Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

“No one is sincere except for me and you.And lately I’ve had my doubts about you.” We’re staring into the face of a trend.I told you in Dec. 2003 that we were moving into an era of “working together for the common good” and that the transition would take 6 years. Thousands of you from Stockholm to Sydney to Las Vegas to South Carolina slipped into the hour-and-a-half multimedia time-tunnel in which I illustrated the arc of society’s 40-year pendulum. Thousands more of you have seen one of my partners make the same presentation.That 6-year transition is ended; we’re now living solidly in the upswing of a Civic cycle.This year’s “Final Four” playoffs in college basketball were conspicuously absent of attention-grabbing superstars. Prior to the games, Tom Davis of NBC Sports wrote, “This is being billed as the ‘No Name’ Final Four for its lack of a star-studded cast of individuals.”In a related story, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said, “The megastar that maybe you normally seem to find in these Final Fours maybe isn’t there. I think it’s refreshing that you’re looking at four teams that ‘team’ is maybe the most important thing.”Working together for the common good is a beautiful dream. But we always take a good thing too far. “Working together for the common good” quickly becomes “I’m not convinced you’re working hard enough and I’m not entirely sure of your motives. What do you have to say for yourself?”People who offer evaluation and advice presume to be superior under the guise of being “helpful.” I find few things in life as irritating as faux purity and faux authenticity: the Faux Real. (The title of today’s memo is an inside joke. Pennie and I have pronounced faux [foe] as “fox” ever since the day an imperious woman in an antique shop condescended to explain to us that a particular antique had a “fox finish.” Sniffing and looking down her nose, she said, “Fox is French for false.” We’ve been laughing about it for 20 years.)Yes, we’re moving into an era of hyper-accountability. Soon Cain will no longer answer, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” but will take great pride in keeping his brother on the straight and narrow. The Cain of tomorrow will be a pest, a prig* and a self-righteous tattle-tale. The Spanish Inquisition and the holocaust of the Nazis were the result of just such a trend getting out of control.“There is nothing that makes us feel so good as the idea that someone else is an evildoer.”– Robert Lynd (1879 – 1949)“Men who believe themselves to be good, who do not search their own souls, often commit the worst atrocities. It is only when we do evil in the belief that we do good that we pursue it wholeheartedly.”– David Farland Just as the Final Four were taking the basketball court, Andrew Potter released a new book, The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves. David Pitt of BOOKLIST writes, “We live, Potter argues, in a world dominated by the prepackaged and the artificial, the fraudulent and the fake. Growing out of this increasingly bleak cultural landscape is a movement centered on the notion of authenticity: the honest, the natural, the real. That’s all fine and good, Potter says, except for one thing: we don’t have a clue what we mean by authenticity, and even if we did, we wouldn’t know how to find it. That is, the quest for authenticity is a hoax—there is no such thing. Authenticity is an exclusionist notion, defined by what it isn’t, not by what it is, and, for the most part, so-called authentic lifestyles are just as artificial and contrived as the rest of modern culture.”Tess Vigeland, interviewing Andrew Potter, said, “You also talk about the one-upmanship that comes into play here, keeping up with the authentic Joneses, especially when it comes to being authentically environmentally friendly. You say there’s this trend toward competitive anti-consumption.”Potter replied, “The idea is that you have to show that you’re not actually connected to the stuff you’re buying. But I think the way it gets really interesting is in the various ways people are downgrading their houses. You know, you get these amazing stories of people putting no-flush toilets in their condominiums in Manhattan, or mud floors in their house. To prove you’re more authentic than everyone else, you have to live like some third world, poverty-stricken aboriginal. It’s quite remarkable.”We get our weirdest when we compete over who is the most pure.If we are not careful this attitude will spawn a new McCarthyism in our politics.If we are not careful this attitude will lead to witch trials in our religions.If we are not careful this attitude will lead to “litmus tests” in our society.I suggest we be careful.And open-minded.And light-hearted.And forgiving. In all the millennia of human experience, these are the only known antidotes.Roy H. Williams

“The best radio ads entertain the public and generate favorable comments.”That kind of thinking is why most radio ads don’t work as well as they should.I know it’s counterintuitive and disconcerting but the ads we hate often work better than the ads we love.What are you trying to make happen with your radio ads? Have you been confusing compliments with results?You’re probably dismayed by what I’m saying right now. Bear with me. I’m betting you’ll find a nugget you can use.Here are some concepts to ponder:(1.) Strange voices: Voices that belong on the radio are easy to ignore. Voices that don’t belong on the radio usually sell more product. Unpolished, amateur voices are hard to ignore. This is why they generate such hot complaints.(2.) Awkward phrasing: “Smooth ads” are built from worn-out phrases that are likewise easy to ignore. Effective ads often feature broken sentences. Half sentences. Non-sequiturs. This is how we speak, but it’s rarely how we write. Our brains know how to assemble bits and pieces of verbalized thoughts so that they make sense in our minds. Awkward wording and weird phrases capture attention. But we rarely use these when we write radio ads.(3.) No music: Music beds “sound good” because they help blur the ads into the format.  This makes the ads – you guessed it – easier to ignore.(4.) No humor: Humor is like nitroglycerine. Handle it carefully and you can move mountains with it. Handle it carelessly and you’ll blow your listener’s attention completely away from your message; they’ll remember your humor but not your advertiser.  Here’s the rule: When the humor is directly linked to the product and its purpose, you’re in the mountain moving business. But when your humor is only tangentially connected to the product, resist the temptation to include it in the ad. Tangential humor will get you lots of compliments but limited results.Please understand I’m NOT saying irritating ads always work. Sometimes a radio ad is irritating because it’s badly written, poorly produced and pointless. But these are rare. Far more common are ads that are badly written, extremely well produced and pointless. But occasionally you’ll hear an ad that doesn’t sound like an ad at all. The person on the radio sounds real, says real things and is believable.Jim Dunn’s accent is difficult to penetrate because he spent his formative years in Boston. Remember Cliff Clavin on Cheers? Jim the construction worker has a much thicker Boston accent than Cliffie the postman and Jim’s jewelry store is in sunny Florida. Earlier this year, Jim bought some radio time and simply told the truth:JIM: What was I thinking? Opening a second location made sense at the time, I just can’t remember why. Originally, I opened J.R. Dunn Jewelers in Lighthouse Point so that Ann Marie, Sean and I could work together as a family. Opening that second location on Las Olas meant us working apart.  The store was a success but it was also a huge burden.  There are things in life worth more than money.  Togetherness is one of them. In late 2009, I asked Ann Marie what she wanted for Christmas.  She said,ANN MARIE: “All I want is to spend more time with our family and for you, me and Sean to work together again.  So if that means closing Las Olas…so be it.”JIM: When I asked Sean what he wanted, he gave me the same answer. Funny, it’s what I wanted deep down inside, too. It’s done.ANNOUNCER: Announcing the first, last and only Happy Together Sale. The entire inventory of the Las Olas store has been moved to the original store location in Lighthouse Point.  The Dunns are back together again.JIM:  Join us in our family celebration.  We’ve got fine jewelry hanging from the rafters.  Two stores full of diamonds, watches and jewelry jammed into one big happy location.  Let us send some home with you.Jim and Ann Marie Dunn allowed their Florida customers to see them real. Jim spoke of relationships more important than money and publicly admitted an embarrassing mistake.Real people with real voices telling real stories.The Dunn’s event was a gigantic success.Real results.Go figure.Roy H. Williams

I tried to write some tips about business growth for you this week. I really did. But I found myself drawn to this, instead. – RHW “Most of one’s life… is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.”– Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963“Our minds are lazier than our bodies.”– Francois, Duc de La Rochefouchauld, 1613-1680You probably have a limiting factor in your life that’s holding you back.A limiting factor may be a habit, a preferred chemical or an attitude that hinders your advancement, your happiness, your future.Can you think of a creative way to remove the limiting factor from your life?“Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there’s no particular virtue in doing things the way they always have been done.” – Dr. Rudolph Flesch, writing consultant and author of Why Johnny Can’t ReadYou are your own best teacher. You know where you’re coming from and what you’re all about. You know where the bodies are buried and the names of the skeletons in your closet.You also know the answer to your problem. But you don’t yet know what you know.How can we get you to realize what you already know? How can we brighten your future?ANSWER: Interactive journaling.“I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.” – William Faulkner, winner of the Nobel PrizeFaulkner was like you and me. We learn our minds when we write our thoughts.The problem with our century is that we are constantly distracted; “Too much to do, too little time.” Writing dictates a frame of mind we rarely experience today.Writing moves us from the emotional confusion of right brain, abstract thought*, to the logic and clarity of left brain, analytical thought. This is why we think writing is difficult.Interactive Journaling focuses your thoughts and quiets your mind so you can hear yourself say what you know to be true.I’m traveling to Carson City, Nevada, to spend a couple of days with Don Kuhl, the grand poobah of Interactive Journaling. I hope to convince Don to craft the Interactive Journaling portion of Dr. Lori Barr’s new class at Wizard Academy, Optimism for Beginners.Don is CEO of The Change Companies, the publisher of the behavior modification curriculums used by the better rehab programs across America.Interactive Journaling has turned countless addicts into model citizens. I believe it might also be able to turn pessimists into optimists.At its heart, Interactive Journaling is a series of written questions that students may answer however they choose. But these answers must be written down.In this private, inner world of the mind, there’s no one with whom you can argue. There is no authority figure trying to impose his or her will. The only teacher is your own experience. The only voice you hear is yours.Interactive Journaling facilitates behavior change quietly and affordably. Are there behaviors you would like to see changed in: your employees? your students? your kids? yourself?Each of us already knows the right answers. I’m going to Carson City to learn the right questions.Fingers crossed.Roy H. Williams

I detest the Positive Thinking cult. Yes, you read that correctly.But I am supremely optimistic. I see the Positive Thinking cult as the religion of Hubris; man worshipping himself. “I am my own god. I control my own destiny. There is nothing I can’t be, nothing I can’t do, nothing I can’t accomplish. I am limited only by my own thoughts.”Sorry. I just needed to put that on the table. It’s important to me that you know I’m not a you-can-do-it-if-you-think-you-can motivational weasel selling magic beans to unsuspecting children.“But didn’t Jack’s beans grow into a beanstalk that reached into the clouds?”Thank you for helping make my point: IT’S A FAIRY TALE.Sometimes your very best just isn’t good enough.But I believe optimism is the gateway to happiness.Outcomes are determined by actions.Actions are determined by beliefs.Your attitude is the glow of your beliefs.What do you believe about the future? What is your relationship to Chance?Have you ever met a happy pessimist? Pessimists prefer the term “realist.” This allows them to reposition optimists as unrealistic airheads who need not be taken seriously. So no, I’m not going to let you pretend you’re neither optimistic nor pessimistic but are merely scientifically “realistic.”Reality refers only to the current moment: a thing is, or it is not. Optimism and pessimism reflect your expectations about the future. Data is one thing, chance is another. Facts don’t alter the reality of Chance.What do you expect Chance to bring?Optimism is surrounded by cliché: “The optimist sees the glass half full, the pessimist sees it half empty.” You’ve always understood this distinction and wished you could see the world more cheerfully, but you can’t help how you feel, right?Wrong. Optimism is a choice.Discussions about the future reveal your basic belief system. Whether you call him God or Chance or The Universe or whatever, you believe he is aware of you or he is not.If you believe he is aware, then you believe he either likes you or he does not.My position is similar to that of Michael J. Fox: “I believe there is a god and it’s not me.” I believe God sees my flaws and knows my darkness but he likes me anyway. I believe bad things happen randomly. I don’t attribute them to God. Arthur C. Clarke said it best: “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.” This understanding supports my optimism. It is part of my belief about God.This is what I believe about you: You are astoundingly, amazingly, unbelievably lucky. Good things happen to you that you don’t deserve. Good things are on the way.When a bad thing happens, let the ugly pass. Don’t stare at it. Keep your eyes on the beauty that will follow in its wake like a skier behind a boat.Keep your eyes on the rope. The skier will soon appear, smiling and beaming with good news. Expect it.Roy H. Williams 

Not a Chance.People don’t really change their minds. They simply make new decisions based on new information. In the absence of new information, there will be no new decision. Give a person the same information you’ve given them in the past and they’ll make the same decision they’ve made in the past. Want a new decision? Provide new information. This new information can be facts and details or it can be a new angle of view: “Today’s expensive drugs pay for tomorrow’s miracle cures.”That sentence doesn’t give us new information. You and I already know:(1.) prescription drug prices are ridiculously high and(2.) drug companies have to pay for their own research. “Today’s expensive drugs pay for tomorrow’s miracle cures,” merely gives us a new perspective by linking the first piece of information to the second. People trust what they already know. Present your customer’s own suspicions, beliefs and prejudices as “evidence” and they’ll judge your assertions to be completely credible. Even when they’re not. That sounds a bit Machiavellian, doesn’t it? Sorry about that, but I want you to have a clear understanding of the technique used by sinister leaders to gain control over large groups of people. Racist presidential candidate George Wallace used this technique in 1968 when he told Americans to vote for him and “send a signal to Washington.” His seemingly innocent statement was built upon 2 assumptions:(1.)  something is wrong in Washington.(2.)  Wallace is against what’s wrong and you should be, too.That first assumption, “Something is wrong in Washington,” is so easy to sell that the second assumption is swallowed without thinking. Wallace used a communication trick I call, “bouncing it off the invisible backboard.”1.    (1.) When you say a thing clearly it goes swish through the net like a basketball. 2.    (2.) Bounce a new idea off an established idea and you’re using the established idea as a backboard. We did this in the statement, “Today’s expensive drugs pay for tomorrow’s miracle cures.” Drugs are expensive was the established idea to which we made specific reference. In essence, it served as a backboard. 3.    (3.) But when you bounce your idea off another idea without making specific reference to the second idea, I say you’re “bouncing it off the invisible backboard.”“White people are superior to black people” was the invisible, racist backboard off which Wallace bounced his statement, “Send a signal to Washington.” “She’s so fine there’s no tellin’ where the money went.” Pennie laughed when she heard that line for the first time in Robert Palmer’s Simply Irresistible. Let’s take a look at all the buried assumptions cleverly hidden within that line: (1.)  There was money.(2.)  It’s gone.(3.)  The man with the money was accompanied by an intoxicatingly beautiful woman.(4.)  He spent the money on the woman.(5.)  He has no memory of it. None of these things was said clearly. We intuit them, reading between the lines. I’m convinced the invisible backboard is found in the right hemisphere of the brain. Unlike the left hemisphere, the right brain doesn’t know fact from fiction or right from wrong. The right brain is all about pattern recognition; hunches, gut feelings, intuitions and premonitions. Speak indirectly to your customer’s hidden suspicions, beliefs and prejudices. Bounce your suggestion off an invisible backboard in the brain’s right hemisphere and you’re whispering naked, in the dark, to the heart. Roy H. Williams

discovering the science behind every artArt is the language of relevance. Science is the language of credibility.Art is interpreted by feelings. Science is what’s left when feelings are gone.Art is the language of the brain’s right hemisphere; science is the language of the left. And the tug-of-war between the two gives us a funny, dual consciousness; the heart whispers one thing while the mind declares another. This is why the hardest choices in life are the choices between two good things: mercy and justice, loyalty and honesty, the impulse of play and the discipline of restraint: right brain and left.Good things often come into conflict, do they not? Liberal and conservative. Art and science. Faith and fact. When faced with a duality, do you choose one side and disparage the other or do you hold tightly onto both and become electric?Advertising is an art and a science.Public speaking is an art and a science.Music is an art and a science.Business is an art and a science.Hollister and Gideon’s other grandfather, Carl Morris, said, “Every science begins as an art. We come upon it intuitively, study it to find the recurrent patterns, then create charts and systems to give us control over it.” Carl has never attended Wizard Academy but he’s already figured out what we do here: we discover the science behind every art.We investigate the languages of shape, color, symbol (metaphor,) music, proximity, radiance and phonemes. And then we teach our students how to leverage these tools to move hearts and minds.We’re rather a dangerous bunch.Advertising and politics, fiction and poetry, painting and photography, food and music, each of these is merely a conduit in which flows a conflicted duality: ones and zeros, pointed and soft, bitter and sweet.Tower construction has been halted.The good news is that we’re about 90 percent complete and the $93,000 elevator is mostly bought, but the kitchen, bathrooms and small offices above those bathrooms have not yet been completed. Strangely, we were at about this same stage of construction – 90 percent – when the Engelbrecht House project came grinding to a halt.Things were going along fine on the tower until we had to plunk down $78,000 all at once for the elevator. This leaves us teetering on the financial edge because we’re committed to not having a mortgage. Please don’t suggest that we borrow the money.Here’s my solution: The workmen are going to stack those huge blocks of limestone we cut from the plateau to build some beautiful retaining walls and terraced gardens. We already own the equipment and the blocks so all we’ll have to fund is the labor, the diesel fuel, the plants and the topsoil in which to plant them. A good project for spring and early summer, don’t you think? My hope is that the money to finish the tower will appear during the few weeks that we’re working on the landscape. I feel good about it.The bad news is that this pushes the Tower Grand Opening Gala to late summer or early autumn.This would be a really great time for you to sign up for a class or special event, don’t you think? Aside from what we’ll spend to feed you while you’re here, 100 percent of your tuition will go toward finishing the tower.Six Years of nonstop fundraising and construction has been wearisome. I think that when you and I finally finish this tower we should shift our focus to building the alumni. You agree? Good. It’s unanimous. Tomorrow will be a brand new day.Come, we’ll watch the sun rise together.Roy H. Williams

Relevance and credibility are the matches and gunpowder of advertising. Relevance is a glowing promise that can ignite the flame of desire.Credibility is quiet power: Details. Facts. Proof.The flame of relevance without the gunpowder of credibility is empty, glittering hype; fluffy and without substance. We see a hollow promise, the brief light of a match in the darkness and then the darkness returns.The gunpowder of credibility without a flame of relevance is the answer to a question no one was asking. Credibility sans relevance is cold, heavy and dry. We are bored by it.But add the glowing flame of relevance to the dry gunpowder of credibility andBOOM. You get everyone’s attention.BOOM. Folks come running from every direction.BOOM. The world is on fire. Lights. Sirens. News cameras. Helicopters.BOOM. Every banker wants to be your friend.Want to hear something really strange? Writers who understand relevance are generally allergic to credibility. They speak ever to emotion, never willing to satisfy our hunger for details and proof. They say, “We have great prices!” and we say, “Name one.” They say, “The lowest prices! Guaranteed!” and we say, “What are the terms of this guarantee, exactly? What happens if I find a lower price? Do I get the advertised item for free or do you make excuses, apologize, and expect me to walk away satisfied? Guarantee, my ass.”Writers who understand credibility seem allergic to emotional relevance. They hate hyperbole and never want to be accused of it. “We have been in business since 1953. We are part of the community. We believe in honesty and in making a fair profit. When other stores say ‘half price,’ you should always ask, ‘half of what?’ We don’t play those mark-it-up to mark-it-down pricing games like the other stores. We are experts. You can trust us. Our staff has 170 years of combined experience. And yes, we’re every bit as boring as we sound.”Step one: light the match of relevance. Step two: touch it to credibility. And make sure it’s a powder keg and not just a firecracker. The pop-pop-pop of firecracker credibility is like the yap-yap-yap of grandma’s annoying little Pekingese dog.The person who combines relevance with credibility can change the world.Relevance with credibility is the answer to public education. Our current educational system offers credible information that has little relevance to the lives of today’s students.Relevance with credibility is the answer for the church. Credibility is truth. Relevance is emotion. Truth without emotion is the ruling of a judge. No one is attracted to a courtroom. Emotion without truth is a cult.Church attendance is dwindling in America because ministers, like ad writers, usually lean too far to one side and away from the other.Without relevance and credibility, there can be no BOOM.Ad writers, sales people, teachers, trainers and ministers, ask yourselves continually, “Does what I’m about to say have relevance? Will it speak to the hearts of my audience? Will they be moved?” And then ask, “Is my message credible? Are my promises supported by evidence without loopholes? Will the audience have confidence in what I’m saying?Relevance plus credibility:BOOM.Roy H. Williams

I’ve been thinking a lot about aging. Now I’m a cliché for sure: a middle-aged man contemplating all the things in his life that will likely remain undone.The weirdest triggers send us off on these melancholy journeys. By “us” I mean pampered American men. Today’s introspective journey was triggered when Dale Betts asked me about the 12 Stages of Seduction. He remembered reading my memo about them but hadn’t been able to find it in the archives at MondayMorningMemo.com.I found it for him. That memo was November 10, 2008, eighteen months ago.Damn. Eighteen months. A year and a half.I remember writing it. I remember Pennie asking me to help her hang shirts from the dryer, the client I was going to meet at the office when the sun was up, the bills I was worried about paying.Where does time go when it passes? Does it wink out of existence? Is it in a file folder somewhere?Methinks my finger has been on the fast-forward button when I should have been content with play.“But if you are content,” we are told, “you aren’t living up to your full potential.”Contentment is another interesting concept, a shimmering mirage we hear about, but never see.“We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.” – Kim FossPaul tells us that a person who knows God and is content is the richest person on earth, “for we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out.”Yes, my finger has been on the fast-forward button when I should have been content with play.Play is the third interesting concept tumbling around in my mind. I remember writing about it recently. When was that? Pardon me while I look for it in the archives.Crap. I wrote that on May 12, 2003, nearly 7 years ago.Yes, I am a cliché. Turn with me now to page 17 in The Handbook for Men Having a Mid-Life Crisis. I read here on page 17 that I have 2 options:1: Buy a sports car, a hairpiece and a membership at a gym.2: Get a hobby. Number one is definitely not going to happen and I don’t much like the word “hobby,” either. It doesn’t connect to big words like “joy” and “epiphany.” So I’m going to stick with “play.”Play doesn’t just connect to the big words; it is one.My 2003 memo tells me that for an activity to be play, it must be:1. intrinsically motivating.If you play because you want to win a trophy, you’re not really playing for pleasure and are therefore not truly playing.2. freely chosen.If you are playing because someone told you to, you are not truly playing.3. actively engaging.If you play while disinterested in the game, you are in essence not playing.4. fun.You must derive pleasure from it.Play is a shortcut to happiness. Laughter is medicine. You know these things. But did you also know that people who are destitute are surprisingly likely to describe themselves as happy?Let me be clear: I’m not recommending poverty as the key to happiness. But in her book, Happiness Around the World: The Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires, Professor Carol Graham firmly disproves the supposed link between wealth and happiness.As an example: the citizens of Japan earn and spend 25 times as much as citizens of Nigeria but the Japanese are no more likely to describe themselves as happy. Scientist Graham conducted an exhaustive study of the world’s population, leading her to conclude, “Higher per capita income levels do not translate directly into higher average happiness levels.”Evidently, Frank McKinney Hubbard was right, “It’s pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.”I believe nothing on earth can “make” you happy.Happiness is a choice.And it’s free.Play on.Roy H. Williams 

“Hello ladies. Look at your man. Now back to me. Now back at your man. Now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me. But if he stopped using lady-scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me. Look down. Back up. Where are you? You’re on a boat with the man your man could smell like. What’s in your hand? Back at me. I have it. It’s an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love. Look again. The tickets are now diamonds. Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady. I’m on a horse.” Much has been made of the new TV ad from Old Spice, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” Yes, its seamless one-shot videography and old-school stage effects are impressive and I’m certain the oyster in his hand is supposed to trigger unconscious sexual appetite, especially when its location is invaded by a massive, Old Spice cylinder that rises slowly upward.But these are not the things that captivate us. Impressive special effects and hidden sexual triggers are everywhere, no big deal.That script, however, is a big deal. It’s fabulous.I’m going to pause for a moment to applaud the writer of that ad.Okay, I’m back now. (And yes, I really did quit typing and applaud.)The magic of the Old Spice script is hidden in plain sight; imperative voice is the sound of command: “Look at your man. Now back to me.” Swim to Kansas. Walk your dog. Kick a can. Lead the imagination. Don’t be ignored. Write imperative voice.Imperative:1.  Expressing a command or plea.2. Having the power or authority to command or control.3. Impossible to deter or evade; pressing.Do it. Open with a 3-word sentence. Make the first word a verb. Prepare to be amazed. Imperative voice gets attention.Lift the receiver. Dial the number. Two nine five, fifty-seven hundred. Kristin will answer. Make a donation. Finish the tower. Attend a class. Go home smiling. Make big money.The area code is 512.I shared all this with my partners during a 2-day training session last month. Tim Miles, a brilliant ad writer with so many clients that he no longer accepts new ones – ka-ching – sent me the following email a few days later:Subject: Short Sentences Rock!Dude,That short, impactful sentence exercise we did last week? I used it to write lines for an ad that started Monday. We saw an immediate increase in the number of generated leads. Seriously – BANG like a gun.Thanks for the technique.TimHere’s a 10-second example:Swim to Kansas. Forget the water. The arms of the propeller on your Piper Meridian will move you quickly, safely and in powerful style. Swim the grand ocean… of the sky.These are the keys:1. Short sentences.   Four words are okay. Three are better. Two rock.2. Open with verbs.   Walk. Sing. Wiggle. Kick. Dance. Jump. Swim. Lift.3. Imperative voice.   Tight. Taut. Command.This week’s memo is short.       I’m on a horse.Roy H. Williams

A fortress protects you and makes you feel safe. A strongly held belief is a fortress. It protects your view of reality. You defend your fortress when you feel it’s under attack.But is every strongly held belief true?The sincerity of the believer does not determine the truth of the belief.Don’t panic, I’m not attacking your fortresses. I have no idea what you believe but I do know you have 4 categories of beliefs:1. Beliefs about GodIs he there or not? Does he care or not? Has he spoken to us or not? Is the future written or do you have free will? You have a belief.2. Beliefs about SelfAre you essentially good or basically bad? Are you broken or whole? Do you matter? You have a belief.3. Beliefs about OthersDo others give to you or take from you? Can they be trusted? What do you mean to them? You have a belief.4. Beliefs about CircumstancesDo you shape your circumstances or do they shape you? Will they get better or grow worse? What do you really deserve? You have a belief.Is there a chancethat one of your beliefs is wrongand your fortress has become a prison?I’m not a motivational speaker. I’m a business consultant. Stay with me.Frances Frei of Harvard Business School says you cannot change a person’s behavior until you change their beliefs. I agree with her.Feelings are the products of actions.Actions are the products of beliefs.Ms. Frei teaches business owners how to change the behavior of employees by changing what employees believe.I teach how to change the behavior of customers by changing what customers believe. But in each instance, the first change of belief must happen in the heart of the business owner.Are you up for it?Roy H. Williams

I’m always stunned, slack-jawed, big-eyed and stupid when a person chooses to do what obviously won’t work. I stand there in a daze, awed by the fact that Jesus can love such idiots as the human race. Maybe I overreact.My first big-eyed moment happened when I was 21 years old. I was a sales rep in a radio station back before we learned to call ourselves Account Executives. Yes, I’m talking about the really old days. Cell phones didn’t exist. If you needed to make a call, you dug in your pocket for a quarter and looked around for a phone booth. There were no such things as CD players or the internet. The only way for the public to hear new music was on the radio.Radio stations played black vinyl circles with grooves cut into them. A diamond needle on a mechanical arm would ride the groove and its vibrations are what created the music. You’ve probably seen this on the Flintstones.My desk at the radio station faced a window that looked into the parking lot. About once a week I’d see a band show up in their finest show-clothes and walk toward our door with hope shining from their faces like Christmas morning. The leader would carry the band’s privately produced album like it was the Ark of the Covenant, a disc with the power to spin them into superstars at thirty-three and a third revolutions per minute.They imagined themselves greeted by a receptionist with a beaming smile. “My!” she would say, “You’re obviously an important, up-and-coming band. I can tell by your impressive show-clothes. Let me get the person in charge of the radio station so he can officially discover you.”Curious and hopeful, I'd always walk down the hallway to see their pitch.Our receptionist was as polished as a teller in a drive-thru bank. You could almost see the bulletproof glass. “I’m sorry but he can’t see you right now… No, you’ll need to leave that with me. If he likes it he’ll give you a call… Yes, I promise I’ll give it to him personally.”And that would be the end of it.Unless… I liked these people. In those rare cases I would follow them into the parking lot and say, “Did you bring another one of those with you?”In a wink I was surrounded by wide eyes and white teeth. Christmas morning had returned and I was Santa Claus. It was scary. “Do you work for Love 98 FM?” they’d ask.“No, I work for their AM sister station.”An album would magically appear in my hands and a voice would say, “What’s your format? We do all kinds of music. We’ve got slow songs, fast songs, rock songs, country songs, ballads, you name it. What kind of music do you play?”“My station doesn’t play music but I can still help you.”Disappointed and suspicious they would look at me as if Santa had said, “I didn’t bring you any toys this year.”And then I would tell them how to get the attention of every radio station in America.“The person who chooses the music is called the Program Director. And all along the baseboard of his office are stacked at least 2,000 unsolicited record albums he plans to evaluate as soon as he has time. Each album has 10 songs. Finding a hit in that pile of 20,000 songs will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. And to make matters worse, privately produced albums have covers that always look a little bit homemade. This creates an expectation of low-budget sound. And guess what? That’s exactly what he hears when he drops the needle. Ten seconds into the first song, he lifts the needle and the party’s over. The album goes back into the jacket, never to be seen again.”Now they’re looking at Santa like he kicked their puppy.I had been told I lacked people skills but I plunged ahead, “Unsolicited albums are added to the stack along the baseboard but 45 RPM singles get a needle dropped on them immediately, especially when they’ve got the same song on both sides. A 45 RPM single says to the Program Director, ‘Somebody really believes in this song.’ And singles are packaged in plain paper sleeves so there’s no cover art to prejudice his opinion.”I’m doing this because I want to help these people, remember? So I’d always tell them, “Pick your best song and pull out all the stops. Hire an arranger and a producer. Pay studio musicians to play those little accent parts that turn good songs into great ones. A high-budget single costs less money to produce than a low-budget album.”We’d stand there in awkward silence until one of them broke the stillness. “You’re an idiot,” the voice would say, “With an album we’ve got 10 chances to get airplay but with a single we’ve only got one chance.” And then they’d climb in the van and drive away while I stood there in the parking lot, dumbfounded.Not once did they ever say, “Wow. Thanks for caring enough to share that with us.”I knew the bands were delusional. I just never realized that I was, too.Strangely, I never quit advising people. In fact, I made a career of it.But a good friend told me something that has saved every

And How Will You Measure Progress?Violent crime in America declined each year from 1993 to 2004. Then just about the time the iPod became popular in 2005, violent crime began trending upward.CONCLUSION: iPods cause violent crime. Or at least that was the conclusion of a 2007 report published by The Urban Institute, a research organization based in Washington. (I swear I’m not making this up.)Bad advertising strategies stem from just such logic: “Since one event precedes another, the first event must be the cause of the second.” This fallacy of logic is so common it has a Latin name: Post hoc, ergo, propter hoc, “after this, therefore, because of this,” referring to the mistaken belief that temporal succession implies a causal relation.Most business owners look around, observe their circumstances and then try to make sense of it all. Their thoughts and plans are guided by what they see. But any scientist will tell you correlation and causation are not the same thing.Don’t tell me what you see. Tell me what you want to see. “What are you trying to make happen? And how will you measure progress?” When I ask these questions, most business owners stammer, stutter and hedge, then change the subject by asking a question of their own.I usually ignore that question and ask, “How am I supposed to help you make something happen when you can’t tell me what it is?”Sigh.“When you don’t know where you’re going,any road will get you there.”– Cheshire Cat, Alice in WonderlandHow many of your actions are actually reactions triggered by circumstances? (Please know that I am as guilty of this as the rest of you.) Are we allowing the merely urgent to set aside the truly important?Do you know what you’re trying to make happen? Can you tell me exactly how you plan to measure progress? The shortest distance from Point A to Point B is always a straight line. The best marketing strategies begin by drawing a straight line from Where We Are Today to Where We’d Like To Be Tomorrow.You can’t navigate a ship by studying the wind and waves. Fix your gaze on your goal, a non-negotiable, fixed position that can never change. Let that be your lighthouse, your reference point, your North Star.No stack of dollars can be your lighthouse. Dollars are merely a byproduct. Money fails as a compass because it can be found in every direction. Guiding directives and unifying principles are never merely financial.Where do you want to be tomorrow?Now point to your North Star so that I can see it, too.Good. Now let’s get started.Roy H. Williams

Moses was 40 years old when he tried to lead Israel out of Egypt by the strength of his own arm. He failed, then ran from the anger of Pharaoh like a little girl. But who can blame him for trying? He was, after all, the only Israelite who lived in the palace under the protection of Pharaoh’s daughter: “I’m unique. I’m special. I was born for this.”Moses at 40 was brash, confident, full of himself; the kind of leader who would stand on the deck of an aircraft carrier, look into the lens of a TV camera and say, “Mission accomplished.”But Moses at 80 was a completely different man. In the book of Numbers we read, “Now the man Moses was very meek, the most humble man on the face of the whole earth.” Having lived 40 years as a shepherd on the backside of the desert, Moses had lost his hubris and developed a speech impediment.Remember how many years the unbelieving Israelites had to wander in the desert before they became a completely different people? Bingo. 40 years.That phrase – “40 years” – appears 25 times in the Bible and in virtually every instance it refers to a window of transformative change. Do we in fact become a different people every 40 years?William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote a book about this 40-year phenomenon in 1991. Those authors never mention the Bible but focus instead on the historical record of Western society from 1584 to the present. That book, Generations, asserts that we go through a series of 4, approximately 20-year cycles or “generations” in a predictable order. (Think of a generation not as birth cohorts but as life cohorts. Everyone alive in a society is part of the same generation in that moment.)Here’s how those 20-year cycles look when overlaid onto the story of Moses.1. Idealist, marked by infatuation,ending with full-of-himself Moses at 40,“I’m special.” 1963-19832. Reactive, marked by disillusionment,ending with Moses at 60 after 20 years in the desert,“I’m searching for something better.” 1983-20033. Civic, marked by a power struggle,ending with burning-bush/10 Plagues Moses at 80,“I’m just a regular person trying to make it through the day.” 2003-2023 (and 1923-1943)4. Adaptive, marked by reluctant acceptance,ending with Israel-in-the-wilderness Moses at 100, “I’m part of a team on a journey.” 2023-2043 (and 1943 to 1963) (In the middle of the last Adaptive cycle (1943-1963) a friend of Jack Kerouac, the poet John Clellon Holmes wrote, “You know, everyone I know is kind of furtive, kind of beat…” – Go, (1952) And from that Beat generation came the beatniks who inspired the idealist hippies of the 1960’s.)When the cycle has gone full circle it returns to where it began:1. Idealistending with Moses at 120, full of himself again, striking the rock to bring water instead of speaking to it as God had instructed. 2043-2063Please note that each of these 20-year cycles is attended by sparkle and darkness. None of them is inherently better than the others.Society hungers for individuality and freedom during the upswing of an Idealist cycle. Nothing wrong with that. But we always take a good thing too far. What begins as a beautiful dream of self-discovery (1963) ends as hollow, phony posing (1983.) And from that shining disco of lights and glitter our hunger falls back, feather-like, toward what we left behind: working together for the common good.But this beautiful dream of working together to build a better tomorrow slowly hardens into duty, obligation and sacrifice. We become bound by rules and the expectations of others.And we grow weary.Finally, we begin to move toward what we left behind: individuality and freedom of expression.“If you look at the history of youth cultural movements, they tend to go one of two ways. One is in the direction of individual expression and creativity; the best example is the '60s. The other way is to lose themselves in the collective, binding themselves into a gang…” – Jaron LanierThe declining Idealist pendulum reached the bottom of its arc in 2003, right on schedule. We’re now in our 7th year of a new Civic cycle, “losing ourselves in the collective, binding ourselves into a gang,” as the pendulum swings toward another Civic zenith in 2023.On the sunny side of a Civic upswing are transparency, volunteerism and authenticity. But in the dark you’ll find smug self-righteousness, legalism and bureaucracy.If history can be trusted as a guide, we’re now entering the time of a power struggle. Everywhere it will be “us” versus “them.” And both sides will believe they work purely for the common good. “God is clearly on OUR side.”“You don’t care enough about global warming,or free enterprise,or civil liberties,or the rights of the unborn,or the downtrodden in Tibet.You’re not committed to family valuesand you don’t recycle.You don’t support our troops.Frankly, we’re disappointed in you.You’re not doing your part.Shap

Even When They're WrongChristian Jürgensen Thomsen was a young man interested in archaeology so when the Danish government of 1816 needed someone to climb into the attic of Copenhagen’s Trinitatis Church and sort through the rubble that had collected there, Thomsen was their man.Upon entering the attic, Thomsen reported random items in “dust and disorganized disarray, hidden away in chests and baskets, among bits of material and paper. It was total chaos.” Sounds like my attic. Yours too, I’ll bet.The first thing young Christian Jürgensen Thomsen did was to organize the antiquities according to their material: stone in one pile, bronze in another, iron in a third. When the public was invited to an exhibition in that same church loft in 1819, this was the first time the false division of the past into three “ages” was ever used.“So familiar has Thomsen’s tripartite division of the past into a Stone, a Bronze and an Iron age become, so complete the authority it has acquired, that we easily forget its comparatively recent vintage and attribute to it a degree of reality that it scarcely has a right to.” – Historian Robert FergusonFerguson says “Stone Age,” “Bronze Age” and “Iron Age” are false labels adopted by people looking for categories where none exist. Likewise, I believe “Baby Boomer,” “Gen-Xer” and “Millennial” to be false labels.People are not imprinted at birth with values systems they carry throughout their lives.Search the phrase “Attributes of Baby Boomers” and you’ll read some truly idiotic assertions that have come to be widely believed, such as, “People born between 1946 and 1955 are experimental, value individualism and are free spirited. People born between 1956 and 1964 are less optimistic, distrust the government and are generally cynical.”- WikipediaStone, bronze and iron refer not to time periods but to materials. Likewise, Baby Boomer, Gen-X and Millennial refer not to people born during a certain window of years but to values systems that were popular for a while in our society.New systems of values are first adopted by the youth. Later, when those values become mainstream and are embraced by the rest of society, the values continue to be associated with the birth cohorts that first embraced them.In truth, the pendulum of Western society swings in a very predictable 40-year arc and all of us are carried along with it. When our societal pendulum is moving toward individuality and self-expression we live in a “Me generation.” When we’re swinging away from these virtues and begin working together for the common good, we live in a “We generation.” The move from one extreme to the other takes 40 years.We’ve recently seen our pendulum reach the bottom of its arc (2003) as we shifted from “Me” back to “We.”Next Monday I’ll tell you exactly what you can expect from the coming decade.Roy H. Williams

Frankly, I Cheat. You Can, Too.I became an advertising salesman so I could buy groceries. A college dropout with no financial safety net, I installed aluminum guttering on houses during the day and changed reel-to-reel tapes in an automated radio station at night. Our format was radio preachers who needed your money to pay for the airtime we sold them.We were the number 23 station in a city of 23 stations. Our best ratings book showed us with a cumulative weekly audience of 18,000 people in a city of 1.3 million. We had between 400 and 800 people listening at any given moment. That sounded like a lot of people to me. One day I asked the manager why our station played no ads.“You think you could sell some ads?” he asked.I nodded like a bobblehead doll.“Do it,” he said as he walked away.I asked the back of his head how much I should charge.“Whatever you can get,” he answered, without ever looking back.When you sell ads on the tiniest station in town, you don’t compete with the other stations, you sell only those businesses with too little money to afford anyone else. In fact, the money my clients gave me every month was usually all the cash they had. If my ads didn’t work, I’d have groceries in my pantry but my clients wouldn’t. A man learns fast in that environment.The first thing I learned is that people are bored by advertising for the same reason they’re bored by anything else: lack of relevance.“If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.”- Emil CioranWhen ads are relevant, customers respond. Are your ads relevant, or are they answering questions no one is asking?My job at the radio station paid $3.50 an hour plus 15 percent commission. Within 3 years I was making about $6,000 a month. That was doctor/lawyer money 30 years ago.Strangely, I never made that many sales calls. Most of my clients called the station to ask if they could buy ads from me. Usually, a friend had told them how much money they were making as a result of the ads I was writing and they wanted in on the action.“What does it cost?” they'd ask. These people didn't care about the radio station or its format. They just wanted to grow their businesses.When the owners of my radio station sold it for 11 times what they paid for it, I decided I’d rather become a self-employed ad consultant than move to Los Angeles and become a station manager for them.The second thing I had learned, you see, is that good ads work no matter how they’re delivered. I saw my ads work on virtually every radio and TV station in the city and with tiny variations these same ads performed as direct mail letters and fax machine blasts.The secret wasn’t in reaching the right people. The secret was in crafting a message that would be relevant to the public.My ads worked because I cheated: I insisted my clients let me deliver a message guaranteed to move the needle on the “Who Cares?” meter.Ads fail when no one cares.An extremely common mistake is to believe that discounting the price of a product is guaranteed to win the interest of the public. But I've seen that strategy fail dozens of times. A half-price turd is still a turd.When a client belligerently demanded that I write some magic words to help him sell a load of crap that no one in their right mind would ever want to buy, I looked down at the ground, dropped a wad of spit on the toe of his shoe, then looked up into his face and said, “No.”Yes, it was a rude and vulgar thing to do but I can assure you it shortened the argument. Word of my little stunt spread. Some saw it as the action of an egotistical lunatic. It’s possible these people were right. But others saw it as the mark of a young man who had the courage of his convictions. These people may have been right, too.Every business owner is on the inside, looking out, and what they see is entirely different from what their customers see. Customers are on the outside, looking in.Great ad writers remain on the outside, looking in. They are advocates, not of the business owner, but of the business owner’s customer. This gives them their great advantage.Do you have the courage to learn what your company looks like from the outside, looking in? Would you like to know what your customer is thinking?Twice a year I gather my Wizard of Ads partners from around the world for 2 days of continuing education in Austin, Texas. This year we’re looking for 7 business owners willing to be guinea pigs for us on February 25, the second day of class. These selected business owners will be responsible for their own airfare and accommodations. Since this is not a Wizard Academy event, we can’t offer you a room in Engelbrecht House. Sorry.In return for your investment of time, travel costs and courage, you’ll receive 1 hour of focused attention from the brightest ad consultants on earth.If you own a business and are interested, email [email protected] or call Paul Boomer at (573)

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