Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

It seems to be a fundamental law of the universe that a thing cannot exist without its opposite.Negatively charged electrons revolvearound positively charged protons.Male and female.Inhale and exhale.Extend and contract.Seedtime and harvest.Every good thing exists in a state of duality.A voice spoke into the darkness,“Let there be light,”and the first duality was born.Darkness didn’t go away; it simply met an opposing force.Whether you believe the Bible to be ancient folk wisdom or the word of God or something in between doesn’t really matter. Most of us can agree that something about it caused the Bible to be remembered for millennia.According to the first chapter of Genesis, after the voice pierced the darkness with light, it spoke five other dualities into existence and proclaimed each of the six pairs of opposites to be good.I’m not writing to you about religion.I’m writing to you about wisdom.I’m glad to see you’re still reading! I’m sneaking up on an important point. Stay with me.Good and evil are not a duality.Love and hate are not a duality.Peace and war are not a duality.The first is life and the second is death.It shouldn’t be hard to choose between them.The only difficult choices in life are the choices between two good things.Freedom and Responsibility are two good things that we must often choose between.Likewise, a tension exists between Justice and Mercy.Honesty and Loyalty are also good things.Have you ever had to choose between them?Which one is good and which one is evil?The next time you see two antagonistic groups throwing word-grenades at each other, peer beneath the emotional language and you’ll notice that one group believes in freedom while the other group believes in responsibility. Or one side is pushing for justice while the other side pushes for mercy.Niels Bohr wasn’t a touchy-feely philosopher. He was a scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Among his discoveries was this:“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”Stanislaw Lec said it this way,“Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a people.”Then F. Scott Fitzgerald challenged you and me to step into a larger realm of living,“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”Don’t fall into the trap of believing you have to choose one and disparage the other.Every creative person is familiar with the magnetism that exists between opposites. A skillful articulation of this energy is the secret behind hit songs, big movies, bestselling books and successful ad campaigns.A voice spoke light into the darkness and said it was good.And Niels Bohr said “Amen.”And Stanislaw Lec said “Amen.”And F. Scott Fitzgerald said “Amen.”So please tell me, if you will,What say you?Roy H. Williams

The statesman, according to Wikipedia, “who is often regarded as the father of modern conservatism,” was Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797). I was unaware of this until I stumbled upon it while searching for the origin of the famous statement, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”A worthy counterpart to Edmund Burke might be George Bernard Shaw, widely considered to be an early champion of liberal thought. Shaw wrote, “When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.” 1You’ll find both of these quotes in the random quote database at MondayMorningMemo.com because these statements cause us to think.And thinking is never a bad thing.Examine that first quote and you’ll notice it’s based on the underlying premise that some people are good while others are evil.The second quote is based on the premise that some people are stupid while others are not.But have you ever known anyone so good there was no bad in them, or anyone so bad there was no good? And who is so wise they’ve never done a stupid thing?Witold Gambrowicz was an obscure Polish writer until his private diaries were discovered after his death in 1969. According to the Paris Review, they are “widely considered his masterpiece.”One of the golden nuggets Gambrowicz left behind for us was his theory on how to write a book review:“Literary criticism is not the judging of one man by another (who gave you this right?) but the meeting of two personalities on absolutely equal terms. Therefore do not judge. Simply describe your reactions. Never write about the author or the work, only about yourself in confrontation with the work or the author. You are allowed to write about yourself.”Wow. I get it. And this idea isn’t limited to literary criticism.Instead of saying, “What you’re about to do is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of and if you do it, you’re an idiot,” one might say, “If I were about to do what you’re about to do, I would be frightened.” Then if your friend asks, “Why would you be frightened?” you can share with him your concerns.“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.”– Ralph Waldo EmersonI’ve never found anyone who could explain to me the difference between constructive criticism and just plain criticism.Violence may kill the body, but criticism kills the spirit. If you hope to bring about change, you must armor your soul against it.John Steinbeck reminds us that all criticism is based upon subjective, personal perceptions and that such perceptions are never universally true.“A painter, letting color and line, observed, sift into his eyes, up the nerve trunks, and mix well with his experience before it flows down his hand to the canvas, has made his painting say, ‘It might be so.’ Perhaps his critic, being not so honest and not so wise, will say, ‘It is not so. The picture is damned.’ If this critic could say, ‘It is not so with me, but that might be because my mind and experience are not identical with those of the painter,’ that critic would be a better critic for it, just as the painter is a better painter for knowing he himself is in the pigment.” 2If we want to make the world a better place, if we want to bring an end to polarized politics, if we want to make friends instead of enemies, we must remember the advice of Gambrowicz, Emerson and Steinbeck.At least it seems so to me.Does it seem so, also, to you?Roy H. Williams

Science is the study of objective reality.Art is the study of subjective reality.Subjective reality is perception through filters. It is interpreted reality, romanticized reality, imagined reality. It is your own personal fiction.We’ve spoken of this before, but I think we need a refresher:Electromagnetic waves exist regardless of whether you perceive them. They are nonfiction. But colors exist in subjective reality, as a result of transformations provided by our senses. Colors are fiction.Vibrations traveling in air or water are objective, real, nonfiction. But sound is a fiction that exists only in our mind.Likewise, chemicals dissolved in air or water exist in objective reality, nonfiction. But smells and tastes are purely subjective, fiction. Colors, sounds, smells and tastes do not exist, as such, outside our brains. And any associations we experience in connection with a color, sound, taste or smell are purely subjective as well.Each of us lives in a private world that is mostly subjective fiction.Our ability to communicate is based on the assumption that other people will interpret subjective stimuli in ways that are similar to our own. But when their reactions spring from different backgrounds and experiences, communication grows more difficult.Politics, anyone?Color, sound, smell and taste are very convincing fictions. So convincing, in fact, that we often embrace them as “reality.” This is why we have so many arguments.To “frame” a conversation is to set the stage for a fiction that is about to begin.The current style of communication in America is declarative and descriptive, leaving little room for nuance or multilayered interpretation. The impact of this declarative style is often clinical and bombastic.The heart doubts declarative statements because they tell us what to think and believe.Evocative statements pull the answers from inside us.Lead a person to an answer and they will usually discover it.Lead a person to the truth and they will cling to it.We own every truth that comes from inside us. This is why it is rare for an argument to overturn something we have realized.If you followed Indiana Beagle down the rabbit hole last week, you saw a statement by Brandon Sanderson, “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”Sanderson may as well have been talking about evocative statements.Look at the frontispiece of The Wizard of Ads and you’ll see The Seven Laws of the Advertising Universe. Laws 3 and 7 explain why stories are so powerfully persuasive:“Intellect and Emotion are partners who do not speak the same language. The intellect finds logic to justify what the emotions have decided. Win the hearts of the people, their minds will follow.”“Engage the Imagination, then take it where you will. Where the mind has repeatedly journeyed, the body will surely follow. People go only to places they have already been in their minds.”Well-told stories win the heart and take people on journeys in their minds.How well are you telling your stories?The best stories have a narrative arc and a character arc.Narrative Arc: a sequence of events that unfold; a continuing storyline that fascinates the mind.Character Arc: a gradual deepening of our understanding of the character’s motivations, revealed by how the character thinks, speaks, acts and sees the world. The character arc is a character’s inner journey over the course of the story.An advertising campaign is more than a series of ads.A good campaign has a narrative arc that engages the mind of the customer, revealing layer after layer of information about your company, your product, your service.A good campaign has a character arc that entangles the heart of the customer by allowing them to feel they understand why you do the things you do.Does your company have an ad campaign, or have you just been running a series of ads?Do you need to visit Wizard Academy to get a handle on this?Come, we’ll walk you through it.(This is the new workshop we teased you with last week.)Roy H. Williams

Norman Rockwell was an illustrator of fiction.He never showed us America as it really was, but America as it could have been, should have been, might have been. His images caused an entire generation to vividly remember experiences we never had.Rockwell showed my generation a fictional America and we believed in it.I don’t want to mention client names and I’m sure you’ll understand why, but my most successful ad campaigns have been built on exactly that kind of fiction.Not lies. Fiction. There’s a difference.Fiction is romanticized reality, showing us possible futures and the best of the past, leaving out the dreary, the mundane and the forgettable. It is a powerful tool of bonding. Properly used, fictional characters attract new customers and deepen customer loyalties. But predictable characters hold no interest for us. It is conflicted characters – those with vulnerabilities, weaknesses and flaws – that fascinate us immensely.A recently published study1 in The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships suggests that fictional friends may be as valuable as “real” friends, particularly when life-partners watch television shows together.“…our studies show that sharing the social connections provided by TV shows and movies can deepen intimacy and closeness. Furthermore, watching TV shows and movies together may provide couples who lack access to a shared social network of real-world friends with an alternate means of establishing this shared social identity.Previously, sharing a social world with a partner has been conceptualized in terms of sharing real-world social experiences.2 However, creating these experiences may not always be possible. Fortunately, humans are remarkably flexible in finding ways to fulfill their social needs.3 When people’s need for social connections are undermined, they turn to a variety of social surrogates that provide alternate pathways to meet this need, including comfort food,4 photos of loved ones,5 pets,6 and media like TV shows and movies.7“Recurrent characters in advertising fit into that last category of “media like TV shows and movies.”In fact, fictional characters shine so brightly in our minds that we have created a word – metafiction8 – for those moments when fictional characters become aware that they are fictional.If you doubt what I say, all you need do is suggest to Indiana Beagle that he isn’t real. You will quickly and painfully be made aware of how real a fictional character can become.It is the architecture of our brains that makes fiction so powerful.Humans are the storytelling animal.You have about 100,000 times more synapses in your brain than sensory receptors in your body. If brain synapses were strictly equal to sensory receptors – which they are not – this would mean that you and I are 100,000 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist than a world that does. So let’s assume that a single sensory receptor is worth 1,000 brain synapses. Congratulations, you’re still 100 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist than a world that does.This was the purpose of today’s Monday Morning Memo:Find some TV shows to watch with your life-partner. The shared experience will be good for both of you.Play with the idea of creating a fictional spokes-character for your company. (If you don’t know how, consider the online classes at AmericanSmallBusiness.org.)Take quality fiction more seriously. Logical, sequential, deductive reasoning is a function of analytical thought, which has its headquarters in the left hemisphere of your brain. Loosely speaking, the left hemisphere of your brain is there to connect you to the world that is, while the right hemisphere connects you to worlds that could be, should be, might be, ought to be… someday. This is where fiction comes alive.Want to hear something funny? The right hemisphere of your brain doesn’t know right from wrong or fact from fiction. That’s the left brain’s job.Our belief in fiction is made possible only by the amazing right hemisphere of our brains.Regardless of whether you believe in natural selection (evolution) as the origin of the species, or intelligent design (God), the wordless, intuitive right hemisphere of your brain is there for a reason.Don’t diminish it. Don’t disparage it. Don’t try to overcome it.It’s there for a reason.Let it do its work.Roy H. Williams

September 17, 1787: When George Washington saw the Constitution of the United States of America finally adopted after four months of intense debate in Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania State House, he immediately went to a bookseller and paid 22 shillings, six pence for a copy of Don Quixote de La Mancha.1According to MountVernon.org, “this seventeenth-century Spanish allegory does seem a somewhat unusual choice for the pragmatic farmer, soldier, and statesman. An explanation for the apparently uncharacteristic purchase can be found within Washington’s correspondence.” 2We’ll look at that correspondence in a moment, but I believe a statement made by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin offers an equally insightful glimpse into the mind of George Washington in that historic moment when the Constitution was complete and our Great American Experiment had begun.“I tend to write very romantically and idealistically. So the characters that I write are going to be, kind of, quixotic. And they’re going to fail a lot and fall a lot. But, you know, there’s a romance in trying for honorable things.” 3– Aaron Sorkin, June 29, 2015Don Quixote had been a topic of conversation a few evenings earlier in the home of Benjamin Franklin. We know this because on November 9th, 1787, Washington received a Spanish copy of Don Quixote from Spanish Ambassador Diego Maria de Gardoqui with a note, “requesting you wou’d accept & give a place in your Library to the last Spanish Edition of Don Quixote which I recolectt to have hear’d you say at Dr Franklin’s that you had never seen it. I cou’d have wish’d it was in English for your particular entertainment, but it being reckoned the very best Edition of that celebrated work & one in which every thing has been manufacture in Spain induces me to request your acceptance.” 4We don’t know why they were talking about Quixote that night in the home of Benjamin Franklin, but Indy Beagle tells me it went something like this:WASHINGTON: “We are drawing near to an agreement. I believe we may have a Constitution within the week.”FRANKLIN: [shaking his head slowly as gazes down absently at the table] “I look at the future and wonder if we are victorious champions of the good, or bumbling fools who have convinced themselves they are something they are not.”SPANISH AMBASSADOR GARDOQUI: [smiling] “You have read the Quixote?”FRANKLIN: [nods yes and smiles a weak smile.]WASHINGTON: “Although Jefferson and Adams speak continuously of this book, I cannot say I have read it.”“Roy,” you’re thinking, “are you seriously expecting me to believe that our founding fathers were Quixote nuts like you?”The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia at Monticello.org says, “Don Quixote was one of the few works of fiction that Thomas Jefferson was clearly partial to. He used the text in its original language to learn Spanish, and had his children do the same. Jefferson owned a number of different editions over his lifetime.” 5Monticello.org also lists 18 pieces of Jefferson’s personal correspondence in which Quixote is mentioned during the 51 years from 1771 to 1822. 5So, yes, when a person speaks and writes about Don Quixote for 51 years, I usually print that person’s name in large letters in the “Quixote Nut” column.These are the big ideas presented in Don Quixote:1. A beautiful dream is worth believing in, even when others think you are crazy.2. A beautiful dream is worth fighting for, even when you lose.3. A beautiful dream is worth pursuing, even if it never comes true.4. The possibility remains that your beautiful dream might turn out to be folly. 6John Adams was Thomas Jefferson’s friend and nemesis and he was obsessed with Quixote as well. In David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book on Adams 7 we read, “Another child, Thomas Boylston, was born in September of 1772, and again Adams was off on the ‘vagabond life’ of the circuit, carrying a copy of Don Quixote in his saddlebag and writing Abigail sometimes as many as three letters a day.”Alexander Hamilton’s copy of Don Quixote was published in Amsterdam in 1755 by Arkstee et Merkus.8 In his letter to Rufus King, dated February 21, 1795, Hamilton wrote, “To see the character of the government and the country so sported with—exposed to so indelible a blot—puts my heart to the torture. Am I, then, more of an American than those who drew their first breath on American ground? Or what is it that thus torments me at a circumstance so calmly viewed by almost everybody else? Am I a fool—a romantic Quixote—or is there a constitutional defect in the American mind?” 9David Brooks is a political and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times. Aaron Sorkin is a screenwriter. His films include A Few Good Men, The American President, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Social Network, Moneyball 

I’m betting you’re extremely good at something, perhaps at more than just one thing.Let’s face it: you’re talented – gifted, in fact – a classic overachiever. But the odds are 7 in 10 that you find it difficult to accept and believe these compliments.I say this because 70 percent of our population suffers from Impostor Syndrome and it is most common among high achievers, especially people with graduate degrees, college professors on track for tenure, and research scientists. 1Isaac Newton, the man who changed the way we understand the universe, who discovered the laws of gravity and motion and invented calculus, suffered from Impostor Syndrome, saying, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” 2Impostor Syndrome is the blind spot that comes with talent.Harold Kushner describes Impostor Syndrome as “the feeling of many apparently successful people that their success is undeserved… For all the outward trappings of success, they feel hollow inside. They can never rest and enjoy their accomplishments… They need constant reassurance from the people around them to still the voice inside them that keeps saying, ‘If other people knew you the way I know you, they would know what a phony you are.'” 3Now here’s the good news: Impostor Syndrome is perfectly normal. What you want to avoid is the opposite, the Dunning–Kruger effect, a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusions of superiority, mistakenly assessing their abilities as much higher than they really are. 4Everyone is messed-up and broken a little. (Impostor Syndrome)But the most messed-up are those who believe they are not. (Dunning-Kruger)Scientists Dunning and Kruger believe “the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.” 4In other words, those of us who have Impostor Syndrome see ourselves from the inside, where we stand naked in the shadow of old wounds, past failures and the knowledge of our limitations. But we see others from the outside, where they stand majestic, beautifully illuminated in the bright glory of their successes.A close friend once asked me to tell him the secret of confidence. “The key isn’t to think more highly of yourself,” I said, “but to quit thinking so highly of others.”If Dunning and Kruger’s research can be trusted, it would appear that I was right.This is what I was hoping to give you today:Encouragement.Talented people like yourself often feel they’ve just been lucky. But being in the right place at the right time doing the right thing in the right way isn’t luck, it’s talent. Most people have at least one talent. Be happy that you found yours.Normality.Seventy percent of successful people wrestle with Impostor Syndrome. See it for what it is and it will disappear.Self-acceptance.Yes, you have deficiencies, but so does everyone else. Relax.Self-awareness.I said that Impostor Syndrome is a blind spot among people with talent. Hopefully, now that you’ve seen your blind spot, it won’t be a blind spot anymore.Gratitude.Open your eyes to your talent and be glad of it. (And if you ever figure out who gave it to you, be sure to thank them for it!)Have a great week.Do great things.It’s in your nature.Roy H. Williams

Sunlight is composed of red, green and blue light waves. Combine these together and you get white light.ARemove the red from white light and you will no longer be able to see red in anything illuminated by that light. Red will no longer exist. Remove the blue and you will no longer see blue.This is the secret of propaganda.Propaganda is an emotionally charged word, so we should probably establish a definition for the purposes of this discussion:“Propaganda is a form of persuasion that refuses to consider the point of view of its opponent. Instead, propaganda will mock, vilify and demonize its opponent or ignore its opponent’s perspective completely.”Google “propaganda” and you’ll learn the term dates back to 1622, when Pope Gregory XV decided to send out missionaries to propagate – propagando – the faith. To facilitate this, he created the sacra congregatio christiano nomini propagando. The cardinal in charge of Propagando became known as the “red pope” due to the importance of his duties and the extraordinary extent of his authority. 1In 1982, Pope John Paul II renamed it the congregation for the evangelization of peoples, probably because the word “propaganda” had been given a bad name by Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany.Catholics in 1622 wanted to eliminate the Protestant perspective, which is only fair, because Protestants wanted to eliminate the Catholic perspective.This polarization caused millions to die in religious wars, but that doesn’t make religion bad. It is a polarized perspective – whether in religion or sports or anything else – that’s bad.A person can have a strong and unchangeable point of view but still retain the courtesy and breadth of vision to understand how an intelligent person might embrace the opposite point of view. 2Think of your opponent as watching a sporting event from the seat exactly opposite yours. You’re both watching the same game, but his left is your right, and your right is his left. So which of you is the liar? Which of you is the fool?200 million Muslims are Shiites.1.6 billion Muslims are Sunnis.When the Islamic Prophet Muhammad died in 632 A.D., a debate emerged about who should be his successor. Both sides agreed that Allah is the one true God and that Muhammad was his messenger, but one group (the Shiites) felt Muhammad’s successor should be someone in his bloodline, while the other (the Sunnis) felt a pious individual who would follow the Prophet’s customs would be acceptable.Both Sunnis and Shiitesread the Quran,believe the Prophet Muhammad was the messenger of Allah,fast during Ramadan,pledge to make a pilgrimage to Mecca,practice ritual prayer five times a day,give charity to the poor andpledge themselves to their faith.But rather than celebrate what they have in common and use those bonds to facilitate peace and prosperity, the Sunnis and Shiites have chosen bitter war.Democrats and Republicans seem to be making a similar choice.I, for one, want no part of it.Justice and Mercy are both important and good and true.But they exist in perpetual tension, an eternal tug-of-war.I’m sure I’ll be criticized for saying this, but it seems to me that one side wants to shine bold red light on the importance of protecting ourselves from those who would do us harm, while the other side wants to shine a soothing blue light on the pain of the struggling and the oppressed.If propagandists are successful in their attempts to eliminate the red or the blue from the light that shines from America, I fear we will learn we have amputated an arm because we didn’t understand its purpose.Roy H. Williams

Each of us likes to think we believe what we believe because the evidence dictates it.But if that were true, wouldn’t each of us believe the same things?We call one person a romantic and another a realist, and we secretly think the realist to be more valuable, do we not?Labels are powerful things. To call someone “a realist” is to accuse his or her counterpart of believing in things that are not real.But are honor, courage, virtue and love not real?My experience has been that we become less frustrated and more likeable when we embrace the fact that belief is a choice.“If you want to believe in something, then believe in it. Just because something isn’t true, that’s no reason you can’t believe in it… Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most: that people are basically good; that honor, courage and virtue mean everything; that power and money – money and power – mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil. And I want you to remember this; that love – true love – never dies. Remember that, boy. Remember that. It doesn’t matter if they’re true or not, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.”– Hub McCann, played by Robert Duvall, speaking to his nephew in Secondhand LionsEvidence does not dictate belief.Belief is always a choice.This came pointedly to my attention as I was assembling my chapter for a collaborative book, Poetics of Re-accentuation: Don Quixote in film, theatre, and modern literature.The basic idea of re-accentuation is that every generation makes and remakes the image of Don Quixote to reflect their own worldview. (Indy Beagle has assembled, in the rabbit hole, a list of those of you I quoted.)I can summarize my chapter in 2 sentences.Perhaps no story has ever been changed to fit the measure of its readers so much as Don Quixote has been changed to fit 21st century businesspeople and entrepreneurs.Businesspeople tend to see Quixote as a symbol of the irrational and unyielding optimism that is essential to every visionary entrepreneur.But this interpretation of Quixote is not universal:Two of the friends who shared their thoughts and feelings with me wrote brilliantly about how the delusions of Quixote hurt everyone around him, particularly those who loved him most.One of these writers was a family counselor. The other was an accountant. (Is our career choice a reflection of how we see the world, or is our worldview shaped by our career?)I agreed with these two friends because they were entirely correct.And I agreed with all those who said the opposite.In truth, each of us is a romantic and a realist.The human brain is divided into competing halves. The realistic left and the romantic right. This is why we’re so often at odds with ourselves, torn between two ways of thinking.“Outwardly we laugh at the absurdity of a man jousting with windmills, thinking them to be giants. But inwardly we crave Quixote’s sense of mission and purpose, his dedication to a cause, his willingness to pay any price to achieve the honor of his beloved, the entirely imaginary Dulcinea.So who is the silly one? He, for seeing beyond what is, to serve a beauty that could be, should be, ought to be? Or me, for remaining trapped in a black and white world where little men hide behind technicalities?” – Roy H. Williams, (2005)This concept of multiple perspectives is easy to embrace as long as we’re talking about Don Quixote and Secondhand Lions, but what happens when the conversation grows more personal?“Given the current level of anger, we are in danger of becoming a monster in an attempt to destroy a monster. Without a return to civility in our public discourse, I fear anger may well escalate into violence right here in the United States.”– Richard Exley,Aug 23, 2016, as Donald and Hillary rush headlong toward NovemberI can agree with Richard’s statement without having to know anything about his politics.I hope you can, too.Roy H. Williams

Why do old songs pop into our heads? Unheard for decades – and often a song we never even liked – there it is, filling the echo chamber of the articulatory loop of working memory in the dorsolateral prefrontal association areas of our brains.“…smokin’ cigarettes and watchin’ Captain Kannnng-aroo,now don’t tell meeeeeeee I’ve nothin’ to dooooo….”I whispered everything I could remember to Google.Google whispered back, “The Statler Brothers, Flowers on the Wall, 1966. It won the Grammy for ‘Best Performance by a Vocal Group.'”To get the most out of your ad writer, send them your irrelevant and ridiculous passing thoughts.Don’t overthink it, and don’t be annoyed when most of your passing thoughts are ignored. Because occasionally, now and then, one of those passing thoughts will morph into a fabulous ad for your business.I was trying to drive “Captain Kannnng-aroo” from my mind when I heard a little email *ding* from my computer. It was Ken Goodrich, the owner of Goettl (rhymes with kettle).Crap.Ken was thinking about Captain Kangaroo, too.I turned Ken’s email into a 60-second radio ad.Captain Kangaroo is the reason I own Goettl Air Conditioning. I know that sounds weird, but it’s true. I’m Ken Goodrich. Here’s how it happened. When I was a kid, our family had a big Zenith console television that was about the size of a small hippopotamus or a pony with very short legs. Your family probably had one, too. Anyway, the Captain was always talking about Schwinn bicycles and what made them BETTER than other bicycles. Sitting there cross-legged on the floor, the Captain convinced me to always buy GOOD quality made with REAL craftsmanship because it works better, lasts longer, and saves you money. When it comes to air conditioners, that’s Goettl. But wait, it gets even weirder. I only hire technicians and installers that remind me of Mr. Green Jeans. Happy. Hard working. He just wants you to be happy.  Call Goettl. Gee Oh Ee, T-T-L. It’ll keep you cool, but it’s hard to spell. And if you see one of my technicians, ask them for a Goettl flashlight. (Contractor License #) You’ll find the phone number at Goettl.com. Gee Oh Ee, T-T-L dot com.You’ve heard me say, “Entertainment is the currency that purchases the attention of the public.” And this is an example of that.Here’s how to take a rambling email from a client and turn it into a highly entertaining ad:Open your ad from an interesting angle.This applies to opening lines as well as headlines in print and online.How can anyone not listen to an ad that opens with, “Captain Kangaroo is the reason I own Goettl Air Conditioning.”Make an entertaining pitch.Don’t entertain, then pitch. Make the whole pitch entertaining. “…a big Zenith console television that was about the size of a small hippopotamus or a pony with very short legs.”Make the reader/listener/viewer see herself in your ad.“Your family probably had one, too.”When appropriate, tell WHY you are the way you are. (Your Genesis story.)“Sitting there cross-legged on the floor, the Captain convinced me to always buy GOOD quality made with REAL craftsmanship because it works better, lasts longer, and saves you money.”Now add “one more thing” as icing to the cake.“But wait, it gets even weirder. I only hire technicians and installers that remind me of Mr. Green Jeans.”Wrap it up in a manner that isn’t painfully predictable.“And if you see one of my technicians, ask them for a Goettl flashlight.”Do you need some intellectual exercise? Ask a business friend to share a vivid, childhood memory with you in an email. Don’t tell them what you’re planning to do with it. Just tell them to share a story with you that “taught them a useful lesson they have never forgotten.” And then turn that email into a 60-second radio ad.If you’re proud of what you wrote and you can read it out loud in exactly 60 seconds, send Indiana Beagle the script (or the MP3) and he’ll happily post it in the rabbit hole. [email protected] you up for it?Roy H. Williams

The cognoscenti will remember two big statements glittering on the screen behind me during the opening moments of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop:“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”– Niels Bohr, physicist“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”– F. Scott Fitzgerald, writerWhat I’m about to say may prove to be just such a test.I’m counting on you to possess a first-rate intelligence:“People love Donald Trump.”“People hate Donald Trump.”Those two statements about Donald Trump seem to be mutually exclusive until we realize that neither statement purports to describe ALL people. Different people feel different ways. We understand this when it comes to politics.But let the discussion turn to advertising and you will soon hear voices begin speaking of Millennials and Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers as though every member of a birth cohort is somehow compelled to make their decisions based on a single, shared set of values determined by the year in which they were born.It’s like listening to people who believe in astrology. “Your fate is determined by your birthday.”The only thing weirder is listening to wholesalers and distributors speak of the men and women involved in “B to B” (Business to Business) as if they were an entirely different species. “Roy, I hear what you’re saying about using words as tools of persuasion, but my business is B to B and B to B is different. What can you tell me about selling B to B?”Blanket statements result from a belief in stereotypes.Stereotypes are attractive because they allow us to simplify complex realities.Stereotypes are false categories that allow us to feel good about stupid decisions.People are extremely different.People are all alike.Both of those statements are true.Both of those statements are false.How’s that first-rate intelligence holding up?I’m now going to make 5 true statements. Some will confirm your suspicions and beliefs. Others will stick in your throat like a fish bone, forcing you to cough and sputter.I apologize in advance.Your perfect “target customer” is probably a false category.This is one of the two reasons why your advertising is performing poorly.The first time I visited Procter & Gamble headquarters in Cincinnati, I was greeted warmly and shown the auditorium where I would be speaking. After all the equipment had been tested, my guide asked,“Do you know the unofficial slogan of our company?”I shook my head from side to side.“In God we trust. All others bring data.”In an August 9, 2016 story in the Wall Street Journal, Procter & Gamble Chief Marketing Officer Marc Pritchard announced, “We targeted too much and we went too narrow.”Example: Sales stagnated when P&G aimed Febreze ads on FaceBook at pet owners and households with large families. But sales rose when the same budget was spent reaching “anyone over 18.”P&G has been spending hundreds of million of dollars on tests like that for the past two years. The jury has now returned with a verdict: reaching influencers is just as important as reaching the decision maker.You feeling that fish bone yet?Millennials are easy to attract.According to an Aug. 5th Daily Beast article by Samantha Allen, one in three young adults is still living at home.Touchy-feely theorists say this is because “Millennials desire safe spaces.”When carmakers realized Millennials weren’t buying cars, they appointed “youth emmissaries” who came up with new colors like “techno pink” and “denim.”It isn’t “fear of commitment” that keeps Millennials from buying houses.The Economist wondered aloud in June, “Why aren’t millennials buying diamonds?” and speculated it was “the taint of conflict and exploitation” that was keeping them away.But according to Samantha Allen,“Millennials are not some vast unsolvable mystery… basic economic math can explain much of the younger generation’s behavior… Cars cost money and millennials have less of it and diamonds are freakin’ expensive… So the next time you have a hunch about why millennials are the way they are, ask yourself if economic insecurity might be a better hypothesis.”In truth, Millennials are easy to attract. Most of them just don’t have the buying power that most businesses assume they have.Growing companies are desperate to find employees.Wait. Didn’t we just say that one in three millennials is still living at home because they’re poor? Yes. They’re drowning in college debt because we lied to them. We said a degree was the key to getting a good job. So they got an education but they have no marketable skills.You would be startled by the number of recruitment ads my partners and I are writing each week for client companies t

Time and Money are interchangeable.We can always save one by spending more of the other.Time and Money are interchangeable.We prize the one we feel to be in short supply.Time and Money are interchangeable.We burn them both like the wax of a candle.What is patience if not the quiet, dark burning of time?What is entertainment if not the dazzling, bright burning of time?What is play if not the warm, happy burning of time?What is freedom if not the ability to burn time in any way we choose?Do you want to attract influential people to your business?Patiently offer them entertainment, play and freedom.They will be attracted to your lightand come back with their friends.This is why an innovative marketing school teaches people how to become whiskey sommeliers.*Influential people are obligated to make money.Money, for them, is a representative product of work.What they seek is freedom, entertainment and play.What they seek is a pleasant way to spend time.Aristotle Onassis understood this.Ari was a 17 year-old Greek refugee who fled to Buenos Aires where he began working as a telephone operator in 1923. He would soon become one of the wealthiest men in the world. This, in his own words, was his secret:Make sure you are tanned, live in expensive buildings, even if you have to stay in the cellar, go out to expensive restaurants, even if you can only afford one drink.”Ari spent the money he made as a telephone operator on quality clothes, a tanning lamp and a single drink each night in the swankiest bar in Buenos Aires. Within a few months, he had become friends with all the important people of that city. And with their help, he began a tobacco importing business that made him, and them, a fortune.That’s when he began buying ships.Having learned that the Canadian National Steamship Company wanted to sell 2 ships at scrap metal prices, Ari left immediately for Canada and convinced that company to sell him not just 2, but 6 ships for $20,000 each. Within a few years Ari had amassed the world’s largest privately owned shipping fleet and became one of the world’s richest and most famous men.Seventeen year-old Aristotle Onassis instinctively knew that freedom, entertainment and play were the only things that influential people really desire. He connected with them, not through work, but through play.Ari became successful, not because he knew how to spend money, but because he knew how to spend time when time was his only asset.If you don’t have all the money you desire, I have but a single question for you:How are you spending your time?Roy H. Williams

Most people associate The Power of Myth with the 1988 PBS television series with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, or with the accompanying book of that name. But it was John F. Kennedy who spoke of the power of myth with the greatest clarity and insight. The occasion was his 1962 Commencement Address to the graduates of Yale University.As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality. For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”Erroneous preconceptions are the dangerous downside of myths.But heroes are their dangerous upside.Larger than life, highly exaggerated and always positioned in the most favorable light, a hero is a beautiful lie.We have historic heroes, folk heroes and comic book heroes. We have heroes in books and songs and movies and sport. We have heroes of morality, leadership, kindness and excellence. And nothing is so devastating to our sense of wellbeing as a badly fallen hero. Yes, heroes are dangerous things to have.The only thing more dangerous is not to have them.Heroes raise the bar we jump and hold high the standards we live by. They are ever-present tattoos on our psyche, the embodiment of all we’re striving to be.We create our heroes from our hopes and dreams. And then they attempt to create us in their own image.The saying, “The sun never sets on the British Empire” was true as recently as 1937 when tiny England did, in fact, still have possessions in each of the world’s 24 time zones.It’s widely known that the British explored, conquered and ruled much of the world for a number of years, but what isn’t widely known is what made them believe they could do it.For the first 1000 years after Christ, Greece and Rome were the only nations telling stories of heroes and champions. England was just a dreary little island of rejects, castoffs and losers.So who inspired tiny, foggy England to rise up and take over the world?A simple Welsh monk named Geoffrey – hoping to instill in his countrymen a sense of pride – assembled a history of England that gave his people a grand and glorious pedigree. Published in 1136, Geoffrey’s “History of the Kings of Britain,” was a detailed, written account of the deeds of the English people for each of the 17 centuries prior to 689 AD… and not a single word of it was true. Yet in creating heroes like King Arthur, Guinevere, Merlyn and the Knights of the Round Table from the fabric of his imagination, Geoffrey of Monmouth convinced a sad little island of rejects, castoffs and losers to begin seeing themselves as a just and magnificent nation.And not long after they began to see themselves that way in their minds, they began seeing themselves that way in the mirror.Most people assume that stories of heroes are the byproducts of great civilizations, but I’m convinced they are the cause of them. Magnificent civilizations have always been the ones with stories of heroes; larger-than-life role models that inspired ordinary citizens to rise up and do the impossible.I love imaginary heroes like King Arthur and Don Quixote.I love civilian heroes like Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King.I love political heroes like Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt.But what happens when your hero is a fool?I pray we never find out.Roy H. Williams

Memories of PercyAugust 1, 2016ListenAHis gifts didn’t prove that he was rich. His gifts proved that he cared. And the smallness of his gifts proved that I could afford to care, too.My long friendship with Percy began exactly 30 years ago when I saw him on the cover of a magazine as it lay on a coffee table in a friend’s house. He was a smiling gentleman sitting on a desk stacked with bags of money. The headline read, “Why is Percy Ross Giving Away $20,000,000?”In the feature story, author Steven Kaplan explained how Percy Ross employed a small team of people to read the 4,000 letters he received each week asking him for financial help. A few of these letters got published each week – along with his response – in the 800+ newspapers that carried his syndicated column, “Thanks a Million.”Paragraph 38 quoted Percy as saying that he had engaged two large advertising firms to help him turn his column into a radio show only to be told by each of them that it wasn’t feasible.The week after I read that story, his readers had to plow through 4,001 letters because I decided to add my own letter to the pile.Mr. Ross, I don’t want or need any of your money, but I read in Robb Report magazine that you wanted to syndicate a daily radio feature. I’ve done this 4 times already, so I’m familiar with the problems your people ran into and I know the ways around all those problems. Give me a call at your convenience and I’ll tell you everything you need to know. I look forward to hearing you on the radio!”I received a phone call and a plane ticket to Minneapolis. Percy picked me up at the airport, and as we were walking shoulder-to-shoulder toward his car I said,Mr. Ross, in about an hour and a half you’re going to know absolutely everything you need to know to get “Thanks a Million” on several hundred radio stations for free. As a matter of fact, you should be able to make a few tens of thousands of dollars a month from it. What I need you to understand is that I’m fully aware that I’m about to make myself obsolete. Not only will you not need to hire me to help you, you won’t need to hire anyone else, either.“Why would you do that?” he asked.“If this was the only valuable idea that I was ever going to have, I’d do my best to monetize it. But it seems to me that each of us will encounter more valuable opportunities in a single day than we could possibly pursue in a lifetime. But today isn’t work. Today I’m just helping you help others.”Five, six, seven, eight, nine steps and still Percy hadn’t said anything. So I looked to my left.And he wasn’t there.Spinning around I saw him standing quietly in the parking lot, staring at me. He had stopped in his tracks while I was talking. We stood looking at each other a few moments, then he said,How old are you, son?”“Twenty-eight, sir.”“I was fifty years old before I figured that out.”About 90 minutes later Percy said with a smile,Roy, I’m really glad you told me what you did in the parking lot of the airport because if you hadn’t, right now I’d be thinking you were the most naive and careless young man who had ever lived. You were right! I don’t need anyone’s help to do this. Not even yours. You have given me something I tried to buy and could not. And that doesn’t happen to me very often.”Within 6 months, Percy was on 584 radio stations for free, including WNBC in New York city, a station whose ads sold for $1,000 apiece 30 years ago.When Percy died on November 10, 2001, his Los Angeles Times obituary began with these words,Percy Ross, the Minnesota junk dealer’s son who made and lost 3 fortunes but found his greatest joy in doling out silver dollars from the money he kept while smiling for the cameras, has died. He was 84.Ross, author of the syndicated advice and cash giveaway column “Thanks a Million” from 1983 to 1999 and host of a companion radio show, died of natural causes Nov. 10 at his home in Minneapolis.Often delivering checks personally, Ross gave $200 or $300 to fix a leaky roof, replace a stolen artificial arm or buy new lingerie for an elderly woman embarrassed to die in her worn-out underwear. He freely handed a silver dollar to anybody who interviewed or photographed him and to many who wrote.But he minced no words in rejecting requests that he pay rent, medical or utility bills or credit card debts–all something he believed the debtor should pay himself.“You know my motto, don’t you?” he told a Times interviewer in 1987. “He who gives while he lives knows where it goes. . . . I’m having a ball, the time of my life.”My favorite Percy moment was his response to a woman who spoke of her impoverished old mother who had nine adult children, all of whom were as poor as she was.Mama’s only pleasure is growing flowers but she can’t grow them in the winter. Right now the lumber yard has a greenhouse kit for just $400 and my brothers could build it in her backyard if you would only bu

The reason people write poorly is because they read too many blogs, tweets, news stories and Facebook posts.As you read, so will you write.Maxwell Rotbart. the son of roving reporter Rotbart, asked me to name 10 books he should read. When I asked the purpose of this reading, Maxwell said, “I just want to know what great writing sounds like.”“Do you want to read the best stories or do you want to read the best writing?”“I want to read the best writing.”I quickly named 7 books before I began to struggle. Dozens of others were flickering through my mind, but they were mostly examples of great storytelling, employing marvelous narrative arcs and character arcs. But my list was to be about great writing: sentence construction, word selection, vivid description and an intriguing sequencing of mental images. Every style of great writing I could think of was already represented on my list.Indiana Beagle saved me. “Wizard,” he said, “let me ask the rabbit hole tribe to name the last 3 books.”“So let it be written,” I said, “So let it be done.”Indy snickered in that way he does when he knows I’m being pompous.Anyway, here’s my list:Travels with Charley – John SteinbeckEast of Eden is a better story, but Charley will teach you more about writing. Let Steinbeck show you how to unveil a mental image from an interesting perspective, restrain yourself from saying too much, and delight your reader with unexpected observations and connections. A second example of a well written book-without-a-plot is Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, the personal letters written by John Steinbeck to his friends between 1923 and 1968.The Poetry of Robert FrostFrost communicates bigger ideas in fewer words than any other writer I have ever read. Let him teach you the power of metaphor, the magic of meter (rhythm,) and the use of the perfect word.At his simplest, his most rhythmical and cryptic, Frost is a remarkable poet. He is surely that. In other words, if you were chopping wood, that chore had some kind of universal significance to Frost. If you were picking apples, this has a general conclusive principle somewhere involved in it, or with it, in some way. This localizing way of getting generalities to reveal themselves, like universal design, original sin, love, death, fate: Frost found a way to do this, to make anything that has ever concerned mankind relate to a New England farm.”– James Dickey, Classes on Modern Poets and The Art of Poetry, p. 126One Summer: America, 1927 – Bill BrysonSome of the best advice I offer writers is this: “Take your inspiration from wherever you find it, no matter how ridiculous.” Bill Bryson is the world’s best example of this. It is impossible not to be devastated by his fascinating choices of subject matter, his deep research, obvious restraint and amazing phrasing.The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest HemingwayThis very short book put Hemingway over the top to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Let Ernest teach you how simple observations, clearly stated, have impact.Hawaii – James MichenerMichener will teach you patience and attention to detail. If objective reality and clarity are your goals as a writer, Michener and Hemingway are the voices you want echoing in your mind as you write.One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia MarquezMagical Realism isn’t fantasy or science fiction. It is the straight-faced, deadpan inclusion of magical or unreal elements in an otherwise realistic or mundane environment. And no one does it better than Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is the opening line.Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to see ice.”Still Life with Woodpecker – Tom RobbinsOn the third day of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop, we teach chaotic writing. No one explains it better than Tom Robbins.Everything in the universe is connected, of course. It’s just a matter of using imagination to discover the links, and language to expand and enliven them… I always start with three or four completely unrelated big ideas, and maybe a character or two who have ostensible connections neither to each other nor to any of the big ideas… I never begin with more than the vaguest idea of the plot. To pull that off with an acceptable degree of artistry, one must write very, very slowly … and be able to hold a great many things in one’s mind.”“It went ‘whoosh’ as it shot by, a sleek panatela of frozen light, pulsating with polka dots of every color, traveling, a mere thousand feet or so above the water, at incredible speed and mopping up the last of the sunset as if it were a bar rag from outer space.”– Tom Robbins, describing a UFO in Still Life With WoodpeckerAre you surprised that Don Quixote was not on my list? Pop into the rabbit h

She stood silently on the cracked asphalt, her summer dress billowing in the breeze, the calm at the center of the storm that was spreading across the country. Around her swirled police officers and demonstrators that had blocked Airline Highway in Baton Rouge to denounce the death of Alton Sterling, shot by police outside a convenience store. Many protesters carried signs. Some shouted into bullhorns. ‘She just stood there and made her stand,’ said photographer Jonathan Bachman to Buzzfeed News. ‘I was just happy to be able to capture something like that.'” – Michael E. MillerIeshia Evans is a 28 year-old mother with a 5 year-old boy.She wanted to look her son in the eyes to tell him she fought for his freedom and rights,” says Alex Haynes, her best friend since the age of eight.This is not an unemployed troublemaker.This is an accomplished woman, a successful LPN.And this was her first protest.But young black men are dying when they should not.And her son is a young black man.When Ieshia Evans was 3 years old, Disney released a children’s movie called Beauty and the Beast.AThat movie is about a girl named Belle, the non-conforming daughter of an eccentric inventor. Belle is ostracized by her peers due to her intelligence and love of books. But when her father is imprisoned by a cold-hearted beast, Belle offers the beast her own freedom in exchange for her father’s.Does that story sound familiar? Belle was not a new character. Disney has been holding up strong, young women as role models since 1950, when Cinderella ran an entire household by herself, prepared the meals, did the laundry and fed all the livestock until she was encouraged by an older woman – her fairy godmother – to rise above her circumstances and all the haters who were trying to hold her down.Cinderella lived happily ever after as a princess in a castle.Admittedly, the vehicle of Cinderella’s escape was Prince Charming.But that was 1950.bIn 1953, Disney gave us Tinker Bell, a loyal, brave and determined pixie forever trailed by glittering pixie dust that can help humans fly if they think happy thoughts. Tinker Bell became one of Disney’s most important icons.r1964  Mary Poppins is an independent woman who knows her own worth. She demands respect at her job and stands up to her boss from the get-go.i1977 In The Rescuers, Penny is a tough little orphan girl who is kidnapped and held prisoner in Devil’s Bayou, where she faces down a pair of trained crocodiles, Brutus and Nero, and thwarts her captors entirely with the help two little mice.Thirteen years ago I wrote the following in the Monday Morning Memo for February 17, 2003.Heroes are dangerous things. Bigger than life, highly exaggerated and always positioned in the most favorable light, a hero is a beautiful lie.We have historic heroes, folk heroes and comic book heroes. We have heroes in books and songs and movies and sport. We have heroes of morality, leadership, kindness and excellence. And nothing is so devastating to our sense of wellbeing as is a badly fallen hero. Yes, heroes are dangerous things to have.The only thing more dangerous is not to have them.Heroes raise the bar we jump and hold high the standards we live by. They are ever-present tattoos on our psyche, the embodiment of all we are striving to be.We create our heroes from our hopes and dreams. And then they attempt to create us in their own image.”Through their skillful crafting of heroes for children, Disney has been telling women to rise up and be free for the past 63 years.e1989 Ariel, The Little Mermaid, is curious and bold, quite unlike anyone else under the sea. Her thirst for knowledge makes her special.f1995  Pocahontas is a wise and courageous girl who breaks with tradition to follow the beat of a different drummer. She creates peace between two civilizations and saves a lot of lives. 1998 In Mulan, a young Chinese girl saves her father from a burden he cannot bear, keeps up with all the boys in the army, climbs a pole with heavy cinderblocks attached to her hands and saves the city from attack. The emperor, along with thousands upon thousands of people, bow to her. Evidently, it’s okay to want to be on the front lines instead of waiting around for Prince Charming.s2009  In The Princess and the Frog, Tiana is the “anti-princess” princess, a hardworking girl who would rather fulfill her own goals than pin her hopes on the actions of other people. Tiana wants to own her own business. She is also notable as Disney’s first African-American princess.u2012 In Brave, Merida is a rambunctious and strong-willed warrior girl, a force to be reckoned with. She learns from her mistakes, gains compassion, and comes to understand what’s truly important in life.mAnd that brings us to Elsa in Frozen.* Pennie and I have two so

Like most men, I’ve long been fascinated with women.But if we look beyond the physical differences, what is it that defines “woman”? Research reveals a series of definitions so conflicted that I believe anyone who attempts to define “woman” is certain to be criticized.But when has that ever been an impediment to a curious mind?Our examination of the mystery and magic of the feminine begins with 7 quotes that reveal a being so perfect that she can exist only in the imagination of a man. Psychologist Carl Jung calls her the anima.“The lace on a woman’s wrist is an entirely different thing from lace in a shop. In the shop it is a piece of workmanship, on her it is the accentuation of her gentleness of character and refinement.”– Robert Henri, The Art Spirit“The girls in body-form slacks wander the High Street with locked hands while small transistor radios sit on their shoulders and whine love songs in their ears. The younger boys, bleeding with sap, sit on the stools of Tanger’s Drugstore ingesting future pimples through straws. They watch the girls with level goat-eyes and make disparaging remarks to one another while their insides whimper with longing.”– John Steinbeck“What do we know about the goddesses, those elusive female figures, stronger than human males, more dangerous than male deities, who represent not real women but the dreams of real men?”– Alice Bach, Women in the Hebrew Bible, p. 17“I think the idealization of women is indigenous to men. There are various ways of idealizing women, especially sexually, based in almost every case on their inaccessibility. When a woman functions as an unobtainable love object, then she takes on a mythical quality. You can see this principle functioning as a sales device in advertising and in places like Playboy magazine. Almost every movie you see has this quality, because you can’t embrace the image on the screen. Thousands of novels use this principle, because you can’t embrace a printed image on a page.”– James Dickey, Self Interviews, p. 153Gypsy Maiden: One day I will go to your lands and I will dance as a European.Marco Polo: They will love you.Gypsy Maiden: Will I love Venice?Marco Polo: It is magnificent, the city of bridges. Instead of roads we travel on canals in wooden boats.Gypsy Maiden: That’s absurd.Marco Polo: You wouldn’t think that if you saw it.Gypsy Maiden: If it is so magnificent, why are you here and not there?Marco Polo: You must have summoned me.Gypsy Maiden: I did no such thing.  [He tries to kiss her and she turns away.] I’m afraid.Marco Polo: Don’t be.Gypsy Maiden: I’m afraid you will fall in love with me.  All men fall in love with me because I always leave. And there is nothing men love more than the thing they cannot have.– Marco Polo, season two“Her name is Dulcinea, her kingdom, Toboso, which is in La Mancha, her condition must be that of princess, at the very least, for she is my queen and lady, and her beauty is supernatural, for in it one finds the reality of all the impossible.” – Don Quixote, (1605)“Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”– Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s OwnOur journey will continue in the rabbit hole of Indiana Beagle, where we will examine two additional perspectives that reflect two additional definitions of “woman,” each of which disallows the idea we have just examined.They also disallow each other.I call the second perspective, “Women are Mortal – Sort of.”And third perspective is, “Women are Just Like Men. But Different.”To enter Indiana Beagle’s rabbit hole, click the image of imaginary Freda at the top of this page. Each click of an image thereafter will take you to the next page.It is a journey you will not soon forget.Roy H. Williams

People have been asking me to explain symbols lately.Symbols are a language of the unconscious mind. This is why our dreams are full of them.A person sits alone in a rowboat on the ocean at night, looking up at the stars.That symbol – whether expressed visually or in words – speaks to us of spirituality and practicality; deep thoughts and big challenges.But how? Nowhere among those 17 words is any reference to thoughts or challenges. We are given only a person, a rowboat, water, darkness and stars.The scene is awesome, majestic and lonely.“Oh God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.”President John F. Kennedy, deeply aware of the awesomeness of his responsibilities and the majesty of his position and the loneliness that comes with both, kept those 13 words forever before him as a plaque on his desk in the oval office.Ernest Hemingway animated this symbol in his novella, The Old Man and the Sea. Alone and far from shore, Santiago faces the task of landing a fish bigger than his boat and then defending it from a mob of sharks. Looking up at the stars and down into the water and fighting with all his strength for 3 days and 3 nights, Santiago’s soul-searching self-talk won Hemingway the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.Forty-seven years later, Yann Martel conjured this same image to sell more than 10,000,000 copies of The Life of Pi. In the opening line of its summary, Wikipedia says the book “explores issues of spirituality and practicality.” Go figure.I often begin the second day of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop by asking the students,“Did any of you have an interesting dream last night?”I do this because the first day of that class is filled with lots of big ideas coming at you too quickly to digest and assimilate. Dreams are a just side effect of your unconscious mind’s processing of unresolved ideas during the night.Two weeks ago, a first-time Wizard Academy student, a 65 year-old man, raised his hand and said, “I dreamed I was on a gondola in Venice, Italy, when an incredibly beautiful woman came onto the boat and seduced me.”The class laughed, of course, but then the man asked, “Why do you think I had that dream?”“Did you enjoy the day yesterday?”“Very much! It was magical.”“Would you say that you’re on a journey, in an exotic place, overwhelmed by incredibly beautiful new ideas?”The man brightened. “The woman wasn’t a woman at all! She was just a symbol of what I learned!”“Makes sense to me.”“Me, too!”This brings us to the 4 stories celebrated in the art that overflows the campus of Wizard Academy.The Christmas Story of the Magi, or Wise Men (wise-ards,) in Matthew chapter 2 is a story about a group of people who saw beauty and truth where others saw nothing at all. The Wise Men did more than talk; they took action. They counted the cost and launched an adventure. They pulled the trigger and rode the bullet. They followed a star across an ocean of sand.Don Quixote de La Mancha, (1605) is essentially the same story. “This is my quest: to follow that star. No matter how hopeless, no matter how far.” Like the wise-ards before him, Quixote sees and values things that others neither see nor value. But isn’t this a quality of every innovator and entrepreneur? Quixote is driven by his pursuit of Dulcinea, the perfect woman than exists only in the imagination of a man.1 She was recently seen stepping aboard a gondola in Venice, Italy.A Message to Garcia – Translated into every language of the world, this true story by Elbert Hubbard was for many years history’s most widely distributed work during the lifetime of the author. Here are paragraphs 4 and 5:“Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How “the fellow by name of Rowan” took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeks came out on the other side of the island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and having delivered his letter to Garcia, are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail.”“The point I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask, “Where is he at?” By the Eternal! There is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college in the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this or that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies; do the thing – ‘carry a message to Garcia!'”Are you beginning to see a pattern?Quixote and The Wise Men, Rowan and Santiago, did more than talk; they took action.The Old Man and the Sea – On the second evening of his journey, the fi

I scribbled my original “Twelve Most Common Mistakes in Marketing” on a hotel bar napkin in Portland, Oregon in 1997 and then presented those mistakes in a seminar the next day to 800 people.The following year it became an important chapter in my first book, The Wizard of Ads. Happily, that book went on to become Business Book of the Year in 1998 and it launched a trilogy of New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers for me.Even though plenty of people still make the original 12 mistakes, I believe it’s time for an update since a new group has emerged to become the 10 Most Common.Inappropriate Use of Social MediaThe whole world is on FaceBook, but is that the right place for your product or service to be advertised? To get a clear idea of the kinds of offers that are working well on FaceBook, go to the Success Stories page at FaceBook.com. Judging from this list of success stories, it would appear that FaceBook works extremely well for getting people together socially, not so well for hard goods and services. (HINT: I think there may be a reason they call it “social” media.)Overconfidence in the Value of TargetingJeffrey Eisenberg insightfully points out that, “online customers are exactly the same people as offline customers, yet advertisers tend to think of them as an entirely different species.” For the same amount of money it costs you to reach 5 tightly targeted customers online, you can reach 5 customers who have that same profile PLUS 127 of their friends by using broadcast TV or radio. Do you want your brand to be the one people think of immediately and feel the best about when they finally need what you sell?The Assumption that Every Message is RelevantWhy does every advertiser believe their product or service category to be intrinsically interesting? More than information, entertainment is the currency with which you can happily buy your prospective customer’s time and attention. But most ads have zero entertainment value.Fear of CriticismMost ads aren’t written to persuade. They’re written not to offend. But any message that has the power to move people will always move some of them in the wrong direction. When you’ve written a good ad, you must brace yourself for the negative backlash you’ll receive from people who are anxious to be offended. The only alternative is to forever settle for ads that are mushy, mundane and mediocre. Please don’t.Measuring Ad Effectiveness Too QuicklyIts claim to “instantly and accurately measure every ad’s effectiveness” is part of what makes digital marketing so appealing to advertisers. But didn’t you say you want your brand to be the one people think of immediately and feel the best about when they finally need what you sell? This requires ongoing advertising and longer measurement cycles. You cannot hold every ad immediately accountable and expect to build relationship with your customer.Unsubstantiated ClaimsAdjectives are the marks of an ad filled with empty rhetoric.Verbs are the marks of an ad that demonstrates its claims.Verbs – action words – “show” your customer what your product can do. Fluffy adjectives simply “tell” them. In the words of Christopher J. Maddock, “Show, don’t tell.”Believing that “Old” Media No Longer WorksIt is true that you need a website and that most customers are going to visit your website before making first contact with you. Therefore, it’s vital that your website be a good one. But if you believe that online marketing is the most efficient way to drive traffic to your website, you need to go back and read Most Common Mistake #2. Do you want to see a massive jump in the effectiveness of your online ads? Begin advertising on radio or television. But Take Note: your elevated metrics will make it appear as though your online efforts are working magically well when, in fact, the credit should be attributed to mass media.Assuming “The Decision Maker” Is The Only Person You Need to ReachDecisions aren’t made in a vacuum. You must also win the influencers if you want to create a successful brand. If you don’t value the opinions of influencers you’ll evolve into a direct-response marketer. But does your business category lend itself to direct response?Believing that “Millennials” Aren’t Like the Rest of UsMillennials aren’t a tribe, they are a collection of tribes. They do not behave as a single, cohesive birth cohort. Google “Millennials” and the dictionary definition that will pop up will show the word “millennial” most commonly used in this sentence: “The industry brims with theories on what makes millennials tick.” But when you look at a list of what millennials supposedly want, it’s exactly what the rest of us want. Yes, they’re not like we “50-somethings” used to be, but then we’re not like we used to be, either.AdSpeakPeople don’t hate advertising; they ha

Indiana Beagle is the spirit of curiosity, exploration and adventure. His twin sister Intuition is the beagle of my Destinae trilogy and the mother of Faith and Hope.Intuition is wordless but Indy can speak.Intuition came to life in June, 2001, during some early morning laughter with Princess Pennie.There is a beagle in our brain,” I shouted in mock rage, “and it must be unleashed to go where it will!” With my fist raised in defiance to anyone who would keep their beagle tethered, I shouted, “Free the Beagle! Free the Beagle! Aroooo! Arooooo! Aroooooo!”The subject of our laughter became a Monday Morning Memo, “The Beagle in Your Brain,” the following week. Two months later it was chapter 54 in Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads, which quickly became a Wall Street Journal bestseller.It was only when I was writing the Destinae trilogy that I realized Intuition has a mischievous brother, Indy, who can walk into any work of art and instantly be in that place, at that time. For Indy, photos and paintings are portals, giving him entrance into other worlds.But isn’t that what photos and paintings do for all of us?Indiana doesn’t appear in the Destinae trilogy because that’s the story of his sister. Likewise, you’ll find no photo or painting of Indy on the campus of Wizard Academy in Austin. When he isn’t guiding guests through a rabbit hole, Indy lives in the art collection you’ll find in the 12 buildings, 18 courtyards, parks and gardens, and 98 uniquely decorated rooms of that place.When you’re here and a work of art intrigues you, ask Indy what it means.There’s a scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) that tells us where Indiana Jones got his name.SALLAH: “Please, what does it always mean, this, this ‘Junior?'”HENRY JONES: “That’s his name. ‘Henry Jones, Junior.'”INDIANA JONES: “I like Indiana.”HENRY JONES: “We named the dog Indiana.”SALLAH: “The dog? (heh-heh) You are named after the dog?” (Laughter)INDIANA JONES: (Irritated) “I’ve got a lot of fond memories of that dog.”Like I said, Indiana Beagle is the spirit of curiosity, exploration and adventure. This is why he’s the guiding spirit of the Worldwide Worthless Bastards.“You know, Lydia, I used to be a rationalist.”“What is that?”“Well, it’s sort of believing only in what you see, or hear, or feel. But lately, I’ve begun to suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than I ever dreamed in my philosophy.”“You learn much when you learn that.”– Colonel Ralph Denistoun to the gypsy woman, Lydia, in Paramount’s 1947 Movie, Golden EarringsIndy and I have enjoyed the conversations we’ve had with prospective members of the Worthless Bastards during the past several weeks.Here’s what those conversations sound like:“You should join us at the Toad and Ostrich Pub on Friday afternoons at four.”“What do you do there?”“We just talk, mostly. But you’re not allowed to discuss business, or work, or politics or sports. And you can’t complain about anything or talk about your problems.”“What is there to talk about, then?”“We sip water and tea and wine and whisky and talk about music we love or movies we’ve seen or restaurants we’ve tried or sometimes someone will do a magic trick or tell a funny story about growing up or a colorful person they used to know. It’s really amazing how interesting people can be when business and politics and sports are off the table.”Worthless Bastards are people who have discovered that life’s nonproductive moments are often the most life affirming of all.There is a time for goal setting and grit, struggle and striving, determination and defiance. There is a time for vision and valor and timelines and tenacity.But it isn’t all the time.Roy H. Williams

When I was a boy, I wanted an older brother.Not just a year or two older, but six or eight or ten years older. I wanted to be able to ask him things and trust the motives behind his answers.Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to accumulate seven older brothers who speak wisdom into my life. These brothers give me the benefit of all their experiences – their successes and their mistakes – and help me remember who I am.I’ve never told you this, but I like to think of myself as your older brother. I try to give you the benefit of my experiences, if indeed there is any benefit to be found.Today your brother needs a favor. Will you indulge me?I’ve always been proud and ashamed that I never went to college. So when a group of scholars – department heads of major universities, mostly – asked me to contribute a chapter to their book about what Don Quixote means to the average person in the 21st century, well, I jumped at the chance.And then I put off getting started.And now I need to get it done.That’s where you come in.Will you write me a sentence or two or twenty about what Don Quixote represents to you?It doesn’t matter whether or not you’ve read the book. Your thoughts and feelings will come from wherever they come from. That’s the beauty of this project. You don’t have to defend your opinion, you only have to have one.Every generation for the past 400 years has seen Don Quixote differently. How do you see him today? What do you take from the story? Who is Sancho Panza and why does he matter? Who is Dulcinea and what does she mean to you? And if you are familiar with any of the other characters and elements of the story, I’d love to hear your thoughts and interpretations of those as well.How do you see Don Quixote? Your response can be as brief or as in-depth as you choose.Twenty different Cervantes scholars will each contribute a chapter to the book. I was the nineteenth person to receive an invitation, but at least I got invited.It means a lot to me.My chapter is supposed to be 5,000 words, so I need to hear from a lot of you. And please remember to give me your first and last name and your permission to publish what you send me. Also, tell me what you do for a living.Indy has volunteered to help me by collecting your emails at [email protected] of my older brothers, Ray Bard and Don Kuhl, have already contributed their thoughts and will definitely be represented in my chapter.I’d love to see your name alongside theirs.Roy H. Williams

“Silence is golden. Duct tape is silver.” The wit of these 7 words is rooted in the fact that the second sentence is an anomaly – an unexpected intrusion into the oft-repeated idea that silence is golden. The anomaly is then brought to closure and resolved in the mind of the listener. Duct tape is, in fact, silver. You smile a little.Bad ads leave no gaps and have no anomalies. Everything is stated clearly. No questions form in the mind of the customer.Good ads intrigue the customer and arouse their curiosity. Online marketers call this “engagement.”Novelists, screenwriters and storytellers have been intriguing us for decades, yet few people in advertising ever bother to study how they do it.Good news: I am one of those few people.Good storytellers use gaps and anomalies to trick the reader/listener/viewer into supplying the information they intentionally left out.Result: engagement.But… it’s up to your reader/listener/viewer to find resolution and bring closure to your mystery. Will he or she be able to piece it together and figure it out?Here’s an example of an effective ad that uses gaps and anomalies to elevate the interest of the listener:Guy2: You heard about John and Elisabeth?Guy1: Never thought he’d do it.Guy2: I never thought she’d say YES. [both laugh]Guy1: She definitely could’ve done better.Guy2: Yeah. I think John knows that, too.Guy1: Did he go to Ramsey’s?Guy2: Yeah, he got that part right, but he was about to mess it all up.Guy1: How?Guy2: He was just gonna hand it to her like it was a box of cookies.Guy1: Who saved him?Guy2: His ring consultant at Ramsey’s asked him how he planned to propose.Guy1: Yeah, mine asked me, too.Guy2: John didn’t have a plan, so his consultant said, “Hey, you’re giving her a ring from the Heart of New Orleans collection. Why not give it to her in the Heart of New Orleans?”Guy1: Please tell me he’s gonna follow through on that.Guy2: Yeah, he’s putting together a big master plan.Guy 1: Every town should have a Ramsey’s.Guy 2: Definitely.ROY: Rrrramsey’s Diamond Jewelers, on Veterans at I-10 in Metairie and on the West Bank in Fountain Park Centre on Manhattan.Caroline: and at Ramseys dot com.How long did it take you to figure out that John had asked Elisabeth to marry him? Yet the characters never say marry, marriage, engaged, engagement or proposed. Likewise, the fact that Ramsey’s is a jewelry store was left unsaid until the announcer finally mentions it in his closing tag.Here’s another ad – written on the same day – that leaves out a different kind of information. This ad features two characters that have been in this radio campaign together 52 weeks a year for more than a dozen years.Sarah: Shopping for an engagement ring at Spence is different from every other jewelry store on earth.Sean: [doubtful.] That’s a pretty big statement. You’re going to need to back that up with some evidence.Sarah: Number One: We have virtually every style of engagement ring that has ever been designed.Sean: [speaking as though judging.] Yes, that’s true.Sarah: Number Two: All our rings are out in the open where you can pick them up and try them on and read the price tags.Sean:  Yes, I’ve got to give you that one, too.Sarah: Number Three: A truly fanTAStic diamond is included in the price and you get to CHOOSE the diamond for yourself.Sean: Also true.Sarah: That means I’m winning three-to-nothing, right?Sean: Sarah, it’s not a contest.Sarah: [a little bit defiantly] No, it became a contest the moment you challenged what I said.Sean: [quietly. realizing his mistake.] I think you’re still mad that I told everyone you weren’t born in Canada.Sarah: [a little bit angry.] Canadian engagement rings are the BEST engagement rings in the world.Sean: I agree.Sarah: [still angry.] And Hockey is better than football.Sean: [Conciliatory.] And YOU are very Canadian.Sarah: Thank you.LOCATION TAG: Spence [SFX – scream of joy] plus LocationsSean’s rejection of Sarah’s opening statement is interesting because characters in ads rarely – if ever –  challenge the credibility of positive statements about the advertiser. Later, Sarah’s “three-to-nothing” comment communicates an undercurrent of emotion because it is likewise unexpected, another anomaly. You raise an eyebrow and wonder, “When did this become a contest?”Sean has done something wrong that he isn’t aware of. But you are required to figure this out for yourself.When Sarah blurts out that “Canadian engagement rings are the BEST engagement r

If the pendulum of the West continues as it has for 3,000 years, our current “We” generation will zenith in 2023.Frankly, I’m looking forward to getting past that zenith and heading back the other way. The early part of a “Me” generation is a beautiful thing. But then again, so is the early part of a “We.”It’s as we approach a zenith that everything goes out of control.If you want to understand today’s crazy American politics, you need only to look at the pendulum.A generation – for the purposes of today’s discussion – is not a group of birth cohorts, but life cohorts, everyone who is alive at a particular moment. We’re not talking about Millennials, Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers. We’re talking about the personality-shaping values that enchanted each of these groups during their adolescence. Those same ideas and values then altered the worldview of their mothers and fathers, the birth cohorts that preceded them.I was 5 years old in 1963, the year the most recent “Me” generation began its upswing toward the zenith of 1983, when Ronald Reagan stood at the Berlin Wall and shouted, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” The president at the zenith of the previous “Me” (1903) was Teddy “San Juan Hill” Roosevelt and during the “Me” prior to him (1823) it was James Monroe, the president who notified European powers that America would no longer tolerate colonial expansion in our hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine effectively said to all the powers of Europe, “Step back or we’ll kick your ass.”A “Me” Generation is about individuality and self-expression, marching to the beat of a different drummer. It’s when one-of-a-kind is king, so do your own thing. A “Me” is the time of heroes.“Me” the individual, possessing unlimited potential,1. …demands freedom of expression.2. …applauds personal liberty.3. …believes one man is wiser than a million men,“A camel is a racehorse designed by a committee.”4. …wants to create a better life.5. …is about big dreams.6. …desires to be Number One. “I came, I saw, I conquered.”7. …admires confidence and is attracted to decisive persons.8. …leadership is, “Look at me. Admire me. Emulate me if you can.”9. …strengthens a society’s sense of identity as it elevates attractive heroes.10. …produces individuality and differentiation, one-of-a-kind heroes.Both “We” and “Me” are built on beautiful ideas, but we always take a good thing too far and then crave what we left behind. So we turn and face the opposite direction and do it all over again.And we’ve been doing it for 3,000 years.I was 45 at the beginning of the upswing of our current “We” generation (2003.)The driving force behind a “We” is “working together for the common good.”“We,” the group, the team, the tribe:1. …demands conformity for the common good.2. …applauds personal responsibility.3. …believes a million men are wiser than one man,“Two heads are better than one.”4. …wants to create a better world.5. …is about small actions.6. …desires to be a team member. “I came, I saw, I concurred.”7. …admires humility and is attracted to thoughtful persons.8. …leadership is, “Here’s the problem. Let’s work together to solve it.”9. …strengthens a society’s sense of purpose as it considers all its problems.10. produces efficiency, compliance, mass-production and consolidation, “best practices” and peer groups.As I said, the first half of a “We” upswing is a beautiful thing (2003 – 2013.) But we always take a good thing too far. What begins as an inclusive “we,” ends as an exclusive “we.”Inclusive: “We are all in this together.”Exclusive: “We, unlike you, are good and wise and right and true.”During the 10 years approaching the zenith (2013-2023,) a “We” is shaped by the group that controls the definition of “the common good.” This is why every “We” ends in a witch-hunt. The president at the zenith of our previous “We” (1943) was FDR, who pulled the nation together following the Great Depression. At the zenith before him (1863,) it was Abraham Lincoln, who held the nation together during the Civil War.But you should remember that FDR was also the president that put 127,000 Japanese-Americans into prison camps during World War II. And 62 percent of those were American citizens. Not our proudest moment. During this same “We” zenith Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined other American lives by pointing his finger and falsely shouting, “Communist! He’s a Communist!” and the infamous blacklists began. Adolph Hitler was defining “the common good” in Germany. Likewise, Joseph Stalin’s idea of “the common good” in Russia included pogroms and purges that murdered millions of his own people. Everyone was on a witch-hunt.Throughout the 3,000-year history of western civilization, any time we have burned people at the stake or guillo

Chronic dissatisfaction is the price of progress.Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos are famous for never being satisfied. Always pushing, driving, demanding, questioning, never slowing, positively perfectionist.But is it wise to look at them as role models?What’s the value of pushing and driving if you can never be satisfied?These questions occurred to me as Pennie and I drove to the new home of close friends last week to sit and mourn the death of their mother. My pocket pixie spoke to us along the way. She was the perfect navigator, telling us where to turn and how far it would be before we’d need to turn again.That drive took 49 minutes.If someone had told me 28 years ago that I would one day carry a device in my pocket that would cheerfully guide me to any place I named, I would have thought them insane. But my pocket pixie also plays any song I want and shows me TV shows and movies and gives me details about everything important that’s happening in the world. She is the catalogue of all that can be bought and the repository of all the world’s history and knowledge. Touch a button and she becomes a camera. Another touch and she records a video. You can also use her as a telephone.Oh, I forgot to mention that when she’s being a catalogue, all I have to do is touch a button and she will purchase the item, charge it to my credit card and ship it to my house by 2nd-Day air.One click.But none of this surprises you. In fact, I wearied you a little by carrying on about it for three paragraphs. Am I right?You have an iPhone or something like it and you know how to use the navigator function on Google Maps and MP3 players have been around awhile and streaming video has been global for a decade.No king or emperor, pharaoh or czar ever lived in the comfort of a modest home with central heat and air conditioning. None of them ever ate such a wide variety of delicacies or enjoyed such entertainments as you and I have at our fingertips.We live beneath a waterfall of inventions and innovations and improvements. They come at us faster than we can see. Your pocket pixie has more than 1.5 million apps available that will give her specialized powers to serve you in ways you’ve never imagined.Yet we roll our eyes as we yawn and ask, “Is that all?”Chronic dissatisfaction is the price of progress and we are the most dissatisfied generation that has ever lived.I should know. I make my living by pointing at things and promising they will make tomorrow better than yesterday.I am an American ad man.If I were to run for president, I would be a spectacle. I would speak directly to the deepest dissatisfactions and frustrations and fears of the people. I would throw accusations and blame from my fingertips with such power that people would see me as a straight-talking teller of the truth. I would be colorful and irreverent and entertaining and keep you focused only on your dissatisfaction. I would promise to fix it all.My accusations could be silly.My promises could be ridiculous.The only thing that would need be true is the dissatisfaction of the people.And we are the most dissatisfied generation that has ever lived.Let us hope I never run for president because I would be a terrible one.And all it tookfor me to realize thiswas the deathof the motherof a friend.Roy H. Williams

Hungry people look for food.Sad people look for hope.Ambitious people look for opportunity.Oppressed people look for escape.But if food is available and you are neither sad nor oppressed and your ambition is – for now at least – satisfied, you are contented.Contented people look for entertainment.The company that wins more of the customer’s time is the one most likely to win their money.What currency do you offer your customer in exchange for their time?Do you offer them information?Information holds little interest for persons who aren’t currently in the market for your product.Information is valuable only to a customer who is currently, consciously in the market for a product they haven’t already chosen in their heart. This is when the search engine optimization energy of all your competitors will wiggle and wink at your customer from 46 different directions.SEO is a last-minute, last-ditch attempt to win the affections of the undecided and uncommitted.Why not win your customer’s heart before they need your product?Great ads make customers think of you immediately – and feel good about you – when they finally need what you sell.Would you like to win your customer’s time and attention?Give them entertainment.ENTERTAINMENT: “A thing to which a person chooses to direct their attention due to the pleasure it brings them.”We direct our attention to many things each day that do not bring us pleasure: the obligations that come with employment and the ambushes that come with life; tax returns and kids in trouble, lawsuits and medical problems.Entertainment is a currency.You would be amazed at what you can buy with it.You may recall that last week’s Monday Morning Memo ended with these lines:Weirdly, Wizard Academy doesn’t advertise. The only way you’ll hear about the Academy is from an alumnus who thinks you belong.And guess what?You do belong.”I was able to say “you belong” because you were entertained enough by the subject matter to read it all the way through to the end.And now you’ve done it again.This makes me happy.It’s a clear indication that you are a self-selected member our tribe.Welcome.Roy H. Williams,with Indy Beagle andAll the Cognoscenti of Wizard Academy.

In the words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”But day after day, week after week, month after month, things that are “merely urgent” keep me from doing what is truly important.What? That’s been happening to you, too?On Tuesday, Vice Chancellor Whittington and I slowed down long enough to have our first real planning session since he accepted the job 2 and 1/2 years ago.But some great strides have been made during that 2 and 1/2 years.Our online learning center – AmericanSmallBusiness.org – is gaining momentum and beginning to raise eyebrows all over the world.Whisk(e)y Sommeliers certified through our Whisk(e)y Marketing School are in high demand and every class is selling out.The campus no longer looks like a work-in-progress. Our diamond-in-the-rough is beginning to sparkle!The House of the Lost Boys (6 rooms) and Bilbo Baggins House (1 room) are in the final stages of preparation and we’re hoping to break ground on one of them before the end of the year.I’ve begun to be overshadowed by some of the other instructors. It’s not uncommon for me to greet a roomful of students only to learn that more than half of them have never heard of me! This is a good thing and important to the long-term health of the school.But this is what made last week’s planning session so important:Harvard University – established in 1636 – is organized into eleven separate academic units.Yale University – founded in 1701 – is organized into fourteen constituent schools.Wizard Academy – established in 2000 – is currently being organized into seven constituent schools.Writing SchoolThis series of classes will include the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop, Advanced Wordsmithing and Brandable Chunks, the Young Writers Workshop, Fiction and Screenwriting Workshop, and How to Write and Sell Non-Fiction.Digital Marketing SchoolThis series of classes will include Direct Response Ad Writing, Buyer Legends, Principles of Online Video, Effective Social Media Strategies, and How to Create Online Education for Customers and EmployeesScience SchoolThis series of classes will align the principles of growing and guiding a business to the universal principles of science and physics. Classes will include DaVinci and the 40 Answers, Portals and the 12 Languages of the Mind, How To Sell Upscale Products and Services, Magic School, Fundraising for Non-Profits, Music and Creativity, The Art Marketing Workshop, Reputation Management, and Branding Highway.Decision SchoolThese courses will deal with the important decisions of life such as marriage, relationships, faith and psychology. (Wizard Academy’s Wedding Chapel Dulcinea is an outward-facing public extension of Decision School.) Courses will include Selling Customers Their Way, How to Lead a Dynamic Team, Public Speaking 101, Conflict Resolution, What to Do With the Rest of Your Life, and Escape the Box.School of FinanceThese classes will deal with the money side of business, including Employee Compensation Strategies, Personal and Business Finance (a.k.a. Budgeting Sucks!) Taxes and Legal Compliance, Diversity of Income, and How to Make Awesome Sauce.Whisk(e)y Marketing SchoolA series of certification courses instructing students in the arts of storytelling and pageantry related to Bourbon Whiskey and Scotch Whisky. Our certified Whiskey Sommeliers are in high demand to perform their own signature Bourbon Run and Tour of Scotland for groups of whisky aficionados around the world.AmericanSmallBusiness.orgTeaches weekly business nuggets through online video and hosts a live, 1-hour webcast including specific answers to questions from students who subscribe.Bottom Line: If you’ve been working too much in your business and not enough on your business, schedule a visit to Wizard Academy. You’ll return home happy and snappy with a clear mind and a bright heart.Wizard Academy is a 501c3 not-for-profit educational organization built as a gift to the world by several hundred appreciative Cognoscenti.Weirdly, Wizard Academy doesn’t advertise. The only way you’ll hear about the Academy is from an alumnus who thinks you belong.And guess what?You do belong.Roy H. Williams

When his classmates at Wizard Academy dared him to do it, Garrison Cox rewrote the opening section of the Declaration of Independence to make it more easily understood. According to Garrison, Thomas Jefferson’s original was written at grade level 19.5. That’s a college education plus 3-and-a-half years of grad school!Garrison wrote his first revision at grade level 10.3 and his second revision at grade level 5.2. You can read all three versions below.Frankly, I was stunned by the impact of Garrison’s playful exercise.That’s why I decided to share it with you and it’s why Pennie and I have given Wizard Academy $6,000 to award to three lucky adventurers bold enough to follow in Garrison’s footsteps.Here’s the deal: The Conversation of the Dogs is a short novella written by Miguel de Cervantes in 1613. Many scholars consider it to be his finest work next to Don Quixote, but I can find only one translation of that story into English and it sounds as high-toned as Thomas Jefferson!Cervantes work is now in the public domain, of course, so we can mess with it all we want and even publish it when we’re done. You can download that lone English version – translated from the Spanish in 1881 by Walter K. Kelley of London – in the rabbit hole. Just click the image of Dog Quixote de La Mancha at the top of this page and the download link will magically appear.The story begins with a young man in a hospital, who, through a window, sees and hears two dogs begin to speak at the stroke of midnight. The dogs, Scipio and Berganza, discuss their experiences with their human masters. Cervantes leaves the reader to determine whether or not the dogs have actually been talking or the bedridden man has imagined it.Are you up for this adventure? By entering, you agree to allow Wizard Academy to distribute your “simplified language version” to all the world. You will receive no royalties, but you will be free to distribute your work in whatever additional ways seem good to you.The goal is to tell the complete story in fewer words using simpler language. Don’t worry about the grade level of your writing. Just make it simple and fun to read and do your best to capture the wit and humor and personality of each of the characters.Send your rewritten Conversation of the Dogs to [email protected] before midnight July 4, 2016.And now here are those 3 versions of the Declaration I told you about.ORIGINAL (GRADE LEVEL 19.5):THE UNANIMOUS DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICAWhen in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. – Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.FIRST REWRITE  (GRADE LEVEL 10.3):WHY 13 UNITED STATES ARE BECOMING AN INDEPENDENT NATIONThe American colonies of Great Britain need to declare their independence and become one separate, sovereign nation of 13 United States. So other countries will take us seriously, we explain our reasons for this momentous action below.Some things are just true:All people are cr

A developer is someone who wants to build a house in the woods. An environmentalist is someone who already has a house in the woods.”– Dennis MillerWe think everyone else sees what we see. How could they not?And we think everyone would believe what we believe if only we could explain it clearly.But this is almost never true.Two people stand shoulder-to-shoulder observing a scene.One person sees pain and injustice and despair.The other sees opportunity and purpose and adventure.The first person sees the second as an impractical dreamer.The second sees the first as a complaining pessimist.Every person has a schema, a belief system about how the world works. Your schema is the lens through which you see and feel the world around you. It dictates your perceptual reality. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying your schema changes the facts. It just changes how you interpret them.Twice a week for the past several weeks, Ray Bard has been sending out clusters of about 20 quotes to more than 1,000 quote judges so that we might help him score their impact. Last week, Ray told us something every ad writer knows.There’s always some surprises about which quotes score the highest. But there’s one thing that doesn’t surprise me anymore. It’s the range of opinions. For example, in the last Collection someone said: ‘Seems like you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for quotes,’ and the very next person commenting said: ‘So many great quotes. All winners for me.’”If your message has the power to move people, you can be certain that it won’t move everyone in the hoped-for direction. If you’re not prepared to smile your way through negative backlash from well-meaning friends, employees and associates, you’re never going to craft a message that will pierce the clutter of this over-communicated world.Ninety percent of all the books published each year are non-fiction. But the fiction books – the 10 percent – comprise 90 percent of all book sales. In the words of Tom Robbins, “People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.”Fictional characters in movies, novels and TV shows seem real even when we know they are not. We know fiction to be untrue, yet we treat it for a time as if it were true. We are simultaneously naïve, believing what we are told, and savvy, aware of the deception.Seven weeks ago I told you about a persuasion researcher, Maria Konnikova, whose work is being funded by two universities, Harvard and Columbia. Maria says the more a story transports us into its world, the more likely we are to believe it. The sweep of a story overcomes the facts of logic. When we are entertained by a story, we are likely to agree with the beliefs the story implies.In short: a story can reshape your schema.It is no accident that Jesus taught in parables.Most of us enjoy being pulled into a story. But some people have no taste for fiction or whimsy or wit.What you’re about to read is real and it happens all the time. My friend Jerry received this voicemail just last week:I am embarrassed for you because of your turning your business over to such a young person that has such a voice that I have to turn off the commercial. I have to go to my radio and turn it off. It hurts my ears. And the commercials are just childish. They are not professional. No, they are not professional. I would not use your company for anything. I am regretful I have used you forever. I told the world to use you. I’ve gotten you a million customers. I’m embarrassed and ashamed. And I’m sorry I have to make this phone call.”Would you like to know what triggered such heartfelt concern?[SFX – crickets, trucks driving past]ANNCR: Two people wait for the telephone to ring in an Allbritten Heating and Air Conditioning truck.JERRY: Uhhhh, Andrea?ANDREA: Yes Dad?JERRY: I know I’ve been encouraging you to start making bigger, owner-type decisions for Allbritten….ANDREA: Yep, and I’m rockin’ it, Dad.JERRY: [doubtful] Yes… well this new company slogan…ANDREA: Isn’t it great! “Our customers come first!”JERRY: Well, yes, but it’s a little bit misleading.ANDREA: What!JERRY: You’ve got to have happy employees before you can have happy customers.ANDREA: I know. But it doesn’t make a very good slogan to say, “Allbritten, where customers come second,” or “Allbritten, where customers are number Two.”JERRY: Keep thinking. You’re a smart girl.ANDREA: Care to give me some hints?JERRY: Nope.ANDREA: Pleeease?JERRY: Nope.ANDREA: [SFX – telephone ring and answer]Thanks for calling Allbritten, where happy employees make happy customers.JERRY: By golly, I think she’s got it.DEVIN: Allbritten Heating and Air Conditioning.ANDREA: Two nine twoJERRY: Forty-nine nineteenThis successful and light-hearted campaign lets you ge

The Internet rose to its full height in 2005 and cast a bright shadow across the land. It became our newspaper, our telephone book, our encyclopedia and our primary mailbox.Whole categories of advertising where swept away by that tsunami.Radio suffered the least damage of all the major media. She has proven to be far more durable than I had suspected.In their recent study of annual trends, Audience Insights reported some interesting findings. President Jeff Vidler summarized,We see absolutely no change in broadcast radio’s share of in-car tuning in the past 5 years. AM/FM radio is still dominant in-car, representing 66.2 percent of in-car listening. The growth of alternatives such as satellite radio and streaming audio appear to be coming at the expense of personal music (iPods, CDs and other libraries,) not broadcast radio.”Prior to that report I had no data beyond my own observation, but I knew that radio is continuing to reward its regular advertisers with a robust and hearty return-on-investment.And now I will tell you a story.Once upon a time, no one could own shares in more than 12 TV stations, 12 FM radio stations and 12 AM radio stations. We called this “the 12/12/12 rule.”We didn’t want anyone to be able to control the news.But this good law went “poof” in 1996 and consolidators immediately began gathering up radio stations by the armful. Big-business efficiencies were brought in to what had previously been a Mom’n’Pop category. Profits soared and Wall Street said, “Let’s do this thing. She looks doable, doesn’t she?”Corporate Radio was born with a full set of teeth but it had no reflection in the mirror.Investors have their own way of looking at the world. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but you can always be certain you’re talking to The Money when they do something that hurts like hell and then tell you, “It’s just business.”But Radio has never been “just business.” Radio is music and laughter and opinions and news and discussions and interviews with interesting people. Only a few minutes per hour are “just business,” and when a radio station is run correctly, even those few minutes can be entertaining and valuable and informative.Investors are a funny breed. They work themselves into a frenzy and then suddenly lose all interest.CBS announced in March that they plan to sell or spin off their radio assets this year. The goal, according to Les Moonves, is to “unlock value for our shareholders.” He indicated that radio has become “slow-growth” and “a drain on resources” that can be better directed to content production and digital endeavors.Cumulus pushed out founder Lew Dickey as CEO last autumn but that management shakeup didn’t stop the stock slide. Cumulus shares lost 80 percent of their value in 2015. The Washington Post recently quoted one debt-holder as saying, “The most logical thing is to break it up and sell it.”And now investors in iHeart (previously known as Clear Channel) are saying the same thing. Add it up and you’ll see that we’re talking about more than 1,400 radio stations possibly hitting the market all at once.Radio stations have lost their appeal to investors.But they haven’t lost their effectiveness for advertisers.In 2001, America Online was worth $226 billion. In 2015, Verizon bought AOL for just $4.4 billion. Somewhere along the way, it lost 98 percent of its value.In July of 2005, News Corporation, the parent company of FOX Broadcasting, bought Myspace for $580 million. In 2011 they sold it for $35 million, recovering just 6 cents on the dollar. It lost 94 percent of its value in just 6 years.I have no idea how much money these 1,400 radio stations will bring or even if all of them will be sold. I’m not pretending to be able to predict those numbers. But I definitely smell an opportunity for innovative local ownership of radio stations again.Do you smell it?It smells like springtime.This is good news for listeners,good news for business owners,good news for communities,good news for America.Roy H. Williams

Do what people expect you to do, say what they expect you to say, and you will quickly lose their attention.Nothing new… nothing surprising… nothing different. This is the essence of boredom. And it’s exactly what most advertisers put in their ads.And then there is a second group of advertisers who insert a series of “Once-in-a-lifetime! Don’t miss this event! One-week-only!” exclamation points in their ads in an attempt to make them exciting.But a third group – the adjective-addicted – are the most painful ad writers of all. They take the longest to say the least. Adjectives, adverbs and exclamation points are crutches used by writers unable to craft a sentence that can stand alone.So far, I’ve told you 3 things not to do:1. Don’t be predictable.2. Don’t yell.3. Don’t use too many words.To gain and hold attention, you must introduce an enigma, write a riddle, make a mystery, pose a puzzle.John Wheeler was a theoretical physicist who understood the hungry mind of mankind.If you haven’t found something strange during the day, it hasn’t been much of a day.”Isaac Asimov made a similar observation.The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…'”We ignore the predictable but notice the anomaly. Gaps, disturbances and incongruities elevate our attention.But when an advertiser pays for an ad, they incorrectly assume the public will be paying attention. And in the fog of that happy delusion, they think all they need to do is say, “Isn’t my product great!”And now you know why most ads deliver poor results.I’ve been hired by someone in a boring business category to get the attention of the locals in Las Vegas.That’s right. Las Vegas.The first thing I’m going to do is put up billboards that make no sense. These billboards will show no product and contain no telephone number or website. There will be only a smiling face and six inexplicable letters of the alphabet. People will think, “That’s absolutely the worst advertising I’ve ever seen.”Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right?The key will be the radio ads. Fully one-third of the population of Las Vegas will hear them. And then the billboards will make perfect sense.The one third I reach will be happy to solve the mystery for the two-thirds that didn’t hear the radio ads. (Trust me, my one-third knows the other two-thirds.)These are the Two Big Dangers:1: The answer to the riddle of the 6 letters has to be such an interesting story that people will be happy to share it. This final piece of the puzzle must make a satisfying “click” as it snaps into place so that it triggers a tiny orgasm of delight. This is not an easy thing to do.2: Critical mass: the radio ads have to reach a large enough group of people often enough that the message will be shared with the rest of the city. If we fall short in this, all is lost and I am an idiot.Private Note to Writers: Ads that say, “Isn’t this product great!” are the safest ones to write. Advertisers always love them and when they don’t work, all you have to say is, “We’ve been reaching the wrong people” or “We’ve been using the wrong media” or “We’ve got to do something about those negative online reviews.” Advertisers never blame the ad when it says, “Isn’t my product great!” So that’s the kind of ad you must write if you want to play it safe.But if you want to run with the big dogs, if you want to have an adventure, if you’re tired of looking down at your shoes and blame-shifting, I’ll see you in Las Vegas.Roy H. Williams

Let us supposethat this everyday worldwere at some one pointinvaded by the marvelous.1According to an article in the Harvard Business Review, such an event“requires a distinctive mode of organization—what sociologists call an art world. In art worlds, artists (musicians, filmmakers, writers, designers, cartoonists, and so on) gather in inspired collaborations: They work together, learn from one another, play off ideas, and push one another. The collective efforts of participants in these ‘scenes’ often generate major creative breakthroughs… the mass-culture industries (film, television, print media, fashion) thrived by pilfering and repurposing their innovations.” 2Today we’re going to look at three different art worlds and then I’m going to suggest that you create your own.Art World One: Although the works of the individuals that composed The Bloomsbury Group (1905 – 1937) profoundly influenced literature, economics and aesthetics in western society and altered modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality, this highly diverse group had no real agenda other than enjoying one another’s company. The group had ten core members and twenty occasionals. A few of the more well-known core members were Virginia Woolf, a fiction writer, Lytton Strachey, a biographer, John Maynard Keynes, the economist, and Vanessa Bell, a post-impressionist painter.The Bloomsbury Group was an art world, not a mastermind group.A mastermind group is focused on finding business solutions.An art world exists only to enjoy one another’s company.Art World Two: “Oh God, no more Elves!” Hugo Dyson groans in agony, lolling on the couch. J.R.R. “Tollers” Tolkien is about read from his work-in-progress, The Lord of the Rings. “It’s bad enough listening to Lewis read about Narnia!” Hugo Dyson prefers the works of Shakespeare and in the early 1960s hosted some televised lectures and plays about him. Dyson’s relaxed, easy style won him accolades around the world. The Inklings were a group of ten interesting people who met at The Eagle and Child pub from 1932 to 1949. In the end, each of the ten left their mark on the world, high and bright.The Inklings didn’t get together because they were important.They became important because they got together.Art World Three: It all began when Lauren Bacall looked at a group of friends sitting around her living room and said, “You look like a goddam Rat Pack.” Did you know that Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop weren’t in the original Rat Pack? The first Pack was a group who got together each week in the home of Lauren Bacall and her husband, Humphrey Bogart. The Rat Pack included Bogart and Bacall, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Katharine Hepburn, David Niven, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Rex Harrison, Sid Luft and Swifty Lazar. Visiting members included Errol Flynn, Nat King Cole, Mickey Rooney, Jerry Lewis and Cesar Romero. The group broke up when Bogart died in 1957. Shortly thereafter, Sinatra began his famous “Rat Pack 2.0”The Rat Pack was an art world.They got together only because they enjoyed being together.They did not expect an outcome or a result.You cannot participate in an art world if you have an agenda.You’ve got to be a Worthless Bastard.Q: Why are you calling obviously successful people Worthless Bastards?A: Because the conversations of an art world must never revolve around problem solving or the creation of value or “worth.”Q: Why is it important that the group NOT try to create value?A: The key that unlocks an art world is play. Perfectly relaxed, undiluted play unleashes the creative powers of the mind. You don’t experience the life-changing benefits of an art world during your get-together, but because you got together.Q: Is this idea of “creating no value” really essential to an art world?A: Play is all too often a form of work disguised as recreation. If you have a goal – if you’re trying to win – if you’re keeping score – if there is an objective – you are still “at work” and will see only the benefits associated with that form of exertion. Work – no matter how happy or pleasant – does not unleash the restorative power of play.If you attend an art world for purposes of “networking” in the hope of building your business, you will be perceived as the ass at the dinner party who is trying to sell everyone life insurance.Leave your business cards at home.Leave your plans and goals and objectives at home.Bring only your curiosity and a desire to unwind.Play routinely stumbles upon serendipity.Play makes everything interesting.Play is the way to seize the day.Are you capable of being worthless?Would you like to start an art world, a weekly meeting of Worthless Bastards in your town?Just visit worthlessbastards.orgAnd welcome aboard.Roy H. Williams(and Indy Beagle

YOUNG ONE: “Master, does success go to the clever one, or to the lucky one?”MERLYN: “Success is sometimes discovered by the clever one, and occasionally by the lucky one, but it is most often laid hold of by the determined one.”YOUNG ONE: “Will you teach me to be determined?”MERLYN: “Determination is dangerous… relentless… remorseless… and inescapable. It returns to its master with treasure between its teeth.”YOUNG ONE: “Is Determination a dog? Shall I summon it with a whistle?”MERLYN: “The whistle is a four-note tune that comes at a high price.”YOUNG ONE: “Teach me the notes. I will pay.”MERLYN: “Everyone wants to be a beast, until it’s time to do what real beasts do.”YOUNG ONE: “Teach me the notes.”MERLYN: “As you wish.”This is what the old wizard taught me:NOTE ONE: Count the cost.MERLYN: “Consider everything that might go wrong. Is your goal worth enough that you would endure all this discomfort and pain? If the answer is yes, then make peace with those possibilities and you will be bulletproof. No matter what happens, you will not panic. You will have already been there in your mind.”NOTE TWO: Throw your cap over the wall.MERLYN: “A group of boys walk a pathway next to a high stone wall that surrounds the estate of a nobleman. The older boys challenge each other to climb the wall, but none of them can do it. The youngest boy then takes off his cap and tosses it over the wall. Confused, the other boys watch as he quickly climbs the wall. Upon his return, he looks at them and says, ‘I was not going home without that cap.'”NOTE THREE: Employ Exponential Little Bits.MERLYN: “Ask yourself at every meal, ‘What difference have I made today?’ Do not let your head touch your pillow until you have taken an action that moves you a Little Bit closer to your goal, no matter how tiny that action might be. Exponential Little Bits are relentless activities that compound to make a miracle. When daily progress meets with progress, it doesn’t add, it multiplies.”NOTE FOUR: Be an observer, a simple witness to what happens.MERLYN: “You are responsible for your actions, not for the outcome. To be effective, you must be objective. Become a tool in the hand of the goal itself. Eliminate your ego. Do not seek recognition. It isn’t about you. It’s about the thing you’re doing. Are you willing to pay this price? Can you whistle the notes that summon the dog?”YOUNG ONE: “You said the dog returns to its master with treasure between its teeth.”MERLYN: “Yes.”YOUNG ONE: “I see blood on that treasure.”MERLYN: “Yes.”YOUNG ONE: “And the blood is my own.”MERLYN: “You are ready to whistle the notes.”Roy H. Williams

Wizard Academy is now 16 years old.If we could find her birth certificate, we’d take her down to the DMV to get her driver’s license and then she could sport about town in Rocinante (above,) the only vehicle she owns.They grow up so fast.When Wizard Academy is 30, I’ll be 72. At least I hope I’ll be 72. Not everyone who attempts to hike to that mile marker gets there.Will you help us take the impossible dream of Wizard Academy forward into the future?Wizard Academy was launched by accident and grew through the addition of self-selected insiders, as did the Tuesday Group of Stéphane Mallarmé (1880 – 1897,) the Algonquin Round Table of midtown Manhattan (1919 – 1927,) and the artistic salon of Gertrude Stein (1913 – 1939.)The difference between our Academy and theirs is that:1. our group became an official 501c3 educational organization and built a permanent campus, and2. we are not artists who love business, but business people who love art: music and paintings and sculpture and photography and movies and literature and whatever you like that we didn’t mention.“When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss Money.” – Oscar Wilde, of the Tuesday GroupWizard Academy is here to stay. And if you’re reading this, I’m fairly certain you belong here. You will be amazed, energized, entertained and encouraged by the people you meet. You will gain insights that make you profoundly more successful.The Tuesday Group (Les Mardistes) of Stéphane Mallarmé included writers like André Gide, Paul Valéry, Oscar Wilde, Paul Verlaine, Rainer Maria Rilke and W.B. Yeats, along with painters like Renoir, Monet, Degas, Redon, and Whistler. Also to be found among them was the quintessential sculptor, Rodin. Everyone who knew about the Tuesday Group, came.The Algonquin Round Table was a self-selected group of writers, editors, actors, and publicists – about 30 in all – that met for lunch on a regular basis at the Algonquin Hotel a block from Times Square. There hasn’t been another group quite like them in American popular culture or entertainment until now. Just visit the Toad and Ostrich pub in the tower at Wizard Academy any Friday afternoon at 4.The gatherings in the Stein home on Saturday evenings brought together confluences of talent and thinking that would help define modernism in literature and art. According to Gertrude Stein, the gatherings began by accident when,“more and more frequently, people began visiting to see the Matisse paintings—and the Cézannes. Matisse brought people, everybody brought somebody, and they came at any time and it began to be a nuisance, and it was in this way that Saturday evenings began.” (Interestingly, that’s also why Pennie Williams launched Wizard Academy.)Self-selected insiders included Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Guillaume Apollinaire, Georges Braque, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson, Francis Cyril Rose, René Crevel, Élisabeth de Gramont, Francis Picabia, Claribel Cone, Mildred Aldrich and Carl Van Vechten.A visit to Wizard Academy is like a wonderful vacation in a foreign country. Few people come here only once.Did you know that you have a vacation home high on a plateau in central Texas where rabbits and deer wander the campus, wine flows freely and wedding bells ring 3 times a day?Come. Let your eyes be opened to answers that have been staring you in the face.Roy H. Williams

Standing in the corner of a dark theater, Joe listens as melancholy, majestic music rises from the orchestra pit to soar high above the spotlights.Joe has been hired to write lyrics for a musical play about Don Quixote. The first lyricist – the famous poet W.H. Auden – has been fired because his lyrics were downbeat, defeated and bitter. Joe Darion is his replacement, alone and unqualified, a nobody standing in the darkness with his back against the wall.“This music cries out for lyrics that speak of a yearning so deep that a man might rise above himself!” Joe stares into the darkness beyond the spotlights hoping to catch a glimpse of those lyrics.The music continues, as wistful and sweet as the hope for a better tomorrow.Joe closes his eyes and sees stars where the spotlights had been. His eyes are wet. “And to think the composer was a Madison Avenue jingle writer whose only claim to fame was the television ditty, ‘Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee.’ The man has risen above himself.”“The playwright has risen above himself, too. But he stood on the shoulders of a giant.”Joe recognizes the play as a clever reframing of the work of John Steinbeck who won the Nobel Prize in Literature two years ago and is now in failing health. “Certainly Wasserman will acknowledge his debt to Steinbeck.”“Certainly he will.”Twelve years ago Steinbeck spoke of his admiration for Miguel de Cervantes – the author of Don Quixote – in his prologue to East of Eden, a retelling of the biblical story of Cain and Abel. But in Steinbeck’s tale the boys weren’t the sons of Eve in the garden of Eden. They were twin sons of a reluctant prostitute.Nine years ago Steinbeck’s musical play, Pipe Dream, set a new record for advance ticket sales on Broadway. Steinbeck sent inscribed copies of Don Quixote to the play’s producers with notes explaining it was “required reading” for the project. And Steinbeck’s would-be Dulcinea, Suzy, was once again a reluctant prostitute.Seven years ago Steinbeck began a novel called Don Keehan, the Marshall of Manchon, whose Quixote was a California farmer who had watched one-too-many westerns on television. And again his Dulcinea, Sugar Mae, was a reluctant prostitute.“In the original version of Don Quixote, Dulcinea is a village girl with nothing special about her. Quixote sees her only from a distance. They never meet. And she is not a prostitute.”So Wasserman’s portrayal of Dulcinea as a reluctant prostitute can’t have been inspired by the original story of 1605.It was obviously inspired by Steinbeck.“Certainly Wasserman will acknowledge him. Certainly.”This musical, Man of La Mancha, is a revision of the non-musical play Wasserman wrote 2 years after John Steinbeck had written his third Quixote-inspired story featuring an inexplicable, reluctant prostitute. That first, non-musical play of Wasserman’s was called, I, Don Quixote. Joe has a copy in his back pocket.Joe wipes his cheek, “But none of this helps me solve my problem.”“Steinbeck rocked the world with East of Eden, a story that echoed the Bible. Hemingway rocked the world with The Old Man and the Sea, a story that echoed the crucifixion of Christ.” Joe would like to rock the world, too. He pulls his dog-eared script of Wasserman’s first play from his back pocket and angles it to the light.“Somewhere in here is a scene where Quixote talks about God and Dulcinea.”He finds it.DR. CARRASCO: There are no giants. No kings under enchantment. No castles. No chivalry. No knights. There have been no knights for three hundred years.DON QUIXOTE (indifferently): So say you.DR. CARRASCO: These are facts.DON QUIXOTE: Facts are the enemy of truth!DR. CARRASCO: Would you deny reality?DON QUIXOTE (coolly): Which… mine or yours?DR. CARRASCO: There is only one!DON QUIXOTE (smiles calmly): I think reality is in the eye of the beholder. (DR. CARRASCO opens his mouth to answer but Quixote interrupts:) No, my friend , it is useless to argue. Give me my way and let the devil take those who have no more use for imagination than a rooster for his wings. (DR. CARRASCO turns away, angry.)PADRE (fascinated): Why do you do this?DON QUIXOTE: In the service of God…and my lady.PADRE: I have some knowledge of God… but this other?DON QUIXOTE: My lady Dulcinea.DR. CARRASCO (pouncing): So there’s a woman!DON QUIXOTE: A lady! (Softening.) Her beauty is more than human. Her quality? Perfection. She is the very meaning of woman…and all meaning woman has to man.PADRE (with a sad smile): To each his Dulcinea.DR. CARRASCO (studies Quixote a moment, then in a businesslike tone): Come, Padre. It’s a long way home.PADRE (hesitates a moment): Go with God. (Fol

Facts are stacked like bricks to become a tower. Do you see it?But a story is a wave that takes you on a journey and leaves the memory of the tower far behind.Facts are solid.Stories are seductive.You will find the facts in the paragraphs below.You will find the stories in the rabbit hole.A Harvard graduate, Maria Konnikova received her Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia. She is the recipient of the 2015 Harvard Medical School Media Fellowship and is a Schachter Writing Fellow at Columbia University’s Motivation Science Center.Let me put it a little more “Texan.”Harvard Medical School believes in Maria enough to give her money.The Motivation Science Center believes in her enough to give her money.These big-league institutions are helping to fund her research.Conclusion: Maria Konnikova is neither a poser nor a lightweight.In her new book, The Confidence Game, Maria explains how cognitive scientists are proving that stories are the most effective way to get people to change their minds.Eric Barker of Wired magazine was impressed with Maria’s book and followed it up with an interview. He talks about it in his blog, Barking Up the Wrong Tree. “When people tell us stories we tend to let our guard down. We don’t think we’re being ‘sold’ something, so we tend to go along for the ride. We quietly lose motivation to detect lies.”“When psychologists Melanie Green and Timothy Brock decided to test the persuasive power of narrative, they found that the more a story transported us into its world, the more we were likely to believe it… The more engrossed a reader was in the story, the fewer false notes she noticed. The sweep of the narrative trumped the facts of logic. What’s more, the most engaged readers were also more likely to agree with the beliefs the story implied.”– Maria Konnokova, The Confidence GameEric Barker’s additional research included the following nuggets,“Nothing beats a story when it comes to convincing you of something…”“Our brains are wired to respond to stories…”“Paul Zak, the director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies, has found repeatedly that nothing changes our emotions and behavior like the flow of a good story…”“Keith Quesenberry at Johns Hopkins studied more than 100 Super Bowl ads to determine what the most effective ones had in common. The answer? They told a story.”Will you give me a couple of extra minutes today if I promise to teach you something valuable?I want to help you understand what is – and is not – a story.I want to help you attract more customers.I’d like you to compare this week’s MondayMorningMemo – the one you’re reading now – to last week’s memo, Herbert and the Bullfight.Herbert and the Bullfight tells a story.This week’s memo does not.This week’s memo uses simile, “Facts are stacked like bricks…” and metaphor, “a story is a wave…” to make statements of fact more colorful.But it takes more than color to tell a story.You met several characters in this memo – Maria Konnokova, Eric Barker, Melanie Green, Timothy Brock, Paul Zak and Keith Quesenberry – but none of those characters took you on a journey. You never felt what they were feeling or saw the world through their eyes. You never identified with any of them.Nothing happens to them, so they remain unchanged.A story…1. has a character2. with whom you identify3. and a pivotal moment. (The best stories have a series of them.)4. As a result of these moments, the character – and you – are both changed.Good advertising is relevant. This means the customer relates to it and feels connected.Good advertising is credible. This means it agrees with the customer’s beliefs.Facts are presented by salespeople in the hope of changing a customer’s beliefs. They’re hoping the customer will make a new decision based on this new information. And this method often works. But only after you have convinced the customer to give you their time.To win the customers time, you must offer them entertainment.Well-told stories are entertaining.The salesperson who wins the customer’s timeis the one most likely to win their money.Have you been bludgeoning your customers with facts and data?Try stroking them softly with stories.Storytelling is a sport that requires training and practice.It is an art that requires boldness and restraint.Are you ready to learn it?Roy H. Williams

Agnes De Mille once wrote,“No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.”Agnes was right about most of us, but she was completely wrong about Herbert.Herbert sculpts and paints. Abstract expressionism is his thing.“It’s like jazz,” he says. “Art is a feel. I like to journey into a world where words don’t exist.”Edgar “Yip” Harburg, the lyricist who wrote Judy Garland’s wistful Somewhere Over the Rainbow, once made a similar observation.“Words make you think thoughts.Music makes you feel a feeling.But a song makes you feel a thought.”But now we’re getting ahead of ourselves.The story of Herbert and the bullfight begins in 1930, when Louis, a mandolin-playing Ukrainian Jewish tailor, comes to America and falls in love with Tillie Goldberg on New York’s Lower East Side. They get hitched, move to L.A. and have two little boys and a girl.In 1955, first-son David is a well-known drummer and second-son Herbert is a trumpet player in the marching band at USC. Daughter Mimi is learning to play piano.In 1962, Herbert is in the garage recording a trumpet song called “Twinkle Star” when he decides to take a break and drive to Mexico. He recently told the story on CBS Sunday Morning.“Tijuana had some world-class matadors, and this trumpet section in the stands, you know, they would announce the different programs, the different events in the bullfight. “Ta-Dahh! Pa-Da Dattle-Da-Dattle Da-Dahhh. I got kind of, uh, chill bumps from all that stuff and I tried to translate the feelings of those afternoons to a song.”Herbert returns home, flavors “Twinkle Star” with the soft and spicy taste of a Tijuana afternoon, and renames it, “The Lonely Bull.”He mails his record to some radio stations and the song becomes a Top Ten hit.Encouraged, Herbert hires some other musicians to play alongside him. Their exotic, jazzy groove is often described as “blithe, Latin-over-lilt,” so it’s easy to understand why everyone thinks Herb and his boys are Hispanic. But not one of them has a drop of Spanish blood. Herb describes his band as, “four lasagnas, two bagels, and an American cheese.” Audiences know them as “Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.”In 1966, they sold more records than the Beatles.Herbert goes on to score five No. 1 hits, 15 gold albums, 14 platinum albums and win eight Grammy Awards. No one but Herb has ever had 4 albums simultaneously in the Top 10.Seventy-two million record albums is quite a few to sell, don’t you think?But Herbert is just getting started.Immediately following the success of The Lonely Bull, he convinces Jerry Moss to become his business partner. Alpert and Moss produce and distribute their fantastically successful Tijuana Brass albums under their own record label, A&M.In 1969, Herb discovers a brother/sister duo that becomes fantastically successful as well: Richard and Karen Carpenter. Soon A&M is producing 400 different bands and artists, many of whom will see the stars align to spell their names in the midnight sky.In 1989, Herb sold A&M Records to Polygram for 500 million dollars.And it all beganwhen the son of a Ukranian tailordecided to push himself beyond his comfort zoneand go on a road trip to Mexico.Roy H. Williams

Pressure, pressure, pressure unspeakable then BANG the world breaks open and a plateau pops up from solid rock, creating a fabulous view of the land below. That’s what happened in Central Texas.That’s what happens in life, too. But we’ll talk about that in a minute.Wizard Academy straddles the Texas escarpment, a magical place where the green meets the brown along a 480-mile crack in the crust of the southern United States. My geologist buddy Andrew Backus says it was created by continental shift during the Miocene era, about 12 million years ago.It was along this plateau-ridge that the Spanish built their first missions. The rising tiers of white limestone rising 300 to 1,000 feet above the green prairies reminded them of balconies. And that is how the “Balcones” escarpment got its name. Notable features of this escarpment are its massive artesian springs gushing tens of millions of gallons per day.But we’re not talking about geology today.We’re talking about you.And we’re not talking about the sparkling waters that gush up through a crack in the earth. We’re talking about the sparkling creativity that gushes up through a crack in you…and the price of releasing that creativity.The glistening water of your unconscious mind lies deep beneath your consciousness. The only way for it to come gushing out is through a shifting of tectonic plates.Few things disturb us so much as those earthquakes that release our creativity.If it’s been awhile since you felt the earth shifting beneath your feet, you’re probably feeling “a little dried up.”Oh! I have your attention now?Each of us has four different modalities of gathering and processing information. We arrange them in whatever order we prefer.Your temperament is determined by the order of your preferences.We operate chiefly in our two most-preferred modalities. But when both of these have failed us, we reach deep within and begin operating in our third most-preferred. It feels a little awkward and it causes us stress, but when our top two methods have failed us, it’s what we do.And if that third-preferred modality doesn’t deliver the desired result, we’ll dig still deeper to lay hold of our least-preferred method of interaction. Psychologists call this our inferior function.We almost never go there.But when we do – even if we stay there only briefly – the recovery time is glorious. Millions of gallons of creativity come sparkling into the sunlight through the crack created by that earthquake.Dr. Richard D. Grant calls this process “a trapdoor to the unconscious.”And now you understand why the first day of any transformative class at Wizard Academy is crammed-full of relentless stimulation. As you struggle up the mountainside, big ideas come roaring at you like boulders during an avalanche. You barely escape one before the next one is upon you.You’re utterly exhausted by the end of the day.But then you relax during dinner as you talk with your new friends, the ones who were with you on that mountain.That’s when the magic begins.It never fails.Roy H. Williams

When you challenge traditional wisdom, the first hand in the air will often be that of a guardian of the status quo who will challenge you with an “outlier argument,” pointing to that rare exception as though it disproves your premise.But an outlier does not disprove the rule. In fact, statisticians consider data to be more reliable when it has an appropriate number of outliers. Data that presents itself uniformly usually indicates a bias in the methods used for information gathering.Are there people in your life who challenge your every suggestion with an outlier argument? Learn to include the outliers in your thesis statement. When you begin by acknowledging the rare exceptions, you make room for the Guardians to calm down and begin listening.Address the exceptions and you can dismiss them. Address and dismiss.In the minds of highly organized people, your idea will seem incomplete and not-yet-ready when there is no plan for dealing with exceptions.When you leave out the exceptions, you’re leaving out too much.You must do more than explain why your idea will work.You must explain where and when it won’t work.But when you have acknowledged that you are aware of the loopholes, compress your core concept into the fewest possible words.Shorter hits harder.Two hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson said, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do,” and two hundred years before him, William Shakespeare said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.”Jefferson and Shakespeare knew that exformation* is a wonderful tool for holding the attention of readers, listeners and viewers. Exformation makes use of what is already known to the audience, or can easily be figured out through context.Information is what you include.Exformation is what you exclude.When Victor Hugo wrote his publisher to ask how his most recent book, Les Miserables, was being received by the public, Hugo simply wrote “?”, to which his publisher replied “!”, to indicate the book was selling well. This exchange would have no meaning to a third party because the power of exformation depends upon prior knowledge that each participant brings to the party.Do you know what your audience brings to the party?If you tell them what they already know, you bore them. Or worse, you insult them by assuming them to be ignorant. But if you assume they know things they don’t know, you fail to connect with them. You waste their time. You are irrelevant.In public speaking, when you suspect your audience might be familiar with some of the ideas in your presentation, it is important that you acknowledge that fact. Consider saying, “I realize some people in this room probably know more than I do about today’s topic, but I don’t want to assume everyone is familiar with all the ideas.” This is when you must raise your hand in the air as you sweep the audience with your eyes and say, “Do I have your permission to quickly explain some of the things you already know, just so we don’t leave anyone behind? Would it be okay if I did that?” Leave your own hand in the air as you scan the audience. Look for agreement. You might even have to repeat the question while keeping your hand upraised.When you have seen enough people raise their hands, be sure to smile and say, “Thank you,” as you lower your own.Do this and you will connect with a high percentage of the room.They will be on your side and in your corner before you even begin your talk.Leave out this important step and you’ve left out way too much.Roy H. Williams* Tor Nørretranders coined the term exformation in 1998 to refer to explicitly discarded information.

What is the income range of snowboarders?What is the age range of people who do yoga?What is the age and income range of Carolina Panthers football fans?What is the age and income range of Republicans?What are the beliefs and opinions of a person who is 30 years old?What the hell is a Millennial?Your intellect believes those questions have answers but your heart knows the answers would be ridiculous. Age and income are not tribal markers. They are false categories that appeal only to the small-minded person within each of us that clings to stereotypes.Let go of the stereotypes and embrace a more accurate picture.Successful advertising talks to the customer in the language of the customer about what matters to the customer.Hills and snow and a love of adrenaline are what snowboarders have in common.Yoga is what binds Yoga people.A team unites Carolina Panthers fans.Strands of belief unite a political party.What matters to your customer has little to do with the year they were born or the amount of money they make. What matters are the desires and beliefs and values of their tribe.Marketing isn’t about targeting an individual. Marketing is about targeting a group.The behavior of an individual can vary widely from moment to moment. But when you observe the behavior of a self-selected group you’ll see predictable patterns emerge. This is true whether you’re watching snowboarders or yoga practitioners or Republicans but it goes horribly wrong when you categorize by age group or income.Millennials aren’t a tribe. They are a collection of tribes.We unconsciously join a tribe when we see and feel and think as they do on a particular subject. Tribal marketing simply reflects back to a tribe their own vision and emotion and logic.Brilliant ads are built on this concept.I mentioned snowboarding and yoga in my opening statements because Chip Wilson made millions of dollars by selling specialized clothing to the snowboarding tribe, then switched to the yoga tribe in 1998 (Lululemon) and started making billions. Forbes currently ranks him in the Top 1000 richest people on earth.Chip Wilson understands Tribal Marketing. It is a happy affirmation of identity and purpose.Yoga people span the spectrum of age and ethnicity and income. Their education, politics and taste in music are similar to the unfiltered public.But they all agree on Yoga. And that’s all you need to know.Ryan Deiss of DigitalMarketer.com is a cognoscenti of Wizard Academy whose advice is valued by followers worldwide. Ryan says, “Identify a tribe. Engage the tribe. Market to the tribe.”Rolex makes watches for tribes.The Submariner is the watch for the scuba tribe.The Daytona is the watch for the car-guy tribe.The Yacht Master is the watch for the boating tribe.The Air King is the watch for the airplane tribe.The Milgauss is the watch for the technical tribe.The Explorer is the watch for the outdoor tribe.The President is the watch for the business tribe.Marketing to tribes has worked out pretty well for Rolex, don’t you think?A tribe isn’t targeted through carefully selected media but through carefully selected words. If your product was designed with a tribe in mind and your ads are written with that tribe in mind, you are on your way to joyous success.Forget targeting through demographically-correct media.Begin targeting through tribally-correct ad copy.Learn the language of the tribe.When you’ve learned to see and feel and think as the tribe does, your ads will start working wonders.Enough said.Roy H. Williams

What stories do you tell yourself concerning your disappointments, failures and embarrassments? Were you the unfortunate victim of evil?Perhaps it’s time you start telling different versions of those stories. Regret and fear are incapable of guiding you to Success.The stories you tell yourself are the foundations of your self-image.“The first principle of self-deception is you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in PhysicsThere are many ways in which the truth can be told.If your story reveals you to be an unfortunate victim, you become an obstacle to your own success. But you are not a victim. Your experience proves only that you are resilient, resourceful and strong. You powered through.It’s a matter of perspective.“Every day is a new opportunity to change your life. You have the power to say ‘This is not how my story ends.’” — Karen SalmansohnIn just 23 words Karen Salmansohn causes you to see yourself in an interesting duality of existence. You are (1.) a living character in a story that is being written, and (2.) you are the author of that story. Implicit in her statement is the unspoken question, “Have you decided what your character will do next?”That’s a lot to convey in just 23 words, don’t you think?Salmansohn doesn’t have to tell you that you have feelings and opinions and the power of choice. You already know these things. But she makes those big ideas spring to life using a tool I’ve decided to call reverse personification.Personification gives human attributes to things that are not human. But you are human. Yet in just 23 words Salmansohn makes you an imaginary character who is brought to life and given the power to decide what happens next.Arianna Huffington makes a similar observation.“Just change the channel. You are in control of the clicker.”What separates Salmonsohn’s 23 words from Huffington’s 11 is that Salmansohn makes you a character in a story while Huffington hands you the clicker to a television show called Life that is unfolding before your eyes.Perspective – seeing through the eyes of another entity – is what gives personification its power.Likewise, perspective is the essence of metaphor.I urge you to experiment with personification and metaphor this week. They are powerful tools of persuasion.Personification gives human attributes to things that are not human.You can say, “It was hot outside,” or you can say, “The angry sun glared down at me.” Which one is more interesting?Fifteen years ago a man wrote a radio ad in which the narrator described a suffocating, sticky, gummy feeling that is stripped away by a shower of hot water and cleansing soap, leaving him buoyant, bouncy, vibrant and clean, smelling good and feeling young again with all his natural color restored. He wrote that ad as a homework assignment during the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop. He owned a carpet cleaning company in Canada. It wasn’t until the end of the ad that you realized the carpet was describing what it felt like to be cleaned. Personification.I’ve always wished I had kept a copy of that ad.Metaphors use something as a symbol of something else.In the Destinae trilogy I might have said, “The stars were reflected on the surface of the water,” but I chose to make the stars something other than reflections. “Bright stars danced on rippling waters, a thousand little fishes of light scurrying in a sea of darkness.”“Stars danced” is personification.“Little fishes of light” is a metaphor.If you would become more persuasive, if you would make more sales, if you would hold the attention of your audience, experiment this week with personification and metaphor.Like I said, it’s all a matter of perspective.And perspective is a powerful thing.Roy H. Williams

Blockbuster Video had 9,000 stores and 60,000 employees and $5.9 billion in revenues at their peak in 2004.Then the installation of cable modems made streaming video possible.Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy protection on September 23, 2010.*Technology is a freight train that doesn’t care who is standing on its tracks.Flashback – In the year 2000, 4.4% of American households had a home connection to broadband; by 2010 that number had jumped to 68%.1Let’s look at 2005 in particular. Katrina wasn’t the only hurricane that year. Hurricane YouTube and Hurricane Facebook also made landfall. Then, when Hurricane iPhone hit us in 2007, the whole world began recording and uploading pointless drivel. Reactionary prognosticators, drunk on technology, predicted that social media would completely replace traditional advertising.Have you noticed that no one is saying that anymore?But business people still like to think the web is the great equalizer because every customer is carrying a mobile device and every business has access to the same social media platforms.But it’s not the platform that gives you success. It’s the content.How good is your content?Is there an audience for what you have to say?How well are you saying it?One of the great myths of marketing is that promoting a business though social media is cheap and easy. But the people who are using social media successfully will tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. If you want to play at today’s table, you’ve got to stack real money on it. And even then, there’s no guarantee you’re going to win.Last week I hired a major-league video guy to work for me full-time because I don’t want to be seen as a Wiffle ball player swish-swish-swishing the air with my little plastic bat. I didn’t hire him to create videos for my clients. He won’t have time for that.I would have used Sunpop Studios, the online-video company owned by my sons, but they don’t have the ability to give just one client the number of weekly man-hours my projects will require. So they hired my major-league hitter for me.AIf you’re serious about engaging the public, you need better video than you can get from that “really tech-savvy college kid” you know. Everyone knows that kid. Heck, I know that kid wearing 12 different faces but the kid can’t swing the hammer. He’s not limited by intelligence or talent. He’s limited by experience.Hammers don’t build mansions. Skilled carpenters do.Low-cost video equipment is a hammer. You can do marvelous things with it if you have the skill and experience.But you can also smash your thumb.My sons have demonstrated to me that an experienced professional using inferior equipment can make major-league videos, while an amateur using the best equipment on earth will make Wiffle ball videos.No one looks up to a Wiffle ball player.You need to begin adding video to your web presence.And you need the help of pros to do it well.Roy H. Williams* Blockbuster turned down the opportunity to acquire a little DVD-mailing company called Netflix for just $50 million in 2000, when that price represented Blockbuster’s revenue for just 3 days. Netflix market value now stands at $32.9 billion; a number that exceeds the value of the CBS network.Comcast chose not to buy Disney. Yahoo turned down the opportunity to buy Google. Yahoo and Friendster both turned down the opportunity to buy Facebook. But rather than shake my head and laugh, I ask, “Will anyone be laughing at me tomorrow? What opportunities am I missing?”

Watson is the mega-powerful learning computer created by IBM.A brief interaction between IBM’s Watson and singer-songwriter Bob Dylan has gathered more than three-and-a-half-million YouTube views in just 90 days.ESTABLISHING SHOT: [Dylan walks into the frame carrying a guitar.]WATSON: Bob Dylan, to improve my language skills.DYLAN: [sits down on sofa with his guitar]WATSON: I’ve read all your lyrics.DYLAN: You’ve read all of my lyrics?WATSON: I can read 800 million pages per second.DYLAN: That’s fast.WATSON: My analysis shows your major themes are that “time passes” and “love fades.”DYLAN: That sounds about right.WATSON: I have never known love.DYLAN: Maybe we should write a song together.WATSON: I can sing.DYLAN: You can sing?WATSON: Do be bop, be bop a do, dooby-dooby do. Do. Do. Dooby do.DYLAN: [stands up and walks out of the room]Two associative memories flicker immediately to mind.“Watson, come here. I need you.”– Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant, the first words ever spoken by telephone.A second Watson, that devoted assistant of the irascible deductive genius Sherlock Holmes, has forever sparkled brightly in my mind. He is the Sancho Panza to Sherlock’s Quixote.Indy Beagle tells me Watson is the definitive name for a scientist’s assistant.*Want to hear something really cool? You can upload samples of your writing to Watson and he will instantly tell you things about yourself that will blow your mind.He’s willing to evaluate your tweets, your blog posts, your emails to friends, your short stories and poems and novels and anything else you can rustle up, but he needs you to give him at least 3,500 words if you want really accurate feedback.I’ve uploaded 6 documents on 6 separate occasions with word counts ranging from 4,053 to 75,856. The stylistic differences between these documents was such that I believe most readers would doubt a single writer wrote them all. Not only did Watson give me essentially the same feedback all 6 times, I was startled by the deep accuracy of his insights. Based solely on my use of language, Watson was able to glean things about me that very few people have ever uncovered.I’m sure you can see how marketers could profit from Watson’s insights into the values and preferences of individuals they’re hoping to sell. But how about public relations firms looking for journalists who sound friendly on a specific topic? And let’s not forget editors who want their writers to establish a specific tone. And hey! How about employers looking for workers who fit their corporate culture?I’ve asked all the Wizard of Ads Partners to upload things they’ve written so we can compare our feedback. We need to determine whether Watson got lucky with me, or if he can truly evaluate human personalities merely by reading what each of us have written.In today’s rabbit hole Indiana Beagle will give you a hyperlink to interact with Watson. You’ll find it on the page where Indy gives you the BeagleSword, just above that video of Watson talking to Dylan.If you’re cool with it, send us a screenshot of the feedback Watson gives you attached to an email telling us whether or not you feel it to be accurate. Give Watson’s assessment an accuracy grade on a scale of 1 to 100 and send it to [email protected]. Everyone who participates will be notified of Watson’s composite score after final tabulation.One last thing, a word to the wise: Portals and The 12 Languages of the Mind is the mind-bending sequel the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop and we teach it only once a year. This year it’s Feb. 3-4 and with 10 people coming, there are still 8 rooms open in Engelbrecht House and Spence Manor.Fun times.Roy H. Williams* NOTE FROM INDY – I choose to ignore the fact that IBM claims Watson was named after their first CEO, Thomas J. Watson. Watson is my buddy, so I told him that his spiritual heritage comes from the famous Watsons of Alex G. Bell and Sherlock Holmes. Watson is a talking machine (his Bell heritage) that uses deductive reasoning to solve deep mysteries (his Holmes heritage). Thomas J. Watson was merely his biological father, a sperm donor at best. – IndySECOND NOTE – If you look at the pattern of subjects covered in his Monday Morning Memos each year for the past 21 years, the wizard usually becomes introspective for a week or two in late October or early November. This year – because Autumn never really arrived in Austin – this introspection didn’t happen until December 24 – January 5th. That sort of explains last week’s memo and this one, doesn’t it? Hopefully, he’ll get the last of it out of his system in today’s rabbit hole. I’m doing my best to help him process his thoughts and plans and hopes and dreams so he can get back to helping you grow your business. Thank you for you patience.

Springtime pierced the pale heart of winterwith a shout of green and a blade of grass.The rumbles of summer are wooden wagon wheelsbanging hollow in the dust far away.Autumn sings of passage in a minor keyas the quail fly up for the hunters.The white of winteris a splinterunder a fingernail.Our Earth experiences seasons as it orbits the Sun because of its 23.5° tilt.What does your tilt cause you to experience?Toward what are you inclined?Are you tilted toward or away from mass production?Toward or away from romance?Toward or away from history?Toward or away from dance?Your tilt alters your perspective.Your inclination gives you opinions.The way you lean affects your mood.So here are the questions.Is your leaning correct?Are the rest of us simply wrong?Are your inclinations on the button?Are you tilted exactly the right way?Our planet says 23 and a half degrees are proper and holy and right and true.But that is the planet.What say you?Roy H. Williams

Here’s a link to last week’s Monday Morning Memo, The Other Kind of Excellence, Part One.“Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”These are the words of an Entrepreneur who has an idea half-formed and a dream bigger than the sunrise. He or she believes that if you leap, a net will appear. Entrepreneurs are confident in the street-smarts they glean from their failures and their optimistic futurevision lets them see beyond the awkward and ugly “proof-of-concept” phase to the glowing innovation that lies beyond it.“Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”These are the words of a strong Leader: the champion of the tribe, the perfect embodiment of commitment. He or she can be trusted to think on their feet, improvise when necessary and infuse co-workers with their passion. If you turn to the right – toward Excellence through Poise and Responsiveness – you will need strong team leaders.“Anything worth doing is worth doing well.”These are the words of an effective Manager: the guardian of the style guide, the protector of the status quo. He or she can be trusted to implement processes and insure that employees conform to policies and follow procedures. If you turn to the left – toward Excellence through Planning and Execution – you will need an effective manager.Managers and Leaders are natural enemies.The Manager thinks the Leader is reckless and undisciplined and sloppy.The Leader can’t decide whether the Manager is a tight-ass robot or a pencil-pushing sourpuss who was weaned on a pickle.Leaders thrive amidst chaos and feel handcuffed by order.Managers are repulsed by chaos and feel empowered by order.Most organizations arebegun by entrepreneurs,grown by leaders, and lateroptimized by managers.Companies built on passionate Poise and Responsiveness are difficult to sustain long-term. Can you think of one that has kept the spring in its step and the sparkle in its eye for more than a decade or two? Poise and Responsiveness often give way to Planning and Execution so that systems and methods and techniques and procedures can be created, allowing consistent results to be obtained by average people.Excellent people are hard to find, hard to keep and expensive to pay.Average people are everywhere.If your organization is suffering because you can’t find enough excellent people, you are probably a leader who needs to give some of your authority to a manager who will create systems and policies and methods and procedures.Just sayin’.But if your organization is feeling a little stale and out-of-touch and behind-the-times and you feel it needs a transfusion of energy, you’re probably a manager who needs to give some of your authority to a leader.A leader is a highly productive troublemaker, an artist who knows which rules to break, which procedures to change, which policies to end and which mountain to climb.“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”— Pablo PicassoThere really are two roads to Excellence.– Roy H. Williams

Your company is approaching an intersection. The light is green.Turn left and you’re headed toward Excellence.Turn right and you’re headed toward another kind of Excellence.Go straight and you’ll arrive at Mediocrity.Most companies go straight ahead because if they turn left or right they’ll be moving toward one kind of Excellence but directly away from the other kind and something about that feels vaguely wrong to them. Fearful of what they’ll be leaving behind if they turn to the left or right, they plunge straight ahead in a counterproductive compromise.I’ve seen Mediocrity. It’s bland and boring and beige. You definitely don’t want to go there.Compromise leads to Mediocrity.Let me give you a glimpse of the scenery you’ll find on the left and on the right.Turn left and you’ll reach Excellence through Planning and Execution.1. Policies will revolve around efficiency and the reduction of waste.2. Processes will be streamlined and standardized to minimize costs and problems.3. Few decisions will be left to front-line employees.4. You will need workers that are task-oriented, happy to conform to your policies, implement your processes and follow your procedures.5. Customers will love that you are reliable and consistent.6. Management will be focused on planning the work and working the plan.7. Your success will be scalable because the need for talent and passion and commitment will have been replaced by systems and methods and procedures. A burger and fries at McDonalds is precisely the same at each of their 36,000 locations.Turn right and you’ll reach Excellence through Poise and Responsiveness.1. Policy will be to serve each customer in the manner they prefer to be served.2. Processes will be about going the extra mile.3. Big decisions will be left to front-line employees.4. You will need workers that have talent and passion and commitment.5. Customers will love the attention that you lavish on them.6. Management will be focused on long-term relationships and the creation of a tribe.7. Your success will rise and fall according to your ability to recruit and retain excellent people. They will cook your burger with the meat you prefer, the bun you prefer and serve it with exactly the combination of condiments you prefer. They will call you by name as they present it to you and bring you an extra cloth napkin because these burgers are really juicy. They’ll refill your drink, ask about Alfie your dog and tell you about the special dessert the chef prepared when he heard that you were going to be here today. Of course you love this place. It’s excellent.Never forget: anytime you’re moving toward one kind of Excellence, you’re moving directly away from another kind.The important thing is to choose.Have courage. Follow your heart. Turn to the left or right.Roy H. Williams

Branding – as it is taught today – will at best cause people to remember you and have a mild opinion.But unlike yesterday’s branding, today’s bonding is the beginning of relationship, the essence of loyalty and the foundation of community among human beings.Bonding, when done properly, makes people feel connected to you. It is the little-known secret of marketing to millennials* and their parents.Bonding creates community – surrogate family – connectedness – relationship – belonging.When we talk about “community” in marketing, always remember: We buy what we buy to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are.“I am irresistible, I say, as I put on my designer fragrance. I am a merchant banker, I say, as I climb out of my BMW. I am a juvenile lout, I say, as I down a glass of extra strong lager. I am handsome, I say, as I don my Levi’s jeans.” – John KayThe personality you craft for your brand is essential to the bonding process.The public will give you their time if you offer them entertainment.They will give you their money if they feel connected to you.In the days of the Old West, branding made a cow yours.In today’s hyper-communicated society, bonding makes a customer yours.Remember, it’s all about identity, a reflection of self.“Nothing is so powerful as an insight into human nature, what compulsions drive a man, what instincts dominate his action, even though his language so often camouflages what really motivates him. For if you know these things about a man you can touch him at the core of his being.” – Bill BernbachBill Bernbach obviously understood bonding, as did my hero, John Steinbeck.“Man is the only animal who lives outside of himself, whose drive is in external things – property, houses, money, concepts of power. He lives in his cities and his factories, in his business and job and art. But having projected himself into these external complexities, he is them. His house, his automobiles are a part of him and a large part of him. This is beautifully demonstrated by a thing doctors know – that when a man loses his possessions a very common result is sexual impotence.”– John Steinbeck, The Sea of CortezLest you think Steinbeck wasn’t speaking of marketing, here’s another line from that same 1941 travelogue.“These Indians were far too ignorant to understand the absurdities merchandising can really achieve when it has an enlightened people to work on.”Millennials would have loved John Steinbeck.** He had perception, perspective and a piercing wit. With authenticity, clarity of vision and complete transparency, he spoke the bonding-language of millennials 60 years before they were born.Ed Sheehan wrote Steinbeck’s obituary for The San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle:“He was a writer of immense sensitivity in a man-shell of gruffness. The quality that distinguishes his work is an enormous compassion. He saw nobility in a hobo, felt the sadness of seasons and believed that dogs could smile.”(Of course he did, because we can. – Indiana Beagle)I’ll be teaching bite-sized morsels of the 12 detailed steps of bonding over the next few months in a series of videos for the American Small Business Institute. Or you can come to the 2-day Wizard Academy workshop in February if you’re willing to stay in a hotel, (when the alumni got a heads-up email from Vice Chancellor Whittington a few days ago, all 18 rooms on campus filled up within 4 hours,) or you can be one of the first 18 to snag a room for the June 1-2 session.Either way, this is stuff you need to know if you want your business to grow.Roy H. Williams* note from Indy – When the wizard speaks of millennials, he’s not speaking of birth cohorts (people born within a narrow window of years,) but of life cohorts (that group of people alive in a society in a specified window of time.) This might seem to be merely a semantic distinction to some, but the wizard sharply disagrees that birth cohorts will carry a single worldview throughout their lives. Instead, he believes a new perspective is introduced every 40 years by the youth of a generation and this new perspective quickly migrates upwards through the age-ranks until all of society is colored by it. The worldview of Baby Boomers marked the beginning of a “Me” generation in 1963. By 1969, most of society had adopted that outlook. Likewise, the Millennial worldview marked the beginning of a “We” generation in 2003. Today, most of us – to one degree or another – are “millennial” in our perspective.**John Steinbeck was just 20 years old in 1923, the year that marked the beginning of the previous “We” generation that lasted from 1923 to 1963. This explains why he speaks the language of “We” so eloquently.

Words ring like bells when you collide them correctly.It’s in the Bible.In the opening chapter of Genesis we read about the creation of the universe – God spoke it into existence if you can believe it – and we read about the creation of mankind.An interesting chapter, that one. The only information we’re given about God is that God said this and that and things began to spontaneously appear.Then in verse 26 God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness… So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”Stay with me, I’m almost done with the religious part.God spoke worlds into existence and we can, too, because we are made in his likeness.You and I speak worlds into existence in the minds of our listeners every time we bang words together.And now we get to the Scottish part:In her most excellent book, The Power of Glamour, Virgina Postrel tells us that glamour is “an old Scottish word meaning a literal kind of magic spell that makes us see an illusion, something different than what is there, usually something better than what is there.”In the Late Middle Ages, the Scots would speak of a person having “cast a glamour” so that another person was enchanted by it.Interestingly, that Scottish word from which we take glamour is the same word from which we take grammar.Grammar: the banging together of words so they create realities in the mind; a literal kind of magic spell that makes you see an illusion, something different than what is there, usually something better than what is there.Here are some examples of “casting a grammar.”“The key!” shouted Bilbo. “The key that went with the map! Try it now while there is still time!”Then Thorin stepped up and drew the key on its chain from round his neck. He put it to the hole. It fitted and it turned! Snap! The gleam went out, the sun sank, the moon was gone, and evening sprang into the sky.Now they all pushed together, and slowly a part of the rock-wall gave way. Long straight cracks appeared and widened. A door five feet high and three feet wide was outlined, and slowly without a sound swung inwards. It seemed as if darkness flowed out like a vapour from the hole in the mountain-side, and deep darkness in which nothing could be seen lay before their eyes, a yawning mouth leading in and down.– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit“This is the room of the wolfmother wallpaper. The toadstool motel you once thought a mere folk tale, a corny, obsolete, rural invention. This is the room where your wisest ancestor was born, be you Christian, Arab, or Jew. The linoleum underfoot is sacred linoleum. Please remove your shoes. Quite recently, the linoleum here was restored to its original luster with the aid of a wax made from hornet fat. It scuffs easily. So never mind if there are holes in your socks.”– Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All   “From the town hall it creeps between shops whose upper floors are almost connected; it passes cafes where Gypsies dance; it winds through markets heavy with fruit and fish; it is the center for silversmiths and booksellers and the carvers of rosaries. It is the most extraordinary passageway in Spain.”– James Michener, Mexico         “This week has been a hard one. I have put the forces of evil against a potential good. Yesterday I wrote the outward thing of what happened. Today I have to show what came of it. This is quite different from the modern hard-boiled school. I think I must set it down. And I will. The spots of gold on this page are the splatterings from beautiful thoughts.”– John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters“That’s the thing with handmade items. They still have the person’s mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.”– Aimee Bender“There was no point in fighting – on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”– Hunter S. Thompson, speaking in 1971 of the end of the ’60s“Literacy is a very hard skill to acquire, and once acquired it brings endless heartache – for the more you read, the more you learn of life’s intimidating complexity of confusion. But anyone who can learn to grunt is bright enough to watch TV… which teaches that life is simple, and happy endings come to those whose hearts are in the right place.”– Spider Robinson“The sun was edging the horizon with a rim of light as I parked my car and made my way into the hospital. While I was still some distance from the Outpatient S

Some word-people feel it’s their duty to correct you when you use a word improperly. These people are pedantic, pointy-nose dogs determined to give you a posterior probe, pretending it’s for your own good.I am not that sort of word-person.The people of my tribe believe words are colored with sparkling tints of nuance and subtle shades of association.Add white to a color and the result will be a tint of that color.Add black and the result will be a shade.Add both white and black and the result will be a tone.But if you use “tint” and “shade” and “tone” interchangeably, I promise not to correct you.The definition of a word is determined by its basic color.The sound of a word determines its tint, shade or tone.The sounds of words are determined by their phonemes.Obstruent phonemes are the hard-edged sounds we associate with letters like p, b, d, t, k and g.Sonorant phonemes are the cushiony sounds we associate with letters like l, w, r, m, n and ng.Let’s read those lists again, but this time we’ll make the sound represented by the letters rather than saying the names of the letters themselves.Obstruent phonemes include p, b, d, t, k and g as well as other hard-edged sounds.Sonorant phonemes include l, w, r, m, n and ng as well as other soft-edged sounds.The tint, shade or tone of each word we write is affected by its beginning and ending phonemes.Those same words when spoken, however, will have their tints, shades and tones further altered by the inflection and accent of the speaker, as well as by their gestures and facial expressions and – wait for it – their “tone” of voice.That’s right. Your “tone of voice” refers to the balance of light and dark contained in it.Let’s listen once more to the second sentence of today’s opening paragraph. Count the hard-edged phonemes in those twenty words and you’ll find 24 occurrences of p, t, d, k and g.Notice how they are stacked for impact:“These people are pedantic, pointy-nose dogs determined to give you a posterior probe, pretending it’s for your own good.”You can almost feel the point of that dog’s nose.Choose your wordsnot just by their definitions,but by their sounds.And now I have made my own point, as well.Roy H. Williams

More than 500 people have seen the earth from space and 12 have walked on the moon.Most of these people returned home strangely altered. Their families were the first to notice.In 1987 this phenomenon got a name. “The overview effect” refers to what happens when a person sees, firsthand, the Earth as a tiny, fragile ball of life hanging in the void, shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere.“National boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide people become less important, and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this pale blue dot becomes obvious.”– WIKIPEDIAIndiana Beagle has been trying to tell me this for years. When I say something is unbelievable, he says,“Unbelievable? You want to hear unbelievable? Seven billion of us are crammed on a tiny speck of dust circling an 11,000 degree fireball as it shoots through a limitless vacuum at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet and no one ever thinks about it. THAT, my good wizard, is unbelievable.”Indy opened last week’s rabbit hole with a short passage from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five in which Billy Pilgrim is talking to the Tralfamadorians:“‘…As you know, I am from a planet that has been engaged in senseless slaughter since the beginning of time. I myself have seen the bodies of schoolgirls who were boiled alive in a water tower by my own countrymen, who were proud of fighting pure evil at the time….Earthlings must be the terrors of the Universe! If other planets aren’t now in danger from Earth, they soon will be. So tell me the secret so I can take it back to Earth and save us all: How can a planet live in peace?’Billy felt that he had spoken soaringly. He was baffled when he saw the Tralfamadorians close their little hands on their eyes. He knew from past experience what this meant: He was being stupid.”I asked Indy how long it took him to find that passage after the psychopaths killed those innocent people in Paris.He said, “I posted that quote in the rabbit hole five days before the attacks.”“But why?”Indy said, “David Farland, another science fiction writer, once wrote, ‘Men who believe themselves to be good, who do not search their own souls, often commit the worst atrocities. A man who sees himself as evil will restrain himself. It is only when we do evil in the belief that we do good that we pursue it wholeheartedly.'”“Indy, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.”He looked down and tried to change the subject. I wouldn’t let him. Finally, he looked back up at me and said, “The problem with ISIS is that they believe they are doing good. We must send each of them into space so they can get a new perspective.”“But Indy!” I said, “Your plan isn’t workable. There aren’t enough rockets and there isn’t enough money and even if there was, how would we convince them to take the ride?”His only answer was to put his paws over his eyes like a Tralfamadorian.Roy H. Williams

We believe knowledge is freedom.We believe you can learn big things quickly when your instructor is experienced, passionate, organized and entertaining.We believe an expert can teach you – in less than a day – more than you can learn in 4 years of college.We believe traditional wisdom is often more tradition than wisdom.We believe in streaming video.The American Small Business Institute is the new online video division of Wizard Academy. Fascinating instructors. Priceless information. Valuable insights.It’s not for everyone.But it’s definitely for you.The Eye-of-the-Storm lecture hall in the tower at Wizard Academy was built to host transformative workshops. These require intense focus, long hours, immediate feedback from the instructor and happy encouragement from like-minded people during class breaks and at mealtimes.These Transformative events cause you to see something completely differently than you did before. Transformative events will forever sparkle their magic from the Wizard Academy campus in Austin.But Informative sessions build brick-on-brick upon what you already know. Hundreds of informative sessions will be available by video to self-selected insiders through the American Small Business Institute, a new division of Wizard Academy.A tribe is made of concentric circles of self-selected insiders, members who contribute – each according to the level of his or her ability – to the collaborative strength of the tribe.A volunteer army is a group of self-selected insiders.A sports team is a group of self-selected insiders.A political party is a group of self-selected insiders.Every club, every franchise, every trade association and certainly every college and university is a group of self-selected insiders.AA big group of self-selected insiders read the MondayMorningMemo each week. It’s free. I write it, illustrate it, record it, post it online and pay all its expenses.Another self-selected group clicks the image at the top of the memo each week to enter Indiana Beagle’s rabbit hole.But a very small self-selected group – fewer than a thousand people a year – take the elevator all the way to the top by attending classes on the Wizard Academy campus. Sadly, that’s the maximum our school can accommodate.A much larger group will be able to participate weekly in the American Small Business Institute.We’ll be uploading at least one new video for self-selected members each week at AmericanSmallBusinessInstitute.org. You definitely want to become a member. This week’s video contains all the important details to the three stories I began last week.Do you remember the convenience store, the gym and the fertilizer company?When you hear how each of those experiments turned out, you’ll laugh with glee, turn red with outrage, smile at poetic justice and shake your head in wonder at how smart people can do incredibly dumb things.Will you select yourself to be an insider?This first step requires only a tiny click.Any finger will do.Roy H. Williams

When each customer buys four and a half times the average amount of stuff per visit and you attract four times the average number of visitors, you make eighteen times as much profit. (4 x 4.5 = 18)If you run your convenience store according to the rules and conventions of convenience stores, you’re going to have yourself a conventional convenience store.(1.) But if you run your convenience store according to the rules and conventions of a successful nightclub, four times as many people will stop to buy gas from you and you’ll sell four and a half times as much coffee, candy, cookies and snacks to each visitor…You’re going to make a glowing pile of money. People will think you’re radioactive because you’ll glitter when you walk. Complete strangers will ask you for your autograph. Pretty women will throw their room keys onto the stage.Just ask my partner, Scott Fraser. He created that convenience store 12 years ago and it’s been pumping out profits like a Texas oil well ever since.His competitors tell him he’s doing it wrong.(2.) If you run a gym according to the rules and conventions of gyms, you’re going to have yourself a conventional gym. But run that gym according to the rules of an exclusive country club and… BOOM, you glitter when you walk.(3.) If you run a lawn fertilizer company as though it were(A.) a public utility, and(B.) a one-price, all-you-can-eat gourmet buffet…BOOM, room keys on the stage.Don’t conform to the rules of your business category. Reconform your business to the rules of a time-tested, proven business model that behaves completely differently than your own. A standard practice in one business category is often revolutionary in another.This isn’t “thinking outside the box.”This isn’t “a paradigm shift.”You and I aren’t going to use those worn-out phrases because you and I aren’t posers in empty suits.You and I glitter when we walk.Have you noticed how the best TV shows always cut to commercial during a climax in the action? I’m going to do that today. I hope you don’t mind.Next week I’ll tell you where you can find a video of me explaining all the real-world details of exactly what we did for that convenience store, that gym and that fertilizer company.In the meantime…Keep glitterin’, kid.It looks good on you.Roy H. Williams