Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

The Private Advice of Harry Connick, Jr.Chandler Canterbury is a child actor with a dazzling future.Immediately following the world premiere of When Angels Sing, a not-yet-released movie young Canterbury made with Willie Nelson, Connie Britton, Lyle Lovett, Fionnula Flanagan, Kris Kristofferson and Harry Connick, Jr., Harry grabbed a microphone and told a funny story about his first encounter with Chandler. (I’ve posted my iPhone video of that moment in the rabbit hole for you.)But Harry C. Jr. told an even better story privately.“Chandler and I were hanging out between scenes,” Harry said, “when he looked at me and said, ‘What’s the secret of being popular? How do you get people to like you?'”An interesting question, don’t you think? Most of us would have responded by saying “Just be yourself,” or “Popularity is overrated,” or some other such claptrap. But Harry believes in answering questions as asked. So the astoundingly popular actor and musician looked young Chandler in the eyes and said,“The secret of being liked is to always ask 5 questions before you say anything about yourself. People won’t remember what you said about yourself, but they’ll always remember what you asked about them.”Harry then let Chandler practice asking him different kinds of ice-breaking questions until the young man finally mastered the art.It kind of makes you wish Harry Connick, Jr. had taken you under his wing when you were a kid, doesn’t it?The bigger story, though, is the movie itself. Turk Pipkin wrote When Angels Sing as a story to be read to his friends and family each Christmas. Year after year, Turk would pull those sheaves of dog-eared paper out of a shoebox and read the story to a roomful of friends who would faithfully gather to hear it.And each Christmas, the crowd got bigger.One year, Fred Miller was in the room. Among his other accomplishments, Fred was executive producer of For All Mankind, that miraculous film documenting the Apollo space missions from 1968 to 1972. When released in 1989, For All Mankind was selected as the Audience Favorite and the Grand Jury Winner at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award.That same Fred Miller jumped up and said, “This story needs to be made into a movie.” Then Elizabeth Avellan – producer of 30 movies including the Spy Kids franchise – got on board. Following Elizabeth was Shannon McIntosh, executive in charge of post-production for Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning Inglourious Basterds (2009) and executive producer of this year’s Oscar-winning Django Unchained (2012.)And now you want to invite Fred Miller to your Christmas party, right?When Willie and Harry and Connie and Lyle and Fionnula and Kris heard about the project and read the screenplay, each of them volunteered to make the film for a teeny-tiny fraction of the prices they typically command. Each of them knew in their heart this film was a magical Christmas card that would cause tens of millions of people to have happier holidays for decades to come. And each of them wanted to be part of a movie that said, “Merry Christmas. You are loved.”Hollywood desperately wants to gain control of this film but the actors and producers aren’t sure they want Hollywood to have it. During a laughter-filled afternoon on the campus of Wizard Academy a few days ago, the general feeling of the producers was to possibly try and repay the $17,000,000 it cost to make this movie by crowdfunding through Kickstarter.I’m not sure whether the Kickstarter thing will happen, but I can definitely tell you that everyone who was involved in the making of When Angels Sing looks at this not-yet-released movie the same way old hippies look at Woodstock, “I was there. I was part of it. And it was magic.”The iconic Willie Nelson celebrates his 80th birthday in a few days. And although this might sound ridiculous today, I believe it’s entirely possible that 20 years from now When Angels Sing will be the thing for which Willie is best remembered.Merry Christmas, friend. You are loved.Roy H. Williams

f I had any sense, if I had half the brains God gave an aardvark, I’d talk about politics or religion and fewer people would be annoyed.But aardvarks look at me with pity because I’m foolish. My social filter is so misaligned that I’m going to share with you my thoughts about planning.“Plan your work and work your plan.” These are the holy words of a belief system built on intuitive faith in an orderly universe.I do not share that faith.I do not believe that everything happens for a reason.YOWZAH! Are you beginning to see how this simple thing called “planning” can trigger strongly-felt emotions?Your thoughts about planning reflect your innermost beliefs about the workings of the universe. When you speak of planning, you unknowingly speak of religion and politics; you speak of how you believe the world works, and of the best way to fix it.But that’s enough about you. Let’s talk about me some more. (Because if we talk about you and accidentally reveal that you’re horribly flawed and broken, you’re going to be REALLY angry. So we’ll talk about me instead and reveal that I’m horribly flawed and broken and then you won’t be angry. You’ll be able to say, “I knew that.” – RHW)I believe there are only two kinds of planning:(1.) Process planning.(2.) Result planning.A process plan is commonly known as “Plan A.” We give it that name when we’ve decided to abandon it because it isn’t working. Results are most often achieved through Plan B or C or D or K or Q or V.Don’t let yourself be seduced by the promise of a miraculous process that leads to golden results. Yesterday’s perfect process becomes “the box” people are struggling to escape today.Focus on the result, not the process.The Wizard Academy campus is nearly complete and there was never a process plan. The only thing we ever planned was the result. Astoundingly, a multimillion-dollar campus was constructed through nonstop improvisation.I don’t actually know how much money we’ve spent. I could easily look it up, of course, but I’ve never been sufficiently interested. There was never a schedule or a budget. “It will take as long as it takes and it will cost what it costs.”There was usually just enough money in the bank to pay for the work we were doing that week. “We’ll find next week’s money next week.”I apologize if you are horrified by these confessions. Your reaction is perfectly normal if you were raised in a nation that was once a colony of Britain. The machine mindset of the industrial revolution taught our society to overvalue conformity, repetition and process. Improvisation and innovation, those wild, flowering weeds, have been uprooted and cursed for 200 years.Although Wizard Academy didn’t have a process plan, we did have three unifying principles:1. Build with cash. Never borrow money.“When money slows down, slow construction down to the pace of the money coming in.”2. Use whoever shows up.One by one, hundreds of you came to me with ideas and suggestions during the past 12 years. My response never changed, “Great idea! You’re in charge of that.”3. The students are the soul of the school.“Designs, furnishings and decor will be chosen to elevate the thoughts and attitudes of students and guests while they are here. The campus will whisper at every turn and touchpoint, ‘Anything is possible.'”I didn’t come up with this idea of Result Planning on my own.Life comes down to a few moments. One of those moments happened for me when I was 8 years old.AOn October 27, 1966, Walt Disney described his vision for a 27,400 acre “Disney World” in Florida. Walt had purchased 43 square miles of land surrounded by a swamp. His dream was literally twice the size of the island of Manhattan. I watched Walt deliver his 24-minute tutorial in Result Planning when it aired during his weekly television show, The Wonderful World of Disney.NARRATOR: The touchstone of Disneyland’s success has been its concern for people: a whole-hearted dedication to the happiness of the people who visit here. Today Disneyland has established standards of performance unsurpassed in all the world. Yet in the planning and building there were no standards to follow; whatever worked became the code. Whatever failed to meet the public need was changed, replaced by a better idea.A couple of minutes later, surrounded by fabulous scale models, Walt Disney appeared and told me that the vision – the result, and its purpose – were the only things that had to be clear. The process, Walt said, must necessarily be one of ongoing improvisation.WALT DISNEY: The sketches and plans you will see today are simply a starting point: our first, overall thinking about Disney World. Everything in this room may change time and time again as we move ahead, but the basic philosophy of what we’re planning for Disney World is going to remain very much as it is right now. We know what our goals are. We know what we hope

Been Read, Being Read, Will be ReadJeff says I have a confirmation bias, a strong attraction to information that reinforces my convictions and helps me prove my point.That makes sense. I’m an ad writer.Does anyone really want their ad writer to be unbiased? The job of the ad writer is to:1. discover a persuasive perspective, and2. develop a distinctly memorable voice for the ad campaign, and3. find supporting evidence that clearly demonstrates your company and your products to be the only intelligent choices in your category.Yes, I have a confirmation bias. It makes me a living.ARay Bard is a good friend and the publisher of most of my books, including the Wizard of Ads trilogy. So if Ray published a book and I thought it was crap, I’d love that book anyway. But that’s not what’s happening today. The ONE Thing says what I’ve tried to say for years, but haven’t been able to say nearly so clearly. This book will sharpen your focus, cut away your distractions, and zoom your ability to achieve the ONE thing at which you aim your heart. The ONE Thing is written from a powerfully persuasive perspective and includes a lot of interesting, supporting evidence. Do you have a dream? The first step toward making that dream come true is to read The ONE Thing.Mark my words: The ONE Thing will leap onto the business bestseller list. Gary Keller with Jay Papasan. Bard Press. A friend sent me a copy of Steal Like an Artist after reading my advice to “repurpose the proven.” (Better Than Creativity, the Monday Morning Memo for January 28, 2013) You’ll read Steal Like an Artist in about 30 minutes but it will forever change how you look at creativity. I hope to get the author, Austin Kleon, to Wizard Academy later this year. If you can afford both books, buy them both. I feel stronger and better for having read them. And I usually hate nonfiction. Maybe it’s just more proof of my confirmation bias, but even though I felt like I already knew what these books were telling me, they made me feel brightened and tightened. Confident. Hopeful. Bouncy. I believe they’ll make you feel the same way.Now let’s talk about fiction.bIn Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s international bestseller, The Shadow of the Wind, Daniel Sempere is a boy whose father takes him to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a huge library of old and obscure titles. According to tradition, everyone initiated to this secret place is allowed to take one book from it, which he must then protect for life.“This is a place of mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. This place was already ancient when my father brought me here for the first time, many years ago.”I titled this memo “Voices of Books” because I am attracted to writers who craft a vivid voice. When I was 13, I was magnetically attracted to the poetic voice of Robert Frost. Spellbound, I marvelled at how he could say two things at once. On the surface of each of his poems, Frost would describe a moment that is common to us all. But below the surface, he was saying something profound and deep and eternal. This appreciation of Frost has never left me and I’m not alone. Robert Frost was awarded the Pulitzer Prize on 4 separate occasions.rJ.D. Salinger wrote The Catcher in the Rye in the first-person voice of a disturbed teenager named Holden Caulfield. That voice is so convincing that you feel yourself drawn into Holden’s confused feelings and troubled thoughts. Salinger crafted a voice that rang so troubled and true that it has echoed within us for 62 years.There has not been another voice as vivid as Holden Caulfield’s until now. Written as a series of letters by “Charlie” to an unknown and unnamed friend, The Perks of Being a Wallflower will trouble you, expand your senses, cast you deep into reverie and stop the hands of your clock. The book has sunk deep roots into the #1 position of the New York Times bestseller list. The Times has it listed as a book for young adults. This seems idiotic to me. It’s a book for anyone who was ever young.The Perks of Being a Wallflower has already been made into a movie. But if ever you trusted me, a known and self-confessed ad writer, trust me now: don’t watch the movie until you’ve read the book.Trust me.Roy H. Williams

Is it wiseto protect the ones we lovefrom the hardshipsthat taught us all we know?Hardship is the undisputed School of the Masters, but very few students seek admission.Education begins with memorization. Having learned all the theories, steps and rules, we parry and thrust against the light in a kind of frantic swordplay with the shadows of possibilities. This is when we learn that steps and rules are only a weak and sad beginning. We still have a lot to learn.Memorization was our first lesson.Improvisation is the second.Choices and Consequences are the lessons that never quit teaching.Every industry, craft, trade and profession has its own traditional wisdom that will hide you safe, out of trouble, by keeping you inside the box.If you’re going to start thinking “outside the box,” you’re going to have to ignore the unwritten rules of traditional wisdom. Do this and you’ll immediately be told that you’re “not doing it right.” And sadly, the new thing you’re attempting to do probably won’t work the way you had hoped.You won’t have a victory but you will have an education.So you’ll try something else that doesn’t work out.Now you’re a screw-up.Most people would crawl back inside the box and quit trying.But not you.You try again. Fail again.Now you’re a loser, a nonconformist, a problem child, and possibly unemployed.This, mi amigo, is what they call hardship.Try again. Limited success.Now you’re a tinkerer who won’t leave well-enough alone.Try again. Limited improvement.No one calls you anything now because no one is paying attention.Try again. Major breakthrough.Now you’re an innovator and everyone wants to swim in your pool.AGeorge Washington was a loyal British subject who decided the king was wrong.Thomas Jefferson envisioned a form of government that Winston Churchill – on the floor of the House of Commons* – would later call “the worst form of government ever created, except for all the others.”Abraham Lincoln violated millennia of traditional wisdom when he won the war but refused the victor’s spoils, saying instead, “With malice toward none, with charity for all… let us bind up the nation’s wounds…” (2nd inaugural address.)But perhaps Teddy Roosevelt said it best. Speaking of the choices and consequences we face daily as we improvise our way through life, he said, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”Wizard Academy is a nonprofit educational organization, a school for the imaginative, the courageous and the ambitious.Finally! After 12 years of false starts, mistakes and “almost rights,”we have a way to explain this place. THANK YOU to Jeffrey Eisenberg and Jeff Sexton, who accepted this challenge 8 months ago and never turned loose of the tail of that dragon.“Wizard Academy: a school for the imaginative, the courageous and the ambitious.” This tells the world who we are and who we are not.“If you have no imagination, please stay at home. If you lack courage, this is not the place for you. If you have no dream that keeps you awake, go back to bed with our blessings. We have work to do.”It took us 12 years to figure out how to explain who we areand we’re the ones that are supposed to know what we’re doing.You’re not a screw-up. You’re an innovator on the edge of a breakthrough. Trust us. We know. We’re very familiar with the edge.And the view from here is magnificent.Join us.Roy H. Williams* Nov. 11, 1947 

I think there should be something in science called the ‘reindeer effect.’ I don’t know what it would be, but I think it’d be good to hear someone say, ‘Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect.’– Jack HandeyThe Reindeer Effect isn’t real.AThe Ikea Effect, however, is real enough to be the subject of a story in Harvard Business Review. The essence of it is this: We don’t put effort into things because we love them. We love them because we put effort into them.1. We find purpose and see value in the work of our hands.2. We see a reflection of ourselves in the things we create.  The Ikea Effect was named for that highly successful, international retailer known for selling flat-pack furniture that must be tediously assembled by the purchaser. Persons who assemble this furniture tend to place a much higher value on the finished product than persons who had no involvement in its construction.The authorship of virtually every book in the Bible is debated by scholars. I don’t want to put my dog in that fight, so let me say for the record that I choose to believe Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes toward the end of his life approximately 3,000 years ago. Solomon enjoyed the freedom to follow his passions and pursue his dreams. Ecclesiastes is his diary of that journey. In it, Solomon shares what he learned on that fateful day he found the final answer. Here’s an often-quoted passage from chapter 3:There is a time for everything,and a season for every activity under the heavens:a time to be born and a time to die,a time to plant and a time to uproot,a time to kill and a time to heal,a time to tear down and a time to build,a time to weep and a time to laugh,a time to mourn and a time to dance,a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,a time to search and a time to give up,a time to keep and a time to throw away,a time to tear and a time to mend,a time to be silent and a time to speak,a time to love and a time to hate,a time for war and a time for peace.What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil — this is the gift of God.That last bit is usually left out when people put this quote on posters and calendars and greeting cards. Solomon’s assertion that the true secret of happiness is to find satisfaction in our toil – our efforts – the work of our hands – is just too plebeian an answer for ambitious people who are driven to succeed. But the Ikea Effect – and the Harvard Business Review – seem to confirm Solomon’s assertion. Even so, most of us will continue to overvalue that glimmering destination on the horizon – “Success” – never quite realizing that any value it has in the end will be produced by memories of the journey that took us there. Now let’s think for a moment about this idea that we love things because we put energy into them. When a thing becomes the object of concentrated hope and focused effort, when we inject it with our own life-force and energy, it becomes very precious to us. Actions trigger feelings. We usually wait to fall in love with something before throwing ourselves into it. A subject in school, a nonprofit organization, a hobby, a sport, a business. But the Ikea Effect tells us that throwing ourselves into it is the surest way of falling in love with it. The same is true of relationships.When I was a very young man, Phil Johnson, a wise-ard, told Pennie and I that if we ever felt we were “falling out of love,” to just start doing the things we would do for each other – to start taking the actions we would take – if we were passionately, madly in love. Feelings follow actions. Phil was about 65 back then and that was 30 years ago. We plan to visit Phil and Barbara when we travel back to Oklahoma in a few months. I mentioned Ray Bard last week. I said he was one of the people who speaks into my life. He doesn’t mean to. In fact, he’s not even aware that he’s doing it. Phil Johnson is another of those people for me. Don Kuhl is another. I hope you have people, too. People who make intelligent and useful comments. People who open your eyes to things you need to know. People who speak into your life.Open your ears to wisdom.Enjoy the work of your hands.Fling yourself headlong into things. That’s how love is born. Roy H. Williams 

A brief summary of this episodeTo See a Better OutcomeThings depend on how you look at them.Through what lenses do you examine possibilities?The first 2 lenses are intellect and emotion.Sometimes you use one, sometimes the other. This is normal.Intellect employs hard facts and cold logic.Emotion relies on soft intuition and warm connections.Will the first impression be made in the head or in the heart?  In all your communications and attempts at persuasion – especially in your advertising – be careful to make a deep, dual impression; one track in the head and another in the heart.But what happens after that first impression has been made? Are there other, smaller lenses that read the second, third, and fourth impressions?Ray Bard is a quiet genius who speaks into my life. I walk away from each encounter a richer soul.Ray recently told me that a careful examination of all the biggest nonfiction books of the past 50 years revealed 4 common characteristics. Ray is like that. He sees patterns that others miss and solves riddles that few have ever considered.Unless you’re a nonfiction author, you don’t really care what makes a nonfiction book successful, do you? But what if I told you these same 4 characteristics are the keys to successful advertising? I saw that. Your ears perked up like a German Shepherd.Communication, to be highly successful, must have:1. A Big IdeaConceptInsightInformation2. Nuts & BoltsHow ToStep-by-StepInstructionsExamples3. EntertainmentWriting styleAnecdotesAdventureSurprise4. HopeVisualized HappinessPromiseInspiration(1.) The Big Idea and (2.) Nuts and Bolts,are more about the writer than the reader. Yet these are the only things every writer of nonfiction feels a need to share. And now you know why we churn out more than one million dull new books each year and why most of our advertising is gruel.Dull communications are about the speaker, the author, the product, the advertiser. Lots of examples supporting a big idea are merely white noise when there’s no entertainment and no hope; the sound of traffic in a too-busy world.Successful nonfiction – including highly effective advertising – is about the reader, the listener, the viewer, the customer. These beloved messages deliver(3.) Entertainment and (4.) Hope.Ray Bard shared with you and me his Big Idea. We can use it to lift the effectiveness of our advertising to new heights. This should give you Hope. But if you want 2 days of Nuts and Bolts examples and Entertainment beyond compare, arrange your schedule to be at Wizard Academy April 10-11 to learn How to Write for Radio and the Internet, the highly heralded class of Christopher J. Maddock and Jeff Sexton.I plan to add a few modest examples and I’m working to get the elusive Ray Bard to make an appearance and share additional wise-ard insights with you, though I can’t yet promise he’ll be there.But I do have Hope.Roy H. Williams 

Nothing sounds appealing.Have you ever had that feeling? You’re sort of hungry, but nothing sounds good. You want to have fun, but nothing sounds fun. So you drive to the bookstore but none of the books – not a single one of them – whispers for you to carry it to the cashier.You go home and sit. The clock ticks.You keep sitting. The clock keeps ticking.You realize the clock is going to win.I hate that feeling. You hate that feeling. Neither of us wants it. So why do we have it?Consider with me the word aimless. It refers to a thing that has not been aimed. This would seem to indicate that it might be aimed, can be aimed, should be aimed.Is an aimless person one who is not being aimed?Now consider the word pointless.It refers to a thing that has no point.Physically, such a thing would be dull.Sort of how I’m feeling right now.The opposite of pointless and aimless would be “sharply pointed and directly aimed.” Do you see in those words an arrow aimed at a target by an archer? There is no dullness in that picture. Notice the fingers on the string, the hand pulled to the cheek, the sweating bicep, the zeroed eye. It requires energy to aim an arrow.But at what shall we aim?Good news: It really doesn’t matter since any nearby target can be hit.The sure-fire cure for the blues is to aim pointed energy at something. The object of your aim is of no importance. All that matters is that you can physically see that your target was hit.I will now stand up and clean my office. I don’t relish the idea. I’m really not in the mood. So who is going to make me do this?I am.I’m putting away my laptop now. It’s 7:09AM.You won’t hear from me again until I’m done.Okay, it’s 8:31AM. I’m not done but I made a lot of progess. I found my favorite, dark red baseball cap under a pile of stuff. Martin Rapaport gave this cap to me. I quit wearing it last summer when it got sweat-stained and salty dust collected where the crown meets the brim. Not a good look. I spent 25 minutes hand-scrubbing the cap. When it dries I’ll see if it’s wearable again.Unimportant? Yes.Satisfying anyway? Absolutely.Okay, back to work.It’s 8:42AM and the clock can no longer be heard. Back again. But now it’s the next morning: 3:27AM. Pennie came into my office while I was cleaning yesterday and suggested that we take my pickup truck to our son and daughter-in-law’s house and load up a bunch of stuff from their garage and haul it to a rented storage facility. They’re trying to get their house ready to sell. The Princess and I spent the day making 3 trips to the storage facility, loading and unloading, loading and unloading, loading and unloading. We made a huge difference in that garage.My office remains a mess but I feel great.Surefire Cure for the Blues: Aim pointed energy at a nearby target. Fix something broken. Create a visible change. Make a difference.Want to kick it to an even higher gear? Aim your attention away from yourself. Do a good thing for someone else. Good feelings follow good actions.Someone a long time ago said that it makes us happier to give than to receive. Give it a shot. See if it’s true.It worked for me.Roy H. Williams

Rambling Thoughts, Spoken Plainly,Certain to Irritate Someone, SomewhereA mirage is not a hallucination, but a misinterpretation.We see the sky reflected from the ground and we assume it to be water. But it isn’t. That reflection is caused by light passing through cold air that sits on a thin layer of hot air, heated by sun-soaked sand.1. FaceBook, for business, is a mirage.Can it successfully gather a crowd to hear a band perform at a bar? Absolutely. Social media, social event. Can it successfully be used by a physically-existing retail or service business as a substitute for mass media? No. It cannot. A physically-existing business is one that lives in the land of sunlight. A purely online business, by contrast, lives in the light of the plasma screen. Check into those FaceBook success stories and you’ll find them all to be businesses that sprang into existence after 2003. I defy you to find a physically-existing business who enjoyed success prior to 2003 that is now reducing its mass media budget because it has found FaceBook to be a more effective use of ad dollars. You will find no such example. I’ve been looking for 3 long years.When you see the power of FaceBook to connect people together, you are facing an indisputable fact. When you assume it’s “the next big thing” for business, you are seeing a mirage, an illusion, a reflection caused by hot air.Google is our phone book, our encyclopedia, our source of ongoing news. Amazon is our bookstore and our mail-order catalog. FaceBook is a party line, a telephone line shared by a large group of people allowing each to listen-in on the conversations of the others.2. Google’s own data makes it clear: pay-per-click works extremely well for physically-existing businesses that have already built themselves a name. Pay-per-click performs poorly for businesses that aren’t already well known. If the name of your business is a household word in your town, consider investing in local pay-per-click. But if you’re still trying to build your name, put all your eggs into a single mass-media basket and then lift that basket to the sky. The biggest mistake you can make is to spread your ad dollars around, thinking you should “cover all your bases.” You don’t have the money for that. Have courage. Get focused. Talk loud and draw a crowd.A human being drinks about 180 gallons of liquid per year. This number is essentially carved in stone. When we drink more coffee or wine or expensive beer, we are drinking less of something else. This is a problem for Coke and Pepsi and Budweiser.A human being consumes precisely 24 hours per day. This number, too, is carved in stone. When we spend time online or playing video games, we are spending less time doing something else. This is a problem for television and radio and the reading of books.3. There is no “next big thing” on the media horizon. I see only a teeming host of small and medium things. Here’s one of the best of the medium things.Get an iPhone 5. Use it to collect video of customers giving you real-world, real-time testimonials “in the moment.” Post these testimonials on YouTube and embed them on your website. It’s free. You don’t even need to know what you’re doing. Professional video editors are plentiful and affordable in the cloud. One million seconds is 12 days. One billion seconds is 32 years. One trillion seconds is 31,688 years. The world watched 1.46 trillion complete YouTube views in 2012 and that number is climbing.Forget Facebook. The opportunity is on YouTube.4. Two of my favorite people won the Superbowl. Paul Harvey spoke to the Future Farmers of America in 1978 and a two-minute clip from that speech rocked the nation during the 2013 Superbowl. When Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads became a New York Times bestseller and was named by the Wall Street Journal as the #1 Business Book in America, my pride in those moments was only a pale reflection of the glow I felt when Paul Harvey said my name on the radio when he quoted something I’d written for Radio Ink magazine.Yes, I know I’ve told you that before. I just never get tired of saying it.The other big winner was the “Joe Montana stain” washed out of a man’s football jersey by his wife with the help of Tide. Cognoscenti Mark Huffman, resident genius at Procter & Gamble, was the executive producer of that ad. Mark made the first of many visits to Wizard Academy back in 2001. Mark brings magic with him each time he comes. If you have the freedom, no, even if you don’t have the freedom, shift heaven and earth so that you can join Mark Huffman at Wizard Academy on March 14 and 15. Mark will be teaching, for the first time in his life, with his twin brother, Gene, a famous thinker whom Mark describes with glowing eyes as “a ringmaster in a circus.” This class will be an expanded version of Mark’s class, Me

Wizard Academy exists to educate, equip and encourage small business owners, little people with dreams who face giant corporations with big bank accounts. Like the windmills of Quixote, these giants are often unaware and unfeeling of their challengers.Don Quixote was an average man, distinguished only by his beautiful dream. He called this creation of his mind, “My lady, Dulcinea.” She was his Helen of Troy, the Galatea of his Pygmalion, the perfect girl-next-door. All that Quixote accomplished, everything he endured was in Dulcinea’s name and for her honor. (She was his Jungian anima; that perfect woman who exists in the mind of every man. Likewise, the animus is Jung’s name for the “real man” that exists in the mind of every woman.)Quixote’s Dulcinea was, in reality, a common village girl named Aldonza Lorenzo and she was completely unaware that Quixote existed. But no matter. A dream is a dream.Small business people are driven by beautiful dreams of common things: a better school for the kids, a house in a nicer neighborhood, a car, a boat, travel to exotic places filled with natives who, strangely, are also dreaming of escape. But no matter. A dream is a dream.Quixote lived in a world populated by characters and monsters of his own making. So do we all.An immortal comic strip featuring an adventurous 6-year old boy with a toy tiger and a boundless imagination: Calvin is Quixote and Hobbes, the tiger, is Sancho Panza. In one of my favorite episodes, Calvin says,“C’mon, let’s go try to find a big poisonous snake!”?Hobbes asks, “What will we do if we see one?”?Calvin replies, “Are you kidding? We’ll scare ourselves silly and run around in circles, screaming like a bunch of loons!”Hobbes sighs, “I look forward to when we’re old enough to get our morning jolt from coffee.”Peering through the grass, Calvin replies, “Ahh, I’ll bet that wears off quicker.”Are any of us older than 6?I am, by career choice, an ad man, and storytelling is at the heart of good advertising. Did you know that every literary device, every storytelling tool ever crafted, made its debut in 1605 in Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote de La Mancha, the first novel ever written?It is impossible for a storyteller to detach himself completely from Quixote. But this mythical man who jousted with windmills is not the only icon of our little school.Wizard Academy takes its name from a group of guys we meet in the second chapter of Matthew, the first book in the Christian new testament. These “wise-ards” see a star in the sky, attach special significance to it, and set off in the darkness to discover where it might lead them. Remember that star in the darkness as you consider these lyrics written by Joe Darion for the wildly successful Broadway musical, Man of La Mancha:To dream the impossible dream,to fight the unbeatable foe,to bear with unbearable sorrow,to run where the brave dare not go.To right the unrightable wrong,to love pure and chaste from afar,to try when your arms are too weary,to reach the unreachable star.This is my quest,to follow that star –no matter how hopeless,no matter how far.To fight for the rightwithout question or pause,to be willing to march into hellfor a heavenly cause.And I know if I’ll only be trueto this glorious questthat my heart will be peaceful and calmwhen I’m laid to my rest.And the world will be better for this:that one man scorned and covered with scarsstill strove with his last ounce of courageto reach the unreachable stars!“If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime,you’re not thinking big enough.” – Wes JacksonThe rotation of the earth causes every star to move slowly across the sky at night except for one lonely star that sits above the North Pole and another that sits above the South. Perfectly aligned with the earth’s extended axis, Polaris and the Southern Cross remain forever fixed, motionless and constant, guiding lights to all the world.Stand on the Laughlin stone* after dark at Wizard Academy and mark the hilt of the sword that rises from the top of the tower. That point of light at the hilt’s crown is Polaris. You and I call it the North Star but Quixote would call it Dulcinea, an impossible dream around which the whole world revolves.Mike Metzger once told me that we meet the same 4 people again and again on the ocean of life.“Drifters just go with the flow,” he said, “pushed this way and that by the wind and waves of circumstances. They look around and say, ‘Whatever. It’s all good.’ Surfers ride the waves, always looking for the next big thing. Drowners stay in the center of a storm. Rescue them and they’ll find another crisis and cry, ‘Help me, save me, I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ But Sailors counteract the winds and waves of circumstance by rigging sails and twisting rudders. But the sailor cannot navigate without an immovable object, a fixed point, a no

A rich knowledge of history is better than creativity.Let me qualify that. A rich knowledge of history is better than creativity if your goal is to make money.The most profitable form of creativity is to repurpose the proven.Do you want to put together a group of colors that create a powerful effect? Maybe for a website or a sign or a brochure or a living room?Common sense will tell you to hire an expert. That expert will ask you to describe the feelings you want the color scheme to conjure and then he or she will aim all their education, talent and experience toward doing what has already been done by minds far greater than their own.Yes, common sense would tell you to hire a talented expert. But common sense is merely the name we give the collection of prejudices we acquire before the age of eighteen. (If you feel you’ve heard that statement before, it’s because Albert Einstein famously said it in the 1952 book, Mathematics, Queen and Servant of the Sciences.)Common sense is overrated.An enlightened soul who has escaped the boundaries of common sense will quietly inquire of the giants whose footprints went deep into the earth, those giants whose fingerprints can be found on the hearts of billions of people they have touched.Why pay a lightweight for advice when you can consult Gustav Klimt, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Vincent van Gogh for free?(1.) Go online and select a series of world-famous paintings whose color palettes have the mojo you seek. (Mojo, by the way, is just the name we give to high-voltage emotional juju. Einstein didn’t say this, but I’m pretty sure it’s true, anyway.)(2.) Download only the paintings of artists who rocked the world.(3.) Import those paintings into Photoshop and sample each of the four or five principal colors. Click a couple of buttons to reveal the precise CMYK formulation of each. BAM! Trust me, those colors will work fabulously well together.No, don’t trust me. Trust the giants.Lee Iacocca was chosen as one of Ford Motor Company’s ten “Whiz Kids” in 1946. But every time young Lee would go to his boss with a suggestion, his boss would say, “Show me where it has worked.”Your first impression of this man is that he was a follower, a lemming, a conformist with no courage or imagination, right? But Iacocca credits that boss as being the man responsible for all his later successes. Iacocca learned from him a pivotal lesson: if an idea is truly brilliant, you’ll find examples of its successful implementation scattered throughout history.The road to bankruptcy court is flanked on both sides by bright-eyed “creative people” dripping with enthusiasm. Ask any one of them for directions. They’ll make sure you get there.The secret of guaranteed success is to import a tested and reliable methodology into a business category where it has never been used.Repurpose the proven.They’ll call you a brilliant creative innovator. You might even be able to patent your breakthrough.But you and I know the truth. You’re merely an insightful historian.Roy H. Williams

We have, for the most part, the feelings we choose to have.Please don’t be angry with me if you prefer to be tragic. I do not deny you this choice. I deny only that you have no escape.Our feelings in the first moment are triggered by our circumstances. Happy news. Sad news. News that makes us angry. But in the second moment, and the third, our feelings are the produce of our chosen perspective.What angle of view do you choose when you examine the day that lies ahead of you and all the days that lie behind? What is your perspective? Where do you aim your eyes? What produce do you grow in the soil of your imagination and the sunshine of your life?Jeanne Hébuterne was a 19 year-old art student in 1917 who fell deeply in love with a dashing Italian artist named Amedeo Modigliani. A year later, their daughter was born out of wedlock and the Hébuterne family was horrified. When that little girl was 2, Modigliani died. The next day Jeanne Hébuterne threw herself out a fifth-story window. She was only 22 years old.Modigliani’s sister adopted the little girl and raised her as her own.The girl inherited no art. She died in 1984.What do you suppose the little girl felt as she was growing up? Did she say,“My father was an alcoholic, drug-addicted loon who refused to marry my mother when she became pregnant and my mother did not love me enough to raise me. She killed herself the day after my father died.”Persons who would choose this perspective, and the feelings that accompany it, always say they are being “honest and realistic.”But is that really true?Would this perspective be any less honest or realistic?“My father was an artist whose paintings of my mother sell for many tens of millions of dollars. My mother was so deeply in love that she literally could not live without him. I am the product of that love.”I do not know what the little girl chose to think, and feel, and believe.I know only that she had a choice.As do you.Roy H. Williams

Use half as many words and they’ll hit twice as hard.Every writer knows it.Salespeople need to learn it.A few weeks ago I invested a day of training in the telephone staff of a client of mine and doubled their close rate as a result.“You’re working way too hard at it,” I said. “These people are calling you, remember? They’re calling you because they believe your company can solve their problem. In your mind, you’re being enthusiastic. But you’re coming across as anxious and nervous and defensive and combative. You’re not talking these callers into buying from you, you’re talking them out of it.”Selling is a transfer of confidence. The seller must transfer his or her confidence in the product to the buyer. When you babble, you don’t sound confident.When you act like the customer has asked the wrong question, you’re basically telling them that they’ve hit you where you’re weak.Always answer questions AS ASKED. This means that you should focus your energies on providing the simplest answer in the fewest words. If your customer wants to know more, they’ll ask you a follow-up question.Pennie and I know a woman with a 13 year-old son who recently said to her, “Mom, what is cunnilingus?”With no hesitation whatsoever, she answered, “That’s when a woman gives sexual pleasure to another woman.”He shrugged and said, “Oh,” and the conversation was over.Had our friend raised an eyebrow, acted surprised, gotten flustered, or asked, “Where did you hear that word?” the whole thing could have escalated into something it didn’t need to become.Our friend is a brilliant woman who gave a simple answer to an innocent question. She didn’t read anything into it. She is, in my opinion, an example of the perfect salesperson for 2013.When you provide simple and straightforward answers to your customer’s questions, they feel that you’re there for them. But when they provide ears for your rambling monologues, they begin to feel they’re there for you.Be there for your customer. Don’t make them be there for you.I was going to write a book about this, but then I found it has already been written. Dan Pink is a brilliant researcher as well as an insightful and entertaining writer. I haven’t yet read his newest book, To Sell is Human, but I did read the transcript of an interview he gave NPR.“We have this idea that extroverts are better salespeople. As a result, extroverts are more likely to enter sales; extroverts are more likely to get promoted in sales jobs. But if you look at the correlation between extroversion and actual sales performance — that is, how many times the cash register actually rings — the correlation’s almost zero. It’s really quite remarkable.“Let’s think about a spectrum on a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 is extremely introverted, 7 is extremely extroverted: The 6s and 7s — the people who get hired, the gregarious, backslapping types of the stereotype — they’re not very good. OK, now, why? … They’re just spending too much time talking. … They don’t know when to shut up. They don’t listen very well; they’re not attuned to the other person; they sometimes can overwhelm people.”The art of selling has changed more in the past ten years than in the previous hundred.Ten years ago, we had to rely on the seller to provide expert information. Today we’re just a few clicks away from anything we want to know.Salespeople are certainly necessary, but the roles they play have changed dramatically.Next week I’ll be teaching a 2-day workshop at Wizard Academy, “How to Advertise in a Noisy World.” I could just as easily have called it, “How to Sell in 2013.”If you can’t come to Austin for the workshop, you should at least buy Dan Pink’s new book. Based on the interview he gave NPR, I’m betting it’s really good.Ciao for Niao,Roy H. Williams

But at Least You're in the Parade"When your friend says something interesting, write it down. Better yet, post it online and give your friend eternal life.I was whining to Rich Mann over a plate of sushi one day when he reminded me to shut up and be happy. Rich didn’t even look up when he said it. He just mumbled, ‘You may be shoveling horse manure but at least you’re in the parade,’ while trying to decide whether to chopstick a slice of tuna or a piece of spider roll. But his words fell on me like Robert Frost’s *Dust of Snow. I smiled, pulled a receipt from my wallet, scribbled Rich’s statement on it, then posted it in the random quotes database at MondayMorningMemo.com.Rich’s words reminded me of something Tom Grimes taught me about tribes. “Every tribe has a hierarchy,” he said.“Give me an example.”“A football team has a trainer who bandages the players. And if you’re the third-string quarterback who never gets put into the game, you can still look at the trainer and say to yourself, ‘Well at least I’m not THAT guy.’ But even THAT guy – the lowest ranked member of the tribe – gets to watch the games for free from the best seat in stadium and chat with the players in the locker room. Never forget, THAT guy is still part of the team.”“You may be shoveling horse manure, but at least you’re in the parade.”What horse manure have you been shoveling in this most wonderful of all parades?“When I hear somebody sigh that life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?'” – Sydney J. HarrisElmer Zubiate (Zoo-be-AH-tay) grew up embarrassed that his name was Elmer. After losing everything he owned in 2005, Elmer fought like a tiger to start a little HVAC business in San Antonio. Last year he decided to make the most of the whole Elmer thing. This is what he put on the radio:There’s Elmer Fudd, Elmer’s Glue, and ME, Elmer Zubiate of Elmer’s One-Hour Air Conditioning and Heating. We’ll be there within one hour of the time we promised you or whatever you need is free. No charge. There’s NO WAY you’re going to wait for US all day. Great prices. Fabulous service. Elmer’s One-Hour.Dial two one oh, thirty-three Elmer.[JINGLE]Two one oh, thirty-three ElmerLast year, One-Hour Elmer did $3.8 million and is trending toward $6 million in 2013. We have every expectation that Elmer will bag $12 million in 2015.I have another friend – and I promise I’m not making this up – who feels the great tragedy of his life was that he inherited 31 million dollars. The way he tells it, he’s never really recovered from that horrible day. He used to moan about it until I finally said, “Shut up, you crybaby. Maybe we should take part of that cash and buy you a spine. And then maybe we can hire an old woman to knit you a pair of balls.”Strangely, I think he still likes me.You want to hear something even stranger than that? I actually kind of agree with him: it would be truly horrible to wake up one day and learn that nothing in life required your effort anymore; all you had to do is point and it would be handed to you.It is good to be Elmer. It is good to be in the parade.Roy H. Williams

Today I’m going to tell you 3 new things you need to know about.My enthusiasm will probably make it sound like I’m giving you a sales pitch. Sorry about that. If you’re not in the mood, the tiniest motion of a finger will take you to a new and different place…You decided to stay? I think you’ll be glad you did.YouTube. Not FaceBook.Throughout the year I’ve been saying to students of Wizard Academy, “YouTube will deliver one trillion views during the 365 short days of 2012. It’s a message delivery vehicle that has yet to be maximized. YouTube’s potential to grow a business is vastly greater than FaceBook. The number of search strings typed into YouTube each day is second only to Google.”The actual number of views in 2012 turned out to be 1.46 trillion. Let’s put that in perspective:One million seconds is about 12 days. tick-tick-tick-tickOne billion seconds is nearly 32 years. tick-tick-tickOne trillion seconds is 31,688 years.This means 46,264 people per second click to watch a YouTube video 24/7/365. Nearly 3 million per minute, 4 billion per day. That’s 13 times the population of the United States every day.*You have things to say. Why not say them to the world?#1 VidBetter is a video production systemthat lets goobers like you and me crank out YouTube videos that look like big money. And there’s no learning curve with VidBetter. All the tricky stuff has been fully automated. The hardware comes in a box. Your professional editors are in the cloud and available to you 24/7. Take a look.#2 Do you talk better than you write?Dave Young and Paul Boomer have created a content-extraction service that pulls your very best out of you and puts it on paper. It’s a fabulous way to create witty and intelligent blog posts, craft award-winning web copy, record relaxed and informative podcasts, write training manuals, create policy and procedure documents, whatever it is you need to get out of your head and onto the web or onto paper. All you have to do is talk on the phone to a professional interviewer. BAM. The whole thing is recorded, transcribed, edited, and given back to you in whatever format you desire. These guys will make you sound like a genius. Check it out.#3 Become a happier you.Kyle Cease was voted the #1 comedian on Comedy Central in 2009 but his real passion is for transformative change. I’ve watched him lead his classmates through exercises that made a profound difference in their thought processes, their attitudes, and their expectations. When his 2-day class was announced a couple of weeks ago, the classmates who had already met him snapped up all the rooms in Engelbrecht House immediately. If you want 2013 to be VERY DIFFERENT than 2012, be at this class. Sleep in a hotel. Don’t tell yourself that you’ll catch Kyle’s class next time. Kyle did more than 200 shows last year and right now he’s hotter than ever. It took weeks to find dates for this class that would work in his schedule for 2013. It will be awhile before we can get Kyle back to Austin. This will be a highly interactive, fast paced, experiential workshop. You will definitely leave better than you came.I shared this stuff with you today because I want you to have the happiest possible 2013. I want you to be energized and productive. I apologize if I sounded like I was making a sales pitch. I’m an ad writer, remember? I sound like I’m making a sales pitch when I pray.But God’s okay with that. He understands.Hopefully you do, too.Roy H. Williams

I recently spent a day with two lawyers who practice the same legal specialty. We’ll call them Nick and Ralph. They live on opposite sides of the country. They met at a conference and became friends.Nick read my books, attended Wizard Academy, and decided to go fishing for customers with a net. He put his money in radio.Ralph thought it made more sense to target only those people in immediate need of a lawyer within his specialty. Ralph went fishing with a hook called Pay-Per-Click.Ralph said, “Nick, you’re hunting with a shotgun. I’m hunting with a rifle.” Ralph believes in targeting, you see. That’s why he fishes with a hook and catches just one fish at a time. But you don’t build a widespread reputation by waiting until your customer needs you and then targeting them through Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click.Nick the Net chose to win the public before they needed his services. Nick the Net wanted everyone in the city to know about him, even if many of them would never need his services. Nick the Net chose to win the hearts of the people 52 weeks a year.Ralph the Hook, by the way, practices law in a trade area that offers 22 times the potential of the area served by Nick the Net.Both men are smart and aggressive. They plunged. Hard.Ralph the Hook spends $180,000 per month on Search Engine Optimization, online marketing consultants, and locally targeted Pay-Per-Click. His annual ad budget of $2,160,000 brings in slightly less than $6 million per year in legal fees, leaving Ralph with a little less than $4 million for gas money. Not bad.One year ago, Nick the Net was spending $30,000 per month on radio. His $360,000 ad budget brought in $1.4 million the previous year in legal fees, leaving Nick with a little more than $1 million to spend on lunch.NOTE: Nick brought in 1/4 as much money but spent only 1/6 as much on ads.And then Nick asked me to begin writing his ads. This year he and I brought in $4.2 million with that same $30,000/mo. ad budget.About 6 weeks ago, Nick said he wanted me to add another $20,000/mo. to his radio budget. I said, “Not yet. First we need to improve your close rate.”“But we’re closing 30 percent of the people who call us,” answered Nick, “Ralph the Hook is closing barely 10 percent of his online leads.”When you advertise 52 weeks a year on the radio, you become a household word. Yours is the name the customer thinks of first and feels the best about. The leads brought in through radio are much warmer than the leads generated through pay-per-click.“Nick,” I said, “our close rate should be up around 60 percent. Bring all the people who answer your phone to Austin for a day of training.”Nick brought them to Austin for a day. They listened. They learned.At the end of the day, Nick drove his people to the airport and sent them home to answer the phones. Nick then returned to my office with his buddy, Ralph the Hook. As a favor to Nick, I spent a couple of hours with Ralph. Ralph, of course, only wanted to know “how to choose the right radio station.”Ralph the Hook still believes that “targeting the right customer” is the secret to growing a business.But Nick and I believe in building a widespread reputation with a warm predisposition in the hearts of the general, untargeted public.What do you believe?Common sense says targeting would be more efficient, right?My thirty years of experience say otherwise. One last thing: Nick’s telephone team is now closing more than 60 percent of all incoming leads. This means Nick the Net will likely do $8.4 million in 2013 with no increase in ad budget and no increase in sales opportunities.Release the Kraken.Roy H. Williams

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