Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

I’m telling you up front that I’m not sharing anything valuable or useful today, but don’t let that keep you from continuing.Today we’re going to talk about 7 guys named Francis.Alan Lightman is not one of those 7 guys.Lightman is a past professor at Harvard and a current professor at MIT and a famous physicist who was responsible for establishing MIT’s policy that requires all students to be trained in speaking and writingduring each of their four years as an undergraduate.Alan’s father Richard Lightman was a movie theater owner who played a major role in desegregating movie theaters in the South in 1962. Richard taught Alan how to get things done and make a difference.In his book, A Sense of the Mysterious, Alan writes,“Not long ago, sitting at my desk at home, I suddenly had the horrifying realization that I no longer waste time.”After he wrote that sentence, he wrote an entire book titled, In Praise of Wasting Time.That’s what you and I are doing right now. We are wasting time in a way that will invigorate you and cause you to think new and different thoughts.You are about to jump out of a deep rut in the road that has been your life.We are at the intersection of Monotony and Surprise. Are you ready to jump?Francis Scott Fitzgerald is the Francis we quote in the first hour of the 3-day Magical Worlds class at Wizard Academy.“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”Francis Ford Coppola gave us Apocalypse Now and The Godfather trilogy.Francis “Frank” Sinatra gave Indy Beagle the song “It Was a Very Good Year.” Indy told me he plans to share it with you in the rabbit hole.Sir Francis Drake was a contemporary of Shakespeare and an explorer and a pirate for England, and a seafaring thorn in the side of King Philip II of Spain, who offered a reward for his capture that would be nearly $9 million today. Queen Elizabeth gave Francis a knighthood.Francis “James” Cameron gave us Avatar and Titanic, the first and third highest-grossing films of all time, bringing in $2.85 billion and $2.19 billion respectively.Francis “Frank” Zappa was an iconic musician, composer, singer and songwriter whose work was characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, musical virtuosity and the comedic satire of American culture. His kids are Dweezil, Moon Unit, Diva Muffin, and Ahmet Emuukha.Francis Bacon is my favorite Francis. Like Francis Drake, he was a contemporary of Shakespeare. Bacon was a statesman, a philosopher, and a master of the English tongue. After the death of Queen Elizabeth, Francis Bacon served as lord chancellor of England for King James I, for whom the 1611 King James translation of the Bible was named.These are some of my favorite memories of Francis Bacon:“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”“A dance is a measured pace, as a verse is a measured speech.”“Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact (man.)”“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”“Nothing does more hurt in a state than when cunning men pass for wise.”“A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.”“Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.”“The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.”“Where philosophy is based on reason, faith is based on revelation, and is consequently irrational. The more discordant and incredible the divine mystery is, the more honor is shown to God in believing it, and the nobler is the victory of faith.”“But now we are to step back a little to that, which by premeditation we passed over, lest a breach should be made in those things that were so linked together.”If the plural of hippopotamus is hippopotami, and the plural of cactus is cacti, and the plural of alumnus is alumni, is the plural of Francis, Franci?If so, Indy Beagle has examples of the works of all 7 Franci in the rabbit hole.Aroo to you.And again, I say Aroo.Roy H. Williams

Gerald was an unwanted third son to his father, so his mother took Gerald on long walks each Saturday night so they would not be available when his father came home drunk. To avoid a beating, Gerald and his mother would wait outside in all weathers until his father fell asleep.Gerald was 16 when his father died, so he quit school to help support his mother by singing in the London subways for tips.Gerald was a Scottish introvert who became famous, but who could have been much more so.I closed last week’s Monday Morning Memo with a famous line from one of Gerald’s songs: “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”Some people surround themselves with a low outer wall, and a high inner wall. It’s easy to get to know them, but hard to get to know them well.Gerald was the opposite; he had a high outer wall and a low inner wall. It was nearly impossible to meet him, but those he allowed to get to know him, knew him well enough to know that he was attracted to the comfort of the familiar.New places and new faces were emotionally exhausting to Gerald, so he drank to hide from them.Gerald wrote,“Winding your way down on Baker Street, light in your head and dead on your feet, well, another crazy day, you’ll drink the night away, and forget about everything. This city desert makes you feel so cold. It’s got so many people, but it’s got no soul, and it’s taken you so long, to find out you were wrong, when you thought it held everything.”In the words of his daughter, Martha,“The soaring saxophone solo perfectly captures the endurance and triumph of the human spirit in adversity, the sun rising out of the darkness and lighting the way once again… ‘and when you wake up it’s a new morning, the sun is shining it’s a new morning, and you’re going, you’re going home’.”On that same album was a song called Right Down the Line.“You know I need your love, you’ve got that hold over me. Long as I’ve got your love, you know that I’ll never leave. When I wanted you to share my life, I had no doubt in my mind. And it’s been you, woman, Right down the line.”Both songs were on a 1978 album called City to City.That album almost didn’t get made. Gerald was not a people person.Paul Simon openly admired Gerald’s song-writing ability.Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney both wanted to work with Gerald, but Gerald said “no.”According to his manager, City to City was rejected by several record label executives because of Gerald’s defensive abrasiveness. The only reason they got a record deal was because Artie Mogull, the United Artists representative, “was in a rush and never met him.”When Rolling Stone interviewed Gerald, he said,“To be a ‘star’ in inverted commas – that is probably the last thing I want. I knew I’d written a good bunch of songs … I remember thinking I’d be pleased if City to City sold 50,000 copies.”City to City became a worldwide phenomenon, selling over 5.5 million copies.Hiding from people because his outer wall wasn’t quite high enough, the great Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, drank himself to death.Hiding from people because his outer wall wasn’t quite high enough, the great American novelist, Jack Kerouac, drank himself to death.Hiding from people because his outer wall wasn’t quite high enough, the great Scottish songwriter, Gerry Rafferty, drank himself to death.His daughter, Martha Rafferty, gathered a collection of her father’s unpublished recordings during the lockdown of 2020 and posted them, with these comments, on a website.“His evolution as a songwriter was intimately connected to his love and joy of singing. Singing was home for him, and he returned to it every day wherever he found himself, harmony especially so. He loved the company of singing with others and nothing gave him more joy, as those who have sat around a table with him will testify. That was his way of putting his mental disarray back in order. Despite his struggles with mental health and the resulting addiction, he left a lasting legacy and body of work which will endure for generations to come. I hope you discover something new here, we will be updating as we go as new releases of unpublished work become available, so keep checking in.Thanks for listening,Martha RaffertySeptember 2020Do you have a high outer wall and a low inner wall? People with high outer walls have fewer friends, but they are usually friends for life.Do you have a low outer wall? If you are in the public eye – such as a celebrity or a politician or a minister – people will expect you to have a low outer wall.If you don’t, they will not love you.Sometimes it is good to think about things like this.Roy H. WilliamsPS – I’ve included Gerald’s biggest hit songs in today’s rabbit hole. Just click the image of the Tiny Tribe at the top of this page and you’re in. – Indy Beagle

The long-ago Greeks had two words for time: Kronos (χρόνος) and Kairos (καιρός).Kronos is chronological time, sequential time, the metered time of the regimented left hemisphere of the brain.Kairos is an inflection point, a time-window of indeterminate length during which something consequential happens.On the other side of the Kairos, things are forever different.Kronos time is quantitative and accurate.Kairos time is qualitative and important.The thing about moments of Kairos is that you can see them most clearly when they are behind you.We make decisions every day, and with every choice we make we reach a point of no return, and wonder what might have been.But I think you will agree that some decisions have longer arms than others. They are more consequential. They carry heavier Kairos and more profoundly affect our future.I believe we will be swimming in Kairos moments during 2022, 2023, and 2024. I can see their silhouettes on the horizon at twilight. Walk outside this evening, just as the sun disappears below the western edge of the world, and consider the silhouettes of events that have not yet happened.These moments of consequence float like icebergs on a rising tide of misinformation, and are blown toward us by the breath of newscasters. One-by-one, they will soon begin to arrive.The frustrating reality is that we won’t be making these pivotal decisions individually; we will be making them collectively.Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with you.Roy H. WilliamsRoving reporter Rotbart is wandering the wide world with his family, but he and MondayMorningRadio will return to us after Labor Day.

If you win the heart, the mind will follow. The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.In 1981, Dr. Roger Sperry won the Nobel Prize for his documentation of brain lateralization, which basically says that we don’t have 1 brain divided into 2 hemispheres as much as we have 2 separate, competing brains.The LEFT hemisphere is the home of rational, logical, sequential, deductive reasoning. Think of it as the Intellect; the Mind. It puts you in touch with this world and leans toward suspicion and doubt.But the RIGHT hemisphere does none of those things. Think of it as the Heart. It understands the six sub-languages in the language of music; pitch, key, tempo, rhythm, musical interval and musical contour. The right hemisphere puts you in touch with a world that could be, should be, ought to be, someday.HOPE is alive and well in the right hemisphere of your brain. It understands symbols, and assigns meanings to shapes and colors. The logic of the right hemisphere is intuition, gut feelings, and hunches.Your body contains 100 million sensory receptors that allow you to see, hear, touch, taste and smell physical reality. But your brain contains 10,000 billion synapses. This means you are approximately 100,000 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist, than a world that does.Call 1-800-Got-Junk.Life is happierwhen it’s less cluttered.Your house will be bigger.Your teeth will be whiter.Angels will sing.You’ll be a better dancer.Magical Thinking is a style of writing characterized by elements of the fantastic – woven with a deadpan sense of presentation – into an otherwise true story.Now this is where it gets really interesting; the right hemisphere of your brain doesn’t know fact from fiction or true from false. That’s the left brain’s job. This is why you can enjoy books, movies, and TV shows that you know are fiction.Magical Thinking is a style of writing that is full of HOPE.Magical Thinking doesn’t talk about the frustration of a situation or the pain of a problem. It illuminates a happy world in which anything is possible.Magical Thinking offers the customer an effortless, frustration-free solution.Employees, your boss wants you to know:“If you answer the phones for our company or knock on the doors of customers, please know that you are a vitally important part of the advertising and marketing team. Our customers expect you to be the living embodiment of our advertising; cheerful and helpful and magically able to make their problem disappear. We will become giants if we act like the company we claim to be in our advertising.”Magical ThinkingmakesMagical AdvertisingmakesHappy CustomersmakesBusiness Grow.Do you want to employ the power of Magical Thinking?Roy H. WilliamsAccording to Lynette Smith, July 4th is the perfect time for writing personal, heartfelt letters to colleagues, family members, friends, and others who have enriched your life. Lynette is a letter-writing evangelist who has authored multiple books on the art and impact of letters that will be kept and saved and savored for decades. “If you want to demonstrate genuine appreciation,” Lynette tells roving reporter Rotbart, “only a letter will do.” MondayMorningRadio.com

It’s impossible not to like someone who likes you.This is why the secret of success is to just keep showing up.My friend Brett was studying theater in college until the day a professor told him to lie on his back, close his eyes, and “breathe blue.” Brett did his best, gave up, got up, walked out.Brett did not become an actor. But he did become a highly successful political consultant.In Brett’s own words, here’s how it happened:“I was looking at the bulletin board in the hallway of my dorm when I saw a little poster that said, ‘All the pizza and beer you can eat and drink if you work 2 hours on the telephone.’ I like pizza, I like beer, so I went to the address at the appointed time and made calls to ‘get out the vote’ for a political party. I didn’t care about politics at all, but I cared a lot about pizza and beer, so I came back night after night. They thought I was really dedicated.”“After several months of showing up, they invited me to work at an out-of-town rally. I went along and noticed the food is better when you go out-of-town. So I kept doing out-of-town rallies until someone asked me if I could write some ads for a campaign. One thing led to another, and here I am. Go figure.”The only unique part of Brett’s story is the part about breathing blue. The rest of it – the part about always showing up – is the world’s most common path to success.Brett quit showing up for acting classes. But he never quit showing up at political events.You will become the thing for which you keep showing up.“Believe in yourself” and “Never give up” are motivational clichés. They sound good, but they give you no real action to take. Do you want to succeed? Just keep showing up.We hear a lot about the value of persistence and determination, but the way to demonstrate those qualities is to just keep showing up.The most important time to show up, is when you don’t feel like showing up.When everyone else has dropped out, faded away, and quit, you are the king of the mountain.In his final speech at the end of his long and wonderful life, Paul Harvey talked about the importance of never failing to show up. He said, “Repetition is effective. Repetition is effective. Repetition is effective.”When you want your company to be the one people think of immediately and feel the best about when they need what you sell, just keep showing up. It’s easy to do. The problem is that most advertisers will choose to reach 100% of the people, but convince them only 10% of the way, due to not enough repetition.They didn’t “show up” long enough to become a permanent fixture in the mind.That same money could have convinced 10% of the people 100% of the way, but most advertisers aren’t willing to do that because they worry about who they are “leaving out.”I’ve got news for you: You don’t have enough money to reach everyone. Limit your focus to only that number of people you can reach with relentless repetition.Keep showing up.It works in relationships.It works in business.It works in advertising.Just.Keep.Showing.Up.

My partner Kyle started a non-profit called “Neighbor in Need” after a developer made a comment that caused Kyle to become concerned about all the elderly people in his neighborhood who didn’t have the money to repair their homes, buy hot water heaters, replace air conditioners, or fix roof leaks. So Kyle decided to do something about it.What Kyle did was new, surprising, and different.That’s why it worked.If you want to bore people, just say what they expected you to say and do what they expected you to do. It works every time.You might even see them fall asleep.I have a friend who is building a condo tower in a town with a population of less than 100,000 people. He called a few days ago, laughing.He had hired a worldwide, world-famous company to manage the sale of the residential units in his building. They made a presentation to him about the “tried-and-true marketing plan” they intended to use.My friend said, “No, I’m going to ask my buddy to write me a series of radio ads. I’m planning to spend a small fraction of what you’re telling me I need to spend.”These professionals, understandably, began to vibrate with panic. “But we’ve tried radio and it doesn’t work! We’ve tried it again and again and it doesn’t work! You need to follow our plan!”My friend told them that radio advertising – quote – “works only as good as the ads you write.”Later, when they actually heard the radio ads, their panic rose to whole new level. The language and perspective of the ads was new, surprising, and different. And those three words can often mean, “experimental, reckless, and dangerous.”Things that are new, surprising, and different never feel as reliable as traditional wisdom.Don’t get me wrong; I believe in bringing the best of the past forward. I believe it to the core of my soul. In my heart, I am a traditionalist. But the problem with traditional wisdom is that it is often more tradition than wisdom.The problem with traditional wisdom in advertising is that it creates ads that feel familiar. And familiarity breeds contempt. Remember what I said earlier? “If you want to bore people, just say what they expected you to say and do what they expected you to do.”People hate ads that are predictable.The real estate marketers begged him not to air the crazy radio ads. They urged him to consider the story of how – in a much bigger city – they were able to convince nearly 1,500 people to register so that they might have a chance to buy a condo unit the moment they became available.Real estate roll-out campaigns like these typically span 56 days. The best they had ever done in 56 days– with a massive online push and billboards that blanketed a major city – was about 1,500 registrations.My friend was laughing because we were at day 14 of our radio push and our “experimental, reckless, and dangerous” radio ads had already generated more than 1,400 registrations and would soon top fifteen hundred.I wrote four ads and only the first of the four has been aired.I believe the second and third ads are the strongest.So now you know why my friend was laughing.I want you to do me three favors:1. Put things in your ads that are new, surprising, and different.Delight the public. Be remarkable.2. Quit thinking that the secret of success is to – quote – “reach the right people.”3. Slap the shit out of anyone who says to you, “No one listens to the radio anymore.”Indy has a wonderful rabbit hole prepared for you. To enter the rabbit hole, just click the image of Indy Beagle at the top of this page. Each click of an image takes you one page deeper.

The ancient Greeks understood psychology a lot better than they understood science.Hippocrates, the father of the Hippocratic Oath, believed that our information-gathering and decision-making processes are determined by an imbalance of 4 bodily fluids – red blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm – two of which have never existed in the form that Hippocrates theorized.But the four basic temperaments that Hippocrates associated with these four fluids have lived on to be verified, codified, dignified and personified by screenwriters and novelists and social scientists* around the world. Hippocrates called these temperaments Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, and Phlegmatic.More than 400 years ago, Shakespeare depicted the full range of human behaviors and character types by embracing the original theories of Hippocrates. The National Library of Medicine has an interesting online exhibit about it.We see these four basic temperaments in ourselves, our family, our friends, and all the most interesting characters in every form of story-telling:The Wizard of OzLion (sanguine) Scarecrow (choleric) Dorothy (melancholic) and Tin Man (phlegmatic)Archie ComicsArchie (sanguine) Veronica (choleric) Betty (melancholic) and Jughead (phlegmatic)I Love LucyRicky (sanguine) Lucy (choleric) Fred (melancholic) Ethel (phlegmatic)Gilligan’s IslandGilligan (sanguine) the Skipper (choleric) the Professor (melancholic) Mr. Howell (phlegmatic)Star TrekCaptain Kirk (sanguine) Spock (choleric) Scotty (melancholic) Bones (phlegmatic)Magnum P.I.T.C. (sanguine) Tom (choleric) Higgins (melancholic), and Rick (phlegmatic)FriendsPhoebe and Joey (sanguine) Monica (choleric) Ross (melancholic) Rachel and Chandler (phlegmatic)SeinfeldKramer (sanguine) Elaine (choleric) George (melancholic) Jerry (phlegmatic)FrasierRoz (sanguine) Frasier (choleric) Niles (melancholic) Daphne (phlegmatic)The Golden GirlsBlanche (sanguine) Sophia (choleric) Dorothy (melancholic) Rose (phlegmatic)Sex and The CitySamantha (sanguine) Miranda (choleric) Charlotte (melancholic) Carrie (phlegmatic)Schitt’s CreekMoira (sanguine) Johnny (choleric) David (melancholic) Alexis (phlegmatic)Desperate HousewivesSusan (sanguine) Gabrielle (choleric) Bree (melancholic) Lynette (phlegmatic)Unbreakable Kimmy SchmidtKimmy (Sanguine) Jacqueline (Choleric) Titus (Melancholic) Lillian (Phlegmatic)Big Bang TheoryHoward (sanguine) Sheldon (choleric) Raj (melancholic) Leonard (phlegmatic)The OfficeMichael (sanguine) Dwight (choleric) Pam (melancholic) Jim (phlegmatic)Game of ThronesArya (sanguine) Sansa (choleric) Jon (melancholic) Bran (phlegmatic)Entertainment is the only currency with which you can purchase the time and attention of a too-busy public.An understanding of the predictable frictions between these four temperaments – and their deep and abiding need for one another – is the basis of every form of long-term entertainment. The novelists who win the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes know this. The screenwriters of all the hit TV series know this. And the ad writers who make a difference know this.When you become intrigued with an interesting fictional character, you spend time with them, whether they are in a book, or a TV series, or in an ad campaign.Most ad writing is transactional: “Give us money, and this is what we’ll give you in return.”Transactional ads are about short-term “harvesting” but they work less and less well the more continuously you use them.Relational ads are about long-term “customer bonding” and they work better and better the longer you use them.Do you want your company to be the one that customers think of immediately and feel the best about? Create a long-term ad campaign that is 2/3 relational customer-bonding ads and 1/3 transactional sales-activation ads. These are the ad campaigns that create consistent year-over-year growth.Think of it as seedtime and harvest.Seedtime and harvest.Roy H. Williams*You may have heard of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, or DiSC, or the Enneagram, or the Four Colors. Each of those 21st-century assessment tools has its roots in the 2,400-year-old observations of Hippocrates.

I made you a promise on November 22 in a Monday Morning Memo called “Time Travel”.This was how that memo began:“My friend Don has a time machine. He takes me with him sometimes. You should come, too! Every person who rides in Don’s time machine is changed by it.”“The United States Department of Justice has booked passage on Don’s time machine for countless prison inmates. State and local governments and hundreds of rehab centers have booked journeys for people as well. Thirty-five million in all.”“Each trip through time begins with a series of words…”I then described two different types of storytelling and the purpose and effect of each. And to give myself a little “third-party credibility,” I quoted Professor Steven Pinker of MIT and Harvard.When the word-count of that Monday Morning Memo indicated that we were approaching our destination and it was time to land, I instructed you to store your tray-table and return your seat to its full, upright and locked position. Then I told you something you probably didn’t know:“Every word in the English language is composed of just 44 sounds called phonemes. We arrange these into clusters called words which we string together in rapid succession so that others can see in their minds what we see in ours.”And then I talked about the Book of Beginnings. Do you you remember?“In the first chapter of Genesis, God says, ‘Let there be this’ and ‘Let there be that’ for 25 verses, and then in verse 26 he says, ‘Let us make mankind in our own image.'”“According to that ancient story, God spoke the world into existence and then gave you and me the power to do the same. When you, as a storyteller, speak a world into existence in the hearts and minds of your listeners, you are doing the work of God.”“Don Kuhl has spent the past 30 years unleashing the power of storytelling to help 35 million people find peace, hope, and happiness, and now he has written a book for you and me. It will be published early next year.”And then I promised you,“I’ll make sure you know when it’s available.”Roy H. WilliamsThat book is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. It’s called “Changing with Aging: Little Stories, Big Lessons.”Don sent preview copies to several people I know. Everyone who has received a copy has been enchanted and enthralled by the stories in Don’s book, as I knew they would be. Don is a remarkable teller of short, bright, heart-warming stories that overflow with honesty, transparency, and wisdom.Peter Vegso, the original publisher of that record-breaking series of books, “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” is such a fan of Don’s stories that he jumped at the chance to publish Don’s book.I have fulfilled my promise. I told you the book is available for pre-order. Do what seems to you good.My partner Johnny Molson was asked to speak to a 4th grade class last week about his career as an ad writer.When he left the school, Johnny texted me to say that two of the children had asked remarkably delightful questions. The first child asked,“Have you ever cringed at your own commercials?”Johnny answered yes, that he always cringes at the predictable commercials his clients occasionally demand that he write, but no, he never cringes at the happy ads that flow from the depths of his heart through his fingertips and then onto the radio and television airwaves. That’s when the second child asked,“Do you have a criminal record?”A conversation with a child is a remarkable adventure full of twists and turns, with surprises around every corner.Today’s rabbit hole is like that, too. It is a theological journey that begins in the first chapter of Genesis and ends with me saying, “We are passengers on a world spinning out of control. Having wrongly been taught that everything happens according to ‘God’s Perfect Plan,’ we blame him for every sadness.”Some of you will be outraged and offended and feel compelled to explain to me why I am tragically and horribly wrong, but I think the more open-minded of you will be intrigued and fascinated by things you never heard before.But none of you will be bored.The title of this photo-filled essay is “God is Not in Control. We Are.” But it is not a denial of God. It is my strange and unusual confession of faith in him.Indy Beagle is teaching a seminar in Dubai this week and gave me complete authority to do whatever I wanted in the rabbit hole.To enter, just click the image of my friend, Don Kuhl, at the top of the page.Aroo,Roy H. WilliamsCraig Archibald is an important acting coach in Hollywood. His client list would rock your world. The thing that makes Craig special is that he teaches his clients that acting is a highly competitive business.  He tells them that if they want to succeed as actors, they need to think like entrepreneurs. Craig also recommends that business owners study acting to improve their financial performance! Fascinating, right? Take your seat, grab some popcorn, the curtain is abou

A successful cluster manager was one of 36 people in a class I taught 2 months ago. When we went into Q & A, he asked for suggestions about what to do with a poorly performing radio station in his cluster.He expected me to suggest a format change, or a clever promotional campaign using billboards and TV. Or he may have thought I was going to give him some half-baked idea about how he could use social media to build an affinity group around the station’s format, because these are the kinds of suggestions people make when a radio station wants to attract a bigger audience.Why is it that everyone assumes the way to increase a radio station’s revenues is to increase the size of its audience?I said, “I’ll answer your question if you want me to, but I need to warn you that my answer is extremely simple, it always works, and it’s going to embarrass the hell out of you that you haven’t already done it.” Then I smiled and asked, “Are you sure you want me to answer in front of all these people?”Since he was the only broadcaster in a room full of business owners and the whole group had bonded pretty tightly during the previous 2 days and nights together, he just smiled back at me and said, “Bring it.”I wrote something on a piece of paper, then folded it and laid it on the table in front of him. “Game on.”The other 35 people in the room clapped and cheered because they knew we were about to have fun.He said, “It’s my number 6 station. My top 3 stations are doing fantastic and numbers 4 and 5 do pretty well, but number 6 just kind of limps along.”“Does it make a profit?”“Yes, but nothing special.”“How many units per hour do you feel would be the right spot load on that station?”He said he’d like to keep it to just 14 units per hour.I said, “6AM to midnight, 7 days a week, 14 units per hour yields 1,764 ads per week.”Next question: “Based on your current audience size, name a spot rate you would be happy to get on that station if every advertiser bought equal daypart distribution across 4 dayparts, morning drive, mid-day, afternoon drive, and evenings until midnight.”He named a modest price per ad.I said, “I’m a local business owner, I’m going to buy 40 ads per week, every week for 52 weeks, and I insist that my 40 ads get equal daypart distribution 6a to midnight. I want morning drive, mid-day, afternoon drive, and evenings until midnight, just like we talked about; none of that R.O.S.* crap. Got it?”He said, “Got it.”I said, “During the next 12 months, I’m going to become a household word to a whole lot of people. Frequency and consistency! That’s the right way to use radio! Forty ads per week for 52 weeks is going to make my business the one your audience thinks of immediately – and feels the best about – whenever they or any of their friends need what I sell.”Next question: “On your #6 station, what’s going to be my 1-week net reach with a weekly 3-frequency, 52 weeks in a row?”The man knew his station, so he was able to name the approximate net reach my schedule would deliver each week. It was a net reach that could make a real difference for any advertiser. I said, “Never let an advertiser compromise frequency and consistency. If they don’t want to do radio right, they don’t get to be on this station.”He said, “But that’s not how advertisers buy radio in my town.”I said, “We don’t need to convince the whole world. We just need to find 44 small business owners who can understand that this is the right way to use radio. We’re going to explain it to them and answer their questions until we have found 44 business owners smart enough to buy 40 ads per week with equal daypart distribution 6AM to midnight.”Then I reminded him how little money those 40 ads per week were going to cost those 44 advertisers each month. I asked, “How many businesses can afford that monthly investment?”That’s when it hit him. He appeared to be deep in thought when he muttered, “There’s a bunch of advertisers in our town that can’t afford our big stations, but they could easily afford that.”I said, “Your problem is that you’ve been allowing your sales team to sell all 6 stations. Take number 6 away from them. Turn it over to just one A.E. (Account Executive – salesperson) and make it the only radio station they get to sell and 40 ads per week/52-weeks is the only schedule they get to sell. Do you have someone in mind you can turn that station over to?”He started getting excited. He said, “I’ve got a couple of people in mind.” Then after a brief pause, he said, “At that price per month, I can have 44 clients sold within 90 days!”I nodded my head. “Every advertiser can afford it and it’s going to work incredibly well for them and most of these advertisers are going to be new business for you. Your people haven’t been calling on those businesses because they don’t have enough budget to buy your big stations. That’s why you’ve got to turn station 6 over to just one A.E. and let them focus on selling and servicing those 44 clients.

What you do today is important, because you are exchanging a day of your life for it.What will you do today?“If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.”– Wes JacksonI knew a man who used to say, “I don’t ever get my hopes up. That way, I’m never disappointed.”If I had been the executor of his estate, his gravestone would say: “He had potential.”I often write about Identity, Purpose, and Adventure:Identity: Who am I?Purpose: Why am I here?Adventure: What must I overcome?Without trouble, there is no adventure.That being said, children and grandchildren are the most wonderful adventure.“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries: avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, non-redeemable. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is hell.” – C. S. LewisMy friend J.P. Engelbrecht sent me a text last week,“Finally read A Gentleman in Moscow. What a lovely book! Thank you for the recommendation.”For those who have not read it, A Gentleman in Moscow is about an older man who becomes, through no choice of his own, the protector and caregiver of a little girl. It is truly a remarkable book.Now that I think about it, Little Orphan Annie is essentially that same story.Many years ago, Pennie and I loved watching Anne of Green Gables (1985) when it was available on TV. Right now we’re watching the updated version, Anne With an E. Basically, it’s about an elderly brother and sister who become, through no choice of their own, the protectors and caregivers of…Oh, I guess it’s the same story as the other two.“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”– Albert SchweitzerTo protect and equip and encourage others is what each of us was born to do.Who are you protecting?If you are a not a protector, you need one.What are you equipped to do?If you are not doing it, now would be a great time to start.Who do you encourage?Let that be the personwho decides what to carveon your tombstone.Roy H. WilliamsA Young Brian Scudamore had a series of private chats with a man who took $1,000 and turned it into a personal net worth of $3.5 billion. Simon Sinek told Brian his deepest insights the night he slept on Brian’s sofa. In Brian’s new book, you’ll meet an NBA superstar, a past president of Starbucks, a British advertising tycoon, and a winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics as they wander on and off the pages like movie stars on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. Wait! I just saw Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Dr. Seuss, and Charles Schwab. Roving reporter Rotbart talks to mega-famous Brian Scudamore, a longtime client of the wizard, on today’s happy and hilarious episode of MondayMorningRadio.com!

I write advertising because I’m good at math.According to my calculations at age 18, the odds of making a living as an ad writer were 117,682% higher than the likelihood that I could make a living as a poet.But really, poems and ads are the same thing.Good poems promote a new perspective in a brief, tight economy of words.Good ads promote a new perspective in a brief, tight economy of words.The objective of both is to get you to see something differently.Poets and ad writers want to alter your perception. To do this, they use words that cause you to hallucinate; to see something that isn’t really there. They want you to look into their magic mirror and see yourself less worried, happier, and beaming with light.Every generation worries about what the next generation seems to have forgotten.Perhaps I am an outlier even among my own generation, but I have long been concerned about how few people today understand the purpose of the arts.I am frustrated that so few understand the differences between the heart and mind.I am broken-hearted that so few know the basic stories of the Bible.“Earth’s crammed with heaven,And every common bush afire with God;But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries.”– Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, 1857Using the megaphone of poetry to whisper to us from 165 years ago, Dizzy Lizzy Browning is referring to the reaction of Moses in the desert of Midian when he saw a bush on fire in the distance that was never consumed.Moses turned aside to see it more closely. Looking into the glow, Moses heard a voice and took off his shoes because he knew he was in a special place.Elizabeth Barrett Browning is telling us that wonders are all around us, if only we would open our eyes. She is saying, “Stop. Notice. Go to the place. Realize that it is special.”How is that not an ad?When you know the basic stories of the Bible and the ancient Greeks, you see them echoed in the biggest movies, the best-selling novels, and the top-rated television shows.When you know those stories, you can use them as templates in communications of your own.These are stories that have proven to be magnetic, memorable, and persuasive. Note that phrase: “proven to be.”Repurpose the proven.In a movie directed by Oliver Stone in the second half of the 1980’s, Charlie Sheen plays a young man who follows a bad father figure, then turns to follow a good father figure. Can you name the movie?If you said Platoon, you are right. If you said Wall Street, you are right. Both movies told the same story, and both were a huge success. The primary difference was that Platoon took us into the green jungles of Viet Nam circa 1967, and Wall Street took us into the concrete jungles of Manhattan circa 1985.Here’s my point: Wall Street premiered less than 12 months after Platoon, but no one who saw it complained, “Hey, we were told this story last year!”Learn when and how to repurpose the proven.Solomon – another interesting Biblical character – said,“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. And though it cost all you have, get understanding.”Unconscious competence is called talent. A talented person instinctively knows what to do.Knowing what to do is wisdom.Conscious competence is called skill. A skilled person has studied talented people long enough to figure out what they are unconsciously doing and why it works.Talented people know what to do.Skilled people know why to do it.Skilled people have understanding.Aim for understanding.Roy H. Williams

In his 3,000-year-old book, Ecclesiastes, King Solomon tells us of the stages and phases of his life, his fads and fancies, his regrets and realizations. Then he gives us his final conclusions and advice. Next to the Good News of John, Ecclesiastes is probably my favorite book in the Bible.Oscar Wilde wrote a similar summary of his stages and phases, fads and fancies, regrets and realizations in a private letter to his best and last and only friend. Later published as De Profundis, “From the Depths,” this 55,000-word letter shines with the unfiltered transparency of a man who has nothing but time, nothing to gain, and nothing to lose.Indy Beagle shared a couple of passages from De Profundis in last week’s rabbit hole. After receiving several happy emails from rabbit holers, Indy suggested that I give Oscar’s story a wider frame and take you on a deeper dive.Grab your scuba gear.As a young man, Oscar fell in love with a woman who dumped him to marry his more conservative childhood friend, Bram Stoker. So Oscar married another young woman who bore him two fine sons. He soon became flamboyantly famous as a comedic playwright, a social wit, a raconteur, and a writer of children’s stories.*Oscar Wilde was like Coca-Cola. He was everywhere.And then he went to prison for being gay.“The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a flaneur, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation.”“I had lost my name, my position, my happiness, my freedom, my wealth. I was a prisoner and a pauper. But I still had my children left. Suddenly they were taken away from me by the law. It was a blow so appalling that I did not know what to do, so I flung myself on my knees, and bowed my head, and wept, and said, ‘The body of a child is as the body of the Lord: I am not worthy of either.’ That moment seemed to save me. I saw then that the only thing for me was to accept everything. Since then—curious as it will no doubt sound—I have been happier.”“I want to get to the point when I shall be able to say quite simply, and without affectation that the two great turning-points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison… I was so typical a child of my age, that in my perversity, and for that perversity’s sake, I turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good.”“A man’s very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life. I am completely penniless, and absolutely homeless. Yet there are worse things in the world than that.”“Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that everybody is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is.”“Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling. Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Someday people will realize what that means.”“Indeed, that is the charm about Christ, when all is said: he is just like a work of art. He does not really teach one anything, but by being brought into his presence one becomes something. And everybody is predestined to his presence. Once at least in his life each man walks with Christ to Emmaus… [Christ] had an intense and flamelike imagination… He understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich… When you really want love, you will find it waiting for you.”Oscar Wilde was released from prison on May 19, 1897, precisely 125 years ago next Thursday.Upon his release, Oscar fled to France. He was no longer welcome in England.There is a strangely prophetic passage in De Profundis when Oscar says,“Many men on their release carry their prison about with them into the air, and hide it as a secret disgrace in their hearts, and at length, like poor poisoned things, creep into some hole and die. It is wretched that they should have to do so, and it is wrong, terribly wrong, of society that it should force them to do so.”Shortly after his arrival in France, Oscar Wilde died of acute meningitis caused by an ear infection. In his semiconscious final moments, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, which he had long admired.He was 46 years old.Roy H. Williams*”The Happy Prince”, “The Nightingale and the Rose”, “The Selfish Giant”, “The Devoted Friend”, and “The Remark

If relationships matter to you at all, don’t put your negative emotions in writing.Spoken words land softly on their feet like a cat that has fallen from a tree. But written words often land with a thud, and the crack of a fractured relationship.My son Jacob taught me an African proverb last week,“The axe forgets, but the tree remembers.”That proverb reminded me to warn you,“Never put a negative emotion in writing.”There are few things as reckless and destructive as a text, an email, or a letter in which you “clear the air” by venting your anger, your fear, your frustration, your disappointment, or your sadness.If you cannot speak face-to-face with the person that you feel needs to hear what you have to say, then at least find a way to speak voice-to-voice.Never put a negative emotion in writing.I speak recklessly, but I write carefully. Every time I have put a negative emotion in writing, I have regretted it.Introverts prefer to communicate in writing. As a member of that 49 percent of our population, I say,“I understand your preference for writing instead of talking. You are good at writing. This is why it is especially important for you to realize that your negative, written words hit harder, hurt more deeply, and cause more widespread destruction than the words of your extraverted friends. So please, never put a negative emotion in writing. But the opposite is also true: your written words of recognition, praise, and encouragement will raise the spirits, strengthen the resolve, and give new energy to every person on whom you shine that happy light.”During the dark times, the tree will remember that light.And smile.Are you ready for a surprise? The same applies to advertising.If your relationship with prospective customers matters to you, don’t put negative emotions into your ads.You ask, “But don’t I at least need to describe the pain of the problem before I tell them about the solution?”No, because if you do, your name and your brand will unconsciously become associated with pain and problems. People will remember you when they need what you sell, but they will feel better about someone else. And this “someone else” they feel better about will probably make the sale.If you want to be that “someone else,” learn to write ads that make people feel good about themselves, their future, and you.I’ve been saying it for 35 years:“Win the heart and the mind will follow. The mind will always find logic to justify what the heart has already decided.”Did you know that I think about you several times each week? As I sit in the light of my computer screen at 2:30 each morning, I ponder the price you pay to read what I write to you. Money can be replaced but time cannot, so each minute you spend with me is spent forever. It can never be replaced. This is why I try to give you things that will last; things you can take with you and use again and again.I cannot see your face but I feel your presence and I want the best for you, just as you want the best for all the people that your life touches.Shine on, bright friend, shine on. All the trees around you will remember.Roy H. Williams

An affinity group is composed of peoplewho share an identity marker.Backpackers are an affinity group.Corvette drivers are an affinity group.If you like to sew, you are part of an affinity group.Every sports team has “fans,” an affinity group.If you like wine, you are in that affinity group.People who like science are part of an affinity group.If you would rather drive than fly, you are part of an affinity group.In a class he taught at Wizard Academy, Ryan Deiss said,“Identify a tribe. Develop the tribe. Market to the tribe.”Ryan was talking about affinity groups.Affinity groups have an affinity for – an attraction to – a particular thing.Marketing to affinity groups is a smart thing to do.*Do you know the jargon of the affinity group you are trying to sell?People who spend time to save money are in an affinity group.People who spend money to save time are in a different affinity group.Your ad copy attracts one of these groups more strongly than it does the other. Do you know which group you are unconsciously targeting?Maggie Tufu is a fictional character, but she spoke profoundly when she said,“Tell me what a person admires and I’ll tell you everything about them that matters.”Mark Zuckerberg is rich because he controls one of the major gateways that allow advertisers to reach affinity groups.Every time you click on something – anything at all – you reveal intimate things about yourself to Mark and dozens of other data brokers. Soon you will have told them everything about yourself that matters.Allow me to quote a video that you will see near the end of today’s rabbit hole:“What all these companies have in common is they collect your personal information and then resell or share it with others… The entire economy of the internet right now is basically built on this practice. All the free stuff that you take for granted online is only free because you are the product. They make money by selling your data… As one expert puts it, ‘They’re the middlemen of surveillance capitalism.'”Several of the apps you have on your phone are tracking you for the purposes of letting you know which of their locations is “Nearest You” at any given moment. And they sell that data to data brokers, some of which are happy to tell anyone – who wants to kill you, kidnap you, or sell you an extended warranty – exactly where you are right now.The going price for that information is $45.Seems like there ought to be a law that makes this impossible, right? Well, there is an outside chance that such a law might soon be enacted.According to that video you’ll see near the end of today’s rabbit hole,“The one time that Congress has acted quickly to safeguard people’s privacy was in the 1980s when Robert Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court and a reporter walked into a local video store and asked the manager whether he could have a peek at Bork’s video rental history. And he got it. As soon as Congress realized there was nothing stopping anyone from retrieving their video rental records too, they freaked out. And lo and behold, the Video Privacy Protection Act was passed with quite deliberate speed.”At the end of today’s rabbit hole, you can see how one man is currently trying to motivate Congress by threatening to reveal all the detailed, personal information he gathered about each of them after spending just a few dollars with data brokers.This could get interesting.Roy H. Williams*Earlier, when I said, “Marketing to affinity groups is a smart thing to do,” please notice that I did not say that marketing to affinity groups is the “only” smart thing to do. I continue to believe in the effectiveness of untargeted mass media – TV and radio – because it works miraculously if you know how to use it. It reaches your target, but it also reaches the influencers of your target. And compared to online marketing, Mass Media is astoundingly affordable.

Thirty-five years ago, he patrolled a stretch of beach as long as two football fields on a Caribbean Island whose name I cannot remember.He pushed a wheelbarrow full of ice as he pranced from one end of his empire to the other, the music of his voice rising and falling over the sound of the surf.“I’m sorry I’m late, but I’m here. You want it. I got it.”His music would often stop. Then resume. Stop.Resume. Stop.Finally, we saw him, a tiny, native islander in his late 50’s, as slender and leathery as a bullwhip, his naked feet falling as lightly as snowflakes on the soft Caribbean sand.“I’m sorry I’m late, but I’m here. You want it. I got it… I’m sorry I’m late, but…”His song would stop abruptly when he saw a hand raised. Sprinting to that spot with his wheelbarrow, he would ask the vacationers to name the drinks they desired.I watched him for a while. He was a genius.Occasionally he would reach into the ice and produce the requested beverage, but usually, he would pull his empty hands out of the icy water and fly like a bullet to his shack at the back of the beach. He would leave so quickly that you had no time to tell him you would happily accept a substitute.He would return like Santa’s reindeer, his feet barely touching the sand, with the requested drink in hand, triumphant and proud not to have let you down.Once, as I saw him fly over the sand with cold drinks in hand, I thought I could hear the sound of sleigh bells,“More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:‘Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!‘”That’s when it hit me: “This sandy song and dance is the daily floor show he gives us in this magnificent tavern without a ceiling. He is making a fortune in tips, and earning every bit of it.”I observed him long enough to decode his methods: if he suspected vacationers of feeling entitled and flinty, he would immediately pull their drinks from the ice, accept their money, and resume his happy song.“I’m sorry I’m late, but I’m here. You want it. I got it.”I was honored when he couldn’t find our drinks. Pennie and I smiled at each other as he sprinted across the sand and returned with them 90 seconds later.One minute after that, we smiled at each other again when we saw him pull those same drinks from the ice to serve an unhappy couple 20 feet away.Like I said, the man was a genius.When an unpleasant person is demanding my attention and I feel like showing them the bird that I keep in my hand, I think of that happy, slender islander, and tell myself that he is still there, his hands in the ice, his bare feet falling like snowflakes on the soft Caribbean sand.Roy H. Williams

It is easier to increase sales than it is to cut expenses.In the words of Adrian Van Zelfden, “You cannot shrink your way to profit.”Cost-cutting CEO’s are hailed as geniuses by Wall Street and lauded as saviors by private equity firms because cost-cutting always works in the short-term.But that’s not how you build a business.When Roger Smith rose from his position of accounting clerk to become CEO of General Motors in 1981, Wall Street saw him as a brilliant businessman who was “optimizing operations” and “maximizing profits.” But anyone who loved cars could see that he was destroying one of America’s great companies.When I complained to one of my brothers-in-law that the GM brands were rapidly losing their distinct identities to become a bland blend of nothingness, he said, “You don’t understand business. It costs a lot to engineer and tool a new model of car for each GM brand,” (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac,) “so Roger Smith is building all the cars on a single platform. But each brand will get its own grill and headlights and interior and taillights.”I said, “Perhaps I don’t understand business, but I understand marketing and reputation-building from the hair of my head to the soles of my feet and I’m telling you that Roger Smith is destroying General Motors.”Every time I point out the dangers of an unsustainable plan to cash in on the 90-day attention span of the American investor, I am told, “You don’t understand business.”Always those same four words.Prior to the arrival of “optimizing, maximizing” Roger Smith in 1981, GM held 46% of the U.S. car market. By the time he left 9 years later, market share had slipped to 35.4% and was rapidly falling. When asked about the plummeting market share, he defended the bottom line: “You don’t pay dividends on market share.”By depriving his brands of the oxygen of creativity and innovation, Roger Smith choked the life out of General Motors.Oldsmobile died. Pontiac died. Buick is not far behind. GM’s market share in 2021 was only 15.2% of the U.S. car market.This did not have to happen.“Critics say Smith’s greatest flaw was overemphasizing that bottom-line mentality rather than working on improving product quality. ‘He was a bean counter,’ says Owen Bieber, who was president of the United Auto Workers during much of Smith’s tenure. ‘Suddenly, GM started making a lot of cars that looked alike. I used to tell him that you can’t have a Cadillac that looks like a Chevrolet and expect to sell them both.’”– Los Angeles Times, Dec 1, 2007By 1989 GM was losing $2000 on every GM10 it built. Asked by Fortune magazine why the program had failed, Roger Smith answered: “I don’t know. It’s a mysterious thing.”In June, 2009, when GM dropped to its knees and begged the bankruptcy courts for mercy, Motor Trend magazine had this to say,“Less than a year after celebrating its centenary, the company we knew as General Motors is dead. Once the richest and most powerful automaker in the world; the symbol of American industrial might; the engine room of the American economy, General Motors is now officially bankrupt.”*You cannot shrink your way to profit.Roy H. Williams* June 1, 2009 – A series of bad decisions based on grievously flawed assumptions led to GM having just $82 billion in assets and $173 billion in liabilities on June 1, 2009. This is a scenario that routinely repeats itself, but no one seems to be paying attention. – RHW

The choice between a good thing and a bad thing is never a hard choice. The only hard choice is between two good things.Science is a good thing. And so are the Arts. Why choose?Rube Goldberg became wildly famous 100 years ago because his elegantly absurd inventions combined Science with Art.Elegant absurdity surprises and delights us because it reveals lofty creativity and deep commitment aimed at something that is not – to the logical mind – worth the effort.Confronted with the elegantly absurd, pure logic snorts a derisive laugh, but the heart laughs with peals of pure joy.YouTube and TikTok are filled with elegant absurdity. OK GO rode the rocket of the elegantly absurd to heights unknown, then Walk Off the Earth rode it like a surfboard to the edge of the world and beyond. The absurdly elegant inventions of Mark Rober and the elegantly absurd shenanigans of Rex and Daniel have given them massive influence in their fields of endeavor.Marching bands, baton twirling, and tap dancing… perhaps all kinds of dancing… are examples of the elegantly absurd because they require creativity and commitment to achieve something that, again – to the logical mind – isn’t worth the effort.Indy Beagle has examples of all these for you in the rabbit hole.Satire is another elegant absurdity.“Satire has done more to change society than a mountain of political policies. Everything from All in the Family to Saturday Night Live to The Daily Show… (not to mention court jesters, Twain, Menippus, Will Rogers). It’s a battering ram disguised as a rubber chicken.”– Johnny MolsonBut is ‘elegant absurdity’ as absurd as it first appears?“Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.”– Jeannette Walls“The more evolved an animal is, the more time it spends playing.”– P.J. O’Rourke“Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.”– Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker, p. 19So there it is. When you are literate in the basic concepts of the Sciences and the Arts, you are qualified to be elegantly absurd. You are that flash of energy, that illumination we see when two wires come into close proximity after having been connected to opposite poles of the same high-voltage battery.Shine on, bright friend, shine on.Roy H. Williams

The great game of BUSINESS does not come with an instruction manual.The assumption of most players is that Customer Acquisition – lead generation – sales opportunities – is how you win the game.But the understanding of a Highly Skilled Player goes 2 levels deeper:Customer Acquisition (lead gen)Conversion (closing the sale)Remove the Friction (from the buying experience)Highly Skilled Players understand that exponential growth is unleashed by improving the conversion rate. Big differences in top-line sales and bottom-line profits flow from small improvements in Conversion.Highly Skilled Players are usually successful, but the Master Players – the paradigm shifters – the system disruptors – the Kings and Queens of their Categories – turn this Highly Skilled Order of Operations upside down.This is the methodology of every Master Player:Remove the FrictionCustomer AcquisitionConversionWithout exception, every one of the 26 Mammoth Successes in which I have played a part was triggered by Removing the Friction.When you remove the friction, you differentiate yourself in a profound and meaningful way. Customer Acquisition accelerates and Conversion Rate climbs.The friction in your customer’s Buying Experience is hard to see, but you can feel it in the reluctance of your customer.A customer survey will only add to your confusion because customers cannot consciously tell you what they subconsciously feel. You will read the results of your survey, do what your customers told you they wanted, but it won’t help you in the slightest.Let’s review:You need to remove the friction that creates Customer Reluctance.This is felt as a lack of sales opportunities, but you cannot identify the cause.Because it is subconscious, not even your customers can tell you the cause.Wait. It gets worse.When you were a kid, did you ever call “dibs”? If there was only one piece of cake and you wanted the right to eat that cake, you would call “dibs” on it. You had a preference and you wanted to impose that preference on others before they could impose their preference on you.Now that you are an adult, there is a new kind of DIBs – Data Information Bias – and it is far more costly than the loss of a piece of cake.I have a client who was successful long before they met me, but their Data Information Bias was impeding their ability to jump to a higher level. I recognized their DIBs when they told me to write ads that would drive sales opportunities to the telephone. Their data clearly indicated their conversion rate was much higher on the telephone than on their website.I said, “You have an extraverted sales assumption, a preference for listening and talking rather than reading and writing. And you assume that everyone else is like you. But it isn’t true. Your data isn’t telling you to drive your customers to the telephones, it is telling you to fix your website.”They believed me. They fixed it. And their sales volume doubled. Then we doubled the double by removing the friction in their mass media. That company is now approaching 10x the sales volume and profitability that was previously considered “successful.”You have already told yourself that you would have interpreted their data correctly. Am I right?Perhaps you would have. But that company’s data isn’t what is holding you back. Your own data and your own Data Information Bias is holding you back, but you can’t see it because it is hiding in your blind spot.If you knew it was there, they wouldn’t call it a blind spot.This last little bit that I am going to tell you – if I can figure out how to communicate it clearly – will resolve the final two mysteries that are lingering in your mind.If I am correct, you are wondering:“Why can’t the customer articulate their subconscious reluctance? I believe I could do it.”“If I am honest and sincere and open-minded, what could possibly keep me from seeing what is supposedly hiding in my blind spot?”Fear and Pride are the answers to both of those questions.Every form of Customer Reluctance is built upon a subconscious fear. We are too proud to admit – even to ourselves – that we are fearful, so we tell ourselves a convenient lie so that we don’t have to admit we are afraid. We believe this lie, so this is the lie that we report to you in your Customer Survey.To see what is hiding in your blind spot, you will have to alter one of your fundamental beliefs about how the world works. Your fundamental beliefs underlie your operating system, your worldview. You and I are exactly alike. Our pride causes us to have a deep, natural aversion to learning that we may have been wrong all along.Here is one example that might help you understand the depth and pervasiveness of the typical blind spot: If a person believes that “money makes the world go ’round” and that we can always find the truth if we “follow the money,” they will also believe that everyone evaluates each other based on their incomes. They see proof of that belief everywhere they look, because we see wh

Gordon Atkinson’s Land of La Mancha is the finest literary work of loneliness that has been chronicled since Henry David Thoreau spent 2 years on Walden Pond.Here is how Thoreau opens that most iconic of early American books:“When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months.”Walden Pond, by the way, is only 2.2 miles from the old North Bridge in Concord where a British soldier fired “the shot heard ’round the world” that triggered the Revolutionary War.Come with me now to July, 1845 when Henry David Thoreau first arrived at Walden Pond:It has been only 69 years since Thomas Jefferson wrote that document by which 13 colonies of England broke away from King George and banded together to form this baby nation. (To put this in perspective, it has been 69 years since Chevrolet introduced the Corvette. – RHW) There are tens of thousands of Americans today who can remember growing up in the 13 colonies. They can recall reading the newspapers of Benjamin Franklin with his constant showering of articles advocating “No Taxation Without Representation” and how their fingertips became blackened by newspaper ink that was not quite dry.Florida became the 27th state 90 days ago and Johnny Appleseed died 15 days later. There is talk of the Republic of Texas also becoming a state. The newspapers of New York are buzzing about a new poem by Poe in which a raven walks around saying, “Nevermore.”That was America on the day Henry David Thoreau wandered off into those woods from which he and his book Walden would emerge 2 years and 2 months later.You’ve never read Walden? Here is a short passage from “Brute Neighbors,” one of the later chapters:“The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native kind not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it; and when at last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away.”Gordon Atkinson is still writing his book, Land of La Mancha, but 3 days ago he posted 25 entries from the journal he has been keeping since the day he became the inaugural artist-in-residence at Wizard Academy.Gordon and I have not yet spoken. You will understand why when you read what he has written.Roy H. Williams

In 2011, the attention of our nation was consumed by the economic problems caused by the sub-prime mortgage debacle of 2008. That’s why everyone thought I was crazy when I wrote these words…“Western Society is in danger of becoming self-righteous, sanctimonious and insufferably judgmental. If history is to be our guide, the next 20 years will be when we move from our agreement of mutual brokenness, ‘I’m Not Okay – You’re Not Okay,’ to embrace a self-righteous indignation, ‘I’m Okay – You’re Not Okay.’ Sanctimonious vigilante-ism will become popular as indignant leaders demonize their enemies and rally their followers by appealing to their inborn sense of rightness and social obligation, ‘Let’s clean this place up and to hell with compromise. They are entirely wrong and we are entirely right. They are stupid. We are wise. They are evil. We are good.’”“The last time we went through this, America formed a committee in Congress called the House Un-American Activities Committee (1938) and later watched with glee while Senator Joseph McCarthy destroyed countless lives by recklessly branding his enemies as ‘Communists,’ and creating the infamous blacklists.”“This sounds a bit far-fetched, doesn’t it? I know it does. I’m writing because I want you to be able to look back and recall how absurd this all sounded when I first told you what was on the horizon.”I brought that 11-year-old prediction to your attention because I’m going to share something else that I see poking it’s head up over the horizon.Are you familiar with the argument that roared among the founding fathers during the 1790’s?Thomas Jefferson feared tyranny and was worried that a strong Federal government would stifle individual freedoms. He envisioned a decentralized republic built of small, agricultural towns. Alexander Hamilton feared anarchy and desired the structure and order that a strong Federal government would provide. He envisioned centralized, efficient power at the top of the pyramid.When the Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 that restricted the activities of foreign residents and limited freedom of speech and of the press, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which called on state legislatures to nullify federal laws.I believe we are seeing the acceleration of that argument between “Federal Power” Hamilton and “States Power” Jefferson, but I believe this time Jefferson will win.I know you would like me to speak plainly, so I will. But first I want to make it clear that I am not advocating the thing I am about to describe. In 2011 I didn’t want to see our nation degenerate into two polarized groups that were equally self-righteous, sanctimonious and insufferably judgmental, but it happened anyway. Likewise, I don’t want to see a surging escalation of state’s rights that ultimately cause our nation to become an expanded and updated version of the European Union, but I believe that is where we are headed.By 2033 you will hear this idea of “each state doing their own thing” being proposed by Alpha Voices that will arise and popularize it.Ten years later, the “ME” cycle of 2043 will be launched in the heady delusion that all of America’s problems can be solved by letting each state become, in essence, its own little country. America will maintain a common currency and a standing army to defend the member states, but the real power of the nation will have shifted to the governors and state legislatures. When you cross a state line the laws will change in profound and meaningful ways.By 2063 we will have begun to realize that if you sow to the wind, you reap a whirlwind, and we will begin to mourn what we left behind.I will be 105 years old in 2063 so it is unlikely that I will be paying much attention. But that’s okay. I’ve already seen this movie, I know how it ends.Roy H. WilliamsPS – I apologize if this seems unfair, but I did not write these things to you so that we could have a discussion about it. In truth, I would rather go to the dentist and have a root canal without anesthesia. But about once a decade I see the future clearly and write down what I see. I am prepared to be wrong. In fact, I hope I am wrong. But this is not a subject I really want to talk about. I wrote today’s Monday Morning Memo so that it can gather dust in the archives and be read by historians of the future who will say, “Well, he was only stating the obvious.” – RHWHindsight is that moment when smug academicians look at what was once impossible and call it “inevitable.” – Indy Beagle

Johnny Molson sent me a video of an elderly Ukrainian woman walking up to a heavily armed Russian soldier, the point man of a force that was occupying her town. Looking him in the face, she said, “Put sunflower seeds in your pocket so flowers will grow when you die.” *The note that came with the video said, “That’s a Patrick Henry/Paul Revere level story. That’s the shit Churchill wished he would have said.”Johnny’s note caused me to remember two things. The first was a passage from a remarkable op-ed from Yuval Noah Harari in London’s 200-year-old newspaper, The Guardian:“Nations are ultimately built on stories. Each passing day adds more stories that Ukrainians will tell not only in the dark days ahead, but in the decades and generations to come. The president who refused to flee the capital, telling the US that he needs ammunition, not a ride; the soldiers from Snake Island who told a Russian warship to “go fuck yourself”; the civilians who tried to stop Russian tanks by sitting in their path. This is the stuff nations are built from. In the long run, these stories count for more than tanks.”The second thing Johnny’s note brought to mind was something I wrote 19 years ago:Heroes are dangerous things. Bigger than life, highly exaggerated and always positioned in the most favorable light, a hero is a beautiful lie.We have historic heroes, folk heroes and comic book heroes. We have heroes in books and songs and movies and sport. We have heroes of morality, leadership, kindness and excellence. And nothing is so devastating to our sense of wellbeing as a badly fallen hero. Yes, heroes are dangerous things to have.The only thing more dangerous is not to have them.Heroes raise the bar we jump and hold high the standards we live by. They are ever-present tattoos on our psyche, the embodiment of all we are striving to be.We create our heroes from our hopes and dreams. And then they attempt to create us in their own image.Most people assume that legends, myths and stories of heroes are simply the byproducts of great civilizations, but I’m convinced they are the cause of them. Throughout history, the mightiest civilizations have been the ones with stories of heroes; larger-than-life role models that inspired ordinary citizens to rise up and do amazing things.Americans are united, at least for a moment, to set aside our petty bickering as we gaze in wonder at the people of Ukraine.My prayer is that Volodymyr Zelensky, his family and his nation, emerge from these dark days alive and free.Amen.Roy H. WilliamsPS – I have liked all of the Russians I have ever met. My strong suspicion is that Vladimir Putin does not represent the hearts of the people of Russia. One more thing: many of you have asked me about William and Sasha, Wizard Academy’s ambassadors to Russia. I have been very careful in my communications with them in recent days since Vladimir is angry with America and it might not be beneficial to be seen as having a lot of American friends right now. – RHW*The sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine, which makes grandma even more of a badass. – Indy

Motivational speakers often tell their followers to visualize accomplishing their desired outcomes; to mentally go into the future and feel the joy of that not-yet-happened moment.Visualization is the mental rehearsal of possible future events.When the word “rehearse” was invented more than 700 years ago, it meant to hear again; to re-hear.I am an ad writer. My job is to get people to repeatedly imagine doing what my clients want them to do. I want prospective customers to live those events in their minds.I could just as easily have been a songwriter.Each time you imagine an action that is followed by a sequence of events, you move precipitously closer to taking that action and bringing those events to pass.Athletes in every sport are taught this by their coaches.This is why I don’t listen to country music. I don’t want to visualize those events and imagine those feelings.Visualization – mental rehearsal – is a powerful thing.Visualization affects one-and-a-half percent of us a little more strongly than it does most people. We are the ones who are warned by psychologists not to get involved in role-playing games because we can get lost in the characters we play and lose touch with reality.This is why, for me, listening to a country song about heart-breaking loss and gut-wrenching grief is exactly like watching a horror movie. But I believe I understand the appeal of country music to people who are not afflicted with my condition. Shauna Niequist writes, “My friend Eve told me once that the ability to cry is a sign of health, because it means your body and your soul agree on something.”If I am right, people love country music because it helps them remember the things that are important in their lives.As Solomon said in the 23rd division of the book of Proverbs, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”His words apply equally to both of us, I think.To me, Solomon is saying, “Do not be in your mind the man you do not want to be.”But to the country music fan, Solomon is saying, “Feel deep and meaningful feelings in your mind if you want to be a deep and meaningful person.”I could be wrong. I have certainly been wrong before. But I do not think I am wrong this time.Roy H. Williams

A brief summary of this episodeThe goal of branding is to build a relationship with future customers. When a relationship has finally been established, you become who these people think of immediately – and feel the best about – when they, or any of their friends, need what you sell.Direct marketers often disdain mass media because it doesn’t allow them to “target and track” their prey. But these same Direct Marketers will give heavy bags of money to online influencers. It never occurs to them that every person listening to the radio or watching TV is an influencer of approximately 250 people.These 250 people are their Realm of Association. They are the people who listen to them when they speak. They are mostly friends and co-workers, but some of them are family.You have people in your life – acquaintances – with whom you are familiar, but they never quite made it into that circle that is your true Realm of Association.Here’s my question for you. Do you trust those people who never contact you unless they want something from you?Those people remind me of direct marketers. They target you – get something from you – and walk away smiling.Your true friends are the ones who spend time with you, who make you smile, laugh, feel good, and rarely ask for anything at all.A brand that you love is like a friend.Ads are either transactional or relational. A long series of transactional ads does not build a brand. It builds name awareness, yes, but not a brand.If I reach and win only 10 percent of your realm of association through my focused use of mass media, but you ­– my future customer – are not within that 10 percent, I am not worried in the slightest. My relational ads will have won the hearts of 25 of your best friends and it is likely that one or more of them will get my message to you when you finally need what I sell. If I reach and win 20% of your community through my relentless use of cheap and effective mass media, I will have reached 50 of your best friends.Decisions are rarely made in a vacuum.Each of us is surrounded by influencers who do not have blogs or podcasts or YouTube channels, but we value their opinions very highly. We trust the recommendations of our friends.“Reaching the right people” is not the secret to building a brand. The secret is to say and do the right things.Getting attention is easy. Any fool can do it.To win a person’s heart, you have to hold that attention. You have to nurture that little spark by the breath of your mouth and then blow it into a flame by your actions. You have to cause people to look forward to their next encounter with you. You have to make them enjoy spending time with you.This, mon chéri, is branding.Brand building is not something you test.Brand building is something you do.Your first encounter with a cold contact will be Low CAP.Low Conversion.Low Average sale.Low Profit margin.But when that contact types your name into the search block because they are looking for you – precisely you – those encounters will be High CAP.Direct marketers wear their CAPs low.Brand builders wear their CAPs high.The most successful direct marketers are those who first built their brands, then began offering specific things to their brand families at specific times, all the while maintaining and nourishing that bond their customers feel with the brand.My personal formula is one-third transactional ads, two-thirds relational.Television and radio advertising are astoundingly cheap and effective. They are the way to go if you want to build a brand. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.Aroo,Roy H. Williams

There are four kinds of thought.Verbal Thought is hearing a voice in your mind.Analytical Thought is deductive reasoning that seeks to forecast a result.Abstract Thought embraces fantasy and all things intangible.Symbolic Thought relates the unknown to the known. The pattern-recognition power of the right brain connects new ideas [abstract thought] with known information [analytical thought] in the deductive reasoning left brain.Symbolic Thought allows you to communicate the abstract by pointing to something familiar that shares an essential attribute with the abstraction you are trying to describe. This is the essence of all similes and metaphors.“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic…”– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline“murmuring…”“bearded…”“garments…”“Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic…”We’re talking about trees, remember?Symbols are a language of the mind.But that observation is just the beginning.I have no proof of what I am about to tell you. So if you continue to read, please understand that I will be sharing nothing more than a deeply held pet theory of mine. I can reference no sources other than 25 years of experimentation and my conversations with Indy.I believe the 4 types of thought are composed of 12 essential languages. Think of these 12 languages as the Operating System of the mind.I believe Numbers are a language of the mind.There are things that can be said in the language of Numbers that can be said in no other language. It is easier to learn mathematics when you think of Numbers as a language and the order of operations in math as the grammar and syntax of that language.I believe Color is a language. Red and pink say different things.Likewise, Shape is a language. A curve says something different than an angle.Arranging colors and shapes so they speak to us is the essence of composition in photos, paintings and illustrations. It is the basis of architecture, Feng Shui, and industrial design (cars, jewelry, furniture, etc.) In fact, it underlies every type of visual communication that causes people to think and feel a certain way.The human mind is given wings by its unique ability to attach complex meanings to sounds.When you use words, you are rapidly choosing which of the 44 Phonemes of the English language shares an essential attribute with the fractional abstraction you are trying to describe.Yes, the entirety of the English language is composed of just 44 sounds. This is not a pet theory of mine. This is settled science among the linguists of the world.When you speak or write, you are connecting Phonemes together in rapid succession to create words – sounds – that represent what you are trying to communicate.Did you know the written word has no meaning until it has been translated into the spoken word it represents? Graphemes, the letters of the alphabet and certain combinations of those letters like ch, sh, and th, merely represent the sounds – the phonemes – to which we attach deep meaning.Look again at ch, sh, and th. Don’t say the names of the letters in your mind. Make the sounds that each of those two-letter combinations represent, “ch,” “sh,” “th”Did it occur to you that “th” has two different sounds? Voiced “th” is the sound we hear in “the”. Unvoiced “th” is the sound we hear in “with”.It is my belief that a basic understanding of the 12 Languages of the Mind will make you a better communicator. Indy Beagle gave you a glimpse of one of the Languages – Symbol – before he got carried away in today’s illustration. And I gave you a glimpse of 4 of them: Number, Color, Shape, and Phoneme.Perhaps one day, if you are interested, we’ll tell you about the other seven.Roy H. Williams

Storm is a character in my mind.No, not so much a character as a caricature, an icon, an archetype.I occasionally meet Storm in the real world. Storm is sometimes male, sometimes female.You’ve met Storm, too.Storm is easily infatuated. Storm is in love with Love. Storm talks a lot about passion.But Storm is a rabbit, a mouse who runs at the first sign of difficulty or hardship.Don’t tell me what you are passionate about, Storm. Show me.Storm, I am old. I have lived many lives and I can tell you with certainty that commitment is the only true form of passion.Passion is not a feeling of fluffy-headed excitement. Passion is suffering. My friend Manley Miller taught me this.Passion comes from the Latin word “Pati,” the root word of Patience. We think of patience as an ability to wait. But patience, more accurately, is an ability to suffer.Compassion means “to suffer with,” to become a partner in the suffering of others. Compassionate people feel the pain of persons other than themselves.“…for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…”Better and richer and health speak of hope.Worse and poorer and sickness speak of passion.Storm, let no one deceive you. Passion does not produce commitment. Commitment produces passion.Have you never heard about the injustices endured by that boy who was born less than 9 months after his parents were married, who then spent his life bringing peace and help and hope to others? He endured mockery, false arrest, a sham trial, a bullwhipping, and then spikes were driven through his hands and feet. They call these events, “The Passion of Christ.”Passion, at its core, is a parching thirst that cries out to be quenched.No, Storm. You are not passionate. You lack the commitment to be.I am finished talking to Storm. Now I am talking to you. Have you been saying, “I can’t find my passion”?Would you like to be passionate? Would you like to feel so strongly about something that you would be willing to suffer for it? Passion is a fire easily lit: just make a commitment and don’t look back, or left, or right; only forward.Make a commitment. Pay the price of it.Mark Jennison has a passion for the gym. I know this because he goes to the gym every day and suffers.Princess Pennie has a passion for gardening. I know this because I see her on her knees, patiently digging and planting and weeding and pruning to create a look and feel of harmony across acres of land.Brad Whittington has compassion for the homeless. I know this because he cooks for them and drives to an unsettling place to serve them one-by-one, face-to-face.Commitment is the only true form of passion.Make a commitment. Passion will follow.Aroo,Roy H. Williams

You and I spoke last week about shadows being “holes in the light” that speak of past actions and their consequences.We are not the first to make that observation.The ancient Egyptians believed your shadow was the spent energy coming off you and dying in this world. Your shadow was separate from you but part of you, always there. The reason you could not see your shadow at night is because darkness swallows darkness.“The spent energy coming off you and dying in this world” sounds a lot like past actions and their consequences, don’t you think?Psychologist Carl Jung spoke of our shadow as the darkness within each of us. He said,“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is… forming an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions… In myths the hero is the one who conquers the dragon, not the one who is devoured by it. And yet both have to deal with the same dragon. Also, he is no hero who never met the dragon, or who, if once he saw it, declared afterwards that he saw nothing. Only one who has risked the fight with the dragon and is not overcome by it wins the hoard, the ‘treasure hard to attain’. He alone has a genuine claim to self-confidence, for he has faced the dark ground of ‘self’ and thereby has gained himself… He has arrived at an inner certainty which makes him capable of self-reliance.”Did you notice that Carl Jung was speaking of past actions and their consequences?When Peter Pan first meets Wendy, she sews his shadow back on for him. Author J.M. Barrie used the shadow of Peter Pan as a symbol to help us better understand this “boy who would never grow up.” For Peter to be able to fly, Peter cannot have a shadow that binds him to the ground. He cannot have memories of the past. He cannot have memories of his mother.Victoria Rego writes,“In a moment of darkness, laying in my bed I suddenly remember Peter accepting his shadow before Wendy was able to sew it back on. It hit me in that moment that this is what we do with trauma. We tuck it away for safe keeping until we are either ready or forced to deal with it. This is how shadow work begins. When we do shadow work, we are learning to become aware of beliefs, ideas, triggers that we have been avoiding, parts of ourselves that we tuck away, so they do not ’cause trouble.’ Acknowledging these aspects of ourselves allows us to heal and find balance within ourselves.”I believe Carl Jung would have endorsed Victoria Rego’s observation.Are you ready to talk about history’s most famous shadow?David, that boy who slew a giant with a sling and then became a great king wrote of this greatest-of-all-shadows 3,000 years ago,“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for you are with me…”Death, that final consequence of all our actions, casts a very great shadow indeed. It is a mountain that looms before us and none can escape it.But take hope, my friend. That mountain would not cast a shadow in this valley where we walk except there be a bright and happy light on the other side.Aroo,

Your actions cast a shadow across space and time, affecting people directly – or indirectly – for generations.You already know this.The rest of what I’m about to tell you is speculative, but I believe I am right:Visually, a shadow is a hole in the light. A shadow carries the distorted shape of a moment beyond the moment itself. A shadow speaks of consequences.A silhouette is not a shadow. A silhouette is what we see when we look toward the light. A silhouette speaks of things to come.Painters and writers and photographers and historians and the makers of movies have always seen this, always known it.You have always known it, too.Shadows speak of the past. Silhouettes speak of the future. When you see a silhouette on the horizon, you immediately think, “And then what happened?”You can use these ideas to deepen the subtlety and artistry of your communication. Don’t worry that your reader/listener/viewer won’t understand. Trust their deep intuition. Trust the right hemispheres of their brains, that half whose principal function is to make connections and predictions through the recognition of patterns.Gut feelings, hunches, premonitions, and intuitions are psychological products of that wordless, pattern-recognizing logic of the right hemispheres of our brains.Zig-zagging enthusiastically back-and-forth across that landscape of possibilities, making connections and seeing patterns, you have a beagle in your brain.I call mine Indy.What do you call yours?Roy H. WilliamsPS – Einstein was a scientist who saw that time and space and reality itself were tied to the speed of light. E = MC2 : E – the energy in a thing = M – its mass x C2 – the speed of light, squared.In the first chapter of an ancient Jewish book of Beginnings, God says, “Let there be light” and our universe springs into existence. Scientists call this the Big Bang. Einstein, being Jewish, was familiar with the original story.We call it the speed of light, but a more accurate way to think of it would be the speed of reality; the frame-rate of the universe.Indy Beagle will explain the math of this conjecture in the rabbit hole. To enter the rabbit hole just click the silhouette of Indiana Beagle standing at the bottom of the clock in the image at the top of the memo. Each click of an image in the rabbit hole will take you one page deeper. This week, there are 20 pages in all.– RHW

I learned about advertising from listening to my eighth-grade football coaches.“Every play is a touchdown play if everyone on the team does their assignment properly.”That was one of the two things they bellowed at us every day. The other one was this:“If you succeed in football, you will succeed in life.”I was only 12 years old but that didn’t mean I was an idiot. I finished that season, but I never played football again. Those coaches believed what they were saying and that made my head spin because I knew it wasn’t true.If you believe, deep in your bones, in always doing what is correct and expected, right and proper, then I want you to be the engineer that builds the bridges I drive across. I want you to be the surgeon that operates on me. I want you to be the policeman that cruises the streets I drive. I want you to be the running back, the tight end, the wide receiver of the team I am playing against.When you’re playing offense and you know exactly what you are going to do and how you are going to do it, the defense knows it, too. You’re “telegraphing the play.” Defenders can read you like an open book.When you’re carrying the ball and the defenders don’t know what you’re about to do, it’s because you, yourself, don’t know. You are an amazing “broken field runner” because you make every decision at the last split second. You are never where anyone expected you to be. They leap to tackle you and grab empty air.If you believe in doing what is correct and expected, right and proper, I want you to write all the ads for the company my client and I are competing against.Predictable platitudes drip from the lips of people who say what is correct and expected, right and proper. Predictable platitudes flow like ink from the pens of the world’s worst ad writers. Predictable platitudes cause people to roll their eyes and say, “Get real.”I’ll tell you a secret if you promise not to be offended. I’ve never met a great ad writer who was taught how to write ads in college.Great ad writing is counterintuitive.You learn how to write great ads by keeping careful track of all the good ideas that should have worked, but didn’t. When you finally run out of good ideas and decide to do something crazy, dangerous, and ill-advised, tell your neighbors to keep an eye on the sky because the airshow and the fireworks are about to be spectacular.Congratulations, you have finally written a good ad.Every play is a touchdown play when your team is the only team on the field. But that’s not how football is played, is it? When you begin with the wrong premise, you always reach the wrong conclusion.To write an ad that is “correct and expected, right and proper” is the most foolish thing you can do.That’s all I have to say today, but Indy Beagle is going to take this discussion to a much deeper level in the rabbit hole.That’s where I’m headed now.Care to join me?Roy H. Williams

Twenty-three years ago, roving reporter Rotbart said to me,“You are three different people.1. There is the person you see when you look in the mirror.2. There is the person other people see when they look at you.3. There is the real you, the person no one can see but God.”Objective reality exists. I do not dispute it. Rotbart’s argument – and mine – is that you and he and I are not equipped to experience it.I live in a perceptual reality; a world that I perceive.You live in a perceptual reality; a world that you perceive.You see your own actions in the forgiving light of your motives, intentions, and regrets, while the “you” that is seen by others is shaped and shaded by their preferences, prejudices, and perspectives.John Steinbeck speaks of this in his preface to East of Eden,“The reader will take from my book what he brings to it. The dull witted will get dullness and the brilliant may find things in my book I didn’t know were there.”Steinbeck knew that we tend to see what is already within us.On May 1, 1831, an unspecified writer for The Atlas in London wrote,“We cannot see things as they are, for we are compelled by a necessity of nature to see things as we are. We can never get rid of ourselves.”Twenty years ago, my friend Kary Mullis challenged my musings about perceptual reality in front of a roomful of people. He said that his belief, as a scientist, was that “real” things can be measured, tested, and weighed. “Real things exist,” he said. “If it is not physical, it is imaginary.”I said, “Are emotions and opinions and beliefs real?”Kary described scientific method and Koch’s postulates, (the four criteria designed to establish a causative relationship between a microbe and a disease,) while I dragged a barstool to the front of the room. Holding up a copy of his book, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, I said, “Kary, would you be willing to sit on this barstool and read the dedication page to us?”As Kary read the page he wrote to his wife, Nancy, his voice tightened and he stopped speaking as tears rolled down his cheeks. I said, “Keep reading, Kary. It’s all imaginary, remember?”When he could speak again, he admitted I was right, and that a whole world of reality exists beyond the reach of physical science.Kary Mullis was a highly confident genius who was willing to change his mind.Persons like Kary Mullis are exactly the people Desmond Ford was talking about when he said,“A wise man changes his mind sometimes, but a fool never. To change your mind is the best evidence you have one.”Kary is gone now and I miss him deeply.The world of 2022 needs more people like him, and quickly.Roy H. Williams“Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.” – Meg Chittenden“Ever realised how surreal reading a book actually is? You stare at marked slices of tree for hours on end, hallucinating vividly.” – Katie Oldham, Sept 12, 2014, retweeted 3,837 times, favorited 3,728 times

“Hoare writes with the license of the nonexpert; you can feel the delight he takes in being unbound by anything but his enthusiasms.”John Williams was describing Philip Hoare when he wrote that line, but he could easily have been describing me. As a nonexpert, I am free to speculate and arrive at my own conclusions.So are you.And so is your customer.You, me, and your customer claim we use deductive reasoning, but it simply isn’t true. Deductive reasoning – the basis of scientific method – would require us to work diligently to disprove what we believe.Do you know anyone who actually does that?Rather than use deductive reasoning, we use inductive reasoning to search out information confirming that our values, beliefs, instincts, and preferences have been right all along.When confronted with contradictory information, our confirmation bias kicks in to assure us the contradictory information is not correct, so we dismiss it with the flick of a mental finger.Let me help you with that flicking away of contradictory information. I am an ad writer. Magical thinking, inductive reasoning, and confirmation bias sparkle at my fingertips.My job is to speak to that which is already within you. You have more than enough information. Let me agree with what you already believe.Google and Facebook will use their algorithms to help us build a community where we can surround ourselves with like-minded people who share our opinions and beliefs. Everyone who doesn’t agree with us is uninformed, misinformed, fooled by faulty data, foolish rumor, or evil geniuses.Magical thinking, inductive reasoning, and confirmation bias sparkle at the fingertips of every evil genius. But I am not an evil genius. I am the genius that agrees with you.Magical thinking is difficult to explain, but Kurt Andersen does a pretty good job:“Americans have always been magical thinkers and passionate believers in the untrue. Our nation was started by Puritans in New England who wanted to create a Christian utopia as they waited for the imminent second coming of Christ and the End of Days. To the south, a bunch of people were convinced, absolutely convinced, that this place they had never been was full of gold waiting to be plucked from the dirt in Virginia. They stayed there looking and hoping for gold for 20 years before they finally faced the facts and decided they weren’t going to get rich overnight.”“This was the beginning of America. Next we had centuries of ‘buyer beware’ charlatanism and medical quackery to an extreme degree, along with increasingly exotic, extravagant, implausible cults and religions.”“All those things came together and were supercharged in the 1960s, when you were entitled to your own truth and your own reality. A generation later the internet came along, giving each of those realities, no matter how false or magical or nutty they are, their own kind of media infrastructure.”A wonderful story is dazzling and attractive, regardless of whether or not it is true. This is the basis of all successful advertising.“Hoare writes with the license of the nonexpert; you can feel the delight he takes in being unbound by anything but his enthusiasms.”John Williams wrote those words in his recommendation of Philip Hoare’s new book, “Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World.”John Williams book review column is titled, appropriately, “Books of the Times.”Roy H. Williams

The limiting factors that will challenge business owners in 2022 are inflation, Covid, and the recruitment of good employees.The bad news is that I can give you the solution to only 1 of these 3 problems.The good news is that it’s the big one: the recruitment of good employees.Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel prize for proving it’s not hard to sell a dog on the taste of meat.Successful jewelers know it’s not hard to sell a man on the woman he loves.Recruitment problems disappear when you know how easy it is to sell a parent on their child.A couple of years ago, Dewey Jenkins and I had a series of conversations about opening a free, private day-care center as a benefit for the employees of Morris-Jenkins Air Conditioning and Plumbing. The thing that kept us from doing it was that the majority of his employees – the technicians – drove their trucks home every night and went straight to their first repair each morning. Consequently, they would have no opportunity to drop off their child.But still, it was a great idea.Do your employees report to a specific location each day? Have you noticed that space for lease just down the street from you?Lease that space.Get a daycare license.Hire 2 or more people to run it.Open your recruitment ads with the words “Free, Private Daycare.”(And now you know why I was explaining the importance of “framing.” – Indy Beagle)Prepare to be amazed at the quality and volume of job applicants.Your employee problem has now been permanently solved.You’re welcome.What? What did you just say?“I can’t afford it.”Raise your prices. Inflation is happening whether you participate or not.“It’s easier to pay a big signing bonus.”Signing bonuses attract job-hoppers.“It sounds like a lot of trouble.”Paying big money for bad employees is another kind of trouble. Is that the kind you prefer?“I’ll just wait it out. Things will go back to normal pretty soon.”Here’s a fun fact I’ll bet you didn’t know: to maintain our population and our workforce, American women need to birth an average of 2.1 children each. The parents of today’s workforce produced only 1.8 births per woman and the birth rate today is at 1.64 and declining.We are at least 10 percent short of having an adequate workforce because that 10 percent was never born. So if you’re waiting for the workforce to get larger, you’re going to need to convince women across America to have more kids and then wait 20 years for those kids to grow up.Child-care is a huge, for-profit business that is crippling the buying power of single-parent (and two-parent) households across America. It is within your power to solve that problem for a small group of people, and in so doing, solve your own problem as well.Give it some thought.And may you have a Prosperous and Happy New Year.Roy H. Williams

Matthew McConaughey writes in his book, Green Lights,“Cool is a natural law. If it was cool for THAT time, then it is cool for ALL time. A fad is just a branch on Cool’s trunk; a fashionable fling whose 15 minutes can never abide, no matter how long she trends to try. Cool stands the test of time, because cool never tries. Cool just is.”My friend Crazy Tony taught me about “cool” 45 years ago when we attended Broken Arrow High School together. Tony made a lot of money buying and selling old cars. I was known as Beatermaker because Tony was forever frustrated by my uncanny ability to drive a fabulous car and, within a week, make it look like a beater.“Beatermaker,” he said, “every guy who has found an old car in perfect condition believes he has found a gold mine. But it’s almost never true. If a car wasn’t highly desirable when it was new, no one wants it 20, 30, or 50 years later. But if a car was admired and desired on the day it was born, it will be cool forever, no matter what condition it’s in.”That was the insight that made Crazy Tony tens of thousands of dollars when we were in high school.The passage of time, the recklessness of the human race, and the slow smokeless burning of decay make old things rare. But it it does not make them wonderful. Remarkable buildings and books and paintings and songs don’t get better with age. They were wonderful the day they were born. I know it, Matthew McConaughey knows it, and now you know it.But what makes them wonderful?Wonderful things were touched by someone who knew the secret of wonder and how to capture it. When you know how to capture wonder, you carry it in your head, your heart, and your hands. You glitter when you walk.Isaac Newton knew how to capture wonder and he passed the secret of it forward in just 14 words. Countless millions have read those words and assumed Newton was talking about himself. He was not. Newton was giving you his most precious advice. He was telling you how to capture wonder. He was telling you how to glitter when you walk.In 1675, Newton wrote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”Isaac Newton stood on the shoulders of Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus in astronomy, Huygens, Euclid, Henry Briggs, and Isaac Barrow in math, Kepler and Descartes in optics, and Plato, Aristotle, and Maimonides in philosophy. Newton combined the insights of all these men and made them uniquely his own.Choose your giants. Stand on their shoulders. Repurpose the proven.Vincent Van Gogh stood on the shoulders of Monticelli and Hiroshige. Long after they were dead, they taught him how to paint. He studied their paintings, captured their wonder, and made it uniquely his own.Johnny Depp stood on the shoulders of Pepe Le Pew, the cartoon skunk, and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones. They taught him how to become Captain Jack Sparrow. Depp studied their mannerisms, captured their wonder, and made it uniquely his own.I stand on the shoulders of John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost, Asimov, Tolkien, Paul Harvey, and Edwin Arlington Robinson. They taught me how to write. In fact, I borrowed “the slow smokeless burning of decay” from Robert Frost and “glitter when you walk” from Robinson. They don’t mind. Each of them stood on the shoulders of giants of their own choosing.Do you have time for me to give you one more example?In the rabbit hole you’ll find “Summer Wine,” a hit song written by Lee Hazlewood that made the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967. When you listen to it, you will think it sounds like a movie score. This is because Hazlewood took three famous movie themes that don’t belong together and made them fit. He captured their wonder and made it uniquely his own.Yes, cognoscenti, you understand.The 3 giants on whose shoulders Hazlewood was standing are obvious. First, you have Nancy Sinatra sounding like every Disney Princess in every Disney movie ever made. And then you notice the unmistakable horse-trot rhythm of every theme song from every western starring Clint Eastwood, followed by the voice of the definitive cowboy-hero tough guy. And then about two-thirds of the way through the song you’ll hear the unmistakable 4-note signature of the title sequence of every James Bond movie: da-dum, da-DAHHHH.Indy Beagle is waiting to show you all these things in the rabbit hole.Have you chosen your giants? Don’t worry that they are silly and don’t make sense. Johnny Depp chose a cartoon skunk and a rock guitarist to teach him acting. I chose a novelist and a poet to teach me ad writing. Hazlewood chose a Disney Princess, a spaghetti western, and James Bond to teach him songwriting.Take your inspiration from wherever you find it, no matter how ridiculous. Repurpose the proven. Stand on the shoulders of giants.Merry Christmas.Roy H. Williams

When your intuitive mind senses a pattern and begins to search for the completion of that pattern, we call this, “curiosity”.But sometimes our searching for the completion of a pattern goes sideways, takes a shortcut, gets it wrong. The false logic that springs to mind as a result of this wrong turn is so common that it has a Latin name, “Post Hoc, ergo Propter Hoc.”Blame Isaac Newton.Newton taught us to think of cause and effect as sequential: a pool cue strikes a ball, which strikes another ball. As a result of our trust in Newtonian physics, the often-wrong logic of Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc is almost irresistibly seductive because it begins with the observation that two events occurred in sequence.Remember a TV show called The West Wing?Jed Bartlet: C.J., on your tombstone it’s going to say Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc.C.J.: Okay, but none of my visitors are going to be able to understand my tombstone.Jed Bartlet: It means, “One thing follows the other, therefore it was caused by the other.” But it’s not always true. In fact, it’s hardly ever true. We did not lose Texas because of the hat joke. Do you know when we lost Texas?C.J.: When you learned to speak Latin?Do you remember The Big Bang Theory? In a 2009 episode, Sheldon Cooper was speaking to his mother on the phone:“The Arctic expedition was a remarkable success, I’m all but certain there’s a Nobel prize in my future. Actually, I shouldn’t say that. I’m entirely certain… (audience laughter) No, Mother, I could not feel your church group praying for my safety… (audience laughter) The fact that I’m home safe does not prove that it worked. That logic is Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc… (audience laughter) No, I’m not sassing you in Eskimo talk.”Similar to “Post Hoc” is the broken logic of simultaneous occurrences, Cum Hoc ergo Propter Hoc, “With this, because of this.”“The bigger a child’s shoe size, the better the child’s handwriting. Therefore, having big feet makes it easier to write.”The mental sleight-of-hand of “Post Hoc” and “Cum Hoc” are what make advertising – and conspiracy theories ­– so easy to believe.@WardQNormal writes,“The trouble with conspiracy theories is that a lack of evidence is taken as proof that the conspiracy is everywhere. This is like thinking that the reason you never see elephants hiding up in treetops is because they’re good at it.”Seeing patterns where they don’t exist can be costly and dangerous. But still, I am wildly in favor of curiosity.Zora Neale Hurston wrote,“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”Albert Einstein said,“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.”Gemma Stone,“When we enter a conversation with curiosity, we allow ourselves to see things differently and to be surprised by what we discover.”Tom Robbins,“Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.”Dorothy Parker,“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”And none other than Daniel Boone – yes, THAT Daniel Boone – said,“Curiosity is natural to the soul of man and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections.”Like I said, I am wildly in favor of curiosity. If I could, I would inject it into your arm with a needle. Curiosity will take you on trips like no other drug.Roy H. Williams

I’ve been saying for 20 years that I’m going to write a buddy movie about Jesus and the 12. I’ve got the whole thing in my head.But who am I to put words in the mouth of Jesus? The idea of creating a fictional Jesus who does and says things that are not in the Bible could easily be the pinnacle of hubris.I believe John Steinbeck was gripped by a similar fear. He and Elaine rented a cottage in England in 1959 so that he could work on his 20th century update of Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory, after he abandoned his half-finished story of Don Quixote as an old man in California who has watched one-too-many westerns on TV.He explained his motive for Le Morte d’Arthur shortly before he left England.“Malory wrote the stories for and to his time. Any man hearing him knew every word and every reference. There was nothing obscure, he wrote the clear and common speech of his time and country. But that has changed—the words and references are no longer common property, for a new language has come into being. Malory did not write the stories. He simply wrote them for his time and his time understood them … And with that, almost by enchantment the words began to flow…”– John Steinbeck, from a letter dated March 27, 1959.Steinbeck’s unfinished works, King Arthur and His Noble Knights and Don Keehan, Marshall of Manchon, are both amazing, and he never explained why he didn’t publish them. But having read everything Steinbeck ever wrote – including 50 years of his private correspondence published as A Life in Letters – I am convinced that John Steinbeck heard the same voice in his mind that I hear in mine, “Just who the hell do you think you are?”But still, I remain committed to making my buddy movie about Jesus and the 12.It occurred to me 2 years ago that I could save a lot of money on set design and costumes if I moved the story from Israel 2,000 years ago to the city of New Orleans today; interesting people in comfortable clothes in a colorful city.Little did I know that Chris Poché already had my idea. But Chris didn’t discover his buddy movie in the Bible. Chris Poché, like John Steinbeck, saw a buddy movie in Don Quixote de La Mancha.In a recent interview with Mike Rowe, Poché said,“And when I started reading it, what struck me was that it’s not a big epic tale. It’s little. He never gets out of his neighborhood. He’s on this cruddy old horse that can’t go very far. He just rides around the neighborhood doing crazy crap. And I’m reading and thinking, ‘Well, that could happen to anybody, any place, any time. I don’t need the desert in Spain in 1605. I don’t need to see a monster through his eyes. That windmill was not a giant. That was the whole point. He’s nuts… Maybe I could just make this [movie] right here. Doesn’t matter where it is. Doesn’t matter what year it is. It could happen to anyone.’ Little did I know, at that moment it was happening to me.”Chris Poché of New Orleans is what the cognoscenti of Wizard Academy call, “our brand of crazy.” And it is this special brand of craziness that has made Chris and a few dozen of his buddies an important part of Mardi Gras.“Everyone in New Orleans is Don Quixote. Everyone. That stupid little Mardi Gras club happened because I looked at my buddy who is my accomplice in all things stupid. I looked at him and said, ‘Do you know what? We’re going to start one of these clubs, but we’re not marching, we’re riding around in power recliners dressed like lounge lizards.’ And he went, ‘Yeah.’ And eight months later, we were in the biggest parades because everyone here supports madness and Quixotic quests. Nobody looks at you like you’re crazy. They look at you like, ‘Hey, that’s a great idea.’ The stupider the better.”Are you willing to be my accomplice in something stupid?It would be irresponsible to call this a class, because a class has a focused educational agenda; something that will save you time or solve a problem or make you money. I don’t plan to do any of that. I’m just going to tell a bunch of true stories about success and failure and show some fascinating movie clips and answer a lot of interesting questions and eat a lot of good food and maybe have an ad-venture or two. Who knows.But we will talk a little about Jesus and Don Quixote and John Steinbeck and String Theory and Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea and I’ll share a few memories of the late Kary Mullis, the inventor of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and the winner of the Nobel Prize.Kary was our brand of crazy.And somewhere along the way we’ll look into the science of creating magnetically attractive characters in fiction, and do some associated exercises that will help you create a more interesting brand, a more entertaining movie, a more widely-read book, a more effective ad; whatever it is you are doing that deserves more attention than it’s been getting.In a nutshell, I’m going to be sharing the m

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with.” – Rebecca SolnitIn just 25 words, Rebecca gave “hope” a new identity, introduced a new purpose for it, and caused us to imagine the beginning of a new adventure. She supplied the words, but we created the movie in our minds.Persuaders don’t tell you the truth; they lead you to it and let you discover it for yourself. Rebecca Solnit is a talented persuader, a gifted teacher, and a wonderful storyteller. She made us see hope as a powerful tool that can smash down barriers and give us access to things we desire.We broke down the door that kept us out, so now we are… where?That is up to you. What do you hope for?# # # #I will now reveal – bit by bit – my true purpose in writing these things to you:“Astral projection is a term used in esotericism to describe an intentional out-of-body experience that assumes the existence of a soul called an ‘astral body’ that is separate from the physical body and capable of travelling outside it throughout the universe.” – WIKIPEDIA“That sounds a bit woo-woo, so I’m out.”“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen… Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” – Hebrews 11:1-3, in the Bible“That sounds religious, so I’m out.”“Every morning, Tony Robbins engages in a 10-minute priming exercise to channel his energy and create the ideal conditions for a fulfilling day. By taking charge of his mindset and emotions, he cultivates a positive state, which greatly increases the odds that he will experience happiness, success and fulfillment throughout his day.” – tonyrobbins.com“That sounds like mind-over-matter, so I’m out.”“Don’t worry. Be happy.” – Bobby McFerrin“Wishful thinking is self-delusion, so I’m out.”“Stay focused, ignore the distractions, and you will accomplish your goals much faster.” – Joel Osteen“Every elementary school teacher has said that to every little kid in America for the past 100 years. I’m out.”“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with.” – Rebecca SolnitEach of us has hope. We cling to it. Rebecca told us precisely what all those other people were trying to tell us, but she chose the word “hope” instead of “visualize,” “focus,” “priming exercise,” “faith,” “Astral projection” or “The Law of Attraction,” because each of those other words and phrases have associations and connotations that might push us away from the truth.What is the truth?This is the truth: You imagine action before you take it. You see yourself do it before you do it. No person has ever cheated on their life partner without first imagining it in their mind, and no person has ever created anything marvelous or good without first seeing it in their mind. And no person has ever sold anything without first causing the customer to imagine buying it.The job of an ad is to cause people to imagine taking an action.I asked earlier, “What do you hope for?”Let me ask it differently, “What action do you want your customer to take?”Do what Rebecca Solnit did. Begin with something familiar; something that you and your customer agree on. Then build a bridge from that point of agreement to where you want them to go.You cannot take your customer where you want them to go until you first meet them where they are.What does your customer already believe in? Start with that.Roy H. Williams

My friend Don has a time machine. He takes me with him sometimes. You should come, too! Every person who rides in Don’s time machine is changed by it.The United States Department of Justice has booked passage on Don’s time machine for countless prison inmates. State and local governments and hundreds of rehab centers have booked journeys for people as well. Thirty-five million in all.Each trip through time begins with a series of words.My friend Don is a storyteller.Stories of the past help us to know who we are.Stories of the future help us to see who we can become.Stories are more effective than facts for changing beliefs and behaviors. Facts cause us to put our shields up and become skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard.With these thoughts in mind, Don invented “interactive journals,” booklets that allow people in crisis to revisit their past and imagine a better future. Each reader of an interactive journal becomes the co-creator of two stories. (1.) the story of how they got into this mess, and (2.) the story of a brighter tomorrow.We imagine every action before we take it. If we want to change our behaviors, we need only to imagine different actions than the ones we have imagined in the past.Stories are portals of escape into alternate realities.An examination of the brain of any mammal will let us know its superpower. Monkeys can swing artfully through trees, not because their bodies are different, but because more than half their brain mass is devoted to depth perception, color differentiation, and guided grasping.According to Professor Steven Pinker of MIT and Harvard,“The human brain, too, tells a story. Our brains are about three times too big for a generic monkey or ape of our size. The major lobes and patches of the brain are different as well. The olfactory bulbs, which underlie the sense of smell, have shriveled to one third of the expected primate size (already puny by mammalian standards), and the main cortical areas for vision have shrunk proportionally as well…while the areas for hearing, especially for understanding speech, have grown…to twice what a primate our size should have.”The superpower of we humans is our unique ability to attach complex meanings to sounds.Every word in the English language is composed of just 44 sounds called phonemes. We arrange these into clusters called words which we string together in rapid succession so that others can see in their minds what we see in ours.In the first chapter of Genesis, God says, “Let there be this” and “Let there be that” for 25 verses, and then in verse 26 he says, “Let us make mankind in our own image.”According to that ancient story, God spoke the world into existence and then gave you and me the power to do the same. When you, as a storyteller, speak a world into existence in the hearts and minds of your listeners, you are doing the work of God.Don Kuhl has spent the past 30 years unleashing the power of storytelling to help 35 million people find peace, hope, and happiness, and now he has written a book for you and me. It will be published early next year.I’ll make sure you know when it’s available.Roy H. Williams

Creativity is counterintuitive. You hate it when you are handcuffed and expected to do your best work, but the secret of doing your best work is to be handcuffed. Creative restraints bring out the best in you.When Sean Jones sold controlling interest in Spence Diamonds a number of years ago, I left that company when he did, just as I left when Dewey Jenkins sold his company two weeks ago.My relationship is always with the business owner, never with the company. Here’s why: a brand without trust is just a product, and a product can be replaced. To become truly trusted, you have to forge a bond with the customer.People don’t bond with corporations. People bond with people.I am a better-than-average ad writer,(1.) because I cheat.(2.) because I don’t fight the handcuffs.This is how I cheat:(1.) I never work with a person unless I really enjoy talking with them. My relationship with that person is the source of my inspiration. How can I make the world love and trust someone if I don’t love and trust them myself?(2.) My new friend must have unconditional authority to say “absolutely yes” without having to check with someone else. Anything with two heads is a monster.(3.) Their company must be operationally excellent. Great ads won’t grow a broken business.(4.) The product or service they sell must have a solid profit margin and a long purchase cycle. A short profit margin is the father, and a short purchase cycle is the mother, of every twitchy little bastard that has ever been born.I hit home runs because I never swing at a pitch that is not in my sweet spot. Ad writing isn’t like baseball. A baseball batter gets to look at only 6 pitches – 2 strikes and 4 balls – before they have to leave the batter’s box. But the independent ad writer doesn’t face a pitch count. You can wait for the perfect opportunity that is in the center of your happy little sweet spot.The crack of the bat shatters the crystal silence as the adrenaline pumps the crowd screaming to their feet the ball arcs through space toward a little boy in the seventh row who has been waiting patiently all day with his baseball glove.Your sweet spot may be different than mine. This just means you have a different superpower.The secret of success is to know your superpower.I promise you have one. It doesn’t matter that you’re not an ad writer, you have a superpower! If you don’t know what it is, ask the people who know you best.So now you know how I cheat.I mentioned a second thing that makes me a better-than-average ad writer: I don’t fight the handcuffs. Yes, I scream at the handcuffs, I mourn the day they were born and I suggest to the handcuffs that they do things that are not anatomically feasible, but then I calm down and pretend they are cuff links and that I am the kind of guy who wears cuff links.A few months ago Sean Jones asked me to meet the new CEO of Spence Diamonds. His name is Callum Beveridge. Callum flew to Austin and we spent a couple of days together and I really like him. When he asked me if I could bring back the magic of the old Spence Diamonds radio campaign. I told him that it would be impossible because Sean Jones was no longer available as a voice actor. Any attempt to bring that campaign back to life without its principal character would be like trying to swim the English Channel wearing handcuffs. It would impossible.Callum reminds me of Dewey Jenkins. Both of them, when I said, “It’s impossible,” asked me the same innocent question: “Well, if it could be done and you were going to do it, how would you go about it?”“Well, Callum, the only way would be to use Sean Jones as a character that never appears on-stage. Conversations with him would always have to take place off-stage. The first time I saw this done was when I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Asimov brings you time and again to the edge of a climactic moment, then you turn the page and that event is now in the past. All the action took place off-stage! We saw a similar thing in that TV series with Tom Selleck, Magnum P.I. Magnum was the head of security at an estate owned by Robin Masters, whom we never once saw or even heard speak, so Magnum gets his instructions from the never-seen Robin Masters through Higgins, the butler. Hey Callum! We should do that! Sean Jones will be the never-seen Robin Masters, you’ll be Magnum, and Higgins will be my partner Michael Torbay! And we’ll bring back the old Spence scream of joy, but with a twist! This is going to be awesome!”Callum said, “Okay, let’s do that.”It worked like magic when Isaac Asimov did it in his books.It worked like magic when Magnum P.I. did it on TV.And it’s working like magic on the radio in Canada.MICHAEL:  Do you remember Sean Jones? [SFX – Scream of joy]I am his executive assistant. My name is Michael.CALLUM: And I’m Callum Bev-MICHAEL: [Cutting him off]   Not yet, Callum. I’ll tell you when.CALLUM: &nb

When Pennie and I were preparing to move away from the town of our childhood, I told my friend Phil that I felt I was holding onto the end of a rope in the half-light of limbo, and I had no idea where the other end of the rope was tied. I have never forgotten what he said.“This is your time in the elevator. You are between two worlds. You are leaving behind the way it has been, but you have not yet arrived at the way it will be. You don’t know if you are going to a higher place or a lower one. The only thing you know for sure is that when those elevator doors open, you will be surrounded by new faces, new spaces, and new places; everything will be different. A new chapter in your life will begin and you will have to figure everything out. But that part is easy. The hard part is being in the elevator. The hard part is not knowing.”Your going-away party is over; your friends are gone. A new opportunity and a new town await you, but you are not yet there. You are in the elevator. It is awkward and filled with uncertainty. You want those doors to open so you can face what awaits.You remember that feeling, don’t you?Phil’s counsel about the elevator came from a book he had read. He said the book was called Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life, by Gail Sheehy. It was published in 1976.When Phil Johnson died, he left me his favorite tie. It is blazoned with shelves of beautiful books from top to bottom. He wore it often.Phil also left me his library of more than 3,000 books, a portion of which now fill the shelves in the reading room of the Enchanted Emporium in the Village of La Mancha, just 200 yards south of the Tower at Wizard Academy.The next time you’re on campus, wander over to the Enchanted Emporium and plop yourself down in one of the soft, red leather reading chairs with a glass of wine and a book from Phil’s library.When you see the titles of the books he read, you will know the man.I think you will enjoy having met him.Roy H. Williams

“Unless your goal is to go backwards, you cannot make progress while staring into the rear-view mirror.”An opening statement like that would usually indicate a motivational message, but I’m doing something different today. I’m not backing up and I’m not moving forward. I’m pausing to look at the long road behind me and the short road ahead.A reflective mood requires a rear-view mirror.I’ve spent an hour on the phone each Friday morning for the past 10 years with my friend Dewey Jenkins. We won’t be doing that anymore. Dewey was offered so much money for his company that it made no sense to keep it.At the top of this page is a photo I snapped as Dewey walked onto the second-story porch of the historic Duke Mansion in Charlotte a few years ago. I had been sitting out there admiring the view when he walked in with his characteristic grin. *Click*We had wrapped up the famous “Mr. Jenkins and Bobby” campaign by giving Bobby $100,000 so that he could pursue his dream of becoming an actor in Hollywood. Now we had to accelerate our momentum and elevate our trajectory in a new and different way. Dewey and Jonathan and Casey and I were building a rocket ship while we were flying it.The new campaign, “Mr. Jenkins Told Me…”, has been even more successful than “Mr. Jenkins and Bobby.” Mr. Jenkins is still the center of attention even though he is now off-stage. The values and beliefs of his company are reflected by the things his employees remember him saying. “Mr. Jenkins Told Me…”The people of that company will be recalling things Mr. Jenkins told them for generations to come. (Indy put some of those TV ads in the rabbit hole for you.)I left the company when Dewey left, but Jonathan and Casey will doubtless reach the stars.Dewey Jenkins called me the morning after he closed the sale of his company.Mr. Jenkins told me, “It was June 23, 2000, when I heard you speak at the Airtime 500 Conference in St. Louis. I bought your first two books for $20 each and they took me to $20,000,000 a year. And then I came to see you in 2011 and we began this grand adventure…”And a grand adventure it has been.# # # #I closed my computer and went to bed after I wrote that sentence. Three days have passed and a lot has happened.Two more of my close friends have sold their companies, bringing the collective sales price for all three companies to considerably more than one billion dollars.Pennie tells me I must write to you next week about, “Your Time in the Elevator.”It is a story that began 37 years ago.I look forward to writing it.Roy H. Williams

King Edward of England inherited control of Gascony in France from his mother, Eleanor of Provence, a French noble. But when the 27-year-old King of France decided in 1295 not to let the King of England control part of his country, Edward asked his English nobles to raise an army so that he could regain control of his real estate on the other side of the water.His nobles said, “Edward, Gascony doesn’t really belong to the nation of England; its revenues belong to you, personally. So we’re out. You need to deal with that on your own.”A con man who wants your money will present you with a phony opportunity. But a con man who wants your vote will present you with a phony emergency.Having thus been rebuffed by the Earls of England, Edward summoned a vast assembly of barons and bishops, knights and burgesses, men of the shires, and representatives of towns and cities, and told them their nation was in danger. He said,“The King of France, not satisfied with the treacherous invasion of Gascony, has prepared a mighty fleet and army for the purpose of invading England and wiping the English tongue from the face of the earth.” 1It was complete bullshit, but it worked.Alarmed, outraged, and afraid, the people of England gave lying King Edward the army he needed to invade France and fight for his real estate. And thus the fuse was lit that would later explode as The Hundred Years War.Edward’s lie cost the lives of tens of thousands of English husbands, sons, and fathers.Fifty years later, Edward II told that same lie to a new generation of English husbands, sons, and Dads. In 1345, he began spreading propaganda throughout England that the French were spies and aggressors whose only goal was to invade England and convert the population to French speakers. He got the people of England so worked up that when they got to France in 1347, “they tore it to pieces like a pack of distempered dogs. The army marched through the countryside, slaughtering and brutalizing as it went.” 2The war that Edward II started that day lasted 116 years, 4 months, 3 weeks and 4 days, and resulted in more than 3,000,000 innocent people dying violently in France. In the end, the French won. The English lost all of their possessions in France except for the city of Calais, which they held until 1558.Fifty years apart, two different kings told the same lie to create a national emergency. And both times, it worked.And it still works today.Roy H. Williams

On a Rainy Autumn Day…October 18, 2021ListenAHis father called him Bunny because he was born on Easter Sunday.Bunny’s younger brother got a scholarship to Harvard.I’ve had both of Bunny’s phone numbers memorized for the past 48 years and I mention his name at least once a week. “Don’t make me say Loren L. Lewis” has been a private joke between the Princess and me since we were 17 years old.I spent my Oklahoma weekends helping Loren load and unload the mountain of antique furniture he would buy at auction.Loren infected me with an addiction for auction browsing that has never left me.At the end of each auction, he and I would load 5 times more furniture than could possibly fit into – and on top of – his 1960 Ford Station Wagon. It became a point of honor that we never had to make a second trip. Loren was a legend. He and I could have hauled the entire contents of the average 3-bedroom home, including all major appliances, in just one load.Pennie witnessed Loren work his magic more than once, so when she and I go to Costco or Home Depot or a plant nursery or an auction and buy far more than we can possibly pack into her little SUV, she will always look at me and say, “Do you think we can get it all home?”I smile and say, “Don’t make me say Loren L. Lewis.”I always get it home in just one load. Always. We may look like the Beverly Hillbillies as we roll down the road, but I graduated magna cum laude from the Loren L. Lewis School of Hauling, where our school motto is, “Of course we can get it in just one load. Don’t make me say Loren L. Lewis.”When I was 15, Loren was 30. Anyone who saw us together would assume he was my older brother or my very young uncle.Loren taught me how to rebuild an automobile engine. Loren drove me to the emergency room when I nearly sliced off my forefinger while trying to shave down the edge of a plastic light switch cover. After we left the emergency room, Loren took me to a seedy bar in a weird part of Tulsa to show me how to hustle pool.I woke up last night feeling that I had allowed the merely urgent to displace the truly important. I Googled “Loren Ladic Lewis” and saw his obituary.My big brother died on June 20th of last year and no one told me.What’s even worse is that in the 16 months that have come and gone since he died, I was always too busy to call either of the numbers I have known by heart for the past 48 years. What was I doing 17 months ago that was so desperately important?Is there a person you love that you haven’t called in a while?Don’t make me say Loren L. Lewis.Roy H. Williams

In America, “generosity” implies an openhanded sharing of material resources.A restaurant can serve generous portions.A donor can be generous with their money.A friend can be generous with their pickup truck, their lawnmower, or their cabin at the lake.While some people are generous with their money; others are generous with their time. They will drive you to the airport, feed your pet while you’re away, and help you pack your stuff, load the truck, and move you to a better place.Are you more generous with your money or with your time?Those who are generous with their money are known as givers or donors or philanthropists. And those who are generous with their time are known as helpers or volunteers. But we have no special name for people who are generous with their encouragement, because those people are extremely rare.What is encouragement, exactly, and why is it so rare?The prefix en was extracted from Latin and came to us through the French. When it precedes a noun, en means to include, allow, or cause to happen. So when you encourage someone, you cause courage to happen within them. You give them a gift they can carry bravely into their future. You make them less afraid.Generic encouragement is as obvious and awkward as flattery. “You’re a winner!” “You can do it!” “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!”To truly encourage a person, you must speak to an ability, a talent, or a special sensitivity they possess. When you privately tell a person about something special you see in them – something that they, too, know is there – you give them courage and confidence.“I’ve noticed that you see connections and relationships between things that most people never notice. I think this may be one of your superpowers.”“I’ve noticed that you can always tell when someone doesn’t feel included, and then you make them feel like they are part of the group. I really admire this about you.”“I’ve noticed that when everyone else is making excuses, you are the one who steps up and does what needs to be done. The world needs more people like you.”To see the good things that hide within a person, you need only to pay attention.Attention is high-denomination currencyin any transaction between two people.Attention is something you payand insight is what you can buy with it.If you want to have insight into a person’s hopes and dreams,you need only to pay attention.I know you. You want to empower people. You want to give them courage and confidence to face the future with a smile. You want to help them be stronger and happier.How do I know this about you?By choosing to read these memos I write, you are showing me a little of what is inside you. I tell you this so you will know I am not flattering you when I say that I know you want to give that little jolt-of-joy and spark-of-life to the people you care about.So the next time you’re with someone that matters to you,talk less and listen more,pay attention to their actions,and when you notice something they are good at,tell them what you have noticed they are good at.Everyone else who knows them will forever be giving them advice.Be that rare and special person who gives them honest encouragement and loyal support.Aroo,Roy H. Williams

Did you know that mood and mode share the same root word?1I point this out because you cannot take your customer where you want them to go until you first meet them where they are. And where they are is in one of two different moods, or modes of shopping: transactional mode and relational mode.Each of us operates in both modes, but we tend to choose our mode according to the category. If the category in question is one which you (1.) have an interest, (2.) have no preferred provider, and (3.) are willing to spend time to save money, you will approach that purchase in transactional mode.If the category in question is one which you (1.) have no interest, (2.) have a name in mind that you feel good about2, and (3.) are willing to spend money to save time, you will approach that purchase in relational mode.A customer in relational modeThinks long term.Considers today’s transaction to be one in a series of many.Does not enjoy comparison shopping or negotiating.Fears only “making a poor choice.”Hopes to find an expert they can trust.Is willing to spend money to save time.Desires a long-term solution provider.Is likely to become a repeat customer.A customer in transactional modeThinks short term.Considers today’s transaction to be the end of the relationship.Enjoys the process of shopping and negotiating.Fears only “paying more than they had to pay.”Considers themself to be the expert.Is willing to spend time to save money.Desires a lower price.Is a good source of word-of-mouth advertising.Relational customers are High CAP:High ConversionHigh Average SaleHigh Profit MarginTransactional customers are Low CAP:Low ConversionLow Average SaleLow Profit MarginWhen you target High CAP customers in Relational Mode, you face these dangers.You must create a company culture that causes your employees to take pride in delivering the experience that is expected by the customer in relational shopping mode.If you disappoint the relational customer, they take it as a personal betrayal. You were their trusted provider and you let them down.When you target Low CAP customers in Transactional Mode, you face these dangers:Transactional customers have no loyalty to you. Your relationship ends when the transaction is complete.Transactional customers who are attracted to you for reasons of price alone will abandon you for the same reason.There is nothing that someone else cannot do a little worse and sell a little cheaper. This is why no business is secure when it targets customers in transactional shopping mode.The words you use in your ads send signals to your customers. Do your word choices appeal to customers in relational mode, or do they speak to customers in transactional mode?Give it some thought, because it really is a big deal.Roy H. Williams1 Latin modus “measure, extent, quantity; proper measure, rhythm, song; a way, manner, fashion, style,” from a Proto-Indo-European root med “take appropriate measures.”2 When you “feel good about a name,” it is because you have repeatedly heard good things about that company though advertising or word-of-mouth.My friend Bill Bergh taught me about Transactional and Relational modes of decision making when he sketched it on a paper placemat in an Irish pub in Calgary more than 20 years ago and Wizard of Ads partner Ryan Chute showed me some amazing High CAP/Low CAP data just 2 weeks ago. Thanks, Bill and Ryan! – RHW

“I did all the right things. I touched all the bases in exactly the right order and I was highly rewarded for it. If you had done what I did, you would have been rewarded, too.”Abel didn’t say it, but Cain heard it. And in his rage, Cain sent his brother to the other side of that open door through which we all must exit.Do you remember the Nashville man who blew himself up inside his motorhome in front of the telephone building on Christmas morning? The final report released by the FBI said, “Anthony Quinn Warner chose the location and timing so that the explosion would be impactful while still minimizing the likelihood of undue injury.” And it went on to say that Warner was driven in part by, “the loss of stabilizing anchors and deteriorating interpersonal relationships.”When otherwise normal people become violent and begin killing random strangers, we usually dismiss them as “crazy and evil” and that’s the end of our discussion.Jordan B. Peterson1 says,“We make our sacrifices in the present, and we assume that by doing so, the benevolence of the world will be manifested to us. That’s why we’re willing to forego gratification and to work. In doing these things, we sacrifice.”“So Cain sacrifices, but God rejects his sacrifice. And that ancient story is brilliantly ambivalent about why you can work diligently and make the proper sacrifices and yet fail, which means that despite all that work and all that foregone gratification, an implicit covenant has been broken. And Cain responds to that with tremendous anger. He raises his fist against the sky and shakes it and says, ‘This should not be!’ And then he takes revenge. He says, ‘I will destroy what is most valuable to you.'”“So he goes after Abel, who is an ideal person whose sacrifices are welcomed by God and he kills him. And then all hell breaks loose in the aftermath. The more I delved into that story, the more it shocked me. I couldn’t believe that much information could be packed into what’s essentially 12 lines.”“We see the suffering and the horror of our lives, the vulnerability and the mortality of everything that we love and cherish, and we see our failure, and that turns us against being. But there is another part of us that maintains faith and strives forward.”A great many people have quietly spoken to me about the unfairness of their lives. And each of them had a valid point. If we lived in an organized universe where hard work and good intentions were always rewarded, and laziness and dishonest manipulation were always punished, the list of winners and losers in this life would look radically different.This idea of winners and losers becomes particularly thorny when you throw God into the mix. Kate Bowler writes,“Blessed is a loaded term because it blurs the distinction between two very different categories: gift and reward. It can be a term of pure gratitude. ‘Thank you, God. I could not have secured this for myself.’ But it can also imply that it was deserved. ‘Thank you, me. For being the kind of person who gets it right.’ It is a perfect word for an American society that says it believes the American dream is based on hard work, not luck.”Twenty years ago, David Brooks wrote a book called Bobos in Paradise, and then a few weeks ago he wrote an update called, How the Bobos Broke America. The following is from that update.“The Bobos didn’t necessarily come from money, and they were proud of that; they had secured their places in selective universities and in the job market through drive and intelligence exhibited from an early age, they believed. They were – as the classic Apple commercial had it – ‘the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers.’ But by 2000, the information economy and the tech boom were showering the highly educated with cash. They had to find ways of spending their gobs of money while showing they didn’t care for material things. So they developed an elaborate code of financial correctness to display their superior sensibility. Spending lots of money on any room formerly used by the servants was socially defensible: A $7,000 crystal chandelier in the living room was vulgar, but a $10,000, 59-inch AGA stove in the kitchen was acceptable, a sign of your foodie expertise. When it came to aesthetics, smoothness was artificial, but texture was authentic. The new elite distressed their furniture, used refurbished factory floorboards in their great rooms, and wore nubby sweaters made by formerly oppressed peoples from Peru.”“‘The educated class is in no danger of becoming a self-contained caste,’ I wrote in 2000. ‘Anybody with the right degree, job, and cultural competencies can join.’ That turned out to be one of the most naive sentences I have ever written.”An enormous number of people are angry about injustice today. They feel that they are doing the right things and obeying the rules, but the rewards are being

When you list “features and benefits” in your ads, you are speaking to the customer who is currently, consciously in the market for your product. What percentage of the public do you suppose that might be? One percent? I doubt it. In most categories, it is only a tiny fraction of one percent.But what about the remaining 99.9 percent? When they aren’t in the market for your product, they have no interest in your features and benefits.Do you remember the story of the Tortoise and the Hare? This is my letter to the rabbit:“Dear Rabbit, quit waiting until the last minute to advertise, hoping to impress the unwitting customer who has not already chosen a preferred provider. Be like the Tortoise. Impress future customers with stories that tug at their attention and make them smile and you will become their preferred provider. It takes courage and patience, but it’s how you win the race.”Looking back at your career, can you describe the moment when your foot first fell onto the path that brought you to where you are today?“I was a 10-year-old boy holding a flashlight for my Dad…”“I won the race by only 20 seconds, so he beat the shit out of me…”“I was in the drive-through line at McDonald’s…”“I was looking at my brand-new baby boy and thinking about the kinds of things that happen to people when they’re least expecting it…”Those are the opening lines of the origin stories of Ken Goodrich of Goettl Air Conditioning, Mark Jennison of IAMACOMEBACK.com, Brian Scudamore of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, and Tim Schmidt of the United States Concealed Carry Association.People listen to the TED Talk of Simon Sinek and realize the importance of “Start with Why,” but they never really know how to do it. Most of them describe the outcome they are hoping to create, or they just approach their Unique Selling Proposition from a new and different angle.If you want to “Start with Why,” write your Origin Story.If your origin story could be told by anyone else in your category, you have not created an origin story; you are telling us about your passion. Or you are telling us what you hope to accomplish.Have you ever read the bio of an artist?“I have loved painting since I was 4 years old.”“I knew I wanted to be a painter when I was 3.”“My mother tells me that I was painting before I could talk.”Those are not the opening lines of origin stories. Those are just people describing the longevity of their passion.If a jeweler says his “Why” is that he wants to “help people celebrate the important moments in their lives,” this is not an Origin Story. He is just telling us what he hopes to accomplish.To prove my point, these are the excellent opening lines of 8 different origin stories from 8 different jewelers:“Tom Heflin was a railroad conductor. His wife had a sister…”“Standing at the engagement ring counter, I felt like Oliver Twist asking for another bowl of porridge…”“Five years before Teddy Roosevelt led the Rough Riders, Simon Schiffman stepped off the train to stretch his legs…”“My Dad was a house painter. He taught me to sand and scrape paint old paint until my fingers were aching and raw…”“During Hurricane Betsy in ‘65, my Dad moved us into his jewelry design studio…”“When I opened the store I had no money. We didn’t have the money for inventory, so I…”“Morris Jacobs immigrated to America as a boy. He came through Galveston…”“My Dad died in a car crash when I was 3 years old. So my Uncle Joe taught me…”As those 8 jewelers just demonstrated, origin stories are not interchangeable.There is no template, no pattern to follow. There is only a snapshot of a fleeting moment, a remembered glimpse of an unfocused future, a haunting voice that has whispered all your life, “Keep trying.”When was the moment that your foot first fell onto the path that brought you to where you are?Send your Origin Story to [email protected] and he will send you something weird and wonderful and worthless from the closet he has been cleaning.Be sure to include your mailing address.But don’t worry. Indy isn’t building a mailing list. Once he has addressed your package, Indy will throw away your address faster than a long-tailed cat running through a room full of rocking chairs.Now write your Origin Story.Roy H. Williams

Jeffrey Eisenberg and I had lunch in a Japanese restaurant on April 28, 2007. I know this because he said something I quickly wrote down and later added to my Random Quotes database: “Marketers are paid to make promises that businesses have no intention of keeping.”Jeffrey wasn’t talking about marketing; he was talking about company culture, that invisible component that causes businesses to rise or fall.We humans search forIdentity (Who am I? What do I believe?)Purpose (What am I supposed to do? Why am I here?)Adventure (What must I overcome?)Identity, Purpose, and Adventure are what lives are built upon.Story, Culture, and Experience are what businesses are built upon.According to Ray Seggern,Story is what your business tells the public in your ads. Is your story a fairy tale or is it a mirror?Culture is an inside job. You cannot buy it or outsource it. It is what your employees feel when they work for you.Experience is what your employees deliver to your customer. Does it live up to the Story you told?Did you notice the parallels in those two lists?The Story you tell the public is a statement of your Purpose,but the Culture of your company is your true Identity,and the Experience you deliver to your customer will forever be your big Adventure, the forever source of your challenges, obstacles, and difficulties.Ray Seggern says that Story, Culture, and Experience are the 3 touch points on the ever-spinning flywheel of business, and when they align they create that perfect vortex of perpetual reinforcement and ever-increasing momentum that lift your business to breathtaking heights of profitability and fame.The Story you tell determines the Experience your customer expects. But whether or not your customer receives it will be determined by your Culture.Owners and managers like to believe their customers are receiving the experience they intended for them to have. But the best intentions are no match for company culture.In the famous words of Peter Drucker, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”Company culture is what causes businesses to rise or fall.Are you ready to work on your culture? Are you ready for your next big adventure?I hope so. Because this is the one where we find the buried treasure.Roy H. Williams

The illustration at the top of today’s Monday Morning Memo features Indy Beagle wearing a yarmulke as he says,“The FBI just released its hate crime statistics for 2020. Are you ready? 36% of victims were attacked for being black, 10% were attacked for being white, and 9% were attacked for being Jewish. Of all hate crimes motivated by hatred of the victims due to their religion alone, 57.5% targeted Jews, although Jews are less than 2% of the U.S. population.”That illustration will be hotly criticized by two people.The first person will be the one who refuses to accept the validity of the FBI’s hate crime report. They will want to “set the record straight” by telling me that the FBI report was “fake news planted by Jews,” or some other nonsense.The second person will be outraged by the “deeply offensive” image of a dog wearing a yarmulke and accuse me of implying that Jews are dogs.But you, since you are not looking for a reason to be outraged, knew immediately that Indy is wearing a yarmulke as a symbol of support for his Jewish friends. And because you are perceptive, you noticed long ago that Indy is black, white, and brown.Small-minded people give themselves power by being easily offended. One person considers even the smallest request to be an attack on his or her personal freedom, and another person considers the rest of us to be asleep. Each of these believes that they alone know the true facts; they alone are awake.Although these two persons sit at opposite extremes on the sociopolitical spectrum, they are alike in that they both have an inflated sense of self-importance, and they are both easily outraged.I do my best to ignore them, because to pay attention to them is to give them power.The strange thing about all of this is that I agree – in principle, at least – with both sides. I agree that we must be vigilant to protect our liberties, and I agree that we should be sensitive to the needs of others.But the extremists on both sides have taken a good thing too far.You will remember that I predicted all of this many years ago when I wrote Pendulum, a book about the predictable, cyclical swings in western society for the past 3,000 years.The bad news is that it will get worse before it gets better. The good news is that it will get better.Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am. Stuck in the middle with you.*I appreciate your companionship, your tolerance, and your sense of humor.I like you.Roy H. Williams

Did anyone besides me grow up reading the King James Bible?Shakespeare was 40 years old when King James commissioned a new translation of the Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek Bible into English, and he was 47 when it was published in 1611.During those 7 years, Shakespeare wrote a dozen plays including Othello, All’s Well That Ends Well, King Lear, Macbeth, and The Tempest. So if the cadence, rhythm and phrasing of the King James Bible reminds you of Shakespeare, well, it’s because that’s how people spoke back then.But only if they lived in England.In the year 1611, approximately 597,000,000 people lived and breathed and wandered the earth. Of these, only 5,600,000 spoke English. So the great-good-gift given by generous King James benefitted slightly less than 1 percent of the world.But still, I like the King James Bible.The book of Genesis opened my mind to the law of duality and to the power of words. The book of Ecclesiastes gives me perspective; few things are as important as they seem, and nothing is permanent. The Gospel of John fills me with wonder and gives me hope.The King James Bible tells me the English language is a constantly evolving, shapeshifting animal.It has been 410 years since King James translated the Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek Bible into the English of Shakespeare, and during those years the words “spirit” and “ghost” have traded places.We think of “spirit” today as the ethos or essence of a thing, and we think of “ghost” as a frightening apparition from beyond the grave. But in the 1611 Bible, those definitions are transposed:In the 14th chapter of Matthew’s Good News we read,“And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear.”Holy Ghost appears 89 times in the King James Bible. In the 14th chapter of John’s Good News we read the words Jesus spoke during the Last Supper to his remaining 11 disciples, just after Judas Iscariot walked out of the room to betray him to the religious leaders who despised him and the Romans who would crucify him:“But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”No matter which translation you read, the Bible is a wonderful book. It takes you into an ancient Middle Earth populated by Pharaohs, Philistines, and Pharisees.Pharaohs: those imperious, mysterious rulers of mystical, magical Egypt.Philistines: pagan Greeks whose champion, a giant named Goliath, was defeated by a young shepherd boy named David who later became King of Israel.Pharisees: leaders of the faith into which Jesus was born. When he grew up, Jesus criticized the Pharisees harshly for their tendency to behave like today’s Taliban, focusing all their energy on the enforcement of the letter of the law but missing the spirit of God’s law entirely. When you read what Jesus said to them! Oh, my!Unlike Jesus, I was born into the Christian faith. Now that I have grown up, I continue to have faith in Christ.But I sometimes worry that a percentage of America’s Christians have embraced that same self-righteousness for which Jesus so stridently criticized the leaders of his own faith 2000 years ago.Roy H. Williams

A snapshot is a message in a bottle floating on the ocean of time.We had “picture day” at school when I was growing up. Is that still a thing?Our 8th grade yearbooks were delivered to Sequoyah Junior High the following summer, just before we started the 9th grade. There was no internet, no email back then, just letters in our mailboxes telling us to come to the school and pick up our yearbooks on a certain day between the hours of such-and-such.After I picked up my yearbook, I got on the telephone with Elaine, a girl my age who lived 4 houses away. Elaine and I were going through our yearbooks together, page by page over the telephone, making comments about every picture when lightning struck. I was looking at a snapshot of a girl I had never met. Although she and I had gone to the same school for 2 years, I had never once encountered her.I said to Elaine, “Pennie Compton.”Elaine answered, “She was in my math class. She’s really nice and super smart.”And then my ears were surprised to hear my mouth say, “I’m going to marry that girl.” I had never said such a thing in my life and I never did again. But deep down I knew it was true. Don’t ask me how, but I knew.A few days later my class schedule arrived with an invitation for all the parents to come to Sequoyah Junior High on Friday night at 7PM to meet their kid’s homeroom teacher and then classes would start on Monday.I didn’t show my Mom the invitation because my first-hour class was Oklahoma History taught by Coach Meeks, a man famous for lecturing kids on how he made his own sun-dried beef jerky and how every young man should drink protein shakes to build muscle mass.Yeah, no need for Mom to meet him. No need for me to go, either. I already knew my way around.But wait! Here was a list of the other 26 kids assigned to my homeroom class and one of them was Pennie Compton!I was the first person to arrive on Friday night. I took a seat at the back of the room and kept my eye on the door. After about 20 minutes, I saw a man and a woman walk in with the girl I had seen in the photo. I got up, strode to the front of the room, shook the man’s hand firmly and said with a smile, “I’m Roy Williams. You’re going to be seeing a lot of me in the future.”Pennie was embarrassed because she had no idea who I was, but it wasn’t long before we were friends.Oklahoma History was memorable. Coach Meeks liked to show off the heavy wooden paddle he made for disciplining unruly boys by beating them on the backside. According to him, those rows of half-inch holes drilled in the paddle were there “to reduce the wind resistance,” but those of us who experienced his beatings knew those holes were there to leave white polka dots on your bright red ass.I got my first butt-tattoo for spontaneously laughing when I shouldn’t have. Coach Meeks was talking about the glory and wonder of the O.U. Sooners Football Team when he decided to steer us onto the straight and narrow path by shouting, “If you succeed in footbaaaaall you will succeed in liiiiife.”Three years went by. Pennie had boyfriends and I had girlfriends but I always knew I would marry her one day. We went a thousand places together on the nights when neither of us had a date, but we never once held hands and I never tried to kiss her. But we told each other everything.The only secret I ever kept from Pennie was that I was deeply in love with her.I got a full ride to Oklahoma State University. She got a big scholarship to an exclusive private school. I attended classes at O.S.U. for a day and a half, then called Pennie and said, “I’m dropping out. Let’s get married and figure out the future together.”She said, “But we’re both so young and poor. Why don’t we wait a couple of years?”I said, “In a couple of years, we’ll still be young and poor.”She thought that was funny and laughed. I said, “I’m completely serious. I think we should get married. We can be young and poor together and we’ll figure out what to do with our lives.”Why did that thought not terrify her? Why did it not terrify me? It should have, shouldn’t it? It certainly terrified everyone else in our lives, but it didn’t scare us at all.Sometimes you know a thing is right, even when it makes no sense.I made that call to Pennie on September 7th, 1976. We were married on December 28th, 112 days later. We have never for a moment regretted it and we have never once looked back.I can hear you thinking, “But you went back and got your education, right?”No, we didn’t. I read a lot of books and took a lot of chances and cheerfully did whatever I had to do to find the money to keep us afloat and somehow it all worked out.A few days ago Jeffrey Eisenberg texted us, “We just finished Here Today on Amazon Prime. Highly recommended.”Obviously, we watched it.There is a scene halfway through that movie when an aging Billy Crystal gets a text from a young friend asking him how he met his wife.I have no idea how that movie ends because I spent the rest of that e

You are too young to remember when there were no search engines.Sit. Relax. I’ll tell you about it.In the days before the dawning of the internet and the Age of Aquarius, every household was given a fat telephone book, and in the White Pages of that book, the names of companies and individuals were listed alphabetically. To find a company’s contact info, all you needed to know was their name.Branded Keywords are the new White Pages. If you want to contact a specific company, just type that company’s name into Google and badda-bing, badda-bang, badda-boom, “Here is how you can reach them.”In the back of that same fat phone book were The Yellow Pages®, a directory for customers who were currently, consciously ready to buy, but who had no preferred provider in mind.Unbranded keywords are the new yellow pages. When you are currently, consciously ready to buy, but have no preferred provider in mind, simply type the name of the category into Google and a bunch of ads will appear. These ads will be listed, of course, according to which companies were willing to pay the highest price.Funny thing: that’s exactly how the yellow pages worked. Business categories were listed alphabetically in The Yellow Pages®, but within each category, the businesses that spent the most money were listed first. Full-page ads, then half page ads, then quarter-page ads…Have you ever heard the story of The Tortoise and The Hare?Aesop was a Greek storyteller whose 158 little parables about life were considered to be so wise that he was quoted by Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch more than 2,000 years ago.In one of these stories a tortoise and a hare – a sort of rabbit – ran a race. The tortoise began running immediately but the rabbit decided to wait until the race was nearly over and then dash across the finish line ahead of the slow, patient, relentless tortoise. The tortoise won that race, of course, because the rabbit was unable to overtake his enormous head start.The rabbit lost the race when he chose to wait until the last minute – the Zero Moment of Truth – to begin running.In the world of advertising, the rabbits win the customer only when there are no turtles in the race.Turtles use mass media – TV, Radio, and Outdoor – to win the hearts of customers while the rabbits are still asleep. These customers become familiar with the turtle; they like the turtle, so they type his name into the search block when they are ready to buy what the turtle sells.The advertising rabbit failed to wake up because there was no starting gun, no unbranded keyword. The turtle wins the customer, gets the click, makes the sale.The times may change, but the hearts of humans do not. Given the chance, they will always buy from a familiar face instead of a stranger.Become a familiar face – or a familiar voice – who tells wonderful stories.It only takes 158 of them to be remembered forever.Roy H. Williams