🐴 How to 10X your sales with the educational Direct-to-Consumer Flywheel

📌 Free Download🌽

Get The Direct-To-Consumer Startup Guide – complete with pricing calculator, marketing templates, and customer scripts!

Learn how to grow, monetize and scale your operation in today’s digital world. Click the button to grab your free copy👇

​Get Instant Access​

​
Friends, the age of corporatized commercial agriculture is here.

But what if I told you the most successful farmers are flipping the script on how food gets to your table and saving the farm at the same time?

By embracing direct-to-consumer and digital marketing strategies, you can keep the farm, spend more time with your family, and take that vacation you’ve been dreaming of, but have put off for the last fifteen years.

With just a few simple shifts, I’ve helped transition our own farm from a traditional row crop and beef cow-calf operation dependent on national markets, to a niche, direct-to-consumer pork and vegetable business that is marketed almost exclusively online.

So what exactly are these strategies and how can you implement them in your own agribusiness? Let’s talk about it.

How I 10X’d Our Farm Profits by Going Digital

What if I told you you could transform your farm from an endless cycle of low prices and even lower profits, into a thriving business where YOU:

• Set the prices.
• Build relationships with engaged customers who actually value your hard work and attention to quality.
• Can finally have a little breathing room at the end of each month.

Sounds good right?

More and more family farms are figuring out the roadmap, and realizing some financial freedom in an industry traditionally stuck in perpetual (sometimes self-imposed) poverty.

So if you‘re tired of your business feeling like a card game where the deck’s been stacked against you from the start, stick around. I’m going to show you how to win this particular hand.

Introducing: The Modern Farmer’s Marketing Flywheel

When I first moved to my husband’s family farm in 2009, it was a conventional corn and soybean operation. These crops helped offset feed costs for the approximately 120 head of beef cow-calf pairs they ran on it. The only things not sold commercially were a few feeder calves they kept to stock their own freezers.

When my father-in-law retired in 2019, he sold the herd and started renting the cropland and pastures out to neighboring farmers. It was at this point I told my husband, if we were going to see the farm make it to the next generation, it was time to pivot.

That’s when I put my agriculture degree to work, and began looking into direct-to-consumer (DTC) options and studying business flywheels.

What’s a flywheel you ask?

In other words, happy customers drive referrals and sales, and your business keeps getting bigger. Rinse and repeat.

When it comes to DTC agriculture, I stumbled upon what I believe is the holy grail. Something I call: The DTC Educational Flywheel.

Hey — clear not clever ok.

While most people know you can grow your business by selling in niche markets, you can 10X your growth by linking it to free online education.

To give you an example, over the summer of 2024 I started from 0 and grew a brand-new email list to over 360+, simply by sharing an educational opt-in link on our farm’s online platforms — Facebook, LinkedIn, Substack, landing page etc. This happened by posting on at least one of these platforms 2-3X per week, and mentioning our opt-in link built into the platform. (more on that later…).

Based on recent data, it would have cost me an average of $1,000-$2,500 to acquire 350 email subscribers / leads by using Facebook ads alone. Learning to leverage the power of free education is not only profitable, it’s also a major cost saver!

Armed with this list, we turned our conventional, commercial farm into a niche, direct-to-consumer one with no price ceilings, no contract quotas, and an almost unlimited digital market.

Understanding the DTC Educational Flywheel

Let me ask you a question...

Why do most people who come to your farm not buy?

Answer?

They have questions. They’re unsure. They don’t know if it’s the right purchase to solve their problem.

It’s why the saying, “a confused mind never buys” is still true.

Point being, there’s a 0% chance that everyone who stops at your farmers market or visits your online store, instantly knows the answers to all their questions and then buys.

The vast majority of products — especially those you’re selling online that people can’t physically see or touch — the reason people don’t buy is because they’re unsure.

This does two crucial things that will skyrocket your business:

• Grows your email list
• Builds trust/authority for your brand that directly increases sales

It takes your audience from one you rent to one you own, and allows people to see you as the go-to leader in your niche/market.

Don’t Make These Two Huge Mistakes!

The two biggest mistakes I see businesses make with their opt-ins?

• Offering a discount (”Want 20% off on your next order? Type in your email!”)
• Being boring and vague (”Subscribe to our newsletter!”)

Both of these are horrible ways of capturing prospective clients & customers.

Why?

It goes back to what I was saying before — people open their wallets AFTER their questions are answered.

Think about it…

If you’re in the market for a new pair of work jeans, and you click on the ad of a brand you’ve never heard of before — are you blindly buying their product because they gave you 10% off? Or tell you that by signing up for their newsletter you’ll “become one of their VIPs”?

Do you go on Amazon and hit “Add to Cart” before you’ve read the product description or any of the reviews?

Yeah…neither do I.

As a result, opt-in rates for companies using these two methods to capture and convert customers tend to be very low — I’m talking 2-3%, maybe 5% on a good day.

So what’s the best way to educate at scale?

You’re about to find out…

---

Here’s how the DTC Educational Flywheel Works:

Daily High-Level Social Media Content 👇

People Find Your Profile & Click Your High-Value Opt-In 👇

People Become Educated & Start to Know/Like/Trust You 👇

Convert Those People to Paid Customers, Subscribers, Clients, etc.

It’s really that simple.

---

How to Leverage The Flywheel to Grow Your Agribusiness

Now you might be saying, “Ok Charlie I agree that education is the best way to get people to know, like and trust me. But if I’m not offering a discount, what’s the best type of opt-in to use? And where should I be putting it?”

The answer to the question “What’s the best type of opt-in to use?” is simple (and you can substitute “lead magnet” or “freebie” for opt-in here).

Educational email courses.

It goes back to what we talked about earlier:

But you’re only one person — you don’t have time to spend all day every day answering questions via email, DM or phone call. And even if you DID have the time, who wants to do that? Not this introverted farm girl!

To answer questions at scale, on autopilot, in your sleep, you need to create an educational email course (EEC).

Instead of opting in for a discount, or the mere privilege of getting your valuable newsletter, you’re going to make your visitors an offer they can’t refuse. Let’s use pictures here to illustrate this point. The first picture is your standard opt-in I see on 99% of websites:

It’s tiny, it’s at the bottom of the page where no one will ever see it, and it’s boring and vague.

Am I an insider?

• An insider for what?
• Why should I care if I’m one or not?
• What exclusives? Exclusive product launches? Exclusive secrets? Exclusive hamburgers?

You get the point.

Now compare it with an educational email course opt-in (hint: this is one I built):

• It’s big
• It’s front and center
• It speaks directly to the pain points of this business’s target audience (people with young horses struggling to get them broke)
• The visitor has just one decision to make — enter their email or leave

Want to know the crazy part?

These are both opt-in’s for the same business! One is the before, and one is the after. Guess which one has brought in more customers and made more sales?

The first one got an opt-in rate of 2%. The second…40%!

The Nuts & Bolts

An educational email course (or EEC) works like this:

1. Someone checks out your site and goes, “dang, I need this info!”
2. They enter their email using a simple form connected on the backend to your email service provider (ex. Kit, Beehiv, MailChimp, Constant Contact etc.)
3. They immediately get a welcome email letting them know what they can expect from the “mini-course”
4. Every day for 5 days they get one email answering one question, solving one problem
5. At the end of the 5 days they get a final email asking them to buy your product/service
6. They buy!!
7. They don’t buy — they go onto your “forever list” and you keep showing up in their inbox with value until they buy or unsubscribe

The best part?

It’s 100% automated!

You’re doing the hard work of posting valuable content and getting eyeballs to your stuff — but if you’re not capturing and converting those eyeballs into customers…

…you’re wasting hard-earned time, effort and money.

How to Profit from the Educational DTC Flywheel

The internet is a goldmine for your agribusiness. When you combine social media with building an email list, you have the ability to set your business and brand on fire.

If you’re selling in-person on the farm or at the farmer’s markets, you can have a QR code ready on your checkout machine, or a flyer linked to your opt-in page. Hand it out to everyone who walks by.

You can work on converting your free email subscribers to paid customers through consistent, valuable communication. You can also offer your list digital products, like an e-book, recorded masterclass, or branded merchandise to supplement your farm products if/when things happen (because they do!).

You don’t have to settle for the traditional, poverty-inducing methods of making money on a farm.

You don’t have to stay stuck in a vicious cycle of low prices and even lower profit margins.

And you don’t have to work from sun-up to sundown, doing the physical stuff during the day, and the paperwork at night.

There’s an easier and better way to do the work God called you to do, and not have to struggle because of it.

People want to buy from you. You just need to educate them on why, and help them solve a problem. By doing so, you’ll build a community who will turn into family — one that will never let you fall.

---

Let’s Network!

I love hearing from my readers. Hit reply and introduce yourself! Tell me who you serve and what you write about. If you have a newsletter, share the link with me, and let’s get this flywheel started.

---

📌 Free Download🌽

Get The Direct-To-Consumer Startup Guide – complete with pricing calculator, marketing templates, and customer scripts!

Learn how to grow, monetize and scale your operation in today’s digital world. Click the button to grab your free copy👇

​Get Instant Access Today​

---

Recommend Western Writing Weekly!

Forward this email to someone who needs to learn more about those who feed, clothe and shelter us.

Know an agribusiness that needs support? I'll help them find their niche market, build trust and make more money, so they can serve more people.

---

✍️Writing Prompt:

Am I currently using a flywheel in my own business? If so, what is it and how can I optimize it? If not, what's holding me back from creating one?

---

🗨️One quote to finish your week strong:

“I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.”

• Andy Warhol

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 for your own business? Book a free 30-minute strategy call here.
3. Promote your business to over 320+ rural brands and founders by sponsoring this newsletter. Email charliedicemedia@gmail.com.

​

Book a free Newsletter Strategy Call with me!