Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

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

A branded keyword is one in which the name of your company appears. When a customer types the name of your company into a search string, they are looking for you, they believe in you. A friend might have recommended you, but usually it was your advertising that won them over.Either way, you have done well.Unbranded keywords include phrases like “air conditioning repair” and “diamond engagement rings.” When a shopper types an unbranded keyword into a search engine, it is a clear signal that they have no preferred provider in your category. No one has won them over.The best online marketers track their branded and unbranded keywords separately because they know that when you follow unbranded keywords all the way from the search string to the gross profit made on those sales, you will often find you spent more money on unbranded keywords than you made on the sales they brought in.That’s when you should drop them like a hot rock.Look at the case study at the top of this page. I have removed the name of the company, the category, and the cities, but the data is real, it is recent, and it is accurate.We spent $37,398 in unbranded keywords in City 1 so that we might have the privilege of losing $8,299.We spent $30,008 in unbranded keywords in City 2 so that we might have the privilege of losing $17,238.We spent $6,273 in unbranded keywords in City 3 so that we might have the privilege of losing $6,409.After losing $31,946 we grew tired of feeling privileged.Meanwhile, in City 1 our investment of just $7,452 in branded keywords made us a gross profit of $49,480 after deducting the cost of our branded keywords.In City 2 our investment of just $14,648 in branded keywords made us a gross profit of $62,976.In City 3 our investment of just $2,998 in branded keywords made us a gross profit of $9,042.But all the young digital weasels tell me I’m not looking at it correctly. They scold me for tracking branded and unbranded keywords separately, and smugly point out, “When you combine them into one big package, the return on investment is perfectly acceptable.”Some of my closest friends are world-famous online marketing experts who know how to create campaigns that allow you to monetize all the customer enthusiasm that has been generated through your radio and TV and outdoor advertising.None of my friends is young enough or smug enough to be a digital weasel.Digital weasels always fail to deliver what they proudly promised. Back when I was a 14-year-old boy on the wrong side of a little Oklahoma town, I would have pulled these weasels aside, put my arm around their shoulders and whispered in their ears, “Be careful not to let your alligator mouth overload your mockingbird butt.”But I have mellowed and matured.Or at least I pretend I have.Les Binet and Peter Field did what data scientists do; they monitored the advertising of more than 1,000 businesses for more than 15 years, then published the data.Binet and Field are not digital weasels. I smile every time I listen to them.ALes Binet says, “If you build your business, or try to build your business, using short-term efficiency measures – cost per response, click-through rates, that kind of thing – you’re on a hiding to nothing. You’re going to run your business into the ground, we believe, because those are not the things that grow the business, long-term.”Les Binet goes on to say, “You need to talk to people, not just who are in the market right now, but people who might come to market over the next two to three years. You need to engage them with things that are more humanly relevant, more general, more universal, and crucially, you need to engage them at the emotional level… So if you want really disproportionately large marketing effects, if you want big sales and big profits, aim for fame.”Is it fame you want? I can give it to you with 3 simple bits of advice:Make your radio and TV ads unpredictable and entertaining. Entertainment is the only currency with which you can purchase the time and attention of a too-busy public.Work a tiny bit of information into your ads, but not so much that it makes your ads feel like ads.Close at least half your ads with something new, surprising, and different; something that gives the customer a tiny, inward smile.I’m really glad you came out to play but I’ve got to go now. My mom is calling.Roy H. Williams

A verb avalanche is a highly engaging description that causes you to see, hear, and feel action all around you. You dodge each tumbling word-boulder only to leap, jump, roll and scramble to dodge the mountainside of word-boulders that follow close behind it.causes, see, hear, feel, dodge, tumbling, leap, jump, roll, scramble, dodge, followThat example included 12 verbs among 43 total words. Roughly 1 in every 3 1/2 words was a verb.Verb Avalanches are built from verbs: action words.“Thorin stepped up and drew the key on its chain from round his neck. He put it to the hole. It fitted and it turned! Snap! The gleam went out, the sun sank, the moon was gone, and evening sprang into the sky.”– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, chapter 11stepped up, drew, put, fitted, turned, Snap! went out, sank, was gone, sprang10 verbs among 43 total words. Roughly 1 in 4 words was a verb.(Snap! is onomatopoeia, a word that imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. When constructing a word avalanche, onomatopoeia counts as a verb.)Here are some other examples of onomatopoeia:Machine noises — honk, beep, vroom, clang, zap, boing.Impact sounds — boom, crash, whack, thump, bang.Sounds of the voice — shush, giggle, growl, whine, murmur, blurt, whisper, hiss.“Jacob slipped into the shadows, ducked down a hallway, climbed a wall, and hid in the shadows above the throne room.”slipped, ducked, climbed, hid.4 verbs among 21 total words. Roughly 1 in 5 words was a verb.“Jacob was afraid for his friends. He slipped into the shadows, crept over a rooftop, slid down a tree, hurried away from the palace, and ran all the way to Bethlehem.”– Chris Auer, The Littlest Magi   was afraid, slipped, crept, slid, hurried, ran6 verbs among 31 total words. Roughly 1 in 5 words was a verb.“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!'”– Jack Kerouaclive, talk, be saved, desirous of everything, yawn, say, burn, burn, burn, exploding, see, pop, goes, ‘Awww!’14 verbs among 69 total words. Roughly 1 in 5 words was a verb.“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of wordsas they tangle with human emotions.”– James Michener love, writing, love, swirl, swing, tangle In this sequence, 2 verbs – writing and swirl – were used as nouns, but we are counting them anyway. Even when used as nouns, verbs have impact.6 verbs among 17 total words. Roughly 1 in 3 words was a verb.“The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock – shock is a worn-out word – but astonish.”– Terry Southernwriting, astonish, shock, shock, astonish.5 verbs among 19 total words. Roughly 1 in 4 words was a verb.“I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don’t want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.”– Shauna Niequistsizzles, pops, makes, laugh, want, get, realize, is, meetings (verb/noun), eat, sing, open, wear, stay up, laughing, paint, sleep hard, throw, eat, read, jump, want, make, belly laugh, gave, loves.26 verbs among 135 total words. Roughly 1 in 5 words was a verb.Did you notice the pattern? When at least 1 in 5 words is a verb, you have created a description that is sure to gain and hold the attention of the reader, the listener, the customer. You have created a verb avalanche.Don’t expect to Google this and learn more about it, because I just made it up.But that doesn’t make it untrue, does it?Roy H. Williams

Isaac Newton discovered that force – impact ­– is the result of mass x acceleration. This is why the impact of any statement you make = the size of the idea x the speed of successfully transferring it from your mind to the mind of your customer.Newton also discovered, “For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.” The faster an advertised offer produces big results, the less well it will work over time.EXAMPLE: When a direct-response offer generates big money quickly, you can be certain that the longer you do it, the less well it will work. To gain attention, a thing must be new, surprising, and different. When it becomes old, predictable, and the-same-as-before, we turn our attention elsewhere.You already know this.Advertising is, in at least some aspects, a science. But systems-focused business owners are demanding that advertising become a science in all its aspects. They say, “Give us fast-acting, reliable advertising that drives ever-increasing sales opportunities,” and the sellers of advertising are saying, “You got it, boss! Coming right up!”I am reminded of the quest for a perpetual motion machine.The first documented claim of perpetual motion was made by Bhaskara of India in the 12th century. It has been followed by countless others. But not one of them has ever worked, and science has proven that none of them ever will.In his book on the subject of Perpetual Motion, Henry Dircks wrote,“A more self-willed, self-satisfied, or self-deluded class of the community, making at the same time pretension to superior knowledge, it would be impossible to imagine. They hope against hope, scorning all opposition with ridiculous vehemence, although centuries have not advanced them one step in the way of progress… The history of perpetual motion is a history of the fool-hardiness of either half-learned, or totally ignorant persons.”When you spend all day, every day talking with enthusiastic young advertising professionals, you meet a lot of people who fit that description.But I promised you a lesson on the Physics of Advertising. Here it is.Newton’s first law of thermodynamics is a version of the law of Conservation of Energy, which tells us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed but can only be transformed from one form to another.EXAMPLE: The chemical energy contained in gasoline can be transformed into kinetic energy, light energy, heat energy, and the percussive energy that you and I call sound, but those energies were there in the gasoline all along.When it is expended, the energy stored in the gasoline is gone. You cannot burn the same gasoline twice.Goodwill, reputation, share-of-mind, and other forms of “buying energy” can be stored in the mind of the customer in 3 different ways.The Performance of your product or service.When you deliver or exceed what the customer expected, you store “buying energy” in the mind of your customer. If you fall short of their expectations, gasoline is burned.A Referral from a friend or an online review.Word-of-mouth is when the buying energy stored in the mind of one customer is shared with another customer. When that word-of-mouth is negative, more gasoline is burned.Stories told in Advertising and by salespeople.Relational energy is built in the mind of the customer when your beliefs are aligned with their beliefs. Some people call this “branding,” but I prefer to think of it as customer bonding. When you create urgency with a limited-time offer, you force your customer into acting “now or never” and gasoline is burned.“Big Money Quickly” happens as the result of urgency; usually a shortage of time, or product, or opportunity. But shout “wolf” too often and the villagers no longer come running. Your gasoline has all been burned.Do you now understand why the faster an advertised offer produces big results, the less well it will work over time? When you allow your short-term metrics to dictate your marketing decisions, you will soon be crying “wolf” with every breath you take.But there is a healthy and sustainable time to harvest.Advertising is like farming.You cannot harvest what was never planted.Planting a seed in the mind of the customer is where every good thing begins. The customer has to know you exist.Nurturing that seed through the growing cycle is essential.Stories told in advertising, by salespeople, and by customers are the water and sunshine that require time to work their magic.Harvest time is when it is.Every jeweler knows that Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day are predictable buying occasions, but no jeweler knows when a couple is about to get engaged or celebrate an important anniversary. And that’s where the big money is. Every air conditioning company knows more systems break down and need to be repaired during extreme weather conditions, but no one knows when a system is going to be replaced. And that’s where the big money is.The goal of the intelligent advertiser is to s

Edwin Twitmyer failed to close a loophole and it cost him the Nobel Prize.Twitmyer was working on his doctorate in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation was on The Effect of Emotions on the Patellar Reflex, or Knee Jerk.To make his research possible, Twitmyer built an elevated chair with a remote-controlled rubber hammer that would strike the person’s patellar tendon and trigger the predictable leg-kick. He didn’t tell his subjects when he was going to release the hammer, he simply let it fall and then measured how far the leg kicked. When his subjects complained that the hammer caught them by surprise, Twitmyer began sounding a bell just before he activated the hammer.One day he accidentally sounded the bell without dropping the hammer and the subject’s leg kicked, even though the tendon had not been stimulated.Twitmyer knew he had stumbled onto something important. He then began doing the same to his other subjects and found that they, too, would kick their legs forward upon the sound of the bell, even when they were trying not to. He published his findings in his doctoral dissertation in 1902, one year before Ivan Pavlov announced the results of his dog research at the 1903 International Medical Congress in Madrid.But when Twitmyer presented his work at a meeting of the American Psychological Association, his research drew little response from the crowd.Ivan Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904, not Edwin Twitmyer.Twitmeyer knew he had a loophole in his research, but he failed to close it. As a good scientist, he acknowledged in his paper that the leg-kicks of the subjects could – theoretically – have been caused by his subjects voluntarily moving their legs, even though he was certain this was not the case.That same possibility had occurred to the other scientists as well.Here’s my point: When it comes to the purchases your customers make, each of them is occasionally a scientist. So when you speak to the customer’s intellect, you have to close all the loopholes. If you don’t, their doubts will remain and someone else, someone like Ivan Pavlov, is likely to make the sale.But when you speak to the emotions you are speaking to that part of the mind that is more interested in feelings rather than facts. Win the heart and the mind will follow. The intellect will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.When my partner Johnny Molson heard about Twitmyer and Pavlov, he said,“So the moral of the story is that if a fella named Twitmyer wrote about conditioned responses a year before Ivan Pavlov did, that means you and I have been conditioned to associate Pavlov with conditioned responses, which would make it literally a Pavlovian-Pavlovian response.”Here’s my second point: The discoverer of a new thing – the genesis agent – is rarely the one who gets the reward. The fame, the money, and all the credit goes to the popularizer who knows how to get people’s attention.You don’t need to be the first.You just need to be the one people see.Roy H. WilliamsA

My friend Brian Scudamore shared a story with me last week. Today I’m sharing it with you.Ted Leonsis was on a little commuter airplane that lost the ability to use its wing flaps and landing gear. Face-to-face with the possibility of imminent death, Ted wrote a list of 101 things that he promised himself he would do if he lived. Start to finish, that list took 20 minutes.By May 27, 2021, Ted had accomplished 81 of those things.What would be on your list of 101 things to do before you die?When Brian Scudamore met Ted Leonsis at MIT, Ted sat him down and gave him 20 minutes to write his 101 things.What Brian wrote on his list is unimportant.What Ted Leonsis wrote on his list is unimportant.What is important is what you write on your list.You can download and print these 2 sheets of paper with lines numbered 1 to 101, or you can create your list of 101 things on your own computer.When you are finished, if you’d like someone to read your list and believe that you will, in fact, do every one of the things listed on it, send your list to [email protected]’ve got 20 minutes. Start a timer, then start your list.Don’t overthink it. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. If you live beyond the next 20 minutes, you can correct those things later.Your plane is falling from the sky. If you’re going to finish that list, you have to add something every 12 seconds.Start your timer.Go.Indy and I will continue this story in the rabbit hole.Roy H. Williams

Bad marketing is about you, your company, your product, your service. “I, me, my, we, our…”Good marketing is about the customer, and how your product or service can elevate their happiness. “You, you, you, you, your…”With every purchase we make, we shout to the world who we are.We are attracted to products and services and brands and celebrities and organizations and friends because we see a reflection of ourselves in them.Our purchases and alliances are identity reinforcement.I’ve built a career on this belief.Simon Sinek says the same thing, but differently. Four minutes into his famous TED-X talk in Puget Sound, Simon says,“Here’s how Apple actually communicates. ‘Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently.’At 5 1/2 minutes,“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.”At 7 1/2 minutes,“The goal is not just to sell to people who need what you have; the goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe. The goal is not just to hire people who need a job; it’s to hire people who believe what you believe. I always say that, you know, if you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money, but if they believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”As Simon approaches the 11-minute mark, he says,“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. If you talk about what you believe, you will attract those who believe what you believe.At 13 minutes:“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe. In fact, people will do the things that prove what they believe.And at 15 1/2 minutes, he starts talking about Martin Luther King:“He didn’t go around telling people what needed to change in America. He went around and told people what he believed. ‘I believe, I believe, I believe,‘ he told people. And people who believed what he believed took his cause, and they made it their own, and they told people. And some of those people created structures to get the word out to even more people. And lo and behold, 250,000 people showed up on the right day at the right time to hear him speak. How many of them showed up for him? Zero. They showed up for themselves. It’s what they believed about America that got them to travel in a bus for eight hours to stand in the sun in Washington in the middle of August.”Most people call this the “Start with Why” talk, but Simon never did. Although he did use the word “why” 28 times, he used the word “believe” 32 times, and 28 of those were in his most high-impact statements.You gain the power of persuasion when you learn to see through the eyes of others. This allows you to talk to them about what they already care about instead of lecturing them on what they ought to care about.It sounds easy, but it’s not. To see through the eyes of others, you have to open your heart and mind to values and beliefs that are not your own.The only hard choices in life are the choices between 2 good things.You will agree, I’m sure, that Justice and Mercy are both good things. But when they come into conflict, which way do you lean? Your customer might lean the other way.How about Freedom and Responsibility? As one increases, the other decreases. Which one do you value a little more than the other?Honesty and Loyalty? Those come into conflict almost daily.You believe what you believe. And you agree with people who believe as you do.When you write unthinkingly, you speak and write from within the constraints of your own belief system. And in so doing, you speak persuasively only to the members of your own tribe.But persuasive ad copy is about the customer. Can you open your heart and mind wide enough to speak to values and beliefs that are not your own?There will always be people who like to buy in the way you like to sell. These people are the low-hanging fruit on which you build the foundation of your business. These people are your tribe. But there will come a day when you have plucked all the low-hanging fruit – perhaps you already have – and you will find yourself trapped beneath a glass ceiling. You can see a lot more business out there, but it’s just not coming to you.You will pass through that glass ceiling when you learn how to sell people who like to buy in a way other than how you like to sell.You have to sell each customer their way.Persuasive ad writers use a technique called “inclusive communication by design.” There are 2 good ways to do it:1. Include something for everyone. Figure out how to include lang

Peter Raible was born in 1929 and he died in 2004.Of all the interesting things he said, this is perhaps my favorite:“We build on foundations we did not lay. We warm ourselves by fires we did not light. We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant. We drink from wells we did not dig. We profit from persons we did not know.This is as it should be.Together we are more than any one person could be. Together we can build across the generations. Together we can renew our hope and faith in the life that is yet to unfold. Together we can heed the call to a ministry of care and justice.We are ever bound in community.”My friend Brian Scudamore puts it this way, “We are bigger and better together.”About a dozen years ago, Wizard Academy board member Dr. Richard D. Grant held a Sunday morning chapel service in Tuscan Hall after an all-day-Saturday Wizard Academy reunion. He began that service by bowing his head and quietly speaking his thanks to all the unseen people who worked to create the clothes we were wearing.It was a surprisingly moving experience.Dr. Grant began with our socks, and spoke of his appreciation for the people who grew the cotton and tended the sheep for the wool from which our socks were made.And then he spoke of his appreciation of the people who worked the machines that knitted those fibers to become the socks we we had on our feet.And then he spoke of his appreciation of the people who created all the bits and pieces from which our shoes were made. And as he named those bits and pieces that come together to make a shoe, we saw each of those people hard at work, and we understood the benefit we took from their labor.By the time he got to the people who cut our hair, every person in that room was deep in contemplation of this wonderful, magical, interconnected world in which we live. And we loved the people who carried things across oceans for us, and the truck drivers who deliver things to warehouses for us, and the warehouse workers who load those things onto trucks for us so they can be delivered to the stores in which we shop, and to the restaurants in which we take such great delight.I hope to someday find the recording of that morning. I would like to share it with you.Indy Beagle tells me that 33 percent of the things we worry about never come to pass. The next 33 percent are so inconsequential that they are not worth our worry. The third 33 percent are things that might come to pass but cannot be changed, no matter how well we worry. This leaves only a tiny percent that are important, and could come to pass if we do not take action.I looked at him and said, “Is that your way of telling me to chill out?”Looking directly into my eyes, Indy just nodded his head.And then he quickly added, “Stop and smell the roses. Lie in a field and look at the clouds. Quit thinking so much about your reputation and your bank account and all the wonderful things you own. No one wins the rat race except for the rats.”Then his voice softened a little as he delivered his conclusion, “And in the end, the rats find out, after a lifetime of struggle, that there is no reward for the winner.”Thank you, Indy. It’s good to keep things in perspective.Roy H. Williams

It is 3AM on a Thursday morning and I haven’t yet written the MondayMorningMemo. In fact, I haven’t even started it.The fact that you are reading it right now means that I did, in the end, get it done, such as it is.Reading is a form of transportation that takes you to a different place and time.You are with me at 3AM as I try to think of something that might entertain you. I keep asking you what you’d like to read, and you keep not telling me.“Write what you want,” you say.At 4:46AM you watch as I visit the home page at MondayMorningMemo.com to see which of the 5,394 random quotes will pop up on the sidebar to inspire me.“One sword keeps another in the sheath.” – George Herbert, (1593–1633)It’s an interesting thought.I assume George Herbert was a military man, but I decide to Google him to be sure. As I type his name and birth year into the Google search block, I wonder, “What would it be like to live in a world where everyone carried a gun at all times? Would one sword keep another in the sheath?”Indy Beagle opens one eye and quietly says, “You don’t want to put your dog in that fight. Think about something else.” And then he goes back to sleep.A contemporary of Shakespeare, George Herbert was a famous metaphysical poet and a priest in the Church of England! He was born into an artistic and wealthy family, began classes at Trinity College in Cambridge in 1609 and was noted as an exceptional speaker by none other than King James the first. Yes, the King James of the 1611 King James Bible, that King James.George Herbert was elected to Parliament in 1624.We are now in England 397 years ago as Google, our tour guide, tells us more about the man who said, “One sword keeps another in the sheath.”“After the death of King James, Herbert renewed his interest in ordination. He gave up his secular ambitions in his mid-thirties and took holy orders in the Church of England, spending the rest of his life as the rector of the rural parish of Fugglestone St Peter, just outside Salisbury. He was noted for unfailing care for his parishioners, bringing the sacraments to them when they were ill and providing food and clothing for those in need. Henry Vaughan called him – quote – ‘a most glorious saint and seer’. He was never a healthy man and died of consumption at age 39.”Who was Henry Vaughn, and what is “consumption,” anyway? I’ve heard of it all my life.Oh! Consumption is what they used to call Tuberculosis! Who knew?Henry Vaughn was another metaphysical poet and a physician. (yawn)Having wrung the last drop of honey from the story of “One sword keeps another in the sheath,” you and I decide to wander around Cambridge in 1609, the year that George Herbert entered Trinity College and came to the attention of King James. Indy Beagle, upon hearing of our journey, decides to go with us.We wander first into The Eagle and the Child, a pub in Cambridge that William Shakespeare was known to haunt. The locals call it The Bird and Baby. It stands opposite the oldest building in Cambridgeshire, the Saxon church tower of St Bene’t’s church which dates from around 1025. A tavern has stood here since 1353, famous for selling beer “for three gallons a penny”.I ask the bartender if he knows a young man by the name of George Herbert. Without looking up, he shakes his head “no.”Behind me, I hear Indy say, “Can we buy you a pint?”Shakespeare is sitting alone at a table scattered with ink-stained papers.“Sit,” says Shakespeare, as he pours wine from a jug into three wooden cups. The cups slosh a little as he slides them across the table. He looks down at the papers. “This new play I am writing is shit.”Indy leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Cymbeline.”“It began as a tragedy but a comedy now emerges. Coming hard on the heels of Julius Caesar, Hamlet and King Lear, the audience won’t know what to think.” He takes the pile of papers off the table and drops them onto the floor beside him. Holding high the empty jug, he shouts, “We’ll have no more of this rancid red! My friends insist on the good Italian!”The Italian red was definitely better; so good in fact that Indy and I do not remember leaving the pub.Do you remember what happened?If you do, send the tale to [email protected] and I would like to read it.Roy H. Williams

You choose a frame every time you look through the lens of a camera, sketch an image with a pencil, or write words with a pen. But today you’re going to start choosing your frames consciously, rather than unconsciously.The job of the ad writer is to introduce a new perspective and trigger a new belief. The best ads make people think and feel differently.When you look through the lens of a camera, you notice that as you move closer you see more detail, but less context. This ratio of detail-to-context is determined by your proximity. And as you circle an object, its profile and its background change with every step you take. Your angle of view determines your perspective.1. Proximity: The details you share reveal how close you are to the subject.2. Perspective: What is your angle of view? Are you a first-timer or an expert? Are you the manufacturer, the customer, or just a reporter with an opinion? Or are you the product itself?Proximity and Perspective:“I was sticky-smelly-suffocating, enveloped in nasty residue from places unspeakable when magical soap and steamy-soft hot water gushed from heaven above and the stickiness and smell of a lifetime of abuse melted off me like tears in the rain. I was stripped naked, but alive again, looking at my true color, when a rush of air lifted me off my feet a little and held me in its warm embrace until I was radiant and dry. This is the new me: happy and fluffy, beaming and bouncy, smiling and smelling brand-new. I am your carpet. Thank you, thank you, thank you for calling Roy’s Carpet Cleaning.”That ad began in first person, past tense perspective (I was…) and ended in first person, present tense (This is the new me… I am…)Your choice of person (first, second, or third) and your choice of tense (past, present, or future) are just two of the many choices you make every time you write. Choose them consciously rather than unconsciously and your writing will leap to a higher level.Ad writers seek to reframe our perspectives, redirect our thoughts, and renew our minds.Sales trainers and motivational speakers do the same.Beryl Markham was a female aviator who could have been an amazing ad writer. She published a 1942 memoir about her experiences growing up in British East Africa in the early 1900s. In 2004, National Geographic ranked her book, West With the Night, as number 8 on its list of the 100 best adventure books.Beryl Markham understood proximity and perspective:“The hills, the forests, the rocks, and the plains are one with the darkness, and the darkness is infinite. The earth is no more your planet than is a distant star – if a star is shining; the plane is your planet and you are its sole inhabitant.”– Beryl Markham, West With the NightErnest Hemingway said,“She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers … it really is a bloody wonderful book.”I have a friend who helps inventors get funding from investors. He says the most important part of his job is the construction of “the dinner party story.” He says, “People like to invest in things that are fun to talk about. Give them a good story to tell and they are likely to invest their money in it.”The world around you is teeming with people willing to give you their money in exchange for elevating their happiness.You just need to start telling the right story.Roy H. Williams

A small chapel was built in Spain in the year 1150. Its name translates into English as, “Our Lady of the High Grasses,” because a religious icon was lost and then found in the high grasses or “tocha” nearby. For nearly 1,000 years, this chapel of Nuestra Señora de Atocha has been standing in the center of Madrid, with the life of the city revolving around it.Well, not exactly “this chapel.” In 1890, when the original chapel could no longer be repaired, Pope Pius IX commissioned that a Neo-Byzantine Basilica* be built to replace it. That Basilica was destroyed during the Spanish Civil war and its reconstruction was completed in 1951. All things considered, it is not the chapel itself but the idea of “Our Lady of the High Grasses” that has been around since 1150.The original chapel was 470 years old when the Mayflower disembarked on Plymouth Rock in 1620, the same year that representatives of King Philip IV of Spain took possession of a new galleon that had been constructed for him in the shipyards of Havana. Christened as the Nuestra Señora de Atocha after the old chapel in Madrid, this new galleon was 112 feet long, made of mahogany instead of oak, and required a crew of 110 men.The crew’s first job was to deliver 40 tons of gold and silver from Central America to King Phillip IV in Spain. It took them more than 2 months just to load it all onto the ship. The heavily armed Atocha was given the honor of sailing as the almirante, or rear guard of a 28-ship convoy.But those 28 ships Captains weren’t thinking about pirates when they set sail for Spain on September 4, 1622. The protracted loading of the ships had caused them to depart 6 weeks late. They were sailing into the heart of hurricane season.On the morning of September 6, just two days after setting sail from Havana harbor, the remains of 8 of those 28 ships lay scattered from Marquesas Key to the Dry Tortugas.The mighty Nuestra Señora de Atocha sank in 56 feet of water, losing all of her 265 passengers, soldiers, sailors, and slaves except for 3 sailors and 2 slaves who survived by clinging to the top of the mizzenmast. A few weeks after those 5 were rescued, a second hurricane swept the ship and its treasure to parts unknown. The Spanish government searched for the wreck of the Atocha for more than 60 years.And then it became the stuff of legend. Four hundred million dollars-worth of sunken Spanish treasure was lying somewhere on the shallow ocean floor near Key West, Florida, free for the taking.During the 20th century, the treasure of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha was discovered hundreds of times in just 30 feet of water by boats full of people who chose to ignore it.Princess Pennie and I were the guests of Mel Fisher and his family in Key West, Florida, shortly before Mel died in 1998. It was Mel’s son, Kim, who told us of the hundreds of fishing lures they pulled off that pile of treasure before lifting those gold bars into the sunlight in July of 1985.And so our story goes full circle: a ship’s treasure was lost, and then found, in the high grasses of the ocean 835 years after the treasure for which it was named was lost, and then found, in the high grasses of central Spain.Spain… bullfighting… Ernest Hemingway… Key WestConsidering that Ernest Hemingway spent 27 years of his life on the Pilar, his custom-made fishing boat in Key West, I am reasonably confident that at least one of those fabled fishing lures was his. But even so, Hemingway would have been just one of the countless sport fishermen who returned to Key West at the end of the day to drink a beer and tell a story about catching “a big one” that broke their line.Yes, those fishermen caught a big one indeed.Perhaps the biggest one ever.Roy H. Williams*In the Catholic faith, a church is any place of worship that has a permanent congregation and is run by a pastor or priest. A chapel has no pastor or priest or permanent congregation. A cathedral is a church run by a bishop. The status of basilica can be awarded only by the Pope, usually because of historical, spiritual, or architectural significance.

Your ability to speak and understand words is a function of the logical, rational, sequential, deductive-reasoning left hemisphere of your brain. Your left-brain hungers for accuracy and seeks to forecast a result.1But the other half of your brain – the wordless right hemisphere – is wired for pattern recognition.2The right hemisphere has no morals, no discretion, and doesn’t care whether a thing is true or false; that’s the left brain’s job. But visual patterns, musical patterns, mathematical patterns, and patterns of behavior trigger what you and I call intuition; gut feelings and hunches. Your can be sure that your wordless right hemisphere is at work when you suddenly know something, but you’re not entirely sure how you know it.It is during the solving of mysteries that the equal-but-opposite left and right hemispheres are fully engaged.Talent is unconscious competence.If the right hemisphere of your brain recognizes the patterns within great writing, you will likely be a talented writer, but you will not likely be a great writing teacher. It is difficult to transfer talent.Skill is conscious competence,usually obtained by observing a talented person and then figuring out exactly what it is they are doing unconsciously. Skilled people make great teachers.This tug-of-war between talent and skill is found in every field of endeavor.But today my fascination is fixed upon speculation, another type of mystery-solving that involves our pattern-seeking right hemispheres.Speculation is responsible for every form of gambling, including speculation in the stock market. Speculation is why we love great stories told in books, TV shows and movies. Speculation is why we marvel at magic tricks and laugh at good jokes and groan at the ones that are obvious.If you want to bore people, just say what they expected you to say; do what they expected you to do. But if you want to captivate those people, delight them with a series of small surprises.Are you beginning to understand the purpose of those unexpected words in great literature, symbolic song lyrics and amazing ad copy? Talented people write those words unconsciously. But you and I can learn to write them consciously.In last week’s rabbit hole, Indy Beagle, Laura Nyro, and The Fifth Dimension gave us the inexplicable word “surry” in Stoned Soul Picnic, along with a debate about what “surry” might mean. But “surry” was only the first surprise we encountered.“Surry down to the stoned soul picnic. There’ll be lots of time and wine, red-yellow honey, sassafras and moonshine. Rain and sun come in akin, and from the sky come the Lord and the lightning. There’ll be trains of blossoms. There’ll be trains of music. There’ll be trains of trust, trains of golden dust. Come along and surry on sweet trains of thought.”Fifty-three years after this song hit the charts, our left-brains continue to demand an explanation of what Laura Nyro was trying to say.Meanwhile, our right-brains are enjoying the picnic.Roy H. Williams1 Broca’s area (slightly forward of your left ear canal) and Wernicke’s area (just behind your left ear,) along with a high-bandwidth bundle of nerves connecting these two called the arcuate fasciculus is what gives us our superpower: the ability to attach complex meanings to sounds, and then to make those sounds through the effortless coordination of diaphragm, larynx, lips and tongue. This ability to communicate highly detailed information is what puts you and I, along with all the other humans, in charge of this spaceship we call Earth.2 Dr. Roger Sperry won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine, “for his discoveries concerning the functional specialization of the cerebral hemispheres.” Speaking of the brain and the mind, Sigmund Freud said, “Poets [thinkers who prefer the right brain] are masters of us ordinary men in knowledge of the mind because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science [thinkers who prefer the left brain.] Aroo, Indy Beagle

My friend Brian Scudamore said something so insightful that Starbucks printed it on 10 million coffee cups:“It’s difficult for people to get rid of junk. They get attached to things and let them define who they are. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that you are what you can’t let go of.”Brian was talking about physical junk and mental junk as well.What is the junk you need to get rid of? Do you have an attachment that defines you?“You are what you can’t let go of.”Some people can’t let go of authority.Some can’t get go of fame.Some can’t let go of anger.Some can’t let go of pain.Look around. What do you see?I see groups of people who believe something, hating other groups of people who believe something else. They, like us, are defined by what they can’t let go of.Jesus talked about this in his famous Sermon on the Mount. He said,“If you are planning to give a financial gift to the work of God and you know that someone is pissed off at you, (this is the Williams “Street” Translation) go to that person and apologize and be reconciled. Then you can offer your gift.”1Jesus was more interested in what you were carrying in your heart than what you were carrying in your hand.What you carry in your heart defines you.Immediately after Jesus finished his famous Sermon on the Mount, he made the same point another way.As Jesus was going down the road, he saw a much-despised tax collector named Matthew sitting in his tax collection booth. “Come and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him, and Matthew jumped up and went with Jesus. Later, when Jesus and his disciples had dinner at Matthew’s house, Matthew invited all his notorious swindler friends to be there also, so that they, too, could hear what Jesus had to say. But when the religious leaders saw what was happening, they were indignant and demanded to know why Jesus associated with men like those. Jesus told them, “Sick people need a doctor. Now go away and understand what God meant when he said, ‘It isn’t your sacrifices and your gifts I want—I want you to be merciful.'” 2, 3The funny part of this story is that it all happens in the book of Matthew, the despised tax collector who invited Jesus to dinner and then became one of the 12 disciples who stayed with him always.I have always found it interesting that Matthew’s book is the first book in the New Testament.Roy H. Williams1 Matthew 5:232 Matthew 9:9-133 Jesus is quoting Hosea 6:6, which had been written about 750 years earlier

You lead the world in client attraction, client acquisition, and client retention.A prospective client has made an appointment with you.I am invited to watch and take notes.These are those notes:In your first meeting with a prospective client, always have a white board or a pad of those giant “stickie notes” to write on. Bring your own colored markers.If you are in their facility instead of your own, begin by asking if you can hang one of the 25 x 30 inch sheets somewhere so that you can make some notes and illustrate what you hope to achieve.When the sheet is secure on the wall, say, “I appreciate that you took the time to meet with me today. I was once told that bad advertising is about you… your products and your services. Good advertising is about the customer, and how your products and services will make their lives better and happier. In that spirit, I want to NOT talk about me today. Instead, I want to answer, in plain language, all your questions and concerns about [INSERT THE NAME OF THE TOPIC IN WHICH YOU ARE EXPERT.] My goal isn’t to tell you what I can do for you. My goal is to demonstrate what I can do for you. I want to give you the solutions to every problem and every frustration you face. I want to give you the answers to every question you have about [INSERT THE NAME OF THE TOPIC IN WHICH YOU ARE EXPERT.] All I need you to do is name those questions for me.” And then write 1. in the upper left corner of your giant stickie note as you say, “Number one,” and then turn to the client, and smile, and wait.Write down each thing they say and then read it back to them.Resist the temptation to comment on what they say! Do not begin a discussion. Just write down each of their questions and say,“Awesome. Can you think of anything else?”“Thank you. Can you think of anything else?”“Excellent! Can you think of anything else?”When they can think of nothing else they would like to know, turn and look at their list. Study it for a few moments.With a different color marker cross out each of the numbers, “1. 2. 3. 4.” etc, and then write “1” next to the question that you have chosen to answer first. Write “2.” next to the question you want to answer second.When you have renumbered their questions, tackle them in the order that you have chosen. When you feel you have answered a question sufficiently, ask “Shall we talk about this some more, or is it okay to move on?” When they tell you that it’s okay to move on, draw a line through that question to indicate that it has been dealt with.As the prospective client sees each of their questions crossed off the list, they will have a strong feeling of “Organized Progress Toward Goal.” And if your answers were good, they will conclude that you are the most competent expert they have ever met.When all their questions have been answered and you have explained exactly what they need to do to achieve all their goals and objectives, sit down at the table across from them and ask, “Where would you like to go from here? What would you like to talk about next?”If you do this correctly, you will have talked only about their questions and their goals and their objectives. You will have said nothing about what makes you better than your competition.Don’t talk about yourself. Talk about them, their needs, their questions, their goals and objectives. Don’t have a sales pitch. Have solutions.The objective of this exercise is to gain a clear understanding of what the client wants, and then to make an honest evaluation about whether or not you are the right person to help them.This is not a sales technique. You are just giving away a free sample of your advice.If you are truly an expert, the customer will know.And if you are not, the customer will know.Roy H. Williams

At the bottom of last week’s Monday Morning Memo, I asked, “Does it surprise you that the multibillion-dollar investment funds that used to buy manufacturing companies and mortgages are now bidding to buy successful home service companies at record-setting prices?”Immediately following my publishing of that comment, a client of my partner Ryan Chute asked him for any insights he might be able to provide about the Private Equity firms that were trying to buy his business. Another Wizard of Ads partner, Stephen Semple, has worked with almost 100 business owners who sold their businesses. Here is what Steve told Ryan:“There are three problems I’ve seen over and over. The first problem is that there is a due diligence clause in every sales contract that professional business buyers regularly use to lower the price. Here is how it works: the closing is scheduled for Friday afternoon (yes, almost always a Friday.) At noon on Friday the buyer drops the price. They tell you they have come across something that says the price is now 20-30% lower.”“These business buyers are banking on the owner having already sold the company in his heart. The champagne is on ice and the owner is not emotionally capable of walking away from the closing table. To fight this, the seller needs to remain ready to walk. Walking away is the only power the seller has.”“The second problem I have seen is this: selling a business is a slow process and the closer it gets to the closing of the sale, the more the business owner mentally and emotionally disconnects from the business. They stop investing in the business, stop growing it. This is a dangerous thing to do because if the sale falls through, they have to get the momentum going again.”“The third problem is that most business owners don’t actually know what their business is worth. Knowledge is power, and you desperately need the power of knowledge when you are preparing to sell your business.”“Ryan, my best advice is that you tell your client to run their business like they are planning to own it for the next 20 years. Remind them that their business isn’t actually sold until the check is cashed.”Ted Rogers owned a cable TV company. When a buyer came along, Ted negotiated the price to be based on the number of subscribers he transferred to the buyer on closing day. Ted was now prepared to spend more per subscriber to acquire new subscribers than he had ever spent before. He ran promotions and offered bonuses to drive up his subscriber count. The buyer was now motivated to close the sale quickly because the price was going up every hour.The technique that Ted Rogers employed can be used by any seller of any business. All you have to do is base the sales price on a metric that is within your control, not the buyer’s control. It can be top line sales in a rolling 12-month window, or gross profits in a rolling 12-month window, or you can negotiate the closing price to be adjusted up-or-down by the same percentage the company has grown or declined during the due diligence window. Pick a metric that you control.And then start growing your business as you’ve never grown it before. By remaining fully engaged in your business, you have now stripped the buyer of his power to ambush you at the closing table.And then, when the deal is done, come to Wizard Academy and tell us your story and we’ll help you celebrate.Aroo,Roy H. Williams

Have you noticed that 2-day deliveries are taking 4 to 5 days to arrive?Shipping companies can’t hire enough warehouse workers and delivery drivers.Have you noticed how long it takes to get the food you ordered?Restaurants can’t hire enough kitchen workers and wait-staff to serve their customers.Service companies nationwide are seeing just 3 or 4 job applicants respond to online recruitment ads that used to generate 40 to 50 inquiries.The limiting factor for business growth in 2021 won’t be a shortage of sales opportunities. It will be the shortage of employees.The Wizard of Ads Partners are rapidly writing recruitment ads for hundreds of businesses across America. Phone lines are ringing and email inboxes are dinging with new requests for recruitment every hour.If you are reliable, conscientious, have a good attitude and are willing to work with your hands, you can write your own ticket anywhere in America.The construction trades can’t find enough people to pour foundations, erect frames, hang sheetrock, build cabinets, lay flooring, and install roofing.Home service companies can’t find enough people to fix plumbing, run wiring, repair air conditioning, paint walls, clean gutters, trim trees, or power-wash driveways, decks and sidewalks.The strongest employers are starting new employees at $80,000 a year and experienced tradespeople are spiraling upwards beyond $100,000 faster than the tornado that carried Dorothy and Toto to Oz.“Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” indeed.Twenty years ago, the internet was the Emerald City. Tech workers were needed everywhere.But then we figured out how to do a lot of that work with software instead of people.Follow a rainbow to where it touches the ground today and you will find a happy, hard-working, hands-on service worker. These men and women are the new pot of gold.Companies that rise to the challenge of recruiting, training, and retaining good people will be the ones who leapfrog ahead of their competitors.Do whatever it takes to become the company that everyone wants to work for “if they are lucky enough to get hired” by you. You’re going to have to pay your employees more than you planned, but you’re also going to be able to charge more than you planned.The service company who can answer the phone and say, “Yes we can and we’re on our way,” is the company you want to be.This is the mountain you must climb if you want to see the view from the top.Roy H. Williams

An overwhelming force enters the marketplace.A train is coming. You wish it wasn’t.1. Will you stand on the track with your back to the train and deny its existence?This business owner is saying, “Their customer is not our customer. They will not affect us.”He is doomed by his delusion.2. Will you denounce the train to everyone who will listen?This second business owner says to state and local government, “We don’t want them here.”He may win a battle or two, but he will always lose the war.3. Will you face the train with one foot on each rail and say, “Bring it on”? This third business owner is saying, “I’m better at this than you are. I’ll make you regret coming to my town.”I’ve occasionally seen this business owner defeat the giant, but only if the giant was sick, distracted, or not in the mood to fight. Usually the little guy loses.There are two proven ways to defeat a giant:1.Go where the giant cannot.Trains run on rails. The rails dictate where the trains go.Sam Walton was a small-town retail hustler in a hillbilly state. The giants who occupied the promised land were Sears, Kress (K-Mart), and J.C. Penney.Big department stores need big populations. As a general store, Sam could operate profitably in towns too small for Sears, Kress, and J.C. Penney. Sam opened his first stores outside of Arkansas in Sikeston, Missouri and Claremore, Oklahoma; towns of about 10,000 people.Sam Walton grew Walmart to $8 billion – a size equal to Coca-Cola at the time – before he opened a store in a town large enough to have more than one McDonald’s.2. Let the giant show you the way.Stand alongside the track and grab hold of the train as it passes. This is a strategy that businesses owners 1, 2, and 3 never considered.Once aboard, stand between the train cars where you don’t have to fight the wind. Let the train cut a hole in the wind for you. You are riding in the slipstream. Haven’t you seen race cars pull up tight behind the leader and ride along in their slipstream until the time was right to slip to the inside and slingshot past them?Walmart was slow, but they did act in time. They studied Amazon and saw what was working. Then they committed to upgrading their online shopping experience.They allowed the giant to show them the way.Wal-Mart wasn’t able to slingshot past Amazon,* but they were able to retain their status as a giant. They did not become a has-been like Sears, Kress, J.C. Penney, or Blockbuster Video.Is there a train headed your way?What is its name?What is your plan?Roy H. Williams*Although Walmart currently does more total volume than Amazon, their online volume is only one-sixth as big. Additionally, Amazon’s market cap of $1.7 trillion makes that company worth 5 times as much as Walmart.

Information can be objectively true but have no relevance to you personally.This is the difference between objective reality and perceptual reality.The opposite is true, as well.You can perceive a person to be beautiful when that person is objectively average. You can also perceive information to be important when in truth, it is not.But in perceptual reality, that person is beautiful.In perceptual reality, the information is important.Objective facts do not win the heart and mind. The magic that creates perceptual reality – personal truth – is relevance.Relevance is a happy shout of Yes to the question, “Do I care?”Just because a thing is true doesn’t mean we have to care.The first time I taught publicly about perceptual reality was in 1994 when I was invited to speak to 1,500 jewelers in London at the 400th Anniversary Celebration of the Goldsmiths of the United Kingdom. Afterwards, Pennie and I were whisked away to the world headquarters of DeBeers to meet with Roger Van Egan, their director of marketing.DeBeers wanted to know why my small handful of jewelry clients were selling 20 times more diamonds than the average American jeweler.My answer, in a word, was “relevance.”On date nights, my jewelers were on the radio speaking to couples in cars.“The Christmas season is a GREAT time to get engaged. She’s going to want to show her new engagement ring to everyone she cares about, and most of those people are going to be conveniently gathered together at Christmastime. If you show up at the Christmas party of your girlfriend’s parents and she is NOT wearing an engagement ring, you get to listen to Great Aunt Gertrude talk all night long about her recent gallstone operation. But if your girlfriend IS wearing an engagement ring, the only thing Aunt Gertrude will want to know is whether you’d like another piece of pie before, or after you ride Cousin Larry’s new motorcycle. One more thing: the day she starts wearing your engagement ring is the day her Mom quits calling you “What’s-his-name.”“But your ad didn’t say anything about why he should buy an engagement ring from your client! You said only that he should buy an engagement ring!”Au contraire, mon frère. That ad made my jeweler fun, approachable, and most importantly, NOT SCARY.But when courtship mode has run its course and the honeymoon is over, men who believe “actions speak louder than words,” tend to be poor communicators.Seeds of doubt, disillusionment and divorce are planted when a woman thinks, “This is not the man I married. He doesn’t love me anymore.”“Ladies, many of you will be fortunate enough this Christmas to find a small, but beautifully wrapped package under your tree bearing a simple gold seal that says Schiffman’s. Now you and I both know there’s jewelry in the box. But the man who put it there for you is trying desperately to tell you that you are more precious than diamonds, more valuable than gold, and very, very special. You see, he could have gone to a department store and bought department store jewelry or picked up something at the mall like all the other husbands. But the men who come to Schiffman’s aren’t trying to get off cheap or easy. Men who come to Schiffman’s believe their wives deserve the best. And whether they spend 99 dollars or 99 thousand, the message is the same: men who come to Schiffman’s are still very much in love… We just thought you should know.” [Hard stop. No location tag.]That ad on the radio said to men, “Buy a diamond from Schiffman’s and she’ll know that – unlike “other guys” – you are still very much in love. Now won’t THAT be grand!”Jewelers today are intently focused on reaching engagement ring customers because there are slightly more than 2 million weddings in the US each year.But there are currently 62.34 million married couples. Do the math. I did. And I quickly came to the conclusion that the jewelry business needed an objective way to categorize a diamond as an “Anniversary Diamond.”So I made one up.“You gave her an engagement ring at the beginning of your journey. You’ve come a long way together. Now it’s time to give her a big Anniversary Diamond.”“What’s an Anniversary Diamond?”“It’s a diamond that’s at least twice as big as the one in her engagement ring.”“Why twice as big?”“Because that’s how you say, ‘I love you twice as much today as the day I married you.'”Do you remember what I said about relevance? If Mister “actions speak louder than words,” still loves her but can’t find the words to tell her, I’m confident he can still find his way to the jewelry store.She wins, He wins, the jeweler wins, and I win.The first rule of persuasion is this: you cannot take a person where you want them to go until you first meet them where they are.When you enter the perceptual reality of the customer, you meet them where they are.Now all

“Don’t look where you don’t want to go.”Every mountain climber knows this rule, and I want you to know it, too.Your mind has conscious and unconscious power over your actions. When you imagine something, you begin bringing it to pass.What is the mountain you’re trying to climb?If you want a happy and joyful marriage, imagine what that would look like. Not just from your own perspective, but from your partner’s perspective, too. Think about it often.If you want to build a successful business, imagine what that would look like. Not just from your own perspective, but from your customer’s perspective, too. Think about it often.Think about how you can make the biggest difference in the shortest amount of time with the resources you have available. Don’t wish for what you don’t have. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.If you do what I just told you, you will occasionally reinvent the wheel, but that’s okay. That wheel will be your wheel, and you will understand that wheel in ways that no one else understands wheels.Business writers like to write about companies who disrupt their categories.Disruptors are people who reinvent the wheel.In 2004, Blockbuster Video had 9,094 locations, 84,300 employees, and nearly $6 Billion in revenues. Things were fine. Why reinvent the wheel?Netflix reinvented the video-rental wheel when they eliminated the car drive to the video rental store. And then they reinvented the wheel again – their own wheel this time – when they eliminated the mailing of DVDs.I was intrigued with Roving Reporter Rotbart’s interview with Carl Schramm on MondayMorningRadio a couple of weeks ago. Schramm manages a $2 Billion foundation whose goal is to help entrepreneurs succeed. It’s safe to say he knows a lot about entrepreneurship.According to Schramm, successful entrepreneurs are marked by 3 characteristics: Determination, Experimentation and Innovation.“Experimentation and Innovation” sound a lot like reinventing the wheel to me.Blockbuster still has one location open in Bend, Oregon.Q: How did that Blockbuster store survive?A: Determination, experimentation, and innovation.They reinvented the wheel.Rachel Greenblatt of NBC reports the Covid lockdown had three big winners: The introverted, the productive, and Jeff Bezos.This makes sense to me because:1. Introverts do their best work when they are not distracted by social interruptions. (I do my best work in the 6 hours following 2:30AM each day. I am usually asleep by 7PM.)2. Highly productive people used the lockdown as an opportunity to reinvent the wheel.3. Jeff Bezos believes every wheel needs reinvention. Except the flywheel, of course. (Jeff Bezos fans will laugh at that line. The rest of you just need to Google, “Jeff Bezos flywheel.”)Indy Beagle says Aroo.I’ll tell him you said Aroo back.Or you can just meet Indy in the rabbit hole and Aroo him yourself.Roy H. Williams

Your assumptions about the intelligence of your customer will colorize and slant your ad writing in ways of which you are not even aware.Is the customer stupid?The writer of the 139th Psalm did not believe that customers are stupid. He said to God, “I will praise you; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”Harvard University Medical School made a 3-minute film that illustrates the idea that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” It’s called The Inner Life of a Cell, and Indy Beagle has embedded it on the first page of the rabbit hole for you. To enter the rabbit hole, all you have to do is click the image of Indy at the top of the Monday Morning Memo.In the book, Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind, we read,“Wizard’s First Rule: People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it’s true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.”When you make unsubstantiated claims, or if you “substantiate” your claims with sophistry, false facts, overstatements or hyperbole, you are writing under the assumption that people are stupid. But a lot of money has been made by giving gullible people false hope. When a person deeply wants to believe that what you are saying is true, they will believe it, in spite of the fact that you are lying.The assumption that people are stupid will help you write more effective political advertising, direct response advertising, and television infomercials. It will also help you build your downline in multilevel marketing.But conning stupid people out of their money is like beating up little children. I can do it, I just don’t want to.There are two ways to write ads that target intelligent people. The first way is to immediately substantiate your claim with highly credible evidence each time you make a statement of benefit.EXAMPLE: Black Diamonds. Exotic. Rare. And Beautiful. A star exploded and sent an asteroid hurtling toward our galaxy a long time ago. That asteroid was more than half-a-mile wide, and it flew through space until it struck the earth. That asteroid was made of black diamonds. The National Science Foundation announced the news about these outer-space diamonds and then the New York Times wrote a story about them. Black Diamonds. Exotic. Rare. And Beautiful.The second way to advertise to intelligent persons is to use “Magical Thinking,” a style of writing characterized by elements of the impossible woven with a deadpan sense of presentation into an otherwise true story. Magical Thinking goes beyond the realm of exaggeration and moves into the realm of entertainment.EXAMPLE: Life is happier when it’s less cluttered. Your house will be bigger! Your teeth will be whiter! Angels will sing! You’ll be a better dancer. Go to 1-800-GotJunk.com and prepare to be amazed.If you make untrue statements and expect them to be believed, you are writing to a stupid person. But if you make untrue statements for the purposes of entertainment – knowing they will not be believed – you are writing to an intelligent person.If I provided an example of advertising filled with strong assurances, baseless claims, puffery and hyperbole with no evidence to support those claims, you would say, “Wow. I hear ads like that every day.”And now you know why people are so very annoyed by most advertising.Roy H. Williams

When a person assumes they have superior wisdom, they will offer you their advice. This is an unmistakable sign they think you are an idiot.I smile when a person says to me, “Can I offer you some friendly advice?” They instinctively use the word “friendly” as a qualifier because, deep in their guts, they know what they are about to say isn’t friendly at all. They want to give me their critique, their criticism, their evaluation.Still smiling, I shake my head and say “No.”Unsolicited advice is the junk mail of life.You don’t need advice. You need encouragement.Not flattery. Encouragement.You can do the thing you would like to do.Of course you can.You can become the thing you want to become.Of course you can.You can achieve the thing you hope to achieve.Of course you can.I don’t know how long it will take, or what you will have to endure, but I do know that you can do these things if you decide to. The only enemy you cannot outwit or outwait is death.You were created in the image of God.He does not think you are an idiot.And neither do I.Roy H. Williams

Bad ads waddle like a porcupine and make lots of little points.Good ads charge like a rhinoceros and make a single point powerfully.This is true regardless of your choice of media.Ad budgets are like that, too.When universities ask me to address their Advertising & Marketing majors just prior to graduation, I always warn those young “advertising experts” never to give advice to friends or family members who are involved in a local business. “This is because everything you have been taught assumes you will go to work in marketing for a Fortune 500 company, or for an advertising agency that places the media for large, national brands. You have not been taught how to grow a local business.” And then I ask their professors – in front of the students – whether they agree or disagree with what I just said.One hundred percent of the time, without exception, every professor has agreed with me. Most of the time, they start nodding their heads in affirmation when I say, “…everything you have been taught assumes you will go to work in marketing for a Fortune 500 company…”The most dangerous of these Fortune 500 concepts is the idea of a “media mix.”The widespread belief about the value of a “media mix” has caused small business owners to sprinkle their ad budgets across several different media because they are worried they are going to “miss” someone. After all, “Not everyone listens to the radio.” “Not everyone watches the news.” “Not everyone looks at billboards.” “Not everyone blah, blah, blah.”Advertiser, you can’t afford to reach everyone. You’ve got to choose who to lose.Would you rather reach 100% of the people and convince them 10% of the way, or reach 10% of the people and convince them 100% of the way? Repetition is effective. Repetition is effective.Don’t be a porcupine. Be a rhino.If you sell a product or a service that most people will need sooner-or-later and you suspect you’ve been sprinkling your ad budget, “a little bit here and a little bit there,” try spending 80% of your ad budget on a single mass media and the remaining 20% online. The choice of mass media is up to you, but it’s hard to go wrong with local broadcast radio or television newscasts. People rarely record the TV news on their DVRs. They watch it live. The same is true of live sporting events.By the way, in case I forget to tell you this later, repetition is effective.“Wait a minute,” you say, “you told me to be a rhino and not to sprinkle my budget, but now you’re telling me that 20% of my budget should be spent online! What’s up?”Google is the new phone book, so you must have an online presence. Properly used, mass media will make you the provider that people think of immediately and feel the best about, but the first thing those people are going to do when they need what you sell is go online to look for your phone number, or your store hours, or your street address, or at your online reviews.You’ve got to show up when your customer is looking for you.There are instances – particularly in the home service categories – when it makes sense to use geotargeting. If time and energy are an underutilized resource, the placement of door hangers and lawn signs and the slipping of flyers under windshield wipers are old-school techniques that still pay big dividends. This is what I call, “shoe leather on the sidewalk.”The geotargeting of neighborhoods can also be done online, and geofencing will even allow you to target the people who enter and exit a specific building. Cool, huh?“But what if I sell a product or a service that only a tiny percent of the population will ever want or need?”Friend, that’s when you bet your entire ad budget online. But make sure that your gross profit margin will allow you to spend 25% to 33% of total top-line sales on advertising, because when all the shouting is over, that is what you’re likely to spend.(Meanwhile, those local advertisers who are betting on the effectiveness of mass media are spending only 6% to 12% of total top-line sales on advertising.)Mild surprise is the foundation of delight.In your ads,A. if you say what your customers expected you to say, they will be bored.B. if you make unsubstantiated claims, they will not believe you.C. if you speak to anything other than a felt need, they will ignore you.D. if you say something new, surprising and different, you will gain their attention.E. if you give them reasons to like and trust and believe you, they will.9. If you win the heart, the mind will follow. The intellectual mind will always create logic to justify what the emotional heart has already decided.10. Repetition is effective,repetition is effective,repetition is effective.Roy H. Williams

Brian, good thoughts!The Neuroscience of Behavior Change link you sent was a great explanation of what Dr. Alan Baddeley calls “Procedural Memory.” You will recall this from The Magical Worlds Communications Workshop at Wizard Academy.Working Memory is consciousness, imagination, the thought you are thinking NOW.Semantic Declarative Memory contains things you can remember, but you cannot remember how or when you learned them.Episodic Declarative Memory is like Semantic Declarative Memory, except that you can remember the episode; the how and when of the learning.Procedural Memory is long-term, involuntary, automatic recall. It is electrical memory aided by chemical traces along the neural pathway. A perfect golf swing, the movement of fingers by a typist or a concert pianist, or the automatic recall of an advertiser’s name; all these are positive expressions of Procedural Memory.Procedural Memory = Salience (impact or relevance) x Repetition.The greater the impact of the message, the less repetition is required. And keep in mind, repetition costs money.The Short-Term Goal of the Direct Response Ad Writer is to speak to an immediately-felt need of the customer who is currently, actively in need of the product or service in question.The Short-Term Goal of the Future Needs Ad Writer is to create Episodic declarative memory by saying or doing something new, surprising, or different, so that future recall of the episode might be established. To do this, the ad writer must make the reader/listener/viewer smile, laugh, cry, become nostalgic, become fearful, or get angry.This is because emotion triggers adrenaline and adrenaline is the biochemical adhesive that creates those chemical traces along the neural pathway. Information without emotion is of limited value.The Long-Term Goal of the Future Needs Ad Writer is to deliver a series of salient messages with enough repetition-over-time to create Procedural Memory, but without any of the negative associations that come with anger, sorrow and fear.So now you understand PTSD. It is simply is a negative expression of the long-term, involuntary, automatic recall known by neuroscientists as Procedural Memory, a product of Salience (importance, relevance, or surprise) times Repetition. With enough salience, a repetition of only one is sufficient to create Procedural Memory.Always good to hear from you Brian!Oh. One last thing: Those of you who didn’t see Brian’s email to Indy Beagle in last week’s rabbit hole were likely intrigued by the new, surprising, and different opening of today’s Monday Morning Memo: “Brian, good thoughts!”“Am I reading a private email to someone named Brian?” Or you may have wondered, “Brian who?” or if your own name is Brian, you may have asked, “How is the wizard personalizing the main body of the Monday Morning Memo to each individual reader?”In any case, those opening 3 words achieved reader/listener/viewer engagement, the first step in The Short-Term Goal of the Ad Writer.Aroo,Roy H. Williams

1492: An Italian, funded by the Queen of Spain, sailed west to find the east, discovered a small island in the Caribbean, decided it was India, and sailed home to share the happy news. Ponce de León, Balboa, Cordoba, Cortés, Coronado and 24 other conquistadors were sent from Spain to bring home whatever they could find.1562: France sent Laudonnière on 3 expeditions to South Carolina and Florida, but Spanish Admiral Menéndez slaughtered the French in 1565 and built the fortress city of St. Augustine, Florida. 1620: Religious misfits from Holland and England boarded a ship called the Mayflower, crossed the Atlantic in 66 days, landed at a place called Plymouth Rock, met some friendly natives and celebrated Thanksgiving with them, presumably on the last Thursday in November.1662: A Dutchman named Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from a group of local Indians for merchandise worth 60 Dutch guilders and built a thriving community there. It is considered to be the greatest real estate deal in the history of the world. Two years later, the English showed up with cannons and announced that they would now be in charge. The Dutch asked, “Can we keep our houses and our businesses and all of our stuff?” The English said, “Sure, no problem. You just have to let us be in charge.”The Dutch smiled and said, “Welcome to America.”In the decades that followed, the sons and daughters of Spanish conquistadors and French explorers and religious misfits and Dutch traders and English soldiers were joined by tens of thousands of optimistic adventurers and entrepreneurs and families who dreamed of a better life. They came from everywhere.And then slave traders arrived with shiploads of captives for sale. But no one smiled at the captives and said, “Welcome to America.” In fact, these dark-skinned newcomers were not allowed to keep houses or businesses or anything else, not even their own children.July 4th, 1776: A new nation was born when everyone got tired of the English being in charge. And as this baby nation grew, her people began to sing.1886: The song of Ellis Island, the song of the Statue of Liberty.“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”– Emma Lazarus1904: The song of a Century of Progress.I’m a Yankee Doodle dandy, a Yankee Doodle, do or die.A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July.I’ve got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart, she’s my Yankee Doodle joy.Yankee Doodle came to London just to ride the ponies, I am the Yankee Doodle boy.– George M. Cohan1968: The song of our Wandering Years.“Kathy, I’m lost”, I said, though I knew she was sleeping,“I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike,They’ve all come to look for America…”– Paul Simon1980: The Song of CelebrationEverywhere around the world, they’re coming to America.Every time that flag’s unfurled, they’re coming to America.Got a dream to take them there. They’re coming to America.Got a dream they’ve got to share. They’re coming to America.They’re coming to America. They’re coming to America.They’re coming to America. They’re coming to America.Today… today… today… today… today!– Neil Diamond 2010: Lady Liberty no longer lifts a torch, but a toast to the newcomers.“So raise your glass if you are wrong in all the right ways, all my underdogs! We will never be, never be anything but loud and nitty gritty, dirty little freaks. Won’t you come-on and come-on and raise your glass? Just come-on and come-on and raise your glass!”– Pink Sitting in the back corner of the classroom, a silver-haired gentleman was the last to stand and introduce himself. He cast his gaze about the room for a long moment before he spoke. “As I sat and listened to you people introduce yourselves, I thought, ‘Never in my life have I been surrounded by so many weirdos, wackos, mavericks and misfits. It’s as if this wizard fellow sent out the mating call of the albino monkey, and you are the strange people who answered.” Then he sat down and smiled as he concluded, “And I just can’t tell you what an honor it is to be counted here among you!”   That man was Keith Miller, the bestselling author of The Taste of New Wine, a book that sold several million copies as it rocked the foundations of Religious America back in 1965. (Christian booksellers kept Keith’s book under the counter because it had the word “wine” in the title.) Keith’s assessment of Wizard Academy was correct. For 21 years, it has been the home of proud misfits who are not afraid to fly their own flag and chart their own course as they journey toward the star that beckons them in the night. Wizard Academy is a waystat

Hollywood has been feeding us romanticized history ever since Birth of a Nation splattered across the silver screen in 1915.Romanticized history is a lie.People will always believe lies that reinforce their worldview.Hollywood feeds us romanticized history because we love it, and the fictions we love best are those heroic stories of pioneers and settlers and cowboys during the years of America’s westward expansion.John Wayne was a powerful icon of rugged individualism for two generations of American men. He was self-reliant and manly and brave, the living embodiment of maximum masculinity. There was no woman in distress he could not save, no wilderness he could not tame, no fight he could not win.His real name was Marion Morrison and he grew up in Southern California. According to WIKIPEDIA, “He lost a football scholarship to the University of Southern California as a result of a bodysurfing accident and began working for the Fox Film Corporation…. It was John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) that made Wayne a mainstream star, and he starred in 142 motion pictures altogether. According to one biographer, ‘John Wayne personified for millions the nation’s frontier heritage.’”The real-world Americans who traveled westward in the hope of finding a better life were, for the most part, poor people with nothing to lose. With few tools and no resources, they improvised as best they could. They endured painful hunger, parching thirst, desperate cold, raging disease and the untimely death of people they loved.We romanticize these struggling families of an earlier century and call them “self-reliant, rugged individuals.” We imagine them as strong, beautiful characters in a John Wayne movie.Here is my question: When you scrape the Hollywood glitter off these people and see them real, was their resourcefulness an expression of exuberant confidence, or was it a product of their abject desperation?Many of you sympathized with the millions of us Texans who shivered in our homes for several days at below-freezing temperatures with no heat, no light, no water and no toilets.I drilled numerous yellow holes in the snow.No electricity means no hot meals, and in southern states like Texas, icy streets mean no deliveries, no fire trucks, no ambulances, and no police. Even the grocery stores were closed.The hospital nearest our home was evacuated.When Pennie and I had been without water for 3 days, the ex-governor who presided over the deregulation of energy in Texas (and dismantled the regulations that would have insured the consistent delivery of water and electricity in our state,) called a press conference to proudly announce that Texans would gladly, “be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.”Now there is a man who has watched one-too-many John Wayne movies.And then there is the senator from Texas who decided that, “to be a good Dad,” he was going to hop on a jet and find some comfort at The Four Seasons in sunny Cancun, Mexico. But I can make room for that. I don’t really blame him for it. If I wasn’t concerned about Covid, I might have done it myself.The “John Wayne” part of that story is that he flew to Cancun with a mask on his face displaying the image of an old Texas flag from our pre-statehood years. That flag shows the star of Texas with a big cannon and the words, “Come and Take It.”In 1835, when European settlers revolted against the government of Mexico, they got control of a cannon in a border town, then flew a flag with a drawing of that cannon and added the words, “Come and Take it.”Basically, they were just flipping the bird to the Mexicans.But why – 186 years later – would a person flaunt a symbol that insults Mexicans while escaping TO MEXICO to get away from 3rd world conditions back home?One-too-many John Wayne movies, that’s why.Born in Texas and raised in the dangerous part of an Oklahoma town, I am no stranger to violence. My willingness to embrace it when it presents itself is alarming to most of my friends. So please don’t think you can write me off as an effete little man who needs to be sheltered from the harsh realities of life.I have all this on my mind today because of a quote in the February 15th Monday Morning Memo from John McCain, a man who was everything Marion Morrison pretended to be.“War is awful. Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. War is wretched beyond description and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality. Whatever is won in war, it is loss the veteran remembers.” – John McCainMcCain’s statement has been rattling around in my head for the past two weeks. I agree with him completely; there is nothing glorious, nothing honorable, nothing virtuous about hardship, pain, and suffering. “Only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.”Men who have been engaged

They did not do it because they thought it would be funny. Four members of the Jamaica Defense Force did it as a statement of pride and determination.Dudley Stokes, Devon Harris, Michael White and Caswell Allen traveled from their tropical island to snowy Canada hoping to make it into the 1988 Winter Olympics.Miraculously, they qualified.When Caswell Allen was injured 3 days prior to the start of the Olympics, he was replaced by Chris Stokes, who was only in Canada to support his brother Dudley.Smaller than the state of Connecticut, Jamaica is not a wealthy island. The men had to appeal to other teams for basic equipment in order to compete.  But as the Olympics are forever a celebration of global cooperation, the other nations were happy to loan them what they needed.When the United States ice hockey team was eliminated, American TV stations needed to fill airtime and chose to focus on the Jamaican bobsled team.“Feel the rhythm! Feel the rhyme! Get on up, its bobsled time! Cool runnings!”The first run ended poorly when Dudley Stokes jumped into the bobsled and the push-bar broke, resulting in the Jamaican team coming in third from last.The team ranked next-to-last on their second run due to White remaining nearly upright through the first corner as he struggled to crouch down properly in his seat.After a blistering fast start on their third run, the Jamaican bobsled careened into the wall of the track and flipped over on top of the team at 85 miles per hour. Bruised and battered, the four men climbed out, walked with the bobsled to the end of the track, then picked it up and carried it off.The crowd went wild.Did the Jamaican team call it quits? No, they did not.The four qualified again for the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. The following year, Disney released Cool Runnings, a comedy film inspired by the team’s experience in the 1988 Games.In the 1994 Olympics* in Lillehammer, Norway, the four Jamaicans finished ahead of the United States, Russia, Italy, France and Australia.At the 2000 World Push in Monaco the Jamaican team won the gold medal.You will never become good at something unless you are willing to be bad at first. But if you stay with it, things will be fine in the end.If things aren’t fine, it’s not the end.Roy H. Williams*In case you were wondering why we had Winter Olympics in 1992 and again just 2 years later in 1994, it was because the International Olympic Commission decided to separate the Summer and Winter Games and place them in alternating even-numbered years. 1994 was the year that decision was implemented.

“Giving a microphone to every human being is the worst mistake we have made in human history.”ME: Are you saying social media was a mistake?“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.” ­– Dale CarnegieME: But doesn’t everyone deserve to be heard?“Every man has a right to his own opinion. But no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” – Bernard BaruchME: We seem to be at war with ourselves.“War is awful. Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. War is wretched beyond description and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality. Whatever is won in war, it is loss the veteran remembers.” – John McCainME: But we’re waging a war of words, not blood!“But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and those things defile a man.” – Jesus, in Matthew 15ME: Can’t we just listen to the good people and ignore the bad?“Men who believe themselves to be good, who do not search their own souls, often commit the worst atrocities. A man who sees himself as evil will restrain himself. It is only when we do evil in the belief that we do good that we pursue it wholeheartedly.” – David FarlandME: I agree with that, especially the part about searching our own souls. When I see a person of real character, I always want to ask, “What darkness did you conquer?” Mountains do not rise without earthquakes.“Hard times create strong men.Strong men create good times.Good times create weak men.And weak men create hard times.”― G. Michael HopfME: Are you saying we brought this social storm upon ourselves through our own weakness and self-indulgence?“You can never make the same mistake twice because the second time you make it, it’s not a mistake, it’s a choice.” ­– Steven DennME: Will we ever quit making the old mistakes?“No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.” – Solomon, Ecclesiastes ch. 1ME: Based on what you said earlier, if these are the hard times created by weak people, is the next phase when we become strong people that create good times?“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else” – Winston ChurchillME: What should I do while I wait for all this social rage and weirdness to become less angry and weird?“Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do… Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love…” – Solomon, Ecclesiastes ch. 9ME: Sounds good to me.Roy H. Williams

We were sitting in my backyard sharing a $600 bottle of wine he had brought.He said, “I got all 250 of my employees together on a Zoom call and told them, ‘You can disagree passionately and share your opinion while we are in the discussion phase, but when a decision has been made, you need to commit to the successful implementation of that decision as though it had been your own. To disagree and work half-heartedly and receive a paycheck is not an option. To disagree and covertly sabotage the plan and receive a paycheck is not an option. To disagree and whisper behind closed doors and receive a paycheck is not an option. You can either recuse yourself by turning in your resignation, or you can disagree and commit. Those are your options.’”My friend is strong, fair, and a marvelous employer. I have always admired him. Raised in a family with no money, he became stunningly successful by the time he was 40.That conversation with my friend is what triggered last week’s Monday Morning Memo about “Those Glorious Creative Handcuffs.”Ad writers like myself always believe we have the best answers and that people should listen to what we say. “But…” I tell my partners, “your client didn’t hire you to be CEO. They hired you to make their plan work. If you believe you can improve their plan, you need to communicate what you would change, why you would change it, and how you would implement that change. But once you’ve had your day in court, your job is to make their plan succeed brilliantly, even if it’s stupid.”In 40 years of ad-writing I’ve chosen to walk away only twice. In both instances I knew the only way the decided-upon plan could end was with a large, smoking hole in the earth where their successful company used to be. In both of those cases I was right. In every other instance, “Those Glorious Creative Handcuffs” clamped on my wrists triggered some of the best creative work I’ve ever done.“Disagree and Commit” works miraculously well, but only if you wash the memory of your ‘better plan’ from your mind. Never speak of it again. Never think about it again. When you’ve had your day in court, commit to the plan and make it a point of honor to make that plan succeed.And then celebrate, celebrate, celebrate when it does.This will make you a person that every employer wants to hire, and every brilliant person wants on their team.Roy H. Williams

If one were to assume that a blank sheet of paper – complete freedom – is the best way to coax maximum creativity from the human mind, one would be wrong.The highest levels of creativity are launched from the tightest constraints.Consider this request made a couple of weeks ago by a student in our monthly webcast.Hi Roy, I work with a micro-distillery in our province who recently developed a lower-priced brand of affordable liquor. It is called: lōk(ə)l and they spell it phonetically, with a k and a schwa. (ə)They make vodka, gin and schnapps packaged in plastic bottles. How can we advertise this on the radio to get people to look for the right product?  Not to mention there is some muddiness marketing “local” when everyone is jumping on the “shop local” train… there is even another alcohol beverage called Local with a similar style.Thanks for all your help.Let’s examine our creative restraints and limitations:Plastic bottles shout “cheap.”“Locally-produced vodka” is not a strong selling proposition.“Local” is an overused generic descriptive, but we’re stuck with it as a name.A competing product has the same name, but with the correct spelling.If we cannot differentiate our brand, our radio ads are likely to sell the products of companies other than our own.Bottom line: lōk(ə)l vodka is memorable only because it is spelled with a k.These are the creative handcuffs we wear as we write a series of 30-second radio ads in an effort to give this brand a personality that says something other than “cheap generic vodka.”Are you ready to ride?Lokal vodka is NOT low-cal, low calorie, lightweight vodka. You’re thinking of a different brand. Lokal-with-a-K is full-bodied, genuine, authentic vodka made right here in Saskatchewan. Vodka is spelled with a K, not a C. Lokal-with-a-K is old-school vodka, the kind that will kick your ass if you drink too much of it. We also make gin and schnapps. This stuff is fabulous, but to make it affordable we put it in plastic bottles, ’kay? Lokal-with-a-K is available in every store that has good taste.AD 2:Lokal-with-a-K vodka is made right here in Saskatchewan, which also has a K. And Vodka is spelled with a K, so we spell Lokal with a K. You say, “Hey, you also make gin and schnapps and they don’t have a K.” But in THIS deck of cards, Vodka is KING, Schnapps is QUEEN, Gin is the JOKER and the joker is wild. Drink has a K.  Kick has TWO K’s, but Compromise is spelled with a “C.” Lokal-with-a-K is fabulous, but to make it affordable we put it in plastic bottles, ’kay? Lokal-with-a-K is available in every store that has good taste.AD 3:Lokal-with-a-K vodka is made right here in Saskatchewan, and because you love it, we’re now making it with extra K. We also put extra K in our gin and schnapps. Vodka is KING, Schnapps is QUEEN, Gin is the JOKER and the joker is wild. With these three in your hand, you’re on your way to a Full House. Drink has a K.  Kick has TWO K’s, but Compromise is spelled with a “C.” We don’t compromise. Neither should you. Lokal-with-a-K is available in every store that has good taste.By the time we get to the third ad, this campaign is promising wild parties in a full house of people where everyone gets their kicks. Did you notice?Incongruities, anomalies, gaps and disturbances naturally attract attention. Learn to leverage them as memory hooks.What if we were asked to differentiate that other brand of vodka, LoCal?Let’s ride again, shall we?Vodka is clean, pure, and colorless… Like diamonds… And sunlight… And the music of angels. But it will also make you FAT and we don’t want THAT. My vodka is Local vodka. At least that’s how most people pronounce it. Look closely and you’ll see that it actually says Low-CAL… Low-CAL. Lo-Cal vodka won’t give you a fat ass. Lo-Cal vodka is diamonds, and sunlight, and the music of angels. [pause] It comes in a small, tight can. Because isn’t that really what we’re after?AD 2:I don’t want to drink wide-bottom vodka. You don’t want to drink wide-bottom vodka. We want the low-CAL vodka that tastes like diamonds… and sunlight… and the music of angels… all of which, by the way, are also low in calories! This heavenly designer vodka is cleverly disguised as, quote, “local” vodka. But look closely and you’ll see it says, Lo-CAL. You’ll spot it immediately. [pause] It comes in a small, tight can. Because isn’t that really what we’re after?AD 3:Pour it into a glass and you’ll see diamonds, and sunlight, and the music of angels. Lift that glass to your lips and you’ll taste diamonds and sunlight and the music of angels. Share it with your boyfriend and he’ll

I have long been fascinated by twilight. In fact, I often use that word to describe flavors that are complex and muted.But what is twilight, really?“Twilight is the illumination of the lower atmosphere when the Sun is not directly visible because it is below the horizon. Twilight is produced by sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere, illuminating the lower atmosphere so that Earth’s surface is neither completely lit nor completely dark.” – WIKIPEDIATwilight lasts only about 20 minutes.“There is a brief time, between waking and sleep, when reality begins to warp. Rigid conscious thought starts to dissolve into the gently lapping waves of early stage dreaming and the world becomes a little more hallucinatory, your thoughts a little more untethered. Known as the hypnagogic state…”– Vaughan Bell, Science Writer, The Atlantic, April 20, 2016I think of this time “when reality begins to warp” as the twilight of consciousness, that time when the subconscious mind takes the intellect for a ride.Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman and Dr. Jerome L. Singer, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University, are studying a different twilight of consciousness. “Daydreaming is a normal, widespread, human phenomenon that people are aware of consciously and can report reliably on questionnaires. Large numbers of people from different walks of society, gender, and ethnicity report considerable daydreaming in their daily lives.”Kaufman and Singer have determined there are three types of daydreaming.1. Positive-Constructive Daydreaming (playful, wishful, constructive imagery)2. Guilty-Dysphoric Daydreaming (obsessive, anguished fantasies)3. Poor Attentional Control (the inability to concentrate on ongoing thought or external tasks)Further study indicated that1. Positive-Constructive daydreaming is related to Openness to Experience, reflecting curiosity, sensitivity, and the exploration of ideas, feelings, and sensations.2. Guilty-Dysphoric daydreaming is related to Neuroticism.3. Poor Attentional Control is related to low levels of Conscientiousness Current neuroimaging research supports Singer’s idea that daydreaming is the default state of the human mind.Your daydreams are the voice of your powerful subconscious as it tries to assist your conscious mind. When your subconscious mind and your conscious mind are working together to achieve a common goal, you can believe that it will happen.So, if our daydreams are the voice of the subconscious mind and we want our daydreams to be Positive-Constructive, how can we fill our subconscious with productive, helpful, happy images?Two thousand years ago, we were given this advice:“Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness.” *If I were to translate this to the language of the 21st century, I would say,“If you turn your attention to good things, your mind will shine. But if you turn your attention to dark thoughts, your mind will be full of darkness. So pay attention, then, or you will find yourself full of darkness.”You have the power to turn your attention wherever you will. Aim it at productive, helpful, happy things. Don’t obsess over problems. Focus your attention on solutions. Not just solutions for the problems you’re currently facing, but solutions in general.Stories of problems solved are, by definition, stories with happy endings.Don’t worry. Be happy.Roy H. Williams*The Good News of Luke, chap 11:34-35

The 2021 we’ve been waiting for has not yet begun.I was reminded of this when I received a meme from a friend. It said, “Omg, what’s the first thing you’re gonna do when YOU get the vaccine shot?? You’re gonna go back home, wait a month, get your second shot, go back home, wait 14 days for antibodies, then keep wearing a mask and social distancing until community transmission reduction. That’s what.”When it finally gets here, the 2021 we’ve been waiting for will be different than 2020, but in what way, I cannot say.Many of us made adjustments in 2020:Working from home replaced going to the office.Online meetings replaced face-to-face meetings.Home delivery replaced driving to the store.Fancy meals at home replaced eating out.Will some of these adjustments stay with us?And if so, to what degree and among how many people?The Bounce:There will doubtless be a pent-up demand for travel. Will we resume traveling as we did before, or will some of us be reluctant? How high will our travel-hunger bounce the airlines, the cruise ships, and the hotels? And how long will this bounce last?Our hunger for the hospitality of restaurants, cafes and bars will doubtless shoot those businesses to new heights, but how long will this bounce last? Will home delivery of products, groceries and meals continue at dramatically high levels, or will it fall back to where it was before, or will it land somewhere in-between?Unable to spend our money on vacations, travel, and fine dining in 2020, we showered jewelry stores and home service businesses with fountains of cash. Will this trend continue, or will we redirect these fountains of affection onto new categories of purchase?I honestly do not know.The only prediction I am prepared to make is that a lot of office space is going to remain empty.Day after day I speak with employers who rave with delight about the productivity of their people working from home. Without exception, every one of them has told me they do not plan to renew the lease on their office space. A number of these employers previously housed more than 500 office workers each.That’s a lot of office space.As a boy, I was friendly with a number of adults who had lived through the Great Depression. Thirty years after the Depression was over, those people continued to bear its marks.How many of us will bear the marks of the 2020 lockdown long after Covid-19 has been tamed? We can only guess. But the events of 2020 will affect consumer behavior for many years to come.It will be a fascinating – and important – thing to watch.Roy H. Williams

We live in a nation that has mistaken pleasure for happiness.Pleasure can be pursued directly, but not happiness.Think of the times you have felt truly happy. In each of those moments, you were feeling grateful for something; a special moment with a special person, a beautiful sunset, the arrival of good news…Happiness is the warm glow of gratitude, and the happiest people in the world are those who have learned to celebrate the ordinary.“Lasting happiness starts with one question… what can I celebrate?”– Michael Beckwith“Celebrate, celebrate, celebrate!”– Dewey Jenkins“Happiness, not in another place but this place… not for another hour, but this hour.”– Walt WhitmanAre you old enough to remember Zig Ziglar? He was constantly talking about maintaining “an attitude of gratitude.”Take a moment to write down 5 things for which you are grateful. Then take another moment to realize that each of those things makes you happy.Right now I’m celebrating Aaron and Kelsie Kleinmeyer of Kansas City. They are in the process of building America’s second free wedding chapel, and the remarkable part is that they are doing it on their salaries as schoolteachers!Did you read what Manley Miller wrote in the rabbit hole last week about passion?“We use the English word ‘passion’ to describe a love for something, or a deep inner drive. ‘I have a passion for cooking,’ or ‘I have a passion for fishing,’ or ‘I have a passion for football,’ or whatever. But passion is a word borrowed from the French ‘pation.’ The root of the word is ‘patior,’ a Latin word that means ‘a willingness to suffer.'”“Feelings follow actions. When you commit to something, what you’re saying is, ‘Even if this gets hard, I’m going to keep on doing it. Even if this causes me pain and suffering, I’m going to keep on doing this.’ That’s why the last week of Jesus’s life is called the Passion Week. It’s not because everything was warm and fuzzy and lovey-dovey, but because it was a week of suffering. Jesus was fully committed to pay the price of reconciling us back to God. He decided in advance that our lives were worth his suffering.”1. Pleasure is easily purchased, but pleasure is not happiness.2. Happiness is the warm glow of gratitude.3. Passion is happiness taken to the next level.Aaron and Kelsie have a genuine passion about marriage. They are willing to sacrifice so that other couples can have a beautiful place to get married. Their little chapel on the prairie is a gift of love to thousands of couples they’ve never met.To receive with gratitude brings happiness.But to give with joy requires passion, the most intense happiness of all.Didn’t someone once say, “It is happier to give than to receive,” or something like that?Roy H. Williams

INDY BEAGLE’S DAY OFFA Story by Indy Beagle, Written in 3 ChaptersCHAPTER ONESpraytan and Boxwine arrived in a white Cadillac convertible fringed in blondes.Boxwine slid out the passenger door and reached for the nozzle while I was filling up my new Hudson pickup on the other side of the pump.I gave him a steady stare. “What have you done?”“We’re headed to the lake. Wanna come? You can bring all your little cartoon friends.”I glanced at the white Caddy. “Nice car. I noticed it on the lot at Baddley Brothers.”Boxwine showed me every tooth in his mouth. “Me and Spray are takin’ it for a test drive.”“Do the brothers know?”Boxwine looked at my Hudson. “Did that ol’ skinflint wizard really give you that truck for Christmas?”I nodded.“Is it real, or did he just conjure it?”“He’s not that kind of wizard.”“What kind is he?”“A Wizard of Ads.”“Hell. Advertising ain’t nothin’ but tellin’ lies with a smile.”“Boxwine, if that were true, you’d be the greatest ad-man on earth.”He placed his cap over his heart and said, “Ratdog, that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”I heard Floyd’s feet hit the pavement and then the Hudson door opened behind me.Great. A muppet and a hula girl were going to defend my honor.Aloha spoke first. “Hey girls!”The blonde sitting next to Spraytan asked, “Are you really a hula dancer?”Aloha went into hula mode and the Cadillac girls responded with admiration.“Hop out and I’ll show you how to do it!”The white Caddy rose up 5 inches when the 7 blondes jumped out.Floyd had already retuned his guitar to make it sound like a ukulele and the ballerinas, Bali and Ha’i, were flanking Aloha when the blondes arrived on our side of the gas pump. And then the light show began. Red and blue Christmas lights twinkled from the tops of 3 police cars as they slid to a stop on each side of the white convertible.Lieutenant Bascom waited until the dance was over before he pulled the trigger on his bullhorn. “Boxwine! Spraytan! You boys kiss the asphalt!”While the boys were lying on their bellies sniffing exhaust fumes and motor oil, waiting to get cuffed and scuffed, Floyd beamed his best muppet smile and said, “Bali, Ha’i, and Aloha are riding up front with Indy, but you’re welcome to hop in back with me.”Hudson pickups have better suspension than Cad convertibles. Loaded with 7 blondes and a muppet, my truck dipped only an inch and a half. I twisted the key and the exhaust pipe pitched a perfect C major, accompanied by the voice of Aloha, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven’t already done so, please stow your carry-on luggage underneath the seat in front of you or in an overhead bin. Please take your seat and fasten your seat belt. And also make sure your seat back and folding trays are in their full, upright position.”Floyd slapped the top of the cab with an open palm and shouted, “To the lake!” and was immediately echoed by ten females calling in unison, “To the lake!”As I pulled away, Floyd began singing an old Johnny Cash song, “I hear the train a coming, it’s rolling around the bend, and I ain’t seen the sunshine, since… I don’t know when…. I’m stuck in Folsom Prison, and time keeps dragging on.”We were halfway to the lake when I asked, “Where’s Alfie?”Aloha said, “When Floyd jumped out of the truck, Alfie jumped into the glove box.”Ha’i raised her hand and twittered, “And then I locked it.”I sighed and unlocked the glove box. Alfie was blushing all the way to the tips of his pointed ears.Raised in the harmony of Santa’s workshop, elves have no idea how to handle confrontation.– Indy Beagle

Reading the title of this essay, “What Would You Have Me Do?” might cause you to imagine me defending myself, saying in effect, “I had no choice.”But I want you to hear those words in an entirely different tone of voice.“What would you have me do?” is a quiet question that I often ask God when I am feeling conflicted or uncertain. I cannot not say I always feel him guiding my heart in answer to my question, but I can say that I always feel better for having asked.I have never “not believed” in God. In my private, inner world, faith is not a matter of logic or evidence. I never try to “prove” the existence of God, but if you will indulge me, I will share a pivotal, personal story of when I felt he answered my question, “What will you have me do?”My only intention is to encourage you. Like faith, encouragement is not logical. It is simply a warm light that can brighten a private, inner world.It was 1977. Pennie and I had been married less than a year and we were trying to figure out what to do with our lives. I was working for $3.35 an hour in a steel fabrication shop, cutting, welding, grinding, and pressure-testing gigantic heat exchangers to be fitted on oil wells. With hammers pounding on metal, grinders showering you with sparks, and the acrid smell of welding fumes burning your nose, a steel shop is the perfect place to develop your private, inner world.One morning I slipped into a bathroom stall at work, but not because I needed to go to the bathroom. I lowered the deck on the toilet, locked the door and sat down to talk to God. “What would you have me do? If you tell me, I’ll do it. And I know you can get a message through to me because you’re God, right? And one more thing. I know you hear me, and I know you’re not going to forget that I asked, so I don’t plan on bugging you about this. I trust you’ll tell me when you’re ready. Amen.”I stood up and unlocked the door just as the buzzer announced it was break time. Walking out into the 45,000 square foot work floor, I was scanning the tops of all the tool cabinets for my coffee cup. Having said everything that I needed to say to God, my only thought was to grab a cup of coffee.The thing that happened next is difficult to describe, but I’ll do my best.All at once, and very unexpectedly, I knew exactly what I was supposed to do, and it startled me. I didn’t see anything or hear anything, but my surprise was exactly as though I had looked across the floor and seen myself pull a message from a letter pouch and hold it out for someone to take.This knowledge, or awareness, or whatever you want to call it, was altogether different than anything I had ever experienced. Without seeing a sight or hearing a sound, I felt just as certain – and was every bit as surprised – as if I had seen a person and heard a voice.I walked over to the time clock, grabbed my timecard, clocked out, got in my car and drove to the Federal Building in downtown Tulsa where I presented myself to a weary woman sitting at a desk. “I’m here to become a postman,” I said, and then I told her the story I just told you.When I left, the woman was no longer looking weary. She was surprised, befuddled, and contemplative. I think she was struggling to decide whether I was delusional, or if it was remotely possible that what I was telling her might be true.I lived in a continual state of excitement for the next two days, but when I quieted my heart to continue my conversation with God in that private, inner world, I realized that I wasn’t supposed to work for the United States Postal Service, but that I was to deliver messages of a different sort.On my lunch break that day, I drove back to the Federal Building, found that same woman, and gave her the rest of the story. When I left, she looked even more surprised, befuddled, and contemplative than before.Next, I rented an announce-only answering machine from the telephone company, had an extra telephone line installed in our apartment, and began writing and recording a new message of encouragement each day, 7 days a week. I placed little classified ads in all the free newspapers that were distributed in little wire stands outside the convenience stores and laundromats.“Take a break in your day. DAYBREAK. 258-7700”No one knew who was recording these messages or why, but within a few months the little counter in the machine indicated I was getting more than 200 calls a day. And every time I heard that tape rewind, it would usually be less than a minute before the little red light indicated that another call was coming through. When I did the math and saw that a 3-minute message playing 200 times tied up the phone line for 10 hours each day, I realized a lot of people must be getting a busy signal. So I rented a second announce-only machine and installed a second phone line.At the end of two years, having written and recorded more than 700 different messages, I needed a part-time job to help pay for it all. So I took a job at a radio station

“In a bombing run over Kassel, Germany, Elmer Bendiner’s B-17 bomber was barraged by 20-millimeter shells which resulted in direct hits on their gas tanks. But none of the shells exploded. The next day, the maintenance chief found 11 shells inside the gas tanks, any one of which should have taken the plane down. When they opened the shells, all were empty, except one. In it was a hand-written note scrawled in the Czech language. Upon translation, they found it said, ‘This is all we can do for you now . . . Using Jewish slave labor is never a good idea.’”– Fall of the Fortresses, by Elmer BendinerA captive Czechoslovakian Jew sent a message in a bottle through an ocean of air, not knowing if it would ever be read.The first message in a bottle was tossed into the sea in 310 BC by Aristotle’s protegé, Theophrastus, hoping to determine if the Mediterranean Sea was formed by the inflowing Atlantic Ocean.In 1177 A.D. an exiled Japanese poet launched wooden planks on which he had engraved poems describing his predicament. His story is known today as The Tale of the Heike.In the 1500s, Queen Elizabeth created an official position of “Uncorker of Ocean Bottles” in the belief that some bottles might contain secrets from British spies.Edgar Allan Poe’s “MS. Found in a Bottle” (1833) and Charles Dickens’ “A Message from the Sea” (1860) taught us to “cast our bread upon the waters” and trust the wisdom of the waves.In the summer of 1977, NASA tossed a message in a bottle into the vast ocean of space. That bottle was Voyager 1, and it included a golden record with greetings from earth in 55 languages along with a collection of 117 sights and sounds including whale calls and the music of Chuck Berry. That record was also engraved with pictorials showing how to operate it, along with the position of our sun relative to nearby pulsars. We did this because we wanted extraterrestrials to know which solar system our bottle was thrown from.After zipping through space for more than 43 years Voyager is only 23 billion kilometers away. It will take 17,720 years for it to travel one light year, less than one quarter of the way to Alpha Centauri.Seven billion of us are crammed on a tiny speck of dust circling an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through a limitless vacuum at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet.Have you ever considered that our planet, itself, is a spherical bottle and we are the message it contains?If Shakespeare was right, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” and if the writer of Hebrews was right, “We are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,” then you and I are backstage right now while others occupy the spotlight. I have been waiting for this moment so that I could speak to you alone, without the others hearing.I believe you underestimateyour talent, your experience, your value.You make a bigger difference than you realize,and you matter much more than you know.You will be amazed when you understandall that you have accomplished!We both know it is easy to love people we do not likebut God really does like you!I see him cheering for youfrom the sidelines.And I like you, too.I tossed this note into the worldwide ocean of ones and zeros and whispered for it to find you.And here you are!Merry Christmas.– Your Secret Admirer

Do you have a deep-seated belief, but you’re not sure where it came from?I have passionately rejected the idea of goalsetting for more than 50 years, but I’ve never understood why I felt so deeply about it until just a moment ago.Welcome to Sunday morning, November 29, 2020.The word “goal” has a certain wishfulness attached to it.“Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might…”I do not believe in goals.I believe in responsibilities.I believe in decisions.Which of the following is the more effective self-talk?A: My sales goal this month is $200,000.B: It is my responsibility to sell $200,000 this month. And I have decided to do it.Goals do not change behavior.Decisions change behavior.(Yes, a goal can occasionally lead to a decision.When that happens, focus on the decision, not the goal.)Desire is rooted in the ego.Identity is rooted in the heart.Goals are produced by desire, what you want.Decisions are produced by identity, who you are.If your goal changes who you are, then you have made a decision to be a different person.If what you want is more important than who you are, then you are an addict.Alcoholics Anonymous is in the business of long-term behavior change. I find it interesting that they do not teach their members to focus on the goal of not drinking. They teach them to make a decision not to drink… one day at a time.They emphasize the decision, not the goal.Goals have attraction.Decisions have consequences.A goal aims your mind at a desire.But your mind is easily distracted by desire after desire after desire.When you make a decision, you pull the trigger and ride that bullet.Decisions have consequences.The Bible has an interesting passage in the second chapter of the book of James:“Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If you say to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but do nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?”Few things reveal a person’s identity like the tip they leave on a table.If you leave a specific percentage, you are disciplined.If your tip is determined by the quality of the service, you are a judge.If you tip lavishly even when the service is bad, you are an encouragement.Regardless of which of these people you have been in the past, you are only a decision away from being a different person in the future.Roy H. Williams

The partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in 1979 happened because of a burned-out lightbulb.When a particular safety system was malfunctioning, that bulb would light up and the technician would alertly take care of the problem.No one anticipated a burned-out bulb.Their mistake, according to my partner Cedric, is that they were monitoring for failure instead of monitoring for the absence of goodness. “That bulb should have been bright when things were good and go out when something was wrong.”A system can malfunction in countless ways but there is only one way it can function perfectly.You need to expect goodness and monitor for the absence of it.Did I tell you that Cedric is a programmer, a data scientist, and a genius?One of Cedric’s most important inventions is a system that monitors the vast array of data-crunching computers used by an important hedge fund. “The old system monitored for failure,” says Cedric, “but certain functions happen only intermittently, so a problem could exist for hours before it was discovered.”Cedric’s new programming checks every element of the system once per minute, round the clock, to confirm that everything is working correctly. But his system isn’t looking for a problem. It is looking for perfection and notifies Cedric when it fails to find it.Cedric says, “One mother tells her son to call when he gets to his friend’s house (and then takes action if she doesn’t get a call by the expected time). Compare this to the mother who says, ‘Call if you get into trouble,’ never realizing that it could be hours after a car accident before she would know that something was wrong.”The first parent is monitoring for the absence of goodness.The second parent is monitoring for failure.The lucky hedge fund with the perfectly monitored system owes a debt of gratitude to Captain Jack Sparrow.Jack Sparrow peed on the comforter in Cedric’s bedroom every time his automated kitty litter box was full, so Cedric wrote software that checked for failure once per minute.Cedric lost 3 comforters before he realized the automated kitty litter box could malfunction in more ways than he could predict, so he wrote new software to “monitor for the absence of goodness” rather than monitor for failure.Problem solved.An automated kitty litter box is a complex system.The data-crunching computers of a hedge fund are a complex system.Employees are a complex system.Are you monitoring for mistakes to criticize, or for performance to praise?If you want smooth transactions, happy customers, and big profits to be ordinary, you must cheerfully expect these things and then come to the rescue only when they fail to happen.Employers who have strong corporate cultures and happy, long-term employees are the ones who have learned to celebrate the ordinary and praise their people when things are going well.If that is not how you have operated in the past, you are only a decision away from being that employer in the future. Just ask my friend, Paul Sherman. Indy tells me you can find him in the rabbit hole.Roy H. Williams