Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Guilty PleasureFebruary 1, 2010ListenAJanuary 27, 2010: It’s weird when you think about it: Apple releases the iPad just as Salinger breathes his last. It feels like the ending of a play.J.D. Salinger and Jack Kerouac were the tortured voices that led us into forbidden places in our minds. We followed them, spellbound, as they sauntered into dark rooms we would never have entered alone.Then Salinger’s Holden Caulfield shuffled onto the big screen as James Dean and gave us brooding angst in Rebel Without a Cause and Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty bopped onto the little screen as Maynard G. Krebs and gave us freedom of expression in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.America said, “The movie was good, but the book was better.”But America has since changed her mind. Today she says, “Out with the old literature!” that requires focused attention as you experience a story in the quiet of your mind. “In with the new literature!” that requires nothing from you but to sit, slack-jawed and drooling as flashing images enter your brain.Joseph Brodsky saw this day coming and tried to do something about it. When he was named Poet Laureate in 1991, Brodsky proposed a populist poetry initiative that might “turn this nation into an enlightened democracy… before literacy is replaced with videocy.”Methinks it may be too late, Joseph.The glittering iPad promises movies, TV shows and YouTube videos at our fingertips, 24 hours a day, wherever we happen to be. No need to carry a pill bottle. Just touch the screen and go unconscious. This tablet is electronic.Yes, I’ll buy one.Of course I will.And I will feel sad.Roy H. Williams

In 1969, spending time with your friends meant piling into a car and driving around.Every town had a strip called “the drag,” a place to see and be seen as you cruised back and forth at 20 miles an hour. It's how you made contact. And when you and your friends weren’t in your car, you were sitting on the hood of it in a parking lot, talking to the people sitting on the hood of the car next to yours.Did we shape our technology or did our technology shape us?Had you asked us in 1969 to describe our vision of 2009, we would have told you of flying cars, driverless cars and carburetors that would get 200 miles per gallon.If you told us the cars of 2009 would travel at the same speeds and get about the same gas mileage we were getting in 1969, we would have rolled our eyes and thought you a fool.Forty short years ago General Motors stood tall as one of the most powerful corporations on earth.Not one person in 1969 would have said,“In 2009 we’ll carry cordless telephones that will have TV screens in them and all the world’s knowledge will be at your fingertips because you’ll be connected to a thing called the worldwide web. And that TV screen will show you any movie and let you listen to any song, any time you want. And you’ll be able to tell it where you want to go and the screen will show you a map of how to get there. And as you travel, the map will continually update to show you where you are. The map will even talk to you and tell you where to turn. And there won’t be any long distance charges.”No American in 1969 would have predicted the iPhone because we were a nation on the move, obsessed with transportation. Then somewhere along the way we fell out of love with transportation and became obsessed with communication.But not quite in the way you think.In the January 18, 2010 issue of Time magazine, Joel Stein explains why people today are uninterested, not just in videophones, but in talking on the regular phone as well. “We want to TiVo our lives,” he says, “avoiding real time by texting or emailing people when we feel like it.”Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor who studies the social aspects of science and technology, says, “VideoSkype, which was the fantasy of our childhood, gets you back to sitting there and being available in that old-fashioned way. Our model of what it was to be present to each other, we thought we liked that. But it turns out that time-shifting is our most valued product. This new technology is about control. Emotional control and time control.”Again, are we shaping our technology or is our technology shaping us?Jaron Lanier, the internet guru who coined the term “Virtual Reality,” has become worried about the real reality we’re creating.Commenting on Lanier’s new book, You Are Not a Gadget, Michael Agger says that Lanier is asserting,“The Internet's long tail helps only the Amazons of the world, not the little guys and gals making songs, videos, and books. Wikipedia, a mediocre product of group writing, has become the intellectual backbone of the Web. And, most depressingly, all of us have been lumped into a ‘hive mind’ that every entrepreneur with a dollar and a dream is trying to parse for profit.”In essence, Jaron Lanier believes that Web 2.0 technologies are based on the assumption that an aggregator of content (Google) is more important than an actual creator of content. Additionally, the implied belief of Web 2.0 technologies is that a million men are wiser than one man.But “individual genius” is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men.Which do you believe?And by the way, are you shaping your technology? Or is your technology shaping you?When's the last time you had an extended, face-to-face conversation with someone who was important enough to you that you turned your cell phone completely off, rather than just setting it to vibrate so you could check to see if the caller was important enough to interrupt the conversation?Something to think about.Roy H. Williams

Today's memo is a long oneBut worth reading if you want to make money.If you knew it was there, they wouldn’t call it a blind spot.Hidden within your blind spot is your limiting factor, the thing that holds you back and limits your success.Find your blind spot and stare your limiting factor in the face. Acknowledge the reality of it. Then decide whether or not you want to overcome it.*That’s right. It’s entirely possible that your blind spot – and within it your limiting factor – is simply an extension of your fundamental worldview.You may already know your worldview is wrong but you’d rather continue being wrong – and suffer the consequences – than change it.I can respect that. I have no problem with a person who is willing to pay the price for their self-indulgence. What I can’t respect is:     1.    a person who is wrong and can’t admit it.     2.    a person who makes a choice and then whines about the price of it.I don’t want to get all sappy and personal with you, so let’s move this discussion to the marketplace. Blind spots and limiting factors are easily observed in business.Here are the most common limiting factors hidden within the blind spots of business owners:    1.    Market Opportunity(A.) Opportunity is staring you in the face and you can’t see it. SOLUTION: Open your eyes.(B.) You’ve overestimated the potential of your trade area. Consequently, you’re bumping your head on the low, glass ceiling of a small population. SOLUTION: (a.) Expand your product offering or (b.) open in a second trade area.If you’re doing okay but have been looking for better ways to target the demographic and psychographic profile of “your customer” and these efforts haven’t been paying off, your limiting factor is almost certainly(1.) Market Opportunity or(2.) Product Appeal. Keep reading. 2.    Product Appeal(A.) Your product is flawed and you can’t see it. SOLUTION: Find someone who has the courage to tell you the truth. Then correct the problem they show you. Don’t live in denial.(B.) Your product has a characteristic whose appeal you’ve underestimated. SOLUTION: Promote the newfound characteristic.EXAMPLE: My partner Peter Nevland recently bumped into the owner of a bottled water service who asked him for some free advice. Peter asked, “Why should the customer of another water service switch to yours?”“We’re locally owned.” “Ten percent of our profits go to charity,” blah, blah, blah.Peter was unimpressed.Exasperated and grasping at straws, the man mentioned his water had recently been voted “Best Tasting” by the readers of an obscure, local business journal.“Why do you think you won?”The man hung his head, “We cheat.”“How?”“Our water is saturated with dissolved oxygen, twice the amount found in regular water.”“What does that do?”“Dissolved oxygen is what makes water taste good. It’s why cold water tastes better than warm water. Cold water contains more dissolved oxygen.”“You’re saying your room temperature water tastes like cold water?”The man nodded his head.“Do you always saturate your water with dissolved oxygen?”“Yes, why do you ask?”SAD ENDING: Peter was unable to convince the man to promote his better tasting water with dissolved oxygen. I swear I’m not making this up. The man remained convinced his ads needed to say, “We’re locally owned and give ten percent of our profits to charity.”3.    Staff Competence(A.) Your front-line people see opportunities and solutions you don’t see. You limit your success by not listening to your people. SOLUTION: Listen to them.(B.) Your people aren’t nearly as smart as you think. You keep listening to them and they’re wrong, but dammit, they’re enthusiastic and they make sense and they’re just so sincere! SOLUTION: Make some executive decisions. Be the leader. Tell your employees what you want. If they can’t get on board with it, let them swim in the cold waters of unemployment. (If that suggestion horrifies you, then it’s almost certainly your limiting factor.)4.    Message Clarity(A.) You understand the benefits of your product but have been unable to communicate them persuasively to the public. SOLUTION: Hire an experienced ad writer with a history of success. (I know a lot of writers like Peter Nevland. You can meet them and read their stuff at AmericanSmallBusiness.com.)(B.) You don’t understand how the public views your product category. Consequently, your ads are irrelevant to them. EXAMPLE: You’ve been saying, “We guarantee our work” when your customer’s real anxiety is, “Will these people show up on time or will I have to wait around all day?” SOLUTION: Speak to what the customer actually cares about.5.    Message Delivery (A.) You have a song to sing, you just haven’t been singing it. (In other words you haven’t been advertising.) SOLUTION: Sing, little bird, sing!(B.) You know who would be interested in

Transactions can be immediate or transactions can happen over time.The purchase of a “Flashing Blue Light Special” is an immediate transaction. I give you something. You give me something. Now we’re done. Transactions like these indicate an Exchange Market where customers are in Transactional shopping mode.Make no mistake about it: Big things can happen fast when you make the right offer in an Exchange Market.The danger of an Exchange Market is that customers can be lost as easily as they were won. You might sell 10,000 customers in 2 hours but these customers were never attracted to you, they were attracted to your product and its price. If a snazzier product comes along, or the same product at a better price, “your” customers will become someone else's customers.It is extremely difficult – but not impossible – to build a strong company using the methods of an Exchange Market. K-Mart thought they knew how to do it. They were wrong. (K-Mart and WalMart are 2 of the case studies we’ll reveal in our upcoming class, How to Make Big Things Happen Fast. If you want to leap forward in 2010 you really need to come.)Growing a fruit tree, winning the heart of a woman and building a brand happen over time, like putting money in the bank and receiving interest on it. Big miracles that happen slow and steady are the product of Exponential Little Bits. Transactions like these indicate an Interest Market where customers are in Relational shopping mode.If you buy gasoline wherever it happens to be cheapest this week, you buy your gas Transactionally. But if you buy your gas from the same one or two places, you’re buying your gas Relationally. Maybe you know why you always go to those places. Maybe you’ve never really thought about it. Doesn’t matter. You’re making your decision based on something other than price-per-gallon.Half the nation buys gasoline Transactionally. The other half buys gasoline Relationally. Both halves are convinced they are typical. Ask them questions about advertising and marketing and they’ll tell you with deep conviction everything you need to do to begin selling “everyone.” In the end, you’ll be as confused as a termite in a yo-yo.The keys to winning short-term, Transactional customers in an Exchange Market are:1.   Make a compelling offer and2.   Impose a time limit, or3.   Make a limited quantity available.The keys to winning long-term, Relational customers in an Interest Market are:1.   Specific details.2.   Honest evaluation.3.   Deliver what you promise.(And be sure to leave a little bit unpromised so you can add “a delight factor.”)The things I’ve told you today are true and reliable. But if these things were all you need to know, we wouldn’t be having a 2-day workshop, now would we?Jon Spoelstra has written a number of bestselling business books. So have I.I like Jon a lot. His talents and preferences are exactly the opposite of mine. That’s why he was chosen to co-teach How to Make Big Things Happen Fast.Would you like your company to be 1 of the 5 that Jon and I develop to show the rest of the class how it’s done? Between the two of us, Jon and I have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in countless real-world experiments over a number of decades. These dollars and years allow us to separate good ideas “that ought to work” from the good ideas that actually do.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.Be the wise man. Come and learn How to Make Big Things Happen Fast, March 30-31.Roy H. Williams

The Full Plate Diet is EverywhereYou’re about to begin seeing The Full Plate Diet everywhere you look; bookstores, grocery stores, airports, wholesale clubs… everywhere.This is an interesting story. I think you’ll enjoy it. Especially since you’re a big part of it. Read on.Ray Bard served as the first chairman of Wizard Academy, a 501c3 nonprofit educational organization in Austin, Texas. He’s also the most successful publisher of business books in the world today. No brag, just fact. More than half the books published by Bard Press have been Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestsellers. No other publisher has had even 10 percent of its titles reach bestseller status. So yes, Ray is a very big deal in the world of publishing.A little more than a year ago, I asked Ray to look at a manuscript written by 3 students of Wizard Academy. Ray agreed to do it because I’m one of the few people in his life who NEVER ask him to look at books written by my friends. Like all successful publishers, Ray Bard is relentlessly pestered by would-be authors who use Ray’s friends to get to him. But I was one of the few “safe” people in Ray’s life. I was spending valuable currency just to ask Ray for this favor.He liked the book.Naturally, Ray kept me involved in most of the discussions about the book’s title, graphics, photography and narrative style. Nearly 5,000 of you received a free copy of a test version of The Full Plate Diet several months ago. Much of the book has been altered since then. It's even better.The final hardcover is glossy and lays flat when opened, like a cookbook. And it overflows with lavish, full-color photos that extend all the way to the edges of the page. About half the content has also been changed. It's more interesting, more useful, more fun.Ray did 2 things on the test cover to get your attention:1: The cover photo of the empty plate contradicts the title above it: The Full Plate Diet. This subtle dissonance works like magic because it’s resolved within the first few pages. You get to fill your plate with whatever you like.2. The test-cover photo also had the spoon on the wrong side and the edge of the knife turned outward. This caused such anxiety among readers that we put the silverware into its proper place on the cover of the final edition. The backwards silverware wasn’t just attention getting; it was a distraction.AIf you were one of the 5,000 Monday Morning Memo readers to receive a free test copy of The Full Plate Diet, I’m hoping you’ll do a couple of things for Ray and me:1.   Go to the Full Plate Diet Page at Amazon.com and write a review of the book. Don’t wait until you have enough time to do a 1st-class job of it. Do whatever you can do in 60 seconds, but please do it right now. This is much more important than you might suspect.2.   Buy a copy while you’re there. You’re going to be deeply impressed with the final product from Bard Press. Amazon’s release-week discount brings the $20 cover price down to just $13.22. You’re going to be glad you bought a copy. This diet works.3.   Mention the book this week to your network of friends. More than one million dollars in printing and promotional costs are on the line. The authors and the publisher are people we really care about. They're part of Wizard Academy.Besides, it’s fun to say, “This bestseller was written by some doctors who go to the same business school I attend. And here’s a copy of the test book they sent me half-a-year before the final book was released. Notice how the silverware is in the wrong place. They decided not to do this on the final cover because…”If enough of us buy a book this week, your fellow alumni are going to become bestselling authors and Wizard Academy will have a new feather in its cap.Thanks for being there. You're what makes the difference.You'll find the MondayMorningMemo I had originally planned for this week – 2010: The Changing of the Guard – in the rabbit hole. Dive into it by clicking the photo at the top of this page but go to Amazon.com first, okay?Roy H. Williams

Read to the End and Find a Business ApplicationIt’s entirely possible that today’s memo will make you think less of me. Maybe not. We’ll see.People fall into 4 categories in my mind:1. People I owe.2. People I know.3. People Invisible.4. People I must fight.If you object to people being put in categories, please keep in mind I said we’re talking about the world inside my head, not yours.People I Owe: When a person has been there for me and helped me when I was down, or gotten involved with something I was trying to do, I’ll always watch for a way to repay them. Some of the People I Owe have earned huge equity in my life and I’ll happily do things for them that no one else dare ask.I’ll bet you’re like that, too.So here’s my question for you: what did your “People I Owe” do for you that you’ve never forgotten? What was it that lifted them to such lofty heights in your heart and mind?Do those same things for other people.People I Know is a category that might have been labeled “friends and acquaintances” but it’s much broader than that in my mind. People I Know are the fabric of the social construct that exists within the scope of my limited vision. In essence, People I Know are the population of RoyWorld. I’m aware of their actions and I care about them.Strangely, the population of RoyWorld contains no newscasters. They are, to me, Invisible. I’m being completely serious with you. Newscasters have no place in my mind. I don’t hate them exactly, but I have no use for them. They don’t matter to me. Consequently, newscasters don’t exist in my private world.People Invisible are those who don’t count.Who doesn’t exist in your private world? How many billions of people live beyond the edges of your peripheral vision? You might like to believe you care about all living things and value all human life equally but your mind isn’t big enough for that. You can’t wrap your consciousness around everyone and everything on earth. So there will always be People Invisible in your world whether you like it or not.I’m suggesting only that you begin 2010 by choosing the populations of your categories consciously rather than unconsciously. Who will you owe? Who will you know? Who will be invisible? Who will you fight?Last week Pennie and I listened to People We Know talk about their Christmas traditions. One man we know – I don’t know his name – watches each year for the sanitation workers who pick up the garbage in his upscale neighborhood. Walking to the curb, he gives each man a Christmas card containing a surprisingly large cash tip. He said, “It makes them part of our community. It proves we recognize them, know their value, and consider them to be part of us.”The men on that garbage truck honk and wave and smile as they pass his home each week. The glow of his recognition stays on them all year. Our friend moved his service workers from People Invisible all the way up to People I Owe. And they have never forgotten it.If you’re in business, your customers are People You Owe. If you let them slip down to People You Know, or worse, People Invisible, your business will definitely suffer for it.But if that happens, don’t sweat it. You can always blame your advertising.Roy H. Williams

Mini Bikes, Tape Recorders, Leisure Suits and Yellow PagesThe Las Vegas Hilton, 2003: The stagehand said, “This is the stage where Elvis appeared when he played Vegas.” He was helping me set up to speak to the managers of all the local, county and state fairs in the English-speaking world.When my stage buddy said we were good to go, the floor attendants opened the doors and the crowd washed into the room, thick streams of people jamming the aisles, then branching into little rivulets as they chose specific rows of seats. I went backstage to get last-minute instructions from my hosts.The chairman of the board looked at me and said, “You’ll be speaking to about 16 hundred members and delegates from the US, Canada, England and Australia. They’re looking for ways to boost attendance at their fairs.”The board of directors then filled me up with everything they felt I needed to know. When they had finally spent themselves, I asked, “What does your organization do, exactly?”The chairman answered, “The main benefit we offer our members is a monthly magazine that reports the gate attendance of all the different fairs. We also report which performers and attractions were the biggest draws. The manager in Des Moines whose fair is about to begin wants to know what happened at the Chicago fair that just ended.”We started walking from the green room toward the wing of the stage when we heard the emcee begin to welcome the crowd.“But doesn’t it take a long time to gather all the information, print it and get it to the members?” I asked.“Yes, and that’s a big frustration among the membership. They say the magazine is mostly old news by the time it arrives.”“You don’t have a website?”“Son,” he said as he stopped abruptly, “the average age of the people you’re about to address is 72 years old. Many of them are over 80. There’s no one in the house younger than 65. These just aren’t internet people.”At that moment, the emcee flung his arm toward me and shouted, “Roy H. Williams!” With a final glance at the chairman, I walked onto the stage and quietly took off my shoes. Standing there in my socks, I studied the crowd a minute. They looked at me as I looked at them.Then I raised my hand and said, “How many of you have used a search engine in the past 7 days to research a purchase you were considering?” Sixteen hundred hands went up simultaneously.I looked offstage at the chairman. The man was openly stunned. I think he may still be standing there.Pennie and I found a plastic bag at the end of our driveway last Tuesday. In it were 3 different Yellow Page books. This triggered a discussion between Pennie and me about icons of the past. We recalled the famous Yellow Pages ad of 1962, “Let Your Fingers Do The Walking.” We talked about all the different tape recorders we’d owned. I told her about the J.C. Penney Golden Pinto mini-bike I coveted in 1970. And then I dropped the bag of books into the garbage.The next morning I received an email from my client and friend, Vess Barnes:Roy,When do you predict the demise of Yellow Pages and their brand-associated websites? Is money spent there basically wasted? Have a great week.Aloha,VessShort Answer: Yes, money spent in the Yellow Pages (and their associated websites) is basically wasted.Have you ever Googled a product or service and had the search engine direct you to the online Yellow Pages listing for a company? I’ve never once experienced it. Search engines elevate the most commonly clicked links. Think about what this implies. (Okay, I'll spell it out for you: if people were using the digital Yellow Pages, those online Yellow Page ads would rank higher on Google and the other search engines. The ads don't rank high on Google because most people never see those ads.)During the past few years, a number of our service company clients (foundation repair specialists, plumbers, HVAC companies, etc.) have taken our advice and abandoned the yellow pages completely, moving virtually 100 percent of their ad budgets to the radio. They already have websites, of course. These businesses, without exception, are outdistancing their competitors in the area of new customer acquisition.I’m fairly certain my position will generate a firestorm of emails from people who feel passionately that I’m wrong. But there are others who will know I’m right.Are you in that second group? Do you have the courage to slash your Yellow Page budget? Would you like to learn how to craft ads for radio and the internet that will gain and hold the attention of a far-too-busy public? Join Chris Maddock, Jeff Sexton and me for a business-altering 2-day course at Wizard Academy, January 27-28: How to Write Ads for Radio and the Internet.Early birds will get the last of the free rooms in Engelbrecht House, Wizard Academy’s spectacular student mansion. Birds who are slow to decide will have to stay in a hotel. But don’t

Ask the wrong question and you will get the wrong answerMost businesses target an imaginary customer because someone – probably an advertising salesman – once asked, “Who is your customer?”Ask any businessperson, “Who is your customer?” and he or she will likely answer with a singular customer profile. Something like, “My customer is a career woman between 28 and 44 years old, college educated, making at least $45,000 per year. She has exceptional taste and style and wants to express her individuality through her purchases.”And her favorite author is Danielle Steele and she likes to take long walks on the beach in the moonlight, right?Ill-advised questions like, “Who is your customer?” must find their answers in that shadowland where memory meets imagination.Although it may seem logical on the surface, “Who is your customer?” is a dangerously worded question.Yes, I said “dangerously” worded.Your whole life you’ve been told, “We remember more of what we see than what we hear.” But it isn’t true. In fact, clinical tests have proven quite the opposite: the precise wording of what enters our ears profoundly alters what we see in our mind.The question, “Who is your customer?” conjures the mental image of an individual since “customer” isn’t plural. Ask that same business owner, “How many different types of people do you serve?” and you’ll get a radically different, far more valuable answer.So now you’re going to tell me the 28 to 44 year-old female customer profile you gave me was the average customer, right?Dr. Neil Postman, the celebrated Chair of the Department of Culture and Communications at New York University, has this to say about that: “We must keep in mind the story of the statistician who drowned while trying to wade across a river with an average depth of four feet. That is to say, in a culture that reveres statistics, we can never be sure what sort of nonsense will lodge in people’s heads… A question, even of the simplest kind, is not, and never can be unbiased. The structure of any question is as devoid of neutrality as its content. The form of a question may ease our way or pose obstacles. Or, when even slightly altered, it may generate antithetical answers, as in the case of the two priests who, being unsure if it was permissible to smoke and pray at the same time, wrote to the Pope for a definitive answer. One priest phrased the question ‘Is it permissible to smoke while praying?’ and was told it is not, since prayer should be the focus of one’s whole attention; the other priest asked if it is permissible to pray while smoking and was told that it is, since it is always permissible to pray.”In a Loftus & Palmer experiment reported by Dr. Alan Baddeley in his 1999 book, Essentials of Human Memory*, a group of people were asked to watch the video of a collision between two automobiles. Viewers who were asked, “How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” gave answers averaging 40.8 MPH and reported having seen broken glass. But viewers reported speeds averaging only 31.8 MPH and remembered no broken glass when asked, “How fast were the cars going when they made contact?” Keep in mind that each group had seen the same video only a few moments before these questions were asked. Control the question and you control the mental image it conjures.Create your marketing plan around the question, “Who is my customer?” and you’ll soon bump your head against a very low ceiling. The true profiles of “your customer” are like the characters in a Fellini movie; an unimaginable circus of people with conflicted personalities and unconscious buying motives.Proponents of hyper-targeting are quick to say, “You’re using the shotgun approach. I believe in putting the customer in the crosshairs of a rifle.”But we’re not hunting just one customer, are we? Hyper-targeters believe in fishing with a hook. But for best results, I suggest you find a net.If you want to grow your business, don’t target age, sex, income or education. Target according to buying motives. The question isn’t, “Who is my customer?” but rather, “Why does my customer buy my product? What does it do for him or her?” The answers to these questions will tell you exactly what to write in your ads.Congratulations. You found your net.Roy H. Williams

You want an example?Romulus Whitaker is saving the rainforest in Tamil Nadu, and with it, dozens of species of animals. The problem is complex, but so is Romulus Whitaker.Tim Bauer is fighting air pollution in the Philippines with a 2-stroke cylinder head that reduces hydrocarbon emissions by 89 percent. Thousands of engines must be retrofitted. The work is rugged, but so is Tim Bauer.Gomel Apaza teaches villagers about sustainable food production high in the Andes Mountains of Peru. His techniques are reliable, so the villagers live happier lives.Reliable. Rugged. Complex. Apaza, Bauer and Whitaker: making a difference.Making the world better for everyone.And the watch they wear is a Rolex: Reliable. Rugged. Complex.Because time is important to people who get things done.Your Rolex is waiting patiently for you to come and pick it up at Nevland Jewelers. I’m Dave Nevland and I’ve got a Rolex… for you.I wrote that ad for the “we” generation of 2009. Spotlighting the selfless servant as modern hero, the ad begs two questions:1. “Do you want to make the world a better place?”2. “Are you the kind of person who gets things done?”If so, you should be wearing a Rolex. Hand Dave Nevland some money.You might remember a quite different ad I wrote for the “me” generation 14 years ago:You are standing in the snow, five and one-half half miles above sea level, gazing at a horizon hundreds of miles away. It occurs to you that life here is very simple: you live or you die. No compromises, no whining, no second chances. This is a place constantly ravaged by winds and storm, where every ragged breath is an accomplishment. You stand on the uppermost pinnacle of the earth. This is the mountain they call Everest. Yesterday it was considered unbeatable. But that was yesterday. As Edmund Hillary surveyed the horizon from the peak of Mount Everest, he monitored the time on a wristwatch that had been specifically designed to withstand the fury of the world's most angry mountain. Rolex believed Sir Edmund would conquer the mountain, and especially for him they created the Rolex Explorer. In every life there is a Mount Everest to be conquered. When you have conquered yours, you'll find your Rolex waiting patiently for you to come and pick it up at Justice Jewelers. I'm Woody Justice and I've got a Rolex… for you.This ad features the individualist as hero and asks very different questions:1. “Are you the kind of person who wins against impossible odds?”2. “Can you take a minute to come pick up your trophy?”That Mount Everest ad was hugely successful 14 years ago, but We, the People, have changed. Have you noticed?Our transition from the Idealist “me” mindset to our current, Civic “we” way of thinking began right on schedule in 2003 and was essentially complete by the end of 2008.Right on schedule? Yep. We shift from one mindset to the other every 40 years and we've been doing it with the precision of a metronome for more than 4 centuries.Want to make your ads work better? Abandon the idea that your customers should reward themselves. Quit saying to them, “you deserve it.” Tell them instead that your product “makes a difference,” that it “helps,” and use the word “give” in a variety of applications, such as, “Give it a chance.”Sadly, the Apaza, Bauer and Whitaker ad won't be given a chance.Rolex didn't approve it.Sigh.Roy H. Williams

It's beginning to look not like ChristmasThey say you can never go home again, just like you can’t step into the same river twice. Things change.Have you ever been to a class reunion?“Cigars had burned low, and we were beginning to sample the disillusionment that usually afflicts old school friends who have met again as men and found themselves with less in common than they had believed they had.”– James Hilton, Lost Horizon“My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could not say it, my old friends wanted me gone so that I could take my proper place in the pattern of remembrance – and I wanted to go for the same reason.”– John Steinbeck, Travels With CharleyYou’re probably thinking, “Roy and Pennie must have gone back to their hometown for a High School class reunion.”Nope. The last class reunion we attended was nearly 20 years ago.I’m not writing these things for me. I’m writing them for you.We Americans have idyllic, Norman Rockwell-type expectations of the holidays.A TV show about a bar in Boston began with a theme song, “Where everybody knows your name. And they’re always glad you came.” And when overweight, unemployed, nothing-special Norm Peterson walked into that bar, everyone looked up and shouted “Norm!” Each of us secretly wants to be Norm Peterson. We want to be known. Cheers became one of the most popular shows in the history of television.“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”– Maya AngelouIn his book, The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton describes “home” as we tend to remember it:“The house has grown into a knowledgeable witness. It has been party to early seductions, it has watched homework being written, it has observed swaddled babies freshly arrived from hospital, it has been surprised in the middle of the night by whispered conferences in the kitchen. It has experienced winter evenings when its windows were as cold as bags of frozen peas and midsummer dusks when its brick walls held the warmth of newly baked bread. It has provided psychological sanctuary. It has been a guardian of identity. Over the years, its owners have returned from periods away and, on looking around them, remembered who they were.”We go home with an idealized memory of a place where everyone listens and cares and loves us for who we are, a place where we're known and everything is okay.And what we find when we get there is our family. We’re never quite prepared for the selfishness of Carol, the laziness of Lee, the assertiveness of Sarah and the insensitivity of Bob. And Gary, well, he’s just a jackass.Pennie says Chapel Dulcinea receives a large number of wedding cancellations right after the holidays. Evidently, “meeting the family” was enough to break the engagement. Then I heard Dr. Grant tell a roomful of students that clinical psychologists see a spike in requests for counseling right after the holidays as well.But then Dr. Grant said something profound: “The opposite of depression isn’t ‘Yippee!’ The opposite of depression is gratitude.”So this year I have a plan: Rather than trying to have a good Christmas, I'm going to make sure that everyone around me has one. My plan is to be silently thankful. Constantly, consciously thankful.I'm going to see past Carol's selfishness and like her anyway. I'm going to accommodate the laziness of Lee. l plan to submit to the assertiveness of Sarah and understand the insensitivity of Bob. I'm even going to seek out Gary and show an interest in whatever he wants to talk about.If my plan is to serve rather than be served, and to give understanding rather than receive it, how can I be disappointed? Are these things in my nature?No. Not at all.Might I crash and burn?Absolutely.Will I tell you how it all turns out?Count on it. Monday, December 28 in the rabbit hole.Wish me luck.Roy H. Williams

Tom Hennen has a line in his poem, The Life of a Day, that says,“We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, ‘no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for,’ and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when we are convinced, our lives will start for real.”That line is a little bit frightening because you read it and realize you’re guilty. You’ve been waiting for that day when your life will start “for real.”The trouble with life is that it’s just so daily.I share this with you because I’ve been thinking about my two grandfathers who are dead and my father who is likewise and I’ve come to the obvious conclusion:Live while you have the chance.“Papa was a rolling stone. Wherever he laid his hat was his home…”– The Temptations, 1971In the final moments of his life, my father scribbled a note for me to find. In barely legible pencil he scrawled, “All the little things in life add up to your life. If you don't get it right then nothing else matters. It gets lonely in the promised land by yourself.”My Dad died lonely, I think, because he never made deep commitments. My father’s confession of his loneliness makes me sad, but his scribbled note tells me he wanted me to learn from his mistake.I meet a lot of people who sigh deeply and tell me they’re looking for their passion, something to set their souls on fire and send beams of light shining out through their eyes.But the people with light shining from their eyes know this:Passion does not produce commitment.Commitment produces passion.Solomon, that wise king, spent years of his life searching for passion. In chapter 9 of the chronicle of that search, the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.”People read that and think Solomon is saying, “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die,” but that's not it at all. He's saying, “Throw your whole heart into whatever you do. Live while you have the chance.”This is my Holiday gift to you,I hope you will receive it:Find something that needs to be doneand throw yourself headlong into it.Let todaybe the dayyour life beginsfor real.Roy H. Williams

Peg the Needle on the Relevance Meter If You Want to See ResultsAds are often written under the assumption that we can get people to care about things they don’t really care about. But this approach rarely succeeds.Traditional ad-think says:1.   Target the right people2.   Leverage the right media (visual media for visual products, etc.)3.   Use creativity in delivering your message.But nontraditional ad-think gets far better results:1.   What you say matters most of all. Speak to a felt need. Good advertising isn’t about the product or the company that sells it. Good ads explain how the customer’s life will be different.EXAMPLE:Don’t say, “Dr. Bill Dipweasel was voted gentlest dentist in Saginaw County.”Say, “Get your teeth fixed. You’ll be more attractive and your confidence will skyrocket. People will treat you differently.”2.   How you say it is critical. Clarity is more important than creativity. Talk like people. People don’t say, “I’ve elected to have cosmetic dentistry.” They say, “I’ve decided to get my teeth fixed.” (Dr. Bill Dipweasel will give you push-back on this because he doesn’t think “get your teeth fixed” sounds professional. Also, he wants the ad to be about him.)3.   Deliver your message using whatever media offers the best psychological environment. In what moments would a candidate for cosmetic dentistry be most open to the message we crafted about being treated differently?Advertising works best when it speaks to what customers already care about. This is called “speaking to a felt need.” I've never met anyone that's had a secret, unmet desire to go to the dentist. But tens of millions of us secretly wish we were more attractive, more confident, and that people treated us differently. Capiche?Good ads aren’t about the company that’s paying for the ad. Good ads are about the reader, the listener, the viewer of the ad. This is especially true when writing classified ads for employment.A man attending a class at Wizard Academy confessed that, working part time, he had made more than $850,000 in employee placement fees as the direct result of a single chapter he had read in my second book. I congratulated him on having had the perception to recognize the potential in that chapter.Last week I received an email about that same chapter in my second book from William, an Acadgrad living in St. Petersburg, Russia.Dear Roy,I received an email from my business partner (Thatcher) earlier today, telling me that we had found the perfect applicant for an opening we have in our company. I crafted the job ad based on one of your chapters in the second Wizard of Ads book.This is what I replied to him: “She's perfect. The Wizard of Ads is a genius, and this girl is just what we want, don't you think? I mention the Wizard because I used an article of his on writing job ads for that one. He said the person we were looking for would recognise themselves in the ad, and we wouldn't be swamped with tedious junky mass-applications. And indeed that's what happened.”So thank you, Roy, for all your amazing free advice; I have yet to meet this girl, but judging by the application, I think she should fit in well.Eternally gratefully yours,WilliamThat chapter, by the way, is called “Writing Classified Ads for Employment.” It's chapter 76 in a 101-chapter book called Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller.Here's an example of the strange type of classified ad that always gets superior results.William, I'm glad you found the perfect employee. I look forward to your next visit to Austin.Yours,Roy H. Williams

Big Brother is Alive and Well My son’s cell phone rang. He answered, “Hello?”“I’d like to speak to Booty Williams, please.”“This is Booty.”[long pause] “Is your name really Booty Williams?”“That’s right. Booty Call Williams.”“That’s awesome.”The call was from a telemarketing firm that had purchased my son’s contact information from a magazine to which he had subscribed. My son is among the millions of Americans who see questionnaires as an opportunity to create prize-winning fiction.That incident happened 14 years ago, yet Pennie and I continue to receive mail addressed to Booty C. Williams. Booty’s evidently-Irish twin brother, Shenanigans Williams, also resides at our address.According to the data purchased by the telemarketers, Booty and Shenanigans are both are highly educated and incredibly wealthy.I finally signed up on Facebook. Sort of. Do you remember giving Facebook your cell phone number? In return for giving it up to them, you no longer had to type those twisted, hard-to-read security words, proving that you were a person and not a computer. Call me paranoid, call me crotchety, call me Rod Wilson (Facebook does,) but don’t call me on my cell phone. I trust the privacy policy of Facebook about as far as I can kick a watermelon.I will, therefore, continue to type those twisted security words, thereby proving that I, Rod Wilson, am a person (albeit an imaginary one,) and not a computer! God bless America.What happens in Vegas no longer stays in Vegas.In the futuristic society described by George Orwell in his book, 1984, everyone is under constant surveillance by the authorities. Citizens are reminded of this by the phrase “Big Brother is watching you.” Immediately upon publication of that book in 1949, the term “Big Brother” entered into general usage to describe any overly-inquisitive or overly-controlling authority figure or attempts by the government to increase surveillance.Friend, Big Brother is alive and well. And he is us.Who needs private investigators and background checks when you can gather eyewitness accounts, signed confessions and photographic evidence with just a few clicks?Kirsten Valle writes, “The line between private and work lives is blurring in an era where blogs, social networking sites and party photo sites are increasingly popular. Employers are scanning the Internet for information on job applicants and even checking up on existing employees. Companies worry about photos showing drug or alcohol abuse, racially offensive comments and revealing clothing – anything that could damage a company's reputation.”People are losing their jobs and their marriages because of things that are posted on social media websites.On a more positive note, I mentioned in last week’s memo that Twitter and Facebook had lifted online research to a whole new level. Here’s a bit of Twitter eavesdropping I did – without even meaning to – while researching Facebook’s highly touted, hyper-targetable online ads:RT @danmartell: Facebook has a crazy awesome TARGETED ad platform. If you don't use it – you're kind of crazy! http://www.facebook.com/adsDrewmack responded:Facebook ads are a great way to invest your ad $ if you aren't one of those people who care about results. http://bit.ly/2Nb50qThat link provided by Drewmack proved interesting. You should click it later.Advertisers are hungry for trackable, direct-response “cause and effect” advertising. Deep down, their fantasy is to be able to say, “Every time I spend (x) dollars on advertising, I make (x) dollars in profit.” Advertisers like to think of advertising as a giant gumball machine: “You put in your ad budget, you crank the handle, and out come the results.”And advertising salespeople have convinced most advertisers that “reaching the right people is the key.”But success is more often determined by how you crank the handle.Specifically:(1.) How relevant is your message?Are you talking about what people actually care about, or only what you wish they would care about?(2.) In what psychological environment was your message delivered?EXAMPLE 1: Everyone knows that more people listen to the radio during morning drive than at any other time during the day. But people during morning drive are thinking about what awaits them at work. It’s during the drive home that they’re thinking about what awaits them at home. Consequently, radio ads tend to work better during afternoons and evenings.EXAMPLE 2: Facebook ads allow you to target with laser-like precision the customer profiles you want to reach. But you’ll get better results with keyword-targeted Google adwords because Google ads appear when the imperfect customer is in looking-for-answers mode. Facebook ads appear when the perfect customer is in connecting-with-friends, wasting-time mode.I realize it’s counterintuitive, but “When” is often

Back when I was an advertising salesman, business owners would often dismiss me by saying, “I believe in word-of-mouth.” Then with a smug, self-satisfied look, they’d say it again, as though the words made them feel fine and righteous. “Word of mouth is the best form of advertising.”I almost opened The Word-of-Mouth Advertising Agency in 1984. My plan was to hire people to ride up and down in elevators of tall buildings and say things like, “Have you tried that new café over on Third Street? I hear it’s really good.”My fantasy response was to say to business owners, “You believe in word-of-mouth? Great! That’s what I sell!”Today you can invest in a form of quasi-advertising similar to my elevator plan. We hear about it everywhere we go: “Social media is the new marketing.”But it isn't true.Lest you think me out of touch, let me remind you that I accurately predicted the impact of social media in my “40-Year Pendulum of Society” presentation in December 2003, long before Facebook, MySpace and Twitter came into being. In January, 2004, I made the same presentation in Stockholm, Sweden, to the great advertising agencies of Europe. From there I took it to Sydney, Australia, then on to Canada and the United States.Social media is not “the new marketing.”Now before you get all worked up and send me an email explaining why you respectfully disagree, give me a moment to share my definitions for 3 commonly used terms: (I've learned over the years that many disagreements revolve around the lack of any definition of terms.)1. Advertising is what you buy from the sales department of any media.2. Public Relations are what you get for free from the news department of any media.3. Social media is word-of-mouth empowered by internet and cell phone technologies.(Based on these definitions, the purchase of targeted ads on Facebook would be classified as advertising, not as social media.)REUTERS – Oct 8, 2009: “Three-quarters of small businesses say they have not found sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn helpful for generating business leads or expanding business in the past year, according to a survey conducted for Citibank Small Business of 500 U.S. businesses with fewer than 100 employees.”If you haven't yet invested a few hundred hours in a social media campaign for your business, let REUTERS and me save you the time: Three-quarters of the businesses who have tried it were disappointed in the results.Are there business examples of success using social media? Of course there are:1. Using Twitter, businesses are building lists of bargain hunters who want to be the first to know about new offerings. Announce a highly desirable product at a highly desirable price – or free – and you can draw quite a crowd. But that’s always been true, hasn’t it?2. Barack Obama’s skillful use of social media helped propel him to the presidency. His secret? From the beginnings of their campaigns, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were both sending tweets on Twitter. The difference is that when Obama had 44,596 subscribers following his tweets, he was following 46,252 others. Hillary was following no one. Imagine how those 46,252 people felt: “Hillary Clinton wants me to hear her opinions. Barack Obama wants to hear my opinions.”3. Feasibility studies are hugely enhanced by social media. A single question, “Who likes the flavor of bacon?” resulted in 35,000 possible customers, 10,000 inquiries and 3,500 sales of Bacon Salt.4. Entertainment has always triggered word-of-mouth. People will stand in the lobby and text their opinions to their friends before ever leaving the theater. Hollywood studios are realizing that opening day is the only day that can be helped by advertising. After that, the movie's future is in the hands of the viewers. Are you in the entertainment business?Bottom Line:1.   Not every business is equally suited to leverage social media.2.   Many businesses are jumping onto the social media bandwagon without understanding the limitations of the vehicle. 3.   Social media is not a replacement for advertising.4.   The most universal benefit of social media is that you can search your own company name (on Facebook, etc.) and find out what's being said about you.5.   The business benefits of social media often fall short of an acceptable return on the time invested.   6.   Create ecstatically happy customers and they’ll spread the word through social media. Create disgruntled customers and they’ll spread bad word even faster.7.   Focus your attention on your customers. Social media will take care of itself.Now go get ready for Christmas.Roy H. Williams

In 1869, Monet was painting at La Grenouillere when he realized that the color of an object is modified:1. by the light in which it is seen,2. by reflections from other objects, and3. by contrast with juxtaposed colors.Monet translated his observations into the glowing phenomenon we know as French Impressionism.Remember: “The color of an object is modified by the light in which it is seen.”Sunlight contains the full spectrum of visible light waves. When full-spectrum light falls on an object, the pigments in that object absorb (subtract) all the light waves except the ones you see. An orange appears orange because the orange light alone is not absorbed, but reflected back to your eyes.The primaries of Subtractive Color Theory (reflected light) are red, yellow and blue. This is useful when mixing paints, pigments and ink. CMYK is Cyan (blue) Magenta (red) Yellow (yellow) and K (black.)So why do televisions and computers have adjustments for red, green and blue? What happened to the yellow?AProjected light doesn’t use pigments, but creates color by adding light waves together. Red light and green light combine to make yellow light. Go figure.The primaries of Additive Color Theory are Red, Green and Blue. (Click the thumbnail of the RGB wheel to see enlarged RGB and CMYK color wheels along with a short, introductory video on color relationships.)Pennie and I met Nathan Bludworth while we were climbing a mountain of boxes at a wholesale electrical supply company whose owner had skipped town. If we could just figure out what we needed for the academy's new tower, we could buy it from the landlord for pennies on the dollar. But we had no idea what we needed.Noticing our confusion, Nathan – the only other customer in the place – said, “Do you guys need some help?”He looked friendly enough and he seemed to know what he was doing, so I blurted it out. “There's a certain kind of light above the tables at Houston's Restaurant that put a pool of light on each tabletop, but leave the chairs mostly in the dark. Those lights create an an amazing atmosphere we've never seen anywhere else. We're just trying to figure out how they did it.”Nathan smiled and stuck out his hand. “I'm Nathan Bludworth. I designed and installed the lights at Houston's.”Nathan Bludworth paints with light, just like Monet painted with color.The Color Rendering Index (CRI) measures color rendering from light sources with respect to natural sunlight. Natural sunlight equals 100 CRI, the best light available. So the closer the CRI number is to 100, the more closely colors will appear as they do in sunlight. Lights with the highest CRI numbers produce the clearest, most vibrant and natural-looking colors.Electric lights can vary in “color temperature” between 2,000 degrees Kelvin (warm) and 9,500 degrees Kelvin (cold.) Low-temperature lighting is progressively warmer (more red/yellow), while high-temperature lighting grows progressively colder (more blue). Natural sunlight – 100 CRI – is 5,000 degrees Kelvin.If the light contains no red wavelengths, the objects on which that light shines will not be able to reflect red back to your eyes…Monet was right. “The color of an object is modified by the light in which it is seen.”By using different bulbs – 2700 K, 3500 K, 5000 K and 6400 K – and shining them from different angles, Nathan Bludworth makes nature dance and glow and change colors as you move through it.Nathan is one of those people that Wizard Academy Cognoscenti call, “our brand of crazy.”You might meet Nathan during your next trip to Wizard Academy. If you're lucky, he'll teach you how to use light to give your customers whatever feelings you want them to have.Do we have the coolest business school in the world, or what?Roy H. Williams

Business midgets focus on profit margin, “I can sell these for double my cost!” But business giants focus on turn, “How many more would I sell if I lowered my price?”Retailers call it “inventory turn.” Restaurateurs call it “table turn.” Either way, it’s a measurement of how efficiently a business uses its assets.Inventory turn tells the retailer how many times he sold and replaced his inventory over a period of time. Table turn tells the restaurateur how many times he emptied and filled his restaurant during a single mealtime.Turn is Sales divided by Inventory.Bob and Samantha are competitors. Bob makes a 100 percent markup on everything he sells. Samantha adds only a 50 percent markup. Which of them has the better business?Your instincts tell you Bob makes more money but actually, it’s Samantha. Bob carries an average inventory of 6 million dollars and sells each of his items an average of once a year at twice the price he paid for it: 12 million dollars in sales with an annual gross profit of 6 million dollars. Bob “turned” his inventory once.Samantha carries an average inventory of just 1 million dollars. She sells and replaces each item an average of 12 times a year, adding only a 50 percent markup each time. Samantha does 18 million dollars in sales and her annual gross profit is 6 million dollars, exactly the same as Bob’s.But Samantha turned her inventory 12 times.Both retailers made 6 million dollars but Bob is slowly going broke. Samantha is quickly becoming rich and powerful.Bob invests 6 million to make a gross profit of 6 million a year. This means Bob has to make a 6 million dollar investment every time he wants to open a new store. And Bob’s inventory is getting out-of-date because he has to sit on it for a whole year before he can replace it. This problem compounds itself each year.Samantha invests just 1 million dollars to make 6 million. She can open a new store with just a million dollars invested in inventory. But wait, it gets better.Bob bought only 6 million dollars worth of product last year. Samantha bought 12 million. And Samantha is opening new stores. Lots of them. This is what makes Samantha powerful. Soon the suppliers will be charging Samantha lower prices than they charge Bob because Samantha is a much better customer. And the suppliers will give her 90 days to pay but Bob must continue paying immediately.Do you realize what just happened? Not only can Samantha open a new store with an investment of just 1 million dollars in inventory, she can sell that inventory for 1.5 million dollars each month for 3 months – putting a total of 4.5 million into her bank account – before she has to pay the first million dollars for the first month’s inventory. This leaves 3.5 million dollars sitting in Samantha’s bank account, allowing her to inventory 3 new stores, each of which will be able to fund 3 additional stores in just 90 days. Samantha has opened 12 stores in just 6 months. If she keeps it up, she’ll have 432 stores at the end of the year. And Samantha started with just 1 million dollars in inventory while Bob started with 6 million.Bob likes to boast that he offers “6 times the selection,” but the public knows Bob charges $100 for the same item Samantha sells for just $75.Care to make a guess how this is going to turn out?The moral of the story is this: you can’t get a high inventory turn without offering the public what they really want. In my opinion, the person who selects a company’s inventory is the most important person in that company. I could be wrong.But I don't think so.Roy H. Williams

Every life has a scoreboard and how you choose to keep score is up to you.How are you measuring success?I’ve known men and women who measure success by their ability to attract the opposite sex. You’ve met these people, too, haven’t you?Some people measure success by their ability to inflict pain in the lives of others. Bullies, vandals, website hackers, internet virus creators and bad policemen are tragic examples. The fact that they momentarily control our time, emotions and energy gives them a perverted sense of power. I know of no cure for this sickness.And then there are the many who measure success by the acquisition of things that cost money. I think this definition covers most of us.John Steinbeck gave us a way to identify the scoreboard we’re using to measure our success. All one needs to do is ask oneself, “What are my plans for the future?”“A rich life is rich in plans. If they don't come off, they are still a little bit realized. If they do, they may be disappointing. That's why a trip described becomes better the greater the time between the trip and the telling. I believe too that if you can know a man's plans, you know more about him than you can in any other way.”– John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden LettersToday I submit these additional measurements of success for your consideration:1. Am I sufficiently curious?“Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”– Albert Einstein    2. How little do I need to be happy?“It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.”– Seneca the younger, (3BC-65AD)3. Have I proven that I care?“That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.”– Aimee Bender, from her short story, Tiger Mending    4. How many lives have I made better today?“In a completely rational society, teachers would be at the tip of the pyramid, not near the bottom. In that society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers, and the rest of us would have to settle for something less. The job of passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor anyone could have.”– Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? p. 217Are you satisfied with the scoreboard you’ve been using to measure success? Remember, you alone get to choose. To measure success according to a scoreboard thrust upon you by another is tantamount to psychic slavery.Don’t be anyone’s slave. Measure success by your own scoreboard. The point of today’s memo is to encourage you to choose your scoreboard consciously rather than unconsciously.When you’ve identified your personal scoreboard, come to Wizard Academy and we’ll help you run up the score.Roy H. Williams

If it takes money to make money, how does one make money when he has no money at the start?A person without capital has nothing to leverage but his or her time. This is why millions of Americans wear the handcuffs of hourly wages.When I was 14, my life sold for $1.60 an hour. At 18, an hour in the life of Roy H. Williams was selling for three dollars and thirty-five cents. People all around me talked about “the security of a steady paycheck” as though steady and unchanging were a good thing.But I found a way of escape.“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”– Howard Thurman (1900-1981)If you want to slip the handcuffs of hourly wages, you must figure out how to be paid according to your accomplishments. “How long did it take?” isn’t the question you want to answer, but rather, “What is the value of my achievement?”People paid by the hour are paid for their activities. People paid royalties, license fees, or sales commissions are paid for their accomplishments.Average people are average because they cling to an avoidance of discomfort. There is a truth – a profound, 4-word truth – known to every successful person: “Pain is my friend.”Pain is an informant, a sentinel, a lookout blowing a bugle. Pain tells us when something is wrong and indicates the location of the problem.“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” – Niels Bohr“Mediocrity has a way of keeping demons from the door.” – Marie AranaComfort leads to complacency. Solomon spoke of the dangers of going with the flow when he said,“There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”Solomon followed that statement with an immediate, sharp contrast:“The laborer's appetite works for him; his hunger drives him on.” (Proverbs 16:25-26)Wait a minute. Solomon warns us the direction most easily taken – “going with the flow” – is a road that leads to nowhere. Hunger, according to Solomon, is your ally.For what do you hunger?Are you willing to risk embarrassment?Financial loss?Damage to your reputation?Let your hunger lead you. Let it drive you on.People stay in the box because it’s safe there. And then they talk about needing to think “outside the box.”“There be tigers outside the box, matey. And ogres and monsters and people who might laugh at ye. Are ye sure ye be wantin’ out o’ that box?”I have no idea where that pirate came from.Here, after much rambling, are my points:1. The times cry out for change.2. We know change is needed because we feel pain.3. Change makes us uneasy because we cannot see the future.4. Financial death is the destination of those who refuse to change.If you have no problems, if you feel no pain, carry on. Good job. Well done. As you were.If you need to make changes but you’re not sure what to change, when to change it, or how to implement that change, consider a trip to Austin to spend a day with the Wizards.Change opens the door to a brighter future.Are you willing?Roy H. Williams

After 4 Years of Fighting ItDid you recently – finally – begin to receive the Monday Morning Memo after having subscribed some time ago? We’ve been trying to get it to you, really we have, but the internet gods have not been kind to us.We've known for 4 years that thousands of you have been unable to receive the Monday Morning Memo through no fault of your own.Today I’ll tell you how we gained the gods’ good graces. Perhaps we found answers you can use.If you manage a business, two things are certain:1. You have someone in your life you consider to be an expert in all things internet.2. That person doesn’t know nearly as much as you think they do.You and I (and most other people) believe urban legends about the internet because the legends make perfect sense. Here are a few we were told:“The ISPs have you blacklisted. You need to get white-listed.”Reality: We never found an ISP that maintains a list of any color. Email rejections are based on codes within an ISP’s system and are mostly automatic and unmonitored. The ISPs rejecting us didn’t know they were rejecting us.“Someone turned you in as a spammer to one of the SpamCop services.”Reality: Never in 15 years have we sent an unsolicited email. Nonetheless, to keep an enthusiastic subscriber from adding a friend’s address without that friend’s permission, we implemented a double opt-in system 4 years ago to make it impossible to subscribe any address other than your own. Consequently, spam cops love us.“Your emails contain too much promotional language.”Reality: The language of our emails was not the problem.“Your emails contain too many hyperlinks.”Reality: The hyperlinks were not the problem.“You’re using .jpg images. You need to switch to flash images.”Reality: jpg images were not the problem.“You need to use rotating servers.”Reality: True spammers use this technique to periodically change identities. We were able to solve our problem without having to resort to this extreme technique.Urban legends will keep you as confused as a termite in a yo-yo. My head was spinning. I felt like throwing up. I needed to find an outbound internet marketing tool similar to On Target, Jeff and Bryan Eisenberg’s inbound internet marketing tool that tells you exactly where the problems are on your website.Jeff and Bryan were unaware of any such outbound tool. Likewise, none of the other internet experts in my circle had never heard of any concrete, outbound marketing tools.When I tell you what the problem was, you’re going to say, “Of course, I could have told you that.” But hindsight is 20/20. The truth, once revealed, is always simple.If you think you know the answer, write it down. Seriously, write it down. The clearest memory is no match for pale ink. In a moment I’ll give you a link to the answer and you can compare it to your guess.I’ve written New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling business books but I was powerless to solve my email dilemma until someone finally came along with a tool – a software system – for identifying and fixing email deliverability problems. BANG. Facts and details to the rescue. No hearsay. No guesswork. Problem solved.I fell into the answer when Sean Taylor walked into my office and asked if he could buy the hot, new 1-page shopping cart for WizardAcademyPress.com. Sean said he’d been researching ecommerce software for a long time and the hands-down winner was from a New Zealand-based company called Interspire. I told Sean I wanted someone from Interspire to come and spend a few hours with us. Sean said I was being ridiculous; the software was only a few hundred dollars. I told him to make the call anyway.“Your boss is being ridiculous,” the consultant said. “This software is only a few hundred dollars.”Sean said, “I know, but I need you to ask your boss anyway.”The CEO of Interspire – Eddie Machaalani – just happened to be visiting his U.S. sales office that day and when he heard his sales consultant telling his manager about my request, Eddie said, “I was in the audience when the Wizard of Ads came to Sydney, Australia, 5 years ago. I’ve always wanted to meet him. Ask this Sean fellow what day Mr. Williams would like us to be there.”If you want to know our problem and its solution, click here.If none of this has interested you, I promise to make it up to you in the rabbit hole. You can go there now by clicking the image of the beagle and the dice at the top of the page.Aroo.Roy H. Williams

The 2009 Labor Day Message of the Wizard of AdsWhen I was a boy, I noticed that people often remember things as having been better – or worse – than they really were. I would listen to friends and family and think, “That’s not what happened at all. I was there.”Call me jaded, but I came to believe that the average American is mildly self-delusional, forever attempting to sculpt a reality that matches their view of the world.“It is a wonder to see how, when a man greatly desires something and strongly attaches himself to it in his imagination, he has the impression at every moment that whatever he hears and sees argues in favor of that thing.”– Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474-1566)Most people believe, deep in their hearts, that wealthy people are happy and poor people are sad. Am I right? So one day when I was twelve, I looked at my circumstances – broken home, no father, no money, bad neighborhood – and realized that people in the future would assume I had an unhappy childhood. So I looked into a mirror and smiled as I said out loud, “Never let them convince you of it.”Growing up poor gives you marvelous advantages. The people who love you are unable to hand you the things your friends take for granted, so you develop quick resourcefulness and humble audacity. Picking up pop bottles for the return deposit. Auctions. Auto salvages. Garage sales. Odd jobs. Bartering, trading, learning from your mistakes.Resourcefulness and audacity. Priceless.The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur is a recently published study of the personality traits of the founders of 549 high-growth companies. Funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and conducted by researchers from Duke University, USC and the University of Akron, the study found that 94 percent of those high-growth entrepreneurs came from middle-class, lower-middle-class, or “upper-lower-class” backgrounds.Hah. Told you so.Money, stability, and family connections will help you get into the best fraternities at the best schools. Then, if you’re lucky, you can graduate and go to work for someone who had the advantage of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks.“I felt I would live a long, lonely, useless life and die alone and unmissed…This is what happens to the overachieving but essentially useless children of parents who raised their children to do well on tests but failed to equip them with the poison-tipped spurs of true ambition.”– Jon Fasman, The Geographer's Library, p.5Would you like to give your children the poison-tipped spurs of true ambition? Would you like to use your own spurs to climb the slippery mountain of Success?I’ve spent the past 30 years working exclusively with self-made men and women; rule-breakers, innovators, rocket riders. Several of these have built empires worth tens of millions of dollars. They look like everyone else. But they don't think like everyone else.Want to learn how high-growth entrepreneurs think? Come to our 3-day Bootstrap Business Boot Camp, Sept. 22-24. We've priced it cheap because you're not rich yet. (We're counting on you remembering the difference we made when you ride your rocket to the sky.)The campus of Wizard Academy has been built entirely through the gifts of grateful alumni. We've never sought or accepted government money or grants from big foundations. This is a family thing.And you are family.We're with you all the way.Roy H. Williams

The Alligator and the MockingbirdFew people are as tiresome as the person who lives life in a minor key. Pessimistic people remind me of Eeyore the donkey:“I don’t think we can do it.”“This idea will never work.”“It’s probably going to rain.”On the other hand, few people are as terrifying as Eeyore’s opposite. Have you ever known a person with Fatal Optimism?“If we just think happy thoughts, everything will turn out okay.”“I am a child of the Universe. I have a right to be here.”“I’m a winner. I can do it. I’m special.”  I’m a proponent of boldness. But I also believe you should count the cost and be willing to pay the price. The comedians at Despair.com spoke the truth when they said, “FAILURE: Because sometimes your very best just isn’t good enough.”In her essay, How Positive Thinking Wrecked the Economy, Barbara Ehrenreich writes,“Besides greed, another habit of mind should get its share of the blame: the delusional optimism of mainstream, all-American, positive thinking.” Barbara writes, “Everyone knows that you won't get a job paying more than $15 an hour unless you're a ‘positive person’ — doubt-free, uncritical, and smiling — and no one becomes a CEO by issuing warnings of possible disaster.”How do we become infected with Fatal Optimism? Malcolm Gladwell says it happens slowly.“As novices, we don’t trust our judgment. Then we have some success, and begin to feel a little surer of ourselves. Finally, we get to the top of our game and succumb to the trap of thinking that there’s nothing we can’t master. As we get older and more experienced, we overestimate the accuracy of our judgments, especially when the task before us is difficult and when we’re involved with something of great personal importance.”In the early part of WWI,the British thought:1. The Turks would lose at Gallipoli,2. Belgium would be an obstacle to Germany’s advance and3. Russia was sure to crush the Germans in the east.The French believed their army would be at the Rhine within six weeks of the start of the war. Meanwhile the Germans were predicting the same amount of time would take the German army to the outskirts of Paris.Each of these predictions was horribly, tragically wrong.Do you remember all the people who claimed we would be “out of Iraq” within 30 days of the invasion? I knew it was politically dangerous and that it would cost me friends, clients and money, but I responded by voicing my concern that we were launching the next Viet Nam. More than a few people snorted and said to me, “You’re a fool if you think we’re going to fight this war with men. This will be a pushbutton war.” And then they accused me of “not supporting our troops.” That was six and a half years ago. I wonder how many of those troops wish I had shouted louder, longer, sooner?But today’s memo isn’t about politics, it’s about business. I included the Iraqi War memory because, other than the recent mortgage meltdown, I couldn’t think of a more stinging example of overconfidence than our invasion of Iraq. (Yes, I’m fully aware this comment will anger some people. But when a man volunteers to wear the handcuffs of public opinion, his words become flaccid and his advice becomes suspect. I don’t want to be that man.)In 2004, Oxford University Press published a book by psychologist Mark Fenton-O’Creevy. Too few people read it. That prophetic book was the result of a 3-year study O’Creevy conducted involving 118 managers and traders at four leading investment banks.One of O’Creevy’s tests involved a computer program that mimicked the ups and downs of the stock market. As the line moved across the screen, the traders were asked to press a series of buttons, which, they were told, might or might not affect the course of the line. At the end of each session, the traders were asked to rate their effectiveness in moving the line upward. Keep in mind the buttons had no effect whatsoever on the line. But each of the stock traders was convinced he had figured out exactly which combinations of buttons made the line go up. (Psychologists call this “magical thinking“ and it's often associated with schizophrenia.)Overconfidence is the rocket fuel of incredibly dumb decisions.As my older and wiser friend Loren Lewis used to say when I was 17, “Don’t let your alligator mouth overload your mockingbird ass.”Be bold, but count the cost.Never assume you can't lose.And remember:Failure is a temporary condition.So don't let it scare you.Roy H. Williams

Or, The Secret of Being DiscoveredThe warm-up band is leaving the stage amidst thunderous applause, bowing and waving to the crowd, throwing kisses, fists pumping into the air. Now it’s time for the headliner, the living legends, the singers you came to see.A drummer takes the stage and launches into a repeating musical figure. He’s joined by five other musicians who enter one-by-one, each adding his instrument into the mix. These aren’t the legends, this is only their band, but the repetitious groove is infectious and easy to follow.The audience begins to clap in rhythm. One of the musicians breaks into a variation. The crowd loves it. The music is cooking, the crowd is jumping, the walls are bulging outwards when a sharp-dressed man takes the stage. “Are you ready to have a good time!”The crowd shouts yes.Cupping his hand to his ear, the vamp leans forward and screams from the bottom of his soul, “I said, I said, I said, are you ready to have a GOOD time!”The crowd shouts even louder.Now the music climbs toward orgasm as the vamp screams about the exploits, the miracles, the wonders this crowd is about to see. Pacing back and forth he loses his jacket and takes off his tie.The singers you’ve come to see aren’t mortal. No, this is Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer. Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. Strawberry, Vanilla and Chocolate. Finally, at just the right moment, with sweat streaming off his face, the vamp shouts the name of the living legends as they explode onto the stage amidst a cacophony of fireworks and smoke.Then the vamp disappears. His job is done. The Poodle has taken the stage.Never underestimate the importance of the vamp.The show is never really about Jay Leno, David Letterman or Conan O’Brien. Sure they do a monologue to warm up the crowd, but the show is really about their guests. Jay, David and Conan are just famous vamps. (Did you ever notice how the band plays as each poodle comes onto the show? I told you 2 weeks ago, “Control the music and you control the mood of the room.” A vamp keeps music at his fingertips.)The vamp is the ringmaster in every circus, the selfless promoter of some one or some thing other than himself. He can work onstage or offstage, under the lights or behind the curtain, but crazy success can’t happen without him.Colonel Parker vamped Elvis from offstage. Don King vamped Muhammad Ali from the spotlight. Ron Popeil vamped the Veg-o-matic from the television screen. John the Baptist vamped Jesus from the wilderness.Did the inclusion of Jesus in that list make you uncomfortable? I’m sorry. Allow me to explain.If you believe, as I do, that Jesus is who he claimed to be, then we ought to pay attention to what Jesus said was impossible. “You cannot vamp for yourself.” Actually, he said it this way: “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that bears witness of me…” (John 5)Then, speaking of John the Baptist, Jesus said, “This is the one about whom it is written: 'I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’” (Matthew 11)Forgive me. It’s not my intention to teach a Bible lesson, I just wanted to point out that God knew his son was going to need a vamp, so he sent John the Baptizer ahead of him.Trust me, you’re going to need a vamp, too.Talented people live anonymous lives in every city, town and village, wishing they could only “be discovered.” But “discovery” isn’t what’s needed. What’s missing is a vamp, an advance man, a promoter, someone who is willing to work behind the scenes, fully dedicated to your success.Here’s the good news: your vamp doesn’t have to be powerful, knowledgeable or “connected.” He or she just has to be fearless, creative and willing.John shouted, “Get ready, get ready, he’s coming! He’s almost here. Are you ready?”Who might be willing to do the same for you?Roy H. Williams

“Give a product away, and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you’re in an entirely different business… ‘Free’ has the power to create a consumer stampede.”– Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical PriceA few weeks ago I announced that Bard Press – America’s most successful publisher of non-fiction books – had decided to give away 20,000 advance-reading copies of The Full Plate Diet. Here’s how that experiment turned out: 5,279 of you requested a free book during the first 6 days. After those books began to arrive, we saw a second surge of requests that continued to build until finally, just before Ray pulled the plug on the computer, he was receiving more than 200 orders per minute.Yes, I said “per minute.”The term “going viral” refers to that moment when word-of-mouth reaches critical mass and begins to grow exponentially.New Experiment: You liked the $20 freebie. So today we’re doing a $50 freebie. Keep reading.Last month, NASA learned their original copy of the moon landing video was nowhere to be found. Perhaps you heard about it.This historic footage was recovered when NASA scrounged four badly degraded, barely viewable copies from around the world, then painfully stacked, merged and recompiled them to recreate the video. At the time of this writing – 3 weeks into the project – $230,000 has been spent and only 40 percent of the work has been done.You thought magnetic tape lasted longer than that?Evidently, so did NASA.Now for the Bad News: The DVDs you and I burn have a shorter lifespan than videotape. Homemade DVDs last only 6 to 8 years. And the faster your burning speed, the shorter the life of your DVD.“Six to eight years? That can’t be true. I bought a Dances With Wolves DVD back in 1996 and it still plays fine.”Mass-duplicated DVDs are made using an entirely different process known as “glass mastering” that’s viable only when making a large number of copies.Oh, you bought a “gold” DVD so you think your photographs, videos, important documents and creative work are safe?UPDATE: When the information on DVDs began to disappear, we assumed the reflective backing was becoming tarnished so “gold” DVDs were introduced because gold doesn’t tarnish. But these gold DVDs are degrading just as fast as the silver ones. The tarnishing of the reflective surface was only a small problem. The big problem is the fading of the laser-sensitive ink in the sandwich layer between the clear plastic and the reflective surface. Remember when fax machines used rolls of thermal fax paper and the faxes they made would fade after a year or two? Same problem.Photographs, videos, important documents and creative work should all be carved in stone. I mean that literally, by the way, not metaphorically.A Cranberry disc is a DVD made of high-tech, man-made stone and the data carved on a Cranberry will likely last longer than the pyramids. No ink layer. No fading. Problem solved.David McInnis is a wild-eyed entrepreneur and a good friend. And he’s going to give you a $50 Cranberry if you want it.Do you want it?I’ll give you the results of today’s experiment in a couple of weeks.Roy H. Williams

We've invented a machine that lets you select your mood. This astounding device can be adjusted to make you feel however you’d like to feel. It’s called a radio.The distinct advantage of humans is our ability to attach complex meanings to sound. The most important sounds are called words.NOTE: The written word has no meaning until it has been translated into the spoken word it represents. How many times have you been lying in bed reading a book when it occurs to you that your eyes have been scanning the same paragraph over and over, but you still have no idea what it says? Falling asleep, your eyes continue to take in the written words, but the visual symbols are no longer being translated into their corresponding sounds. Consequently, no comprehension.Pitch, key, tempo, rhythm, contour and interval are elements of music, another language of sound, to which we attach complex meanings.Control the music and you control the mood of the room.Not even a chimpanzee can clap in rhythm to music. Conscious rhythm is uniquely human, a function of Broca’s area. It makes sense, doesn’t it? That same region of the brain that coordinates diaphragm, larynx, lips and tongue so that we can articulate stored sounds called “words,” also coordinates the muscles that allow us to clap, tap, and dance to a rhythm. Animals can't clap in rhythm for the same reason they can't talk. No Broca's area.Imagine an auditorium of chimpanzees clapping in unison to Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets. Pretty scary, huh?In all its variations – iPod, CD player, etc. – a radio is a mood selection device, a delivery system for the complex sounds that so greatly alter our mood. How do you want to feel right now? Just press the button.Faint traces of music driftTo my ears in the lonely nightWords barely audible yet familiarA little too familiar this timeTaking me back to times and placesI never knew I had left behind.Intending to turn the radio offI only manage to increase the volumeHoping you will somehow hearAnd miraculously returnTo sing each broken phrase with meThese opening lines of Memory Radio by Jenny Leigh were written in non-rhyming meter, also known as free verse. Meter is achieved when words are arranged so that a predictable rhythm is created in their pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.Iambic meter is soft/hard (x /)“That time of year thou mayst in me behold”Trochaic meter is hard/soft (/ x)“Tell me not in mournful numbers”Spondaic meter is hard/hard (/ /)“Break, break, break/ On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!”Anapestic meter is soft-soft/hard (x x /)“And the sound of a voice that is still”Dactylic meter is hard/soft-soft (/ x x)“This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock”Meter is magnetic.“Bounty. The quicker picker-upper.”Meter makes slogans sticky.Where do you want to go today? – MicrosoftIt's everywhere you want to be – VISAThe ultimate driving machine. – BMWWhen it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. – Federal ExpressMeter makes words musical.“Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring…” – Clement C. Moore“Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered…” – Edgar Allen Poe“My client would not, could not, did not commit these crimes.” – Johnny CochranThink of stressed and unstressed syllables as hard and soft drumbeats. Use meter to weave a musical rhythm into your message and it will, like a song hook, get stuck in the phonological loop of working memory in the dorsolateral prefrontal association area of the listener's brain. Additionally, you'll have moved your message from the suspicious left hemisphere – the half of the brain that interprets words – into the open-for-anything right hemisphere responsible for interpreting music.The right hemisphere of the brain isn't suspicious. In fact, it doesn't know right from wrong, true from false, or reality from fantasy. Hmm. This could be useful…One last thing: I've always wanted to see a billboard featuring the giant buttons of a car radio. Above those buttons are the words, “How Do You Want” and below the buttons, “To Feel Right Now?”I'm betting it would cause millions of drivers to turn on their radios.But what do I know?Roy H. Williams

A Look at Management vs. LeadershipA group of students from the University of Texas recently asked Corrine Taylor to set up an interview with me on the subject of leadership. My schedule hasn’t allowed me to do that interview yet, but their request did trigger some thoughts on the subject.Maybe I’m splitting semantic hairs, but businesspeople who say “leadership” usually mean, “being a good manager.”But leadership and management, in my experience, are virtually opposite skill sets.Management requires wisdom, patience and strength. Basically, it’s parenting, bringing forward the best of the past, enforcing the status quo.Leadership requires independence, audacity and courage. It's inherently defiant, questioning the past, challenging the status quo.And then there are those perky Chihuahuas barking “Leadership! Leadership! Put me in charge! I’ll tell everyone what to do! I’m a trained leader, I’ve been to a seminar!”No, you’re just a weasel who wishes he were the furry-hatted drum major of a marching band. (Yes, I have a prejudice against self-styled leaders. Does it show?)True leaders require no authority. They think their own thoughts, make their own decisions, carry out their own plans. They say, “This is what I’ve decided to do.”And then they do it. Others see them doing it and decide to follow.Leaders lead from the front.Managers manage from behind.Alexander the Great was always the first over the wall of an enemy city. Whether his men followed him was up to them. Alexander was a true leader. “I’m going in, boys!”Geronimo, the famous Apache leader, was not a tribal chief but a spiritual advisor, a historian of the people and a protector of their beliefs. He said, “I have something I need to do.” And when the other Apaches saw what he was doing, they decided to help him.The Architect of the landmark buildings at Wizard Academy, Marley Porter, is a true leader. Those of us who love Marley know he is barely passable as a manager but when it comes to visionary architecture, few architects are in his class.In fact, most architects have never even glimpsed his class.Who but a leader says, “Let's build the chapel over the edge of the cliff.”Then, when the real estate agent pointed into the rocky crag below that cliff and said, “Those 7 acres are throwaway land. Basically, you're getting those acres for free,” Marley Porter said, “That's where we're going to build the student mansion.”When I said, “We need a classroom tower,” Marley finished the sentence, “with an underground entrance.”Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous design, Fallingwater, is a home built over a waterfall. Any architect might have drawn it, but none had the courage to suggest something so absurd.Every American architect studied Frank Lloyd Wright in college but few of them will ever draw anything like Fallingwater. These architects have intellect, training and talent. What they lack is the audacity.How about you? Do you have the audacity to do your own thing, go your own way and ride your own bullet without ever looking back?A Marley Porter building doesn't require a lot of money, but it does require a boatload of courage. Fortunately, our board of directors has that in abundance. Oz Jaxxon, Corrine Taylor, Ray Bard, Mark Fox, Jodie Gateman and Nick Grant are a constant source of inspiration to me.Maybe boldness is genetic.Maybe it's a product of environment.But I think it's just a choice.But I wasn't at all surprised to learn that Marley's mother's mother was a Hancock. Yes, from that line of Hancocks. This boldest of American architects is a direct descendant of the man whose very name is synonymous with boldness. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” and then, in an unmistakably large, sweeping script, Marley Porter's grandfather flipped King George a polite bird.John Hancock was willing to pull the trigger and ride the bullet to wherever it took him. He was definitely our brand of crazy. Are you?Will you write your name large – John Hancock style – across the flickering tablet of life and time?Come to Wizard Academy, a nontraditional business school. We'll help you get started.Bring your pen.Roy H. Williams

How to Turn $100 into $100,000Magellan was a misfit, a visionary with a better idea, a curious explorer of things unknown. He would have fit right in at Wizard Academy.But a similar outlook on life isn’t the only thing that connects us to Magellan. There’s a tangible connection as well.More about that later.Magellan was 13 years old when Columbus returned triumphantly to Queen Isabella and Pope Alexander VI divided the world in half, the eastern half going to Portugal, the western half to Spain (1493.)Years later, when Magellan asked King Manuel of Portugal if he might sail for him, the king publicly snubbed Magellan. Humiliated, Magellan leaned forward to kiss the king's hand. King Manuel put his hands behind his back.Remembering that Spain had funded Columbus, a foreigner, Magellan went to Spain and pointed out to King Charles that no one knew exactly where the Pope's boundaries were in the East, so an explorer like himself might be able to establish the boundary between Spain and Portugal on the back side of the world and thereby prove the coveted Spice Islands belonged to Spain. King Charles liked the idea.Magellan sailed toward South America in 1519 carrying 280 men in 5 small, wooden ships: the Concepcion, the Santiago, the Victoria, the San Antonio and the Trinidad.Stay with me. I promise you an interesting twist at the end.The largest of Magellan’s ships was smaller than the Santa Maria of Columbus or the Mayflower of the Pilgrims. And Magellan didn’t just sail 4,000 quick miles to America. He covered 42,000 miles in 2 years and 11 months, hampered by plots, battles, mutiny, desertion, starvation, disease and murder. And half of those miles were across waters never before seen by any previous explorer.Only 18 of the 280 sailors made it home to Spain after circumnavigating the globe.The Santiago was wrecked in a storm at the tip of South America.The chicken-hearted captain of the San Antonio turned his ship back to Spain during the night with more than a third of the fleet’s provisions.When the 3 remaining ships finally limped into the Philippines, the islanders enthusiastically accepted Christianity. When chief Lapu-Lapu of Mactan tried to unravel those conversions, Magellan took just 60 men to face the chief’s army of 3,000 natives. And there Magellan died.There weren’t enough sailors to sail three ships, so the papers, logs, letters and diaries of Magellan were put aboard the Concepcion by the 2 captains that had been guilty of mutiny and that ship was burned in Philippine waters. (We know these things because an Italian named Antonio Pigafetta kept a secret diary. He was one of the 18 who made it home.)The Victoria and the Trinidad were headed home to Spain when the Trinidad sprung a leak and had to turn back to the Philippines. There she was captured by the Portuguese who had come to the Philippines along the traditional route, down the coast of Africa. Soon after her capture, the Trinidad was lost in a storm.FLASH FORWARD: A soldier returning from Viet Nam is stationed at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines in the late 1960’s. One day he sees a man step off a fishing boat carrying what appears to be a crustacean covered rock. Curious, the soldier investigates. The object is too heavy to be a rock. That’s why the fishermen didn’t chunk it back into the sea when it appeared in their nets.The soldier buys the curiosity and spends the next several weeks picking away at its concrete-like encasement. It turns out to be an old ship’s bell, 12 inches across and 12 inches high. Bronze.Upon his return to the states, the soldier sends photos of the bell to an underwater archaeologist who tells him the bell’s style, markings and color (high copper content) indicate it’s probably a Spanish ship’s bell from the first half of the 1500s. The archaeologist assumes the bell was found in the Caribbean. The soldier doesn’t tell him otherwise.If the soldier had revealed where the bell had been found, the archaeologist would immediately have known the bell could be from Magellan’s flagship, the Trinidad, or possibly his Concepcion, both of which were lost in the Phillipines.Realizing the bell’s value, the soldier buries it deep in his back yard to keep it from being stolen. The only witness is his little girl. When the old soldier dies, the only person on earth who knows the location of the bell is that little girl, now a mother with a teenage daughter of her own.Long story short: Pennie and I bought the bell from the soldier’s daughter.A similar bell was discovered a few years ago that experts believe could be the bell of the Santa Maria. It’s estimated to be worth 30 to 60 million dollars.Pennie and I will donate our bell to Wizard Academy if a new crew of Magellan can be located to sail into the unknown with us. We’re not asking to be reimbursed for the bell. We’re asking only that 280 people donate $100 apiece to help build a beautiful qua

and Get Real SkinnyThe Full Plate Diet is an incredibly cool book. And because you’re a friend of Wizard Academy, you can have a no-charge advance copy. That’s right. No charge. Nada. Zero. Zip. The publisher – Wizard Academy board member Ray Bard of Bard Press – is giving away 20,000 pre-release copies to trigger a nationwide buzz. The Full Plate Diet will be in every bookstore in America in January but you can have your advance copy today.It’s even okay to tell your friends how they can get a no-charge copy, too. I highly recommend it.FLASHBACK: A young man starts a newspaper that becomes extremely successful. He sells the company and then he dies. His last will and testament stipulates that the money – a mountain of it – is to launch a non-profit organization whose only mission will be to create a healthier, happier, slimmer America.The man’s dying wish became the Lifestyle Center of America. Its board of directors built a multi-million dollar medical facility and hired the Who’s Who list of medical research doctors in America. The chairman of the board is Dr. House. I’m not making this up.The first thing the medical marvels created was a diet that reverses Type 2 diabetes. But that didn’t fulfill their mission. The newspaper mogul’s dream was to touch every American, not just diabetics. So the Lifestyle Center contacted Corrine Taylor and mailed her some money to set up a meeting with me.My team and I spent a day talking with the Lifestyle Center people and then agreed to work with them. That was a little more than a year ago. Toward the end of the day my 290-pound media analyst, Joe Hamilton, asked, “Would the diet you talked about work for someone who isn’t diabetic?” The doctors said, “Absolutely. It’s how human beings were meant to eat.”A few days later I told Ray Bard what the doctors had said. He seemed mildly interested. And I mentioned it to a couple of my out-of-town partners.A couple of months later I was pouring a cup of coffee when Joe Hamilton walked into the room. I looked up and said, “Joe, you’re losing weight.”Joe said, “I’ve been doing what those doctors talked about and I’ve lost 35 pounds.” By the end of that year, Joe had lost 90 pounds. No exercise. And he hasn’t gained a bit of it back. (See before-and-after photos of Joe at the bottom of this page.)A couple of weeks after I saw Joe Hamilton I saw Ray Bard and he had never looked better. “Roy, I did what you said those doctors talked about and I’ve dropped 30 pounds. I'd like to meet them.”Then, at the partner meeting, one of the partners I’d told about the diet said he had done what I described and lost 20 pounds. The other partner had lost 24.The Full Plate Diet is not a deprivation diet. There’s nothing you “can’t have.” And you’ll never go hungry.I use the Monday Morning Memo to promote classes at Wizard Academy, a 501c3 nontraditional business school, but I never use the memo to sell things and I’m not selling you anything today.But you really ought to look into this diet.You can meet 3 of the doctors in a fun, online video produced by Sunpop Studios and request your no-charge advance copy of the Full Plate Diet at FullPlateDietBeta.orgNext week I’m going to tell you a true story that will blow your mind.Your mind will be blown. You’ll be walking into walls. Boy Scouts will have to hold your hand when you cross the street. After hearing this story you'll need to lay down and put a cold rag on your head.The story begins in 1519 and it involves Wizard Academy.And you.Roy H. Williams

A close friend told me last week why his wife doesn’t like me: having seen me speak before a crowd, she is convinced I lack humility. I am a boastful man, arrogant and unprincipled, merciless and cold.She’s not the first to have said these things.I see her point and I make no argument. Marketing is a high-stakes competition for the time and attention of the public. Every business asking for time and attention is in a wrestling match with every other. The same is true of public speaking. It is survival of the fittest. “And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For I am the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley.”Yes, I definitely see her point.In 2006, one of my longtime clients told me his principal competitor had filed bankruptcy and all his assets were being auctioned. I said, “Great. I’ve been trying to break that man for years.” My client was appalled until I reminded him that it was my job to plan the battles in which good men die. “Do you really want me to adopt the attitude that there’s enough business out there for everyone? ‘Be happy with what you’ve got? Don’t push for more?’ If that’s what you want from me, just say the word and my job will get a whole lot easier.” I reminded him of a statement by General George S. Patton, “You don’t win wars by dying for your country. You win by making the other poor bastard die for his.”My client, a kind and generous man, finally understood my role as a marketing consultant and we never spoke of it again.Strangely, I’m not a natural competitor. Nobody wants me on their side in sports because I don’t care if we win or not. My daily vehicle is an 8 year-old pickup truck without electric windows and when I’m not speaking before a crowd, I wear clothes I’ve owned for more than a dozen years. Privately, I'm so boringly average as to be perfectly invisible.But yes, when someone plunks down $25,000, a whole other fellow shows up. “It's Showtime! Prepare to be amazed!”The Magical Worlds Communications Workshop begins with an investigation of duality in which we study the open contradictions of life, those equal-but-opposite realities that are the basis of all existence. “When confronted with a duality,” I tell the class, “a poor student will choose one side and disparage the other. But a brilliant student will bring both sides of the duality into close proximity and feel the electricity that passes between them.”Protons are contradicted by electrons. Inhalation is undone by exhalation. Ice and steam are both water? Really?In the third chapter of his Ecclesiastes, Solomon puts it this way:There is a time for everything,and a season for every activity under heaven: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,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 time is this? For you, I mean.My family adopted a homeless mutt when I was in the third grade. She slept in my bedroom until the day she died, 10 years later. Pearl was a mellow dog, laid-back and lazy, playful and fun; unless you acted as though you were going to hurt me. Then, in a horrible flash of fur and teeth, playful Pearl became a bloodthirsty beast that hungered only for your throat. People who witnessed this transformation were stunned. My happy little dog had the soul of a tiger. Pearl understood the difference between playtime and wartime.What time is this? For you, I mean.“In peace there's nothing so becomes a manAs modest stillness and humility;But when the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger;Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood…Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,Hold hard the breath and bend up every spiritTo his full height.”– William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act iii. Scene 1The Jesus of Sunday school is a passive, Gandhi-like man who urges us to turn the other cheek. But the Jesus of John chapter 2 is a man of premeditated violence who “made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.”Will you turn the other cheek today, or make a whip of cords?“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity.”What time is this? For you, I mean.Roy H. Williams

Did you know I’ve been writing these Monday Morning Memos for 15 years now? And in all that time:1. There’s never been a Monday when I didn’t send a Memo.2. I’ve never repeated a Memo that had been previously sent.I’m going to break that second rule today because I think it’s what you need.Last week the Wizard of Ads partners gathered for 3 days of planning and training. When Paul Boomer told me he hadn’t made any progress on his book since our last meeting, I told him about the magic of the elbs.Later, as I was preparing my opening comments for the upcoming class at Wizard Academy, Checklist for Your Journey of 1,000 Miles, I realized that what the attendees would need most is the magic of the elbs.Then, when I was reading a play-by-play analysis of how America was sucked into a whirlpool of economic doubt by subprime lending, it occurred to me that nothing can reverse a whirlpool like the magic of the elbs. That sucking downward into darkness is reversed to become a fountain into the sky.“Hey Stupid,” I said to myself, “you need to resend that memo. It’s been 7 years and the people who read it have mostly forgotten it. This is the magic America needs today.”So here it is, repeated from October 27, 2002:Makers of miracles have magical little helpers. Is there a miracle you’d like to make?Would you like to learn the magic of the elbs?Elbs are Exponential Little Bits, tiny but relentless changes that compound to make a miracle. The power of an elb lies not in its size, but in its daily occurrence. For an elb to work its Exponential magic, the Little Bit must happen every day… every day… every day.Every day.Funny thing… When daily progress meets with progress, it doesn’t add, it multiplies. To harness the magic of Exponential Little Bits you must learn to ask yourself, “What difference have I made today?” And never go to sleep until you have done a Little Bit to move yourself closer to your goal. But you must do a Little Bit every day, no matter how tiny the thing might be.Exponential Little Bits work both ways. They can lift you up or hold you down. There is much power in the ELBs.Start with a dollar. Double it every day for just 20 days and you’ll have 2,097,150 dollars. But if you diminish each day’s total by just 10 percent (a Little Bit) before the next day’s doubling, you’ll amass only 793,564 dollars. Diminish each day’s doubling by 35 percent and you’ll have only 56,784 dollars – a holdback of 95.83 percent.There’s a line in Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” that says, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down! I could say ‘Elves’ to him, but it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather he said it for himself.”Is there a wall between you and your miracle?I could say how to bring it down.But I’d rather you said it for yourself.Roy H. Williams

What will be your customer's memory of you?“It [the Cheshire Cat] vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.” – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)I never ask the graduates of Wizard Academy, “What could we have done differently? How might we improve?” To do so would be to ask them to search their memories for disappointing moments. These are not the images I want to cement in their minds. Instead, I ask, “What was your favorite moment during your time with us?” This causes the students to recall each of the high-impact moments during their time on campus and relive those moments in their mind. It doesn’t matter what they choose as their favorite, I just want to flood their minds with happy memories.The grin will remain after the rest of it is gone.It is important to control the Last Mental Image (LMI.) What procedures do you employ to make sure your customer has a positive LMI of their experience with you?Today the world is forming its LMI of Michael Jackson. So far, the stories and comments have centered on his impact as a performer and his contributions to music. The foibles and flaws that interested us yesterday no longer seem important. Michael Jackson is dead and the world seems a tiny bit smaller.Want to hear something bizarre? A few hours before Michael Jackson died, I woke in the night with an itch in my brain. The scratching of that itch became the subject of a rabbit hole far deeper than any I had ever created. When I finally realized the depth of the project I had begun, I said, “No one will ever click to even the halfway point. This is going to be the rabbit hole to China.”The itch in my brain made a lot more sense when I heard Michael Jackson had died.He and I were exactly the same age.Roy H. Williams

Maybe it’s because I was a young adult in the Dress-for-Success, go-go 80’s and retain vivid memories of those hollow days.Maybe it’s because Pennie and I had close friends who stepped on the landmines of “Get Rich in Real Estate With No Money Down,” “How To Make Millions Selling Soap,” and other glistening schemes promoted by effervescent conmen with perfect teeth who said, “You can do it. You’re a winner.”Maybe it’s because the positive-thinking cult believes Man is God and this disturbs me to the core of my soul.Or maybe I’m just a Grinch who doesn’t like to hear the singing of the happy Whos in Whoville. You be the judge. But the truth is that I have no goals and I’m annoyed by conversations about them. Does this shock you?“Goal,” in my experience, is a favorite word of people who talk and dream and dream and talk. And then they get together to “network” with other talkers. There’s always a lot of noise in these meetings but it’s unlikely than anything of consequence is going to happen. People who chatter about goals are rarely willing to die on that mountain.I have no goals. But I do have plans.A plan puts you in motion toward a destination. The destination you choose is irrelevant. It is (1.) motion, (2.) determination and (3.) commitment that separate destination-reaching explorers from goal-setting chipmunks.Count the cost, explorer. “Am I willing to die on this mountain?”There are laws against discharging firearms. They’re loud and noisy and someone might get hurt. But discharging a firearm isn’t the same as “shooting with intent to kill.”“Intent.” That’s the word. Plans have intent. Goals do not.A goal without a plan is wishful thinking.A plan without action is self-delusion.Wizard Academy helps people get where they’re trying to go. We teach people of action. We have little time for drifters who just want to talk and dream and sigh.Do you remember the 3 questions I asked you to answer in a recent Monday Morning Memo about my friend, David Rehr?1. What are you trying to make happen?2. How will you measure success? 3. What’s the first thing you need to do to get started?I asked 43,000 readers to send me their answers to these questions. Doubtless, everyone who read the memo thought about doing it. But only 0.7 percent – 307 people – actually pulled the trigger and rode the bullet.Here’s where that bullet will take them:Thursday, July 9th at Wizard Academy, a 1-day workshop.Checklist for Your Journey of 1,000 Miles:Things You’ll Need Along the Way.This 1-day workshop is $750 and a bargain at that price.The 307 riders of the bullet whose names appear on this list will be allowed to register for only $50 (approximately what it costs the academy – per person – to cater lunch and dinner.) Normally we’d be magnanimous and pick up the tab for everyone, but tower construction has squeezed the bank account dry. Sorry about that.Twenty-six hundred years ago Lao-Tzu said, “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”Take that first step. Be in Austin on July 9th as we create the Checklist for Your Journey of 1000 Miles. It's going to be a challenging, disturbing, inspiring, life-changing day.Are you coming or not?Roy H. Williams

How to Get Customers to Give You Their Time.Portals create intrigue in paintings, photographs, literature and movies. Architects use them to lengthen the time we spend in landmark stores and theme parks. Portals say, “Come on in. Stay awhile.”Dr. Nick Grant, a close friend, was examining a group of photographs in my Accidental Magic collection when he said, “Oh! You’re a portal person. I should have known.”“A what?”Pointing with his finger to each of the portals in the photographs, he explained, “Portals in art help us move from one state of consciousness to another.” Dr. Grant, I should mention, is a clinical psychologist.And thus my study of portals began.Doorways, windows, tunnels, bridges and stairs are portals. Each of these whispers a promise of change, “Things beyond here are different than where you are.”I’m teaching you about portals and partial reveals because customers prefer to spend their time in places where there’s more to explore, the lure of discovery, a promise of adventure.Do you offer these things? In your store, your offices, your landscaping?Go to the mall and you’ll see that most of the stores have no entry portal, no doorway. They stand wide open, naked, with nothing hidden or obscured. This makes it easy for you to wander into them and just as easy to wander out. Stores without doors see a lot of traffic with low curiosity and no commitment.A door creates a threshold barrier, but once you’ve passed through it you’re insulated from the world you left outside. Customers spend more time in stores with doors.An open portal offers a partial reveal. Notice the image at the top of this page. If the window were closed it would still be a portal though it would no longer offer a partial reveal.A partial reveal is a glimpse, an enticement, a tease. Occasionally it’s offered through an open portal, but more often through a space between impediments. The more partial reveals you display, the longer the customer stays in your store.Curiosity is stimulated by a partial reveal. If this were not true, there would be no long skirts with slits up the side and men would not buy their wives negligees.A full reveal delivers the promise of the partial reveal. You catch a glimpse – the partial reveal – and are drawn toward the carefully crafted full reveal. BAM! Your world is rocked.Water, music, and spirals are soft portals – shadow portals – but we’ll leave any further discussion of these for the upcoming class on Enticement: Visual Cues and the 12 Languages of the Mind I’ll be teaching August 18-19. We'll study in depth all the things I've written to you about in the past 4 Monday Morning Memos.Come and you’ll see multiple examples of how a series of partial reveals – created by multiple piercings of the horizontal plane through the careful placement of display artifacts – will elevate interest in your store, office, home, garden or artwork. You’ll also see dozens of examples of how illumination affects the customer’s perception of value. Then we'll look at the foundation of all these effects – the 12 languages of the mind.Don’t worry, once you’ve seen some examples you’ll realize this stuff isn’t nearly so complicated as it sounds.The only way you can attend this class is to purchase a portal for the Tower. Yes, it’s time for us to pay for the doors and windows and Wizard Academy needs your help. This class should be at least $2,500 but it's not. You can fund a window for as little as $400 or put your name on a fabulous feature door for as much as $7,000. Take a look.It’s going to be another unforgettable class. (If you can't come to the class but would still like to fund a door or window, you will forever be remembered as a leader of your people. Thanks.)Roy H. Williams

I write today with some hesitation, the same hesitation I felt 2 weeks ago when I wrote about the romance of shadows and the piercing of horizontal planes. You may recall that I asked, “Was this stuff interesting for you or did it go over your head?”Three hundred and ninety-one responded with variations of “More! More!” and only 2 said they didn’t quite get it. If the 391 spoke for the 42,712 subscribers they would statistically represent, you’re going to enjoy today’s memo. If by some sad chance of luck or fate those 391 represented only themselves, I offer you this apology in advance:“What crazies we writers areour heads full of language like buckets of minnowsstanding in the moonlight on a dock.”– from Ray, by Hayden CarruthThere is an objective reality but we are ill equipped to experience it. You and I live in private, perceptual realities.“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. 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.”– Dr. Jorge Martins de OliveiraA yarmulke covers the sensory association area, that part of the brain that gathers and tabulates sensory data collected from the sensory receptors in the ears, eyes, muscles and skin.Associative memories are added to this information equation as it flows toward Broca’s area of the brain where the predictable information is subtracted. Information that’s new, surprising or different flows beyond Broca’s area into conscious awareness – imagination – where the central executive of Working Memory searches for relevance. Only after the central executive gives the information the thumbs up is it forwarded to the prefrontal cortex – located just behind your forehead – for a decision about whether or not to take action.No, I didn’t make any of this up. I read it in the writings of Alan Baddeley, Susan Gathercole, Ricardo Gattass, Silvia Helena Cardoso, Burkhard Maess, Steven Pinker and Jorge Martins de Oliveira, cognitive neuroscientists, all.This next part, however, is all mine and yes I might be crazy or just plain wrong.But I don’t think so.There are 12 languages of the mind that supply the constituent components of concrete, analytical thought. It is these 12 languages that enable our perceptual realities.A signal received in one language of the mind can reinforce, or contradict, a signal received in another. Signal reinforcement deepens perception. Signal contradiction elevates interest. 1. Shape – angles send a different message than curves. 2. Numbers – a language of relativity. Many or few? 3. Phonemes – sounds represented by letters of the alphabet. 4. Color – often combined with shape and radiance. 5. Proximity – near/far, large/small, left/right, up/down, etc. 6. Music – any sound that isn't a phoneme. 7. Radiance – energy sent outward or sucked inward. 8. Motion – fast/slow 9. Symbols – messages with secondary meaning.10. Taste – tongues do it.11. Feel – skin and muscles do it.12. Smell – noses do it.Each of these 12 has a shadow language that supplies the components of emotional, philosophical, abstract thought. But that’s another matter for another day.Control the signals and you control the perceptions.Control the perceptions and you control the conclusions.Control the conclusions and persuasion is accomplished.Next week’s memo will be easier to understand and infinitely more useful to most of you. We’re going to talk about how Portals, Reveals, and Partial Reveals can be used to take people where you want them to go.And now it is time for meto go.Roy H. Williams

How Will You Measure Success?June 1, 2009ListenAThe keeper of my calendar told me a few weeks ago that David Rehr had called to schedule a day with me in Austin. I scratched my head and wondered why.David served as a congessonal aide on Capitol Hill when he was young, then he took a broken-down trade group, The National Beer Wholesalers Association, and turned it into one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington.So dramatic was his sucess that the National Association of Broadcasters, the trade group for every radio and television station in America, asked David to come and take the helm in 2005.On May 6, 2009, shortly after scheduling his appointment with me, David Rehr resigned as President and CEO of the NAB. Then he showed up at Wizard Academy, right on schedule. We had never met or corresponded. I was curious what he knew of me and why he had come.“Roy,” he said, “a lot of people really like you and a lot of people really don’t but I usually agree with what I read in your books and magazine columns.” Curiosity made me ask what David had been told by the people who dislike me. Most of the stories he'd heard were true. Guilty as charged. Thirty years as a consultant give me deep respect for an observation made by Mark Twain, “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.”“David, what do you plan to do with the rest of your life?” I never suspected he might have an answer.“I want to be President of the United States Chamber of Commerce.” The clarity of that answer told me: 1. how David Rehr became successful.2. that he and I were going to be friends.3. why he'll someday be President of the United States Chamber of Commerce.We spent the rest of the day discussing David’s ideas for stimulating the economy of the United States and then I got him to agree to teach a class at Wizard Academy.David Rehr was able to state his goal in a single sentence of just 12 words.Can you?1. What are you trying to make happen?2. How will you measure success? 3. What’s the first thing you need to do to get started?I'd like you to answer each question using no more than 12 words per answer. This means the email you send me cannot exceed 36 total words, plus your name and contact information.Yes, there will be prizes.The biggest prizes will be the ones received by every participant: clarity of thought and purpose. There will be other prizes sent by my office.All Participants will receive advance notice of David Rehr's class as soon as dates and a course description are available. This gives you first shot at the 14 rooms in Engelbrecht House.Craft your 36 words. Send them to [email protected]. Don't put it off. Do it now.You're at a turning point.Which way will you turn?Roy H. Williams

Romance of Shadows, Curiosity of Vertical Planes Illumination and Proximity are 2 of the 12 languages of the mind.Your feelings about an item are affected by the way it’s illuminated.Feelings of romance, intimacy, prestige and adventure are triggered by the hot spots and shadows of a campfire, a fireplace or a candle in a dimly lit room. Hot spots and shadows send signals that are rich, textured and varied. Upscale retail stores and restaurants, museums and cathedrals are filled with hot spots and shadows.Feelings of drudgery, routine, commodity and bureaucracy are triggered by the homogenized light that fills every corner of a room equally. Discount stores and cafeterias, elementary schools and post offices are filled with homogenized light. Homogenized light is the same all over. No hot spots. No shadows.Feng Shui – the ancient Chinese practice of arranging rooms and furnishings to create specific moods and feelings – is built upon an intuitive understanding of the language of Proximity.The arrangement of furniture and fixtures within a room can pull you along a specific path as surely as if you were walking within a labyrinth.A boring store has 3 horizontal planes. The bottom one is the floor. The top one is the ceiling. The center one in a clothing store is the top of the clothes racks. In a large jewelry store, it's the tops of the showcases. In Best Buy, the tops of the shelves.To make a big room feel interesting and intimate, all you have to do is pierce that center, horizontal plane with a series of vertical planes rising to varying heights. If your view is partially obscured by three tall pots standing 9 feet tall, you'll feel drawn to take a look at what’s behind them. But if you can see everything from a single vantage point, the brain says, “Nothing here to see.”By the way, these techniques work just as well in homes and offices as they do in retail stores.Was this stuff interesting for you or did it go over your head? Send a quick email to [email protected] and let her know.I confess we took only a shallow look into a deep subject today, but if enough people thought today’s memo was beneficial, we’ll schedule a class and a field trip to investigate detailed examples of how the careful placement of selected fixtures can cause customers to visit you more often and spend longer amounts of time.We’ll also look at how shadows can change the mood of a room and increase the perceived value of inventory. We might even investigate the language of color and how visual portals can be used to move people from one state of consciousness to another.But now I’m rambling.Wizard Academy is a new kind of business school. We study what gifted people do when they’re feeling inspired so that we can reverse engineer their unconscious methods.What are you trying to make happen? Let us help you.Come to Wizard Academy.Roy H. Williams

The Tinkerbell Effect describes things that exist only because people believe in them. Remember Tinkerbell, the fairy in Peter Pan who is revived from near death by the belief of the audience?[Tinkerbell has drunk the poison meant for Peter Pan.]PETER PAN: Her light is growing faint, and if it goes out, that means she is dead! Her voice is so low I can scarcely tell what she is saying. She says—she says she thinks she could get well again if children believed in fairies! [He rises and throws out his arms to the audience.] Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands!And all over the world, children clapped with all their might.The Tinkerbell Effect is responsible for the rule of law. If enough of us quit believing in it, the rule of law would cease to exist. Likewise, the value of money. A dollar has value only because we believe it does. Without our belief, dollars would be scraps of paper.Much of who and what we are is owed to the Tinkerbell Effect.Tinkerbell would be proud of Tommy.Tommy is a young man who sees possibilities. Few people understand him. His home is littered with his strange inventions.When Tommy is 28, he writes a letter to his friend, Robert Skipwith, about The History and Adventures of the renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha, a book that has captured his imagination.In that book, Alonso Quixano sees beauty where others see only dust and grime. Then, like a little boy tying a bath towel around his neck and pretending to be Superman, Alsonso dresses himself as a knight and pretends to be Don Quixote, setting out to right all the wrongs of his day.Tommy, too, becomes a sort of Don Quixote, seeing always a world that could be, should be, ought to be. His fascination with Don Quixote will continue throughout his life and he will mention Quixote in dozens of letters to his friends. Finally, when Tommy is 78 years old and looking back across the years, he writes to Benjamin Waterhouse, “Don Quixote undertook to redress the bodily wrongs of the world…”Inspired by Quixote, Tommy likewise undertook to redress the wrongs of the world.It was a single, glittering statement for which there was no evidence in all the world: 32 year-old Tommy, that incurable dreamer, flung the Tinkerbell Effect hundreds of years into the future and across millions of lives with 14 words full of pixie dust, “We Hold these Truths to be Self-evident, that All Men are Created Equal…”And a nation sprang into existence.Do you have an impossible dream? Come to Wizard Academy. The Cognoscenti will believe it with you and together, we'll make it happen.Roy H. Williams

A year before the birth of Barack Obama, John Steinbeck bought a pickup truck, named it “Rocinante” and went looking for America. His final book, Travels with Charley (1962,) is a journal of his thoughts and memories as he drove that pickup 10,000 miles across 38 states looking back across the years of a lifetime.Steinbeck remembers an incident that happened during the 1940s:“I lived then in a small brick house in Manhattan, and, being for the moment solvent, employed a Negro. Across the street and on the corner there was a bar and restaurant. One winter dusk when the sidewalks were iced I stood in my window looking out and saw a tipsy woman come out of the bar, slip on the ice, and fall flat. She tried to struggle up but slipped and fell again and lay there screaming maudlinly. At that moment the Negro who worked for me came around the corner, saw the woman, and instantly crossed the street, keeping as far from her as possible.When he came in I said, 'I saw you duck. Why didn't you give that woman a hand?''Well, sir, she's drunk and I'm Negro. If I touched her she could easy scream rape, and then it's a crowd, and who believes me?''It took quick thinking to duck that fast.''Oh, no sir!' he said. 'I've been practicing to be a Negro a long time.'”Ten months ago, Wizard Academy's Dr. Oz Jaxxon gathered a dozen unlikely candidates in Tuscan Hall to begin a 2-year discussion on Racism. Is it a continuing problem or a distant memory? If it exists, what can be done about it? Is racial tension the white man's burden to bear alone, or do whites have legitimate complaints of their own?It may have been the most insane thing we've ever done as an organization. The group was Black, White and Latino, Gay and Straight, Liberal and Conservative, Religious and Agnostic, Bombastic and Shy, Streetwise and Embarrassingly Naïve. There were moments during those 3 days when I was tempted to stick the key in the ignition of my own Rocinante and drive quickly and quietly away.Whose idiotic idea was this, anyway?Miraculously (and with no help or encouragement from me, I must confess,) the group stayed in touch with each other and worked through dozens of technical and budgetary problems to launch a blog, InsideFromTheInside.com.I'm extremely proud of these alumni. You should take a look at what they're doing.Roy H. Williams

As you know, I’ve been trying to get one of my favorite business authors to the Academy to host a 2-day event.Today I’m pleased to announce that July 28-29 you can meet and be mentored by the great Jon Spoelstra.Jon is going to teach you how to thrill the public and rock your bank account. He’s going to teach you how to Market Outrageously.Marketing Outrageously is fun.Marketing Outrageously is politically incorrect.Marketing Outrageously is using your imagination.Marketing Outrageously is being willing to be laughed at.Marketing Outrageously is putting revenue first and everything else second.Marketing Outrageously is dropping your assumptions and starting all over with a fresh point of view.Marketing Outrageously is the opposite of marketing safely – but it may be the only truly safe way to market in 2009.A half-hearted marketing strategy is like buying a ticket halfway to Europe. Don’t do things halfway. Jon Spoelstra doesn’t believe in small ideas, small plans or small results. And after attending this class, neither will you.One of my favorite Jon Spoelstra stories happened when Jon worked with the New Jersey Nets back when that team was at the very bottom of the NBA roster. The Nets had no star players, no up-and-comers and no loyal fans, but he made them the most profitable franchise in all of basketball. And he did it without winning games.Jon says, “I’ve got a warped perspective on advertising: I think advertising should get results you can feel. Don’t give me any of that image or identity stuff; I want revenue that I can track to the ad. Anything less is, to me, like throwing money into a tornado and hoping for the best.”In just three seasons, the revenues from paid ticket sales went up from $5 million to $17 million. Local sponsorships ballooned from $400,000 to $7 million. And the market value of the team grew from $40 million to $120 million.Read the course description. This class is going to be amazing.This 1-time-only event will be strictly limited to 100 attendees, all of whom should expect a significant jump in revenues upon returning back to work.Could you use a significant jump in revenues?Roy H. Williams

Your unconscious writing style is how you write when you’re simply being yourself. You also have a formal style and you might even have a whimsical style. But three styles is usually as good as it gets.Language, however, is extraordinarily plastic. You can make it do anything you want. With a little conscious effort, you can speak and write in a thousand voices. The possibilities are intoxicating.I’m going to give you 10 ways to expand your literary voice. But please, I’m begging you, don’t get legalistic or analytical with this stuff. Style is like a frog; you can dissect the thing, but it dies in the process.Let’s begin with a sentence in ordinary language: “The optional ingredients available for your omelet are mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, broccoli, jalapenos and cheese.”1. Add.Now let’s add the word “and” between each of the ingredients. Notice how the list gains rhythm and length: “The optional ingredients available for your omelet are mushrooms and tomatoes and onions and broccoli and jalapenos and cheese.”Adding conjunctions slows a list down. And depending on how the list is intoned, adding conjunctions can (1.) give it greater dignity or (2.) convey the author’s own impatience by signaling that he, too, thinks the list is long.2. Subtract.Next we’ll subtract words from the original sentence, including the standard “and” that usually appears between the next-to-last and last items in a list: “Optional ingredients: mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, broccoli, jalapenos, cheese.”Subtraction adds authority, accelerates the pace, says more in fewer words.3. Substitute.Engage the imagination by substituting an unexpected adjective or verb for the one you would normally write: “Personalize your omelet with Splash! into the bubbling butter: mushrooms or tomatoes, onions or broccoli, jalapenos or cheese or all-of-them all at once.”Okay, I confess, I not only substituted jazzy verbs for boring ones, I repeated “or” four times and “all” twice. On purpose. For Style.4. Rearrange.I might have said, “I purposefully repeated ‘or’ and ‘all’ for the sake of style.” Instead, I rearranged the sentence to create multiple false endings like the multiple punch lines at the end of a Steven Wright joke.You can also rearrange chronology: “We will buy, and rush into the mall.”5. Disconnected Lists.Combine wildly disconnected things in a list, then connect them together in the closing fragment of the sentence.“A cathedral, a wave of a storm, a dancer’s leap, never turn out to be as high as we had hoped.” – Marcel Proust“Sparkling eyes, laughter, sunshine and speed come with every Nissan 370Z Convertible.”6. Personification.Give human attributes to inanimate objects.The shattered water made a misty din.Great waves looked over others coming in,And thought of doing something to the shoreThat water never did to land before…   – Robert Frost, Once By the Pacific“The gas pedal of this car throbs with hot impatience.”7. Break the rules of logic.Tease the imagination by stating things that don’t make immediate sense.“In two words, im possible.”“But I can't be out of money, I still have checks!”8. Break the rules of grammar.Slip the handcuffs, seize attention.When Winston Churchill was reprimanded for ending a sentence in a preposition, he apologized, then added, “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” No one remembers the rest of the conversation.Gertrude Stein is remembered for saying, late in life, “There ain’t any answer. There ain’t going to be any answer. There never has been an answer.” Were she to have said, “Life doesn’t make any sense,” would her thoughts today be quoted? (That was another little trick of rearrangement. Common language would be, “would her thoughts be quoted today?”)9. Use Calculated Repetition.Arthur Quinn cheerfully points out, “Scarcely a guidebook on writing does not contain an admonition such as the following: ‘Be brief. Do not repeat yourself. Say what you have to say in as few words as possible. To belabor your point is to risk boring your reader – even insulting his intelligence.’”Quinn then wryly says, “We could easily point out that the author of this advice thought it so important that he was not brief, did repeat himself, used as many words as he dared, and insulted our intelligence by contradicting his own advice in the process of giving it.”There is a time for repetition. Amplification is a worthy goal:“A child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.” – Shakespeare, Love’s Labors Lost, 1.1.263“At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.”– King James Bible, Judges 5:27There is no correct or incorrect style. “Purely subjective, it is.”(That’s a little rearrangement trick Chris Maddock calls Yoda-Speak.)10. Expand Your Reading.The easiest way to augment your style is to fill your ear with sentences strange. Reach for the author unre

Minor key life is the mournful echo of a hollowed-out gourd, bleached in the sun, hard and empty. Life should be lived in a major key, drenched in the colors of nature, quivering with energy, throbbing with purpose.Last week I showed you how to extract liquid color pallettes from famous paintings. This week I’ll show you a similar technique using words. It’s the one taught by Christopher J. Maddock* in Accidental Magic, chapter 15, “How to Color Your Writing.” Master this technique and you’ll wring vivid dictionaries from a single word.Here’s Professor Maddock’s instruction:“First, choose an emotion or feeling to communicate, such as nervous excitement. Think of some words or phrases you associate with that feeling: anxious, waiting, white-knuckled, hesitant, cold sweat. Now incorporate these into your writing:You step into your waiting car, failing to ward off the thought: ‘My first house.’ The seatbelt clutching your shoulder: ‘My first house.’ Engine hesitant, tires chirping, you drive white-knuckled through a cold sweat of rain toward a place you’ve been waiting to come home to your entire life.Voilà! Color your ads with emotions. Enliven them with words fat with association. Don’t just paint pictures – give rides.”In the opening paragraph of today’s memo I gave you a series of words I associate with minor key music. But rather than say the obvious, “sad, melancholy, and pale,” I went one level deeper and gave you my associations with those words: “mournful, hollowed-out, bleached in the sun.”Maddock's technique helps you to avoid clichés and surprise your audience with unexpected combinations and layers of meaning. Listeners and readers love it.I’ve often said to the students of writing at Wizard Academy, “A willingness to write badly is the key to writing well.” When writing descriptions, the first words to pop into your head will be the ones you hear most often, the ones that are overused. Capture these words on paper, then think of what you associate with each of them.Don’t use the obvious words. Use the associations. Don’t worry that your audience won’t understand. Write colorfully and you, too, might be nominated to become president of Chile.“Julian once told me that a story is a letter the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind, p. 444 Pablo Neruda was never afraid that his audience wouldn’t understand. That’s what made his writing so colorful:“Anyone who doesn't read Cortázar is doomed. Not to read him is a grave invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who had never tasted peaches. He would be quietly getting sadder, noticeably paler, and probably little by little, he would lose his hair. I don't want those things to happen to me, and so I greedily devour all the fabrications, myths, contradictions, and mortal games of the great Julio Cortázar.” – Pablo Neruda, poet, nominated as a candidate for the Chilean presidency in 1970.You’ve tasted a peach, haven’t you?Write colorfully. If you don’t, you’ll lose your hair.Roy H. Williams

How to Choose ColorsApril 13, 2009ListenAWe learned last week that numbers are a language.Things communicated in numbers can be spoken in no other language. And because numbers are language, numbers can lie.Color, too, is a language.We use the language of color to reinforce – and contradict – statements made in the languages of shape and symbol, illumination and proximity. Hues, shades, tints, and intensities of color work together to create a mood, an ambience, an attitude.Yes, color is a language and I am fascinated by it.Colors are chosen for websites, logos, furniture, offices and art.The question is, “How do you choose?”Wizard Academy studies what gifted people do when they are feeling inspired. We investigate the greatest accomplishments of great men and women so that we may reverse engineer their unconscious methods.We teach you how to do consciously what a gifted person does unconsciously when they are feeling inspired.How would you like to be able to say, “The color palette of this website was selected by Claude Monet?”Imagine the impact of a color scheme that was the basis of a Gustav Klimt painting that sold for more than 100 million dollars.“The colors in this church were chosen to match the mood of ‘The Last Supper’ by Leonardo DaVinci.”Do you suppose the color scheme of ‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch might create a similar mood of disquiet even when separated from the painting? After all, Munch chose the colors to reinforce the scene. We can safely assume the colors are saying the same thing as the painting.Colors sing most eloquently in chorus. Rarely does one color say much alone.I have said enough today in the language of words. It's time to let the colors do the talking.Just click the beagle at the top of today's memo to begin your instructional journey down the rabbit hole. Each painting clicked will take you one step deeper. There are also a couple of strange side tunnels. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of each page.What colors might one find in a minor key rainbow?I'll tell you next week.Roy H. Williams

Activity Based Accounting, Part TwoThe key to Activity-Based Accounting is never to separate the numbers from the activities of the people represented by the numbers. When numbers in a business lose their connection to people and their actions, the numbers are no longer trustworthy.Never forget these 3 things:1. Not all facts are helpful.2. You lose sight of the big picture when you get too close.3. It’s easy to tell lies in the language of numbers because most people believe numbers never lie.Here are a couple of facts taken from the 2000 Census:The average American family size is 3.14 persons.The average number of children per household is .90 children.Problem: Let’s say you want to move to a “family” town, a place where lots of people are married with children still living at home. You’ll need to find a city with more than nine-tenths of a child per household, right?Using the logic of traditional Cost-Based Accounting, you’ve narrowed your search to 3 towns with 50% more children than the national average of .90 per household. Riverview, Prairieville and Mountaintop each have 1.35 children per household. On paper, the 3 towns look equal.But Activity-Based Accounting would reject the 1.35 children per household average and look at the raw data behind the numbers. Here’s what Activity-Based Accounting would discover:The people of Riverview dislike children. That’s why90 percent of all Riverview households have no kids.But Riverview has a Polygamous religious group, so5 percent of Riverview families have 13 children each and5 percent have 14 children each. Welcome to Riverview, where tension hangs thick in the air.Prairieville is composed largely of immigrants from an overpopulated nation. Consequently, the people of Prairieville believe it’s immoral to have more than one child.8 percent of Prairieville households have no children.74 percent of Prairieville households have 1 child.5 percent have 2 kids.5 percent have 3 kids.4 percent have 4 kids.4 percent have 5 kids.In Prairieville, 82 percent of the population looks down on the 18 percent with more than one child. “Breeder” families like yours are social outcasts. You and your 2 kids are just going to love it here.The people of Mountaintop are happy to be alive. The town motto, “Live and Let Live,” is painted on the water towers and the police cars.33 percent of all households in Mountaintop have no children.22 percent have 1 child.33 percent have 2 children.7 percent have 3 children.2 percent have 4 children.1 percent has 5 children,1 percent has 6 children,1 percent has 7 children.Did you notice in the raw data that none of the children were fractioned? In Activity-Based Accounting, any step that creates a fractional person is a false step.Although it’s true that each of these 3 towns has 1.35 children per household, it’s a completely irrelevant fact and(1.) Not all facts are helpful.We took one step too many when we calculated the number of children in the average household. This illustrates the fact that(2.) You lose sight of the big picture when you get too close.I’m sure you would agree that we learned more about Prairieville, Riverview and Mountaintop from the raw data than from their identical averages of 1.35 children per household. Now that you've taken a step back from the misleading “average” and looked at the raw data, Mountaintop is obviously your best choice.Advertising professionals, you realize I’m talking about Gross Rating Points, don’t you?Reach (the number of different people being reached)times Frequency (repetition)equals Gross Impressions.Gross Impressions expressed as a percentage of population equals Gross Rating Points. (One million Gross Impressions in a city of one million people equals 100 Gross Rating Points.)The Cost-Based Accounting logic that created Gross Rating Points isn’t just plain stupid; it’s fancy stupid. (Stupid with raisins on it.)An advertiser is considering 5 different plans. All he knows is that each plan delivers 100 Gross Rating Points. An Activity-Based study of the raw data tells us Plan One will reach 100 percent of the population once. Plan Two will reach 50 percent of the population twice. Plan Three reaches 10 percent of the population 10 times. Plan Four reaches 5 percent 20 times. Plan Five reaches 1 percent of the population 100 times. But with “100 Gross Rating Points” hovering before his eyes, there’s no way for the advertiser to see the varying effectiveness of these schedules because when he multiplied reach times frequency he took one step too many.Gross Rating Points are valid only if you accept the false premise that reach and frequency are interchangeable.Do you believe reach and frequency are interchangeable? If so, you’d be just as happy in Prairieville or Riverview as in Mountaintop. After all, they each have 50 percent more children than the average American town.And real estate is so much cheaper in the first two tow

How Wal Mart Killed K Mart and Best Buy Beat Circuit CityI spoke to a small auditorium full of business school grad students at the University of Texas last month.They were fascinated by my case study of Transactional vs. Relational customers. I saw their eyes widen and their heads move up and down slowly as I explained how the Relational shopping mode is the foundation of all branding. But then they all dropped their heads and started taking notes like crazy when I began to talk about Activity Based Accounting.I was startled by their reaction. I paused, then said, “You guys have heard about this, right?” They shook their heads no. These young men and women will receive their MBAs in May.I stared at them in disbelief.A man from India spoke up, “For a moment I thought you were talking about activity-based costing but then you took it a whole different direction.”I was incredulous. “You’ve never heard of Activity-Based Accounting?” Again they shook their heads no. Then it hit me. Joe Romano invented this and taught it to his students 20 years ago without ever mentioning that it was his own invention.I smiled. Joe has always been like that.As the years have passed, I’ve seen countless real-life examples of Activity-Based Accounting in action. I just always assumed it was common knowledge and that everyone else was seeing what Joe taught me to see.In a nutshell, Activity-Based Accounting is highly sensitive to trends in customer behavior. It sees the people behind the numbers.Traditional cost-based accounting reduces customers and their behaviors to an “average” or a “percentage.”If a hole is 12 inches deep, how deep is half a hole? Cost-based accounting will answer “6 inches.” Activity-Based Accounting will answer, “There’s no such thing as half a hole.”Have you ever met the family with 2.3 children?Analysts who study Wal-Mart will tell you that the secret to their success is inventory management. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that Wal-Mart’s inventory management is highly responsive to the activities of the customer.Wal-Mart has a men’s clothing department. So does K-Mart. Let’s assume they sell exactly the same clothing. K-Mart can tell you that the month started strong, then slowed down, so they pulled out their little stainless steel cart and the store manager got on the intercom and announced “a flashing blue light special.”Wal-Mart, on the other hand, knows it sold 5 Dave Hogan sport shirts within the first 8 hours they were on display and that all of them were blue. The red ones aren’t selling. The next day they sell 4 more blue ones and only 2 red. Wal-Mart’s sales aren’t going to slow down like K-Mart’s, because Wal-Mart is going to make sure they don’t run out of blue, Dave Hogan sport shirts.K-Mart went bankrupt. Wal-Mart became the most successful retailer in the history of the world. That’s the power of Activity-Based Accounting.Likewise, Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson implemented a decision-making technique back in 2004 that I immediately recognized as Activity-Based Accounting. One year later the success of his endeavor was trumpeted in the Wall Street Journal. Four years after that, rival Circuit City was driven into liquidation because they never quite caught on to what Best Buy was doing.Would you like to talk more about it?Activity-Based Accounting dovetails nicely into the principles taught by women’s marketing expert Michele Miller, so I’ve asked her to give me a couple of hours during her upcoming Wonder Branding class April 15-16 at Wizard Academy. You don’t mind a little extra class time, do you?Rooms are still available at no charge in Engelbrecht House. I’d snag one right now if I was you. A couple of days in Austin will make 2009 turn out a whole lot better for you. Just look at Wal-Mart and Best Buy. (Best Buy retained Michele Miller. Those guys aren’t stupid.)“Education costs money, but then so does ignorance.”– Sir Claus MoserThe Wizard Academy campus is beautiful this time of year. Come.Roy H. Williams

1. Never promise everything you plan to deliver.Leave something to become the delight factor. That unexpected, extra bit you deliver “because we love you” will go a long way toward helping the customer forgive and forget any areas where you may have fallen short. Great ads are written in three steps: (1.) How to End. What will be the Last Mental Image your ad presents to your customer? Begin with the end in mind. (2.) Where to Begin. A clear but interesting angle of approach will gain the customer’s attention. (3.) What to Leave Out. Surprise is the foundation of delight. What will you intentionally leave out of your ad so that you can deliver a delightful surprise? What will you leave out so that the imagination of the customer is engaged?2. Never begin a sentence with the word, “Imagine…”If you’re planning to take your customer on a journey of imagination, plunge them into it. “The wheels of your airplane touch down, but not in the city you were promised…” “You must now choose between two good things…” “If you had more enemies like these, you wouldn’t need friends…”3. Never include your name in an ad more often than it would be spoken in normal conversation.Cramming your name where it doesn’t belong is AdSpeak. Back when Americans encountered one thirtieth as many ads each day, the rule was to repeat the name of the advertiser as often as possible. Do this today and your ads will sound like they were written in the 1940s.4. Never conjure an unpleasant mental image.Fear and disgust work face-to-face, but they often backfire when used in mass media. Conjure these unpleasant emotions in the minds of the masses and you’ll leave your listeners with a vaguely bad feeling attached to your name. They’ll want to avoid you, but they won’t be able to recall exactly why.5. Never respond to a challenge from a competitor smaller than you. Drawing attention to a smaller competitor makes them larger in the eyes of the public. Conversely, if someone bigger than you is foolish enough to shine their spotlight on you, dance in it.6. Never claim to have exceptional service.Most people won’t believe you. And those who do believe you will expect more from your staff than they can possibly deliver. It’s a lose/lose proposition. Rather than promise exceptional service in your ads, tell the public something objective, factual and verifiable that causes them to say, “Wow. Those people really serve their customers.” Never praise yourself. Do things that make the customer praise you.7. Never mention the recession.I understand how tempting it is to say, “In order to help you combat the recession we’re offering…” But all that really does is remind the customer that now is not a good time to be spending money.8. Never make a claim you don’t immediately support with evidence.Unsubstantiated claims are the worst form of AdSpeak. Give the customer facts, details and objective proof if you want to win their confidence. Specifics are more believable than generalities.9. Never use humor that doesn’t reinforce the principal point of your ad.Here’s the litmus test: If remembering the humor forces you to recall the message of the ad, the humor is motivated. Good job. But if recalling the humor doesn’t put you in memory of the ad’s main point, the humor is unmotivated and will make your ad less effective. Sure, people will like the ad. They just won’t buy what you’re selling.10. Never say things in the usual way.From billboards to storefronts to packaging to messages on T-shirts, ads whisper and wheedle and cajole and shout to win our attention. A 1978 Yankelovich study reported that the average American was confronted with more than 2,000 advertising messages per day. But that was 30 years ago. When Yankelovich revisited the study in 2008, the number had jumped to more than 5,000 messages per day. The mundane, the predictable and the usual are filtered and rejected from our consciousness. Win the customer’s attention with words and phrases that are new, surprising and different.Come to Wizard Academy. We’ll teach you how.Roy H. Williams

I am reminded of what Michel Eyquem De Montaigne said with tongue in cheek during the French Renaissance 450 years ago, “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”As expected, we received a firestorm of email 2 weeks ago as a result of the Monday Morning Memo of March 2 in which I said I had chosen not to be fearful about the future. It seems that a lot of people take pleasure in fretting and they want me to get on board.But a frightened person frightens other people. And these newly frightened people will frighten still more people until finally no one is spending any money. Fear is the fuel of recession. I understand perfectly what’s happening in the world. I simply choose not to be afraid.You can choose, too. We are worth more than many sparrows.Warren Buffett agrees with this outlook.“Fear is very contagious. You can get fearful in 5 minutes, but you don’t get confident in 5 minutes.” – Warren Buffett on CNBC, Monday, March 9, 2009CNBC: “We’ve been getting thousands and thousands of emails from our viewers. Warren, we’d like to start with one that echoes a theme we heard again and again. This one comes from Terry in San Antonio, Texas, who asks, ‘Will everything be all right?’”BUFFETT: “Everything will be all right. We do have the greatest economic machine that man has ever created. We started with 4 million people back in 1790 and look where we’ve come. And it wasn’t because we were smarter than other people. It wasn’t because our land was more fertile or we had more minerals or our climate was more favorable. We had a system that worked. It unleashed the human potential. It didn’t work every year. We had 6 ‘panics’ in the 19th century. In the 20th century we had the Great Depression, World Wars, all kinds of things. But we have a system – largely free market, rule of law, equality of opportunity – all of those things that cause the potential of humans to get unleashed. And we’re far from done. Your kids will live better than mine. Your grandchildren will live better than your kids. There’s no question about that. But the machine gets gummed up from time to time. If you take the bulk of those centuries, probably 15 years were bad years. But we go forward.”Did you notice the quote the twitchy news people of America lifted from Buffett’s very upbeat, 3-hour interview? They filtered out all kinds of affirming, positive statements (such as the one above) to create the headline, “Warren Buffett Says ‘The Economy Fell Off a Cliff.”Slippery Wall-Streeters triggered this recession but the twitchy news media seems committed to making sure it progresses.And now for happier news: Wizard Academy has contacted the person I consider to be the best in America at making BIG things happen quickly. Within the next few weeks I hope to announce the dates of a special, 2-day workshop that will allow you to interact with this marketing giant in person. I’ve never met him but I’ve read his books and I look forward to having him on campus. Are there any big things you'd like to make happen quickly?When that announcement is made, you’ll want to act quickly. There are only 100 seats available in Tuscan Hall and many more than that will want to attend this event. It will likely be the most profitable thing any of us do in 2009.And now for a final thought: Fear is contagious. Don’t spread it. And if you meet any twitchy, fear mongering news weasels, slap them and say, “Stop it. Stop it right now.”They’ll know what it’s for.Roy H. Williams

8,000 years before Stonehenge and the PyramidsThe rocks of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) are a curiosity, and curiosity rocks.Travel with me to that ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southeastern Turkey.A shepherd wandering on the hillside where grows a solitary Mulberry tree, spies the top of an oblong rock that appears to have been shaped by human hands. He notices others like it in a pattern. He returns to the village and tells what he has seen. The digging begins. The year is 1994.“Gobekli Tepe is the most important archaeological site in the world.”– David Lewis-Williams, Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg“Gobekli Tepe changes everything.”– Ian Hodder, Stanford University.Stonehenge was built 5000 years ago in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC. Carbon dating of organic matter adhering to the megaliths of Gobekli Tepe reveal it to be 12,000 years old, meaning it was built around 10,000–9,000 BC.“Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-wheel, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant.” – Tom CoxPerhaps the strangest part of the Gobekli story is that around 8,000 BC, its inhabitants entombed their temple under thousands of tons of earth, creating the artificial hills on which the unnamed shepherd walked in 1994. It was a task of unspeakable labor.No one knows why Gobekli was buried.“The modern history of Gobekli Tepe begins in 1964, when a team of American archaeologists combed this remote province of southeast Turkey. The archaeologists noted that several odd-looking hills were blanketed with thousands of broken flints, a sure sign of ancient human activity. Despite this, the US scientists drifted away and did no excavating. Today, they must feel like the publisher who rejected the first Harry Potter manuscript.” – Sean ThomasThirty years later, a shepherd saw a pattern of rocks peeking through the soil and said, “I wonder…”Google Gobekli Tepe and you’ll find that everyone mentions the shepherd but none can name him.I want to locate that shepherd and bring him to Wizard Academy. For it’s people like him – men and women without credentials, funding or permission – who notice the daily miracles that surround us and point them out for all to see. Galileo,Da Vinci,Buckminster Fuller,and the shepherd of Gobekli Tepe;to these servants of Curiosity,I give my highest Salute.Roy H. Williams

The Beagle Sings with BubleMy staff can hardly get any work done. It seems the whole world is calling to ask what I think will happen with our economy.The President of the United States made a primetime speech last week. The press is an interesting animal. The Chicago Tribune predicted the president’s speech would “live among the annals of man,” while its competitor, the Chicago Times, editorialized that “the cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the president.” Those papers were talking about Abraham Lincoln. The speech was the Gettysburg Address.Before I go any further, let me acknowledge that I’m aware of how dangerous it is to speak of politics or religion. No matter what I say on either subject, I’m going to get a firestorm of emails correcting me.Even so…All indications are that President Obama’s speech lifted the mood of the nation.When the mood of the nation is optimistic, our economy sings like Michael Bublé and money flows like water in the street.More than one friend has told me that Obama’s plan will end in disaster. I choose to believe otherwise.I choose to believe.I choose.A jet is low over New York City. Both engines have failed. Any idiot can see that everyone on the plane is going to die. The pilot can fly into a building and kill all the people inside, or he can line up on a street and kill unsuspecting motorists instead. These are his only options.Well, I’m on that jet and I say this pilot is going to land on the Hudson River and the plane is going to float long enough for everyone to get out safely and then we’re all going to hop onto some big passenger ferries that will be exactly where we need them to be.Don’t laugh. It could happen.By the way, you’re on this jet, too.I bought a book at the airport the other day. Barack Obama wrote Dreams From My Father fifteen years ago. As a writer, I was deeply impressed. If a man can be judged by what he writes when he is young, we have an extremely intelligent president.A history book of ancient Israel tells of a starving city surrounded by an enemy army. “Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? If we say, 'We'll go into the city'-the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let's go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”That story ends happily. Not just for the lepers, but for everyone in the city. Well, not quite everyone. There was one man who insisted that God himself couldn’t save the city. Interestingly, everyone made it safely onto the ferryboats except for that guy. He was the moron screaming hysterically ‘We’re all going to die!’ while the pilot was trying to land the plane on the Hudson.It’s really an interesting story. You ought to read it.Roy H. Williams

of the Wizard of AdsTen years ago I taught you how to create relational ads that target the right hemisphere of the customer’s brain. Advertisers who learned this technique made a lot of money.Five years ago I taught you that 2008 would be the final year in a series of 40-year cycles and that the position and direction of society’s pendulum meant 2009 would likely be 1929 all over again. If you haven’t been a little freaked out by the accuracy of that prediction, then you haven’t been paying attention.Today I’m offering you another chunk of glittering gold:A high percentage of relational customershave shifted to a transactional frame of mind.In other words, the rules of marketing are changing.What I teach about writing ads today is quite different from what I taught as recently as 1 year ago. Today, in addition to giving your customer a feeling of connectedness, you must infuse your ads with facts, details, logic and information.NOTE TO THE COGNOSCENTIOF THE MAGICAL WORLDSCOMMUNICATIONS WORKSHOP:The buying mode and mood of the general public has moved from Intuitive and Feeling (NF, right brain/right brain, pattern recognition) to Sensing and Thinking (ST, left brain/left brain, sequential reasoning.) Frosted Frank, not Monet, will win the heart today. Abandon fuzzy angles of approach. Be direct, clear, concise. Clarity is more important than creativity. But it’s also more difficult to achieve.ConsiderThe Economy,accelerated byAccess to Information (Google,)moving in unison withThe Direction of Society’s Pendulumand you’ll understand why consumers have begun buying with their heads instead of their hearts.The irrational right-brain remains powerful, but the logical left is winning the tug-of-war more often than ever before. Impulse purchases are becoming more restrained. We crave romance but we do not trust it.Ad writers, you’re going to have to work harder than ever but so are your clients.Money is tight.Unemployment is rising.People aren't shopping.Traffic is King.To drive traffic,select – in unison with your client – an exciting item or service at apopular price point. Selecting the right item is critical.feature that product or service with a vivid ad full of details and benefits.Q: How is a “featured product” ad different from the price-and-item ads of yesteryear?A: Price-and-item advertising was about offering the lowest price on a common commodity. Featured product ads require new and surprising information. A featured product is an exciting, uncommon item at a popular price point. The ads cannot be hype. Many businesses will resort to Sale! Sale! Sale! Resist the temptation of this cocaine. Featured product ads must contain new information your customer will be glad to know. The selection of what to feature is critical. This is where the business owner is going to need help from the ad writer. Use logic, details, facts to entice the customer to “come and take a look.”We live in exciting times.Wizard Academy awaits.Roy H. Williams

Magic Words to Penetrate the Filter,Erase Suspicion and Lower the Guard It was exactly 10 years ago. I was on the telephone with an 87 year-old man I had been hunting for several weeks. I needed this man’s permission to publish a private letter he had written to America’s Chief of Naval Operations back in 1963. The man’s name was William Lederer.“Where you calling from young man?”“Austin, Texas.”“I was there recently. Nice town.”“What brought you to Austin sir?”“I was there to bury my best friend Jim.”“I’m sorry to hear that.”“You would have liked Jim. Everyone did. He once gave me some advice that changed my life.”“What was it?”“William,” he said, “the public is more willing to believe fiction than non-fiction.”Mr. Lederer now had my full attention.Our bodies contain approximately 100 million sensory receptors that allow us to see, hear, taste, touch and smell physical reality. But the brain contains 10 thousand billion synapses. This means we’re roughly 100,000 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist, than a world that does.The first step in persuasionis to entice your targetto imagine doing the thingyou want them to do.Four and a half years ago in the summer of 2004, a screenwriter named Eli Attie began creating a persona for a new fictional character that would appear on The West Wing. Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) would be a young congressman, new to Washington, a working-class member of an ethnic minority. Prior to running for public office, our fictional character Santos had been a community organizer in a major city (Houston.)Screenwriter Eli Attie admitted to The Guardian, a British newspaper, that he was inspired in 2004 by a young Illinois politician – not yet even a US senator – by the name of Barack Obama, a community organizer from Chicago.As a result of Attie’s attraction to Obama, the 2006 television season showed us a glittering, fictional candidate for the presidency, a happily married, young minority male with 2 children who would run against a moderate Republican opponent from a western state.The imaginary Republican senator, Arnie Vinick (played by Alan Alda,) was unpopular with his conservative base due to his moderate views. His principal opponent in the fictional Republican primary was the Rev. Don Butler, a Christian preacher. Keep in mind these West Wing episodes aired 18 months before the nomination battle between John McCain and Mike Huckabee.But wait, it gets weirder.Ten years ago, Aaron Sorkin admitted that he based The West Wing’s Josh Lyman on Rahm Emanuel, who served in Bill Clinton’s White House. Both Lyman and Emanuel are Jewish. Both are brilliant. Both mail dead fish to opponents who make them angry.In the 2006 season of The West Wing, seasoned White House staffer Josh Lyman serves as campaign manager for the long-shot, minority candidate. When his candidate wins, Lyman is named Chief of Staff.Two years later Rahm Emanuel, the real Josh Lyman, will become Barack Obama's Chief of Staff.Was it all a plot? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just an example of how we tend to act out the things we’ve seen in our mind. By the way, here’s the end of the Lederer story:“How did Jim’s advice change your life Mr. Lederer?”“Well, I had written a few books but none of them sold very well. So in 1958 I showed Jim the manuscript for my newest book and he told me to go back and fictionalize the name of the country, the characters, everything. ‘The public is more willing to believe fiction than non-fiction.’”“How did it turn out for you?”“Well, that book, The Ugly American, stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 78 straight weeks and sold more than 3 million copies in its first year. Marlon Brando starred in the movie. But of course that’s nothing compared to what Jim did.”“What do you mean?”“Jim wrote more than 40 books, sold more than 100 million copies and won the Pulitzer Prize.”There was an awkward silence.“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t think of what Jim you might mean.”“I’m sorry, son. You probably knew him as James. James Michener.”Roy H. Williams

America, I think, is not a place. If another people lived here, the geography would be the same but it would not be our nation.America, I think, is not a government. Our pendulum swings from one extreme to the other and our politics are not unique.America, I think, is not an economy. Free markets exist in other nations and we hold no patent on capitalism.America is a people, an outlook and a family. (A dysfunctional family, yes, but aren’t they all?)Eighty-three years ago the American son was a swaggering youth with glinting eye, proud of his muscle and chin held high. Mark Twain wrote about his American strut in a 1926 letter from Europe to President Calvin Coolidge: “We, unfortunately, don't make a good impression collectively… There ought to be a law prohibiting over three Americans going anywhere abroad together.”Saul Bellow, in his Adventures of Augie March, gave our American boy a voice during the Great Depression: “I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, and will make a record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.”America. Land of Opportunity. A chicken in every pot and a car in every driveway. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Hard work never killed anybody. Cream rises to the top. Second place is the first loser. You can do it.And we did. “Leaders of the free world, liberators of the oppressed,” we’re less than 5 percent of the world’s population yet consume 26 percent of its energy and 30 percent of its resources.A few years later Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of that ocean-crossing hero, began to worry that things were getting out of balance: “America, which has the most glorious present still existing in the world today, hardly stops to enjoy it, in her insatiable appetite for the future.”John Steinbeck echoed Anne’s words. “Then there is the kind of Christmas with presents piled high, the gifts of guilty parents as bribes because they have nothing else to give. The wrappings are ripped off and the presents are thrown down and at the end the child says – ‘Is that all?’ Well it seems to me that America now is like that second kind of Christmas. Having too many THINGS they spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and Nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedyand sick.”John Steinbeck was immediately accused of being a Communist sympathizer.America didn’t listen to Anne or John but became more intense in the pursuit of whatever it was we were chasing.“Go to college. Get good grades. Go to college. Rise to the top. Go to college. Enjoy the good life.”Eighteen years ago Faith Popcorn wrote in her famous Popcorn Report, “The trouble in corporate America is that too many people with too much power live in a box (their home), then travel the same road every day to another box (their office).”Charles Osgood spotlighted this disconnection on CBS Sunday Morning, March 30, 2008, “The average urban dwelling American sees up to 5,000 advertising 'messages' –from T-shirts to billboards – every day. That compares with 2,000 thirty years ago.” [Source: Yankelovich, Inc.]Wow. No wonder we’ve become a nation of consumers. With 5,000 messages hammering us every day, we hardly have time to think about anything else.And now it’s 2009. The whole planet waits to see whether America has the strength, the wit and the will to correct our mistakes. They wait because the economy of the world depends on whether we're able to buy the stuff they need to sell us.The solution appears to be that the world needs better ad writers.Roy H. Williams