What’s in store for today:

• Story: The Van Trump Report
• Framework: Poker vs. Chess
• Writing Prompt: What’s an opportunity you either passed on or took, and how did it change the trajectory of your life or business?
• Quote: read to the end to find out!

---

Did you know boring newsletters can be big businesses?

Here’s what I mean…

Your newsletter doesn’t have to be complicated to get millions of subscribers or make millions of dollars.

In fact, it’s better if your newsletter is dead simple.

When people subscribe to a newsletter, they want to know exactly what they’re getting and how it will help them.

To quote Donald Miller:

“A caveman should be able to glance at it [your newsletter headline] and immediately grunt back what you offer.”

However, most newsletters don’t clearly show readers how they add value.

But one small-town farm boy from Missouri’s newsletter does.

In fact, he turned a newsletter about investing into a $20M+ a year business (with just 1 employee)!

Let’s take a look…

---

Here’s this week’s Western Writing Weekly:

📕Story: The Van Trump Report (Kevin Van Trump)

Kevin Van Trump’s newsletter for farmers makes over $20M+ a year, and employs just one person…him.

Here’s how this small-town boy from rural Missouri did it:

When Kevin Van Trump and his wife got married nearly 20 years ago, he knew nothing about trading, investing or business. When his wife got her dream job as a manager for Eddie Bauer in Chicago, Kevin packed up and went with her. Problem was, he had no employable skills outside of farming.

Fortunately for him, he was a big guy who looked like he played D1 football.

What does this have to do with the price of potatoes you ask?

Well, turns out back then, when trading was still done on a floor pushing paper, if you looked like you could flatten someone to get your trade in, you got hired.

Climbing his way up from the very dregs of the business’s food chain, by age 25, Kevin was trading fairly large positions in Deutschmarks, Swiss Francs and corn currencies. Eventually because of his background in agriculture (a novelty in the investment world), his strong suit became grain trading.

Fast forward to 2007 when the Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) came out, and everyone began using corn to produce ethanol.

He started fielding a lot of calls from money managers and traders that knew nothing about agriculture and farming, but knew a lot about energy trading. They wanted to pour a lot of money into agriculture markets sensing the opportunity with biofuels.

On the other side were his farmer neighbors (by this time Kevin and his wife had moved back to MO).

He’d get stopped by them as they were playing dominoes on the store porch in the morning, getting their breakfast and sipping coffee. They’d say to him: “Hey city slicker, tell us what’s going on in the corn/bean/wheat/cattle market”.

He would dumb it down in his unique blue-collar way: “here’s what they’re really saying/what they mean.”

After enough people kept asking him the same questions, he decided to start writing it all down.

He started journaling, which quickly turned into putting his notes into a daily email he sent to trader friends and farmers alike.

He says the emails helped him gain a better perspective on his own investment strategies and positions, and he was helping his friends in the investment world learn more about rural American at the same time. Once it started circulating back to him that guys from Goldman Sachs and different trading firms were reading the emails, he told his wife (they’d been investing in storage units at the time), “shit, I’ll send it out for $40/month, it’ll be like a storage unit deal, let’s just see if people pay.”

People paid.

Today, the Van Trump Report has over 45,000 subscribers paying $600/year in over 45 countries (you can do the math), and is read by not just farmers and energy traders, but Congressmen, senators, and big hedge fund managers alike, who want to keep a pulse on what’s going on in the agriculture markets. And they’ve never spent a dime on advertising. Their growth has been 100% organic.

And Kevin still writes it himself.

Many of today’s biggest trading companies and exchanges have white-listed the report as a must-read for their employees.

Just goes to show you even ‘boring’ can be profitable.

Eggs In Different Baskets

As the newsletter grew, so did Kevin’s interest in finding new ways to bring the agricultural community together.

A few years ago, he started what is now known as FarmCon. What began as a yearly catch-up over coffee between buddies, quickly grew into the premier 2-day event for like-minded movers and shakers in agriculture. It now boasts attendance of 500+ agribusinesses, 350+farm operations, and over 1,200 attendees. Kevin is so respected in the agriculture community — people really appreciate the value they get from the event and the opportunity to network.

If you’re interested in going, you better act quick — this year’s event is being held January 8-9, 2025 in Kansas City, MO, and tickets sell out fast!

Don’t think your company will let you? Kevin’s got a downloadable “Convince Your Boss Letter” right on the website. Just print, present and start packing!

Kevin and his son also have AgSwag, a merchandise company, which they say is run like a family dinner.

A very large family dinner…as AgSwag is estimated to be doing about $25-30M per year.

---

📝Framework: Poker vs. Chess

People talk a lot about life being like chess — you have to think a few steps ahead.

Kevin says life’s more like poker because the cards are facedown and at times, a lot of luck’s involved.

He says there’s a lot of unknowns, you need some luck to cause variance, and you can easily tell the difference between the amateurs and the pros. Amateurs play too many hands (ex. 50%), where a pro only plays 15-20%. Meaning, beginners take every opportunity that comes their way in the hopes that one of them will stick. This causes them to spread themselves too thin and not have the bandwidth to see the real winners.

Pros will pass on the average opportunity to save room for the big one.

Warren Buffett calls this “waiting on the fat pitch”. You might pass on some good pitches, but as long as you’re swinging at the right ones, you’ll eventually hit a home run.

You can have the greatest skill in the world, but if you don’t catch any breaks or have any luck, it is what it is. When luck is going your way, that’s when you double and triple down. When luck isn’t on your side, that’s when you hunker down and wait for the better move.

Kevin attributes trading to wresting:

“Great wrestlers are super patient. They wait for the ‘market’ to make a mistake - out of align, overleveraged, over-tilted, and then you come in and try to make a play.”

The greatest traders say “all your money is made sitting.” The decision to do nothing is a decision. And in the investing world it can be the greatest decision you make.

He got lucky by being early with BitCoin and Tesla.

But he says he also bought 30,000 early shares of Amazon, went negative on it right out of the hole (it was trading at $3-4 at that time), and didn’t have money to stick it out. Had he done so, it would’ve been the craziest trade of all time. But in his words, he’s a trader - he wouldn’t have stuck with it.

His advice on bad calls?

“You can’t beat yourself up over it. Then it gets hard to fail and recover.”

Deal or No Deal?

While Kevin’s had some Lady Luck on his side and made some good trades, he also categorizes every business deal that comes across his desk to see if it’s a good deal or not.

He uses the following graphic to illustrate his system:

To the far low right you have your high-value, low uniqueness businesses.

Example: a tire business

People have to have it, so it’s not unique. But it’s high value because no one wants to kill their family, and they need tires on their cars so they want them to be good.

If you see your business in that category, you know you’re in a low-growth business model. You’re a low-cost provider, so you’re going to have to do high volume. That’s gonna be your play.

To the top left is low-value, high uniqueness businesses.

Example: Google Glass (not a thing anymore btw)

Your product or business is gonna cost you a lot of money to educate the masses, it costs a lot to get it to market, and there might not be any longevity in it. This is a really tough spot to be in.

To the upper far right is your high-value, high uniqueness businesses.

Example: Apple iPhone (really any Apple product)

This is where you can create high gross and high margins. It's unique and everyone wants it. It's where you can make a lot of great things happen.

And then we come to the lower left corner.

Here are the businesses with no value and aren't unique. If you find yourself here, in Kevin's words - you’re an idiot.

People buy value, not price. You can go as low as you want with price, but if it’s not good, it’s not good.

“It’s never the soldiers I send in at first - it’s never the first money we send in on the deal. It’s how many more soldiers are going to get called into duty and maybe never come back home into my bank account, or missing limbs.” - Kevin Van Trump

Knowing where a business deal or offer falls on this scale is crucial to racking up more wins than losses.

Know Thy Customer

Kevin says the key to success with AgSwag?

They know their funnel. They do a great job of managing what Kevin calls light vs. heavy users.

Here's a graphic to help visualize the concept:

Kevin says you’re always going to be pulled to the high user.

They demand more of your time and resources, and the result is low gross. They try to beat you up on price, therefore they beat up your bottom line.

Example: you don’t want to get an order from Walmart because it’s almost impossible to get your business back to the left.

On the other hand, if you can build a business around 'light users' (customers that don't take up a lot of your bandwidth, resources, and are willing to pay the prices you set), you'll have higher gross and usually, better customer retention.

Big Misses

About 20 years ago, when the internet was just getting started, a guy came to Kevin and said — “I got this great idea!”

He was an English major, and looked like Dexter in a 3-piece suit. He said:

“I’m going to build websites. And I’m going to hire a couple other English majors, and we’re going to write really eloquent descriptions of bulls and their stems (ie. sperm). Then I’m gonna sell this sperm all over Japan, the world etc.”.

In Kevin’s mind he thought something to the effect of, “how the hell can you write eloquent descriptions of bull sperm? This shit will never work”.

Years later he randomly Googled the guy, and he’d absolutely blew it up!

Another miss?

One year he was attending the Louisville Farm Show as their keynote speaker. Set up next to him, he noticed a guy who had all these little Polaroids stuck on this little 10x10 booth. So Kevin goes over and says to the guy, “what the hell is this?” And the guy goes, “it’s called Farmersonly.com”.

Kevin says he and all the vendors nearby are making fun of this guy. A dating site for farmers? Seriously?

Well, the next year the same guy comes and he’s got a 20x20 booth. The next year his booth is damn near as big as John Deere’s! Then he’s got Super Bowl Ads!

Wonder if it’s the same guy who started my TV guilty pleasure — Farmer Wants A Wife?

Current Opportunities In Agricultural Investments

Compared to other industries, agriculture’s GDP is massive! Kevin says it’s a really hot area.

Mega-investors like The Gates Foundation and Berskshire Hathaway have all jumped on the agriculture investment band wagon. Warren Buffett’s son Howard used to be a big farmer — his land included 1,000’s of acres before he started hiring other farmers to tend the land for him. More and more people are interested in agriculture, food and where it’s coming from.

Since COVID, we’re also seeing more people buying direct from farmers.

A great example of farmers taking advantage of this trend is Bid On Beef. It started as a group of 7-8 ranches in Texas that came together to form a little coalition, that are now selling direct-to-consumer. From getting bare bones prices for their beef through traditional supply chains, they’re now doing extremely well selling direct to the public and through their website. For more info, check out Bid On Beef.

On a recent “My First Million” podcast interview, host Sam Parr (creator of The Hustle, now sold to HubSpot), asked Kevin — “if you were 24 again, what would you advise people go do in the agriculture space?”

Answer: air quality.

Kevin says particularly because of COVID-19, we’re seeing a lot more air quality testing take place, and testing in general. We’re also seeing a lot more kids that have asthma and asthma-related problems (globally). From an agricultural perspective, a solution we have is the carbon market.

And nothing reduces the carbon footprint more than a giant corn field.

He says investing in opportunities that will save energy, increase water purity, or anything to do with natural resources. They’re just going to be relied on more.

He also really loves the blue-collar business space (ex. what Codie Sanchez is doing).

He likes the thought of buying blue-collar businesses - rolling them up, packaging them and selling them. He likes it because many in this space are retiring, and we’re not seeing near as many kids go into the trades as in the past. There’s a short supply of skilled tradesmen, and he thinks you can build out some really cool things with those types of businesses.

An interesting note is the exploding popularity of the trades on TikTok.

Videos glamorizing these industries in a cool and accurate way is all over the multi-billion user platform. Seeing young people on there telling you, “I’m making $100K and I went to trade school for 2 years” — a lot of kids are being influenced by this because they’re like, “shit, I graduated with $150-200K in debt, and I don’t make anything remotely close to that! And I’m sitting on my computer all day.”

Kevin loves that young people are more open-minded to the trades. And while change is inevitable, AI isn’t going to replace plumbers, electricians or HVAC people any time soon.

Bottom Line: if you provide people with good quality service and a good onboarding process, you can cut your retention rate down to a feasible level. From there, he says the sky’s the limit on growth.

Hang Out With Those Outside Your Industry

One of the things I loved about my research on The Van Trump Report and Kevin Van Trump, is his philosophy towards people who aren't like him.

Agriculture tends to be an industry that's very close knit. And we're both wary of new faces, as well as tend to hide our own from those "different" than us.

But Kevin says his greatest growth has come when he's gotten out of his comfort zone, and put himself in rooms with people he wouldn't normally hang out with.

For example, he goes to random conferences outside his industry that he didn’t need to go to, but he wanted to to shift his lens and learn something new.

Another example is hanging out with young people who are demographically/culturally doing different things than the guy who "made it", and is now at the country club, and might be disconnected from today's culture shifts.

While he doesn't always want to do these things, he just makes himself .

In a recent podcast interview, he used the analogy of growing up playing sports, and having a couple friends who played at a high level (World Series, Super Bowl).

"They’d always talk, 'oh you got a bad coach' - but everyone gets a bad coach at one point or another. I'd say look man, you gotta be able to steal something from the guy. The guy was a great player. You gotta go in there with an open mind and put those arrows in your quiver".

Bottom Line: Do it anyway, even when you don’t know the value that’ll come out of it.

Amen to that.

---

✍️Writing Prompt:

What’s an opportunity you either passed on or took and how did it change the trajectory of your life or business?

---

🗨️One quote to finish your week strong:

“The most expensive tax is not from the government, it’s an unmade decision.”

• Dickie Bush

Every choice leads us to an opportunity or a lesson. The real growth happens when we commit to our paths, regardless of the baggage.

Have a great week!

Enjoy the ride,

Charlie

---

When you’re ready here’s 3 ways I can help:

1. Share this newsletter with a fellow rural brand or business owner.
2. Want me to help you write your own newsletter? Apply for my 1:1 ghostwriting services here.
3. Promote your business to over 300+ rural brands and founders by sponsoring this newsletter. Email charliedicemedia@gmail.com.

​

Book a free Newsletter Strategy Call with me!