Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

The Miraculous Disappearance of Black-and-WhiteMost of the choices we make have effects we did not anticipate. This is due to the Law of Unintended Consequences.“Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it.”– Rob Norton, author of The Concise Encyclopedia of EconomicsHere’s an example of politicians ignoring it: The Chinese government introduced the one-child policy in 1978 as a measure to curb China’s population growth. Thirty-four years later,“The policy has been implicated in an increase in forced abortions, female infanticide, and underreporting of female births, and has been suggested as a possible cause behind China’s gender imbalance.”- WikipediaLimited to just one child, many families opted for a boy because men have always had more power in Chinese society.The unintended consequence of the one-child policy is that marriageable young Chinese women are in extremely short supply. According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, unmarried men between 20 and 44 already outnumber their female counterparts 2 to 1.* This gives young Chinese women amazing power.Score one for poetic justice.All this seems perfectly reasonable in hindsight, but did anyone see it coming 34 years ago?Before you wag your finger at those Chinese parents, consider what American parents were saying to their daughters during those same years,“Why dream of being a nurse when you can become a doctor? Don’t be a secretary, become a CEO. Make something of your life! You can always get married AFTER you’ve established your career.”Thus warned against becoming that ultimate of losers – a stay at home Mom – American girls grew up and became “successful” by foregoing the creation of a family.And what did we tell our boys?“If you don’t go to college, you doom yourself to be a loser, son; a common, blue-collar laborer who gets no respect, no admiration, no love. Please, son, go to college. Don’t be a loser.”Thirty-four years later we have millions of college-educated, unmarried men and women returning to live in their childhood bedrooms at Mom’s and Dad’s house because they can’t support themselves, much less pay off the tens of thousands of dollars they owe in student loans. There are plenty of good-paying jobs out there, but most of them require a technical skill; something not taught in college.The Unintended Consequences of the advice America gave its children is that the American subgroup Bill O’Reilly likes to call “Traditional America” (code for “white,”) no longer controls the outcome of elections. Ironically, it is the subgroups who continue to value motherhood and skilled labor that have become the deciders of America’s future.And I, for one, have no problem with that.America has a surplus of young adults empowered with pointless educations and staggering student loans. For now, at least, it would appear the spotlight belongs to men and women who are skilled in a trade, who take pride in the work of their hands; chefs and carpenters, plumbers and electricians, mechanics and technicians and jewelers who can set a diamond in gold.The American Success Myth of the 20th Century taught us to buy things we didn’t need with money we didn’t have to impress people we didn’t like. We were taught, “Whoever dies with the most toys wins.”So we chased happiness with dollars in our hands and it fled from us faster than we could run. Exhausted, we sat down and learned the truth:“The key to happiness is an ability to celebrate the ordinary.”Family. Friends. Food. Fun.Having been born into a 1958 America that was strictly black and white, I will finish my days in a full-color nation.And what, I ask you, is so terribly wrong with that?Roy H. Williams

Voltaire is often quoted as having said it, but he never did.It was actually Pierre de Beaumarchais in 1775, just a few months before Thomas and George and Ben and the boys wrote their scathing letter to England’s king.Beaumarchais was working on the second scene in the first act of The Barber of Seville, when it hit him, “Aujourd’hui ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d’être dit, on le chante.”“Anything too stupid to be spoken is sung.”Now before you get all hinky-dink and say, “But George Washington didn’t sign the Declaration of Independence,” allow me to assure you that my statement is six times correct: Clymer, Read, Ross, Taylor, Walton and Wythe. Georges all. Declaration signers.Isn’t it funny how the mind makes assumptions based on fragments of information? I gave you 1775, Thomas, George, Ben and the boys, and a letter to England’s king. You thought, “Revolution, Jefferson, Washington, Franklin and the founding fathers, and The Declaration of Independence they sent to King George.”Your mind filled in the empty spaces.But what if there were no empty spaces?What if the mental bandwidth of your attention was filled with other information?Fill some of that vacancy with music and you’ve got a song.Crowd the remaining emptiness with images and actions and you’ve got a movie. Make it participatory and you’ve got a video game, but now we’re introducing an entirely different lesson…Allow me to get back on track: song lyrics don’t have to make sense because words that are wrapped in music aren’t held to the same level of scrutiny as words that must stand on their own.Every language is made of obstruent and sonorant phonemes with the vowels of the language supplying the musical tones. The letters of the alphabet are not phonemes. The sounds represented by those letters – and certain combinations of letters such as sh, th, ch, ng, – the sounds are the phonemes. (I’m not making this stuff up. It is a studied and known science. We can look further into it in the rabbit hole, if you like.)Humans are uniquely gifted to attach complex meanings to sound. Some of these sound-messages are the combinations of phonemes we call words, but a complex sound-message without phonemes is called music. Mix phonemes with music and you’ve got a song.Words wrapped in music are no longer strictly words, but components of a complexly woven auditory tapestry with additional messages embedded in the pitch, key, tempo, rhythm, interval and contour of the tune. Song lyrics cannot be easily evaluated until they’ve been separated from the music that has swallowed them.When the music feels happy, we usually think of the song as being happy, even when the lyrics are tragic. When the music is sad, we feel the song is sad even when the lyrics are joyful. When the music is triumphant, we feel the song is triumphant even though its lyrics may describe rejection and defeat.On September 12, 2001, the day after 9-11, the most-played song in America was Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA. This is a fact. Radio stations across America wanted to lift the mood, remind us of our heritage and defy Osama Bin Laden, so they filled the sky with our favorite anthem to American exceptionalism:“Born down in a dead man’s town,The first kick I took was when I hit the ground.You end up like a dog that’s been beat too muchTill you spend half your life just covering up.Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A….Those lyrics get increasingly sad, describing rejection and defeat without redemption, as a returning Viet Nam vet can’t find a job even though he turns to the Veteran’s Administration for assistance. In the end, he winds up working without hope in the shadow of a penitentiary and he blames it all on the fact that he was born in the U.S.A. The End.Yet we shout the chorus to Born in the USA at the top of our lungs because the triumphant arc of the music and the defiant tone of Springsteen’s voice feel profoundly patriotic and proud, lyrics be damned.Music is a language of emotion so powerful that it is capable of contradicting the very words it carries. Control the music and you control the mood of the room. But choose the music for its feel, never for its lyrics.Sound is a stunning phenomenon.Learn how to use it, then choose whom you would like to stun.Roy H. Williams

An auction house is an island of cast-offs and misfits where the rejected and broken feel finally at home.I am speaking of the merchandise, of course, not of the people.Perhaps I am speaking of the people, as well.From the age of 18, Pennie and I have searched for buried treasure in auction houses. When you collect the misfit and the broken, you quickly learn how to accentuate natural beauty and disguise the inevitable flaws. These are valuable skills for a marketing consultant.There is magic in that moment between Before and After.AThe most miraculous makeovers happen when the misfit is made of wood. Formby’s Conditioning Furniture Refinisher is an amazing solvent that dissolves old varnish, lacquer and shellac, gently melting the crackled, grimy layers of age into a homogenous, flowing liquid.It’s not a stripper, exactly. Formby’s refinishing solvent merely allows you to redistribute the accumulated weirdness that was already there, giving the piece a rich, original, old finish.Time is like Formby’s Refinisher; a solvent dissolving memories and events into one another, creating altogether new realities based only loosely upon the ones that were before.The past was reality. But it does not remain reality.What is today’s reality? Yours, I mean.My mind has been topsy-turvy for a year. Last month marked the first anniversary of the death of a lifelong friend. I am only just now beginning to regain my balance.A couple of weeks before the anniversary of his death, I contacted his right-hand man of many years and asked him to organize a “memory party” with good food and fine wine to be held on the anniversary of our pal’s departure. I sent a significant budget and asked that he invite everyone who might have a story to tell about our friend.I believe good stories need to be spoken into the living memories of others, a sort of cross-pollination of realities.The party was a big success. Lots of people came and I’m told the stories were wonderful. I’ve decided to make it an annual event.I suspect that in the not-too-distant future, citizens who never met my friend will be able to share sparkling memories of moments with him that never really happened.And it is possible that these true stories will be the most magic of all.Myths and legends are true, you see, even when they are not.Roy H. Williams

A wise man sees both sides of a matter. The fool sees only one.The origin of the word “wizard” is wise-ard. It means wise man. Nothing more.The wise-ards of the Christmas Story followed a star, had an adventure, made a discovery and leaped onto the pages of history. What did they talk about along the way? Who did the cooking? What pressing issues did they leave unattended back home? What did they do with the rest of their lives? Where, when, and how did each of them die?We know only that they followed a star everyone else was content to ignore; that they were nonconformists with strange beliefs who had the courage of their convictions.They took action. They left home and found the thing they sought.How about you? Will you run with the big dogs or sit on the porch and bark at the postman? Talk is cheap, the buzzing of flies. I didn’t say that to hurt your feelings. I said it because I love you.What are you trying to accomplish?How will you measure progress-to-goal?Do you know what needs to happen next?Which star do you follow?An encounter with the wise man in the woods is part of every hero’s journey. Athena was the wise man in the woods for Odysseus. When Obi-Wan was gone, Luke went to Dagobah and Yoda became his wise man. Mr. Miyagi was wise-ard for the Karate Kid. Morpheus for Neo. Galadriel for Frodo.When you’re in the darkness of the forest – the belly of the whale – look around for the wise-ard who will help you complete your journey. The wise man in the woods exists only to assist the hero on his or her adventure.21st century wise-men-in-the-woods become faculty at Wizard Academy. Putting you together with them is why we built this place.Mark Huffman from Procter & Gamble.Dave McInnis from PR Web.Tim Storm from FatWallet.comDean Rotbart from the Wall Street Journal.Greg Farrell from Bloomberg News.Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg, Dr. Lori Barr, David Freeman, Michele Miller, Kyle Cease, Ze Frank, Jean Backus, Jeff Sexton, Rich Christiansen, Mark Fox, Dr. Richard D. Grant, Ken Brand, Dennis Collins and the unforgettable Beate Chelette.Wizard Academy is America’s small business institute, a training facility and think-tank for open-minded and courageous business people from around the world. The star you follow is entirely up to you. We simply prepare you for your journey, tell you what to expect on the road ahead, and celebrate your success when you find what you seek.Two or three days at the academy is an informative experience for some, transformative for others.I’ve rambled enough for one day. I thank you for your kind attention.As I bow at the waist and back slowly off the page, I pass along these carefully crafted words from heroes who carved their names deeply in the tree of life.“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!'”– Hunter S. Thompson“If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.”– Wes JacksonNever forget that failure is temporary, a moment quickly forgotten. 2013 awaits you. Damn the torpedoes.Full speed ahead.Roy H. Williams

We can listen much faster than we speak. Consequently, a listener’s mind will wander when we take too long to make a point. This isn’t new. What is new, however, is the current trend toward voluntary, rapid distraction. Defenders of this practice call it ‘multi-tasking.’ But brain-imaging studies reveal that ‘multi-tasking’ is merely the switching of attention back and forth between two tasks.The danger of multi-tasking is that it trains the brain to be more easily distracted. Combine this with the exponential growth of information that assaults our brains each day and you’ll see why – and how – radio ads must change.Information saturation has risen to the point that an auditory neuroscientist at Brown University, Seth Horowitz, published a stern warning about it in the Nov. 9, 2012 issue of the New York Times: “Listening is a skill that we’re in danger of losing in a world of digital distraction and information overload.”In other words, few people these days can listen to a single voice drone on and on about a product or service for sixty, or even thirty, seconds. The only way for an ad to elbow its way into the customer’s fragmented attention is to become the most interesting and surprising thing that’s happening at that particular moment.Horowitz goes on to explain that focused attention is what separates mere hearing from active listening. “Attention is not some monolithic brain process. There are different types of attention, and they use different parts of the brain.”1. The sudden loud noise that makes you jump activates the simplest type: the startle. A chain of five neurons from your ears to your spine takes that noise and converts it into a defensive response in a mere tenth of a second. This simplest form of attention requires almost no brains at all and has been observed in every studied vertebrate.2. More complex attention kicks in when you hear your name called from across a room or a birdcall in an underground subway station. This stimulus-directed attention is controlled by pathways through the temporoparietal and inferior frontal cortex regions, mostly in the right hemisphere — areas that process raw, sensory input, but don’t concern themselves with what you should make of that sound.3. When you actually pay attention to something you’re listening to, the signals are conveyed through a dorsal pathway in your cortex, a part of the brain that does more computation, which lets you actively focus on what you’re hearing and tune out sights and sounds that aren’t as immediately important.A high percentage of radio ads are being tuned out because they are judged by the brain to be “not immediately important.” Radio has not yet embraced the giddy pace of 2012.To embrace the new pace:1. Talk faster, say more.2. Use big ideas, presented tightly.3. Introduce a new mental image every 3 to 5 seconds.4. Use fewer adjectives.5. Embrace unpredictable timing and intonation.6. Say things plainly. Bluntly, even.7. Emotion is good. Even negative emotion.8. Allow distinctly different voices to finish each other’s sentences.9. Prepare for lots of complaints. Listeners want to be able to ignore radio ads. When they can’t ignore your ads, they complain. A lot.10. Prepare to make more money.We have proven this technique works, but you can definitely take it too far: the confusion that results from going too far is a condition I call Cloud Atlas. (Those of you who are laughing right now have seen the movie.)Would you like to listen to a performance of numbers 1 through 7 simultaneously? Visit YouTube and type “Ze Frank The Doctor’s Office.” Watch the video and you’ll realize that Ze requires your entire attention just to keep up with him.These are the tightly-connected, verbally-delivered surprises that will bloody your nose in the first 30 seconds of this delightful video:1. Pain day2. Double-stacked3. Purposely forgot4. A physical5. prehypertension6. bacon7. pre-dead8. R.D. Lang9. sexually-transmitted disease10. 100 percent mortality11. Hallway of Shame12. make you tell lies13. drink and exercise14. people watchThose first 14 ideas are delivered at an average pace of one idea every 2.15 seconds. But the story continues:15. inflatable arm-cuff16. swimmies17. puked in the pool18. hard to get up speed19. totally traumatic dog-paddling20. arm cuff hurts21. life and death battle with a robot22. Good News23. 11 cups of coffee24. NurseWow. Twenty-four ideas in 60 seconds is exactly 1 idea every 2.5 seconds. Give Ze’s verbal riff 60 seconds and I promise you’ll keep listening. And you’ll laugh when he says “Australian puke me,” because strangely, it will make perfect sense.How to do this – across all media – will be the foc

Everyone wants to make the same three things,” the Princess said, “money, a name, and a difference. But our actions are dictated by the one we want most.”You can make a name for yourself – become famous – or you can make a lot of money in complete obscurity. Either way, people will consider you a success. But famous people with piles of money seem always to be haunted by the need to make a difference, don’t they?You’ve seen it. So have I.Getting is more fun than having.Building is more fun than maintaining.Giving is more fun than receiving. Just ask Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.Bob Buford says, “The first half of life is a quest for success, the second is a quest for significance.”Success is measured by the money and the name you’ve made.Significance is measured by the difference you’ve made.GOOD NEWS: Making a difference doesn’t always require money and it certainly doesn’t require a name.Significance is achieved by caring and doing.Caring without doing is the mark of frightened, tentative, whiners. That’s right; small people complain. But big people don’t whine. They swing the hammer, bang the problem, sing a song and alter the world.In other words, shut up and do something.Our world is full of people who have achieved success without significance. Edwin Arlington Robinson wrote about these people 115 years ago:Whenever Richard Cory went down town,?We people on the pavement looked at him:?He was a gentleman from sole to crown,?Clean favored,* and imperially slim.??And he was always quietly arrayed,?And he was always human when he talked;But still he fluttered pulses when he said,?‘Good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.??And he was rich – yes, richer than a king -?And admirably schooled in every grace:?In short, he was everything?To make us wish we were in his place.??So on we worked, and waited for the light,?And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;? And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,?Went home and put a bullet through his head.The day is young. There’s still plenty of time to make a difference.Someone should have told Richard. Roy H. Williams * good-looking

Most people believe in The Way Things Ought to Be.Others embrace The Way Things Are.Arguments, terrorism and war happen at the intersection of these Ways.“Here’s what you ought to do.”“That’s just not going to happen.”“Okay, then we’ll fight.”An even weirder, three-way intersection happens atThe Way I Remember It,The Way You Remember It, andThe Way It Actually Was.Standing in the reflection of that intersection is like standing in a house of mirrors.My friend Dean Rotbart believesyou are three different persons:1: The person you believe yourself to be.2: The person others believe you to be.3: The person you really are.This means there is:1. the person I see when I look in the mirror.2. the person you see when you look at me.3. the person God knows me to be.The Roy I See lives in my mind.The Roy You See lives in your mind.The Roy God Sees lives in God’s mind.(I’d like to meet that Roy, wouldn’t you?)Sorry, but these are the strange things I’ve had on my mind this week.If you judge these contemplations to be the disjointed ramblings of an overworked ad man at Christmastime, you will doubtless be correct. But if you discover among these 312 words a worthy nugget to contemplate, and it grows to become a portal in your mind that allows you to see new and wonderful things; well, that’s okay, too.Final thought: I was contemplating the word “encouragement” when it hit me: Encouragement happens when a person needs courage… so you give them yours.Your friend was worried and fearful.You had courage, and gave it to them.They were encouraged.What a gift!Encourage someone out there today, okay?People who need it are all around us.Roy H. WilliamsA

ahrenheit RevisitedPennie and I were at the airport in San Francisco about to board a flight for home. I needed a book to read.I’d been thinking about the halfway points in Pendulum theory as well as pondering a phenomenon I’ve decided to call Information Saturation. Both are heady topics. I needed to take a break.The two halfway points of our most recent “Me” cycle were 1973 (halfway up to the “Me” zenith of 1983,) and 1993, (halfway down from it.)Similarly, the halfway points in our previous “We” cycle were 1933 (halfway up to the “We” zenith of 1943,) and 1953, (halfway down from it.)Whether halfway up or halfway down, the Pendulum is in the same position. Consequently, the motivations and values that drive our society will be surprisingly similar even though these halfway points are 20 years apart. There will be striking parallels in the inventions we create to satisfy the hungers we feel, and our most popular music and literature will reflect surprisingly similar fixations and orientations at every halfway point of a “We.” A different set of fixations and orientations occupy us at the halfway points of a “Me,” but they are no less predictable.The second topic of consideration, Information Saturation, is a communications phenomenon: a feeling of too-much-coming-at-you-too-quickly, resulting in a state of constant, rapid distraction. The statistics I’ve gathered on our current state of Information Saturation are mind-boggling.I walked into the airport bookstore and spotted Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. I’d heard people speak of this book, but I had never read it. At just 46,118 words Fahrenheit is a slim volume, but that hasn’t keep it from selling more than 10 million copies. I looked at the date of publication: 1953.Wait a minute. Wasn’t 1953 one of the halfway points in our previous “We” cycle? And in a few more weeks won’t it be 2013, a halfway point in our current “We”? And don’t all the halfway points mirror one another in “We” after “We” after “We”?I bought the book. Soon I was reading highly accurate descriptions of Information Saturation. On page 52, Beatty describes to Montag the condition of media in their society:“Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”“Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click? Pic? Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!”“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”If those comments sound contemporary, please remember that Harry S Truman was president when those words were written and Dwight D. Eisenhower was president when they were published. The top TV shows were I Love Lucy, Dragnet, and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.Ten years ago, while being interviewed about Fahrenheit 451, the late Ray Bradbury said,“Fahrenheit’s not about censorship. It’s about the moronic influence of popular culture through local TV news, the proliferation of giant screens and the bombardment of factoids. We’ve moved in to this period of history that I described in Fahrenheit 50 years ago.”Wow. This Pendulum stuff is real; frighteningly predictive, profitably instructive, and highly propulsive. 1953 was the halfway point of a “We.” 2013 will be another. Is there anything we can learn from 1953 that will help us succeed tomorrow?A COMMAND PERFORMANCE:During a meeting of the directors of Wizard Academy last week, I was asked to share my thoughts on the climate for small businesses in our society. I shared with the board my concerns about Information Saturation and how this phenomenon is making it harder for advertisers to gain and hold human attention. “How can a business fight back?” they asked.

How Much Are They Holding You Back?The pervasive fantasy in business today is that you can tweak your way to success. Tweakers believe you need only “monitor your metrics” to ratchet your way to the top of the mountain. “Hold your position, then make a tiny change and click up to the next level.” Tweakers find comfort in numbers, decimal points, percentages and line graphs.Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in monitoring. You cannot improve what you do not measure. But you won’t see big differences in that line graph until you make some meaningful changes.Incremental change is the path to quiet evolution.Significant change unleashes noisy revolution.There are no quiet revolutions.AIn 1979, Sony put lightweight headphones on a tightly-compacted cassette tape player to create the ‘Walkman,’ a worldwide hit that allowed you to take your music with you when you went walking, shopping or jogging. Sony retained a 50% market share in the U.S. for more than a decade even though their Walkman cost at least $20 more than its numerous rivals.Sony in 1990 was like Apple today; seemingly invincible.So why didn’t Sony invent the iPod?Sony fell into the trap of scientific, incremental change; an eternal series of tiny improvements in the hope of making an increasingly better Walkman; a process known in Japan as “kaizen.” 30-SECOND HISTORY LESSON: To help restore Japan in the aftermath of WWII, America provided experts to assist the rebuilding of Japanese industry. A Management Training Program was developed and taught by Homer Sarasohn and Charles Protzman in 1949-50. Sarasohn later recommended W. Edwards Deming to provide further training in Statistical Methods. And thus, Japanese “kaizen” was born. Sony introduced a courageous product and it made them hugely successful.And then Sony began playing it safe.Your friends, family, staff, and customers – all the people who care about you – want you to be safe. And the safest thing you can do, they believe, is to conform to the accepted norm. This is why they will always “express their concern” when they see you stray from the straight and narrow path.But isn’t “playing it safe” in business the least safe thing you can do? Sony methodically kept improving the Walkman long after they should have replaced it with an entirely new concept. Big Success is rare because it requires audacity and courage.Or maybe I’m wrong.What do you think?Roy H. Williams

Travel agencies were eliminated as a business category when the Digital Age arrived. Likewise, encyclopedias found they were no longer needed. Soon we were opening the newspaper each morning to read headlines we already knew about. Newspaper doubled over in pain and fell to its knees. The Yellow Pages got dusty and catalogues quit arriving in the mail.“Why print on paper when we can put our stuff on a computer screen that’s already in the customer’s home?” A single, online catalogue company – Amazon.com – now facilitates 25 percent of all the online purchases in the United States.* And isn’t a blog just an electronic diary, a journal open to public view?Electronic media has been damaged far less than print media by the arrival of the Digital Age. In short, TV and radio are doing just fine.Right now you’re thinking, “But what about iPods and Pandora and smart phones and online listening and satellite radio? Does anyone listen to regular radio anymore?”Research Director tells us the average American spends only 15.4 hours a week listening to the radio these days, a decline of 11 percent since 1970. Media Audit says the decline is 13 percent, down to just 17 hours per week. And a 2010 Bridge Ratings study puts the decline at 18 percent, bringing the average down to about 18 hours per week in radio listening. Obviously, these research firms don’t agree on the details, but they do agree on this: Radio alarm clocks wake America in the morning and radio remains our companion in the car. People who work alone at night – about 14 percent of our nation – think of the radio as a friend.Roughly 3 years after online radio becomes standard equipment in the dash of new cars, geographically targeted online radio advertising will become a powerful tool. Trust me. I’m keeping a very close eye on this.But what about right now, today?My clients across America currently air 52-week radio schedules on more than 700 radio stations, so it can reasonably be said that I’ve spent a few hundred million dollars buying airtime over the past 25 years.Radio is considered “mass media” for a reason: It reaches the unwashed, unfiltered masses. Rich and poor alike. Homeowners, apartment dwellers, and children still bumming a room from their parents. Generally speaking, radio is not good at targeting specific types of persons, but it’s great for building a reputation. If you want the public to think of you when they need what you sell, a nonstop radio schedule will work wonders.But don’t fall into the trap of overpaying to be on the “right” station. Radio goes fishing with a net, pulling up thousands of fish with each pass through the waters. If you want to sit on the riverbank with a pole and a hook and target a specific type of customer, use magazines or a list or invest in Google Adwords. But know this: the success of your ad campaign won’t be determined by your choice of media. The success of your ad campaign will be determined by your choice of message.Weak ads fail, regardless of which media delivers them.Strong ads succeed, regardless of which media delivers them.How strong are your ads?Want to make them stronger?Roy H. Williams

A New Book is in the Making. Want to Be Part of It?More than 1,000 businesses will be featured in this book. Each will have fewer than 100 employees. On average, they’ll have been operating for at least 20 years. We’re going to ask them about their advertising.Research tells you what ought to work.We’re going to ask these businesses what actually worked.Actual experience is the highest form of research.Each of these businesses will be part of a new book to be published in 2013, the halfway point in the upswing of our current “We” generation:20,000 Years of AdvertisingLessons Learned. Fortunes Made.Pendulum was released last week. This week we’re making a run at the bestsellers list. Wish us luck.Two weeks ago, the Wizard of Ads partners held their semi-annual partner meeting in the Veranda Room of the Enchanted Emporium at the entrance to Wizard Academy.Be patient. All these things are connected. You’ll see.Each of the partners was given an advance copy of Pendulum. Here’s part of what it says on the back flap:Roy H. Williams dropped out of college on the second day, choosing instead to “figure it out” for himself. At age 19, he began asking local business owners, “Have you ever done any advertising that you felt really worked? Tell me about it.” After cataloguing their answers, he asked, “Have you ever done any advertising that you thought was brilliant—something you were really excited about— that failed miserably?”“You only have to ask a few hundred business owners,” says Williams, “before it all becomes crystal clear . . . everyone makes the same mistakes for the same reasons. And the things that work brilliantly have common denominators as well. All the answers, of course, are initially counterintuitive. That’s why everyone makes the same mistakes. I was given thousands of years of collective experience and the results of more than one hundred million dollars in advertising expenditures . . . for free. All I had to do was see the patterns. What a country!”At 20, Williams began consulting small business owners across America, guiding dozens of them to unprecedented success. Twenty years later, his Wizard of Ads trilogy of business books rose to the top of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.Princess Pennie, the love of my life, said to the partners, “Not long after we were married, Roy spent all day, every day, asking business owners about their experiences in advertising. I think we should do it again. Who is willing to interveiw 50 business owners about their best and worst experiences in advertising?”The room was a sea of raised hands. I’ve got the greatest partners on earth. 20,000 Years of Advertising Lessons Learned, Fortunes Made, will clearly identify the common denominators of successful small business advertising as well as those costly, seductive mistakes we all seem to make. We’ll quote many of the businesses who participate and we’ll identify our stringers as well. The reader will gain the benefit of 20,000 years of recent, real-world experience on the battlefield of marketing. And this won’t be patty-cake business school theory, either. AThese battles will have been fought with live ammunition: hard dollars spent by small business owners performing the kinds of marketing experiments entrepreneurs do every day.What’s a stringer, you ask? A stringer is an independant reporter who is not on the payroll of a major news network but who contributes from the sidelines in exchange for national recognition. The stringer brings a story to the attention of the network and then benefits from the recognition of that association. The first step in getting hired by a major network is to become a valuable stringer.If you own a small business and would be willing to be interviewed by telephone, please email your name, business name and phone number to [email protected] you know at least 20 business owners and would be willing to suggest to them that they volunteer to be interviewed by us, just have them email their name, business name and telephone number to [email protected] and be sure they tell us that it was you that asked them to do it. Participants and stringers will be recognized in the book for their contributions and each will receive an advance copy of the hardback when it’s published next year.Stringers whose names are mentioned in more than 20 emails from business owners will be invited to a special Wizard of Ads training event and given free access to the Wizard of Ads LIVE monthly webcast for a full year, (usually $1,440.)20,000 Years of Advertising is going to increase the success and prosperity of every small business owner who reads it. And make no mistake; the success of a nation’s small business owners is what drives the economy of that nation. A “We” gener

How much do your name, logo and color scheme really matter?A schmuck falls off the balcony on the 30th floor.A putz is the guy he lands on.A putz is passively stupid; ridiculously unlucky.Could a company succeed with a name like Putzmeister?Could a company win if its logo was indistinctive and boring and literally gray?Putzmeister was founded by Karl Schlecht in 1958. Today it employs 3,900 people that produce more than $ 1.5 billion in annual sales in 154 countries on 5 continents, name and logo and color be damned.$1.5 billion, by the way,is fifteen hundredtimes a thousand,times a thousand.Fifteen hundred million. Just sayin’.Wal-Mart may have the dumbest name in the history of the world. “My name is Walton, so I’ll call the store Wal-Mart.” Really? And yet he became so rich that just six of his descendants are worth more today than the combined net worth of 30 percent of our nation. That’s right, a tiny company begun in 1962 with an idiotic name and a drab logo and an unimaginative color scheme became the most successful retail empire in the history of the world in less than 30 years.And they never bothered to change the name or the logo.I meet Chicken Little advertising people every day who squeal, “the sky is falling” over names and colors and logos.Color is a language. It definitely matters. A little.Shape is a language. It can contradict or reinforce your choice of colors. Shape matters. A little.Product and company names are words that carry conscious and unconscious associations. They absolutely matter. But what matters most of all is what matters to the customer.Customers who buy from your competitors aren’t choosing your competitors because they have better logos. Your problem is something else entirely.Customers care about things like products and procedures and policies that might affect them. They care about your offers and assurances. They care about the experience you create for them.Will your prospective customer be glad they chose you? Yes? How are communicating this? What do you offer as evidence? Testimonials are suspect. Bold promises sound like Ad-speak. What are you doing to give your prospective customer real confidence that choosing you is the right thing to do?You need a consultant because you have a blind spot.(If you knew what it was, they wouldn’t call it a blind spot.)You’re on the inside, looking out. It’s hard to read the label when you’re inside the bottle. Your consultant is on the outside, looking in.If your marketing people talk a lot about colors and logos and layouts, you’re dealing with graphics artists posing as marketing consultants.If you’d like to talk about how to take your company to the next level for real, my partners and I are ready. Are you?If you’re a person who is interested in marketing and would like to expand your skill set, Wizard Academy was built for you, for today, and for the challenges you’re about to face.Come. It’s time for you to rise up to your full height. You, we, have work to do.Roy H. Williams

I am, by profession, a communications consultant. I craft strategies, write ads and buy media. My clients ask for my advice. They even pay me for it.Advice is dangerous to give.If you are thinking, “Yes, it’s dangerous to give advice because your advice might be wrong,” you probably haven’t worked full-time in a focused specialty for 30 years. Yes, there is a chance my advice might be wrong, but that’s not the principal danger.Advice is always dangerous because a person only needs it when:1. they’re making decisions based on incorrect assumptions.2. they made a mistake that triggered unhappy repercussions.3. they’re looking at a situation from an unproductive angle.Jeffrey’s experiences in life have been different from my own. Jeff has traveled more extensively, speaks multiple languages, has a different religious background, a different political bent and his education has been completely unlike anything I have experienced.Weirdly, we get along extremely well. This is possible only because I know Jeff likes me and respects me and he knows I feel the same about him.Jeffrey taught me three new terms: educational bias, cultural bias and religious bias.Educational bias is what happens when native intellect encounters new information. How smart are you? How extensive and reliable is the information to which you’ve been exposed? How well do you assimilate knowledge into your actions? These things form the basis of your educational bias. There are things you know a lot about and other things you know very little about.Cultural bias is formed by the persons with whom you interact. Your inherent beliefs are shaped – to some degree – by the nations, the communities and the families in which you have lived.Religious bias originates with your beliefs about God. Is there a supreme being or is there not? And if such a being exists, what is his attitude toward us? Your religious bias is the foundation of your beliefs about how the world works. Do we live in an organized Newtonian universe of cause-and-effect or do we live in a mystery-and-awe universe of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle? When a person says, “That’s the way things are because, well, that’s just how they are,” their religious bias is talking.Now let’s look at those three, highly volatile moments when a person needs advice:1. When your friend or client is making a decision based onincorrect assumptions, such assumptions are usually based on:(A.) a popular myth, such as, “People remember more of what they see than what they hear,” or(B.) outright misinformation, such as, “Saddam Hussein is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.”When you challenge the reliability of a false assumption, you are:(A.) telling your friend that he or she has been misled. You are exposing their educational bias, questioning their intellect and gently calling them naïve. How do you suppose this will make them feel?(B.) suggesting that their teacher was either a liar or a fool. In this case, your advice will be dangerous to precisely the degree they loved and respected that teacher.2. When your friend or client has made a mistake that triggered unhappy repercussions, you can be certain they are feeling some pain. Their educational bias is on display for the world to see and surmise, “They didn’t know what they were doing.” Your friend will either be embarrassed and sensitive or angry and defiant, “I wasn’t wrong. Everyone else was wrong.” Either way, you must choose your words carefully.3. When your friend or client is looking at a situation from an unproductive angle, your advice is going to challenge their worldview, their belief system, their interpretation of their own past experiences. Be careful or your advice will make them feel like you’re saying their whole life was built upon a mistake up until now. An unproductive angle of view is usually the result of a cultural bias or a religious bias and both go all the way to the bone.My advice to you is this: never, under any circumstances, offer unsolicited advice. Unsolicited advice is the junk mail of life.Even when you are asked for advice, be very careful. Your relationship with this person will be significantly altered by what you are about to say.And yes, I realize I’ve been giving you unsolicited advice for about 5 minutes now. I took this chance because advice that’s distributed widely doesn’t carry the same accusatory impact as advice that’s delivered one-on-one.And I took the chance because I like you and I respect you and I think you know this.Roy H. Williams

Every “Me” cycle in society begins with:1. a beautiful dream of freedom from restraint2. a hunger for self-expression3. a search for individualityOur last “Me” cycle began in 1963 and reached its zenith in 1983 when freedom from restraint had evolved into conspicuous consumption and individuality was being “self-expressed” through costumes, big hair, disco and phony poses.The upside of a “Me” zenith is optimistic entrepreneurialism and national pride. Of course Peter Ueberroth was able to raise 215 million dollars more than was needed to host the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Of course it was the grandest spectacle the world had ever seen. Of course it was. And our movie-star handsome, wavy-haired President is about to stand at the Brandenburg Gate on worldwide television and command the leader of the world’s other superpower to “Tear down this wall!” as though he’s telling a naughty child to clean his room.We tend to overdose on everything, don’t we? “If a little ‘Me’ pride is good, a lot is better.” The slow deflation of the over-pumped “Me” was known as Gen-X (1983-2003,) but Generation-X was never about birth cohorts. A generation is about life cohorts. Emergent values will be embraced first by the youth and this causes people to mistakenly believe those birth-cohort myths about “Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials.” But our attitudes aren’t a reflection of when we were born; they’re a reflection of the times in which we live.Ultimately, we’re all in this generation together, regardless of when we were born or how soon after the tipping point we embrace the new values, outlook, and perspective.A “Me” is about vertical hierarchy, “Who is on top?”A “We” is about horizontal connectedness, “To what am I committed?”And we move as a group between these perspectives in a predictable swing of society’s pendulum that takes precisely 40 years to travel between zeniths.The bottom of the pendulum’s arc is the tipping point. 1963 began the “Me” that reached it’s zenith in 1983 and then declined back to a new tipping point twenty years later.Our current “We” cycle began in 2003 with:1. a beautiful dream of working together for the common good2. a hunger for acceptance as a member of a team3. a search for significanceWe’re approaching the halfway point (2013) in the 20-year upswing of a “We” that will zenith in 2023. If the recurrent and undeniable patterns of the past 3,000 years can be trusted, we’re about to enter a very dangerous time.The upside of a “We” zenith is that the prevailing attitude is “I’m OK – You’re Not OK.” This can manifest itself as genuine concern for others, “Things are good for me right now, but not so good for you. How can I help?” Volunteerism zeniths in a “We” as teamwork and significance are celebrated as supreme virtues.The downside of a “We” zenith is that “working together for the common good” often escalates into a self-righteous gang mentality. “I’m OK – You’re Not OK” can also be translated as, “I am correct and good. You are incorrect and evil.”Yes, we’re entering a dangerous time indeed.What can be done?Tune in tomorrow (Sept. 18) for a live, 1-hour webcast hosted by yours truly. No money. Just an hour of your time. We’ll look at some real-world, right-now examples of the upswing of the “We.”The book will be released October 2nd.Roy H. WilliamsA

A Look at Choices and ConsequencesYou wrestle with lions daily.Lions are powers outside yourself: circumstance and serendipity, fate and phenomenon, bad luck and good. A lion can oppose or assist you. It can be your enemy or friend.A gang of lions is called a pride. Interesting.Unlike lions, tigers are solitary.Your tiger is your own, inner ferocity: Determination. Commitment. Focus. Hence the phrase, “The eye of the tiger.”The tiger will not be denied.Gentle persons don’t like to believe they possess an inner ferocity, but I agree with William Blake, “He that gently made the lamb hath made the tiger also.”The tiger within you calculates the cost of your choices and agrees to pay the price. Make no mistake; every choice has a cost.Here are 3 more things you should know:1. All tigers have a similar marking on their forehead, which resembles the Chinese symbol Wang, meaning King. Likewise, the tiger within you is king, the captain of your soul, choosing what it chooses and paying in whatever coin is required:Coin 1. Time – Time, like money, is spent. But unlike money, time cannot be replaced.Coin 2. Embarrassment – Embarrassment, or the risk of it, accompanies all your important choices.Coin 3. Deprivation – All the things not chosen are the price of every choice you make.Coin 4. Relationship – You make demands on those who care for you and thereby alter the bond that connects. Will your choice make this bond stronger or weaker?Coin 5. Effort – The pain of “trying” is a coin all its own. And in its shadow is embarrassment if you fail.Coin 6. Conscience – When your tiger sides with your conscience, the price is that which your conscience denies you. But when your tiger overrules your conscience, the price is paid in the coin of embarrassment. And the audience that is watching… is you.2. Shave the fur from a tiger and it will still have stripes. Fur is merely an outward thing. The true shape and color of the animal lies beneath. What stripe is tattooed beneath the fur of your outward personality? The skin-stripes of tigers are the source of the proverb, “a tiger cannot change its stripes,” meaning that we do not change our basic nature. We can only hope to overcome it.3. The tiger’s most developed sense is its hearing. Likewise, the tiger within you is informed primarily by what you hear, including those printed words that echo in your mind as you read.What do you read? What have you been feeding your tiger?Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, understands tigers.Calvin’s tiger, Hobbes, lives exclusively in the mind of Calvin. When anyone else is in the picture, Hobbes is just a small, stuffed toy.Likewise, none of us sees the tiger that lives in another. We see only a sketch of a tiger drawn by their choices and actions.Watterson understands the power of silent voice. He famously decided that Calvin and Hobbes would live only on the printed page. No animated cartoons. The only voices of Calvin and Hobbes are those that each of us hears in our minds as we read their words on the printed page.And Brother Watterson understands “paying the price.” In this case, that price is the many millions of dollars he forfeits each year by not licensing Calvin and Hobbes. No toys. No action figures. No paraphernalia. Tens of millions of dollars would appear in his bank account if the man would simply say the word “Yes.”Bill Watterson is either a giant among men or one of the greatest fools that has ever lived. This you must decide for yourself.But one thing is stunningly clear:Watterson’s tiger does not purr.I like him.Roy H. Williams

From Unstructured DataJune 25, 2012, 8:29 PMStep 1: Create a monster by networking 16,000 ultrafast computer processors.Step 2: Feed the monster 10 billion images chosen at random from YouTube videos.Step 3: See what happens.What Happened: The monster taught itself to recognize cats.“We never told it during the training, ‘This is a cat.’ It basically invented the concept of a cat.” – Jeff Dean, speaking for the scientists at Google’s secretive X-LabsThe frightening part of this report is that modern computers appear to be capable of independent learning through extrapolation.The comforting part of this report is that it takes 16,000 ultrafast processors working together to do something that’s completely effortless for a human toddler.I drive 40 minutes to meet Jeffrey Eisenberg for lunch in a place that looks like it used to be a Denny’s. I hand him an advance copy of Pendulum. “Hold it up next to your face,” I said. He held it up and smiled. [click]Jeff laid the book on the table and thumbed through it, “This really turned out nice.”“So tell me what’s happening in Jeff-world.”Jeff said he was developing applications of big data for some of America’s largest companies.“What’s big data?” I asked.“You’ve been teaching Practical Applications of Chaos Theory in the Magical Worlds course for about 12 years now, right?”“Right.”“Big data is just one more use of that idea.”“How so?”“Dump huge amounts of unstructured data into a computer, then wait to see the patterns it discovers. The bigger the dataset, the more obvious the patterns.”Jeff went on to explain that ‘unstructured data’ included information from climate sensors, digital photos and videos, purchase transaction records, Tweets and other social media posts, GPS signals from cell phones, things like that.YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, traffic and security cameras and the worldwide proliferation of portable digital devices add up to this: If every book, document, spreadsheet, register, newspaper and photograph created prior to July, 2010, were digitized, they would account for only about 10 percent of the world’s data.Ninety percent of all the data in the world has been created in the last two years.According to Ed Dumbill,“Big data is data that exceeds the processing capacity of conventional database systems. The data is too big, moves too fast, or doesn’t fit the strictures of your database architectures. To gain value from this data, you must choose an alternative way to process it.”Institutions can use big data to reduce fraud and errors. Hospitals can use it to improve patient care while reducing healthcare costs. According to IBM, one health care organization used big data this year to decrease patient mortality by 20 percent. A telecommunications company reduced processing time by 92 percent and a utility company improved the accuracy of power resource placement by 99 percent.Huge organizations like these have been the first to embrace big data, but Jeff Eisenberg tells me that he and Bryan are working to make its power available to retailers and small businesses, as well.When Jeff said big data was just another practical application of chaos theory, here’s what he meant: Chaos, in science, is not randomness, but precisely the opposite. Chaos is a pattern so vast that it won’t fit into the human mind.Confronted with the product of a chaotic system, the pattern-recognition function of our brain’s right hemisphere senses a pattern that never seems to resolve, never seems to close, never seems to finish and begin again. As a result, we are drawn to a beauty that is too big for us. All the beauties of nature – mountains, canyons, trees, clouds, snowflakes and the movements of fire and water – are products of chaotic systems.Likewise, works of art that pierce public consciousness to become mass-appeal, runaway successes – top-of-the-chart songs, bestselling books, Oscar-winning movies – always contain a third gravitating body* with a high degree of divergence and an explicit moment of convergence. Third gravitating bodies show up in effective advertising, as well.I didn’t make up that term, “third gravitating body,” by the way. It’s a term that has been used by astrophysicists for more than 100 years to describe a mathematical function of the universe that relates to system evolution and gravity, the ability to attract.Attract…Attraction. That would be a good thing to master, don’t you think?And now you know why it’s called The Magical Worlds Communications Workshop at Wizard Academy, the most interesting business school on earth.Come. We’ll fill in the blanks.It will all make perfect sense before you leave.Roy H. Williams

Jack became dull when he failed to free the beagle in his brain. You let your beagle romp and play, don’t you?Don’t you?The beagle in your brain connects nonlinear events – think of these events as a collection of dots – to reveal fantastic patterns.Intuition. Humor. Leap of Faith. These are just three of the beagle’s names.The beagle is not limited to paired opposites but lives in a place of infinite possibilities. Fantasy and fiction, poetry and song, symbols, rituals and metaphors beckon us into that realm where anything can happen in the color-stained shadows beneath the beagle’s grand forest canopy. Every stick is a sword, every rabbit is an adventure and every tree becomes home base the moment you begin to run.“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” first appeared in a book of collected proverbs published by James Howell in 1659, but it was generations old, even then.An article by Dr. Peter Gray in Psychology Today proves the potency of this 353 year-old warning. Dr. Gray is a research professor of psychology at Boston College. His findings guide the decisions of comparative, evolutionary, developmental and educational psychologists around the world. He has written important articles on innovative teaching methods and alternative approaches to education. He is the author of Psychology, an important college textbook now in its 6th edition.That’s right. He wrote the college textbook.Dr. Gray has recently been studying “the dullest culture on earth,” a people so painfully boring that previous researchers concluded they could not be studied. There was nothing to see, nothing to ask, nothing to probe or investigate among the Baining, an isolated tribe in Papua, New Guinea. According to Dr. Gray, “They do not tell stories, rarely gossip, and exhibit little curiosity or enthusiasm. Their conversation is obsessively mundane, concerned primarily with food-getting and food-processing.”The Baining, you see, do not believe in play. In fact, Baining children are punished when they do frivolous things. The Baining believe only in productive work and “things that make sense.”Grow crops.Harvest crops.Cook crops.Eat crops.Sit and wait silently for tomorrow.Do it all again.The Baining make no room in their minds for romance, fantasy or adventure. They don’t even allow imitation. There are no Baining religions or heroes or humor, no Baining poetry or legends or music. Sex is an unpleasant chore endured only for the production of children. The single Baining ritual is a firedance that initiates boys into manhood. Women and children are not allowed to watch.I promise I’m not making this up. I’m not even exaggerating.Dr. Gray’s report paints a picture so dreary and sad that he opens it by assuring us that he is not a racist. “This essay is clearly not about race but about culture, and if there is value judgment, it is judgment grounded in my own culturally-produced biases.”Dr. Gray ends his report by saying,“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and it apparently makes the Baining the ‘dullest culture on earth.’ In some ways, I fear, we today are trying to emulate the Baining as we increasingly deprive children of opportunities to play and explore freely and, instead, force them to spend ever more time working in school and participating in adult-directed activities outside of school.”I agree with all that, but I took something different from Dr. Gray’s report, namely this: if we don’t make time for intuition, humor and leaps of faith, if we don’t make room for romance, fantasy and adventure, then we don’t know Jack.But it’s very possible we’re on our way to being him.And Jack is a very dull boy.Free the Beagle.Roy H. Williams

“Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.” – David OgilvyA creative problem-solver consciously or unconsciously realizes the problem at hand has already been solved – many times – but the answers have not yet been applied to the immediate situation.Creative problem solving is merely the leveraging of trustworthy patterns – those relationships between elements in a system – to achieve an advantage previously undiscovered in the immediate application.The critical first step in creative problem solving is to identify the defining characteristics of the problem. This is usually achieved, according to David Ogilvy, by “stuffing your conscious mind with information.” That’s the easy part. Our society swims in information. The second part, to “unhook your rational thought process,” is where it gets tricky.I believe there are 5 ways to unhook deductive reasoning. A1. The Arts. Music speaks to us through rhythm, interval, contour, pitch, key and tempo. Theater and Dance speak through foreshadow, symbol and movement. Painting and Sculpture through shape, proximity and color. Poetry and Literature speak to depths beyond our understanding. Connect to the arts and watch the marlin rise from deep water to tail-dance across the ocean in the moonlight.  2. Humor. A statement that belongs and fits is predictable, not funny. A statement that doesn’t belong and doesn’t fit makes no sense: not funny. A statement is funny only when it “doesn’t belong, but fits.” Brilliant ideas often enter the world as jokes. An outrageous suggestion that could theoretically work is always hilarious. Humor is a slippery key that unlocks the intuitive mind as we become aware of obscure but possible connections. Laughter is a portal that takes us beyond the realms of fear and doubt. Look though that window and consider what you see. b3. Time Pressure. I once watched Keith Miller trick a roomful of people into brilliance by giving them too little time to complete a series of detailed lists. “Pick a subject that interests you. I’ll give you sixty seconds.” Keith counted down, “45 seconds… thirty seconds… fifteen seconds…” Each person was then required to stand and name the subject they’d chosen. Keith said, “Write down 16 things you’d want to include if you wrote a book about this subject. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar or putting them into any kind of order. I’ll give you 4 minutes. Sixteen things. Go.” Mild panic causes the logical mind to quit “second guessing” as the floodgates of intuition open and spray far more knowledge than you ever knew was there. r4. Play! Without keeping score. Playing to win is just another name for work. Play must be freely chosen, actively engaging and fun. Hide-and-seek. Throw a disc. Sing hit songs with a group of new friends. Play requires the relaxation of the uptight mind. We are rejuvenated and revitalized by it. Children are happy because they play. Adults are unhappy because they do not. i5. Recovery. Humans are like neon; we glow when we release the energy of overstimulation. I once mentioned to Dr. Grant that I often have my best ideas in airplanes on the way home from speaking engagements. Knowing my strong preference for introverted thinking, he said, “Well of course. Working to connect to an audience is extraverted feeling, your least preferred function.” When he saw I was confused he continued, “Psychologists have known for years that a person’s fourth function – the one least preferred – is the trap door to the unconscious mind.” Ten minutes later we created Escape the Box, one of Wizard Academy’s most heralded workshops. (We don’t have one scheduled but we could easily do so if enough of you are interested. Just call Della at 512-295-5700 or email [email protected]) Look Inward. Laugh. Panic. Play. Sleep.Welcome to Wizard Academy. Are you beginning to understand why the world’s most interesting business school has an art gallery, a concert hall, a star deck, a wine cellar and a student mansion?Come.Roy H. Williams

Courage might look like confidence to onlookers but confidence and courage are not the same. Confidence means you’re not afraid. Courage means you do your best even though you’re scared half to death. Courage does not rely on confidence. Courage relies on commitment.“It embarrasses me to admit that there have been seasons in my life when I was so full of myself that there was no room for anyone else.” – Richard Exley, Dec. 12, 2011(Richard has been a close friend for 30 years. I have witnessed these seasons in him as he has witnessed them in me. – RHW)Confidence without humility is arrogance.Humility without confidence is an inferiority complex.The single prerequisite of true humility is that you must first have confidence.The false humility of inferiority is really just anger in a sad disguise. Courage is good,confidence is better,but humility is the highest lessonand much harder to learn than the previous two.“There is a strange duality in the human which makes for an ethical paradox. We have definitions of good qualities and of bad. Of the good, we always think of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of cruelty, greed, self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of society, the so-called and considered good qualities are invariable concomitants of failure, while the bad ones are the cornerstones of success. A man – a viewing-point man – while he will love the abstract good qualities and detest the abstract bad, will nevertheless envy and admire the person who through possessing the abstract bad qualities has succeeded economically and socially, and will hold in contempt that person whose good qualities have caused failure. When such a viewing-point man considers Jesus or St. Augustine or Socrates he regards them with love because they are the symbols of the good he admires, and he hates the symbols of the bad. But actually he would rather be successful than good.”– John Steinbeck, Sea of Cortez, p. 96, (1941)Begin by learning courage. Stare into the face of the tiger that threatens to devour you. Be the excellent soldier who runs toward the sound of the guns. You will do these things not because you are fearless, but because you have chosen to. And when you have stared down tigers and emerged from battles undead, you will notice that your courage has grown into a strutting little rooster called Confidence.And then one day long after, if you are open-minded, open-hearted and wise, you will realize that your successes were never born from the strength of your will, the razor’s edge of your intellect or the power of your focused mind, but from the whim of an inexplicable little fairy called Luck.Laugh at the rooster,Tip your hat to the fairy,And smile.Roy H. Williams

Reality doesn’t exist; at least not in the way that we usually think of it. Dr. Jorge Martins de Oliveira writes,“Our perception does not identify the outside world as it really is, but the way that we are allowed to recognize it, as a consequence of transformations performed by our senses. We experience electromagnetic waves, not as waves, but as images and colors. We experience vibrating objects, not as vibrations, but as sounds. We experience chemical compounds dissolved in air or water, not as chemicals, but as specific smells and tastes. Colors, sounds, smells and tastes are products of our minds, built from sensory experiences. They do not exist, as such, outside our brain. Actually, the universe is colorless, odorless, insipid and silent.”Dr. Oliveira isn’t a touchy-feely philosopher, a halfwit existentialist or the delusional leader of a religious cult. He’s the Director of the Department of Neurosciences at an important institute in Rio de Janeiro. (I love Latin American scientists. They speak of the beauty of science more poetically than do scientists in the United States.)According to Oliveira, each of us lives in a private world of our own perceptions.Speaking of this perceptual reality he writes,“Although you and I share the same biological architecture and function, perhaps what I perceive as a distinct color and smell is not exactly equal to the color and smell you perceive. We may give the same name to similar perceptions, but we cannot know how they relate to the reality of the outside world. Perhaps we never will.”But isn’t there an objective reality that’s the same for all of us?Sure there is. In the purest objective reality, 7 billion of us are trapped on a tiny speck of dust that circles an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through a limitless vacuum at 252 times the speed of a rifle bullet.And none of us ever thinks about it.That seems almost surreal, doesn’t it?I point out the subjective nature of our perceptual realities to underscore the importance of articulate communication. Are you able to make others see what you see and feel what you feel? If so, you have persuasion, the most powerful of human skills. Physical speed, agility and strength seem puny standing next to it. Indeed, the pen is mightier than the sword.Next Monday we’ll examine the word choices of a great contemporary writer during the first 30 minutes of our monthly, 1-hour video webcast for subscribers. I hope to teach you how to choose words as he chooses them so that you might speak and write with greater persuasive power. I’ll also be revealing a 25-year secret; specifically, the criteria my firm uses to select which radio schedules to purchase from the thousands that are submitted to my media buyers each year. I’ll teach you how to extract more benefit from your ad budget.The Wizards of Ads are known for the growth of their clients, small businesses who currently air 52-week schedules on more than 700 radio stations across the United States, Australia and Canada. Eyebrows will jump when I reveal the criteria we use for choosing these stations. Tempers will flare. Media salespeople everywhere will shout we’re “doing it wrong.”I’ve decided not to worry about that. Instead, I’ll be trying to wrap my head around how we can fly at 252 times the speed of a rifle bullet and feel as though we’re standing still.Whoosh. Roy H. Williams

Dave saw adventure where others saw only shadowsbecause Dave is a creative genius who never forgot how to play.The mind wants closure, for everything to add up and make sense, for there to be no loopholes, paradoxes or remainders. Intellect wants to believe that it has the answers, that is sees beyond broken logic, that it is ultimately in control, that there is no force greater than itself.In short, humans want to be their own god but we are poorly equipped for the job.The study of Magical Thinking includes the examination of common superstitions, justifications and self-delusions. Think you don’t have any? Think again.The same insanity that allows us to believe in a god who has everything “under control and moving forward according to His Perfect Plan” also allows us to believe that the Higgs boson particle is somehow proof that the vast diversity of plant and animal life on this planet is the accidental result of an explosion.“GOD, we are a comic species. Why are you interested in us?” This is a question that’s been asked for at least 3 thousand years. Indeed David, player of the harp and slayer of Goliath asks GOD in the 8th of his Psalms, “What is a human being that you think about him? What is a son of man that you take care of him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings. You placed on him a crown of glory and honor. You made human beings the rulers over all that your hands have created. You put everything under their control.”On a practical level, an understanding of Magical Thinking – this amazing propensity of humans to jump to ridiculous conclusions and become deeply bonded to them – is the most powerful sales tool on which you will ever lay your hand.Fortunately, our not-quite-sane ability to imagine and believe in the unproven, the unlikely and the clearly impossible is not just proof of our brokenness, it is also our greatest gift and highest treasure. Magical Thinking allows us to see possibilities not indicated by the evidence at hand. Intuition depends upon it. Breakthroughs happen because of it. Undiluted play is at the heart of it.Play. Do you remember it? Dave Young was playing when he saw Quixote in the shadow of the cactus.Stated in the simplest of terms, Magical Thinking describes potentialities that are not strictly possible, but are believable nonetheless. And these potentialities can be positive or negative.The obvious question is, “What is a potentiality?”You’re a young man who is about to ask the love of your life to marry you. Special circumstances give you the opportunity to buy a diamond engagement ring for a fraction of its true value. The previous owner was a woman who was murdered by her husband. He then fled the country with all of his assets. The ring is being sold by the cemetary that buried the woman. Do you buy the ring and present it to your fiancé as a symbol of your love?Why not? Diamonds and gold are inert. They have no memory and carry no contagion, no karma, no bad juju. You know this in the left hemisphere of your brain, but Magical Thinking tells you otherwise in your right.Contagion and “bad juju” are negative potentialities. Sports memorabilia, celebrity autographs and historical artifacts are valuable due to positive potentialities.When you understand the seductive pathways of Magical Thinking you’ll be able to write advertising and web copy that causes people to choose you, your company and your brand, above all others, even when it defies common sense.Magical Thinking works like magic, allowing the magician to pull rabbits from hats that everyone knows to be empty. magiimagine magic.Roy H. Williams

Out in the open Wisdom calls aloud, she raises her voice in the marketplace…”- Solomon, Proverbs ch. 1Wendy Clark sponsored a trio of young protégés to attend this year’s annual Young Writer’s Workshop at Wizard Academy. While she was on campus with her crew, she said,“There really needs to be a book of helpful tips for start-up business owners. The E-Myth warns you that being a good housecleaner doesn’t necessarily mean you’d be good at running a housecleaning business. And that’s quite a revelation. But there’s no book that tells a person how to make the leap from wage earner to business owner. The book is needed and needed badly.”Will you help Wendy and I write that book of entrepreneurial tips?Wendy and her sister Jessica overcame an impossibly vertical learning curve by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. Their company, Carpe Diem Cleaning in Durham, North Carolina, is the classic success story. Wendy spoke to me of some powerful insights she had been forced to learn the hard way. Tragically, I’d heard them all before. Lots of times. So why hadn’t I warned her?This is a book that screams to be written and you, mi compadre*, are going to contribute what you know. You’ll do it because it’s the right thing to do. You’ll do it because you know every strong economy is built on companies with fewer than 100 employees. You’ll do it because we’re all in this together.I mentioned Wendy’s comment to Wizard Academy’s board of directors last Monday. Jean Backus said, “I taught basic tax tips for 10 years at Austin Community College and a high percentage of my students already had an MBA. When I asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ they always said, ‘They don’t teach this stuff in college.’”Jean Backus promised to give us a list of time-and-money-saving tips. Likewise, Dennis Collins and Adrian Van Zelfden promised to contribute what they’ve learned in their several decades as consultants to hundreds of business owners. Doctors Oz Jaxxon and Lori Barr promised to chip in their collected wisdom as well. And I promised that you would send in at least one golden nugget.Here are a few examples of the kinds of tips this book will contain:1. Calculate the potential revenues available to your category in your trade area in 3 ways: (A) Make a list of all competitors in your category, estimate the annual sales volumes of each, then total the estimates for a “country boy” estimate of the marketplace potential. (B) Pull national sales volume estimates from trade publications for your category, then divide that number by the population of the nation, then multiply by the population of your marketplace. (C) Access the government NAICS numbers for your category to derive a per capita average for your state, then multiply that number times the population of your trade area. Don’t be surprised when all 3 answers fall in a narrow range.2. Growing from 5% of your market potential to 25% of your market potential (20 percentage points) is easier than growing from 25% to 33% (8 points.) This is because you win the easiest customers first, then must face customers that are much more difficult to win. It is extremely rare for a business to grow beyond 33% of the market potential for their category.3. Commit all agreements to writing. The clearest memory is no match for pale ink.4. Sometimes your very best just isn’t good enough. Don’t let it get you down.5. In most service businesses, 1/3 of revenues will go to payroll, 1/3 will go to overhead, and 1/3 will be gross profit from which taxes, etc. must be withheld. Take this into consideration when hiring and pricing.6. A talented, hardworking tradesman, craftsman or technician, working alone, can make a lot of money. Soon they’ll have no free time and will be turning away business, so they will hire a helper. Then they’ll discover that it’s faster and easier to just do it themselves than it is to train, motivate and supervise the helper. So they’ll hire a second and third employee and work harder than ever and make less money than when they were working alone. Until that tradesman, craftsman or technician has approximately 10 employees, he or she will usually make less money than when they were working round-the-clock, alone. Be ready for these frustrations if you choose to build a service business.7. A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid that mistake altogether. Share what you’ve learned with others and be quick to hear what they have learned and you can both be wise.“Out in the open Wisdom calls aloud, she raises her voice in the marketplace…” – Solomon, Proverbs chapter 1Solomon… wise man… wise-ard… Wizard Academy,America’s Most Interesting Business School.Good decisio

A 30-Year Examination of Money and Jews“Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers,” is a phrase I heard a lot as a kid.My school career began at Hilldale elementary in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Having been absent from that fair city since 1973, I Googled Muskogee to see what had changed in 39 years. As it turns out, not much.The person(s) who wrote the Wikipedia entry for this haven of my childhood wanted to make sure we knew the following 3 things about Muskogee. These are direct quotes:Muskogee was commemorated in the 1969 Merle Haggard song “Okie from Muskogee”.The Jerry Jeff Walker song “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother“ is a satire of small-town life playfully aimed at Muskogee, which is made evident in the last line of the song: “Muskogee, Oklahoma, U.S.A.”In the sitcom Friends, Chandler becomes excited when he hears a mention of Muskogee, saying that it’s “only four hours from Tulsa,” where he resides. In reality, Muskogee is less than an hour from Tulsa.(That the writer felt the need to correct Chandler and point out Muskogee is “less than an hour” from Tulsa makes me smile. If Oklahoma were Los Angeles, Tulsa would be Beverly Hills.)Oklahoma became a state just 51 years before I was born. As a kid, I knew a lot of adults who grew up in the region when it was still officially “Indian Territory.”The Oklahomans of my childhood were mostly mixed-breed mutts. I say this lovingly. I grew up knowing nothing of ethnicities. I never knew anyone who could call themselves Mexican, Polish, Irish, German, Italian or anything else. Heck, we didn’t even have Catholics.Jews were as rare as Chinese, existing only in newspapers and books.The first “foreigner” I ever met was a Jewish man from New York who did me an extraordinary kindness. The encounter made such an impression on me that I’ve been predisposed toward Jews ever since.Here are a few thingsI’ve learned about Jewish culture over the years:  (Doubtless some of my Jewish friends will take issue and feel compelled to correct me on some point or other but that’s perfectly normal. An Israeli friend, Dror Yehuda, warned me many years ago, “Six Jews, ten opinions.”)1. A solution that is not sustainable is probably unwise. The best solutions are always self-sustaining. Knowledge of this deeply embedded cultural belief helps one to understand the 8 Levels of Charity known to every Jew. The lowest levels of charity are those where you hand someone money and walk away. Jewish thought asks, “What is the problem that causes them to need this money? If I truly care, I should help to solve the underlying problem.” Feeding endless amounts of money into a broken situation is unsustainable. Consequently, the highest of the 8 Levels is to help a person start a business that will give them an income on an ongoing basis and provide jobs for others as well. This is true love. Another form of Jewish love-in-action is to give a person a job. These solutions are considered superior because they solve the problem in a sustainable manner. Although no Jewish person has ever said so to me, I get the sense that Jews feel it’s a little bit tacky to just give a person cash and then walk away.2. It is the responsibility of every Jew to make the world better. “What am I doing that makes a difference?” is the ever-present question in the mind of an orthodox Jew. This is probably why Jews are exactly 100 times more likely to win a Nobel Prize than other ethnicities. This is true. Slightly more than 20 percent of all Nobel Prizes have been awarded to Jewish people even though they comprise only 2 tenths of 1 percent of the world’s population. Does it surprise you that every time I’ve ever pointed this out, someone within earshot has immediately said, “Well, it’s the Jews who decide who wins the Nobel Prize, that’s why.” For the record, the Nobel Prize committee is Swedish, not Jewish, and Sweden’s Jewish population is precisely the same 2 tenths of 1 percent as the rest of the world. I did the research.Think about it. If your culture taught you from birth (A.) to always be thinking about how to make the world better and (B.) that the highest form of love is to create sustainable businesses that create jobs for the community, is it any wonder these people have become unusually successful?Roy H. Williams 

Robert Pirosh died on Christmas Day, 1989, in Los Angeles. He was born in Baltimore in 1910. But prior to that Christmas Day in L.A., Pirosh taught screenwriting at the University of Southern California. He was considered a credible screenwriting coach because he had written the screenplays for Gathering of Eagles (1963) starring Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor and Hell is for Heroes (1962) starring Steve McQueen. Prior to that, Pirosh wrote and directed Valley of the Kings, a 1954 adventure movie, and was nominated to receive an Academy Award for his 1951 film, Go for Broke! Two years earlier Pirosh had in fact won the 1949 Oscar for his screenplay of Battleground, a movie about the siege of Bastogne in World War II. Pirosh found his inspiration in his diaries, having served as a Master Sergeant in the 35th Infantry Division. One bitterly cold and forlorn day during the battle of the Bulge, Pirosh led a patrol into Bastogne to support the surrounded American forces there. Bastogne is a long way from Baltimore and being surrounded by people who want to kill you is not the mark of a very good day. Pirosh was awarded the Bronze Star. But war and movies about war were not what Robert Pirosh had planned for his life. Prior to serving in WWII, Pirosh had written some of the funniest lines of Groucho Marx’s career. In the screenplay for A Day at the Races (1937,) Pirosh has Groucho saying, “If I hold you any closer, I’ll be in back of you,” and picking up a telephone to say, “Room Service? Send up a larger room.” Groucho Marx and Robert Pirosh became lifelong friends. We won’t take the time to talk about Robert Pirosh as a writer for The Waltons, Hawaii Five-O, Mannix, Bonanza, My Three Sons, Family Affair, Combat! and The Fugitive. Our interest is directed at the letter that started it all, a letter blindly sent by 24 year-old Robert Pirosh to every producer, director and studio executive in Hollywood: Dear Sir:I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave “V” words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land’s-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around.I have just returned and I still like words.May I have a few with you?Robert Pirosh385 Madison AvenueRoom 610New YorkEldorado 5-6024 Robert Pirosh has been gone for 23 years, having successfully satisfied the demands of a 79-year adventure. As Chancellor of Wizard Academy, I hereby bestow on Robert Pirosh The Order of the Beagle, the highest award our little institution can offer. Based on his letter and what can be pieced together of his life, Robert Pirosh was our brand of crazy. Do you have nominations for The Order of the Beagle? Send your suggestions and the rationale behind them to [email protected] Wizard Academy belongs to you. What do you plan to do with it? Roy H. Williams

Inclusive Communication by DesignRoughly 400 years before the wise-ards followed their star to Bethlehem, a Greek physician recognized four basic styles of behavior, calling them Choleric, Phlegmatic, Melancholic and Sanguine in the mistaken belief that these observable patterns of behavior were triggered by excesses of certain bodily fluids. Today’s Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, DiSC, True Colors and The Behavior Style Assessment are merely scientific instruments based on refinements of Hippocrates’ original observation.Just to be clear, these instruments do NOT measure your abilities but merely your preferences. You can function perfectly well outside your preferences. In fact, much of your peak performance is likely to be in areas outside your preferences. So what good is an understanding of the science of preferences if it has no link to performance?Communication.Communication.Communication.Question: Is it more effective to communicate with others as you would have them to communicate with you, or should we strive to communicate with others in the manner they prefer to be communicated unto?Courage (Lion) Heart (Tin Man) Home (Dorothy) and Intellect (Scarecrow) are the pillars in the Palace of the Temperaments. Strong communications have points of connection to each of these four pillars.The person who values intellect needs to understand your logic.The person who values feelings needs to perceive your motives.The person who values stability needs to know it has been tested.The person who values courage needs to hear you speak of action.If you are wise, you will speak to each of these 4 people every time you attempt to persuade. Put something in your presentation for each of them. This is called “inclusive communication by design.”Most of us attempt to persuade as though everyone makes decisions according to the same criteria we use. But they don’t. There is a Scarecrow, a Tin Man, a Dorothy and a Lion in every crowd and you must speak to each in the language they prefer.Speak to all four preferences and your voice will carry rich harmony. We see the quartet from Oz everywhere we look.AJefferson is the intellectual Scarecrow of Rushmore.Lincoln is its big-hearted Tin Man.Washington is America’s great stone Dorothy.Roosevelt is our reckless rock Lion.We spoke last week about these same archetypes found in the principal characters on Desperate Housewives. Indeed, it’s virtually impossible to create succesful fiction without characters who embody each of these four preferences. Did you ever see Sex and the City?Miranda is the intellectual Scarecrow.(Myers-Briggs NT)Carrie is the big-hearted Tin Man. (Myers-Briggs NF)Samantha is the reckless Lion. (Myers-Briggs SP)Charlotte is the proper Dorothy. (Myers-Briggs SJ)My partner Chuck McKay wrote about inclusive communication by design in 2006 and another partner, Jeff Sexton, wrote about it in 2007. Both were inspired by that great psychologist Dr. Richard D. (Nick) Grant, one of the founding board members of Wizard Academy. Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg also speak of Dr. Grant in their bestselling books, Call to Action and Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?Ten of my Wizard of Ads partners are going to be certified as Myers-Briggs instructors and facilitators this autumn. Would you like to join them and get certified yourself? There are only 3 seats left in this 4-day class. Cost will be $4,000 and will incude a room and meals in Engelbrecht House, Wizard Academy’s amazing student mansion. Acadgrads, as always, receive a 50 percent discount. (Call Becke at 512-295-5700 during Central Time business hours to register.)I’m secretly hoping the lucky 13 candidates will be treated to a surprise visit from Dr. Grant. Back in 2000 when Wizard Academy first began, we miraculously had a recorder turned on while Dr. Grant was riffing about the four temperaments. He said,“You probably remember that on the old Star Trek there were four principal male characters. Those were the four temperaments, that’s why it worked.”“There was Scotty, the SJ engineer that took care of the infrastructure, ‘I can’t make it go any faster, Captain!’” (Dorothy, Washington, Charlotte)“Then there was Bones, the doctor, the compassionate NF who took care of people, ‘Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a doorknob!’” (Tin Man, Lincoln, Carrie)“Then there’s Kirk, the robust, swashbuckling Captain, the SP, ‘More power, Scotty!'” (Lion, Roosevelt, Samantha)“And then finally the NT, Spock, the brilliant science officer who would die for a principle.  NTs are scary, they’ll die for a principle, ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.’ Gave his li

If I could give you the gift of Curiosity, I would risk a great deal to do it.I would buy it for you illegally, inject it into your arm with a needle and watch as Life flowed into your eyes. I would do this for you because your future would brighten and your days would be full of wonder.Curiosity is addictive, it is true. But it is not unhealthy. Nor is it illegal. Unlike the drugs of Greed, Ambition, Anger and Fear, Curiosity makes a person happier, healthier and easier to love.Curiosity mixed with initiative means your life will never lack purpose.Curiosity without initiative is daydreaming.Curiosity followed by action is adventure.Curiosity is colored by the individual who swims in it:AThe physically curious person hungers to go and touch and experience and do. They speak often of travel, tend to be impulsive and always in motion. We see physical curiosity in the Warrior archetype of psychologist Carl Jung. The emotionally curious person seeks connection to others; soul-sharing through that mystical umbilical called empathy; words and gestures, painting, poetry, plays and songs linking heart to heart. Emotional curiosity is spiritual hunger. This is the Seeker/Healer/Lover archetype.bThe intellectually curious person navigates an ocean of riddles that must be solved, connections that must be investigated, patterns that whisper of secret meaning. This is the Magi/Wise-ard (magician/wizard) who travels to impossible places without ever leaving the room.rThe organizationally curious person discovers what is missing and then provides it. These are the leaders who serve us by creating structure, process and order. Organizational curiosity is demonstrated by the Administrator/King archetype.Intuition is Curiosity’s beautiful daughter.“Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data.”– John NaisbittThe holy grail of every curious person is that sparkling moment called “discovery.”Fan the spark of curiosity in your mind. Watch it blaze into a flame of passion that will illuminate you with inspiration.Remember what David Ogilvy told us last week?“Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.” In other words, study hard and then play.Play. The right hemisphere of your brain cannot do its job as long as Lefty is calling the shots. So tell your left-brain to take the night off.And then goAnd see for yourselfAnd you’ll know something you never knew.Go. Follow the spark of curiosity. Let it be your guiding star.The Journey is begun.Roy H. Williams

Joe Kraus was co-founder of excite.com in 1993. Today he’s a partner at Google Ventures, an angel investor at LinkedIn and on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Kraus says we live in a culture of distraction. Prior to the availability of smartphones, we accessed the internet an average of 5 times a day. Now the average is 27 times a day. Kraus is worried about this:“The effect of all of this [connectivity] is that we’re increasingly distracted. The funny part about distraction is that it’s a worsening condition. The more distracted we are, the more distractible we become.”“Some people call switching our attention from one thing to another ‘multi-tasking’ like we’re a computer with dual cores running two simultaneous processes. Except we’re not. Numerous brain studies have shown that what we call ‘multi-tasking’ in humans is not multi-tasking at all. Your brain is merely switching its attention back and forth between two tasks.”“Those studies have shown that we’re dumber when we do this, an average of 10 IQ points dumber. That’s twice as much as smoking a joint dumber. And we’re also 40% less efficient at whatever it is we’re doing.”“But my favorite part about multi-tasking is that the more you do it, the worse you are at it. It’s one of the only things where the more you practice it, the worse you get at it.”“When you practice distraction, which is what multi-tasking really is, you’re training your brain to pay attention to distracting things. The more you train your brain to pay attention to distractions, the more you get distracted and the less able you are to focus even for brief periods of time on the two or three things you were trying to get done in your ‘multi-tasking’ in the first place. How’s that for self-defeating?”Joe Kraus is probably familiar with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the University of Chicago professor who said, “Humans cannot really successfully multitask, but can rather move attention rapidly from one task to the other in quick succession, which only makes us feel as if we were actually doing things simultaneously.” (The cognoscenti will recall this statement as part of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop.)Here’s what our Culture of Distraction means to marketers:1. Getting attention is one thing. Holding it is another.2. The volume of information gushing toward your customer is like a fire hose aimed at a teacup.3. Advertising must embrace a Big Idea or it will be ignored.4. Attention can be held only by moving rapidly from Big Idea to Big Idea to Big Idea.5. Never in history have we crammed bigger thoughts into fewer words.I opened last week’s memo by giving you Five Big Ideas jammed into just 39 words; think of these as a 15-second radio ad:Mediocrity comes from the perfectimplementation of traditional wisdom.The person who achieves spectacular failurehas at least attempted something bold.Failure is a temporary condition.Success is likewise temporary.Life, itself, is temporary.So quit hesitating.Do something. Big Ideas don’t arise from normalcy. Big Ideas are products of audacity. The unmitigated gall of a Big Idea requires that you be a bit of an outsider or you will never walk the path where it can be found.That most Brit of all Britons, the great David Ogilvy, put it this way:“The beginning of greatness is to be different. And the beginning of failure is to be orthodox. Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.”“Stuff your conscious mind with information, then Unhook your rational thought process.” Anyone who has been here will recognize that Ogilvy was describing Wizard Academy. This is that Island of Outsiders where your mind is stuffed and stimulated throughout the day with information and perspectives far beyond your normal experience. Add to these days electric evenings flowing with (1.) the freedom one experiences when surrounded by brilliant, friendly strangers, (2.) a modest amount of alcohol and (3.) immodest amounts of laughter, and you have opened the faucet from which Big Ideas run like tap water.The first day of any class at Wizard Academy is hard work but the evening is a complete joy as you decompress with your classmates in Engelbrecht House, Wizard Academy’s secluded student mansion in the valley below Chapel Dulcinea. Day Two is when the real magic begins and the second evening sparkles. It happens every time. Can you imagine the pixie dust when a class runs 3 days and 4 nights?The Magnificent Seven is a business-growth workshop that happens just once every two years: Three days, Four nights, Seven companies. Interes

A Message at Graduation Time The person who achieves spectacular failurehas at least attempted something bold.Failure is a temporary condition.Success is likewise temporary.Life, itself, is temporary.So quit hesitating.Do something. Mediocrity comes from having perfectly implemented tried and true, traditional wisdom.The outcome is the only thing that separates confidence from hubris. If your bold idea succeeds, you were a confident visionary. If your bold idea fails, the walking dead will accuse you of being full of yourself. “It was hubris,” they will say.Ignore the zombies. Life is risk. Risk is life. The only death is mediocrity. The only stupidity is fear. Fling yourself into something uncertain. The view from the edge is spectacular. What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket. If you lose those eggs, you can find some more. The world is covered with eggs.Zombies invented the lie that curiosity killed the cat. But it wasn’t curiousity that did her in. It was boredom.Boredom killed the cat.Security, boredom and a bloodless life are all the zombies have to offer. But if you follow your Beagle of Intuition into the Forest of Uncertainty, you’ll ask directions of angels and they’ll answer you by opening a door you never knew was there. You’ll kiss the hand of Serendipity as you gaze upwards into her face. And she will smile. Zombies tell many lies.Their most famous lies are:1. A college degree is the key to getting a good job.2. If you give your money to financial experts they will grow it into a fortune. (Strangely, this second lie is partly true. But often, the only fortune those experts will grow your money into is their own.)Your Beagle of Intuitionknows different truths:1. Opportunity comes to those who have asked directions of angels.2. Money flows to those who have seen the smile of Serendipity. The world is covered with eggs.And there is a miracle inside every one of them.Roy H. Williams

1. Today’s reader is riddled with information hitting us from every side.2. Traditional and online media assault our senses to the point of sensory shutdown.3. Consequently, today’s reader is strongly attracted to numbered lists.4. A numbered list promises a starting point, a conclusion, and milestones along the way.5. A numbered list contains the fewest possible words.6. A numbered list feels memorable, portable and doable.7. A reader who would have glanced at your headline and then moved on will often give your message a second look when they see a numbered list.Information organized into paragraphs feels casual and intimate. But that same information in a numbered list feels authoritative and useful.8. Information in paragraphs feels casual and intimate.9. Information in a numbered list feels authoritative and useful.SUMMARY: When you need to present a big idea, develop a numbered list. Your information will be easier to follow, appear more credible and trigger a clearly measurable response.Trust me on this. I’ve been experimenting with numbered lists for more than 25 years.A few weeks ago I presented Pendulum to a few hundred executives from big corporations. A few hours before taking the stage, I chose 4 slides that contained information in paragraph form and altered them to unveil that same information as a numbered list. In each of the 4 instances a numbered list appeared, hundreds of iPhones were lifted to capture a snapshot of it. Most of the audience didn’t even bother to read it first. These men and women reached for their cameras the moment they saw the information was sequential.Numbered lists feel authoritative and useful.Have you learned anything you can use?Come to Wizard Academy.We’ve only just gotten started.Roy H. Williams 

Want 'em? “Show me what a people admire,and I will tell you everythingabout them that matters.”– Maggie TufuI agree with Maggie Tufu even though she’s a character in fiction.Dare to look closely at what our society admires. It will take your breath away.We’re a nation of addicts, craving that which makes us weak, frail and small.We hunger for fame and fortune.Fame is seductive, addictive and corrosive. We never possess it. It possesses us.Fortune is debilitating. You’ve noticed how rich people are often aimless, unmotivated and unhappy? Of course you have. We know these things. We’ve seen the evidence. But we desire fame and fortune anyway. We believe we‘ll be smarter than those others. Fame will make us twinkle. Fortune will make us dance.We’re addicts. Not once have we seen fame and fortune bring the peace, contentment or fulfillment they promise but we hunger for them anyway. Weird, isn’t it, to be addicted to something we’ve never had?Fame is erased by time and distance. It is a fire that dies slowly in the night.The handcuffs of fortune could be escaped in an instant if a person had the nerve. But our addiction to wealth is too deeply rooted.In the tenth chapter of his report, Mark tells of a young man of great wealth and authority who approached Jesus to ask him the secret of life. After a little banter back and forth about all the actions the young man had already taken in his quest for purpose and meaning, “Jesus looked at the young man and loved him,” and in that historic moment said, “The only thing left for you is to sell everything you have, give the money to the poor and come, run with me.”Can you imagine that moment? I imagine Jesus with a smile, standing as a person stands when they’re holding a door open for someone else, gesturing with an upraised palm and extended arm toward the pathway that lies ahead. Mark (ch. 10) and Luke (ch. 18) tell us the young man “was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.”A number of years ago a friend asked a group of us to imagine a single moment in history we would visit if we could step across time and space. It’s an interesting question. What event would you witness if you could be there, in person, to see it happen?I knew my answer immediately. When asked to speak of my chosen moment, I said, “On the shores of Galilee in the early morning hours when Jesus said to Peter, Andrew, James and John, ‘Follow me and I will make you fishers of men,'” and their grand adventure was begun.I’m in the business of helping others achieve fame and fortune. It’s what I do. It’s my job. And frankly, I’m very good at it. But the fame and fortune my clients win is just a consequence of each of them having made a difference.They make the difference. I just figure out how best to tell their story.Make something better: a product, a system, a circumstance, a life. Make something, anything, better. Fame and fortune will follow if you have a friend who will tell your story.Don’t do it for the fame. Don’t do it for the fortune. Make a difference because that difference needs to be made. Be the person who changes something for the better.It doesn’t even matter what the thing is.Let the adventure begin.Roy H. Williams

Fantasy and Science Fiction are alike in that each requires the creation of a complete new world. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, The Avengers and Planet of the Apes each occupies its own imaginary universe.Fantasy and Sci-Fi are great for entertainment but not so great for selling most products and services.The process of selling requires a reality hook, something that gives us, here in this world, a handle on the impossible. Would you like to sit and listen as John Lennon writes the lyrics and melody to Imagine, one of the most popular songs of all time? It’s easy to go there. All you need is the white Steinway piano on which John composed the song. You can see the cigarette burn on it from a moment when he got distracted and forgot it was there. That cigarette burn is a reality hook, a point of focus that brings an abstract moment from yesterday into the black and white of now.The power of any message – particularly an advertisement – is increased when you add a detail easily imagined by the listener. It was easy to see that cigarette burn on the white Steinway, wasn’t it? This piano exists, not in fantasy, but in the residence of Yoko Ono in Manhattan’s famous Dakota building. John gave it to her on her birthday in 1971.If you are a writer, a real one, you need to study magical thinking. Unlike science fiction and fantasy, the world of magical thinking is this world and all its impossible events happen in this, our own all-too-familiar universe. The writing style created by magical thinking is called Magical Realism and you’ll need to be good at it if you want to gain and hold the attention of 21st century America.Fortunately, a new book was just published about it. The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking     by Matthew Hutson1. Objects Carry Essences: Cooties, Contagion, and Historicity“John Lennon sat at this piano.”2. Symbols Have Power: Spells, Ceremonies, and the Law of SimilarityA Red Sox jersey bearing the name and number of Dave Ortiz was buried by a construction worker under the foundation of the new 1.5 billion dollar stadium of the New York Yankees. Yankee management took this curse seriously enough to consider filing criminal charges.3. Actions Have Distant Consequences: Using Superstition to Make Luck Work for You.A ‘lucky fisherman’s hat’ makes you feel different. Consequently, you make better decisions.4. The Mind Knows No Bounds: Psychokinesis, ESP, and TranscendenceAt the root of the bestselling book, The Secret, is a bit of magical thinking called The Law of Attraction which says if you focus on a thing and see it in your mind and believe it is yours, you will have it. The book has sold more than 19 million copies.5. The Soul Lives On: Death Is Not the End of Us.We think of a thousand different ways to say it and believe it. “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” – Thornton Wilder, last lines of The Bridge of San Luis Rey6. The World is Alive: Animals, Objects, and Gods are People, Too.In her award-winning book, The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion speaks of coping with the death of her husband. “I stopped at the door to the room. I could not give away the rest of his shoes. I stood there a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return.” Likewise, most of us never delete the telephone numbers of close friends who have died. We leave them on our cell phones because there is part of us that believes if we called that number, they would answer.7. Everything Happens for a Reason: You’ve Got a Date with Destiny.In Ernest Hemingway’s famous short story, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, a writer named Harry goes on safari with his lover, Helen. A thorn scratches his knee as he photographs a herd of waterbuck, and the wound becomes infected. The story opens with Harry dying on a cot in the shade of a tree as birds circle above. “I don’t see why that had to happen to your leg,” says Helen. “What have we done to have that happen to us?” Helen, like most of us, needs to believe that everything happens for a reason.A new series of radio ads is playing in selected markets across the United States. The ads are working fabulously. In them, you’ll notice the careful weaving of simple, factual information with reality hooks and magical thinking. These ads feature the founder of the company, Brian Scudamore, with a sidekick:SIDEKICK: You fill your garage with it.BRIAN: You walk around it,SIDEKICK: step over it,BRIAN: put it into closetsSIDEKICK: and cram it in the attic.BRIAN: It’s been there so long you don’t see it anymore.SIDEKICK: Bottom Line: You’ve got junk.BRIAN: We can help with that!SIDEKICK: Call 1-800-Got-Junk.BRIAN: We’ll be there before you hang up the phone. We’re the company Opra

The average person would rather be angry than bored. Anger is exciting.Likewise, love and hate are not opposites. The opposite of both is indifference.I’m not suggesting that you be angry all the time. I’m suggesting only that you care enough to take action. No, that’s not it either. I’m suggesting that you take action even when you don’t care. Curiosity and action are the only cures for boredom.“I’ve an idea. Why don’t we have a little game? Let’s pretend that we’re human beings and that we’re actually alive. Just for a while. What do you say?”– Jimmy Porter in John Osborne’s 1956 play, Look Back in AngerBoredom and indifference are deadly poisons. “Just go with the flow,” “Don’t make waves,” and “Whatever…” are the mantras of the walking dead.Don’t be dead. Be alive. Make a choice. Commit. Hold your ground. Stand, chin in the air, ready to endure the coming storm or be utterly blown away by it to a strange and different land.Welcome to Oz, Dorothy. Where did you get those shoes?I grow weary of people who speak endlessly about goal setting. It’s like listening to someone agonize over where to take their vacation. I feel like shouting, “Just pick a place and GO there! Choose! Go! There’s cool stuff to do EVERYWHERE.”“I just can’t find my passion.”Whiner, I’ve got news for you: Passion does not trigger commitment. Commitment triggers passion.Feelings follow actions. So make a choice. Commit irrevocably. Take action. Passion will explode like a flame, giving you energy and lighting your way. Congratulations! You’re about to embark on an adventure called Life.Knowing how to do a thing is not the same as actually doing it. “Many times after one of my six-week classes is completed, a student, excited by what he or she has just learned, has said to me, ‘You should teach an advanced class!’ I am always flattered, but always a little surprised. Advanced? I know for a fact that they have not mastered the most basic principles, and yet they feel that they are ready to move on to the next level.” – Brian McDonaldWizard Academy equips people who have chosen a purpose. We don’t help you find a purpose; you’ve got to aim that arrow on your own. And then you’ve got to act. You’ve got to release that arrow and ride it.We just help you hit the bullseye.I like committed people. I avoid people who are not committed. They waste my time and frustrate me with sad stories and soft sighs as they sing the song of the weasel. You’ve heard the song. All its verses begin with the words “If only”:“If only I had the money.”“If only I had gone to college.”“If only I had chosen differently.”A committed person paints a picture of a possible future and then works to bring that picture to life. They see it before it happens. They believe it before it’s true. And they take action.Weasels are dreamers. They see possibilities and sigh wistfully, “If only.”Committed people are dreamers, too. But they see possibilities and take action. When that action doesn’t work they take another. And another. And another and another and another and…Weasels believe success and failure to be permanent. Committed people know both to be flickering moments, points on scoreboards that are constantly changing, tiny adventures called victories and defeats.What are you trying to make happen?Do you have the courage to say it out loud?Do you believe in the future you see in your mind?“You must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.” And you must take action, because the person who does not take action “is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” (Both quotes are from the first chapter of James in the New Testament.) Some of you are offended by what I have written today.But honestly, wasn’t it better than being bored? Roy H. Williams

“You know me; I find a crowd all headed in the same direction and call it my parade.”– Roy Laughlin, April 26, 2012Brother Laughlin uttered this phrase as he was telling me of his involvement in the development of two new daily radio shorts involving a couple of well-known celebrities. Living as he does in Los Angeles, Laughlin sees crowds headed in the same direction long before these crowds are visible to the rest of us.Laughlin managed KISS-FM during its glory years under the ownership of Gannett, then Jacor, then Clear Channel. I’ll never forget the day in 2004 when “Other Roy” called to say, “I’m thinking about replacing Rick Dees with this new kid, Ryan Seacrest. Do you think I’m nuts?” Laughlin often thinks out loud in my ear. It helps him, somehow, to hear himself say what he’s thinking. He finds it useful. I find it interesting.Last week was a classic Laughlin moment.“Music is everywhere,” he said, “you can get it everywhere. All kinds of services, all kinds of devices, we’re swimming in an ocean of music. Radio is headed to the spoken word. Live talk is just gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger. You won’t be able to get it on these other devices.”I hadn’t really thought about it but I instantly knew he was right. (Calm down, music radio junkies. Evolutions like this don’t happen overnight but I do believe we’ll see a steady trend toward FM talk for at least the next 10 years.)My confidence in the correctness of Laughlin’s prediction is rooted in my study of Society’s 40-Year Pendulum, a theory that says public opinion is driven by the energies of a duality, the “Me” and the “We.” Each of these, when balanced by the other, is a good thing. But we always take a good thing too far. Then, suffering the consequences of our own mania, we hunger for what we left behind and begin a 40-year journey to the other extreme.Moving from its central, balanced position (1963,) the Pendulum swung upward 20 years to the “Me” zenith (1983,) then down 20 years to return to the central point (2003,) now we’re headed up the other side toward the zenith of “We” (2023.)These are the opposing values that drive the Pendulum:“Me,” the individual, unique and special and possessing unlimited potential1. demands freedom of expression2. applauds personal liberty3. believes one man is wiser than a million men, “A camel is a racehorse designed by a committee.”4. wants to achieve a better life5. is about big dreams6. desires to be Number One. “I came, I saw, I conquered.”7. admires individual confidence and is attracted to decisive persons8. believes 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.The most recent 20-year upswing of the Pendulum into “Me” values began in 1963 with the Beatles song “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Self-indulgence and freedom of expression reached their zenith in 1983 with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Every zenith of “Me” is marked by plastic, hollow posing and outlandish costumes as each of us struggles to be unique.The 20 years from 1983 to 2003 marked the downswing of the “Me” as it began to deflate and lose energy. We called these “the Gen-X years.”We’re currently at the halfway point in an upswing into the “We” perspective (2003 to 2023.)“We,” the group, the team, the tribe, the collective1. demands conformity for the common good2. applauds personal responsibility3. believes a million men are wiser than one man, ”Two heads are better than one.”4. wants to create a better world5. is about small actions6. desires to be a productive member of the team. “I came, I saw, I concurred.“7. admires individual humility and is attracted to thoughtful persons8. believes leadership is, “This is the problem as I see it. Please consider the things I am telling you and perhaps we can solve this problem together.“9. strengthens a society’s sense of purpose as it considers all its problems.“Me“ and “We“ are the equal-but-opposite attractions that pull society’s Pendulum one way, then the other.The 20-year Upswing to the Zenith of “We“ (1923–1943) is followed by a 20-year Downswing as that “We“ cycle loses energy (1943–1963). Society then begins a 20-year Upswing into “Me,“ (1963–1983) followed by another 20-year Downswing as the “Me“ cycle loses energy (1983–2003). We’re currently headed toward the zenith of “We,” when our beautiful dream of “working together for the common good” calcifies to become conformity, obligation and sacrifice. In the final phase, these hard virtues evolve yet further to become legalistic intolerance and self-righteous judgementalism.Talk radio will be used to define “the common good” as we approach this next zenith of “We.” It was near this same halfway point (March 12, 1933) in our previous 20-year upswing into “We” (1923-1943)

She jumped from the window of a building on New York’s East Side on January 19, 1981. Her face was erased by the fall.I’m not sure what I was doing that day but I did not kill myself.No one knew her name so her body remained unclaimed until she was reported missing. She was identified by her clothes.Suicide troubles me. I get it but I don’t.I think I’ve known more people who killed themselves than the average person. This, too, troubles me.Francesca often denied the camera her face, turning away from it as though she didn’t want to be photographed. But Francesca was a photographer, the very photographer, in fact, who was taking her picture.I think Francesca Woodman was hiding from herself. And one day she hid so very well that she never found herself again.Francesca was a profoundly artistic photographer. Had she not hidden herself so completely she might have enjoyed a visit to 1071 Fifth Avenue. The photographs she made during the 9 years following her 13th birthday have become the feature attraction of the Guggenheim, one of the world’s most prestigious museums. I put a few of her photographs in the rabbit hole for you. (Just click the photo of Francesca hanging from the lintel of the door above the title of today’s Monday Morning Memo. Each click of a photo beyond that portal will take you one step deeper.)Francesca Woodman was born when I was 5 days old. Steve was a couple of years older.I remember Steve because he and I often prayed together when I was 22. One day he and his wife asked Pennie and me to have dinner in their home. On a different day, his wife asked Steve for a divorce. Steve moved out, as requested.On a final day, Steve broke into his house while his wife and young son were out. He went into his son’s room. I remember that room. You know what happened next.I don’t know why I’m telling you this.Steve was a lineman for the telephone company.He had a life and then he didn’t.Maybe I’m telling you this because one of you is thinking of quitting early.All I can say is this and it’s probably the wrong thing to say; decades of sadness and confusion are the legacy left by those who quit early, the bitter inheritance you give to those who created a place for you in their hearts.Not everyone is showcased by the Guggenheim.Roy H. Williams

Guilt is about what you have done.Shame is about who you are.I’ve always been attracted to people who are guilty, but unashamed. Guilt without shame is audacity, a special kind of courage.  It’s what we admire in the little boy who shouted, “The king is naked! Right there in the middle of the street! Naked!”Everyone was thinking it, but no one was willing to say it.I’ll bet that kid was in trouble when he got home. His mom probably even used all three of his middle names, “Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, what were you thinking?”“Well Mom, I was thinking the king was naked.”“Oscar, what you did was unacceptable… inappropriate… inexcusable.”The boy was guilty of speaking a socially unacceptable truth. His mother knew the danger of it. “Oscar, people are rarely thankful when you pull aside their veils of pretense to reveal their grand delusions.”Oscar Wilde died 112 years ago but we still recall the piercing observations of his stiletto wit.“The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity.”“And he goes through life, his mouth open, and his mind closed.”“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”“Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.”“Men always want to be a woman’s first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: What they like is to be a man’s last romance.”“When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss money.”“Bad artists always admire each other’s work.”“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” If you are committed to speaking the truth, it will be your choice of tools that defines you.  Oscar Wilde was a playwright. He put his words, like a ventriloquist, into the mouths of actors on the stage. Ad writers, screenwriters and novelists differ only in their ventriloquist’s dummies, the masks they hide behind.Dorothy Parker was just 7 when Oscar Wilde died but he left her his stiletto wit. Dorothy became a journalist. No dummy. No mask.When a Broadway play was interrupted to announce the death of Calvin Coolidge, Dorothy leaned over and whispered to a friend, “How do they know?”When reviewing The Autobiography of Margot Asquith for the Oct. 22, 1927 issue of The New Yorker, Dorothy wrote, “The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories of all literature.”In another review, she said, “This wasn’t just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.”Dorothy Parker had the audacity to speak the truth.“All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn’t sit in the same room with me.” Not even the church was safe. “But as for helping me in the outside world, the convent taught me only that if you spit on a pencil, it will erase ink.”In later years, she said, “I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives’ tales about how men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock around a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I have never seen this happen.”The bright clarity of her observations earned her a place on the infamous Hollywood Blacklists of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. But Dorothy was not dismayed. She said: “They sicken of the calm who know the storm.”In other words, bring it on.If it’s a crime to pull back the veil of public pretense and name the nakedness of kings, Dorothy was definitely guilty.Dorothy Parker died 5 years before Ze Frank was born, but I recognize the flash of that blade; big ideas packed into few words. Ze Frank is Oscar and Dorothy for the 21st centuy.Ze showed us the power of the video blog when, in 2006, he committed to post a new show every day for a year. The Show with ZeFrank is the stuff of internet legend. March 18, 2007, was a desolate day for millions of fans worldwide. The 365 days had ended. No Show. Ze was gone, just as he said he would be.When, a couple of weeks ago, Ze Frank announced he was going to do something new, a spontaneous party erupted around the world. There were fireworks, laughter and dancing in the streets. Our new Vice-Chancellor, Michele Miller, miraculously convinced Ze to share what he knows with us on September 13 at Wizard Academy. You’ve heard me say that Leonardo da Vinci, Buckminster Fuller and Walt Disney would teach here if they were still alive. I know this because each of them was creatively disruptive, our brand of crazy. If the face of Ze Frank were carved alongside da Vinci, Fuller and Disney on Wizard Academy’s private Mount Rushmore, he would not look out of place.I wouldn’t miss this event for anything. Neither should you.I

He seems to have been crazy.Seems to have been.Bubbling, babbling in bits of broken English, Sam was a cantankerously crazy old man.But what he left behind was beautiful.He worked on it alone from 1921 to 1954, then signed the deed over to a neighbor and disappeared.Never came back.The Beatles put his face next to Bob Dylan’s on the album cover ofSgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967.The surreal structure Sam left behind was declared a National Historic Monument in 1990.He was crazy like Leonardo Da Vinci. Crazy like Buckminster Fuller. Crazy like Antoni Gaudi. If Sam could illustrate what he saw, he would have been crazy like Dr. Seuss. But his paints were not liquid. They were broken bits of glazed pottery and colored glass embedded in concrete over wire-covered steel.AIn Sam’s fingers a shattered 7-Up bottle became a splash of sparkling green in the sky above Los Angeles. Milk of Magnesia bottles offered Sam the riches of cobalt blue. The sea placed at his feet the whitewashed shells of underwater creatures and the dumpster of a pottery factory gave him the Sunflowers yellow of Vincent Van Gogh and the red blood of an Italian saint.Spain’s Antoni Gaudi began the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona in 1883.America’s Sam Rodia began Watts Towers in south central L.A. in 1921.He finished and vanished before I was born.Sam made bas relief murals in colored cement by pressing his tools into the mix when it was still young and impressionable. He made an impression on me as well and I am no longer young.Three weeks ago I asked Paul Sherman for the money to build a winding sidewalk from Wizard Academy’s tower down to where the chapel path meets the Garden of Joy. Paul granted us the cash because Paul is a generous man who appreciates what he has learned during his visits to the Academy and the difference this knowledge has made in his business. And now I’m asking you to help build an archway, a portal on Paul’s sidewalk, in the manner of Sam Rodia. This archway, this portal to adventure, will be built by Pennie and me from the objects you send us along with the fifty dollars or more you donate to Wizard Academy. Sam’s style and method of building from found objects has been called naïve art, outsider art, folk art and junkitecture.I call it enchanting, inspiring and crazy.Are you in?Roy H. Williams

How tall is your brand?As long as we’re on the subject of brand identity and reputation, how are brands created in the first place? Is a brand merely the sum total of all the things a company says about itself?Of course not.Ads do, of course, play a big part in branding. Brand personality is communicated by:1. what you say,2. how you say it, and3. what you leave out. That’s right. What you leave out says as much as what you shout. This is because our minds read between the lines. Consider boxing legend Mike Tyson’s rebuttal to a statement made by sportswriter Wallace Matthews: “He called me a rapist and a recluse. I’m not a recluse.”What you leave out says as much as what you shout.Now back to the idea that a brand is the sum total of all its ads. The simple truth is this:1. Some ads have more relevance than others.2. Some ads have more credibility than others.3. Our opinion of a brand is not just a reflection of that brand’s current ad.4. Our opinion of a brand is not just a reflection of that brand’s advertising during the past 30, 60, or 180 days.5. A two-year rolling window seems to be the interval of primary influence. (Notice that we said primary influence, not total.)6. Thus, it can be loosely said – to the degree that ads communicate a brand – brand identity is largely a composite of the previous 24 months’ advertising. Ads older than 24 months fade into the mist of yesterday’s truth. You might remember an ad from 30 years ago but it’s not likely to greatly influence your opinion of that brand today. 7. Sleep erases advertising. The less relevant the message, the more quickly it is erased.8. “Save 30 Percent, This Week Only,” becomes utterly irrelevant next week except for one little tidbit that sticks in the mind of the customer: “Wait, and they’ll put it on sale.” Our minds read between the lines. There are two factors beyond advertising that greatly inform our opinion about a brand:1. Our own experience. “What you are doing shouts so loud I cannot hear what you are saying.”2. The opinions of others. News stories (the result of a good P.R. campaign) and word-of-mouth (the result of the experiences of others) influence brand reputation and thus, brand identity. News stories are tricky to get. Word-of-mouth is not. The problem with word-of-mouth is that it’s much more likely to be negative than positive. This is because:1. Rage is a stronger motivator than joy. (Not a stronger emotion; a stronger motivator. Rage demands action. Joy does not.)2. Most people “play it safe” when it comes to word-of-mouth. If they tell you, “It was a great movie,” you’ll think less of them if you see the movie and don’t like it. But if they say, “It was horrible. Don’t go,” you’ll be grateful they saved you from making a mistake. Positive word-of-mouth is risky to the recommender. Negative word-of-mouth is not. Do you want to know the secret to generating positive word-of-mouth? Never promise everything you intend to deliver. Keep an ace up your sleeve. The bigger the happy surprise you deliver when your customer comes into contact with you, the stronger the positive word-of-mouth that will follow. And this “happy surprise” can’t simply be great service. You’re going to have to come up with something far more eye-opening than that.Did you learn something in today’s memo you can use?Good. Now go tell two other people about MondayMorningMemo.comDo it for them.Do it for me.Ciao for Niao,Roy H. Williams

Elijah, according to the Bible, was a Tishbite.Google “meaning of Tishbite” and the first page of results will give you a glimpse of the grand sweep of opinions we have when it comes to things religious.Tishbite means “stranger” according to some sources but Wikipedia says Tishbe was a place, thus, “The phrasing can be reworded as ‘Elijah the Tishbite of Tishbe in Gilead.’”Churchages.com says, “If we translate the word Tishbite, it means ‘a converter.’” But meaning-of-names.com lets us know, “In Israeli, the name Tishbite means ‘that makes captive’ and is most commonly given to girls.” (Israeli is a language? I thought Israelis spoke mostly Hebrew. – RHW)What this tells us is that you can “prove” anything you want if only you choose the right sources to quote. People give authority to the written word. “Right there it is in black and white. See it? Right there it is.”Elijah lived about 2,900 years ago and his specialty, it would seem, was calling down fire from heaven. We’re told of 3 times Elijah did this. The first time was epic.“At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: ‘LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.’ Then the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.”– 1st Kings ch. 18To the consternation and amazement of my friends, I am one of those inexplicable people who believe there really was a guy named Elijah and that he really did the things ascribed to him in the books of 1st and 2nd Kings in the Old Testament. Jesus, too, speaks of Elijah in the New Testament as though he was a real person and believe it or not, the Qur’an refers to this same Elijah in chapters 6 and 37.But I don’t believe Elijah was a real person merely because a few ancient texts refer to him as a real person. I believe the Elijah story – all of it – because I have chosen to believe it.Belief is not mandated by facts or by the lack of them. You believe what you choose to believe. Belief is always a choice. Consequently, you can believe Tishbe was a place and Elijah was from there, or you can believe Tishbite means “stranger” or that it means “a converter” or that Israeli is a language and people who speak it commonly give their daughters the unfortunate name of “Tishbite.”You might even choose to believe that a nameless storyteller invented Elijah 2900 years ago and that Jesus was duped by this Elijah fiction 900 years later and Muhammad was likewise duped 600 years after that. This would be a perfectly reasonable belief.It’s just not the belief I have chosen.As I said, Elijah’s specialty was calling down fire from heaven.You, too, can call fire down from heaven. What kind of fire do you call? Is it musical fire? Is it shapes and colors? Do you call down poetry or analysis or compassion or strategic planning? There is a thing you do extremely well. You know what it is. You have a knack for it. It just comes to you. You’ve always been good at it. What is it?I believe in Elijah, but I also believe in you.You have doubts about your own abilities.Self-doubt is part of the human experience. Elijah, immediately after calling down the fire of chapter 18 in 1st Kings, ran from an angry woman and hid in a cave in Mount Horeb. During the night, the word of the LORD came to him:“‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.Then a voice said to him, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’”There is great majesty and poetry in the Bible. This is evident to anyone who has a taste for literature. But I also take encouragement from it.Let us conclude:1. You, like every human, can call down some type of fire from heaven.2. It is dark and you feel alone, hiding in your cave.3. Remember the words of our pal, Teddy Roosevelt: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”4. Think big. Start small. Do something, no matter how tiny, but do it now.5. Then do another tiny thing.6. And another.7. Today’s memo has been nothing but a whisper:“What are you doing here, Elijah?”Roy H. Williams

“‘Hunches,’ his mother used to call them. The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really just a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.”– The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, an allegorical tale about an Andalusian shepherd boy, written in only two weeks in 1987 because according to the author, “the story was already written in my soul.” It has since become one of the twelve best-selling books of all time.Hunches – premonitions – gut feelings – intuition – are just different names we give to that wordless logic of the brain’s right hemisphere. Look at any list of the functions of the right hemisphere of the brain and you’ll notice that each is simply a different form of pattern recognition. You’ll find no book that says what I just said; it’s merely my own observation. But I’m quite certain I am right. The left and right brains don’t work independently of each other, though it often seems like they do since they contribute very different kinds of perceptions to the final mental image. The left brain looks for the discrepancy, the flaw, the mistake, the anomaly, always asking, “Where is the difference?” And then it focuses on that difference. The left brain zooms in like a microscope, forever seeking additional details.  The left brain rejoices “when it all adds up.” The danger of the left is that it often makes mountains out of molehills in the mistaken belief that anything that is true must also be relevant to the problem at hand. The left brain is legalistic, seeing everything as either correct or incorrect, right or wrong, true or false. The left brain can be astoundingly petty. Rational, sequential, deductive reasoning – classical logic – is the contribution of the brain’s left hemisphere. But the logic of the right brain is intuition. The right brain looks for similarities, patterns, systems and relationships, always asking, “Where are the connections?” And then it uses the ripple effect to give it systemic leverage within highly complex systems; “a small change here yields a big difference way over there.” The right brain pulls back further and further, forever seeking the bigger picture. The danger of the right is that it often sees patterns that aren’t really there, resulting in an unproductive goose chase into the unknown and irrelevant. The right brain is amoral. Morals are the left brain’s job. And the right brain makes no distinction between fact and fiction. Real and imaginary are one and the same in the shadowland of the subconscious right brain. The right hungers only for the complexity of skillfully woven patterns and relationships between shapes, colors and symbols in art; contour, interval, pitch, key, tempo and rhythm in music; motives, relationships, actions and reactions in people; and form, function, component and composite in machines of every kind, even the relational machinery of human organizations. The right brain seeks the metaphors, universal laws and archetypal patterns that link all experience into a grand unified theory, the final solution to the puzzle of existence; the biggest picture of all. The right brain rejoices in the complexity of the pattern. The left brain seeks and provides information.The right brain seeks and provides perspective, choosing a particular angle of view. People never really change their minds. Provide them with the same information and perspective they’ve had in the past and they’ll continue to make the same decisions they’ve made in the past. A person who appears to be “changing their mind” is really just making a new decision based on new information and/or a new perspective. Motivational interviewing is an inverted form of storytelling that helps us open the eyes of another to patterns of behavior and consequences that may have previously been hiding in their blind spot. It helps us give them a new perspective. Storytelling is a form of selling. It allows us to use the old and familiar as metaphors to help us determine the right course of action when facing the new and different. Choose the story and you control the metaphor. Control the metaphor and you strongly influence the conclusion that will be reached by the listener. An elegantly powerful salesperson is one who leads you to believe you made the decision entirely on your own. This is the power of Once Upon a Time… Roy H. Williams

To Radio AdvertisersBefore we begin, you need to know that a “3.0 frequency” is RadioSpeak for reaching the same listener 3 times. TSL means “Time Spent Listening” and PPM is “Portable People Meter.”Hi Roy,  I’m sure that you receive this question often, but I didn’t find your personal response to it online. How do you believe the reduction in frequency realized through the implementation of PPM should affect media planning? The obvious response is that PPM derives a more accurate measure of TSL, and therefore these “new” metrics should now be the benchmark…but what does that say about the “old” 3.0 frequency? Previous studies showed the “old 3.0” was effective. In the end, the PPM 3.0 is clearly a safe bet for results…but the question is whether old schedules, previously deemed effective, should be shifted to reduce reach and increase frequency…and whether that change will further enhance results or not.Thank You!Ashley Alexandra Testa Ashley, you ask a good question.For those who aren’t completely up-to-speed on Arbitron’s new Portable People Meter (PPM) technology for radio measurement, here are the basics:1. Arbitron survey respondents now carry a device that records which stations they’re actually listening to, not just the ones they think they’re listening to, as was often the case in the old “diary” based method.2. This means radio stations get credit for actual listening time rather than just how well they imprint their station slogans and taglines onto our memories.3. Consequently, lots of “favorite” radio stations are being revealed to have smaller audiences than was previously believed, while lots of second and third-favorite stations are finally able to prove what they’ve always known: listeners were listening to their stations and then reporting to Arbitron they were listening to the “brand name” leader.4. The average person listens to a larger number of different stations than they realize.5. This makes it harder than ever to achieve frequency (repetition.)Now back to Ashley’s question, which was, effectively, “Since PPM shows us a schedule that yielded a diary-based 3.0 frequency yesterday yields only a 2.5 when measured with PPM today, should we start targeting a 2.5 frequency instead of 3.0?”Ashley, the short answer would be “Yes” if short answers weren’t so dangerous. Our dilemma lies in the premise stated in your note: “In the end, the PPM 3.0 is clearly a safe bet for results…”A 3.0 frequency is not, and never was, a safe bet.Results in radio are based on three things:(1.) Relevance. Does the listener care? And if so, how much?(2.) Credibility. Does the listener believe the claims made by the advertiser?(3.) Frequency. (Repetition.) How often is the listener exposed to this message?Relevance without credibility is the definition of hype.Credibility without relevance is the answer to a question no one was asking. A message with high relevance and high credibility for a product or service with a short purchase cycle is the perfect Direct Response ad. For such an ad, a frequency of 1.0 will work just fine.But very few ads have such relevance and credibility that they need to be heard only once.Insufficient repetition kills a lot of radio campaigns. But radio people often blame poor results on insufficient frequency, saying, “The advertiser just didn’t spend enough money,” when the real problem was in the ad copy: It had low relevance or low credibility or both.Here’s another problem with that sacred 3.0 frequency: Is a 3.0 spread over a month the same as a 3.0 delivered in one week? How about a 3.0 delivered in just one day?Again, a short answer: The less sleep between repetitions, the better. Sleep erases advertising. When the relevance and credibility of two ads are equal, depth of memory goes to the one given the highest repetition within the fewest nights sleep.The “old rule” of a 3.0 was simply this: “The average message must be heard by the same listener at least 3 times within 7 night’s sleep to give that message any chance of being remembered.” Radio people somehow twisted this into, “A 3.0 frequency is a guarantee of success.”Generally speaking, the shorter the purchase cycle, the sooner the ads will start working. The longer the purchase cycle, the longer it will take for the campaign to gain traction.High-impact ads for products with short purchase cycles work less and less well the longer you air them. Memorable ads for products with long purchase cycles work better and better the longer you air them.If you want to have a lot of fun, write high-impact ads for products and events with very short purchase cycles. Talk loud and draw a crowd. Advertisers will treat you like a rock star. When the ads finally burn out and your advertisers begin to f

And Don's Single Biggest MistakeThis isn’t what Richard Exley said last week, but rather what I took from it:If you want to be truly happy,1. Commit to a cause greater than yourself.2. Value people rather than things.3. Give thanks for what you have instead of complaining about what you don’t have.4. Celebrate the ordinary. Find joy in life’s daily pleasures. I see Richard’s Recipe for Happiness as the perfect checklist for conducting a Blind Spot Self-Examination. Each of us has a blind spot. You disagree? Consider this: if you knew it was there, it wouldn’t be called a blind spot.Are you willing to do a self-examination with me? I’ll go first:1. Commit to a cause? Check. I’m committed to building a school for business owners with fewer than 100 employees. I’m committed to the little guy, the underdog, the misfit, maverick, renegade, disruptor, entrepreneur: the visionary with an impossible dream.2. Value people? Blind Spot. I love my CrazySmart Friends but I’m profoundly annoyed by lazy people, frightened people, self-righteous people, whiners, complainers and professional victims. This is obviously where I need to grow. As much as I believe these people to be a tragic waste of skin, a little voice tells me I’m wrong.3-4. Give thanks? Celebrate? Check. Check. I live in a constant state of amazement over my extraordinary good fortune. If I ever need money, I’ll buy a lottery ticket because I honestly believe I’ll win. Each morning when I get behind the wheel of my 11 year-old pickup truck with 100,000 miles, I remember how incredibly fond I am of it. And brown beans. And Fuji apples. And of looking at my wife when she doesn’t know I’m looking. Good things happen to me that I do not deserve. And for these things, I am thankful.Number 2 is my blind spot; the people thing. Which one is yours?Don Kuhl publishes behavior-change journals. His clients include the Justice Department and more than 6,000 correctional institutions and rehab centers.Don shared something profound with me recently when I asked him if there is a specific turning point that leads broken people to recovery and rehabilitation. I’m not quoting Don exactly; I’m just sharing what I think I remember:“The single biggest mistake people make is their refusal to own their circumstances. When something bad happens, they say, ‘I’ve been wronged. I didn’t choose this. Someone else did this to me, so someone else needs to fix it.’”“This someone else, by the way, is usually1. family2. religious organization3. employer4. medical community, or5. government.”“But if someone else can’t or won’t ‘fix it,’ these people become miserable. They feel like victims, angry and helpless. This victim mentality causes their life to begin spinning out of control.”“The turning point toward happiness is when a person takes ownership of their circumstances. When something bad happens, they learn to say, ‘I’ve been wronged. I didn’t choose this. But these are my circumstances. Now what am I going to do to change them?”New beliefs lead to new choices.New choices lead to new actions.New actions lead to new circumstances. If you don’t like your circumstances, examine your beliefs. What do you believe? Does “someone else” need to fix it? Or do you need to fix it yourself?Roy H. Williams

In 1605, Quixote’s fearsome giants were windmills and Dulcinea1 was his beautiful, impossible dream.“What giants?” said Sancho Panza.“Those you see there,” answered his master, “with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long.”“Look, your worship,” said Sancho. “What we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the vanes that turn by the wind and make the millstone go.”“It is easy to see,” replied Don Quixote, “that you are not used to this business of adventures.”—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1605In 1765, Patrick Henry’s giant was tyranny and Liberty was his dream. He said, “Give me Dulcinea2, or give me death.”In 1845, Henry David Thoreau’s giant was a distracted life and Purpose was his dream:“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what Dulcinea3 had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”But it was September 23, 1798, during the idyllic years between the American Revolution and Walden Pond that a newly graduated Mr. Bronson of New Haven scribbled a note to his classmate, Thomas Lewis of Glastonbury:“Yesterday Morning, just after I got out of bed I looked out at the window and saw a young gentleman on horseback riding round a rock at the corner of the meeting house, who, after surrounding it three times, I discovered was Wilcokson. I suppose he was playing Don Quixote to it. I just bid him good morrow and saw him proceed, with his Rocinante, towards Glastonbury…”A young man named Wilcokson found some fascination in a rock at the corner of a meeting house 214 years ago. He circled it thrice, judged it unworthy to be his giant, then rode onward in search of adventure.Have you found a giant worthy of your attention or are you just riding in circles ‘round a rock?I am often asked, “What is your fascination with Don Quixote?” The question is a fair one, so today I will attempt to answer it. I love Don Quixote because:1. he saw beauty where others did not.(In the eyes of others, his Lady Dulcinea was a common village girl.)2. he saw adventure where others did not.(“What giants?” said Sancho Panza…)3. he was utterly committed to his quest.(Quixote never gave up, never backed down. He was willing to suffer hardship for what he believed.)Are you able to see beauty in the ordinary?Are you willing to find adventure in the daily?Are you prepared to commit completely to what you believe?Sancho Panza didn’t always understand Don Quixote, but he never left his side. Sancho encouraged Quixote, advised Quixote, and helped Quixote to mend each time he was broken. Sancho and Don had such a marvelous time together that we continue to speak of them after 400 years.Wizard Academy is Sancho Panza to every dreamer of an impossible dream. Can you name your Dulcinea?Come, we will help you fight giants.Roy H. Williams

My back is against the wall and I don’t know what to do. The vortex of this crisis is pulling me into a toxic blue quicksand of the soul. I struggle until hope is gone. The light is growing dim. I have no one to blame but myself.As I lift my weary eyes one last time, an unexpected angel steps quickly from the shadows. I feel his fingers tighten around my forearm.I am surprised when I see his face.“When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.”– E.W. HoweRichard Kessler, Jeffrey Eisenberg and Chad Prosser have never met, yet each of them has gripped my forearm when I desperately needed a friend, which is why it may surprise you that I recently pushed Chad into the fight of his life.The telephone rings. Caller ID says it’s Chad Prosser.“What up, Chadbo?”I hear a weary sigh before Chad begins to speak. This startles me. Chad is not a sighing sort of fellow. “I’m getting a lot of pressure and I need the perspective of someone outside the situation.”“What situation?”“South Carolina.”“Pressure?”“A lot of people are pushing me to run for Congress.” The telephone line remains silent until Chad says, “You there?”“Chad…”“Yes?”“You called the wrong friend.”Before I continue, I’d like to make four things clear:(1.) It’s important to me that you understand how deeply I hate politics. I feel the average politician to be a big ego in an empty suit, a cardboard cutout, a talking doll who delivers pre-recorded platitudes whenever you pull his string.(2.) The Monday Morning Memo is NOT a publication of Wizard Academy. The Memo is, was, and forever will be the public ramblings of a private citizen, Roy H. Williams.(3.) Wizard Academy will never have a political opinion, alliance or affiliation. No political meetings will ever be held on Academy property.(4.) Pennie and I are supporting two different persons running for Congress this year. Dan Grant is a Democrat. Chad Prosser is a Republican. We love them both because they are incredibly good men with the best possible motives.I yelled at Chad for half an hour. He was reluctant to run for office for all the same reasons that you or I or any other sane person would be reluctant. Exasperated, I said, “Chad, when you served as director of Parks, Recreation and Tourism for South Carolina, I saw you turn away from anything that might benefit you personally. You always said you just didn’t feel it would be right, even when it was perfectly legal and above board. I saw you put the needs of the people of South Carolina ahead of your own needs day after day. I know you to be a true public servant.”“Roy, you’re making my case for me! I did my time. I served my state.”“Chad, now it’s time for you to serve the whole country.”Before I let him off the phone, I made Chad promise to watch a 2-minute video David Rehr recorded in Sunpop Studios 3 years ago. When David was a junior in high school, he became a congressional page on Capitol Hill. He was later hired to be President and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters. David Rehr knows Washington, DC like no one I’ve ever met.Chad watched the David Rehr video. The next day he announced his decision to run for Congress.Speaking of videos, when Chad attended his first class at Wizard Academy in 2004, he was randomly chosen to make a few comments about his experience in another video you may not have seen. I met Chad just 2 days before he appeared in this promotional video for Wizard Academy. Take a look.I’m confident Chad will be elected. The people of South Carolina know the same Chad Prosser I know. They’ll definitely elect him.I’d like for you to know him, too.Pennie and I are hosting a private evening with Chad and we’d love for you to have dinner with us. Yes, we’re hoping you’ll support him. Every little bit helps.Can you come?Roy H. Williams

James Lipton asked Barbra Streisand the secret of her success. She responded by saying, “At the moment of commitment, the Universe conspires to assist you.” – September 8, 2003, while recording an episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio that would air on March 21, 2004Streisand was summarizing a quote usually attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832,) the Shakespeare of Germany:“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”Goethe never said it,* but it’s true nonetheless.The medical term for this most American characteristic is hypomania. In a nutshell, hypomania is “the good kind of crazy,” an irrational optimism that never abandons its hold on the truth. (Mania is bad. Hypermania would be “beyond mania,” extremely bad, but Hypomania is an optimism that remains “below mania.”) Hence, the good kind of crazy; “There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere!” (Google that punchline if you don’t know the story. Or ask a few of your friends. One of them will know.)Hypomania is (1.) an inherited bipolar disorder, (2.) the definitive characteristic of the American people and (3.) extremely common in successful entrepreneurs. Hypomania is considered to be the most common undiagnosed condition in our nation. Think about it. No one ever goes to a counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist to say, “I’m feeling GREAT, Doc! What’s wrong with me?”Read the biography of any man or woman who left their fingerprints on the world and you’ll likely read the tale of a hypomaniac, someone who said, “I must attempt the ridiculous if I am to accomplish the impossible.” Ray Kroc, Mother Teresa, Teddy Roosevelt, Barbra Streisand, Steve Jobs, Florence Nightingale, Tom McDowall, Jane Pauley, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Ronald Reagan…)Yes, it’s inherited. A few generations ago, tens of thousands of men and women boarded ships that would take them to America. These men and women had minimal skills, no money, no jobs, no relatives or friends waiting for their arrival. Yet somehow these people believed, “This is going to be AWESOME! We’ve got it made.”The average American is a descendant of self-selected hypomaniacs. Consider the impact of a few generations of interbreeding and it’s no wonder that hypomania is the principal trait the world loves and hates about Americans. Make no mistake. Hypomania can easily cross the line into arrogance and self-delusion; Charlie Sheen, Ernest Hemingway and Robert Downey, Jr. were each fomally diagnosed with it.Hypomania is a medical disorder, but one with an upside: It helps us “to dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe, to bear with unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go…”You can learn magical things from crazy people if they are “the good kind” of crazy. How to Make Awesome Sauce is a gathering of highly-accomplished entrepreneurs who have proven themselves in the marketplace in very BIG ways. David McInnis, Dean Rotbart and Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg are going to mentor “whosoever will” for 72 life-altering hours March 13-15 in the tower at Wizard Academy. Will you? Be there?You can’t learn to ride a bicycle by reading a book or watching a video. There’s a big difference between “understanding” and “doing.” This is a “doing” class. These guys will say, “So what?” as they help you back onto your banged-up bike. Success comes only to those who are crazy enough to swing a leg over, peddle-peddle-peddle, fall down, get up, then swing that leg over and peddle-peddle-peddle again. At least 3 NEW businesses will exist and be making money by the end of the third day. One of them could be yours.Do you have an idea for an online business? Would you like to launch it in less than 72 hours with the help of some of the biggest boys in the land?Are you crazy enough to believe your idea can become reality?Good.Roy H. Williams

I love Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon for the same reason I love Norman Rockwell. The people in those worlds are quirky but loveable, flawed but happy, sincere but imaginary. When you think about it, Lake Wobegon is a lot like Andy Griffith’s Mayberry, where the children are mischievous but good-hearted, racial tension is nonexistent and all the women are homespun and pure. Just like they were in Michael Landon’s Little House on the Prairie. Michael grew up as Little Joe Cartwright on the Ponderosa before he became Melissa Gilbert’s “Pa” in an even better idyllic environment.You do realize Lake Wobegon and Mayberry and Little House aren’t real places, right?I’ve always loved Norman Rockwell but let’s not pretend he told us the truth. Rockwell painted a nation that never was, an idealized America, the nation of Paul Revere and Valley Forge and the key on Benjamin Franklin’s kite string as that adorable old man stood alone under a lightning-filled sky.America’s love of country music is an escape to that world of Bo and Luke and Daisy Duke and their bright orange General Lee, the original NASCAR driven by the original good old boys:Tommy Lee Jones is a Man’s Man. He don’t take no shit from nobody. Damn. If he was president, he’d sure whip that Middle East into shape, wouldn’t he? And then he’d use common sense to lower taxes, save Social Security, create jobs and sell us gas for a dollar a gallon.Hero worship breeds naiveté. It causes otherwise intelligent people to make idiotic “Tommy Lee Jones” statements and then vigorously defend those statements with extrapolations and fabricated facts. I am a professional romanticizer. My job is to write ads that make certain products and people larger than life. I am, frankly, very good at it.The American worship of “The Founding Fathers” is wearisome to me. I hear people speak of them as though they were emissaries of God’s Perfect Will rather than the debt-laden, combative, self-interested businessmen they really were.Am I speaking heresy? If so, you believe America to be a religion that needs to be protected and enforced. My crime is that I see America as a people.“Well, things sure were simpler and better back then.”No they weren’t. Things were exactly like they are now but without modern medicine and electricity and cell phones and cars and central heat and air conditioning.Make no mistake; heroes do have value.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 a badly fallen hero. Yes, heroes are dangerous 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 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 create us in their own image.– from The Monday Morning Memo of the Wizard of Ads, Feb. 17, 2003 I am a true believer in the power and beauty of heroes. I do not wish to live in a world without them. But please hear this: a hero is that by which we should measure ourselves, as individuals. If you measure others by your heroes, you will quickly descend into a dark and frantic judgmentalism, crying, “All is lost and there is none that is good. No, not one.”Fearful discontent is a horrible master. Roy H. Williams

“Two heads are better than one,” is often quoted but horribly wrong.  Trust me, I know.Anything with two heads is a monster.“Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”– John Steinbeck, East of Eden, Chap. 13, 1952This is the point in the discussion where one could easily say, “Well, that’s your opinion and Steinbeck’s. But I happen to know that brainstorming as a team leads to better idea generation.”But do you know that, really? Or is brainstorming just another sacred cultural myth?Jonah Lehrer published a research article this week that eliminates the need for speculation and debate.Alex Faikney Osborn was the “O” in the famous advertising agency B.B.D.O.  Alex was full of ideas. His first book, How to “Think Up”, was published in 1942, followed by Your Creative Power in 1948, Wake Up Your Mind in 1952, and then in 1953, Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem Solving.In the opening paragraphs of Jonah Lehrer’s marvelous research into “Groupthink,” he writes,“Osborn’s most celebrated idea was the one discussed in Chapter 33, ‘How to Organize a Squad to Create Ideas.’ When a group works together, he wrote, the members should engage in a ‘brainstorm.’ The book outlined the essential rules of a successful brainstorming session. The single most important of these, Osborn said, was the absence of criticism and negative feedback. Brainstorming was an immediate hit and Osborn became a popular business guru. The underlying assumption of brainstorming is that if people are scared of saying the wrong thing, they’ll end up saying nothing at all. Typically, participants leave a brainstorming session proud of their contribution. The whiteboard has been filled with free associations. At such moments, brainstorming can seem like an ideal mental technique, a feel-good way to boost productivity. But there is one overwhelming problem with brainstorming. It doesn’t work. The first empirical test of Osborn’s brainstorming technique was performed at Yale University, in 1958. The results were a sobering refutation of Osborn. Although the findings did nothing to dent brainstorming’s popularity, numerous follow-up studies have come to the same conclusion.”Interesting, isn’t it? Sixty years of scientifically controlled experiments, studies and tests have proven brainstorming to be significantly less effective than individual effort but the brainstorming myth just won’t go away.Here’s the real kicker: discussion and debate – the very two things prohibited in a ‘brainstorming’ session – have been repeatedly proven to bring out the best in us.And now I must pause to do my Happy Dance.Okay, I’m back now.I’m happy because Jonah Lehrer describes, in the second half of his research article, what has been proven time and again to be the ultimate environment for true creative breakthrough, “a space with an almost uncanny ability to extract the best from people… a magical incubator.” He then gives us a clear description of the kitchen and courtyard of Engelbrecht House, the student mansion on the campus of Wizard Academy.Many of you reading this Monday Morning Memo will recall my greeting during the opening session on your first day of class at Wizard Academy. “Each of you came here to be enlarged by your instructor. You will, I promise, not be disappointed. But at the end of these days and nights together, as you prepare to go back home, you will realize that the most precious gift we gave you was the gift of each other.”Do you want the recipe for magic? Real magic? World-changing, life-altering magic? Here it is:1. Gather about a dozen or so really curious people.2. Let them share meals together, have coffee together and drink wine together between multiple sessions of mind-stretching stimulation.3. The magic will emerge during the times of casual discussion, relaxation and recovery as these people bring out the best in each other with questions and stories and the sharing of personal observations.Discussion and debate, sharing and defending your viewpoint with an open mind, considering and processing the input of other smart people in a fun and safe environment. Welcome to Wizard Academy.I felt certain we were on the right track.Thank you, Jonah Lehrer, for proving it.And now I’m going to do my Happy Dance again.Roy H. Williams

A brief summary of this episode

Media Buying Lesson Number OneI’ve never seen a business fail because they were reaching the wrong customer. But I’ve seen hundreds fail because they were saying the wrong things. Most ads answer questions no one was asking.How did we Americans become so fixated on “targeting the right customer” in our advertising?That question has two answers. The first is, “because it’s completely logical” and our natural inclination is to follow the footsteps of lovely Logic, even when she leads us to erroneous conclusions.  The second reason we’re fixated on targeting the right customer is, in two words, “advertising salespeople.”If you were selling a commodity that was only mildly different than the same commodity sold by your competitors, you’d focus your sales presentation on those mild differences, right? Because if you didn’t, price would be the only remaining factor for your customer to consider.I’m not accusing the ad-selling community of deception. I know these people and I like them. A lot. Many have been good friends for years. But like all sellers of products, they cannot be successful unless they convince themselves that buying advertising from anyone else would be a tragic mistake. And they care too much about you to let you make that mistake.Advertising salespeople rarely succeed unless they(1.) sincerely care about their clients and(2.) believe they are telling their clients the truth.But mass media – in all its forms – is a commodity. We call it “mass media” because it reaches the male and female, young and old, rich and poor, white-collar and blue-collar masses.“Who is your primary target?”“Females 25 to 34 years old.”“Excellent! Barbie 98 is the Number One radio station for females 25 to 34! That’s exactly who we reach! If you don’t buy our station, you’re going to be missing the Barbies. We fit your needs like a hand in glove.”“The Wizard of Ads told me to buy Wacko 103.”“Well, I like the Wizard of Ads and I read all his books, but this time he’s wrong. Wacko 103 ranks number 7 with females 25-34 and they cost 20 percent more per ad than Barbie! That just doesn’t make any sense at all. Oh my god! Look at this data. Just 7 percent of Wacko’s audience are 25 to 34 year-old females while 17 percent of Barbie’s audience is exactly your target. Wacko 103 is just a tragically, horribly inefficient buy for you. The Wizard really missed it this time.”Before we look deeper into this Barbie/Wacko fiasco, let me ask you a different question: Do the people outside your target have value? Is there anyone whose opinion you DON’T care about? Is there anyone you would rather NOT recommend you to their friends?Decisions are rarely made in a vacuum. Each of us is guided by co-workers and family members, neighbors and friends.If you are normal and healthy, you maintain about 250 people in your “realm of association.” Some of these are permanent members of that realm while others will pass through your life and be replaced. But the number hovers at about 250. And guess what? Beyond their connection to you, these 250 people have little, if anything, in common. They are your personal world: the male and female, young and old, rich and poor, white-collar and blue-collar “masses” that give your life purpose and meaning.You are someone’s target customer. If I fail to reach you with my ads but my company is beloved by half the people in your realm of association, what’s the likelihood that you’ll hear about me?Google and Facebook, radio and television, magazines and mailers, billboards and flyers are called mass media because they reach the masses. The ability to “target” using mass media is more illusion than fact.Now let’s get back to glorious Barbie 98 and that tragic mistake, Wacko 103. (This example, by the way, is not extreme in any way. My media analysts see this scenario several times a day.)The plain facts are these:17,000 of Barbie’s 100,000 listeners are females 25-34.14,000 of Wacko’s 200,000 listeners are females 25-34.Do the math and you’ll see the advertising salesperson was telling the truth. Seventeen percent of Barbie’s audience is your “target” while only seven percent of Wacko’s audience fits that profile. (17% versus 7% sounds a lot bigger than the reality of 17,000 persons versus 14,000 persons, doesn’t it? But still, it is 3,000 more persons…) But wait! While Barbie gives you an additional 83,000 people outside your imaginary “target,” Wacko 103 delivers an astounding 186,000 additional people.If we calculate Gross Rating Points for the 25-34 female “target,” Wacko appears to be 46 percent more expensive than Barbie on a cost-per-point basis. But if we consider that we’re paying for the entire audience of each station and step back to look at the question from this strange, new perspective, it becomes obvious that Wacko 103 offers twice as many people for just 2

People today are different, less naïve, less gullible, less open to suggestion than in the past. Christopher Isherwood describes this difference perfectly: “To live sanely in Los Angeles or, I suppose, in any other large American city, you have to cultivate the art of staying awake. You must learn to resist the unceasing hypnotic suggestions of the radio, the billboards, the movies and the newspapers; those demon voices which are forever whispering in your ear what you should desire, what you should fear, what you should wear and eat and drink and enjoy, what you should think and do and be. They have planned a life for you from the cradle to the grave and beyond which it would be easy, fatally easy, to accept. The least wandering of the attention, the least relaxation of your awareness, and already the eyelids begin to droop, the eyes grow vacant, the body starts to move in obedience to the hypnotist’s command. Wake up, wake up… you’ve got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment.” Yes, people today are definitely more skeptical than they used to be. Have you noticed how few people these days spout the old “positive thinking” platitudes that were so popular during the revved-up years of Reagan, George Sr., and Bill Clinton? Quiet determination and clenched-teeth endurance are the virtues we admire today. A person spewing happy platitudes and cliché’s is likely to be told, “Talk is cheap. Shut up and do something. Don’t tell us what you believe. Show us.” Conversations among friends are less likely to be shallow and superficial than in the past. Concerns run deeper, fears lie closer to the surface and frustration often simmers deep inside. Even the happiest people are a little bit angry. The public is no longer looking for a perfect icon to worship. Most of them are looking for an equally-flawed friend with whom they can connect. The online world gives us instant access to information. This has sensitized the public to the absence of facts in most selling messages. Unsubstantiated claims in advertising are likely to fall on deaf ears. Much has been written about the importance of transparency as though transparency were still a choice. But it isn’t. You are transparent whether you choose to be or not. Search engines have removed any veil you might have hidden behind. I hear a voice whispering in the night:“Relevance and credibility, ad writer, are the words you must engrave on your heart if you will write ads that move the needle. The customer is asking, ‘Does this matter to me?’ They are looking for relevance. And their second question is, ‘Do I believe what they’re telling me?’ They are looking for credibility.” Today’s customers have been lied to by the best. All but the stupidest of them can spot a half-truth a mile away. Make no mistake; there are still plenty of stupid people left in America. Fools must outnumber con men or the con men could not find enough to live upon. My seat-of-the-pants estimate is that roughly 15 percent of Americans are gullible fools whose prejudices outweigh their intellect. I’m not trying to be vicious. I just don’t want you to cling to those obvious exceptions that would appear to disprove the larger truth. Fifteen percent of the population is still a pile of people and frankly, you can make a lot of money by yanking their chain with hyperbole, misdirection, overstatement and lies. But to me, writing ads that target stupid people is like beating up little children. I can do it. I just don’t want to. I’ll bet you don’t either. Eighty-five percent of your prospective customers are intelligent people with unprecedented access to information. And as such, they are a hard public to convince. These are men and women who have seen an actual war launched by imaginary weapons of mass destruction, an actual economy ruined by imaginary credit-default swaps, and billions of dollars bilked from hard-working investors through imaginary securities created by Bernie Madoff and his Wall Street cronies. Yes, today’s customers have been lied to by the best. As an ad writer, I’ve chosen to write ads for the intelligently suspicious 85 percent. It’s hard work, requiring clenched-teeth determination and a willingness to wrestle with advertisers who desperately want to turn back the hands of the clock.The simple truth is that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are gone, Norman Rockwell is dead and the Reagan years are over.  But I believe the best is yet to come for business owners who understand the new rules of communication. Come, the future awaits us. Roy H. Williams

1845: This is the year Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman will plant his final apple tree. Mark Twain is 10 years old, living the boyhood that will bring us Tom Sawyer. Florida will be added to the U.S. this year, raising the total number of states to 27. We think of life as being simpler, more idyllic back then, don’t we?The American Revolution was more recent to them than World War II is to us today. Memories of colonial times were only just beginning to fade. But Thoreau felt compelled to take a sabbatical in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, saying, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”Stéphane Mallarmé was 3 years old and living in Paris in 1845, much too young and too far away to extend a hand to Thoreau. But in just a few more years he’ll bring a generation of world-changers together on Tuesday nights at 89 Rue de Rome.Gertrude Stein never met Mallarmé though their houses were only 3 miles apart. Stein arrived in Paris in 1903, 5 years after Mallarmé died. Stein’s living room is where Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Henri Matisse, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Salvador Dali and Man Ray banged ideas together while Josephine Baker danced to the music of Cole Porter who played the piano and sang. None of them was yet famous.Prior to 1953, America was too uptight to embrace outside-the-box thinkers so Paris was the haven for renegades. The living rooms of Mallarmé and Stein were like cabins in the woods. But when several Henry Davids arrive at a cabin simultaneously, the dust in the air begins to sparkle as the place becomes an island of pirates. Tinker Bell can be seen if you look quickly enough. Peter Pan is learning to fly.The salons of Stein and Mallarmé brought together the great minds of their day and tumbled them like clothes in a dryer, influencing, stimulating, inspiring one another to new heights above the accepted norm.Stein and Mallarmé were unimportant writers who surrounded themselves with the shapers of fashion, the inventors of tomorrow, the makers of the future.I strongly identify with Stein and Mallarmé.Funny, isn’t it? No one wants to be average, but everyone wants to be normal.How about you? Will your need to be “normal” condemn you to a life of screaming mediocrity? You’re familiar with the phrase, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation…” but the truly frightening part is the thought that follows, “and go to their graves with their songs still in them.”Thoreau went to Walden Pond because Wizard Academy was not yet built.This bizarre little business school in Austin, Texas, is barely a dozen years old but its alumni and friends include an astounding array of scientists and musicians, journalists and authors, businesspeople and government officials. Tony Hsieh of Zappos recently sent us his endorsement of Pendulum, the book we’ll release this spring. Two of our alumni will be elected to congress in November.Don’t go to your grave with your song still in you. Come and tumble topsy-turvy with people who will make you sparkle and shine. It’s time you learned to fly.The day-to-day can wait. Don’t allow the merely urgent to displace the truly important.Let 2012 be your year.Roy H. Williams