way to ‘real’ friendships, an attenuated version that’s better than nothing, but not something that anyone should choose. Yet ARGs and QAnon (and games and fandom and so many other things) demonstrate there’s an immediacy and scale and relevance to online communities that can be more potent and rewarding than a neighbourhood bake sale.”

3. “The same has happened with modern ARGs, where explainer videos have become so compelling they rack up more views than the ARGs have players (not unlike Twitch).”

The point I take away from this is that people will get fanatically involved in things that require work, struggle, and uncertainty. Because it creates a thrill. And it gives them a feeling of agency.

Second, you can now make a world for your prospects that’s more stimulating and more real than any experience they’ve had before.

And third, if you’re a really calculating type, you can have your cake and eat it too. Because if you set out to create an experience for the engaged, rabid core of your audience… the people who play along with your complex and challenging world-building… well, the passive-but-profitable remainder will still follow along.

But why am I spoon-feeding you these ideas?

Perhaps you are the kind of person who gets what I’m talking about.

Maybe want to discover and experience some things yourself.

In that case, here’s the link to Hon’s article. It’s not a recipe for world-building. But is an entry point into Hon’s world. And it might be just the type of thing to help you crack this puzzle one day:

https://mssv.net/2020/08/02/what-args-can-teach-us-about-qanon/

Inspiration for would-be New Professors

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Last Thursday morning, I read an article about a man who set an unusual world record.

Between December 2018 and August 2019, he traveled around the world by boat one-and-a-half times.

And in each of the world’s five oceans, including at Antarctica and somewhere close to the North Pole, he visited the deepest underwater point, in what are called “hadal” regions.

In order to become the first person to do this, Victor Vescovo, for that is the man’s name, had to build a custom-made submarine.

He had to retrofit a big ole ship, which he had bought from the U.S. Navy.

He had to hire a crew of engineers, scientists and support staff, all there to help him in his record-setting quest.

The whole enterprise cost a little less than $48 million, which Vescovo, who made that much and more in private equity, paid himself.

But don’t think this was a foolish waste of a rich man’s money.

According to the article, the U.S Navy has showed interest in buying Vescovo’s innovative submarine + blueprints, for a little over what Vescovo himself paid to develop and test it.

In other words, there’s a good chance that Vescovo will have somebody else foot the bill for his unique and quirky passion project of the past several years.

I don’t know about you, but this sounds pretty romantic to me. It’s the kind of life I would like to live.

Not that I’m interested in exploring ocean depths, or managing a big crew, or setting world records.

But I like the idea of having a sailboat of one, sailing to an unexplored island when the mood strikes me, writing up what I’ve learned along the way, and having others pay me to live this life.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be a real sailboat or real islands.

It could just be an unusual topic I get interested in and start researching. Kind of like being a tenured professor, but without the years of clawing up the academic hierarchy.

So why am I telling you this?

No reason. Odds are, you don’t share this same dream.

But on the small chance that you do, then I want to tell you there’s hope.

I was talking to fellow copywriter Will Ward about this idea today.

And Will pointed me to the blog of Gretchen McCulloch, someone who is very much living a life like this. Gretchen has even written up a series of posts about how she became one of The New Professors (my term, not hers), and perhaps, how you can too.

I’m reading these blog posts right now. It’s good for inspiration and maybe a bit of guidance. If you want to read them too and be inspired, here’s where to get started:

https://allthingslinguistic.com/post/189045267597/part-i-what-is-a-weird-internet-career