Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

The average person is afraid of criticism.But the person who has no fear of criticism is more likely to succeed. This lack of fear is what keeps them from being average.The average business owner is afraid their ads will be criticized.Do you want to kill a great ad? Show it to the people you trust.In the words of my partner Mick Torbay,“You need to understand something: the committee is not evil. The committee doesn’t want you to fail. The committee has nothing but good intentions. But the committee can’t innovate. More than anything, the committee wants to look good to the rest of the committee. The committee is afraid of looking stupid… The committee can only spot problems, downsides, possible pitfalls… So don’t be surprised that when you present a really, really great idea to a committee, the only thing you’re gonna get is a reason why that idea won’t work, one reason for every member of the committee. The committee will always pull you to the center. The committee will help you avoid risk, but risk and reward are two sides of the same coin. If you avoid risk, then huge success is now out of the question. Are you okay with that?”Most ads aren’t written to persuade; they’re written not to offend.But even a weak ad will cause your name to be the first that springs into the public mind if you give it enough repetition. This assumes, of course, that your competitors have equally bland ads.And frankly, that’s a pretty safe bet.But repetition costs money.Do you want to differentiate yourself with memorable, attention-getting ads that will accelerate your repetition by unleashing the persuasive powers of wit, humor, identity, and audacity?The first step is to find your corporate mission statement, take it outside into the sunlight, lift it high up into the sky, then lay it down on the sidewalk and set it on fire. When it is finished burning, sweep the powdery ashes into the grass. Paper ash is an excellent source of lime and potassium. This will raise the pH and help neutralize the acid in your soil.You have now put your mission statement to the best possible use.Just out of curiosity, why did you think you needed to write down all those generic things you believe in? Those things you included – the things you stand for – rarely differentiate you since most of us include, believe in, and stand for the same things: Individuality, Informality, Opportunity, Competition, Efficiency, Progress, and Helping Others. It is what you exclude, or stand against, that defines you. To gain attention and win a following, you must stand against the omission of one of these seven things:Individuality: individual initiative, individual expression, independence and privacyInformality: equality, directness, and an open societyOpportunity: ability to change yourself, your business, your country, and your worldCompetition: opportunity to win recognition, status, and material rewardsEfficiency: reduce wasted time, effort, and resourcesProgress: social, economic, and physical mobilityHelping Others: because we’re all in this togetherYou may have used different words, but those are the ideas contained in every mission statement, the ultimate expression of committee-think.You don’t become famous by championing everything.You become famous by championing one thing.The client who grew the most in 2018 stands against inefficiency. His company eliminates stress and frustration by responding instantly when customers call and then doing the job perfectly, making sure the customer’s time and money are never wasted. His local company grew by tens of millions of dollars last year. Most people love his ads but he still gets plenty of criticism.A client whose volume jumped almost as high stands against formality. His frank, unvarnished style of communication makes customers trust his people and his company. His ads are beloved by most of the population but he still gets savaged in social media.Does the client who stands against inefficiency also have ads that are frank, informal, and unvarnished? Of course he does, but it is his stand against wasting the customer’s time that sets his company apart.Does the client who stands against formality also respond quickly and do the job right? Yes, but it is his stand against distance in the relationship between himself and the customer that makes his company special.What is the principal enemy your organization fights against?When I say “principal enemy,” I’m not talking about your competitors. I’m talking about that thing you try so very hard to eliminate for your customer.What is it?Roy H. Williams

Ad writers hear it every day, whistling toward them like a bullet: “We need more traffic, that’s what we need; more sales opportunities!”I spent the early part of my radio career stepping up to the plate and knocking that fastball out of the park. If your back was against the wall, I was the man to call.I was like Coca-Cola, baby, I was everywhere.It was the early 1980s.My employer required me to wear a tie, so I hung one around my neck like a scarf. And to underscore my scruffy renegade look, I refused to tie my shoes. Everywhere I went, people would tell me, “Your shoes are untied,” and I would reply with a smile, “Yeah, I know.”I looked like a young drug dealer, and in a way, I was.I sold instant gratification advertising. “You want a crowd? Crowds cost money. How big a crowd do you want?”It’s actually pretty easy to attract a worked-up crowd. Do you want to know how to do it?These are the ingredients you must have at handTo Make Big Things Happen Fast:1. Urgency – There has to be a shortage of time or a shortage of quantity. The rule to remember is this: “No shortage, no urgency.” The best shortage is to have a limited number of a highly desirable item at a remarkable price. This is the time-tested formula that causes people to camp out on the sidewalk in front of Wal-Mart before the doors open the day after Thanksgiving.If the number of 82-inch TVs available for $999 is too few, people will say, “I don’t have a chance,” and stay home. But if the number is too many, no one will get excited because “there’s enough to go around.” So you definitely need to name a number. “While supplies last,” is a line that only a beginner would write. The customer hears that and thinks, “They only had one of those and they sold it before this radio ad ever hit the airwaves.” Result: no response.2. Credible Desperation – If you scream, “400 Toyotas MUST be sold this weekend! No reasonable offer refused!” you’ve got no credibility. The listener thinks, “WHY do you have to sell 400? What happens if you don’t? And what you consider to be ‘a reasonable offer’ is probably a lot more money than what I consider to be a reasonable offer, so I’m going to pass. I’ve got better things to do this weekend than haggle with a jackass car dealer.”Desperation loses credibility as time passes. That’s why these ads work less and less well the longer you use them.“Lost our lease, everything must go,” is another line that only a beginner would write. Specifics are more believable than generalities.Do you want to make your desperation credible? Do you want stuff to fly out the door? Say, “We’ve been thrown out! Our landlord rented our space to someone else and a dump truck will be here at 8AM on Monday, January 7th to haul away everything we leave behind….”3. Specifics – “…so we’re liquidating the entire inventory, every item in every department. We’re selling the showcases, the light fixtures and the cash registers. And if you can figure out how to get the wallpaper off the wall, we’ll sell you that, too. Call your friend with a pickup truck because you’re going to leave here with an ecstatic truckload of once-in-a-lifetime bargains. An $800 kayak is $179. Perfume that sells for $200 a bottle is yours for just $20. Diamond pendants worth a thousand dollars are just $129. A dozen doughnuts, made fresh while you wait, are just ONE DOLLAR and you can eat them while you’re shopping. So cancel what you had planned and get here as quick as you can.”4. Repetition – Nothing says “urgent news” like an ad that runs twice an hour for 72 hours. If a radio station will let you air only one ad an hour, then make sure it’s a 60-second ad. If a station has a policy that allows you to air only 3 ads every 4 hours, then buy a different station. Whatever you do, don’t air your supposedly “BIG” announcement with too little repetition. Did you read the part where I tried to make it clear that one spot per hour, 24 hours a day, was a MINIMUM schedule? I meant that.Month after month I sold urgent, high-impact schedules to business owners who licked their lips as they shook my hand.It wasn’t long before I was visiting twitching, crowd-addicted business owners who looked at me with hard, glittering eyes and a facial tic as they said, “Just like last time, but even better, okay? Even better. That’s what I want. Do whatever you have to do, just bring the people in.”High-frequency radio schedules and high-impact ad copy are the opioids of advertising. They’ll take away your pain, but when you come down from your high, you’re just a dark-eyed addict in an empty room. So you call the guy with the untied shoes again. But each schedule works a little less well than the one before until, finally, you have destroyed the health of your business.Do I still write high-impact ads and air them round-the-clock? Of course I do. Opioids exist for a reason. When the pain of an unforeseen business catastrop

Few people remember it because it was too long ago.April, 1962– America tries to overthrow Fidel Castro of Cuba in the “Bay of Pigs” invasion.July, 1962– Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev reaches a secret agreement with Fidel Castro to place Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter any future invasion attempt.October 14, 1962– An American U–2 spy plane takes photos of Soviet nuclear missiles being assembled in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida.October 22, 1962– American President John F. Kennedy appears on national television announcing a military quarantine of Cuba, warning the American people of the potential global consequences. “It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”October 24, 1962– Nikita Khrushchev says the U.S. blockade is an “act of aggression” and Soviet ships bound for Cuba are ordered to proceed.U.S. forces are placed at DEFCON 2, meaning war involving the Strategic Air Command is imminent.October 26, 1962 – John F. Kennedy learns that work on the missile bases is proceeding without interruption and that an American U-2 spy plane has been shot down over Cuba, and its pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson, is dead.The world totters on the brink of nuclear war between superpowers.Americans everywhere stop in their tracks and look to the skies.And then two of them wrote a song:Said the night wind to the little lamb,“Do you see what I see,Way up in the sky, little lamb?Do you see what I see?A star, a star, dancing in the nightWith a tail as big as a kite.With a tail as big as a kite.”This was the image of a nuclear missile followed by its fiery tail in the night. But it was also the image of a star poised above Bethlehem, shining its light on a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes.Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy,“Do you hear what I hearRinging through the sky, shepherd boy?Do you hear what I hear?A song, a song, high above the treesWith a voice as big as the sea.With a voice as big as the sea.”Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king,“Do you know what I knowIn your palace warm, mighty king?Do you know what I know?A Child, a Child shivers in the cold,Let us bring Him silver and gold.Let us bring Him silver and gold.”Said the king to the people everywhere,“Listen to what I say,Pray for peace, people everywhere!Listen to what I say,The Child, the Child, sleeping in the night,He will bring us goodness and light.He will bring us goodness and light.”During the darkest hours of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a French veteran of WWII living in New York, Noël Regney, wrote the lyrics and his Brooklyn wife, Gloria, wrote the music.And for as long as they lived, neither of them could sing it all the way through without crying.Merry Christmas,Roy and Pennie Williams

Throughout my career as an ad writer, I’ve noticed that the easiest companies to skyrocket are those with a healthy and happy corporate culture.You know it’s a great company when everyone wants to get a job there and no one wants to leave.Let’s talk about culture.Definition One:In biology, a culture is a cultivation (usually bacteria, germs, or tissue cells) in an environment of nutrients.Culture: a cultivation in an environment of nutrients.Do you want to create a culture?Step One: EnvironmentStep Two: NutrientsDefinition Two:When we describe a person as “cultured,” we’re saying they are conversant in the arts.In the words of Phil Johnson, “You acquire an education by study, hard work and persistence. But you absorb culture by viewing great art, listening to great music and reading great books.”The arts are nutrients for the heart. To become “cultured” in the arts is to know how to make peoplefeel differently.Definition Three:When our friend Susan Ryan came home after 7 years of doing business in a third-world country, she said, “It’s hard to develop a strategy that will overcome hundreds of years of enculturation. Culture eats strategy for lunch.”A strategy is made of goals, objectives, and activities.A culture is made of values, practices, and behaviors.Princess Pennie says strategy is today’s “do list”and culture is all the yesterdays that made you who you are.Definition Four:The culture of a business is expressed as esprit de corp: the spirit of the group.Culture: a cultivation in an environment of nutrients.Business Culture: a cultivation of practices and behaviors in an environment of values.If you don’t have strong values, you won’t have a strong culture.If you don’t reward and celebrate employee practices and behaviors, you’re just mouthing platitudes and clichés. (Commonly known as mission statements and corporate policies.)Anyone can copy your strategy, but no one can copy your culture.Branding is nothing more than corporate culture made known.Good advertising promises your customer a specific experience.It is then up to your people to deliver that experience.Shout it from the housetops.Roy H. Williams

I’m reading Hemingway’s novel, Death in the Afternoon, and I like it.It is a detailed explanation of bullfighting.Not a story about a bullfighter.Bullfighting.I have no interest in bullfighting. None.The book has no character arc because it has no characters. It has narrative, but no narrative arc. No plot, no moments of crisis, no heroism, no romance.It is essentially an instruction manual.Why do I find myself drawn to this book?Yesterday morning I said to Pennie, “Hemingway is teaching me some things I can’t quite put into words, but as soon as I can figure out how to explain them, I’ll tell you what they are.”She was moving laundry from the washer to the dryer. “Read me a page that you liked.”“Page one hundred and twenty. Hemingway has been explaining how the bulls of Salamanca differ from the bulls of Andalucia when – out of nowhere – he inserts a literary device I’ve never seen in a book.”“What kind of literary device?”“He imagines a reader’s reaction to his book, then, speaking as that reader, he criticizes the author for not doing the thing that made him famous. Then, as the author, he accommodates this imaginary reader by inserting an imaginary conversation with an imaginary woman. It’s the same kind of multi-layered self-talk Robin Williams used to do.”“Read it to me.”But, you say, there is very little conversation in this book. Why isn’t there more dialogue? What we want in a book by this citizen is people talking; that is all he knows how to do and now he doesn’t do it. The fellow is no philosopher, no savant, an incompetent zoologist, he drinks too much and cannot punctuate readily and now he has stopped writing dialogue. Someone ought to put a stop to him. He is bull crazy.Citizen, perhaps you are right. Let us have a little dialogue.What do you ask, Madame? Is there anything you would like to know about the bulls?Yes, sir.What would you like to know? I’ll tell you absolutely anything.It is a difficult thing to ask, sir.Do not let that trouble you; talk to me frankly; as you would to your doctor, or to another woman. Do not be afraid to ask what you would really like to know.Sir, I would like to know about their love life.Madame, you have come to just the man.Pennie smiled and nodded her head. Then she handed me a gang of shirts on hangers and told me to put them in my closet.I hung the shirts on the doorknob of the laundry room and said, “It’s like that time I took Chris with me to Seattle.”“That time he began speaking to an imaginary television audience in that seafood restaurant?”“Yeah. He just put down his fork, stared at a point on the wall across the room and said, ‘Hello there, friends. It’s time, once again, for Workin’ It, with Chris Maddock.’ After a 5-minute opening monologue, he turned and began talking to a guest on his show; an invisible woman seated next to him. Never cracked a smile. Never broke character.”“How did the show end?”“He just picked up his fork and started eating again.”“What year was that?”“1999”“When did Hemingway write the bullfight book?”“1932”As she picked up a stack of folded towels, she said, “When we’re surprised by weird, unexpected twists and turns, it makes the journey more interesting.”I nodded my agreement and lifted the shirts off the doorknob.“Maybe you should do that in a Monday Morning Memo.”“Maybe I will.”Roy H. Williams

1967 – A little boy leaned on his elbows in front of a black-and-white TV in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, unaware that Walt Disney was dead.How could he be dead? I was watching him on TV.Looking right into my eyes, Walt told me about his purchase of 43 square miles of Central Florida, an area twice the size of the island of Manhattan, and his plan to build there an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT.)He was standing in a Hollywood film studio in front of a floor-to-ceiling map of his Florida project when he said,“Welcome to a little bit of Florida here in California. This is where the early planning is taking place for our so-called Disney World Project. Now, the purpose of this film is to bring you up to date about some of the plans for Disney World.”A little later, he said,“The sketches and plans you will see today are simply a starting point, our first overall thinking about Disney World. Everything in this room may change time and time again as we move ahead, but the basic philosophy of what we’re planning for Disney World is going to remain very much as it is right now…”That was the part I never forgot: Walt Disney knew his plan would evolve into something different than he imagined.Eighteen years ago Princess Pennie decided to buy some land and build a non-profit school for entrepreneurs, storytellers, and educators. We knew it would have a classroom tower with a library mezzanine and on-campus housing so that students wouldn’t have to sleep in hotel rooms.Everything else was an afterthought.Chapel Dulcinea was chosen by 1,111 brides in 2017, making it the most popular wedding chapel on earth. A free wedding chapel wasn’t part of the original plan, but if you’ve ever walked the campus at Wizard Academy, it’s hard to imagine it not being there.A certification course for the training of whiskey sommeliers (storytellers) wasn’t part of the original plan, either. Nor was The Crowded Barrel whiskey distillery.* And we could never have dreamed that Wizard Academy’s YouTube channel, The Whiskey Vault, would become the #1 whiskey-review channel on earth.We couldn’t have imagined it because streaming, online video did not exist in the year 2000.And now the Rocinante gym.A couple of years ago, Brian Clapp donated state-of-the art gym equipment but it never got used because it was housed in a part of the campus where students never go. The solution? Build a sleek, cantilevered gym covered in glittering silver metal with an 18-foot glass wall looking at Chapel Dulcinea, and put it next to the sidewalk between Spence Manor and Engelbrecht House.And of course we’ll be starting The House of the Lost Boys – your third student mansion – as soon as the gym is complete, probably in about 60 days.But that’s not the big news. No, not by a long shot.In late spring, 2019, the American Small Business Institute will be launching an important new certification course, The Ad Writer’s Masters Class, a one-year online course – 26 modules, followed by 26 essay assignments – followed by a three-day, face-to-face working examination by a board of Master Ad Writers.This is a really big deal.And very expensive. (12k, minus alumni discount)When you finally pass your board exams – and you can try as often as you want – you will be certified and admitted into The Ad Writers Guild, with appropriate pomp and fanfare and physical glitteralia.Because after all, the American Small Business Institute is an extension of that wonderful dreamscape called Wizard Academy.Indy says you should visit him in the rabbit hole. You know how to get in, right?Roy H. WilliamsPS – If you want to be notified when the Ad Writer’s Masters Class is about to be officially announced, email [email protected]* The Crowded Barrel whiskey distillery isn’t technically located on Wizard Academy property. It was built with private funding on property owned by the academy’s very friendly next-door-neighbors, Roy and Pennie Williams.

Two brothers were locked out of their home, so they climbed onto the roof and entered the house through the chimney. When they crawled out of the fireplace, one of them had soot on his face, the other did not. The clean-faced brother immediately went into the bathroom and washed his face. The brother with soot on his face did not. Why?We are confused by the actions of the brothers until we put ourselves in their shoes and see the world through their eyes.The clean-faced brother looked at the sooty-faced brother and assumed they were both in the same condition, so he went and washed his face. Likewise, the sooty-faced brother did not know he needed to wash, because he was looking at the brother whose face was clean.We assume that we are like other people, and that they are like us.This is the assumption that misinformed the brothers.This is the assumption that misinforms the salesperson.Do you put yourself into the shoes of each customer and see the world through their eyes, or do you assume that they are like you?Do you unconsciously assume that your customer has your financial limitations? Do you secretly believe that they should do what you would do?These are the reasons you struggle as a salesperson.You believe you are being empathetic, but you are not.You aren’t putting yourself into their shoes; you’re putting them into yours.Roy H. Williams

Indy Beagle posted a T-shirt in the rabbit hole that said, “If life gives you melons, you might be dyslexic.” Princess Pennie laughed when she read it.If that T-shirt had said, “If life gives you oranges, you might be dyslexic,” would she – or anyone else – have laughed?Pleasant surprise is the foundation of delight.Confusion is the foundation of frustration.When something unexpected happens, but it makes sense, it is surprising.When something unexpected happens and it makes no sense, it is confusing.To get a click online is to get attention.But to hold that attention requires engagement.Are you satisfied with getting a click, or would you also like to make the sale?People who are engaged are looking for closure. They are following a mystery that needs to be solved.Headlines and subject lines that create a mystery are more effective than those that solve one.No mystery, no click.No continuing mystery, no engagement.The key to holding attention is to introduce a new mystery just as you solve the previous one. This works online exactly as it works in literature, mass media, and entertainment.The quicker your sequences of mystery and resolution, the more likely you are to hold the attention of your audience. This is what separates good stand-up comics from people who take too long to tell a joke.Consider the mysteries implied by these famous opening lines:Call me Ishmael. – Moby DickIt was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. — 1984This is the saddest story I have ever heard. — The Good SoldierIt was a wrong number that started it. — City of GlassI am an invisible man. —Invisible Man124 was spiteful. — BelovedIn a sense, I am Jacob Horner. — The End of the RoadThey shoot the white girl first. — ParadiseI write this sitting in the kitchen sink. — I Capture the CastleWhen your subject lines harbor mysteries, you’ll see your open rate rise like the sun on Easter morning. And if you solve that mystery just as you introduce a second one, you will have achieved engagement.Novelists and playwrights have known this for hundreds of years.Screenwriters and comedians have known it for decades.I’m merely suggesting that you might experiment with it in your ads.Who knows? It might work for ad writers, too.Roy H. Williams

Day after day, business owners tell ad writers, “We just need more sales opportunities. It’s a numbers game. If you double our traffic, we’ll double our sales. Now show me what you can do.”These business owners don’t understand that today’s close rate dictates tomorrow’s sales opportunities.Some businesses will run customers off faster than a good ad writer can bring them in. But still they will tell that ad writer, “We just need more sales opportunities. Double our traffic and we’ll double our sales.”What that company really needs, of course, is to increase their close rate. And the secret to increasing your close rate is to align the personality of your sales process with the personality of your advertising.But that will never happen as long as your sales manager remains untethered from your ad writer.It’s easier to grow a company that closes 6 out of 10 sales opportunities than it is to grow a company that closes only 2 out of 10. Straightforward math would tell you that it should be only 3 times easier, but then you’d be forgetting about the exponential impact of customer referrals.There are exceptions, of course. A company with a truly extraordinary product can utterly botch their sales training and customer service and still do just fine. This is particularly true in technology and in restaurants.But let’s talk about that disconnect between your sales manager and your ad writer.This is a blind spot shared by the majority of American companies.Think of those people in your company who respond to customer inquiries as your first responders. These first responders include the people who answer telephones and who respond to emails and to live chat inquiries on your website. And then, of course, there are your service people and your salespeople.Your first responders are continuing a conversation that began with your advertising. And your customer has clear expectations about who they expect your people to be and how they expect your people to act.When your first responders speak and act differently than your customer expected, that customer feels ambushed and betrayed. Remove this disconnection by being the company your customer believes you to be, and you’ll see your close rate climb faster than a happy squirrel harvesting acorns in an oak tree.Strong ad campaigns communicate a distinctly memorable corporate “personality” that distinguishes a company from its competitors. Rippling that attractive personality through your advertising is especially important when the public perceives your products and services to be essentially the same as those of your competitors.Win the heart and the mind will follow. The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.A good ad writer will cause the public to like you.Now all you have to do is be the company the public liked.And now you know the most important truth of advertising.Your ads don’t communicate a distinctly memorable personality?Then you don’t have a strong ad campaign.You don’t have a high close rate?Then you don’t have alignment between the expectation of your customers and the performance of your first responders.Are your first responders using the signature phrases that made your ads famous? Do they embody the corporate personality communicated in those ads?Or is your sales process independent from your advertising?If you want to talk more about it, Indy Beagle has a lot to share with you in the rabbit hole.Roy H. Williams

Is your bandwidth keeping you from fulfilling your purpose?Do you have too much to do and too little time?Your bandwidth is limited by:1. the number of hours in a day.2. your physical stamina and capacity.3. your mental and emotional limits as a human being.4. your inability to juggle the number of desires, needs, demands, and emergencies hurtling toward you.No matter how hard you try to overcome these limits, they are there, they are real, and they will remain.Chances are, you’ve been at the limits of your bandwidth for quite some time.Bandwidth is easy to explain, but purpose is hard to explain because it can come from multiple sources, be evaluated from multiple perspectives, and be known by many names.1. Is your purpose the achievement of your goals, the fulfillment of your vision, the crossing of that last item off your bucket list?2. Is your purpose dictated to you by your circumstances? It is to fulfill your duties as a son or daughter, husband or wife, father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, or as a loyal friend or trusted employee?3. Is your purpose chosen for you by something or someone bigger than yourself? Destiny, the universe, or God?I have no argument with any of these beliefs.Here’s my concern: I am subject to the tyranny of the “merely urgent” every day, so I rarely stop to ask myself, “What would be the consequences if I chose to ignore this?”I find myself putting off the truly important, day after day, to take care of an endless list of small-but-urgent obligations.Is it just me, or are you doing this also?I’m not asking for your help or advice.And I’m certainly not telling you how to live your life.I’m just sharing a personal observation:Urgent things are rarely important.Important things are rarely urgent.And learning to tell one from the otheris the key to a happier, healthier, more productive life.If you and I were to say yes to one big thing each day, and say no to all the little things, how much more might we accomplish?Roy H. Williams

Ten days ago, at the annual meeting of the most innovative and successful small business owners in America,* I was handed a series of questions to answer during the problem-solving session. Most of the questions had to do with recurrent frustrations in business.When I saw the group excitedly taking notes, I was a little bit surprised. Then it hit me, “I’m a lot older than most of these people, so they haven’t learned these things yet.”If they were glad to hear those solutions, maybe you will be, too.Here are a few of the things I told them:Your work doesn’t always speak for itself.Explain what you did and why you did it. Talk about a couple of ideas you considered, but rejected, and explain why you rejected those solutions. Only then will your client understand the thought and planning and effort you put into what you are delivering to them.You have maximum credibility when you put the sale at risk.Agreements established before money changes hands are the agreements that will forever guide the relationship. The time to explain what will not be included is when the sale hasn’t yet been made. Clearly and memorably emphasize anything you need your customer to remember in the future. To gloss over a possible disappointment during your presentation – or to bury it in the fine print – is to deceive your customer and poison their future trust in you. So say the difficult thing up-front. Don’t wait until later.When your customer rejects the solution you have prepared, don’t argue with them, even when they are clearly wrong.Just do the extra work. Only after they have approved your second solution will you have the credibility to convince them not to use it. To debate with them earlier will only make it look like you’re trying to avoid doing the extra work. But don’t be surprised if your second solution is every bit as good as your first. When that happens, just go with the second solution. Remember: it’s not about “winning.” It’s about making your customer happy.Never be afraid to charge more than anyone else in your category.And never be afraid to pay the highest price, either. The only company that can fund a customer’s hoped-for experience is the company with a fat profit margin. The services you get for half-price aren’t the same services you get for full price.It’s harder to get attention in larger cities because there is so much more happening.Ad campaigns take longer to get established in large cities due to the customer distraction caused by marketplace noise. The upside of large cities, however, is that the market potential is so much higher. Businesses in smaller towns often take off quicker, only to later face a sharply limited market potential due to the smaller population.Growing a local business from 2 or 3 percent of the market potential to 20 percent of the market potential is easier (and more fun) than lifting it the next 5 points, (from 20% to 25%.)The reason for this is because you will have picked all the low-hanging fruit by the time you are making 20 percent of all the sales in your category. In other words, you’ll be selling everyone who likes to buy the way you like to sell. Growing the 8 points between 25 and 33 percent of market potential will likely require you to make some changes you have long been reluctant to make. And growing a business beyond 33 percent of market potential is virtually impossible. The only exception to this is when the category has a shortage of committed competitors.Here are a few different ways to calculate market potential for any business:(Try to do it three different ways and see if the numbers agree. In my experience, they usually fall within a 10 percent window of variation. The two most reliable numbers are (1) the educated guesses of the sales volumes of each client in the category, and (2.) the NAICS totals, which are based on taxation data.)List every competitor in your category and attach to their name your best guess regarding their sales volume. Total these, and be sure to include your own volume. This is your market potential.Extract the total U.S. sales for your category from the NAICS data at www.census.gov. Divide this number by the population of the U.S. to get a per-capita average. Multiply that average times the population of your trade area. This is your market potential. NAICS data is clunky and hard to isolate, but it’s there and it’s reliable. Just keep digging.Most trade magazines will publish the annual U.S. volume for the category they cover. Divide this number by the population of the U.S. to get a per-capita average. Multiply that average times the population of your trade area. This is your market potential.Ask Google for the national and/or state sales per-capita in your category. Calculate a per-capita average, then multiply that average times the population of your trade area. This is your market potential.NOTE: The weakness of methods 2 throug

Responsibility limits your Freedom,and freedom is a good thing.So is responsibility wrong and evil?Sigh.The only hard choice in lifeis the choice between two good things.Justice and Mercyare at opposite endsof a teeter-totter.Honesty and Loyaltywrestle in your heart,do they not?Opportunity and Securityare inversely proportionate.One will decreaseas the other increases.These are a few of the examples that spring to mind when we read the words of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Niels Bohr: “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”Keep in mind that Niels was a physicist, not a philosopher.Jonathan Haidt shines some light on this subject in his book, The Righteous Mind, citing a wealth of research that indicates how our beliefs come primarily from our intuitions, with rational thought coming afterward, to justify our initial beliefs.That’s an uncomfortable thought, I agree.But does that make it wrong?Fifteen years before Knopf Doubleday published The Righteous Mind, Bard Press published The Wizard of Ads. On its frontispiece you will find The Seven Laws of the Advertising Universe.The third law is this:“Intellect and Emotion are partners who do not speakthe same language. The intellect finds logic to justifywhat the emotions have decided. Win the heartsof the people, their minds will follow”I was able to write those words with confidence because Dr. Roger Sperry won the Nobel Prize in 1981 for his documentation of brain lateralization, which says in effect that we don’t have a single brain divided into two halves so much as we have two separate, competing brains.Our left hemisphere is logical, rational, sequential, deductive reasoning.It also contains the language functions.Our right hemisphere recognizes patterns and is intuitive. These can be patterns of behavior, patterns in history, or patterns in auditory or visual phenomena. But our right hemispheres don’t know right from wrong, true from false, or fact from fiction. That’s the left brain’s job.Speaking of the brain, Dr. Sperry said, “Each hemisphere of the brain is indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and . . . both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel.”So we have an uptight, suspicious, legalistic left brain, and a free-wheeling, ready-to-party, intuitive and mystical right brain that doesn’t require proof or evidence. It is always willing to believe.Was evolution the origin of our species,with our brains evolving over billions of years,or did God simply create us this way?In any event, you can be sure that we haveopposing brain hemispheres for a reason.I wonder what it is.Roy H. Williams

“Facts tell, stories sell,” is a principle known to every top-tier ad writer.Stories change people while statistics give them something to argue about.People remember stories long after bullet-points are forgotten.Tom Robbins said, “I mean we are all, as human beings, caught up in a web of narration, this great narrative web, and we have always defined ourselves, human beings, through narration, through stories.”In his final speech to broadcasters on March 8, 2003, Paul Harvey said,“And should you visit my skyscraper offices in Chicago – and you’re always welcome – your attention will focus first on a large portrait on the reception room wall. It’s a portrait of a young boy. His clothing dates itself to a generation past, the plus-fours are wretchedly wrinkled, the misshapen shoes are worn out. One of them is worn through. But the boy, leaning forward on one elbow, is listening enrapt to a 1930s-vintage cathedral-shaped, multi-dial radio. The boy does not resemble any person in particular, except to me. The artist is an Oklahoman named Jim Daly, whom I have never met, but with his painting he included this note. He said, ‘There is no way for me to express the pleasure I received from listening to the old radio programs. In my mind, those wonderful heroes were magnificent. No movie, no television program, not even real-life could have equated what my imagination could conjure up. Amazingly, all of those heroes’ he says, ‘looked a bit like me… And all of those heroes,’ he described, ‘looked a bit like me.'”The first American census was taken in 1790, fourteen years after the nation declared its independence from Britain; 3,893,635 persons were in that final count, which included 694,280 slaves. In other words, the total population of the United States was slightly smaller than today’s metropolitan Atlanta, slightly bigger than modern Detroit.1790 was just 228 years ago. Only 6 or 7 generations.I could say, “America became America because of the stories we told ourselves,” but that might lead you to believe that America has become what it will always be. But the new and different stories we are telling ourselves today are reshaping us, making us a different America.We become what we tell ourselves.“Those who tell the stories hold the power in society. Today television tells most of the stories to most of the people, most of the time.” – George Gerbner“Whether you read a newspaper, watch TV or follow the news online, only 14 percent of the stories you hear about were developed by journalists defining an issue and pursuing it. A staggering 86 percent of the stories were fed to broadcasters by official sources and press releases. In 1960 the PR agent-to-journalist ratio operating in the US was 0.75 to 1. Today the ratio is 5 to 1.” – John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney, The Death and Life of American Journalism Paul Harvey concluded his speech in 2003 by saying,“Isn’t it a shame that with noisy, distressing, depressing news hour after hour, day-in and day-out; by our emphasis on all of the bad things, crime and inflation and pollution and floods and fires and discord and discontent; by our persistent preoccupation with negatives, we tend to un-sell ourselves and our children on a way of life which in fact is the envy of the rest of the world. And that repetition is effective. I tell you, repetition is effective. Repetition is effective.”You and I speak a world into existence every day.And the kind of world we createDepends onlyOn the kinds of storiesWe tell.Roy H. Williams

Seek the teacher who is a mentor to apprentices. She will give you expert advice and examples, then evaluate your ability to do as she has taught. Her name is Wisdom and you should always listen to her voice.But Wisdom’s teacher allowed young Wisdom to follow any path she chose!Wisdom learned her lessons from Consequences, the greatest teacher of all.Wisdom can give you interesting examples because of all the fascinating things she learned from Consequences. You will know you are in the presence of Wisdom when you see her scars.Wisdom and Consequences are happy teachers who guide students through the adventures of life.A sad teacher repeats only what she’s been told, then grades you on how well you can repeat it back to her. She is a parrot, and she teaches other parrots.A smart person makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again.A wise person finds a smart person, and learns how to avoid that mistake altogether.A fool listens to a parrot, and believes what he is told.“But wait a minute, didn’t you say a wise person finds a smart person so they can learn how to avoid the mistake altogether?”“Yes, but the parrot is not a smart person. She never made the mistake and learned from it. She is just repeating what she’s been told.”“And why is that dangerous?”“When the experience of Consequences has been removed from the classroom, the majestic principles of Wisdom quickly degrade into small and silly rules.”The great fire-breathing dragonbecomes a tiny lizardwho lives in a little rulebook.Every bureaucrat was once a young parrot taught by a sad teacher.But was there ever a child who, late at night, lay under the covers and dreamed of someday becoming the enforcer of small and petty policies?No. But there are children who were unlucky enough to be protected from Consequences by a misguided someone who did not understand the value of scars.Roy H. Williams

Competition can be entertaining, but I do not consider it to be “play.”Is than un-American of me?Play, for me, can have no objective; no element of strategy or combat or debate.Writing for The New Yorker on Nov.14, 2011, John McPhee shares an anecdote about George Hartzog, a man who understood my kind of play, and Tony Buford, a man who did not.“It was Hartzog who took a set of plans that had been lying dormant for fifteen years and built the great arch of St. Louis. Those who know the story of the arch say that had it not been for Hartzog there would be no arch. Hartzog the ranger is a hero in St. Louis, but at this moment he is not a hero to Tony Buford. ‘God damn it, George, this river is a mess. There is no point fishing this God-damned river, George. The fishing here is no good.'”“Hartzog looks at Buford for a long moment, and the expression on his face indicates affectionate pity. He says, ‘Tony, fishing is always good.’ The essential difference between these friends is that Buford is an aggressive fisherman and Hartzog is a passive fisherman. Spread before Buford on the bow deck of his jon boat is an open, three-tiered tackle box that resembles the keyboard of a large theatre organ.”Likewise, John Ciardi understood the importance of true play, as does every great poet. Here is a portion of his essay, How Does a Poem Mean?Robert Frost knew precisely what the German critic Baumgarten meant when he spoke of the central impulse toward poetry – and toward all art – as the Spieltrieb, the play impulse.An excellent native example of the play impulse in poetry is the child clapping its hands in response to a Mother Goose rhyme. What does a child care for “meaning”? What on earth is the “meaning” of the following poem?High Diddle diddleThe cat and the fiddleThe cow jumped over the moon;The little dog laughedTo see such craftAnd the dish ran away with the spoon.“Preposterous,” says Mr. Gradgrind. But the child is wiser: he is busy having a good time with the poem. The poem pleases and involves him. He responds to it in an immediate muscular way. He recognizes its performance at once and wants to act with it.This is the first level of play, as rhythm is the first element of music. The child claps hands, has fun, and the play involves practically no thoughtful activity. Beyond this level of response, there begins the kind of play whose pleasure lies for the poet in overcoming meaningful and thoughtful (and ‘feelingful’) difficulties, and for the reader in identifying with the poet in that activity.My purpose today is to remind you of the delight to be had exploring ideas without purpose or plan or agenda.All you have to do is follow your curiosity. This can be done alone or with friends who understand the rules.Rules? Rules for play?Yes. Here they are. For an activity to be play, it must be:intrinsically motivating.If you play because you want to win, you’re not truly playing.freely chosen.If you play because you have to, you’re not playing.actively engaging.If you’re disinterested, you’re not playing.fun. You must derive pleasure from it.Some people would call such activities “wasting time.”But time cannot be wasted, it can only be spent.This is what time spent playing can buy:relaxation of the mind,restoration of optimism,rejuvenation of the soul.Are you up for it?If so, Indy Beagle and I have a proposal for you in today’s rabbit hole.To enter the rabbit hole, all you have to do is click the image of the person in the swing beneath the treehouse.I see adventurein your future.Roy H. Williams

The strangeness of our world is demonstrated by the things we take for granted.I bought a used book. The previous owner’s name was Mary Lou. I know this because she used the stub of her boarding pass as a book marker.A few years ago, Mary Lou took United Airlines flight 5409 from San Diego to Los Angeles on New Year’s Day. She sat in seat 10C.No big deal, right? You can read all that on the stub of the boarding pass.But then I also know that she’s 44 years old with short, blonde hair and bright blue eyes. I know the sound of her voice and the name of her 11-year-old son and her home address in Minneapolis. I can name each of the 8 companies that have employed her as an events coordinator. And I know that she is a very private person.It took me less than 5 minutes to learn these things and I was only mildly curious.All I had to do was ask the companion in my pocket. She knows everything.My companion even gives me directions when I’m driving. “Turn here. Get in the left lane to turn left at the next intersection. Your destination will be on the right.” She knows every nook and cranny of every city, town and village on earth.She showed me a photo of the house where Mary Lou lives with her husband and her son.The strangeness of our world is demonstrated by the things we take for granted.There is a multicolored dog who lives across the street, two houses down.He races me for about 100 yards every morning when I drive past his house. We both know the finish line. He doesn’t growl or bark or act like he’s protecting his territory, he just likes to see if he can outrun my pickup truck.Strangely, he doesn’t race with Pennie or with anyone else.Only me.And he doesn’t race with me when I’m driving Pennie’s car.I don’t know the dog’s name, so I asked the companion in my pocket.She doesn’t know, either.Roy H. Williams

The feminine ideal was different a hundred years ago. Less sex, more charm.It was her charm that attracted us to young Anastasia Romanov, the daughter of Czar Nicholas II of Russia. This is why we refused to believe it when she was murdered in 1918 following the Bolshevik Revolution. For the next 50 years we embraced every impostor who claimed to be her.Elegant, effortless charm remained a feminine ideal as recently as 50 years ago. It’s what attracted us to the movies of Audrey Hepburn.Anastasia and Audrey represent the Regal Queen, one of the four feminine archetypes of Carl Jung.But Anastasia and Audrey were bumped aside by the blonde bombshells of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, poster girls for the objectification of women. And I mean “poster girls” quite literally. Marilyn was the centerfold in the first-ever issue of Playboy magazine, with Jayne following in her footsteps 17 months later.Marilyn and Jayne represent the Erotic Lover, another of the four feminine archetypes.Just as the Regal Queen was in vogue 100 years ago, so was the impudent ingénue. America was riveted by the antics of Alice Roosevelt, the mischievous young daughter of Teddy. And when Alice exited the White House, we replaced her with young Shirley Temple, the impetuous embodiment of Little Orphan Annie.This young “court jester” persona of Alice and Shirley and Little Orphan Annie is a sub-type of the Wise Woman archetype,which is the feminine variation of the masculine Wizard or Magician. It continues to this day as an icon of female empowerment in characters such as Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, Bella Swan from Twilight, and Hermione Grainger from the Harry Potter series.Girl Power.I’ve saved the first of the female archetypes for last, however, because Mother Eve is the least appreciated and most misunderstood.I blame the translators of the 1611 King James Bible.We meet Eve in the second chapter of Genesis when God says, “It is not good for man to be alone. I will make him an ezer kenegdo.” The King James version translates this as, “a help meet for him,” while other translations say “helpmate” or “helper.” (In 1611, meet meant appropriate.)This mistranslation in 1611 caused Christians to believe that the proper role of women was to be the “assistant,” or servant, to their man.The Hebrew term ezer kenegdo is notoriously difficult to translate. In fact, it appears nowhere in the Bible except the second chapter of Genesis.But we know for certain that it doesn’t mean “helper.” A more accurate translation would be “lifesaver.”Let’s look at the two separate words that form ezer kenegdo.Ezer is always interpreted as “power” or “strength” or “rescue.”Throughout the Bible, it speaks only of God, especially when you desperately need him to come through for you.“There is no one like the God of Jeshurun, who rides on the heavens to be your ezer.” – Deut. 33:26“Blessed are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD? He is your shield and ezer and your glorious sword.’ – Deut. 33:29“I lift up my eyes to the hills-where does my ezer come from? My ezer comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.’ – Ps. 121:1-2“May the LORD answer you when you are in distress; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you. May he send you ezer.” – Ps. 20:1-2Kenegdo means “facing.” It can also mean “opposite.” Thus,“It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a power facing him.”“I will make him a strength opposite him.”“I will make him a rescuer that looks him in the face.”Each of these translations is vastly more accurate than “helpmate” or “helper”.Remember when Arwen saves Frodo in The Lord of the Rings?*Arwen is a princess, a beautiful elf maiden. She comes into the story in the nick of time to rescue Frodo just as the poisoned knife wound is about to claim him.ARWEN: He’s fading. He’s not going to last. We must get him to my father. I’ve been looking for you for two days. There are five wraiths behind you. Where the other four are, I do not know.ARAGORN: Stay with the hobbits. I’ll send horses for you.ARWEN: I’m the faster rider. I’ll take him.ARAGORN: The road is too dangerous.ARWEN: I do not fear them.ARAGORN: (relinquishing, he takes her hand.) Arwen, ride hard. Don’t look back.It is she, not the warrior Aragorn, who rides with glory and speed. She is Frodo’s only hope. She is the one entrusted with his life and with him, the future of all Middle Earth.She is his ezer kenegdo.The Mother Eve archetype corresponds to the masculine Warrior archetype.You didn’t see that coming, did you?Can you imagine how history might have unfolded differently if those tra

Do you have favorite books and movies?Are there songs you love and stories that captivate you?Is there art that speaks to your heart?Paintings and plays, movies and music, stories and sculptures: art is valuable to the degree that it triggers emotion. But it isn’t always the art, itself, that triggers the emotion. Sometimes the art is merely a point-of-contact with an idea – or an ideal – with which we identify.We’re attracted to art when itstands for something we believe in,shows us a reflection of our own values,gives us a glimpse of our own inner face.An icon symbolizes a thought or a feeling for which we do not have sufficient words.But when the symbolism of an icon becomes too obvious, we call it a cliché.We are attracted to mysterious icons.We are repelled by predictable clichés.“Mr. LeSage, sir, I’ve got a tender new script about a sensitive young subway guard that just stinks of courage and integrity. And I know, sir, that next to scripts that are Tender and Poignant, you love scripts that have Courage and Integrity. This one, sir, as I say, stinks of both. It’s full of melting-pot types. It’s sentimental. It’s violent in the right places. And just when the sensitive young subway guard’s problems are getting the best of him, destroying his faith in Mankind and the Little People, his nine-year-old niece comes home from school and gives him some nice, pat chauvinistic philosophy handed down to us through posterity and P.S. 564 all the way from Andrew Jackson’s backwoods wife. It can’t miss, sir! It’s down-to-earth, it’s simple, it’s untrue, and it’s familiar enough and trivial enough to be understood and loved by our greedy, nervous, illiterate sponsors.”– J. D. Salinger, from “Zooey,” published in The New Yorker in 1957According to W. H. Auden, “Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings.”And according to Rob Kapilow, sappy clichés are “clear thinking about clear feelings.”I share this with you today in the hope that you will be able to use the richness of archetypes and icons in your advertising without falling into the molasses of sappy cliché.When a person spends money, they tell you everything about themselves that matters.Our purchases remind us – and announce to the world around us – who we are. Our favorite brands communicate what we stand for, what we believe in. We direct our dollars in ways that reflect our values and offer a glimpse of our souls.Great ads create a lasting bond with customers through the artful use of archetype and icon.What? You’re convinced people just want the facts? The unadorned truth?It’s 1991. We see workers in a car factory as we hear the voice of Brian Keith,“A car is a car. It won’t make you handsome or prettier or younger. And if it improves your standing with the neighbors, then you live among snobs. A car is steel, electronics, rubber, plastic and glass. A machine. And in the end, may the best machine win… Subaru. What to drive.”In 1992, we see the next ad in that series:“Making a sports car, it seems mandatory to mention how fast it can go. Instead, why not mention the things you shouldn’t mention about a sports car: a strong weld, over 24 safety features, all-wheel drive, engineering that endures. Still, if it’s speed you want, we promise, with the Subaru SVX you’ll easily be able to go as fast as the law allows… Subaru. What to drive.”And then the campaign evolved into open mockery of people who identify with the cars they drive.Shot from a low angle, we look upward at a man who looks down on us. He says,MAN 1: A luxury car says a lot about its owner.WOMAN 1: Mine says I’m witty beyond belief.MAN 2: Mine says I’m more Europeanish.MAN 3: Mine says I’m the product of superior genes.WOMAN 2: I’m so successful I can go into debt.MAN 4: I’m much more handsomeMAN 5: cosmopolitanWOMAN 3: another pathetic sheep following the herdMAN 6: I’m irresistibleWOMAN 4: powerfulMAN 7: stylishMAN 8: sexyWOMAN 3: dynamic.NARRATOR: The Subaru SVX. All it says it that you bought a great car and you can still pay your mortgage.Although those “outside-the-box” ads won numerous awards, the financial result was disastrous.The ad agency was fired and the Subaru executives who approved those ads lost their jobs.In summary:1. We buy things with which we identify.2. Predictability is the essence of cliché.3. Cold logic fails to warm the heart.4. Win the heart with the skillful use of icons, and5. your customer will create their own logic to justify what their heart has already decided.Win the heart.Roy H. Williams

You walk out the door. A person raises a forefinger and says, “Quick question.”And then they tie you up for the next 30 minutes.Have you ever been ambushed this way?Quick questions don’t always have quick answers and you can’t give 30 minutes to every person who raises a forefinger, so the next time you’re ambushed, smile as you continue walking and say, “Walk with me.” The questioner will invariably fall into step beside you.If you stop walking, you’ve officially been “captured.”A walking person is obviously headed somewhere, so “Walk with me” indicates that your time to speak with them will be over when you get to where you’re headed. When you get there, shake their hand and say, “I’m glad we got to talk.” And then disappear.“Walk with me” is how to make sure that quick questions remain quick.But sometimes you need to give your full attention to what a person is saying.Tom Peters became the king of business authors in 1982 when he wrote In Search of Excellence, a book that sold 3 million copies in its first 4 years.Today, at 75 years old, Tom Peters says listening is “the bedrock of leadership excellence,” but characterizes himself as a bad listener and “a serial interrupter.” So to help him stay focused on the other person, he writes the word “LISTEN” on the palm of his hand before walking into meetings. He says, “The focus must be on what the other person is saying, not on formulating your response. That kind of listening shows respect for the other person, and they notice it.” 1According to Roger Dooley at Forbes.com, “Peters cites research that on average, doctors listen to a patient describing symptoms for just eighteen seconds before interrupting… Professionals who are smart and who know what they are talking about are often the worst listeners.”I’ve noticed that people who are smart and know what they are talking about are also the worst explainers.This is due to a disease called “the curse of knowledge” that afflicts every expert.When speaking about a subject we know intimately, we assume our audience has a higher level of familiarity with our subject matter than they actually possess. Consequently, we believe they are “connecting the dots” when in fact they are barely following what we are saying.To become a more effective teacher, all you have to do is add the words “which means…” to every statement of fact you make. You can do this out loud or in your mind. Either way, you will be prompted to connect the dots for your audience, and they will love you for it.Gen Z was born between 1995 and 2015.[which means they are between 3 and 23 years old.which means the youngest “millennial” is currently 24 and growing older every day.which means the future will be firmly in the hands of Gen Z in about 25 years.]77% of Gen Z prefer reading printed books and 59% don’t trust Facebook. 2[which means our current obsession with the internet may turn out to be a fad.]34% of Gen Z said they were permanently leaving social media, and 64% are taking a break because “the platforms make them feel anxious or depressed.” 2[which means social media may continue to loosen its grip on our attention.which means there is still hope for the return of face-to-face social interaction.which means Gen Z is reflecting the values of their grandparents who grew up in the 60’s and 70’s.which means the pendulum of society is swinging precisely as it has for the past 3,000 years.]Now read those 3 statements of fact without the subsequent, “which means.”Gen Z was born between 1995 and 2015.77% of Gen Z prefer reading printed books and 59% don’t trust Facebook.34% of Gen Z said they were permanently leaving social media, and 64% are taking a break because “the platforms make them feel anxious or depressed.”Did you notice how those statements of fact seem distant and flat when no interpretation is offered?Connect the dots for your audience.Watch them sit up and pay attention.Roy H. Williams1 “What’s The One Word Business Guru Tom Peters Writes On His Hand Before Meetings?” by Tom Dooley2 “Survey shows digital-native Gen Z prefers in-person interaction with brands”

“He knew how to lead by listening and teaching.”– Erwin C. Hargrove, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, writing in 1998 about a leader he much admired.I, too, have known brilliant leaders like that; men and women who lead by listening and teaching.Brian Scudamore, Lori Barr, Richard Kessler, Cathy Thorpe, Erik Church, Sarah Casebier, David Rehr, Michele Miller, Brian Alter, Richard D. Grant and David St. James to name just a few. I mentioned one such leader, Dewey Jenkins, in last week’s Monday Morning Memo. Another of them, Ken Sim, is currently running for mayor of Vancouver.According to Professor Hargrove, the key to leadership is to hearken to “the better angels of our nature,” a phrase he borrowed from Abraham Lincoln, who used it in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861.But we didn’t listen to Lincoln. We chose civil war just 6 weeks later.The leader that Professor Hargrove admired who “knew how to lead by listening and teaching,” was another American president who encouraged us during a different time of social upheaval – the Great Depression.“In February 1933, a man shot at [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt, who was riding in an open car in Miami, but succeeded in killing Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago, who was with the president-elect. FDR was calm and deci­sive, ordering the driver to go immediately to the hospital, paying no attention to his own security, and talking to the wounded man. His calm courage impressed all who saw him.”– Erwin C. Hargrove,The President As A Leader: Appealing to the Better Angels of Our Nature, p. 79 (1998)The Stanford Library review of Professor Hargrove’s book ends with this statement: “In harking back to Lincoln’s evocation of the better angels of our nature, Hargrove reminds us that we may, even as leaders, be better versions of ourselves.”And the key to becoming that “better version of ourselves” is to become focused listeners and patient teachers.The reason history repeats itself is because we don’t pay attention the first time.Anti-intellectualism in American Life was written in 1964 by Richard Hofstadter, a professor of American History at Columbia University.It won him the Pulitzer Prize. It was his second. He won his first Pulitzer for his 1955 book, The Age of Reform.Reading these books has caused me to develop a theory.Can I share my observations with you?Our obsession with the internet has led us to believe that we are smarter and wiser than any previous generation.We quietly assume that anyone over 40 is a dinosaur, and that every famous historical figure was innocently naive. “But they couldn’t help it,” we sympathize, “because they didn’t know everything like we do now.”We ignore the centuries of experience of previous generations.We are teaching. But we are not listening.And those who teach – without listening – share their own preferences as though those preferences were wisdom.But what do I know? I’m over 40.Roy H. Williams

Dewey Jenkins says, “If your employees don’t look forward to company meetings, then you’re not doing it right.”Dewey has grown his company to nearly 100 times the size it was when he bought it, so I tend to listen to what he says.Dewey taught me to celebrate, not just the touchdowns, but the first downs.Dewey smiles and says, “Celebrate, Celebrate, Celebrate!”So I’m going to do that today.Vice-Chancellor Whittington posted a “Tower Update” video last week promoting Bonding as a Branding Strategy, a new class debuting at Wizard Academy on August 29 and 30. (Wednesday and Thursday of next week. I think there are still a couple of rooms available on campus.)What I’m celebrating is that he explains “customer bonding” in his video better than I do! And I’m the one who taught it to him! Heck, I’m the guy who invented the term!I’m celebrating because he proved he understood it by building a Wizard Academy YouTube channel with my oldest son, Rex, that currently has more than 112,000 subscribers and is adding hundreds more daily.I’m celebrating because they built that highly successful YouTube channel without spending a single cent on advertising or promotion.I’m celebrating because 500 of those YouTube viewers – that’s right, 500 prospective new students – will be flying to Austin from all over North America this Saturday to tour the Wizard Academy campus and hear about all the other courses we teach.I’m celebrating because the Whiskey Sommelier storytelling program created by vice-chancellor Whittington has already delivered a large number of new students to Wizard Academy.I’m celebrating because the principles taught in that Whiskey Sommelier program aren’t a departure from our established curricula. The sommeliers are taught how to “romance” the whiskey they’re about to pour through delightful, artful descriptions of it. We’re teaching them how to craft and deliver messages that create strong bonds and dramatically increase sales.I’m celebrating because many of these newly-graduated Whiskey Sommeliers have already signed up to take additional courses that aren’t whiskey-related.Best of all, most of these new students have never heard of Roy H. Williams.After spending 20 years and millions of dollars to build a 501c3 educational organization, I now know for certain that Wizard Academy will continue to thrive long after Princess Pennie and I are gone.And that’s definitely a thing worth celebrating.Roy H. WilliamsPS – Don’t get the wrong idea. Pennie and I aren’t, to my knowledge, going away anytime soon. It’s just good to know that the school is no longer dependent on us.

Reading that Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Christian anarchist, I had an unexpected thought, so I asked Google, “What is the difference between an anarchist and a libertarian?”Six-tenths of a second later, The Goog told me – in a highly visible block at the top of the Search Engine Results Page:“An anarchist is an extreme libertarian, like a socialist is an extreme democrat, and a fascist is an extreme republican. It’s like the difference between a lover and a rapist. They’re both in the same place but one uses violence to get there. Libertarians believe in free markets, private property, and capitalism.”And included in that featured snippet was a hyperlink to ChaosPark.com, the low-budget website of a better-than-average writer named Harry Reid.Harry paid nothing for Google’s recommendation of him and his website. He earned it by crafting the most concise, cogent answer to an often-asked question.Google is rewarding writers of concise content, wordsmiths who get to the point.When Google’s featured snippet is your answer to a commonly asked question in your business category, Google is telling the world that YOU are the expert of experts. It seems, to me, this should be the goal of every Search Engine Optimizer.But this would require them:to be experts in your business category, andto be better-than-average writers.But since they are neither of these, they will tell you the secret to becoming a featured snippet is in the microdata, and then fly into a blur of activity with a flurry of sparks and elbows.Take a quick look at Harry Reid’s ChaosPark.com and I think you’ll see that Harry doesn’t give a rat’s ass about microdata, metadata, or SEO. He’s just a guy writing about things that interest him, and he knows how to summarize big ideas in few words.Does your business interest you? Can you summarize big ideas in few words?Before you can take a person to where you want them to go, you must meet them where they are. You must answer their questions –as asked– and speak to them within the frame of their own experience.Leo Tolstoy knew this, and he used his novels as instruments for the examination of social issues. War and Peace (1869,) Anna Karenina (1887,) and The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886,) were not meant to be entertainments, but persuasive lessons about life and living. Tolstoy met his readers where they were, so that he could take them where he wanted them to go.John knew this, too, so he framed his Good News to be easily understood by the people of the region in which he made his home. One of the 4 “first followers” of Jesus, John wrote to the people of Ephesus within the frame of their own experience.But that’s another story.What does your customer already care about?What does your customer already understand?If you will be persuasive, you need to begin your story exactly there.Before you can take a person to where you want them to go, you must meet them where they are.Roy H. Williams

The pivotal moments in our lives are rarely announced with trumpets and fanfare.But wouldn’t it be great if they were?“Hello, this is God speaking. You’re at an inflection point in your life and although you don’t suspect it, the wisdom you’re about to receive from that old man over there is going to empower you to achieve things you never imagined. So pay attention, okay? This is a really big moment. Don’t let it slip past you.”No, that doesn’t happen. Not the voice, anyway.But the moment definitely happens.We just don’t realize it until years later.You are Frodo Baggins. You are on a journey. The old man you meet in the woods is Gandalf. He will equip you with what you need.You are Luke Skywalker. You are on a journey. The old man you meet in the woods is Obi Wan Kenobi. He will equip you with what you need. For now.Later, you face challenges for which Obi Wan did not equip you. You are lost in the woods again. You meet another old man. His name is Yoda. He is funny and small but pay attention to him. He will equip you with what you need.Now you are you.You are about to meet an old man in the woods. His name is Warren Buffett.I’m going to pretend to be God, okay?Don’t laugh. I’m doing this for you.“You’re at an inflection point in your life and the wisdom you’re about to receive is going to empower you to achieve things you never imagined. So pay attention, okay? This is a really big moment. Don’t let it slip past you.”“I was genetically blessed with a certain wiring that’s very useful in a highly developed market system where there’s lots of chips on the table, and I happen to be good at that game. Ted Williams wrote a book called The Science of Hitting and in it he had a picture of himself at bat and the strike zone broken into, I think, 77 squares. And he said if he waited for the pitch that was really in his sweet spot he would bat .400 and if he had to swing at something on the lower corner he would probably bat .235. And in investing I’m in a ‘no called strike’ business which is the best business you can be in. I can look at a thousand different companies and I don’t have to be right on every one of them, or even fifty of them. So I can pick the ball I want to hit. And the trick in investing is just to sit there and watch pitch after pitch go by and wait for the one right in your sweet spot. And if people are yelling, ‘Swing, you bum,’ ignore ’em. There’s a temptation for people to act far too frequently in stocks simply because they’re so liquid. Over the years you develop a lot of filters. But I do know what I call my ‘circle of competence’ so I stay within that circle and I don’t worry about things that are outside that circle. Defining what your game is – where you’re going to have an edge – is enormously important.”– Warren Buffett, in the 2017 documentary, Becoming Warren BuffettYou become self-aware when you realize what is – and what is not – in your circle of competence.Most people are not self-aware.Warren Buffett is acutely self-aware.“But I do know what I call my ‘circle of competence’ so I stay within that circle and I don’t worry about things that are outside that circle.”Warren, do you have any last words of wisdom for my friend?“Defining what your game is – where you’re going to have an edge – is enormously important.”That was a big moment.Don’t let it slip past you.Roy H. WilliamsPS – ‘The old man you meet in the woods’ is, as often as not, a woman.PPS – “Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data.” – John Naisbitt

The Random Quotes database at MondayMorningMemo.com currently contains 4,376 quotes.About a third of these are quotes you can easily find online.Nearly half are delightful passages I’ve transcribed from books, movies, or TV shows, and archived for future reference.Five percent are witty and wonderful statements made by friends during lunch or in casually written emails.And exactly 455 of those 4,376 quotes are words of my own.Quoting oneself might appear to be insufferably egotistical, but in truth, my only objective is to capture thoughts I might want to think upon in the future. Hence my latest addition to the database, made only moments ago, “Boxwine and Soupline are barstool buddies of Spraytan and Parlay. The girl is Parlay’s sister, Parfait.”Innocent readers who stumble upon that quote in the future will doubtless scratch their heads and say, “What the hell?” never suspecting it’s only a note I scribbled to myself about characters in a short story yet to be written.But today, because you are special, I will explain the backstory of those 5 characters.A dozen years ago I hired Devin Wright and trained him to be a media buyer, a professional negotiator. At least once a day I would pop into his office and ask him a wildly unexpected question. Devin would always laugh, and that would be that.But one day about 7 years ago I popped in, pointed at him and asked, “Devin, is that a spray tan?”Devin sputtered and coughed and denied that he would ever do such a thing, so of course being from Oklahoma, I was required to forever thereafter introduce him as Spraytan Wright.Wine snob Boxwine Harrison has the office next to Spraytan.I decided that Boxwine’s little brother would be Soupline.“But whence,” you ask, “come Parlay and Parfait?”Be patient. I’m getting to that.A week ago, Spraytan put $200 on an online gambling site so that he could place bets on sporting events. He quickly turned his $200 into $600, then got bored and lost the whole $600 playing blackjack.His pirate friend Dave Neubert asked, “Did you check your bonus money?”“My what?”“When you put money into an account, they often give you a few bonus dollars just to keep you gambling.”Spraytan checked, and sure enough, he had 4 dollars and 41 cents in bonus money. So he chose 12 fights that would happen later that day, picked his 12 fighters, and parlayed his $4.41 across the entire dozen, which means he had to pick 12 winners in advance or his bet would be forfeited. If even one of his fighters lost, Spraytan would get nothing.Big deal, right? It’s four dollars and 41 cents. And not even his money.So he went to get a haircut.When he got up from the barber chair, Spraytan checked on his bet. Ten of the 12 fights were over, and his fighters had won all 10 fights! He drove home quickly, to say the least.They tell me the gravel from his tires is still flying above that parking lot.Sliding sideways into his driveway, Spraytan ran into his house, turned on the TV and began shouting instructions to fighter number 11. But that guy lost. Then, when Spraytan checked his bet, it turns out that he had bet on the other guy, the winner!When his 12th fighter won the 12th fight, Spraytan looked at his cell phone screen to see that his four dollars and 41 cents was now three thousand, seven hundred and twelve dollars and two cents.When he told me what happened, I said, “Spraytan, I believe you’ve earned a new nickname. After today, I’m going to start calling you Parlay.”He smiled.“But of course Parlay isn’t a word I’m really familiar with. The truth is I never heard that word until you told me your story just now, so I’m sure you’ll understand if I occasionally call you Parfait.”The smile disappeared and Devin said, “I think we should just stick with Spraytan.”Walking across the parking lot, I began thinking about a series of adventures involving Boxwine and Spraytan and Parlay and Parfait and Boxwine’s little brother, Soupline.And then I wrote myself a note and posted it where I’d be sure not to lose it.Self-quotation doesn’t necessarily mean you’re egotistical.Sometimes it just means you’re nuts.Roy H. Williams

When you have nothing to say, be careful that you don’t pay money to say it.“What do you mean?”Have you ever paid a premium to target the right audience and then made an offer that failed to move them?“Everyone has paid for ads that didn’t work.”Did you realize that your message was at fault, or did you assume that you had mis-targeted?“Well, even when it doesn’t work, at least I get some name recognition.”[sigh] What am I going to do with you? Name recognition is enough only if your competitors are invisible or incompetent.“What do you mean?”Invisible means they don’t have the courage to advertise.Incompetent means their ads are even worse than yours.“But my ads are way better than average. They look and feel professional.”Most ads – even professional ads – aren’t written to persuade. They are written not to offend. This is why most ads speak in worn-out clichés. Why not just add a stock photo and get it over with?“Are you saying that most ads are ineffective?”Even the weakest ads have an effect, but what you’re looking for is long-lasting, cumulative impact.“Can you speak more plainly, please?”Bad advertising is about your product. Good advertising is about your customer and their life. And your customer values nothing so much as they value that circle of people who are close to them. Your customer relates to those people. Your customer identifies with those people. Your customer forgives those people when they screw up.“I thought we were talking about advertising here. You make it sound like I should spend my ad budget trying to make friends.”That’s right! I’m talking to you about trying to make friends! When your customer appreciates you and your comments, they consider you to be a friend, even though they have never met you.“So if I don’t talk about my product, what do I talk about?”Talk about what your customer already cares about. Don’t try to convince them to care about what you wish they cared about.“So what does my customer already care about?”They care about that circle of people I mentioned. They care about the people who care about them. You have the power – if you dare – to take your place in that circle.“But how?”By causing your customer to identify with you.“But why will they identify with me?”They will do it partly because of what you say and how you say it. But they will do it mostly because of what you don’t say.“Okay, so tell me what not to say.”Don’t talk constantly about your company and your product. This just makes your ads sound like ads.“As much as I hate to say it, you’re beginning to make a little bit of sense. But can you give me an example of what you’re talking about?”I’ll ask Indy Beagle to put some recent examples on the first few pages of the rabbit hole.“The rabbit hole? What’s that?”It’s a weekly e-zine for self-selected insiders.“Where?”Just click the image of Indy Beagle at the top of any Monday Morning Memo and you’re in. Indy is reading over my shoulder right now and wagging his tail. I think he has something in mind. I’m curious to see what it is.Roy H. Williams

They told you it was called, “reading between the lines.”But what they didn’t tell you was that the writer put it there – between the lines – for you to figure out on your own.Speak the truth and people will doubt you. But if you can tempt those people to follow you to where they can discover that truth on their own, you will have convinced them to the core of their soul.You’ve got to let them find the treasure on their own.But it’s okay to leave a trail of breadcrumbs.Just don’t be too obvious about it.When the crumbs are too big or too close together, people feel manipulated.You’ll know you’ve done the job perfectly when the person whose eyes you’ve opened wants to tell you about “this wonderful new thing” they have discovered.Mothers go through this every day.How old were you when you finally figured out that most of what you were “discovering” and sharing with your mom was just stuff she had placed in your path for you to find?Wives are good at this, too. Princess Pennie does it with such subtlety and grace that it’s often days or weeks before I realize what she has done.But I am neither a mother nor a wife, so my only option is to clumsily remind you of things you already know. You will then be free to say, “Yes, I already knew that, but thanks for the reminder.”These are the things I would not have you forget:(Or should it be, “These are the things I would have you not forget:”? I’ll let you decide. And I’m reasonably certain that my colon–quotation mark–question mark sequence two sentences ago is improper punctuation, but I can’t figure out how to phrase the question for Google, so with your permission I’ll just move on, okay?)Never claim to be honest. Just say things that only an honest person would say. Having followed the breadcrumbs, the listener will then conclude, “Wow. This person is really honest.”Never claim to be generous. Just freely give what only a generous person would give. The recipient will then conclude, “Wow. This person is really generous.”Never claim to be intelligent. Just listen intently and nod your head as though you understand. The speaker will then conclude, “Wow. This person really gets it.”Now that I think about it, never claim anything at all. Just demonstrate the quality you want to be known for.In other words, shut up and do the thing.Don’t claim things.Demonstrate them.I’m talking about advertising, of course.But I think the same advice also goes for pretty much every other situation in life.Did you notice the anomaly in point 3, the one about intelligence? Did you notice what was missing? Did you hear what I did not say?I did not tell you to, “Just say something that only an intelligent person would say.”Because that NEVER works. Trying to sound intelligent just makes you look like a pompous ass.But you already knew that.You’re such a great listener.Thanks.Roy H. Williams

Listen, my young apprentice, and I will release you from your chains.Every door of opportunity begins as a window in the mind.Look through that window of imagination and glimpse a world that could be, should be, ought to be someday. Keep looking… and watch it grow into a door of Opportunity through which you can pass into an entirely different future.Opportunity never knocks. It hangs thick in the air all around you. You breathe it unthinking, and dissipate it with your sighs.Opportunity never knocks. It appears, flickering, like faulty neon at a nondescript fork in the road.Opportunity never knocks. It whispers, a tickle in your distracted mind.1Yes, opportunity begins as a window in the mind through which we glimpse possible futures.And then one day we leap through that window.“What is sure, predictable, inevitable – the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?”“That we shall die.”“Yes, there’s really only one question that can be answered, and we already know the answer… The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.” 2There is a space between yesterday and tomorrow. Do you know the place I mean?It’s called Life.And you’ve got to make a living if you’re going to have a life.How do you want to be paid?Do you want to be paid for your time,or do you want you be paid for your knowledge?Listen, my young apprentice, to what an old man knows.There is no future in being paid by the hour.You must escape from that financial prison.Become good at something.Become astoundingly good.Do you see a person who is skilled in their work?That person will stand before kings. 3Do you wait tables?Become the server whose tables spend twice as much money as the other tables. Restaurants around the world will hire you to teach their servers how to do the same. But don’t let those restaurant owners pay you for your time. Insist that you be paid for the difference you made.Do you stack bricks?Stack them in a way that no one has ever seen bricks stacked before. You have sizes, shapes, and colors. Stack them so they can’t be ignored! But don’t let your customers pay you for your time. Be paid for the difference you made.Listen, my young apprentice, to what an old man knows.Craftsmen are paid for the quality of their work.But craftsmen are paid by the hour.An artist is paid for the impact of their art.Artists are paid for the difference they made.The only thing that separates a craft from an artis how you agree to be paid.Roy H. Williams1 The Monday Morning Memo, July 18, 20052 Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness, chapter 53 Proverbs 22:29 (NASB)Do you see a man skilled in his work?He will stand before kings;He will not stand before obscure men.

Every few months, I remind my partners of something that took me way too long to learn.I say, “When a person believes in what they’re doing – even if it’s an imperfect plan – let them keep doing it. Give them advice and try to open their eyes, but don’t fight them too hard, because, ‘A person convinced against their will, remains unconvinced, still.’ So be careful. If you finally convince a person to quit doing what they believe in, and to start doing what you would do if you owned their company, they’re probably going to fail.”People who have spent time with me may find this difficult to believe, but I’m a lot less combative than I used to be.Here is the non-combative technique I use.Listen attentively to the person with whom you disagree.Let them speak until they’re finished.Find a point of agreement, something you can honestly endorse.Tell them why you agree with them. And if they have altered your opinion in any way, confess that to them, as well.Use the point you agree upon to introduce another point which you feel might expand and enrich their perspective.Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not talking about introducing “alternative facts.”I’m talking about introducing your idea as a logical extension of the idea about which you have already agreed.This will cause the other person to feel like they already knew the thing that seemingly just occurred to you.In essence, you’ll be giving them an entirely new perspective while reinforcing what they already believe.Bottom line: Try to avoid telling people they are wrong. You’ll make more progress and achieve more change if you can figure out a way to tell them they are right.Here’s a recent example:An air conditioning client was convinced that we should target the perfect customer profile by using “addressable TV” ads. This would allow us to target specific households individually – rather than as a demographic, geographic, or psychographic group – by using data provided by broadcaster set-top boxes (STBs) and over-the-top (OTT) streaming devices like Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Roku, or Amazon Firestick.The CEO of the air conditioning company said, “Why should we pay to reach people who live in apartments, or who rent their houses from landlords, or who have a home warranty contract with a company other than ours? Wouldn’t it make more sense to target ONLY those homeowners living in houses old enough to need a new air conditioner, and who don’t have a home warranty?”“I love that idea!” I said, “And we’ve already got some great TV ads we could air!” I gave him a high five, then asked, “How much did they say it will cost us?”“They said it will be extremely efficient since we’ll be aiming a rifle with a scope instead of using a shotgun like we’re doing now.”“I don’t doubt that a bit,” I said, “but we do need to find out how much they’re going to charge us per 1,000 households they deliver (CPM.) We’re currently paying a cost-per-thousand (CPM) of $3 on broadcast radio. Now I’m DEFINITELY willing to pay more than $3 per thousand to reach the PERFECT customer rather than the unfiltered, mixed-bag, untargeted customers we’re currently reaching, but how many untargeted customers is one PERECTLY TARGETED customer worth? Is it 4-to-one? 7-to-one? Are we willing to trade 10 untargeted customers for 1 targeted customer? How many are we willing to trade? I think at some point there’s going to be at least one perfect customer in our current, unfiltered assortment of broadcast TV viewers and broadcast radio listeners, don’t you think? And then we get all those other people for free. But I still think this “addressable TV” thing is a great idea. So call and tell them exactly who you want to target and ask for the cost-per-thousand.”After he checked into it, he learned that the cheapest we might possibly pay was 12x to 16x our current cost-per-thousand, but with the layers of targeting he wanted to add, we would be trading at least 26 broadcast radio listeners for every 1 “perfectly targeted” homeowner.After thinking it over, he decided we were already reaching more than 1 “perfectly targeted” homeowner in every group of 26 unfiltered, mixed bag, untargeted radio listeners.My point is this: I didn’t have to argue. I didn’t have to debate. And my client, the CEO of that business, was treated like a CEO.I’m just the consultant who agreed with him.Roy H. Williams

I’ve often wondered what happened to him.Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, 1979: Pennie and I had just moved into our first house.It…was built before Oklahoma became a state,had never had a mortgage on it,had been expanded 3 different times,and was now barely 800 sq. ft.,had sat vacant for more than 10 years,and was sold to us for $21,500.It wasn’t an impressive neighborhood.Pennie looked out our front window and saw a frightening-looking man working on his car. She mentioned it to me. I looked out the window and saw a man in his mid-30s wearing ragged clothes with a dirty pony-tail that trailed below his belt. He had rented the unlivable shack across the street.I walked outside to meet him. “Hi. I’m Roy. I live over there.”“Hi. I’m Harold.”I helped him fix his car, a worn-out Chevy Vega.Harold and I became good friends. He was soft-spoken, respectful, and sentimental. Pennie liked him, too.One Sunday afternoon, the phone rang. It was Harold. “Roy, do you have $400 in cash?”Miraculously, I did have $400 in cash that day, an extremely rare occurrence. “Harold, if you had called on any other day, I wouldn’t have been able to say yes. But I do, in fact, have $400.”“Man, I need you to come and bail me out of jail. I ran a red light at midnight and didn’t have my driver’s license with me. Can you come and bail me out? I can pay you back as soon as we get to my house, I swear.”“I’ll be right there.”As we pulled away from the police station, Harold said, “If you will, I need you to do me one more favor.”“Okay, what is it?”“Follow me to my boss’s house. He’s been wanting to buy my Vega and stuff a big motor in it to make himself a drag racing car. I’ve decided to sell it to him.”We stopped at Harold’s house where he paid me back the $400, then I followed him a few miles to where his boss lived. Harold’s job was to mix cement all day and hand it up in 5 gallon buckets to the brick masons on the scaffold. They paid him in cash each week.Harold gave his boss the car keys, got in my car again, looked at me with tear-filled eyes and said, “One last favor?”“Whatever you need.”“Drive me to the bus station.”“Harold, what’s going on?”He was blinking away the tears. “I’m going to buy a ticket on whatever bus is about to leave the station and I’m going to move to wherever that bus takes me. Roy, I’m an escaped convict.”It took me a few moments to find my voice. “What were you in for, Harold?”That’s when he told me his real name was Jeff-something. Sadly, I’ve forgotten Jeff’s last name because he spoke it just that one time, during a highly distracted moment, 39 years ago.“I had just turned eighteen when my Dad beat the crap out of me and I decided to leave home. I hitchhiked and slept in open fields for a couple of days until I ran out of money for food. I was walking down the road on the morning of the third day when I saw a farmer working all alone. I walked over and asked if he would give me a meal and pay me a few dollars if I helped him all day. He said he would. At the end of the day, he gave me a meal but claimed he never agreed to give me any money. I was really mad, so I walked out to his barn and took a 5-gallon can of gas and a .22 rifle he had for shooting rats and then I started walking down the road.”Back in those days, it was easy for hitchhikers to catch a ride when they were carrying a can of gas to give to whoever picked them up.“I was planning to sell the .22 at the nearest pawn shop. It never occurred to me that the farmer had seen me and called the sheriff. I had only walked about 200 yards when I was arrested and taken to jail.”“What happened next?”“I had been in jail a couple of weeks when I hid under a big pile of dirty clothes in a canvas laundry cart just before they rolled it onto the truck. I don’t weigh much, so no one noticed. Then, when they stopped at a traffic light, I jumped out of the dirty clothes and scrambled out the back of the truck. That was the first time I escaped.”My eyes grew big, I’m sure. “How many times have you escaped?”“The third time was two years ago. They always catch me because of a traffic violation. I don’t have a driver’s license.” He smiled a weak smile. “I was really lucky they caught me on a Saturday night because the fingerprint place isn’t open on Sundays. If you hadn’t bailed me out of jail, they would have walked into my cell tomorrow morning and called me by my real name.”“What were you in for the second and third time?”“Escaping. They always increase your sentence when you escape. I’ve been in and out of prison for 16 years.”“And the only thing you ever did was steal a 5-gallon can of gas and a .22 rifle?” Jeff could only nod as the tears ran into his beard. We didn’t talk for a while. Finally I asked, “How did you get out this last time?”“I went over the wall.”“What?”“I went over the wall.”“But how?”“Roy, if everyone and everything that made your life worth living was on the other side of a 30-foot cement wall, but your side of that wall was an unendurable hell, d

Dear Radio,I’ve loved you all my life. In fact, I have more confidence in you than you have in yourself.But you have a blind spot, and it’s killing you: radio advertisers are reaching 100% of the city and convincing them 10% of the way, when they should be reaching 10% of the city and convincing them 100% of the way.You’re letting advertisers squander their money on reach without frequency.Your spot rate is determined by your reach, your audience size.The bigger your reach, the bigger your bank account.This is why you dance when you have a good book. 1You push reach.“We’re #1” means “We offer the most reach.”But your client’s success is determined by his frequency.I am your client. Sell me a schedule that gives me big reach with small frequency and I’ll soon be singing, “I tried radio and it didn’t work” at the top of my lungs.Sell me small reach with big frequency and I’ll take over your city, one station at a time. I’ll use relentless frequency to become a household word on a little station, then when that station’s weekly cume of many thousands of listeners 2 have grown my company into a bigger one, I’ll add another station, then another and another until I’m on every station in town.This is not theoretical. I’ve been doing it for 38 years and it has never failed to work. In truth, our clients across the U.S., Canada, and Australia are seeing greater success through radio today than ever before.Frequency should be non-negotiable. Why do you let people on the air without it?And since I sell products and services that have a long selling cycle, I’ll also need consistency.Consistency is the frequency of the frequency.52-week consistency is essential when your client has a long selling cycle. Things like engagement rings, A/C repair, home appliances, drain opening, legal services, auto repair, and insurance have long selling cycles. The way I can win these categories is to become the provider the customer thinks of immediately – and feels best about – when they, or any of the people in their circle of influence, finally need what I sell.The only clients who can succeed without consistency are sellers of food and entertainment – things with a short selling cycle – things we buy every day, or at least every week or two.Reach and frequency are not interchangeable.Who was it that decided we should multiply reach times frequency to calculate gross impressions, and then cast gross impressions as a percentage of the population to calculate gross rating points?The hunger for gross impressions and gross rating points always leads to the purchase of too much reach without enough frequency. When you multiply reach times frequency, you blur the line between the two. Reach is easy to obtain in a media mix. Frequency is not.Reach is not a substitution for frequency.Frequency must be protected at all costs.If I buy 100 gross rating points, I’ve reached the mathematical equivalent of 100% of the population of the trade area 1 time. It would take 1,000,000 gross impressions to give me 100 gross rating points in a city of 1,000,000 people. But does this mean I’ve reached 100% of the people 1 time? Or does it mean I’ve reached 50% of the people twice? Or does it mean I’ve reached 25% of the people 4 times? Or does it mean I’ve reached 10% of the people 10 times? Or does it mean I’ve reached 5% of the people 20 times? Or does it mean I’ve reached 1 sad bastard 1,000,000 times? Each of those scenarios is 100 gross rating points.The only numbers that really matter are:(1.) a weekly Frequency of at least 3.0 and(2.) 7-day Net Reach (18+) 3Sleep erases advertising. This is why you must always measure frequency within a window of 7 night’s sleep. It’s also why 52-week consistency is vital.This is the question that really matters: How many people (18+) can I reach at least 3 times each within 7 night’s sleep, 52 weeks in a row?If you sell me a 26-week buy spread out “on-a-week, off-a-week” over 52 weeks, you’re selling me a station that costs twice what I can afford. Soon I’ll join that other guy in singing “I tried radio and it didn’t work,” and a lot of people will hear us sing it.According to Kleiner Perkins, the average American spends 4% of their media time with print, but print is getting 9% of our national ad spend. Print is punching 5 points above their weight.The average American spends 13% of their media time listening to broadcast radio, but radio is getting only 9% of our national ad spend. If radio was punching 5 points above its weight, radio would enjoy 18% of the ad spend instead of just 9%.Is this doable? Is it possible for radio to double its annual revenues? You bet it is.Radio, to start winning 18% of the ad spend, all you need to do is:(1.) focus your attention on advertisers with a long selling cycle.(2.) make sure that every schedule achieves a 3-frequency (18+) each week, 52 weeks in a row.(3.) learn how to write engaging copy.This is the radio success formula that never fail

Is established information or new information more likely to be true?Which is more effective, planning or improvisation?Are people essentially good, or essentially selfish?Which is more important, individual rights or collective rights?Will the future of America be better than its past?Are low-income people less intelligent than high-income people?Is the Bible true, or just a collection of ancient folk stories?Are attractive people more reliable than unattractive ones?You may think those questions have obvious answers. But in truth, just as many people chose the opposites.Each of us has foundational assumptions upon which our worldviews are predicated.If your foundational assumptions are different than mine, you’ll interpret experiences, evidence, and data differently than I do.Psychologists call a foundational assumption a “cognitive bias,” but only if your assumption is tightly focused. If we’re discussing your entire collection of foundational assumptions, we’re talking about your “schema.”Your schema, or outlook, is how you believe the universe works.Asking a person to reconsider a foundational assumption is like asking them to change their religion.But every foundational assumption comes with a blind spot.This is true even if your foundational assumptions caused you to answer our opening 8 questions by saying, “Well, it depends on…”We often believe our foundational assumptions are shared by intelligent people everywhere.Because when you “know” something deeply and intrinsically, it’s hard to imagine other people not knowing it. This cognitive bias is often called “the curse of knowledge,” and it’s responsible for a high percentage of bad advertising because it will cause you to answer questions in your ads that no one was asking.Are you beginning to see why it’s important to be aware of your blind spots?Most of us refuse to believe we have blind spots, because to accept that you have blind spots is to accept that your foundational assumptions are flawed, and then who would you be?To point out another person’s blind spot is like undressing them in public; you will not be soon forgiven.And now you know why polite people “never discuss politics or religion” with people outside their own ingroup.And although this may sound Machiavellian, I share it with you not so that you might employ it, but so that you might guard yourself against it: It is easy to manipulate a person when you know their foundational assumptions.Don’t let people manipulate you.When you have the courage to recognize your foundational assumptions for what they are, you are more likely to be happy, more likely to be liked, more likely to experience personal peace.But this open-mindedness comes at a price: you will never be the leader of villagers with torches and pitchforks.But that was never really a goal of yours, was it?Was it?Roy H. Williams

A lawyer and a rabbi are arguing about what it means to be kind.It is an ancient argument.The lawyer thinks a “kind” person is always polite and considerate.The rabbi thinks “politeness” is superficial, and “considerate” simply means to consider the consequences before taking any action, but that true kindness comes at a price. The rabbi believes that true kindness will take insult, inconvenience or injury upon itself in order to save another person from the same.We read of this encounter between the lawyer and the rabbi in the Biblical book of Luke. You may remember the story of a traveler who is robbed, stripped of his clothing, beaten, and left half dead alongside the road.Jesus, the young rabbi, tells the lawyer that two religious people passed by the wounded traveler, but both of them avoided the man. Then, the member of an ethic minority came upon the injured traveler. The most common name for this ethnic minority was a racial slur in the day of Jesus, so to help make his point, Jesus used the racial slur as the name of the man: “a Samaritan.”According to Jesus, “the Samaritan,” at his own expense, took the injured traveler to an inn, treated his wounds, and paid the innkeeper to take care of him.Jesus then asked, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”The lawyer, too polite to say “Samaritan,” said, “The one who had mercy on him.”Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.”Rabbi Jesus was clearly demonstrating that kindness costs the giver, and that it is our actions that define us, not our origins.Disagreements occur when there is a lack of definition of terms. When there is no agreed-upon definition of a word, arguments will revolve around it.I believe the word that has the largest number of conflicting definitions today is the word “Christian.”If we were to poll our nation, we would doubtless discover countless definitions for “Christian,” but I believe most of them would fall somewhere in the middle of a three-cornered continuum.At one extreme of that triangle, a Christian is a believer in Christianity, a religion founded by Jesus, who came to give us a new moral code and teach us a better way to live. This Christian is patriotic and rejects behaviors that he or she believes to be immoral.At the second extreme of that triangle, a Christian is a believer in Jesus as God Incarnate, who came to earth to purchase eternal life for all who would believe. This Christian does not believe that Jesus came to deliver a new moral code, but to die so that we might live.The third extreme of our triangle is a definition occasionally embraced by people who do not identify themselves as “Christian,” because they define a Christian as:a religious person who believes poor people deserve to be poor because “anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps through good decisions and hard work.”a religious person who is in favor of guns, but against gays.a religious person who believes Americans are exceptional, and that all other nations are inferior.It is not my purpose today to start an argument, but to defuse one.Christianity and politics are in turmoil today due to the lack of an agreed-upon definition of the word, “Christian.” I have no intention of offering my own definition of Christian, since it is unimportant to anyone but me. And I do not expect your definition of “Christian” to be any of the three extremes I named. I expect you have a complex, nuanced definition that you feel strongly about. You may even be anxious to share it in the hopes of “clearing the air.”Please don’t. AMy only goal today is to ask you to consider – for just a moment –that a good person might hold views and opinions dramatically different from your own without becoming “the enemy.”This person could even become your trusted friend.Even if they are “a Samaritan.”Roy H. Williams

I began losing my hair when I was 19. By the time I was 21, I looked like I was 30.Best thing that ever happened to me.People take you seriously when you look like a grown-up, and I needed people to take me seriously.I sold advertising for the smallest radio station in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We were rock-solid at number 23 in a city of 23 radio stations. We had a 0.5 share during the Average Quarter Hour. This means that out of every 200 radios that were turned on, only 1 of them would be tuned to my station.Best thing that ever happened to me.At any given moment, my station would have between 500 and 800 people listening. But the total number of different people we would reach in a week was about 18,000. Woo-Hoo! I was overjoyed. There wasn’t a single business in our city of 1,000,000 people that couldn’t use 18,000 more customers.All I had to do is figure out what to say to get my 18,000 people to remember – and prefer – my advertiser. I cannot say with certainty how I knew success would be found in the crafting of a persuasive message rather than in the selection of the “right” audience, but my memory shows me a young boy sitting in an empty classroom reading books during recess rather than playing with the other kids on the playground.Best thing that ever happened to me.Yes, I know I’ve said “Best thing that ever happened to me” three times and they can’t ALL be the “best thing,” but I don’t feel like ranking them “#1 Best,” “#2 Best,” etc., so go with the flow, okay?I restricted my sales calls to businesses that were so tiny they couldn’t afford any advertising other than my little nothing of a radio station. When these people believed in me and wrote me a check, they were giving me their life’s blood. If my plans for them failed, my clients couldn’t pay the rent. They couldn’t send their kids to school with a sack lunch. They couldn’t pay the electric bill.When you face those kinds of consequences, you lie awake at night figuring out how to make the ads you sold work, because there is no one with whom you can share the blame. It’s all you.Guilt, Pain and Remorse are powerful teachers.I quickly figured out how to make advertising work.And what Guilt, Pain and Remorse taught me was very different from what is being taught in colleges.Few marketing professionals will ever be solely responsible for the outcomes of the ad campaigns they help to create. Most people in my profession go to college, get a degree, and then become a cog in a marketing machine. Their failures can be attributed to a wide variety of forces beyond their control. Their ink pens are never filled with the blood of the families for whom they write.My station owner was hoping our little station might bring in about $11,000 a month. Within 18 months, my personal billings were averaging $51,000 a month. My base pay was $800/mo. and I made a 15% commission. Do the math.I spent my early twenties as a joyously married, rapidly balding boy with ten thousand stories in his head and an ink pen full of blood in his pocket. Then, at 26 years old, they made me the General Manager of a much larger station.Worst thing that ever happened to me.I no longer spent my days talking face-to-face with business owners and crafting stories. Instead, I stared blankly at spreadsheets and spoke by telephone with corporate officers and bookkeepers and listened to the whining of 32 employees who had me confused with their mommies.Six months into it, I said, “You can keep the cheese. Just let me out of the trap.”With the unwavering support of Princess Pennie, I became an independent ad writer and media negotiator. I adapted my stories to fit billboards on the highway and TV ads during the Superbowl and websites on the internet.But some things never change. Thirty-four years after saying “no” to spreadsheets and corporate politics, my relationships continue to be one-on-one with business owners, never with the companies they own.I don’t believe in destiny.I believe in choices and consequences.I believe each of us chooses what we become.What have you chosen to become?If plan A isn’t working out for you, consider plan B or C or D!New choices bring new consequences.Isn’t life a wonder?Don’t forget to live it.Roy H. Williams

A thing cannot exist without its opposite. This is why a positive statement – without its corresponding negative – is usually a platitude.1Every proton has its electron.Every summer has its winter.Every Yin has its Yang.Every up, its down.Every inside, its outside.Every justice, its mercy.“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement.But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”– Niels BohrNiels Bohr was not a philosopher. He was a scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics.Duality, in the form of paired opposites, is essential to high-impact communication.It is not enough to explain what you believe.You need also to explain what you don’t believe.It is not enough to explain what you stand for.You need also to explain what you stand against.I saw you flinch just then. You don’t like “being negative.” Am I right?You believe in abundance.You believe in optimism.You believe in fairness and peace.You sound like a Hallmark greeting card.Now tell me if I’m being “negative.”I stand against poverty.I stand against hopelessness.I stand against bullies.I sound like someone who might actually make a difference.Don’t just tell us what you include.Tell us also what you exclude.Don’t just tell us what you are.Tell us what you are not.“At Kesslers, we do diamonds better, because diamonds are all we do. We don’t sell watches or pearls or gold chains. But we do sell every style of engagement ring that has ever been designed.”“At Goettl Air Conditioning, we do things the right way, not the easy way.”“Jigsaw magnesium is a mineral, not a vitamin. And it delivers real energy, not caffeine energy.”Here’s why photos of you never really look like you:You see your face in the mirror every day. You see photos of yourself only occasionally. But the mirror shows you a reversed image. The “you” that your friends see is opposite the image that you see.If you speak only of what you see from your perspective, you miscommunicate to everyone who sees the opposite.Comprehensive communication always shows both sides:The verse and the inverse.The upside and the down.What’s left in and what’s left out.Do you have the breadth of mind to do this?Do you have the courage?Roy H. Williams

Doubtless, they will someday say, “Inspired by Roycroft and Bohemian Grove, Pennie and Roy Williams built Wizard Academy…”But they will be wrong.Yes, the Princess and I – with the help of hundreds of good friends around the world – began constructing the Wizard Academy campus in 2004. The “wrong” part is that we were inspired by Roycroft and Bohemian Grove.This error is forgivable, however, because jumping to conclusions is what makes us humans so adorable.Elbert Hubbard was a marketer whose magazine, The Philistine, was read by subscribers around the world 120 years ago. Likewise, my Monday Morning Memos and the e-zines of Indiana Beagle are read by subscribers around the world.But Elbert Hubbard did not inspire me to become a marketer or to write these Monday Morning Memos. And I’m pretty sure Indy Beagle wanders the rabbit hole for reasons of his own, as well.Elbert Hubbard published a book on advertising but I did not write my Wizard of Ads trilogy because of him.Elbert and his wife, Alice, began building the Roycroft Campus as a writer’s and artist’s enclave in East Aurora, New York, in 1895. But Pennie had never heard of the Hubbards or their Roycroft Campus when she decided to build Wizard Academy. I know this to be true. I was there.Yet there are definite similarities between our organizations.Wizard Academy bridges the gap between business and the arts. Like the Roycrofters before us, we celebrate the study of the arts for the furtherance of business.*San Francisco’s Bohemian Club began constructing Bohemian Grove in 1878. The “Bohemians” in those days were writers and artists. But business people wanted to hang out with them and were immediately attracted to the club.Oscar Wilde attended The Grove in 1882. Afterwards, he said, “When bankers get together they talk about art. When artists get together, they talk about money.”Think of the annual encampment at Bohemian Grove as the original TED Conference.An invitation to The Grove remains the hardest of all tickets to obtain. Security is incredibly tight. The guests invited to Bohemian Grove today are Nobel Prize winners, top-tier artists and authors, Senators, and Fortune 500 CEOs.Interestingly, Wizard Academy attracts many of these same people, but on a smaller scale.The official motto of The Bohemian Club is a line taken from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here.” It means, “Business deals and any thoughts of ‘networking’ are to be left outside. This is a place of escape.”Like Bohemian Grove, Wizard Academy is a place of escape, renewal, and inspiration for people who wrestle with giants.Do you have a dream, an enterprise, a mission, a purpose that occupies your heart and hands and mind?Come. You have a tribe. Hang out with us. You will be a stronger wrestler when you leave.Roy H. Williams

Trouble happens to everyone.“Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.”– Carl JungBut don’t worry about it.“Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.”– George WashingtonReally. Don’t worry about it.“Don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”– Jesus, in the 6th chapter of Matthew’s Good NewsBecause I’ve got this.“In this world you will have trouble. But be of good cheer! I have overcome the world.”– Jesus, in the 16th chapter of John’s Good NewsAnd I’m your friend.“Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.”– EuripidesTrouble is a searchlight in the darkness that shows you a person’s heart.“You never forget three people:the person who helped you in trouble,the person who left you in trouble,the person who put you in trouble.”– Randy PhillipsAnd sometimes that searchlight is reflected back at you.“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.”– Theodore RooseveltBut finally, the sun rises, morning comes, and it’s a brand-new day.“Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life and repeat to yourself the most comforting words of all: ‘This, too, shall pass.'”– Ann LandersRoy H. Williams

“Radio is dying.”“Radio is dead.”“My friends and I don’t listen to the radio. We (blah, blah, blah) instead.”“No one listens to the radio anymore, especially in high-tech places like San Francisco, in the heart of Silicon Valley. That’s right, isn’t it?”Isn’t it?A few paragraphs from now, I’m going to tell you exactly how many people we’re reaching in San Francisco each week and precisely how many times the average San Franciscan hears our radio ad.But first, let’s look at why we can trust those numbers.You’ve heard of the Gallup Poll and you’ve heard of the Nielsen Ratings. And of course, you understand scientific survey methodology and statistical analysis.Nielsen measures San Francisco’s radio listening habits continuously, using a sample size of about 2,400 adults.Oh? You say you don’t understand scientific survey methodology and statistical analysis? You didn’t know the Gallup Poll is usually based on just 1,000 interviews? And that those 1,000 persons represent the entire population of the Unites States with a high degree of accuracy?“How can a poll of only 1,004 Americans represent 260 million people with only a 3 percent margin of error?” This is the name of an article you’ll find in the online archives of Scientific American. In that article, Professor Andrew Gelman of the departments of statistics and political science at Columbia University, says, “The margin of error depends inversely on the square root of the sample size.”This is what Professor Gelman is saying: The smaller the universe, the larger the percentage of that universe must be queried. If you want to know the opinions of a universe of 10 people, you’ve got to ask all 10 of them.The larger the universe, the smaller the percentage of that universe must be queried. To accurately measure the opinions of 700 people, you’ve got to ask 250 of them. But a sample size of only 384 persons will measure the opinions of 1,000,000 people with an identical degree of accuracy.When the Gallup organization wants to get nitpickingly accurate, they crank their sample size up to 1,500 persons. And that’s to measure the whole United States.That Nielsen sample of 2,400 persons in San Francisco isn’t looking quite so small anymore, is it? By the way, the annual report of Nielsen Holdings indicates they had revenues of $6,572,000,000 last year. That’s right. Six and a half billion dollars to monitor our listening and viewing habits.I say “monitor” because Nielsen doesn’t trust our memories or our motives. Nielsen gives each of those 2,400 San Franciscans a small, electronic device to carry with them each day. This “Portable People Meter” detects the radio stations to which you listen, and notes the precise times that you listen to each station, each day. This data is uploaded to Nielsen and serves as the basis of their ratings report.Electronic devices don’t lie.Nielsen’s methodology and math are irrefutable and unimpeachable.I say we can trust Nielsen’s numbers. What say you?We recently negotiated a weekly schedule on the broadcast radio stations of San Francisco. That schedule reaches 43% of the total (18+) population of that city an average of 2.7 times each week, 52 weeks a year, at a total cost of 47 cents per person/per year. This means each of more than 2.5 million San Franciscans will hear our full-length message an average of 140 times in 2018. (52 x 2.7 = 140.4)About 50 percent of America spends enough time listening to the radio each week that you can efficiently and affordably reach those customers with sufficient repetition to become a household word, an intimate component of their daily life.This familiarity accelerates and enhances every other effort at selling; email, online, outdoor, voice-to-voice on the telephone, and face-to-face on the sales floor.In the first chapter of the book of Genesis, it is written 11 times, “And God said…”The only description we are given of God in the book of Genesis is that he spoke a world into existence. But then, in verse 26, it says that we are made in his image.I believe this is why we can speak possible futures into the hearts and minds of other humans. It’s an art we call “selling.” And it works wonderfully well on the radio.It’s okay with me if you believe the Bible is a fairy tale. But if you think Nielsen numbers are a fairy tale, you are in a special kind of denial.Might I humbly and respectfully suggest that you pull your head out of your ass and see the light?That was meant to be a funny, unexpected punch line. If you took it otherwise and it made you angry, I’m sorry. Please say hello to your colon for me.Roy H. Williams

1. When you need someone to faithfully implement your time-tested policies and procedures, hire a straight-A student.This is what we know about them:A. They bought into the educational system, believed its promises, and played by its rules.B. They have demonstrated obedience, compliance, and conformity.C. They have obvious respect for authority.And these are not bad things.2. When you need to innovate, improvise or reinvent, hire a rascal.1This is what we know about them:A. They mistrust the system, laugh at its promises, and make up their own rules.B. They have demonstrated disobedience, defiance, and abnormity.C. They have obvious respect for alternative thinking.Steve Jobs was a rascal with an unimpressive résumé. When Steve applied for a job at Hewlett-Packard in 1977, they rejected him because he had dropped out of Reed College in 1972.“Quitters never win.” That’s the traditional wisdom. Ask any high school football coach. And Steve Jobs was definitely a quitter.Jan Koum was a bonafide rascal. When he was 20, his ex-girlfriend got a restraining order against him. He later said, “I am ashamed of the way I acted, and ashamed that my behavior forced her to take legal action”.Jan Koum was also a quitter. Facebook refused to hire him in 2008 because he had dropped out of San Jose State. Here’s what was on Jan’s resume for the previous year: “I traveled around South America playing ultimate frisbee.”I can almost see that HR director rolling her eyes, can’t you?In 2009, Jan Koum founded WhatsApp, an innovation he sold to Facebook in 2014 for $9.1 billion.Steve Jobs and Jan Koum are mentioned in the opening paragraph of a 59-page study2 published by two academicians in 2017. That paper is titled Asymmetric Information and Entrepreneurship. Its scholarly authors reached their conclusions only after analyzing 12,686 individuals over a period of more than 30 years.I’ll do my best to summarize those 59 pages:“A person is motivated to start their own business when they have more confidence in their ability than they have in their résumé.” – Roy H. WilliamsThere. I’ve put 59 pages into a single sentence.Perhaps I should become an ad writer.Roy H. Williams1 If no rascals are available, you can substitute a rebel, a rogue, or a renegade.2 Hegde, Deepak and Tumlinson, Justin, Asymmetric Information and Entrepreneurship (May 15, 2017). Available for download at SSRN.

When you need people to respond to your ad immediately, you need to think like a reporter.These are the first two things they teach news reporters:“When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”“You never read about a plane that did not crash.”So why do so many direct-response ads talk about the man who got bit by a dog, or flew on a plane that did not crash? To be successful, direct-response ads must deliver a message that is remarkable.Recruitment Ads are a form of direct-response marketing.Last week, the following 60-second radio ad reached 19 percent of the total population of Charlotte, NC. The average listener heard this message 6.3 times in just 3 days, Wed/Th/Fr. And it cost only seven tenths of a penny per repetition for a listener to hear it. This means that for less than a nickel per person, (6.3 x 7 tenths of a penny) we electrified 19 percent of the total population of Charlotte with a remarkable message. And you know what? The 19 percent we reached are the friends, neighbors and co-workers of the other 81 percent, guaranteed.Are you a plumber? Would you like to make one hundred thousand dollars a year? That’s right. I said a hundred thousand dollars. Can you install new water heaters, faucets and drains? You hear Morris-Jenkins on TV and radio all the time. Morris-Jenkins Plumbing is the sister company of Morris-Jenkins Air Conditioning and they’re both managed by Dewey Jenkins, the man you DEFINITELY want to work for. Our new plumbing division is keeping 30 plumbers busy and we need 10 more who know how to install water heaters, faucets and drains. We need air conditioning installers, too. Many of our A/C installers are already making a hundred thousand, and we’re putting together a plan that will allow our plumbing installers to make that much, too. We want to meet you. This is not a joke. If you’re ready to start the greatest job you’ll ever have, be at Morris-Jenkins headquarters this Saturday Morning at 8AM for a confidential interview. We need 10 plumbers and 6 air conditioning installers. Be here at 8 o’clock this Saturday morning. You’ll find our address at Morris-Jenkins dot com. Your life is about to get a whole lot better. Morris-Jenkins dot com.That’s a pretty remarkable message, right?But just as important as being remarkable, direct-response ads must also be credible and urgent.Remarkable means your message will be repeated from person to person. “$100,000.”Credible means your message is supported by already-known and trusted facts.(A.) Due to their commitment to long-term customer bonding, Morris-Jenkins is universally recognized as the market leader in Charlotte.(B.) Dewey Jenkins is on TV every day and the public LOVES him.(C.) This ad would not have worked nearly so well for a person that was less respected.Urgent means action must be taken immediately, because(A.) the available number is limited, “We need 10 plumbers and 6 A/C installers.” Or,(B.) the window of time is limited. “Be at Morris-Jenkins Headquarters THIS Saturday morning at 8AM for a confidential interview.(C.) Urgency is accelerated through relentless repetition. We ran this ad twice an hour, 24 hours a day, for 3 days, on each of 2 different radio stations. 288 total airings in 3 days.If your direct-response ads aren’t working, there are only three possible shortcomings.1. The ad is not remarkable. People aren’t talking about it.2. The ad is not credible. In other words, it’s hype.3. The message isn’t urgent. There is no need to take immediate action.NOTE: There has never been a direct-response ad campaign that was sustainable in the long-term. Because the longer you repeat a message, the less remarkable it becomes.Direct response – “Take Action NOW” marketing – is different from customer bonding.Customer bonding ads build long-term reputation and relationship. Direct-response ads erode it. This is why you should use direct-response ads with the same restraint you use prescription opioids.Most direct response marketers prefer to target customers online. They talk about “holding your ad dollars accountable with trackable, measurable results.” What they don’t like to talk about is the extremely high cost of generating awareness online, especially when compared to the extremely low cost of creating excitement through old school, mass media.For the record, 164 plumbing and HVAC professionals were standing in line at 8AM on Saturday, April 14, 2018. Were you aware that recruitment is the limiting factor of nearly every plumbing company and HVAC company in America today? No one can find enough people.Do you remember that cost of 7-tenths of a penny (per repetition) for our direct response campaign?When you buy long-term customer bonding schedules, you get a much better d

Technically, you don’t take a trip. It takes you.If you could take a trip, you could also put it back when you were done with it.But you can’t.Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s talk about Robert and Chris and the trip they took.It was a 1968 tripfrom Minneapolis to San Franciscoon a 1964 Honda Superhawkwith Chris riding on the backbecause he was only 11 years old.When that trip was over, Robert remembered a lot of things that never really happened. And in 1974 those memories became Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the best-selling philosophy book ever written. It stayed near the top of the best-seller lists for more than a decade.I agree with a lot of what Robert wrote.But a little of what he wrote makes me wonder if he was crazy.We’ll talk more about that later.These are the things Robert wrote that I agree with:“You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge.”“The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.”“It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.”“The more you look, the more you see.”“First you get the feeling, then you figure out why.”“We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone.”“When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.”I like that last statement for 2 reasons. (1.) “The appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does” is sort of why Wizard Academy exists. (2.) Is it just my imagination, or have you noticed that the shadow of insanity (and not the good kind of insanity) seems to be growing wider and darker across our land? I’m seeing and hearing things today that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago.One last quote from the book:“But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.”I suppose that’s what worries me most about the dark shadow of insanity spreading across our land. If we remove the people who are casting that shadow – but we don’t change the patterns of thought that elevated them – we’ll replace those people with more just like them.I said earlier that we’d talk about Robert being a little bit crazy.Robert Pirsig was treated with electroconvulsive therapy on numerous occasions when he was institutionalized with paranoid schizophrenia and clinical depression between 1961 and 1963. He was 35 when he got out. His son Chris was 6. They began their road trip 5 years later.At its heart, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is an exploration of the underlying belief systems of Western culture. In his foreword to that book, Robert told readers that despite its title, the book should “in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice.”He added, “It’s not very factual on motorcycles either.”Yes, Robert went crazy for a while.But then he got over it.Perhaps we will, too.Roy H. Williams

We connect with people who interest us.We have fun with people who know how to have fun.We bond with people who believe what we believe.But our deepest relationships are with people who have shared our pain.Think of the people you can count on – always – to have your back. Chances are, you’ve been through hard times with them at your side.Adversity is a whirlwind that tears friends apart if they don’t hold on to each other, but bonds them tightly together if they do.An acquaintance is someone with whom you can laugh.A friend is someone with whom you can cry.I am not suggesting we celebrate adversity.I am suggesting we celebrate our friends.The seeds of commitment are watered by tears.“Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.”– Oscar Wilde“The thing about rock’n’roll is that for me anyway it wasn’t enough… There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms… but the songs weren’t serious or didn’t reflect life in a realistic way. I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.”– Bob Dylan, Divine Madness, p. 166If you want to be persuasive, if you want to convince people, you must abandon the myth that you – or anyone else – is capable of being perfectly objective.We see things not as they are, but as we are.Exactly 4 years and one week ago – during this season of Passover and Easter – I wrote to you about cognitive bias:“You’ve heard it said that, ‘Every person is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.’ Yet we routinely craft our own facts from the fabric of personal experiences, preferences and prejudices. A stereotype is nothing more than a pattern we’ve observed. This pattern isn’t always predictive, but it is a pattern nonetheless and we trust it. We do this in the misbegotten belief that we have correctly interpreted our past experiences and that our preferences and prejudices are, in fact, correct and reliable interpretations of objective reality.”– The Monday Morning Memo for March 24, 2014Preferences and prejudices cannot be trusted.But pain is neither a preference nor a prejudice. And sorrow is hard to escape. To willfully walk into them for the sake of a friend is the signature of someone who cares.Do you have a friend in crisis?Don’t send flowers.Send yourself.Roy H. WilliamsPS – Don’t assume from today’s memo that the wizard is feeling blue. He’s not. It’s just that he and I know a lot of people who need a hug. I’ll bet you know people, too. – Indy BeaglePPS – Leonardo da Vinci clearly understood cognitive bias. He said, “The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”

The traditional aristocracy of inherited wealth, position and influence is a false one, in my mind.You were born into an influential family. You went to the right kindergarten, the right grade school, the right college, and you party with the right people. You invented the phrase and the wink, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”You are a house cat.You think desperation is an enemy that should be avoided at all costs. But who else can you turn to when you need to clear your mind, focus your thoughts, summon your courage, and unleash your creativity?Desperation will do all of this for you, and more.Desperation is the friend and the ally of every alley cat.Desperation is the mark of every true entrepreneur.Have I angered you? I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention. I was just hoping to encourage those friends who are facing deadly peril, whose options are limited, whose bank accounts are depleted, whose backs are against the wall.That’s never been you? Oh… now I see why you’re angry.You’ve never really had an adventure.In 1992, I helped a friend launch a company that he later sold for $68 million. I can still remember several occasions when his circumstances became so painful that he said he wanted to “curl up in the fetal position.”A few years later, I helped a friend who is brilliant, disciplined, and highly organized. He sees situations clearly and has remarkable judgment. When his company sold for $125 million, I pointed these traits out to him as the reasons his company had thrived. He looked at me very sincerely and without a trace of humor shook his head and said, “No, it was desperation.”“I have often fallen into a doom loop, convinced that I was about to lose everything.” These are the words of a friend whose company revenues are rapidly approaching $1 billion a year.One friend whose net worth is currently more than $2.5 billion speaks of a time 20 years ago when cash was so tight that, “I lived in a tent with my wife and children in the back of our little shop.”These are only 4 of the 400 true entrepreneurs I have known.I’ve never met a self-made person who didn’t have stories of desperation.Stress and trouble are the unmistakable signs of adventure.No stress?No trouble?No adventure.“When we’re safe at home we wish we were having an adventure. But when we’re having an adventure, we wish we were safe at home.”– Thornton WilderDon Quixote saw beauty in Dulcinea when everyone else saw commonness, so he decided to be her champion. And because he was tired of being safe at home, he went looking for adventure. The balance of his epic book are the tales of his battles: his victories and his defeats, his parades and his embarrassments, his glistening moments of accomplishment and his painful regrets. Quixote challenged lions, fought giants, and struggled with adversaries on every side.“And I know if I’ll only be trueTo this glorious quest,That my heart will lie peaceful and calmWhen I’m laid to my rest.”“And the world will be better for this;That one man, scorned and covered with scars,Still strove with his last ounce of courageTo reach the unreachable star.” 1“Scorned and covered with scars…” describes every true entrepreneur.People often ask why I am attracted to Don Quixote. Here is my answer:Don Quixote was a house catwho decided to becomean alley cat.Roy H. Williams

CHAPTER ONE: (97 words)“Circumstances” are where you are right now.“Choices” are what you will make.“Consequences” are what will happen as a result.Sometimes your circumstances are the consequence of your choices. But not always.The circumstances of your birth and your childhood, such as your nationality and your ethnicity, and whether or not your family had money, are not the consequence of any choice you made.It is foolish to feel pride about circumstances that are not the result of your choices.It is foolish to feel shame about circumstances that are not the result of your choices.CHAPTER TWO: (45 words)Will you allow yourself to choose contentment?Or do you believe contentment to be shameful?What is it abouttheir native discontent,their refusal to be satisfied,their undying hunger for more,that makes us admire an ambitious person?Contentment is a choice, not a consequence.CHAPTER THREE: (60 words)Guilt is about what you have done. Shame is about who you are.You choose shame when you continue to do what you know is wrong.Feelings of guilt are beneficial when they cause you to make better choices.When you make better choices, you are no longer who you were.So let the shame go. It isn’t yours anymore.CHAPTER FOUR: (26 words)You can evaluate a man’s ethics by the condition in which he leaves a public restroom.I don’t know how to evaluate the ethics of women.CHAPTER FIVE: (68 words)The angels in the sky sang to the shepherds, “All is forgiven.”A star in the sky whispered to the wise men, “Follow me.”The message was clear to the shepherds.But the wise men had to figure it out on their own.“What’s it all about?” ask the wise men, the entrepreneurs, inventors, artists and kings.But the shepherds – underpaid nurses, caretakers, guardians and teachers – already know.CHAPTER SIX: (69 words)Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) worked as a telegraph messenger 169 years ago. Books were expensive in those days and there were no public libraries. But a Pittsburg man, Col. James Anderson, opened up his collection of 400 books every Saturday to local boys who wanted to expand their minds. Carnegie later donated $56.5 million to open more than 2500 libraries in a dozen countries, saying, “The man who dies thus rich, dies disgraced.”CHAPTER SEVEN: (40 words)Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932) was a Jewish garment manufacturer who quietly donated more than $50 million in matching funds to construct 5,357 schools in African-American communities across the impoverished Southern States. “He who gives while he lives, knows where it goes.”CHAPTER EIGHT: (42 words)Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) left us his best advice, “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”CHAPTER NINE: (83 words)Billionaires Bill and Melinda Gates ($88.5 billion) have been joined by Warren Buffett ($74.2 billion) and 158 other billionaires in an effort to remedy society’s most pressing problems by committing to give more than half their wealth to philanthropy or charitable causes, either during their lifetime or in their will. The current pledge total is now more than $365 billion.Imagine spending a billion dollars a day – a thousand million dollars – every day for a year, in an effort to change the world.CHAPTER TEN: (19 words)The wisest of the wise menalways becomeshepherdsin the end.The shepherds were the first to know.Roy H. Williams

Life-changing decisions often seem small on the day we make them.1978 – Everyone had gone home. I was in the warehouse alone, waiting for Pennie to come and pick me up. I had been installing guttering on houses all day. The job paid $5 an hour.We had just one car.Bored, I looked in the phone book to see if Tulsa had one of those pre-recorded “dial-a-prayer” lines I might call to pass the time.There were three of them.I called.I was appalled.Later that night I saw my friend, “Cheerful Charlie” Myers, and told him how devastatingly bad those messages had been. My secret hope was that Charlie would volunteer to create a more interesting daily message. I said, “Someone ought to…”Before I could finish that sentence, Charlie reached into his pocket, grabbed my wrist, turned my palm upward, slapped a 10-dollar bill into it, looked into my eyes and said, “And you’re just the man to do it. Here’s ten bucks. Let me know what number to call after the equipment is installed.”I had allowed my alligator mouth to overload my mockingbird butt, and Charlie called me on it.That ten dollars would be the only money I would ever collect from “Daybreak,” my daily recorded message, because I never told anyone how they could get in touch with me. The daily call count got so high that Pennie and I had to install rollover lines and lease additional equipment because too many callers were getting a busy signal.I was spending about 3 hours of writing time each day and 25% of our household income each month to fund an enterprise from which there was never a plan for return-on-investment.But it was the ultimate Masters Class on Ad Writing.If you write a new message – 7 days a week – that is interesting enough to cause complete strangers to voluntarily dial a phone number each day to hear that message, your friends are going to ask you to start writing ads for them.But ad writing takes a lot of time. So much, in fact, that “Daybreak” became a weekly 1-page fax called The Monday Morning Memo. That fax later became an email and a podcast. You’re reading it, or listening to it, right now.1998 ­– exactly 20 years after Cheerful Charlie Myers slapped that 10-dollar bill into my hand, Bard Press collected 100 of those memos and The Wizard of Ads became Business Book of the Year. Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads (1999) and Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads (2001) became New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers.Then Pennie found a 21-acre plateau that overlooked Austin from 900 feet above the city and suggested that we build a campus for artists and entrepreneurs.2018 – exactly 20 years after The Wizard of Ads was published – I’m preparing to turn Wizard Academy over to a new generation of leadership and begin the next chapter of my life with the Princess.But that’s enough about me.2018 – Let’s talk about you.  Have you mapped the journey that brought you to where you are? I just showed you how to do it.Find a moment that, in hindsight, looks to be auspicious.Begin your map at that point in time.Look back at other positive, pivotal moments.Figure out where they should be on your map.Connect the dots.The fun of this exercise is that it:reminds you of who you are.focuses your attention on good, not bad, memories.gives you a glimpse at what might – just maybe – be around the corner.And now a Traveler’s Blessing for you that I condensed from the Tefilat Haderekh, the traditional Hebrew traveler’s prayer:May God guide your footsteps toward peace, and cause you to reach a happy destination. May he rescue you from the hand of every foe, and every ambush along the way. And may you have a wonderful time.Roy H. Williams

People don’t Paint-by-Number as often as they did 50 years ago.My personal theory is that we came to our senses and realized Paint-by-Number paintings are perfectly awful.But we still see and hear a lot of Advertise-by-Number and Sales-by-Number.I blame the colleges.Paint-by-number paintings employ a template. I’m not against templates. I’ve created dozens of them. The purpose of a template is to give beginners a way to begin. The hope, of course, is that the beginner will learn to improvise, develop new techniques, and leave the template behind. But invariably some fool of an instructor will carve the template in stone and treat it as an idol to be worshiped, a perfection to which we should all aspire, a standard to which we should all be held accountable.And because templates are step-by-step and simple and tidy and easily monitored, they are quickly embraced by people looking for shortcuts and hacks.Pause with me for a moment to thank merciful God above that the template worshippers never discovered poetry. If they had, all poems would begin, “Roses are red, violets are blue…”Sadly, the template worshippers discovered marketing in the 1950s.That’s when most of our tragic Advertise-by-Number and Sales-by-Number templates were developed, popularized, and adopted as standard operating procedure. These obsolete templates from the 1950s are why we hate most advertising and are suspicious of most salespeople.Advertise-by-Number Template #1: Your Unique Selling PropositionBusiness owners are usually introduced to this template by well-meaning ad writers who ask, “What is it that you do differently than your competitors? We need to focus on what YOU do that they DON’T do. What makes you different and special and better than everyone else?”TRUTH: Bad advertising is about you, your company, your product, your service. “Me, me, me, me, me.” Bad advertising walks into the room and shouts, “Here I am!”Good advertising is about the customer and how you hope to improve their world. Good advertising walks into the room and smiles, “There you are!”Advertise-by-Number Template #2: Reach the right people.Targeting the “right” customer is always more expensive. A lot more expensive. This is why media salespeople want you to focus your attention on reaching “the perfect target customer.” Age. Gender. Income. Zip code. Purchase history. When you agree with the seller that some people are “right” but most are “wrong” for your business, you just agreed to pay a premium price for whatever media they’re selling.TRUTH: Decisions are never made in a vacuum. To become a household word, you must also reach the influencers, the friends and neighbors, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, co-workers and employers of your customer. But happily, this “unfiltered” mass audience is extremely affordable.TRUTH: Telling an interesting story – saying the right thing – is much more important than “reaching the right customer.” When you learn to speak to the heart, you’re going to be surprised at how many people suddenly become the “right” people. Online engagement, page views, time spent on site, and word-of-mouth will skyrocket.Advertise-by-Number Template #3: Tell them what they want to hear.“Tell them what they want to hear,” is the very definition of hype! Hyperbolic statements of high relevance, but low credibility, cause customers to roll their eyes and whisper, “That would be impressive if I believed you.”TRUTH: You gain credibility when you are open, honest, and vulnerable. The strongest ads create a bond with the customer. Win the heart, and the mind will follow. Your customer can always find logic to support what their heart has already decided.Sales-by-Number Template #1: Everyone is an extravert.“Engage the customer immediately. Make eye contact. Smile big. Shake their hand. Pat their back. Never quit talking. In other words, be friendly.” Extraverts live to talk. Face-to-face. Nose-to-nose. It gives them energy and makes them feel good. Does it surprise you that extraverts are naturally attracted to selling? Here’s what’s funny: They’re treating you exactly how they prefer to be treated.TRUTH: What feels like “friendliness” to the extravert feels like “assault” to the introvert. And 49.5 percent of the population is introverted.1 Are you beginning to understand why Amazon.com has become the #1 search engine for product research, even when we’re planning to buy the product at a local brick-and-mortar store?TRUTH: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” assumes that everyone is like you. If you want happier customers, you must learn to, “do unto others as they prefer to be done unto.”Sales-by-Number Template #2: Dominate the conversation.“Don’t let the customer lead you. You must lead them. Don’t listen to their story. Make them listen to yours.”TRUTH: People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care. And the way to let people know t

We experience wonder when we realize our true size.On clear nights, we ride a speck of dust as it circles an 11,000-degree fireball shooting through a limitless vacuum at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet.And that fireballis one of billionsof fireballsin our galaxy.And our galaxyis one of billionsof galaxies.Looking at the stars, we know our true size.On rainy days, we thumb through the fading scrapbooks of our minds, celebrating small and silly victories, reflecting on old mistakes, examining events that will cease to be when we are gone.And again, we know our true size.Jorge Luis Borges speaks of this infinite, inner universe in The Witness.“The man, while still a boy, had seen the face of Woden, had seen holy dread and exultation, had seen the rude wooden idol weighed down with Roman coins and heavy vestments, seen the sacrifice of horses, dogs, and prisoners. Before dawn he would be dead and with him would die, never to return, the last firsthand images of the pagan rites. The world would be poorer when this Saxon was no more.”“We may well be astonished by space-filling acts which come to an end when someone dies, and yet something, or an infinite number of things, die in each death. There was a day in time when the last eyes to see Christ were closed forever. The battle of Junín and the love of Helen died with the death of some one man.”“What will die with me when I die? What pathetic or frail form will the world lose? Perhaps the voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a horse in the vacant space at Serrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?”Roy Batty, the leader of the replicants in Blade Runner (1982) spoke of his own inner universe just before he died.“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”Likewise, in Richard Hoggart’s First and Last Things, an old woman observes,“Since Penelope Noakes of Duppas Hill is gone, there is no one who will ever call me Nellie again.”I mention these things only because you populate your private universe with people and events of your own choosing.If you don’t like the world you live in, you can change it.The people who occupy the space around youcan choose to be there against your will.But you, alone,control who it isthat occupiesthe real estateof your mind.Roy H. Williams

Balance is not compromise. It is a universe born when gravity meets antigravity, matter meets antimatter, Yin meets Yang, and Lennon meets McCartney.Balance is not the average between two extremes. It is the precarious midpoint between rising and falling. It is the last breath of an old man answered by the first cry of a baby. It is the electric current that leaps between positive and negative. It is perky Paul McCartney meeting jerky John Lennon.There we are with Lennon and McCartney again. Do you know that story?Neither of them was as good alone as they were together.Lennon added depth to McCartney’s superficial shallowness. McCartney injected hope into John’s cries of despair. If you’ve seen the theatre masks of tragedy and comedy you’ve seen the souls of Lennon and McCartney.In a 1980 interview, John said,“Paul provided a lightness, an optimism, while I would always go for the sadness, the discords, the bluesy notes.”Occasionally, they would weave together two half-finished songs to create a hit that neither of them could have crafted alone. In one instance, Paul contributed the energetic passage, “Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head …” to insert in the middle of John’s whining complaint, “I read the news today, oh boy …”But then came the moment when perky Paul McCartney had to write a song of encouragement to a broken-hearted 5-year-old boy.That boy was Julian Lennon, the son that John had abandoned to be with his lover, Yoko Ono.Paul wrote the song as he was driving out to visit Julian and his mother, Cynthia, a month after John had moved out of the family home.“I started with the idea ‘Hey Jules’ – which was Julian – ‘don’t make it bad, take a sad song and make it better.’ But then I changed the name to ‘Jude’ because I thought that sounded a bit better.”When Paul played the song for John, he assured him that he would change the line, “the movement you need is on your shoulder,” because Paul felt it conjured the image of a parrot. Lennon replied, “You won’t, you know. That’s the best line in the song.” So the line stayed in.“Hey Jude” spent nine weeks as the number one song in the United States, the longest of any Beatles song, ever, and the single sold eight million copies. In 2013, Billboard named it the 10th biggest song of all time.When you make room for someone who is essentially your opposite, you make yourself exponentially stronger, more appealing, and more effective.Your opposite can bring you gifts that no one else can give you.Your opposite can see what is hiding in your blind spot and bring it blazing to your to attention.Your opposite is uniquely qualified to be your partner to the stars, or your nemesis in the darkness.Your relationship with them will determine which of these they will be.Did you know you can choose to like someone, regardless of whether they have ‘earned’ it?Which of the people in your life is your opposite?Do they know you treasure them as an asset?Or do you simply annoy each other?Roy H. Williams

“The data is conclusive,” he told me, “our close rate is much higher when customers call us on the telephone instead of going to our website. Therefore, you need to write ads that drive customers to the telephone.”“I agree that the data is conclusive,” I told him, “and it says you need to fix your half-assed website.”The research community has embraced a new buzzword. They take great delight in demanding that everything be “evidence based.” It’s a little like listening to a parrot: “Evidence based.” “Evidence based.” “Evidence based.” “Evidence based.”By themselves, these two words seem harmless. After all, every new idea is based on evidence. But the smug and devilish side of this trend toward “evidence-based” methodology is that the phrase has come to mean “scientific, conclusive, and therefore above debate.”In other words, if you want everyone to shut up and swallow your recommendation, all you have to do is raise your voice and announce that it is “evidence based.”I think they learned this trick from online marketers. (Lest the broad brush of that statement paint innocent people with a fault that is not their own, allow me to say that I know several brilliant, online marketers who gather data responsibly and examine it from every perspective. They agree that numbers can whisper opposite statements when viewed from different angles.*)I’ve never seen anyone make a decision that wasn’t based on evidence.So the question isn’t whether you’re basing your decisions on evidence. Of course you are. The question is whether you’re interpreting that evidence correctly.Here’s how I explain this cognitive bias that has become so alarmingly evident: “The intellect can always find logic to justify what the heart has already decided. Consequently, data is often used in the same way that a drunk man uses a lamppost; for support, not for illumination.”Let’s examine the facts.FACT: The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.FACT: The French eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.FACT: The Japanese drink no red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.FACT: The Italians drink lots of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.FACT: The Germans eat sausages with beer and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.EVIDENCE BASED CONCLUSION: Eat and drink what you like. It’s speaking English that kills you.The misinterpretation of data is as old as humanity. “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc,” is the ancient Latin name for this most common fallacy of logic. It means, “the second thing followed the first thing, therefore the first thing caused the second thing.”But correlation rarely indicates causation.Another limitation of data is that it cannot tell you the right thing to do. It can only tell you the result of what you have already done.Am I against data? Of course not. Data is information, and information is powerful.But like all powerful things, it can hurt you if mishandle it.Five safeguards you should use when evaluating data.Ask:1. What were the methods of data collection?2. Could those methods have influenced the findings?3. Is there any other way to look at these numbers? (i.e. – Are they saying “drive customers to the telephones,” or are they saying “fix the website”?)4. Is there a chance the persons who prepared this information have a bias or an agenda?5. If the data reveals a surprise, is that surprise supported by indicators outside the data?You’ve heard it said that “numbers don’t lie.” I’ve heard that, too.But I also remember my grandfather Roy looking at me after a data-quoting salesman had walked away. He said, “Little Roy, never forget: figures lie when liars figure.”Granddad, it’s been fifty years.I never forgot.Roy H. Williams

The name Wizard Academy causes a lot of people to scorn our school without knowing anything about us.And that, my friend, is the primary reason we chose the name. AWe don’t want uptight people coming here.When the right people – people like you – are confronted with the name Wizard Academy, they are filled with curiosity. And so they investigate. They visit the website, watch a few videos, read some MondayMorningMemos.Curiosity and a hunger for wonder are what Wizard Academy alumni seem to have in common.Wonder. Do you remember it?“Later that evening when we sat at the train station waiting to board our train I opened the notebook and wrote a question at the top of the first page: Where do you find wonder? That was the central question for a magician, certainly, but I also thought it was an important question for anyone. Wonder is something that everyone cares about but no one discusses, and I probably wasn’t the only one in my generation to lie awake in bed one night, unable to sleep, trying to figure out when everything had gone so numb and how to get back. Where do you find wonder? is a good question, but it carries an unstated assumption. The real question is, Where do you find wonder after you have lost it? That’s what I wanted to learn on this trip – why you lose it, and how you get it back.” – Nate Staniforth, Here is Real Magic, p. 114-115People who lack curiositynever find the end of the rainbowor hear the chimes at midnight with a friend.Ann Pratchett famously said,“Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”Glenn Gould was on a similar trajectory when he said,“The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but rather the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder…”Tom Robbins said it in a way that includes me.“A lot of my work comes from what in Asia is called the ‘mind of wonder.’ There is not a lot of ‘mind of wonder’ writing in contemporary Western literature. I think that’s what appeals to the readers who are my fans.”Albert Einstein said it first.“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed.”But G.K. Chesterton said it succinctly.“We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”Wizard Academy teaches the communication arts. These include speaking and writing, of course, but symbols, colors, shapes, music and numbers are language as well. And each one plays a role in successful advertising and marketing.I share these things with you becauseI am thinking about the future.And what I want it to hold.Curiosity is the gift I would give you.And wonder is what I want you to find.We’re here when you want to visit.Roy H. WilliamsChancellor, Wizard Academy

Didn’t Coca-Cola used to have the most wonderful TV ads?But when’s the last time you saw one on TV?Have you heard of Vitaminwater? Coke bought it for $4.1bn. Traditional soft drinks are now less than 2/3 of Coke’s business, and that percentage is likely to decline.The problem, I think, is that we fell out of love with sweet, syrupy soft drinks. Coke saw this handwriting on the wall, so they evolved into ready-to-drink teas and coffees and juices and dairy products.Coca-Cola knew it was time to reinvent themselves; to transform from one thing into another. This is why – after a continuing series of mistakes, failures, and course corrections – they will continue to thrive.Reinvention is easier as an evolution, rather than an all-at-once revolution.But this takes foresight.Do you remember when travel agencies were a thing? If you needed to buy a plane ticket, you called a travel agent. But most travel agencies disappeared altogether because they remained in denial too long.Changes in the marketplace are, doubtless, affecting your business. Do you have plans to evolve into what you need to be, or are you hunkered down in denial?I happen to know a number of bright and successful church pastors across North America. Interestingly, they all say the same thing. “Gone are the days when most people attended church services every Sunday. Most people attend once a month these days, and the core congregation comes to church twice or three times a month.” But these pastors aren’t complaining and they’re certainly not lecturing their congregations about it. They’re successful because they’ve adapted to what is.Have you adapted to what is? Or are you trying to turn back the clock, to the way it ought to be, or used to be, or the way you’d like it to be?The customer has a way they would like it to be, too. Will you listen to them? Or will you insist they listen to you?Is this something you’d care to discuss?Our conversation will continue in the rabbit hole, with Judge Indy Beagle presiding.Roy H. Williams