Minnesota Musing: Testing Your Audience With an Offer

Yep. I like to create. I like to invent. I have always had this in my personal - what is the word I am trying to use - personal attribute.

Currently, I am musing about offering something. Since I am working on a mill that slices black walnuts into sliced pieces for basket making, my current idea is to offer a free sample to you. A miscellaneous free sample, mind you. A slice.

How do you obtain a free slice?

How do you obtain a free black walnut slice? If you want additional slices, like two or more, you'll have to get in touch with me for the remainder. And, after 'one' they are no longer free. What is my price? Hmm. Well, we'll have to talk later.

Well. Are you motivated enough to send me something? If you are motivated enough to send me a self-addressed stamped envelope, I will place one slice in it and send it back to you.

Perhaps you should write Free Nut Slice on my envelope so that I know what you want. You know, I'll forget and I'll sit there and look at your envelope, and the self addressed envelope included, and I'll be like, "What the heck? What do I need to put in here?"

Now, mind you, I only have a limited number of slices right now. Once I start cutting them, I'll have more. On a regular basis.

I have two machines that I am currently building. One cuts 1/4 inch sliced shells and the other cuts 3/8 inch sliced shells.

What kind of a deal do you think my offer is? This is going to be a string of questions, simply because I'm musing once again.

A postage stamp costs almost fifty cents, and two of them, are a dollar. So, then, you are requesting something free, but it costs you a dollar.

Hmmm. You see, the reason why I am musing about it, is that way back when, when I started thinking about this, I was inspired by a stamp company, that used to place ads in magazines and would promise to send a package of starter stamps to you, if you sent a stamped, self addressed envelope.

Now. Here's the thought: They receive thousands of requests for some stamps. Where do the stamps come from that they need? Well. Easy enough. They remove the requests from the envelopes, stack the envelopes together and use a saw and slice the stamps off. Then, they package them in each envelope that comes in. The beauty of it is that for the most part, they don't run out of stamps to send back, because the stamp requests are coming in so frequently that they don't have to worry about it. Plus, the return customers, order more stuff and those stamps on those requests, get cut off and sold to the new customers.

My idea isn't quite that extreme, but, I am willing to drop a walnut slice in the mail to you, if you'd like to get one.

You know, it isn't all rainbows and butterflies in a nut house. There's sawdust, there's walnut husks, there's the actual nut, there's the nutmeat, and then, finally, the slice.

The walnut husks are valued for their staining abilities. The sawdust is valued for people who design landscaping for model railroads. The broken shells make a great powder for cleaning things that need blasting. The early, young walnuts are collected off the trees, in late June, to make a delicious drink with the nuts and vodka.

I think of brown teeth when I think of drinking something made from walnuts, but on the other hand, I drink coffee, so what's the difference?

I have tasted the green husks of a young, young black walnut and the flavor is quite sweet and almost citrus. The scent of the walnut is fresh when young. Perhaps not so much after it is off the tree and turning brown.