Retailers are asking, “Why do people buy from my competitors without even giving us a chance?” And I reply, “They gave you a chance. They just didn’t physically come to your store.”Customers carry instant access to all the knowledge of the world in their pockets. They no longer have to visit your store to compare prices and research their options.Why would they drive to a store to get expert guidance when better, faster, more objective guidance is instantly available online?You can argue, if you like, that the information you provide is far superior to the information available online. And you might even be right. But your customers are looking for information immediately. They’re looking for information right this second. They gave you a chance when they went online. Your website just didn’t volunteer what they wanted.If your answer to their query had been available online, Google or some other friend would likely have directed them to it.“Advertising is a tax you pay for not being remarkable.”There are three keys to being remarkable:1: Correctly anticipate the customer’s desire.2: Satisfy it clearly, with nothing held back.3: Package your offer magnetically.These are simple things, but as my friend Jeffrey Eisenberg says, “Simple isn’t always easy.”Particularly “not easy” is this challenge of magnetic packaging: to create an offer that draws attention, an offer that bears repeating, an offer that no one else has the courage to make.Magnetic Packaging begins with strategy. “What would the customer be delighted to hear?” Answer this question resoundingly and you have the beginnings of a successful direct response campaign.Want to know a secret? Next week’s class at Wizard Academy, “How to Write Direct Response Ads,” will be attended by three of the most successful direct response packagers in the world today: (1.) Brian’s website has more than unique visitors per day than most websites will see in 3 years. (2.) Ryan has hundreds of professional marketers paying him significant amounts of money each year just so they can hear what Ryan is currently thinking. (3.) Dan employs 180 people in a full-time direct response effort that brought in 85 million dollars last year. That business will easily exceed 100 million in 2014.Weirdly, all three of these giants want to hear what Jeff Sexton and I have learned about Magnetic Packaging.Dan has agreed to share the technique that allowed him to go from $70,000 in credit card debt to $85,000,000 in sales. Some of you have stayed in the room Dan built at Engelbrecht House. Yes, Dan has been part of the family for a long time, so he’s willing to share things with us that he shares with no one else. Brian and Ryan are also deeply involved with the Academy and even though they’re both attending as students, I’m betting their questions, comments, suggestions and observations will be insightful. Frankly, I’m very much looking forward to this class.All the rooms in Engelbrecht House and Spence Manor are full, of course, but we can definitely find a seat for you if you’re willing to rent a hotel room.This class is May 6-8. I’m definitely going to be there.Are you?Roy H. Williams

“Cream rises to the top” is what we tell talented people who are frightened. It’s a lie, of course, but it makes them feel like they have a chance.Confidence and courage are not the same thing.Confidence is trust in your ability.Courage is to have such security in your identity that you’re willing to risk open failure. “I’m okay with who I am and I know my intentions are honorable. Que sera, sera.”Confidence springs from ability.Courage springs from identity.And the energizing fluid of courage is audacity.Public speaking requires it.Singing demands it.And successful advertising depends on it.The technical term for the fear of speaking – and of being judged by what you say – is glossophobia, from the Greek gl?ssa, meaning tongue, and phobos, fear or dread.We must elevate you above this fear or you will never successfully advertise a business, promote an event, or advance your career.Stage fright isn’t just the fear of performing in front of large groups. It’s also the reluctance to make a presentation to a group of co-workers.Dr. David Carbonell says,“Stage fright is like being heckled mercilessly during your performance, and getting into an argument with the heckler, except that it’s your own mind doing the heckling. You get so involved in your internal struggle that you don’t get involved with the actual performance. Most people with performance anxiety get tricked into focusing on themselves, struggling against anxiety in a vain effort to get rid of it… One of the keys to mastering stage fright is to become truly involved in, and focused on, your material. Not on yourself.”Unless you’re a major celebrity, the audience didn’t really come to see you; they came to hear the material you brought them.It’s not about you at all. It’s about the material. Think about the material. Think about how the audience needs it. Think about the material. Think about how the audience needs it. Think about the material. Think about how the audience needs it.Don’t let anything get in the way of the gift you brought for your audience. It’s not about you at all.You’re only the mailman.I said earlier that courage is, “to have such security in your identity that you’re willing to risk open failure.”But sometimes you need Plan B, so here it is: Commit to delivering the mail. Commitment looks exactly like courage when you’re committed to something more important than your fear. Say to yourself, “It’s okay if the audience isn’t impressed with me, as long as they’re impressed with what I brought them.”Only a fool stands between a mother tiger and her cubs.Be the mother tiger.Roy H. Williams

I should begin with an apology, I suppose, because the secret of great advertising, the secret to great wealth, the secret of status and stature and your name on the lips of all the beautiful people is actually a wee bit disappointing.Yes, it’s a sadly disappointing big secret.The reason the big secret is such a letdown is that you already know it.Are you ready?The secret of great advertising is that you must find something to say that your customer would be happy to hear.You knew this, of course, but most advertisers don’t. If they did, our eyes and ears would not be so continually assaulted with such excruciating drivel.And this goes double for newscasters.Plato was obviously thinking about advertisers and newscasters in 372 BC when he said,“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”Ad strategy is more difficult to teach than ad copy.Strategy is determining what a customer would like to hear.Copy is deciding how best to say it.Impact in advertising is 80 percent strategy, 20 percent copy. This makes it nearly impossible for good copy to compensate for weak strategy.We create advertising failure when we pretend that creativity can overcome the fact that we really have nothing to say.Morris Hite said it sharply enough to pop a balloon:“If an ad campaign is built around a weak idea – or as is so often the case, no idea at all – I don’t give a damn how good the execution is, it’s going to fail. If you have a good selling idea, your secretary can write your ad for you.”Even more annoying than advertisers and newscasters who have nothing to say are those smug and confident little weasels who preach with passion that the secret of successful advertising is to find the media that reaches the RIGHT CUSTOMER. In effect, the weasels are selling you a treasure map. “The reason you haven’t found the treasure,” they say, “is because you’ve been digging in all the wrong places.”But the treasure isn’t buried at all. It’s in the pockets and purses of everyone you see. And if you offer these people something they’d rather have than their treasure, they’ll hand you their treasure with a smile and say “Thank you.” And then they’ll tell all their friends that they should give you some treasure, too.The media that delivers your message is the least important part of the communication equation. When your message is right, any media will work. When your message is wrong, no media will.During the decade when I lived in hotel rooms and spoke about advertising in 50 cities a year, my least favorite moment was when the airplane landed back home in Austin and the ground crew didn’t immediately throw open the door. Those minutes waiting for them to open the hatch and revive me to life were a dark and hateful hell for me.You did not need to know that. I included it only because I thought it would be weird to talk about “my second-least favorite moment” and leave you wondering about my first-least favorite.But now the mystery is solved, so we can continue.My second-least favorite moment was when an advertiser would follow me into the bathroom and then casually lean over to say, “Mr. Williams, I’m in the furniture business. How do you suggest I advertise? Is it TV? Is it Radio? Is it the Internet?”This happened to me a lot more often than you might think. How would you have answered?Roy H. Williams

When Ann Richards was Governor of Texas, she said, “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.” Governor Richards was slightly militant in her feminism, as was common 20 years ago when she made her piercingly witty statement.But the once-edgy voice of feminism has softened in recent years as Americans have increasingly recognized the abilities of women. America’s 110-year movement toward female empowerment is headed into its final phase:When you want to popularize an idea, romanticize it.The Twilight series of films was launched 5 and 1/2 years ago. Twilight revolves around Bella, a high-school girl who is average in every way, yet she’s accepted, respected and highly valued by immortals of astounding power and wealth. The Twilight films have grossed more than 3.3 billion dollars and it’s not because we believe in vampires.It’s because we believe in girls.In 2012 we were introduced to 16 year-old Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, another successful franchise about an average girl who is called upon to save humanity. Her inner strength, tenacity and fundamental goodness allow Katniss to survive everything that is thrown at her as she quietly wins the day. No fists flung skyward in triumph. No chin jutting forward in defiance. No happy end zone dance.Divergent is the newest of these Joan of Arc films in which an average young woman goes toe-to-toe against strong opponents and wins. The special ability of the Divergent protagonist, Tris Prior, is that she isn’t limited to seeing the world in just one way but is able to respond appropriately in ever-changing circumstances. In other words, Divergent celebrates an ability shared by every woman, everywhere.I don’t believe that Twilight, The Hunger Games and Divergent are changing our perception of women. Movies like these are just mirrors that show us how much our perceptions have already changed.The quietly heroic woman is especially evident in jewelry stores.As recently as ten years ago, approximately half of all men would choose the engagement ring alone. The other half would choose with their partner at their side. It was barely thinkable that a woman would shop for an engagement ring by herself and then bring her partner in to see it later. But this is a common practice today.Do you have any idea how this trend affects the language of engagement ring ads? Most women are gracious enough not to be angered by outdated AdSpeak such as, “Buy her the diamond she deserves,” but is such a statement going to attract a woman to your store?A more elegant observation would be to say, “When you love someone and they love you back, it just doesn’t get any better than that. And a diamond is the symbol of that love.” This statement treats both parties as equals and makes no assumptions regarding gender.But gender-neutral statements are difficult to craft in the English language since we have no gender-neutral pronouns to speak of someone that isn’t me or you. We are forced to say, “He walked across the road,” or “She walked across the road.” We cannot say, “It walked across the road.” Such are the miseries of an ad writer.The first artificial sweetener was dressed in pink and called Sweet and Low; adjectives that perfectly described the American woman of that day. In 1981, Sweet’n’Low was challenged by a new competitor. Equal quickly became the overwhelming choice of women. Men, not surprisingly, continued to...

Nine Voices, Nine MoviesEach of us speaks and writes without thinking. This is why so much of what we say is predictable. Do you want to be more interesting? Choose an unusual perspective and verb tense. A movie begins in the mind of the listener every time you speak or write. At whom is your camera aimed?First Person perspective: “I, me, my, we, us, our.”The person speaking is the star of the movie.Second Person perspective: “you, your”The person listening is the star of the movie.Third Person perspective: “He, she, him, her, it, they, them”A person other than the speaker or the listener is the star of the movie.After you’ve chosen your star, you must decide upon the action. The verbs you use will be past tense, present tense or future tense. You should choose these verbs consciously, rather than unconsciously.Past tense verbs speak of history.Present tense verbs speak of action as it’s happening, play-by-play.Future tense verbs are predictive.Any story can be told with past tense, present tense or future tense verbs.It was the night before Christmas, and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.It is the night before Christmas, and all through the house not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse.It will be the night before Christmas, and all through the house not a creature will stir, not even a mouse.Now let’s look at 9 different movies produced from a single script by using 3 different actors in each of 3 separate timelines.1. I placed my paws in warm water and shivered.(First person, past tense. Personal historical narrative.)2. You placed my paws in warm water and I shivered.(Second Person, past tense. An historical story about the listener.)3. She placed my paws in warm water and I shivered.(Third person, past tense. An historical story that describes the actions of a person that is neither the speaker nor the listener)4. I place my paws in warm water and shiver.(First person, present tense. I’m doing it right now.)5. You place my paws in warm water and I shiver.(Second person, present tense. The speaker describes what the listener is doing as it is happening.)6. She places my paws in warm water and I shiver.(Third person, present tense. The speaker is describing what someone else is doing as it is happening.)7. I will place my paws in warm water and shiver.(First person, future tense. Predictive of the speaker’s future action.)8. You will place my paws in warm water and I will shiver.(Second person, future tense. A story about what the listener will do in the future. This voice is predictive or prophetic.)9. She will place my paws in warm water and I will shiver.(Third person, future tense. A story about the actions of others that have not yet occurred. Again, predictive or prophetic.)The voice of any story is transformed when you change the actor and timeline.You have seen the 9 movies and heard the 9 voices.You have been forever changed. You are different now. You carry magic.You will speak with authority and people will listen.That is my benediction, crafted in the second person, traveling through your past (2 sentences) and your present (2...

Today we call it Data but we used to call it Statistics.Statistics are boring. That’s why a clever boy in Silicon Valley gave them a new and better name.A scientist is willing to change a belief when presented with data, facts and logic.But very few customers are scientists. This is why you must accommodate their perspectives, reinforce their biases, anticipate their preferences and leverage their stereotypes.In his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie said, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”Carnegie was quoting Benjamin Franklin who said it 100 years earlier.Franklin discovered the idea in a satirical poem, Hudibras, written by Samuel Butler 100 years before that, in 1664.That statement, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still,” resonated with Carnegie, Franklin and Butler, just as it does with every person who has vainly attempted to use facts and logic to overcome a belief.In the words of Andrew Lang, we generally use statistics “as a drunken man uses a lamppost, for support rather than for illumination.”This is because data, facts and logic are not the keys to the mind.The keys to the mind are metaphors, connecting the unfamiliar to the familiar, the unknown to the known. Metaphors employ Symbolic thought, the only type of thought that bridges the unconscious to the conscious, the right brain to the left, the category to the specific, the pattern to the purpose.Verbal thought is the sound of words in your mind.Analytical thought embraces data, facts and logic.Abstract thought embraces patterns of events and patterns of answers. It’s a nonverbal, subjective reality built on preferences, prejudices and stereotypes.Symbolic thought is a bridge that begins in the land of Abstract thought and ends in the land of Analytical thought. Parables, music and metaphors are powerful expressions of Symbolic thought. Each is more persuasive than Data.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.We’re a funny, funny species, aren’t we?We’re coaching a basketball game.Cedric makes 4 baskets in less than 2 minutes so we conclude that Cedric has “a hot hand,” he’s “in the zone and has a feel for the basket,” so we instruct the other players to feed Cedric the ball.Does it surprise you to learn that all the data clearly indicates that a player who makes 4 consecutive baskets in less than 2 minutes of game time is no more likely to make his next shot than usual? But every coach, every player and every fan of the sport will continue to feed Cedric the ball.We don’t trust data nearly so much as we trust our heart.Digital marketing is here to stay and it provides us with data beyond imagination. But data doesn’t change the mind. At best, it reinforces a decision that was already made in the heart. Win the heart and the mind will follow. Don’t fill your messages with data. Instead, use metaphors that connect your idea to your customer’s world. Because a man...

People will direct their attention to whatever gives them a sense of identity, purpose and adventure.You must always remember this when crafting advertising.The fans of a sports team are the members of a club. Their team gives them identity, purpose and adventure. Political parties, too, give their members identity, purpose and adventure. Religious organizations, book clubs and Twitter feeds give their followers identity, purpose and adventure.A grandmother adores her grandchildren because they give her identity… purpose… and adventure.Do you know what a rock collector gets from his rock collection? Identity, purpose and adventure.Each of us – every one of us – is on a treasure hunt. The differences between us are found primarily in the things we value. When a person doesn’t value what we value, we think a little less of them. They are obviously shallow, stupid, deceptive or evil.Abraham Maslow believed a third of our society lives below the search for identity or above it. Those who live below the search are focused primarily on securing food, shelter and safety. This is their economic reality. Those who live above the search have a clear sense of identity and they know their purposes precisely. This is their emotional reality. Their adventures depend on nothing outside themselves.Those who live below or above the search for identity are effectively immune to advertising. The first group can’t afford what you’re selling and the second group doesn’t care. These people are rarely prospective customers.Fortunately for businesses everywhere, two thirds of us buy what we buy to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are. These two thirds of society are the backbone of the economy. We have needs that have not been met, hungers that have not been satisfied, dreams that have not been fulfilled.Businesses exist to meet those needs, satisfy those hungers and fulfill those dreams.We make and spend money primarily to discover who we are.This would be sadif it wasn’t so much fun.Vie à l’économie.Roy H. Williams

It’s Friday morning, September 7, 1951. John Steinbeck emerges from deep in his writing of East of Eden to scribble a note to his friend, Pat Covici:“This week has been a hard one. I have put the forces of evil against a potential good. Yesterday I wrote the outward thing of what happened. Today I have to show what came of it. This is quite different from the modern hard-boiled school. I think I must set it down. And I will. The spots of gold on this page are the splatterings from beautiful thoughts.”Those five words, “the splatterings from beautiful thoughts,” let me know that I’m not alone.Another five words, “haggard, inconstant splashes of beauty,” appear near the end of an Italian movie about a guy who, on his 65th birthday, begins to reevaluate his shallow life. The movie is visually rich but a bit of a downer.Life can be a bit of a downer, too, even when it’s not a shallow one.Visually rich sights are all around us but we’re too pressed for time to notice. We’re in a mood, in a hurry, in trouble, in a crisis or incapacitated. We’re anxious or angry, distracted or distraught, bedazzled, bedeviled or bedraggled.But still those splashes of beauty creep in – barely noticeable at first – but there they are, haggard and inconstant, limping and laughing splashes of miracles that would show up more often if only we would notice.“There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it….”– Alan Paton, opening line of Cry, The Beloved CountryA profound beauty can often be found in the ordinary. Will you look for it with me today? The cost is nothing and the value is high.If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then let us become beholders.Yes, people will laugh at us if we see beauty where they do not. Let us think of this laughter as our gift to them. We should laugh a little, too.And now I will tell you a dark secret that is also a paradox: the richest of all beauties – the one that takes your breath away – is deeply terrifying. It grants me new life when it appears, but I do not seek it. For this richest beauty happens only when my world collapses and my only hope is in God.Perhaps you, too, have been there.There is a quickening, a wiggle of life when we’re in extremis, a rearrangement of priorities, deep and clear. The problem that’s about to swallow you whole becomes a pool of water that serves as a magnifying glass and for a moment you see everything clearly.As I said, I do not seek this richest of beauties, for it is terrifying.Coward that I am, I shall continue to live without an all-consuming crisis for as long as I’m able and do my best to be satisfied with the haggard, inconstant splashes of beauty that are the splatterings from beautiful thoughts.Dorothy Parker was right, “They sicken of the calm who know the storm.”Even so, let us look for beauty – in the calm – of the ordinary.Roy H. Williams

I look in the mirror and see the person I believe myself to be. You look at me and see the person you believe me to be. We don’t see the same person.Businesses, too, see themselves differently than their customers do.A flatterer disguised as a branding consultant will help you create an idealized self-portrait and tell you it’s your brand. I say “idealized” because we businesspeople judge ourselves by our intentions. Customers judge us by our actions.Peace of mind comes from liking the person you see in the mirror.But brand attraction happens when the customer looks at your company and sees a reflection of themselves.We are attracted to brands that stand for something we believe in. Likewise, we are attracted to television shows, movies, books, websites, podcasts, newscasts and songs that confirm what we believe. This is known in psychology as “confirmation bias.”Let me say this plainly: If you challenge a person’s core beliefs, they will avoid you. Agree with those beliefs and they will like you. This is the essence of brand building.But not everyone believes the same things. This is why a brand-builder must choose who to lose. There is no message, no belief system, that appeals to everyone.The Democratic party and the Republican party dominate American politics even though just fifty-eight percent of Americans align themselves with either of these two brands.In a survey of self-identified “Liberal Democrats” and self-identified “Conservative Republicans,” Experian Simmons identified the Top 15 favorite television shows of each group.Not a single show was on both lists.Not one.Liberals prefer shows of moral ambiguity like Mad Men, Dexter, 90210 and Breaking Bad, where the good people aren’t entirely good and the bad people aren’t entirely bad. “I don’t mean to make light of it, but Democrats seem to like shows about damaged people,” said John Fetto, senior marketing manager at Experian Simmons. “Those are the kind of shows Republicans just stay away from.”Conservatives prefer shows where hard work and talent are clearly rewarded. Reality shows and contests like American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Survivor and The Bachelor scored high with this group.Interesting information, right? But not really surprising when you think about it. Narcissus saw his reflection in a pool of water and fell in love with the person he saw.Confirmation bias strikes again.How can you use this information to make money?1. Quit trying to change your customer’s mind.2. Tell them they’re right.3. Confirm their suspicions.4. Demonize their enemies.5. Let them see themselves when they look at you. Do these things and you’ll make more money. Usually, a lot more money.But a strange thing happens when you“go along to get along,” when youagree with people you don’t respect, when youfail to speak out against injustice, when youallow etiquette and expediency to quietly replacecompassion and courage:You look in the mirror and no longer like who you see.How do we remain open to seeing things from a new perspective without losing clarity of self in the process?If I ever figure it out, I’ll let you know.Roy H. Williams

Contrary to what my headline might suggest, this is actually an upbeat message.Guilt is about what you have done.Shame is about who you are.Failure in business has no connection to either of these.Failures are footlights along the dark pathway to success.One of the defining characteristics of Wizard Academy alumni is that we are people of action. Failure does not frighten us.The author of Peter Pan, J. M Barrie, would have been one of us if Wizard Academy had existed back then. He said, “We are all failures – at least the best of us are.”Thomas John Watson, the early President of IBM who turned that company into a household word, said, “If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.”Roger Van Oech, a consultant to Apple, Disney, Sony and IBM echoes, “Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.”Warren G. Bennis had a failure epiphany that changed his life. He says, “The leaders I met, whatever walk of life they were from, whatever institutions they were presiding over, always referred back to some failure: something that happened to them that was personally difficult, even traumatic, something that made them feel that desperate sense of hitting bottom — as something they thought was almost a necessity. It’s as if, at that moment, the iron entered their soul; that moment created the resilience that leaders need.”Failure, it seems, is valuable and important and necessary to your success.Here’s how to do it right:Fail cheaply. Always ask, “What is the minimum viable experiment?”Fail forward. Be sure to learn something you didn’t know before you failed.Fail quickly. The primary goal is to prove or disprove your concept.This education by experience can be expensive. But ignorance is even more expensive.I’m in the middle of what appears – right now – to be a failure of epic proportions.But I’m not frightened by it, ashamed of it, or even confused.“Amazed” is the word I would use.Back on November 4th I announced a $10,000 Quixote’s Windmill Prize. Only 4 people, so far, have entered that contest.Think of it this way: would you accept a free lottery ticket to win a $10,000 cash prize if your chances of winning were 1 in 4? That’s right. There is nothing to buy, no entry fee, and anyone can enter. The prize is cash.The deeply insightful Jean Vanier says, “I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.” The name of Vanier’s book is Community and Growth.Community: you’re part of the community of Wizard Academy and the Monday Morning Memo.Growth: It’s the goal of our coming together.I’m going to say something hard now. I hope you will forgive me: If you want to stand before others as a sparkling example of what is possible if a person works hard enough, is disciplined and determined enough, and makes all the right decisions, well, you seem to have a need to be worshipped.If you actually want to benefit the people around you… if you want to help them avoid the mistakes you made and the difficulties you endured as a result… you must share those mistakes and describe those difficulties. This is how we grow. This is how we have community.I want you to enter Quixote’s Windmill contest because it’s important for you to laugh about your failures. If you try to keep them secret, you give them power over you.Don’t wear the handcuffs...

“Once, there were 3 kittens named Murry, Furry and Wurry…”I’ll admit to fabricating Murry and Furry, but you and I both know that Wurry is often pampered and protected like a cherished pet. We talk about our Wurry and cuddle it. We share our Wurry with others, hoping they will choose to love our Wurry as we do.If you try to help a person eliminate their Wurry, they will rise ferociously to its defense.People who have all chosen to love the same Wurry form organizations and political parties, bound together by a shared anxiety.Would you like to have anxiety? It can be yours if you want it. All you have to do is craft a pessimistic interpretation of ambiguous events and voilà, anxiety is yours.Jesus makes a strong argument against worry in the 6th chapter of Matthew, then finishes his thoughts with these words: “Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”That’s a well-known Bible verse, but if you actually choose not to worry, most people will consider you to be foolish and naive.We are programmed from birth to give our attention to the snarling tiger on our left instead of the beautiful butterfly on our right. When face-to-face with imminent danger, fear gives us focus and clarity. It is a biological imperative that keeps us alive. This is why we give bad news the highest priority. But that doesn’t mean fear is always good.When was the last time you encountered a tiger?In the absence of snarling tigers, modern man has chosen to focus his need to fear beyond this moment, beyond his circumstances, beyond objective reality.Our fear about the future is called Worry.I do not love it.What would it feel like if we quit borrowing trouble from tomorrow?It sounds reckless, doesn’t it, not to worry about possibilities that might never happen? Would that mean the end of planning? Perhaps it would. But it would also trigger an explosion of improvisation.I seem to recall a writer who said that most plans are just inaccurate predictions anyway. I think he makes a good point.Am I seriously suggesting that we eliminate worry from our lives? No, it was Jesus who suggested that. I’m merely contemplating the implications of such a decision and walking you down a path of possibilities.Interesting scenery, don’t you think?Roy H. Williams

We could call this memo, “The Poodle and The Vamp, Part Two,” but we won’t. No one likes the sequel quite so much as they liked the original.Talent isn’t rare. Our world overflows with worthy talent that continues day-to-day unrecognized. I’ll wager that you possess such talent.There is something you’re capable of doing, I’ll bet, that could make you famous around the world. Your fame might even happen in a whoosh, the way it did for Billy, Tom, and Ted.Billy Graham started preaching in 1947. In 1949, Billy set up a circus tent in Los Angeles, certainly not the first to do so. So there he was, night after night, just another preacher with a tent, when two words forever altered the trajectory of his life: “Puff Graham.”William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper mogul who inspired the movie, Citizen Kane, sent that unexplained, 2-word telegram to every editor at every newspaper he owned in America. The next day, papers from coast to coast were glowing with stories about this Christian minister. Hearst never told the papers to quit puffing Graham.And they never did.In his book, Just as I Am, Billy Graham says he never learned why Hearst took an interest in him. “Hearst and I did not meet, talk by phone, or correspond as long as he lived.”Billy Graham was, and is, remarkably talented. But so are 10,000 other ministers.Every poodle needs a vamp.“Tom Clancy was an insurance salesman in Maryland when, in the early nineteen-eighties, he wrote a book, ‘The Hunt for Red October,’ that Ronald Reagan, with a handsome public mention, turned into a best-seller. Clancy’s career took off like, well, like one of his rockets. Too nearsighted to serve in the armed forces, Clancy, who kept a tank on his front lawn, was a military fantasist whose end-is-nigh concoctions spawned a franchise…”– David Denby, The New Yorker, Jan. 20, 2014, p. 78Reagan played vamp for Tom Clancy just as Hearst did for Billy Graham.But what about Teddy Roosevelt? Wasn’t he one of the most popular and beloved presidents in the history of the United States?Nope. Not really. His policies and decisions were as hotly debated as those of Barack Obama today. We think of Roosevelt as “one of the great ones” primarily because his monumental face watches over America from Mount Rushmore along with Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, the undisputed big boys of American history.Roosevelt’s vamp was Gutzon Borglum.Borglum was not commissioned by the government to create Mount Rushmore. It was a private work begun by a private individual.And that individual was a buddy of Ted Roosevelt back when Teddy was still alive. Roosevelt had been gone for only 8 years when Borglum began his carving.If Gutzon Borglum was only just now beginning to carve that granite in South Dakota, he might chose Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Carter because Gutzon answered to no one but himself.That is the power of a vamp.Do you believe in someone? Vamp for them.The Wizard of Ads partners are known throughout the Engish-speaking world because we have agreed upon a covenant: Never boast of your own accomplishments but only those of your partners.“You vamp for me. I’ll vamp for you.”It’s called “third party credibility,” or at least it used to be. Today they call it “feedback,” “comments” and “customer reviews.”Billy, Tom and Ted went viral before it had a name. But one thing remains the same: A poodle needs a vamp.Every business is a poodle.Every ad writer is a vamp.How good is...

Type “business plan” into Google and you’ll see an impressive array of articles from BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Inc., Forbes, Entrepreneur and SBA.gov.Everyone has a business plan.Almost no one has an advertising plan.And we are coming to a critical fork in the road.I want you to choose your fork consciously rather than unconsciously. And choose you most definitely will.I’m talking about your choice between brand-building and direct response advertising.When you sell a product or service with a long purchase cycle – something purchased only once every several years – your business will be best served by brand building. Do everything in your power to become the company that people will think of first and feel the best about when they finally need what you sell. Good brand-building also stimulates word-of-mouth, the original “viral.” But brand building requires patience, confidence and courage.If you sell a product or service with a short purchase cycle – something that most people will purchase every few days, weeks or months – your business will be best served by direct-response ads. Create an extremely attractive, limited-time offer, then add an additional incentive for those who act now. Then add a third incentive. This is called “benefit stacking” and it makes a massive difference. Direct-response ads are exciting but to be really successful you need a big-gap offer.The goal is to create a big gap between the perceived value and the asking price. The more impressive that gap, the more attractive your direct-response offer. Big-gap offers are most easily made when the public has no ability to shop and compare.Companies that make money with big-gap offers are the ones that can sell products with a perceived value that is at least 10 times their actual cost. I’m betting you don’t have that kind of profit margin. Am I right?Write a direct-response ad for a product with a widely known price and the public won’t be impressed unless you’re selling that product below your cost. This is known as a “loss leader.” The idea behind a loss leader is that it can drive customers into your store who might make additional purchases while they’re there. Grocery stores have used this technique since the dawn of time.Direct response is not a style of ad writing. It is a style of offer packaging.Businesses with short purchase cycles can jump from offer to offer, item to item, incentive to incentive indefinitely. But may God have mercy on the ad writer who is expected to generate immediate response for a product or service with a long purchase cycle.There are times when it’s possible to run a direct-response offer within a brand-building ad campaign for a product or service that has a long purchase cycle. An example of this would be for a jewelry store to make an enticing offer to finance engagement rings right before Valentines Day. Add the additional incentives of a romantic dinner and a limousine filled with 12 dozen roses and you might see a bump in engagement ring sales.Google’s ability to identify customers who are immediately in the market for products and services with long purchase cycles has all but eliminated the Yellow Pages and it is rapidly eroding the public’s need for in-store “experts” as well. Google’s unique ability to do this has caused many business owners to believe they have a right to expect immediate results from traditional mass media.Business owner, the fork in the road is before you: brand building or direct response.If you sell a product or service that at least 50 percent of the public will purchase within the next 12 months, you might do well to consider running direct response ads in mass media. But please be careful to make a highly impressive offer or you’ll be horribly...

“Normalization” begins with an idealized norm of conduct – for example, the way a soldier should ideally stand, march, and present arms, with each of these actions defined in minute detail. Individuals are then rewarded for conforming to this ideal or punished for deviating from it.Normalization allows a leader to exert maximum social control with the minimum expenditure of force. This idea of “disciplinary power” emerged over the course of the 19th century, came to be used extensively in military barracks, schools, factories and offices in the 20th century, and has since became a crucial aspect of modern societies. I blame the British.Curious to know more? Read Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault“We all know bad things are happening to our political and social universe; we know that business is colonizing ever larger chunks of American culture; and we know that advertising tells lies. We are all sick to death of the consumer culture. We all want to resist conformity. We all want to be our own dog.”– Thomas Frank, Conglomerates and the Media, 1997“The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you but yourself.”– Rita Mae Brown, Venus Envy, 1994“Education either functions (1.) as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or (2.) it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”– Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1968Paolo Freire was a miraculous educator who used unapproved methods to teach thousands of illiterate Brazilian farmworkers to read and write in just 45 days. He was later put in jail.I believe Paolo would have loved Wizard Academy, a school for the imaginative, the courageous and the ambitious. We resist rigid rules and rely instead on universal principles.Laid side-by-side, a stick and a rope have a similar profile. Likewise, rules and principles look alike even though they have little in common.Rules are like sticks. You can prod people with them. You can threaten people with them. You can beat people with them. But you cannot lead people with them. When a rule doesn’t fit the circumstance, your only choice is to break it.Principles are like rope, able to be wrapped around even the most weirdly shaped problems. They are less brittle than rules, and stronger. Principles whisper priceless advice and people are happily led by them.A rule requires obedience.A principle requires contemplation.Simple people living in a push-button society demand simple rules.Wise men and women understand and apply universal laws.There. I have said it.Roy H. Williams

A brief summary of this episode

The Eye of the Storm is what we call the classroom in the tower at Wizard Academy. This name is doubly appropriate; not only is The Eye of the Storm a momentary escape from the buffeting winds of business, it was funded by Tim Storm, a wildly successful entrepreneur.It was the third day of a 3-day class. A hand went up in the second row.“Yes?”“What’s the next big thing?”The answer leapt from my mouth before he had even finished the question.“YouTube.”Everyone laughed. This confused me until I realized the class thought I was trying to be funny. Yes, of course, YouTube was already big.But not in the way I meant.Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim founded YouTube in February 2005. Google purchased it the following year (2006) for $1.65 billion.YouTube was an idea whose time had come.During the 365 calendar days of 2011, YouTube delivered more than 1 trillion views. Viewership in 2012 was up by more than 40 percent: 1.46 trillion views. I mentioned that to you exactly 52 weeks ago. You might remember how I pointed out that one million seconds is about 12 days.One billion seconds is nearly 32 years.One trillion seconds is 31,688 years.A trillion is a lot.The statistics page at YouTube currently says the number of views delivered in 2013 was “50 percent more than last year.” This means they’ve jumped from 1 trillion views to 2 trillion views is just 24 months. It seems that you and I and the rest of the world are watching a lot of online video.Advertising begins a conversation with prospective customers that will be continued when they make contact with your company. This is why it’s important to educate your sales team about your advertising.Sometimes a customer calls to ask you a question. You answer. Sometimes they walk through your door. You greet them. But as Steve Wozniak wryly observed in 2010, “We used to ask a smart person a question. Now who do we ask? It starts with G-O, and it’s not God.”Your customers are gathering information through Google and YouTube. This means your website and your online videos are vital new half steps that fall between your advertising and your customer’s direct first contact with you. (You know I’m right because you’re doing this, too. You walk to your keyboard every time you have interest in a product or a service.)Are your customers finding the information they need?I’m not talking about Search Engine Optimization. I’m not talking about responding to customer queries made by email. I’m talking about crafting an informative answer to the question you believe your customer will ask and then posting that answer in a video on YouTube. You can also embed that video on your website. How many questions can you answer intelligently? That’s exactly how many YouTube videos you should create.Yes, I’m being serious.YouTube is often called “social media.” This is unfortunate because businesspeople tend to see “social media” as cotton candy that offers little real nutrition. Entertainment value is measured by the number of views a video receives. I am not suggesting that you should entertain the public, but rather that you should inform them. Information value is measured by how well you anticipate and answer your customer’s not-yet-asked question.YouTube delivers entertainment when we want to be distracted but it also delivers information when we are seeking answers. Google and YouTube give us unprecedented access to information, 24/7. This is changing the nature of sales training. As Steve Wozniak pointed out, we’re no longer seeking the opinions of experts face-to-face, we’re seeking them face-to-computer-screen. This is not how the world functioned a short decade ago.Welcome to 2014.Wizard...

The official wedding count for Chapel Dulcinea in 2013 was 824 weddings. When I talk about the number of weddings performed each year at Chapel Dulcinea I usually say, “more than a thousand,” but it’s not because I’m lying.I’m just telling the truth prematurely. We’ll soon be at 1,000+ per year. I’m certain of it.If you make a declaration but you don’t believe it to be true, then you’re lying. But if you say a thing is true and you believe it to be true even though it hasn’t happened yet, “I’m there for you. I have your back, no matter what,” are you lying? Are you exaggerating? Or are you just telling the truth prematurely?Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Happy endings are made of it.Faith is the evidence of things not seen. It is proof of the invisible.Hope is optimistic expectation.Faith is hope with its sleeves rolled up.Faith is hope wearing working gloves.Faith is hope yanking the ripcord of a chainsaw.Faith is hope with a hammer in its hand.Faith speaks of that which is not yet as though it already were.Faith requires commitment.I have faith in the success of the companies for whom I write ads. I have faith in the abilities of my Wizard of Ads partners. I have faith that you will blossom like a rose when you visit Wizard Academy. I have faith that you will find what you need while you’re with us.Faith requires commitment and commitment is a choice. It’s not something that arises within you like courage. It’s not something that comes upon you like fear. Commitment is simply a choice.Are you willing to pay the price of commitment?The things to which you must say “no” are the price of your commitment.The things you must walk away from are the price of your commitment.The things you will deny yourself are the price of your commitment.Commitment comes at a price.Do you have hope for the future?Do you have faith in your plans?Does your faith have a hammer in its hand?Are you willing to pay the price of your commitment?If you can give me four yesses I’ll tell you your future:You’re going to have a fabulous 2014.Roy H. Williams

I admire John the Beloved and Abraham Lincoln. These were quietly determined and reliable men, full of love and compassion, unwilling to leave anyone behind. But if I am honest, I must admit that I’m actually more similar to Simon Peter and Teddy Roosevelt; blustering and thundering, quick toward combat, often causing more pain than I realize.There are few Lincolns in America but the spirit of Teddy is everywhere you look.Teddy Roosevelt would have liked Hockey and Football.“It is always dangerous to generalize, but the American people, while infinitely generous, are a hard and strong race and, but for the few cemeteries I have seen, I am inclined to think they never die.”– Margot AsquithMargot Asquith was an English socialite, author and wit.Dorothy Parker was an American socialite, author and wit.In 1927, Dorothy reviewed The Autobiography of Margot Asquith for the Oct. 22 edition of The New Yorker:“The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories of all literature.”And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is what is known in wrestling as a take-down. In soccer and hockey, a body check. In football, spearing. In the hood, a bitch slap.Americans are generally better at it than Europeans. This is an observation that’s been made many times.“I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, and will make a record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted: sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.”– Saul Bellow, opening line, The Adventures of Augie MarchI was born in Texas and raised with rough boys in Oklahoma, so I understand what Saul Bellow meant when he said, “I am an American…” Humorist Will Rogers also knew what Bellow meant. He wrote a letter from Europe to President Calvin Coolidge in 1926:“We, unfortunately, don’t make a good impression collectively… There ought to be a law prohibiting over three Americans going anywhere abroad together.”Comedian Fred Allen likewise looked into our cultural mirror with amusement and chagrin.“The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.”Another comedian, Paul Rodriguez, said in 1987,“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”Ouch.But the most devastating criticism came from the pen of John Steinbeck:“Americans are remarkably kind and hospitable and open with both guests and strangers; and yet they will make a wide circle around the man dying on the pavement. Fortunes are spent getting cats out of trees and dogs out of sewer pipes; but a girl screaming for help in the street draws only slammed doors, closed windows, and silence….”– John Steinbeck, Paradox and Dream, (1966)That these criticisms come from within our own circle gives me hope and a sense of pride. I am not advocating negativity. Continual self-criticism is a slow, unwinding spiral into darkness as our self-confidence unravels to nothing. This is dangerously self-destructive.But even more dangerous is to deny that we make mistakes.The vital passage in my book, Pendulum, is a quote from David Farland:“Men who believe themselves to be good, who do not search their own souls, often commit the worst atrocities. A man who sees himself as evil will restrain himself. It is only when we do evil in the belief that we do good that we pursue it wholeheartedly.”I believe it is wise to...

Why the World Needs Don Quixote Sarah says if you rely solely upon reason, your actions will be based upon what you believe to be possible. You’ll not likely attempt the impossible. She goes on to say, “Quixotism is the passionate pursuit of an ideal which may not be attainable. It is the belief that an individual can alter reality and redefine what is possible.”George brings Sarah’s observation to a pragmatic conclusion:“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.”Progress begins with a rejection of the status quo.Progress begins when a Quixote sees a giant that needs to be defeated.Are you a conformist who believes we must accept the dominance of giants?Of course you’re not. If you were, you would not be reading this. You are the “unreasonable” person of whom George spoke.The opening lines of George’s biography at NobelPrize.org tell us, “George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin, the son of a civil servant. His education was irregular, due to his dislike of any organized training.”George disliked organization? He would have adored Wizard Academy. Sadly, George Bernard Shaw died in 1950, exactly half a century before Wizard Academy was born. So alas, we cannot meet him.But Sarah is still with us. And she is looking for work as a babysitter. I know this because I found her 2011 college thesis during a Google search and was deeply impressed by it. Curiosity required me to learn more about her.Here are a few quotes from the introduction to her thesis:“Quixotists are the willful creators of their own destinies.Their childlike ability to marvel at the world, desperation to experience a full life, and willingness to pursue goodness and beauty through an adventurous process of trial and error set them apart from all who depend upon common sense. Thus, quixotism has the potential to serve as a mechanism of social change, stretching the limits of the possible.”“Given that quixotism stands in stark contrast to the more cautious, conventional notion of reason, it initially appears to be nothing more than madness and is often summarily dismissed as such. However, one of quixotism’s most important principles is its recognition of ambiguity and uncertainty. This philosophy thrives in the space between the known and the unknown.”“Quixotism represents the most profound expression of genius: joyful curiosity about the world and a willingness to explore. As thought and action are inseparable, it is both a belief system and a way of life. While the practice of quixotism leads to a greater number of mistakes than more restrained forms of intellectualism, it also yields more successes as a result of its extreme nature.”Young Sarah is obviously one of us.She doesn’t know I’m quoting her. She doesn’t even know we exist.Shall we contact her? Shall I offer her a scholarship to a class atWizard Academy? Would you like to help cover her travel costs?Babysitters don’t often have money for plane tickets.It is Christmastime. You are busy. I am busy. So perhaps we should forget the whole thing.I leave it up to you.Roy H. Williams

You have within you an idea, a possibility, a thought that has never quite gone away. You tell yourself it’s a childish fantasy.Perhaps it is. And that’s precisely why you should rescue it from the shivering shadows.Let your child live in the light. You’re strong enough now to watch over it and protect it from the beasts that would devour it.Let your child live in the light.This “thought that has never quite gone away” provides you with a perspective not fully understood by those around you. You see a special connection between certain things that others don’t quite see. This is probably one of your “life messages,” a note you carry from God to the rest of us.We are terrified to deliver life messages. I’m not entirely sure why. But I do know that every two-dimensional life gains depth when its message is brought into the light.Have you been living a 2-dimensional life? If you will share your secret belief, your special perception, you can step into an exciting, 3-dimensional world.Yes, some people will think you’re bat-crap crazy.That’s the price you pay.I’ll admit this probably sounds highly abstract and even a bit airy-fairy, so I’ll make it concrete by giving you some examples:1. I believe there are specific, spatial relationships within a 3-dimensional color model – my favorite is Munsell’s – that can accurately predict the emotional effect of juxtaposing selected colors. We explore this idea briefly during the “Color” module of the class, Portals and the 12 Languages of the Mind. (The 2014 session will be March 4-5. You should register.)2. I have been haunted by the number 3 since I was small. During the past 17 years I’ve investigated the relationship between the numbers 2, 3 and 4, and have been encouraged by the fact that Lao Tzu was haunted by the same idea during the lifetime of Alexander the Great (about 325 BC) and he wrote about it in chapter 42 of the Tao Te Ching. Augustine of Hippo was likewise haunted by threes in 410 AD and shared his conclusions in chapter 2 of book 15 in his series, On the Trinity. Alchemists struggled with this 2-3-4 relationship during medieval times, calling it “The Axiom of Maria.” Mathematician and theoretical physicist Henri Poincare’ was haunted by threes in 1887 when he investigated the wild-card power of every third gravitating body in complex systems and invented algebraic topology as a direct result. Carl Jung built his Theory of Individuation around the idea. So maybe I am a nut, but I’m a nut in pretty good company. If this idea holds interest for you, any of the cognoscenti of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop can explain the benefits and uses of this perception of threes in detail.3. I want to create songs in which the musical instruments, themselves, sing the words to the song. You know what a trumpet sounds like. You can identify it by its sound. Now imagine the voice of a trumpet speaking intelligibly. I believe this will soon be done, not just with trumpets, but with every musical instrument. The vowels of any language can easily be converted into notes via their frequency signature, so the problem of making instruments “talk” doesn’t lie within the vowels, but in the formants of the consonants.Are you beginning to understand what I mean when I say, “a perspective not fully understood by those around you… a connection between certain things that others don’t quite see?”You have ideas like these within you, too. Why not let them

This ocean adventure called life is most easily navigated when we have a guiding light.The winds and waves of circumstance push at all of us.1. We can passively go with the flow.2. We can choose the badge of the victim.3. We can loose ourselves in pleasure.4. We can harness the wind and waves.The Drifter,?Spun by wind and wave,Helpless, says, ‘Whatever…’The Drowner?Plays for sympathy.‘It’s been the worst week of my life.’The SurferScans the horizon,Wanting ever ‘The next big thing.’The Wise Men?Follow the star.?Adjust the sails.Twist the rudder.The Wise-ards know.– Roy H. WilliamsStart begins with star.Rick Warren popularized the concept of a guiding light in his book, The Purpose-Driven Life, but he certainly didn’t invent it. That book was published in 2002. By 2007, it had sold 30 million copies.It would appear that people hunger to have a purpose.Miguel de Cervantes wrote about a man consumed with purpose.His Don Quixote has been heroic and laughable, wise and foolish, admired and scorned for more than 400 years. Steinbeck speaks of Cervantes and Quixote in his preface to East of Eden, then says, “The reader will take from my book what he brings to it. The dull witted will get dullness and the brilliant may find things in my book I didn’t know were there.”Steinbeck looked at Don Quixote and realized that we tend to see what is already within us.In The New York Observer of March 31, 1910, John Bancroft Devins set 14 words apart in quotation marks but failed to attribute them. These 14 words have since been repeated many times:“Two men looked out through prison bars. One man saw mud, the other stars.”The first man saw mud because mud was within him.The other saw stars because he was full of light.We do not see things as they are, but as we are.We especially do that with the Bible, I think.Jesus speaks of vision in the 6th chapter of Matthew and the 11th chapter of Luke. I suppose the passage has as many interpretations as it has readers:“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The light of the body is the eye: if your vision is singular, your whole body will be full of light. But if your vision is unfocused, your body will be full of darkness. If the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”I read those lines and hear Jesus speaking of the passion and energy and creativity and stamina – the light – that comes from having a vision, a dream, a purpose, a goal. And I hear him speak of the echoing emptiness of life without these things. Perhaps I find in that passage only what I bring to it, but that’s what I find, nonetheless.I find myself contemplating this for three reasons:1. It is November.2. We have only to build Bilbo Baggins’ house and the Lenhard-Murray amphitheater and the Wizard Academy campus will be complete. What will we do then?3. Pennie and I remember in vivid detail the day we purchased the land on which Wizard Academy is built. The ensuing 9 years and 8 months passed us by with such speed that we are left gasping in a vacuum.I walk across the campus and am startled by what I see. When did all this happen?Each autumn I think seriously about what to do with the rest of my life. I reflect on the irreversible past and project a possible future. It is my favorite time of year.Start begins with star.“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right

For Friends OnlyFifty-one times a year I write things I believe you’ll find to be useful. Once a year I turn the mirror toward myself. This is that time.I hope you don’t mind.I’ve enjoyed 8 distinct advantages in life for which I can take no credit. I am thankful for 6 of these advantages, but weirdly embarrassed by two of them.I was born in America as a white boy during a time when to be anything other than that was a distinct disadvantage. I didn’t choose to be (1.) white and (2.) male, so I’ve always carried uneasy feelings of guilt. There you have it.I’m often reprimanded by those who feel it’s in poor taste to acknowledge differences in race and gender. This confuses me. I believe it’s in poor taste to pretend that minorities and women are always as quickly hired as white boys. Things are certainly better today than when I was young, but we’ve got a long way to go before we’re the nation we pretend to be.I was born in the late 1950s. I remember the murder of Martin Luther King. I remember Rosa Parks. I remember being raised by a single Mom who worked harder than her male counterparts, was more effective than her male counterparts and was paid 32 percent less than her male counterparts. So please, for the sake of our friendship, keep your reprimands to yourself.These are the 6 things for which I have always been thankful.1. I was born poor.This gave me a certain fearless resourcefulness that isn’t so easily learned in the better parts of town.2. I was born introverted.This makes it pleasant for me to focus and concentrate deeply when I’m alone. I’ve used this preference to great advantage throughout my life. My clients even pay me for it. I call these deep thoughts “plotting and scheming against the rest of the world.”3. I began losing my hair in my late teens.This gave me credibility as a young ad man. Thinning hair makes a boy look older, so I looked 30 by the time I was 20. You have no idea how much more seriously people listen to your advice when you don’t look like a kid.4. I was raised by a mother who gave me copious freedom and good advice.Mom knows that traditional wisdom is usually more tradition than wisdom, so she taught me to think for myself. And her belief that I could accomplish whatever I chose was so vast and complete that I could not help but believe it myself. Add to this the simple fact that poor people are resourceful by necessity and fearless because they have nothing to lose and you’ve got the ingredients of an unbreakable entrepreneur.5. I fell in love with a girl who believed in me.Miraculously, she agreed to drop out of college and marry me when we were both eighteen. This is huge. It cannot be overestimated. My belief in the extreme importance of one’s life partner is so overwhelming that I taught my sons throughout their formative years that their choice of a life-partner would be far more important to their future happiness than their educational path or choice of career. I know such statements are considered to be heresy in career-worshipping America but they never arrested me for it.There is one more thing for which I am thankful.6. I’ve had deeply personal encounters with God that make it impossible for me to be agnostic even though I find it easy to follow the logic of close friends who believe him to be a delusion. And my God likes me! I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable or angry, but we’re talking about me today, not you, remember?I’ve shared with you from my heart today – at great risk – in the hope of inspiring you to look inwardly this week and celebrate the ordinary in your life with great joy. We’re about to go into 2014 together and we’ve...

Evocative Words Work WondersGive a mundane product an evocative name and you will dramatically increase its appeal.Humans are uniquely gifted to attach complex meanings to sounds. Some of these sounds are musical; pitch, key, tempo, rhythm, interval and contour. But much more specific in their meanings are phonemes, the building blocks of words.Cat and Kite begin with the same sound. Ignore, for a moment, that C and K are different letters. The phoneme is the sound, not the letter. The sound represented by the letters “ch” in chirp, cherry and cheerful is another phoneme.There are only 40 phonemes in the English language. If you want to get fussy, you can count the unvoiced “th” sound in with as a different phoneme than the voiced “th” in the. If you continue down that road, you can find as many as 44 different phonemes. But that’s all.Forty-four sounds allow you and I to know each other’s thoughts.The Bible opens and closes with stories about the importance of names. Genesis tells us that Adam’s first task was to name all the animals. In the Revelation of John we read, “I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.”Names are important. This is a fact known to every cognitive neuroscientist.Nouns originate and are interpreted in a region of the brain just behind your left ear known as Wernicke’s area, connected by the arcuate fasciculus – a high-bandwidth bundle of nerves – to another region slightly forward of your left ear known as Broca’s area, where we attach the sounds we call “verbs” to the actions we need to name. Broca’s area then coordinates the diaphragm, larynx, lips and tongue so that we can form the rapid succession of phonemes in that positively human display called speech.Information gathered by the eyes, muscles and skin is routed through Broca’s area on its way to the dorsolateral prefrontal association area, the home of the visuospatial sketchpad*, the mind’s eye, where we “see” things in our imaginations. All of this is connected to the ear.Yes, humans are uniquely gifted to attach complex meanings to sounds. And we are uniquely gifted to make those sounds, as well.All of this is well documented.Shape and Color are visual languages.Phonemes and Music are auditory languages.Painters use paint and brush. Fashion designers use cloth and scissors. Jewelers use metals and gemstones. Visual artists, gifted in the languages of Shape and Color, often expect their work to “speak for itself.”But it can’t.If you will add to these visual languages an evocative name, the listener – your customer – will craft their own unconscious bond to the thing you have named. A well-chosen name focuses and accelerates the talent of the visual artist and gives that talent greater impact.A designer and a poet holding hands can reshape the world.Here’s a 60-second radio ad built upon the evocative naming of visual products.SARAH: Christmas is coming!SEAN: And what could be betterSARAH: than designer diamond earrings!SEAN: You’ve never seen ANYTHING like these.SARAH: From diamond Hugs and KissesSEAN: two-hundred-ninety-nine dollarsSARAH: to the fabulous hoops of the Renaissance Queen.SEAN: Twenty-five-hundred-thirty-nine dollars.SARAH: See them on our website.SEAN: The Diamond-Studded SUPERSTAR.SARAH: The Summer of Love.SEAN: Cinnamon Roll earrings!SARAH: Fairy Tale hoops.SEAN: Forever THIN.SARAH: Sparkling Springtime!SEAN: Pink CHAMPAGNE hoopsSARAH: and Captured HeartsSEAN: Buried TREASURE hoopsSARAH: [sexy] and the Diamond Negligee.SEAN: The Ocean...

for What Ails Your Customer?A spoonful of Entertainment helps the medicine go down,medicine go dowwwwn,medicine go down.The public will give you their time if you offer them entertainment.They will give you their money if you offer them hope.But don’t ever call it hope.Don’t accuse your customer of being hopeless. Just let them know exactly how you can make tomorrow different than today and let them know it in an entertaining way.Go do that.Go. Get started.“Be entertaining” and “make tomorrow different” is easier said than done, right?We want your customer to have a new perspective, a new attitude about you and what you sell. But if your customer doesn’t give your message a moment of their time, your message might as well have never existed.You paid the postage but they didn’t read the letter.Entertainment is the currency that will buy you their time. How might your message entertain them? I’m not just talking about being funny.Humor is nitroglycerine.Handled correctly, it moves mountains.Mishandled, it moves things you didn’t want moved.We often remember the humor but don’t remember the product, right? This is what happens when the humor is gratuitous, disconnected from the essence of the ad.“Entertaining” is simply what we call the most interesting thing that’s in front of us at any given moment. Sometimes the bar is lower than at other times.My friend Brian Alter is a jeweler who’s about to send a catalog to his customers. His excellent cover letter below will accompany each catalog. Take a look and see what you can learn.ANext week we’ll talk about PowerNaming.Now get some rest. Christmas is coming.Roy H. Williams 

You must attempt the ridiculous to accomplish the miraculous.David sees a giantand says, “I will defeat him.”Everyone else sees a giant, as well.David walks toward the giant with his slingand BANG, David is king.That’s a favorite story everywhere. Here’s another.Don Quixote sees a giantand says, “I will defeat him.”His companion sees only a windmill.Quixote charges the giant with his lance,is lifted high into the air on its revolving arms,and slammed into the ground.“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”Wizard Academy alumni refer to David and Don as “our brand of crazy.” Unafraid. Purpose-driven. Willing to try.So why does only David get a trophy?What about Quixote, who fought his giant hand-to-hand and ended up in a heap on the ground?Wizard Academy announces a $10,000 cash prize for him.Is he/she you?The purpose of the Quixote’s Windmill Prizeis to encourage the takers of chances, the facers of giants, the riders on the arms of windmills. We are a school for the imaginative, the courageous and the ambitious.Are you our brand of crazy?Tell us about it in a YouTube videobefore March 23, 2014 and you could win $10,000 in cash, plus a free ride at Wizard Academy for one full year; a revolving scholarship for as many classes as you choose to attend.These are the rules of engagement:1. Anyone can enter. You do not have to be an alumnus of Wizard Academy.2. Your story must be true and verifiable.3. You can’t enter an idea you did not pursue. You must have taken dramatic action, spent money, time and energy in the pursuit of your idea.4. You must have learned a lesson that has value.5. Your video cannot exceed 2 minutes and 30 seconds. If the YouTube time bar on your video says 2:31 or more, your entry will not be considered.6. The winner will be named on April 23, 2014.7. A contestant can enter no more than 2 videos each year.You will lose if you make us pity you.In fact, you have already lost. Quixote makes us cheer for his courage and he leads us in laughter at his defeats because Quixote knows that failure, like success, is a very temporary condition.There will be 5 areas of scoring. Each of the 7 directors of Wizard Academy can award up to 100 points in each of the following 5 categories.A perfect score would be 3,500 points.1. How good was the idea?Tell us why it made sense at the time. 7 x 100 points2. How aggressively did you pursue it?Make us feel your courage, your creativity, your determination. 7 x 100 points3. How bad was the outcome?Did you merely shrug your shoulders and walk away, or did paramedics drag your unconscious body from a smoking crater? 7 x 100 points4. What did you learn?How valuable will your advice be to the rest of us? 7 x 100 points5. How well do you tell your story?This is where you get style points for lighting, color, sound quality, graphics, special effects, humor… 7 x 100 pointsHave you tried and failed? Have you battled and lost?Watch the videos of the other Quixotes who enter and you won’t feel stupid anymore. You’ll say, “Wow. I’m part of a family, a tribe, a fraternity that doesn’t sit and watch from the sidelines.” And no matter how much your misadventure may have cost you, no matter how badly it...

The following press release will soon be received by the media in Midland, Texas.Diamonds to be Cut in Midland(MIDLAND, TEXAS – October 29, 2013)[Name of Diamond Cutter] is coming to Midland to cut diamonds on Saturday, November 16th and the public is invited. “It’s one of the Christmas gifts we’re giving the city,” says Cathy Fleck of Occasions Fine Jewelry.“Diamond crystals aren’t very impressive when they come out of the ground. But then, when they’re cut, they explode with light. It’s like watching the sun come up over the horizon.”“We’re going to let our guests see and touch and hold a $1,500 natural diamond crystal before it is cut. Then, we’re going to have a drawing to see who gets that diamond for free. That person will then tell the diamond cutter the shape they want him to cut their diamond. And then everyone who’s there will see the birth of a new diamond. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”The event will be displayed on an LCD screen for those who can’t get close enough to the diamond cutter.“I asked myself, ‘How can a jeweler honor the birth of Christ?’ And then it hit me; the manger, the star, and Jesus coming into the world. The only thing a jeweler could do is let people watch the birth of a sparkling new diamond. And then that diamond must be given for free. Maybe you think the whole thing is silly, but I’m really looking forward to it.”Witness the birth of a diamond from XX – XX on Saturday, November 16.Occasions Fine Jewelry was born in the back of a local drug store in Midland 20 years ago. Today, they stand on the corner of Loop 250 and Garfield with more than 4,000 square feet and are known throughout the world.# # # # That press release was written by one of the Wizards of Ads. It features frame shifting, dimensional shifting, and a trio of reality hooks. Here’s the original press release that was given to us by our friend, Cathy Fleck, who asked, “Is there a better way to tell this story?” The writing is slightly better than average. But is better-than-average really good enough in today’s overcommunicated society?# # # # OCCASIONS FINE JEWELRY EXPLAINSDIAMOND CUTTING PROCESS TO THE COMMUNITY(MIDLAND, TEXAS – October 29, 2013)Occasions Fine Jewelry is bringing a Diamond Cutting Show to Midland on Saturday, November 16th. As a part of the show, Occasions is flying in equipment and cutters to do a demonstration for the public. They will show all stages of the process on site. “We are very excited about this new event,” said owner Cathy Fleck. “Very rarely do you get to experience something like this in Midland. We will also be drawing for a diamond that the customer can pick their own shape and cut to create their own diamond.”The event will discuss the different shapes and yields in person as well as display on an LCD screen. Customers will be able to walk through each step of the process.The event will be held at Occasions in Midland (2308 W. Loop 250) from XX – XX on Saturday, November 16.Occasions Fine Jewelry opened for business in the back of a local drug store in Midland over 20 years ago. Today, their Midland location on the corner of Loop 250 and Garfield is over 4,000 square feet.Occasions offers a number of lines exclusively in the West Texas area including Lorenzo, Orbis, Soho, Diamond Cushette, Cyma, Natalie Kay and Paul Winston.####The cost of hosting the diamond-cutting event remains the same for Mike and Cathy Fleck regardless of which press release they send.That, right there, that, is why you should learn to write.The Wizards of Ads are writers of persuasion. “Find a better story and deliver it with greater impact.” Two of the wizards who

One of the books I’ll write someday is a collection of true stories gathered from extremely successful people.My business as an advertising consultant and seminar speaker has put me face-to-face with many of the brightest stars in the entrepreneurial sky. And rarely do I miss the opportunity to ask them,“Can you recall that fateful moment when you chose the fork in the road that led you to where you are today? How did you first get into this business?”Never – not once – has a successful person said to me, “I followed my passion.”But this is the answer you will hear again and again from people who are serving time in prison.The world is full of rich people who are not, and never were, successful. People who stole the money, inherited the money, married the money, won the money in the stock market or in the lottery, cheated others out of the money or were awarded the money in court, do not qualify as “successful” in my admittedly subjective opinion.The “Follow-Your-Passion” myth is pervasive because successful people are usually passionate. But those people would have been passionate about whatever they chose to do.Their jobs don’t give them passion.They give passion to their jobs.The same is true in successful marriages.Moon-eyed dreamers who say, “I just can’t find my passion” always act like I kicked their puppy when I tell them that passion is not a magical ether that can be located and tapped into. Passion is the shrapnel that flies from a three-way collision of determination, commitment and action.While we’re at it, let’s pull the mask off a couple of other myths:(1.) Passion doesn’t always manifest itself as happiness. Passion is also behind deep grief. (2.) Passion isn’t always confident. Worry is misguided passion, fearful passion, but it is passion nonetheless.Don’t do what you’re passionate about.Be passionate about what you do.Don’t follow your passion.Let your passion follow you. Passion is created when determination and commitment are joined by the nitroglycerin of action. Leonardo da Vinci said it 480 years ago and he said it in Italian. Here is the clearest translation:“People of accomplishment rarely sit back and let things happen to them. They go out and happen to things.”Listen to Leonardo.Go out and happen to something.When we hear the laughter and the dancing,the crying and the grief, we will know the shrapnel is flying.Roy H. Williams

The Silent Rifle as a 3rd Gravitating Body“Dangling like this from his leg, his upside-down perspective made him giddy. If this were to be his last moment he would die happy, but it would not. Instead, he’d soon be singing karaoke with a group of Korean tourists. But first, the roller coaster.”?– Christina Gressianu, opening lines of an unwritten novelAnton Chekhov wrote a letter to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev dated November 1, 1889, in which he said, “Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”Tragically, this casual advice became the sacred and unbreakable rule of scriptwriting known as “Chekhov’s Gun” in which every element in a story must be necessary and irreplaceable.Obey the rule of Chekhov’s Gun and your stories will be predictable to all but the youngest of children.Movies are predictable, TV shows are predictable and Advertising is predictable because some fool decided Chekhov was a messenger sent from God.No, let us be fair to Chekhov: his advice was given in 1889 when less than 1 percent of the public had ever read a novel or seen a play. Motion pictures were an inventor’s experiment in a laboratory. Television wasn’t even a fantasy. His audience was, in effect, young children.Would Chekhov offer the same advice today? Let me assure you he would not.Surprise and delight are strangled by the cruel hands of Predictability.If you will write an interesting story, wallpaper the room with guns that are never used and never explained. An unfired gun is a curious distraction, a potential disaster or delight that hovers beautiful like a hummingbird just out of view.I use “gun” only as the metaphor for a literary device, just as Chekhov did. Can an oversized bottle of champagne be a silent rifle, a hovering gun hanging beautifully on the wall?Of course it can.One of my favorite passages in literature flagrantly violates the rule of Chekhov’s Gun. It is an inexplicable paragraph inserted into the middle of Cryptonomicon, an extraordinary adventure/mystery novel written by Neal Stephenson. The gun on the wall is a bowl of breakfast cereal.The cereal, the milk, the eating of the cereal, indeed breakfast itself is utterly unnecessary in the story of Cryptonomicon. But there it is:“World-class cereal-eating is a dance of fine compromises. The giant heaping bowl of sodden cereal, awash in milk, is the mark of the novice. Ideally one wants the bone-dry cereal nuggets and the cryogenic milk to enter the mouth with minimal contact and for the entire reaction between them to take place in the mouth. The best thing is to work in small increments, putting only a small amount of Cap’n Crunch in your bowl at a time and eating it all up before it becomes a pit of loathsome slime, which, in the case of Cap’n Crunch, takes about thirty seconds… He pours the milk with one hand while jamming the spoon in with the other, not wanting to waste a single moment of the magical, golden time when cold milk and Cap’n Crunch are together but have not yet begun to pollute each other’s essential natures.”Chekhov, I believe, would approve.Welcome, Anton, to 2013.Roy H. Williams

My friend Jeffrey and I were talking one day about this and that when he said, as much to himself as to me, I think, “What is it that separates confidence from hubris?”I replied, “The outcome.”“That’s it!” Jeff gasped through his laughter, his head thrown back as tears began to inch toward his ears. “If you succeed, it was confidence. Fail, and it was hubris.”I’ve never been sure why my answer gave Jeff such pleasure, but isn’t it great to see a friend laugh uncontrollably?For the past 30 years I’ve livedwith my finger on the pulse of business owners.I know the rhythm of their heartbeats.I know what raises their blood pressure.I know what puts them to sleep.I feel the thump, thump, thump of their hunger for success.I know the storms that rise above them.I know the rains that fall.And I know what keeps them moving.Time and Chance are variables beyond our control.Money and Love are fuel.Time and Chance affect the flow of Money and Love.But Money and Love have no effect on Time and Chance.I’ve always been simpatico with the writer of Ecclesiastes.I think I understand him. He said,I have seen something else under the sun:The race is not to the swift?or the battle to the strong,?nor does food come to the wise?or wealth to the brilliant?or favor to the learned;?but time and chance happen to them all.Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come:As fish are caught in a cruel net,or birds are taken in a snare,so people are trapped by evil timesthat fall unexpectedly upon them.It is not my goal to bring you down or give you melancholy. I hope only to broaden your perspective. I want you to enjoy this adventure called Life, regardless of the scenery that surrounds you. You made it here. You exist. You’re alive. How cool is THAT!We choose our destiny with every choice we make.We create our reality with every action we take.And Time and Chance happen to us all.Roy H. Williams

Do not confuse pleasure with happiness.Unhappy people can have pleasure.And uninterrupted pleasures are not happiness.Happiness is the result of knowing who you are, why you are here, and what you should do.We need identity, purpose, and adventure.Identity – Who am I?Purpose – Why am I here?Adventure – What will I do now?Selling is theater and each customer is an actor in that play.The marketing person – an ad writer – creates the storyline.The salesperson is the director, the narrator, the master-of-ceremonies and the usher.The customers sit quietly in the audience until they realize the play is about them.Are your customers sitting quietly in the audience? Your job is to entice them out of their seats. You want them to stand up and take action. You need them to storm the stage, perform their parts, walk on clouds of laughter, dance in the rain of the spotlight, revel in the thunder of applause.This play called Life should always be about identity, purpose and adventure. Make it about something else and your play is certain to be a parody, a tragedy, a satire or a farce.These are the motivations of the characters:Identity: Who am I? We buy what we buy to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are. We even choose our service providers based on how closely they mirror the way we would run their company. We’re attracted to reflections of ourselves. A salesperson points out this reflection, “That’s you, isn’t it?” and then gives the intellect the facts it needs to justify the purchase. Win the heart and the mind will follow.Purpose: Why Am I Here?If you’re sitting alone in the darkness, it’s because you’re afraid. Stand up fearfully, but stand up anyway. Flip the switch of the spotlight with a trembling finger and walk wobbly-kneed to center stage. We measure ourselves by our intentions but others measure us by our actions. Let your intentions become your actions and you will have stumbled onto your purpose. Quit thinking. Start doing. And whatever you do, do it with set-jaw determination. Your purpose will reveal itself soon enough.Adventure: What Will I Do Now?It is not the victory, but the audacity of the attempt that makes us feel alive. Small plans do not enflame the hearts of men. If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough. Waiting is a kind of dying. Indecision is a decision. When you let enough time go by as you wring your hands and say, “Well, I just don’t know,” the opportunity will pass and your decision will have been made. Procrastination is the passive assassin of happiness.Opportunity has been knocking for a long time now. In fact, it’s pounding on your door as you read this. Get up and answer it.Do something that scares you.What’s the worst than can happen?Answer the door.It’s showtime.Roy H. Williams

I’m 21 years old but my thinning hair makes me look about 30. I consider this to be my greatest asset.I walk the retail sidewalks, looking in windows, deciding if I will go in. A peddler goes door to door unthinkingly, playing the odds, tossing his pitch to anyone who will catch it like the common cold. But I choose my doors carefully, walking past most, looking always for those little indicators that whisper, “The owner of this business has a brain.”I climb wooden stairs to the trailer house office of a mobile home dealer on Admiral Boulevard. Standing on the cedar deck outside the glass door I see myself looking back at me, the sport coat I bought for 3 dollars at the Goodwill store, the briefcase I carry to look educated. Behind me is the neighborhood of Ponyboy Curtis, an unfiltered assortment of bent automobiles, broken houses and discarded people.My footsteps drum the wooden deck. Behind the glass, two men drink scotch at a coffee table in a cloud of Winston and Lucky Strike. The heavier one looks up at me, then back to his scotch as I swing open the door and step inside.“Whatever you’re sellin’, we’re not buyin’.” His eyes never leave the scotch.“Probably advertising,” said the other, careful not to look my way.“I came in here because you guys appear from the road to be smarter than most. Don’t tell me I made a mistake.”Both men turn to look at me. They stare. I stare. The second one speaks again. “What makes you think we’re so smart?”“The sign, the flags, and the angle of presentation.”His eyes grow cold and hard. “Explain.”Holding a solitary finger in front of me, I give them the facts. “Five sheets of inch-and-an-eighth tongue-in-groove plywood gave you an 8 by 20 sign on which you painted ‘Veterans Housing Specialists’ in exactly the same style and colors a government agency would use. You’re looking for that Veterans Administration ‘one-dollar-move-in’ money that you know every Viet Nam vet has available to them. You’re smart enough to paint the sign. I’m smart enough to know it’s working.”A second finger joins the first. “Every other dealer on mobile home row uses exactly the same strings of cheap vinyl flags to get attention. Red, yellow, blue, green and white. But you paid extra for unicolor strings of metallic silver and metallic gold. It makes your mobile homes look upscale.”Three fingers. “You have the least inventory of any dealer but your customers never realize it because while every other dealer places their homes parallel to the road, you’ve angled yours so that no home is ever blocked from view. This is visually more interesting, gets more attention, makes the homes seem distinctive AND you’re creating leading lines in a V-shape that guide the eyes of passers-by to your seemingly official ‘Veterans Housing Specialists’ sign.”The second one stood up and shifted his scotch to his left hand. “I’m Jim McDuffie.” Pointing to his partner he said, “That’s Mac McKean.” Reaching toward me for a handshake, he said, “And you’re our new advertising guy. Tell me what I need to buy.”I like to tell that story because it makes me look smart. There are other stories I don’t like to tell.Jim McDuffie’s business is big enough to advertise in multiple ways. This means I have a safety net. If the ads on my tiny little radio station don’t produce results, the traffic generated by the other stations will cover me. I rarely have this luxury.The upside of working for the smallest radio station in the city is that I can make presentations to businesses with budgets too small for any station but mine. In other words, the salespeople who work for the larger stations are limited to just 1 of every 100 businesses. The other 99 can’t afford their rates, but every business in town can afford me.That’s the problem. People buy my...

A brief summary of this episode

Reverse Your Thoughts, Increase Your IncomeUnifying Principles are those guiding thoughts around which all your actions revolve. When you hold them in plain sight, you always know what to do next.Brilliant people stumble when they focus on the parts and neglect to see the webs of connections between those parts. This is what causes medical doctors to treat each symptom separately while failing to recognize the underlying disease.Such compartmentalization is an even bigger problem in business, causing owners and managers to wrestle with symptoms instead of solving the problem. Not enough customers, low profit margins, high employee turnover and negative online reviews are merely compartmentalized symptoms of a systemic malfunction.Unifying principles eliminate compartmentalization.Let’s develop some unifying principles for your business that will help you create your happiest possible future:1. Think of your perfect ending; leap forward in time and see the outcome you most desire. How does that future company behave? Who are its customers? What marvelous things does it do that cause its customers to recruit their friends? What do these happy customers say about you? Describe, right now, the perfect day in this business you’ll own in the future. See, feel, taste and smell all the details of that soon-coming day.2. Hold those thoughts clearly in your mind.3. You are now equipped to identify the constituent components of this happy future. You’re ready to create the steps that will take you there. You’re ready to draw the map you will follow.ONE: Where would such a company be located?TWO: How would such a workplace be decorated?THREE: How would such a company recruit its employees?FOUR: In what ways might such a company train its employees?FIVE: How would such a company compensate those employees?SIX: What hours would such a company be open?SEVEN: How would their ads make you feel?EIGHT: What would their written warranties and guarantees include?NINE: What would such a company NEVER do?TEN: What might such a company do for its customers that its competitors would be unwilling to do?Are you beginning to get the picture?A clear and stable vision of the End Goal is required to inform the small choices that will bring that goal into existence.You’ve previously heard of Gestalt Theory but now you’ve actually used it.AThis particular application of Gestalt Theory springs from TRIZ Principle 13: turn it upside down; reverse the process; do it backwards. If you want to learn the other 39 Principles of TRIZ, check out Mark Fox’s book, Da Vinci and the 40 Answers or attend that class when Br’er Fox teaches it on Oct. 30-31. Wizard Academy cognoscenti Dr. Kary Mullis never heard of TRIZ Principle 13 but he instinctively used it to create Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR,) the invention that opened the door for DNA research and won him the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Kary said, “Everyone was looking for a needle in a haystack, so I said, ‘Why not turn the haystack into needles?'” Turn it upside down; reverse the process; do it backwards. That’s how PCR was born.More recently, Kary used Principle 13 to create Altermune, the invention that will probably win him a second Nobel Prize. Speaking of that portion of our immune system that attacks foreign tissue and of how it has been studied for decades so that it can be suppressed during organ transplants, Kary said, “Suppress it, hell, why not aim it?” And from that bit of...

Agrees With Wizard AcademyHeadlines often tell the truth more powerfully than is completely accurate, a disturbing trend in this day of sound-bite news.The mental image conjured in the mind by the headline, “Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Agrees With Wizard Academy,” is one in which the Nobel Laureate (1.) is aware of Wizard Academy and (2.) makes a statement of affirmation regarding it.Neither of these things has happened. So how could the writer of that headline say such a thing? The Monday Morning Memo you received on July 29 was titled, Fortune’s 500 or America’s 5.91 Million? Perhaps you remember reading it.In that memo I stated,The Fortune 500 are the newsmakers but they are not the backbone of the American economy. According to the U.S. Census, America is home to nearly 17 million sole proprietorships, plus an additional 5.91 million businesses with fewer than 100 employees. These 5.91 million are the backbone of the economy since they create more new jobs than all the other companies combined. The press will cheer for the giant with a spear but I sing for the boy with a sling.If the Fortune 500 suddenly vanished from the earth, a new group of giants would arise. But if America’s 5.91 million businesses with fewer than 100 employees suddenly vanished from the earth, the fabric of our society would be shredded and democracy would be gone.Free enterprise doesn’t depend on democracy.Democracy depends on free enterprise.On August 17, 2013, more than 2 weeks after that MondayMorningMemo appeared, Jeffrey Eisenberg sent a story from the August 17th New York Times in which the Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale, Robert J. Shiller, contemplated the newly-published worries of Edmund Phelps, the 2006 recipient of the Nobel Prize in the Economic Sciences.According to Shiller,“Professor Phelps discerns a troubling trend… He is worried about corporatism, a political philosophy in which economic activity is controlled by large interest groups or the government. Once corporatism takes hold in a society, he says, people don’t adequately appreciate the contributions and the travails of individuals who create and innovate. An economy with a corporatist culture can copy and even outgrow others for a while, he says, but, in the end, it will always be left behind. Only an entrepreneurial culture can lead.”I’m not suggesting that Phelps or Shiller was influenced by what I wrote. In fact, I’m reasonably certain they’ve never heard of me. But I do feel I’m well within the mark to say both men agree with me.Phelps is worried about corporatism. Me? I’m worried about a disturbing trend toward overstated sound bites. I gave today’s memo a reckless headline to underscore my point, but better examples are all around us.A recent story boasted the headline, “Right Brain, Left Brain? Scientists Debunk Popular Theory.” Google it and you’ll find dozens of variations of that story reposted by online parrots who never pause to contemplate what they hear before squawking it to all the world.Invest 3 minutes to actually read that story and you’ll find the headline to be false and misleading to the point of absurdity. The discovery for which Dr. Roger Sperry won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology stands as tall and proud as ever. Here’s a direct quote from the story that supposedly ‘debunks’ Dr. Sperry’s findings:“‘It’s absolutely true that some brain functions occur in one or the other side of the brain,’ explained Jeff Anderson, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study. ‘Language tends to be on the left, attention more on the right. But people don’t tend to have a...

The Essence of Content MarketingThe perfect customer is like a beautiful woman, distant and desirable and pursued by countless competitors. An appropriate metaphor, don’t you think?Most advertisers want ads that equate to a magical pickup line. “Tell me what to say to this beautiful woman so that she’ll rip off her clothes and jump into bed with me.”Some advertisers get downright self-righteous as they demand these magical lines. They lift their chins and sniff, “I want to hold my ads accountable.” In other words, “I want it to work immediately. Tell me how to make this beautiful woman give me what I want. Tell me what to say. I’ll say anything.”Advertising people know how to craft these “direct response” messages. And the lines we tell you to say to the woman very often work! Not surprisingly, the “beautiful women” who can be won in a single conversation are mostly interested in money. It’s usually about the price.And they tend not to be loyal.Courtship takes a longer path.According to behavioral psychologist Desmond Morris, the strength of a relationship is usually determined by the process that formed it. Relationships that are quickly formed are quickly broken. True courtship is an adventure and adventures take time. You’ve got to let the woman of your affections get to know you.You do remember that we’re talking about business, don’t you? All this stuff about beautiful women was just a metaphor for building long-term relationships with customers.If your website or blog provides valuable, insightful content, you’re likely to become a sustaining resource that your prospective customer will grow to depend upon. This form of customer courtship is called “content marketing.” Think of it as the advertising equivalent of love letters.Ray Seggern, one of my Wizard of Ads partners, explains customer courtship as the convergence of Story, Culture and Experience. According to Ray:Story isWhat You Say. (Marketing)It is the personality and promises you put in your messages.Culture isWho You Are.It is the experience your employees have within your company.Experience isWhat You Do.It is what your customers perceive when they interact with your company.Authenticity occurswhen your story and your customer’s experience align.When these don’t align, you get bad reviews.High Employee Morale is what happenswhen your story and your culture align.When these don’t align, you have cancer in the building.Brand Ambassadors are bornwhen story and culture and experience align.This is when your happy customer chooses to become a member of your family, part of your brand.In other words, the beautiful woman agrees to marry you.And because who you are and what you say and what you do are in perfect alignment, I honestly believe you’ll live happily ever after together.Roy H. Williams

Commentators say that people today have a shorter attention span than in the past, but Jerry Seinfeld and I don’t believe this is true.“There is no such thing as an attention span. There is only the quality of what you are viewing. This whole idea of an attention span is, I think, a misnomer. People have an infinite attention span if you are entertaining them.” – Jerry Seinfeld“If you are entertaining them.”I believe it’s presumptive to say that today’s generation is more easily distracted than previous generations. It is accurate, perhaps, to say they are more often distracted, but might not their forefathers have been just as often distracted had they carried electronic worlds in their pockets?The truth is that people today have a low tolerance for boredom. Combine this with the constant availability of entertaining attractions and it’s easy to see why this question of attention span keeps popping up like a prairie dog.Of course people today can pay attention. But why should they?“We frequently forgive those who bore us, but cannot forgive those who we bore.” – Francois, Duc de La RochefoucauldWe are insulted when people turn their attention away from us, especially when we believe what we’re saying is important.You can blame today’s generation for bad manners and a short attention span. You can blame video games and smart phones. You can blame poor parenting and too much television. You can blame Alfred E. Neuman. You can blame God.Or you can realize that attention will always turn toward whatever stimulus is most interesting. You can see the competition for attention is fiercer today than it has ever been. You can see that we need to up our game.Our ability to gain and hold attention depends entirely upon our ability to stimulate the curiosity of others.Can you stimulate curiosity? If you can’t, you will not hold attention. Not in your ads, not on the telephone, not face-to-face.I tell my business partners, the Wizards of Ads, not to be offended when someone in the audience begins texting or playing a video game, but to take it as a signal to add some sparkle to their talk; do something more interesting than the distraction; win back the wandering mind. They are now among the most riveting speakers in America.So what will it be? Will you blame the audience or blame yourself?If you blame the audience, you eliminate all hope of improvement because there is nothing you can do to fix the audience. You must then conclude that society is circling the drain. “America is in decline, blah, blah, blah”.But if you blame only yourself for not rising to the challenge of increased competition, that problem is easily solved:All you have to do is become more interesting.Begin by entering your subject from an unusual angle.“Jerry Seinfeld and I don’t believe this to be true.”Use examples that are relevant to the audience.“…electronic worlds in their pockets.”Specificity is more interesting than generalities.“…this question of attention span keeps popping up like a prairie dog.”Don’t over-explain. Let your listeners figure it out for themselves.“You can blame Alfred E. Neuman.”Unusual intonations and inflections captivate the ear and make it difficult to quit listening.Talk faster than usual. Our speed of hearing greatly exceeds the speed of speech. Nothing bores people faster than taking too long to say too little.Deliver big ideas quickly like boulders in an avalanche. Rapid distraction is a machine gun that requires you to collect bullets in advance.You can no longer just make it up as you go along.The future is a magical world that will belong to those who...

We tend to think of imitation as the opposite of innovation but I don’t believe this is true. “Opposite” indicates opposed positions, left and right. But my observation is that innovation and imitation are usually the second and third positions in a continuing circle that has improvisation as its starting point.Here’s how that circle is usually drawn:You are faced with a problem for which you have no solution, so you improvise. Or a known and trusted solution fails to perform as it has in the past, so you improvise. It is through such improvisation that innovation is most often discovered. Then, when the innovation has proven to be more efficient, it is imitated again and again to become our new state-of-the-art. It will be touted as a “best practice” for a while, then lose its luster to become merely the status quo, “the way things are done.” Yesterday’s brilliant innovation then becomes traditional wisdom, and as new circumstances arise, we begin to suspect it to be more tradition than wisdom until finally it becomes “the box” in which we feel trapped.You’ll say, “I need to think outside the box,” and improvisation will begin again.1. Improvisation*2. Innovation and3. Imitation are three positions on a continuing circle, or more accurately, a spiral.Practical Applications of Chaos Theory is the final session on the last day of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop at Wizard Academy, America’s school for the imaginative, the courageous, and the ambitious. In that climactic session, the cognoscenti learn that a fractal image is merely the map of a chaotic system and that chaos, in science, is not randomness but rather precisely the opposite: a level of organization more complex than the human mind can follow. The cognoscenti then learn that fractal images are three-dimensional due to the repetitive nature of fractal self-similarity: a repetitive series of complex patterns that interlock to become a larger iteration of precisely that same pattern. In the simplest possible manifestation of this idea, a spiral is a series of spinning circles interlocked to become an increasingly larger series of spinning circles.That’s when we begin to hear the voice of Solomon echoing through time and space as it has echoed for 3,000 years:“What has been will be again,what has been done will be done again;there is nothing new under the sun.Is there anything of which one can say,‘Look! This is something new’?It was here already, long ago;it was here before our time.No one remembers the former generations,and even those yet to comewill not be rememberedby those who follow them.”– Ecclesiastes, ch. 1Another good Jewish boy, Brian Greene, is the theoretical physicist widely known for his ability to explain String Theory, reconciling quantum mechanics to general relativity and explaining the fundamental nature of time and space along the way.“Among the many features of String Theory, the following three are perhaps the most important ones to keep firmly in mind.First, gravity [general relativity theory – RHW] and quantum mechanics are part and parcel of how the universe works and therefore any purported unified theory must incorporate both. String theory accomplishes this.Second, studies by physicists over the past century have revealed that there are other key ideas – many of which have been experimentally confirmed – that appear central to our understanding of the universe. These include the concepts of spin…”– Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe, p.383Wow. The spinning spiral must really be an essential law of nature if Brian Greene gives it first place on his short list of the laws of the universe.Improvisation, innovation and imitation are just repetitive phases...

When you find your mind wandering, ask yourself these two questions:What am I thinking?Why am I thinking this?And when you’re busy, ask these three:What am I doing?What do I hope to gain by it?Why does this matter to me?Ask these questions and you’ll sidestep the bullet Socrates fired into the future when he said,“The unexamined life is not worth living.”Reality Television. Why are we so quick to examine the lives of others and so reluctant to examine our own?Carl Jung gave us another lens for self-examination when he said,“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”Make a list of your pet peeves and you’ll learn something about yourself.But then we must contend with Dr. Richard Cytowic, that famous neurologist who tells us,“Not everything we are capable of knowing and doing is accessible to, or expressible in, language. This means that some of our personal knowledge is off limits even to our own inner thoughts! Perhaps this is why humans are so often at odds with themselves, because there is more going on in our minds than we can ever consciously know.”Wow. According to Cytowic, there’s stuff happening in our heads that can’t be spoken; stuff we don’t even know that we know.And then, just to make absolutely certain that we don’t get too cocky about this whole self-examination thing, MIT’s Dr. Jerre Levy throws her own special molotov cocktail into the mix:“The left brain maps spatial information into a temporal order, while the right brain maps temporal information onto a spatial order. In a sense understanding largely consists in the translation of information to and fro between a temporal ordering and a spatial one – resulting in a sort of stereoscopic depth-cognition.”Huh?Strangely, the solution to unraveling this hopelessly tangled knot we call self-identity can be found in the advice of an imaginary person in a science fiction book about archaeology on other planets:“Show me what a person admires, and I will tell you everything about them that matters.” – Maggie Tufu, The Engines of God, p. 398Do you want to know yourself better?Quickly make a list of:2 favorite visual artists3 favorite poems4 favorite stories5 favorite movies6 favorite songsWhen you’ve made these lists, take them with you into the rabbit hole and Indiana Beagle will tell you what to do next.I’ll see you there.Roy H. Williams

Wal-Mart is the biggest company in America, followed by 3 oil companies and then Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway, Apple Computers, General Motors, and General Electric.Yep. Apple today is bigger than both General Motors and G.E.“Yippee, Skippy, call the press.Oh, you did already? And the press said Nash-Finch is number 500?Who the hell is Nash-Finch?”The Fortune 500 are the newsmakers, but they are not the backbone of the American economy. In fact, if every company in America with more than 500 employees was added to Fortune’s famous list of America’s 500 largest corporations, all those companies combined would account for just three tenths of 1 percent of the businesses in America and less than one half of all the jobs.According to the U.S. Census, America is home to nearly 17 million sole proprietorships, plus an additional 5.91 million businesses with fewer than 100 employees. These 5.91 million are the backbone of the economy since they create more new jobs than all the other companies combined.These 5.91 million buy the majority of the radio ads, half the TV ads and most of the Google Adwords. And they also buy more real estate and rent more office space than the Fortune 500.The press will cheer for the giant with a spear but I sing for the boy with a sling.If the Fortune 500 suddenly vanished from the earth, a new group of giants would arise. But if America’s 5.91 million businesses with fewer than 100 employees suddenly vanished from the earth, the fabric of our society would be shredded and democracy would be gone.Free enterprise doesn’t depend on democracy.Democracy depends on free enterprise.My partner, Jeff Sexton, said something the other day that impressed me enough to write it down:“A nation of farmers, fishermen, lumberjacks, cowboys, ranchers, etc. is not the same as a nation of cubicle dwellers. We’ve focused on self-esteem when we should have focused on building self-efficacy.”Don’t feel weird if you’re not sure about the definition of ‘self-efficacy.’ I wasn’t sure either, so I looked it up: “Self-efficacy is the measure of one’s own ability to complete tasks and reach goals.”Self-efficacy says, “I can do this.” Self-efficacy is where freedom begins.It is through choices and consequences that we learn the hard lessons that make peace and prosperity possible.Susan Ryan is using the power of choices and consequences to bring peace and prosperity to Afghanistan. Susan has been teaching Afghan women to become employers of labor. She says,A“Men look at you differently when you have the power to give them a job. A dozen Afghan women, each running a company that generates at least a million dollars a year in sales, would significantly alter the future of Afghanistan.”Wizard Academy’s Chapel Dulcinea sits across from the last remaining corner of an old stone home. And on the wall of that old home is a bronze plaque that says, “If mothers ruled nations there would be no war. Arm in arm they would stand and say, ‘Stop that. Stop that right now.'”Susan Ryan has an MBA and is an extraordinary teacher. Her company, Silk Road Solutions, trains courageous and ambitious people to make different choices and experience different consequences.Susan teaches them how to make money.Her 50 employees in Afghanistan have been teaching locals how to create a happier financial future for themselves. Susan says, “Think new, act different, create change.” The Afghan people love Susan’s company and the Afghan government approves of what she is doing. Not surprisingly, Susan has been invited to bring Silk Road...

Every employee has opinions about the advertising that represents their company. This is natural I suppose because those ads, by extension, represent the employee as well. And so they tell the boss what they think, “and all of our customers think that, too.”But if the development of successful advertising were as instinctive as most people believe, a higher percentage of ads would be successful.Most business owners trust their instincts and personal preferences in the creation of their advertising. Others empower a “creative” family member, an “artistic” employee, or worse, a group of employees who “studied advertising in college” to craft their messages and select the media that will move their businesses to the next level.And the results of these ad campaigns are nearly always disappointing.Philip Stanhope addressed this situation when he said, “Every young man thinks himself wise enough, just as every drunk man thinks himself sober enough.”Joss Whedon, too, might easily have been talking about writing ad copy when he said, “Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck.”But no one ever thinks they suck. No one considers their own company to be boring or their own product to be average. Each of us is from Lake Wobegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”We look in the mirror and assume that everyone sees what we see. And then we “hold these truths to be self-evident” in our advertising.But does anyone ever see us the way we see ourselves?Most people have an opinion when it comes to advertising. And they feel certain they know what would work. But it’s only when you’re allowed to play with live ammunition – real dollars – that you begin to feel the slip of the ice beneath you and draw the sharp air of reality into your lungs.The amateur believes an ad will be successful if it captures an aspect of the business that is unique and beautiful.But every business is unique and beautiful, just like every snowflake in a snowbank.When you have walked on that snow and slipped and fallen again and again and left the stain of your blood on the whiteness, you learn some hard truths that are not self-evident:1. The world of advertising is noisier and more crowded than you ever dreamed possible.2. Even though you are paying money to reach them, prospective customers are not required to give you their attention.3. Until you win the customer’s attention, your message does not exist.4. People turn their attention – moment by moment – to whatever is most interesting.5. It is hard to make ads interesting.6. The message contained in your ad must be relevant.7. The message contained in your ad must be credible.8. True isn’t always credible. And credible isn’t always true. Competitors know this.9. Ads soft enough not to repel anyone are also too weak to attract anyone.10. If you evaluate each ad by asking, “Who might this offend?” you will never craft an ad sharp enough to pierce the clutter.11. Every brand attracts a different set of core values in the hearts of its customers. The strategy that grew Apple computers into a worldwide brand won’t work for J.C. Penney. Just ask Ron Johnson.12. The best ads contain entertainment, information, and hope.The hardest part of my job as an ad man is telling my clients how to respond to people they care about when those people begin telling them how they should advertise.When you’re held...

A brief summary of this episode

You and I are aware of the superficial motives we have for the things we do, but only rarely do we consider the deeper motives that hide behind the superficial ones.Pennie and I have been discussing the future and how it revolves around you.Yes, you.Today, July 8, 2013, is the vortex of a 15-year convergence of events that began in 1998. We sit for an instant in the eye of the storm, a wonderful moment of stillness surrounded by a whirlwind of activity before and after.Everyone who works on the Wizard Academy campus – about a dozen of us – spent the last 2 weeks frantically unstacking and moving, sifting and sorting thousands of items from warehouses scattered across the campus. We’ve hungered for this grand purge for several years. Books and artwork, furniture and accessories, music and films were pulled out of boxes and given new homes. It was a Herculean task carved into our calendar several months ago. Fifteen years of acquisitions were organized and distributed in just 14 days.Twelve people working for 80 hours is 960 man-hours. We woke up yesterday morning and breathed a deep sigh of relief.By strange coincidence, during those same 2 weeks Daniel Denny rented the equipment to cut the 14-inch hump out of the solid limestone approach to the tower. The concrete was then poured – thanks to the generosity of Cognoscenti Rich Carr – so the golden flagstone can be laid on top of it and the Jane DeDecker monuments can be installed for our October 4th Open House.And the business office in the tower was finally completed as well! Whoosh. All at once, 4 momentous things came together that have been driving me crazy for years. Whirlwind.An even weirder coincidence is that Wizard Academy’s new Vice Chancellor – Daniel Whittington – starts work today. Believe it or not, we didn’t time the completion of the business office – the place where he will work – to coordinate with the day of his arrival. It was completely accidental. I started to write to you about Daniel Whittington. But then I said, “No, I’ll give him a week or two to get settled.”And then I started to write to you about digital outdoor advertising, online radio and the secrets of successful videoblogs. But then I said, “No, I’ll save those things for the monthly webcast at 11AM.”And then I started to write to you about portals, those literary, musical and visual devices useful in moving a reader, a listener or a viewer to a new perspective. But then I said, “No, portals need to be taught with the 12 languages of the mind and that’s way too much to put into a Monday Morning Memo.”And then I thought about printing the details of How to Negotiate and Schedule Successful Radio Advertising. But then I said, “That would be – for a significant percentage of Monday Morning Memo readers – the most boring thing I ever wrote.”And then a bright light overcame the darkness in my mind. “Tell them why you do it. Tell them why you write these memos, why Pennie and you built this campus, why you and she gathered all these thousands of things together.”Here’s the reason, the deeper motive that hides behind our superficial ones, the truly important motive that is often obscured by the merely urgent: Pennie and I want you to have a happy and satisfying life.We began writing the Monday Morning Memo in 1994 in the hope that you might begin to think differently, make better decisions and enjoy greater success. We didn’t see you with our eyes but we saw you in our mind.We purchased and donated the land for the Wizard Academy campus and applied for government recognition of the school as a 501c3 nonprofit educational organization so that you would always have a physical place to which you could escape, regroup, and open your mind to new possibilities. We don’t own it. You do.We built Chapel...

I’ve had a handful of memorable moments.AAmong them is a meeting with Zig Ziglar in 1986. Zig stood at a whiteboard and smiled at the 20 of us staring back at him with big eyes. Zig had written several bestselling books and created America’s most popular sales training program. The 20 of us were neophyte managers, trembling with excitement at having been chosen to be in that room.Marker in hand, Zig said, “Name for me every attribute of the perfect employee.”As we called out attributes Zig wrote them down. We had nearly 90 on the board before we began to slow.“Can you think of any others?” We painfully named two dozen more.“Think hard. I want you to describe the perfect employee. I need every attribute.” We studied that whiteboard until we began to sweat. We got to 114.Pointing now at the first word on our list, Zig asked, “Is this a skill or an attitude?” We said it was an attitude. Zig wrote a big “A” next to it. Pointing at the second word, he asked, “Skill or attitude?” Another big “A.”Twenty minutes later, Zig tallied the final score: of the 114 attributes on our list, only 7 could be classified as “Skills.” Five were “Skills/Attitudes,” and a whopping 102 of them were purely “Attitude.”Zig could have saved himself 30 minutes by just blurting out the punch line: “Employees don’t lose their jobs because they lack skill. They lose their jobs because they don’t have a good attitude.” But Zig didn’t want to say these things and then try to convince us of their truth. Zig wanted us to say them, and thus convince ourselves to “always hire people who have the right attitude.”I sat there drenched in realization and recalled a few lines from Elbert Hubbard’s famous rant of 1899, A Message to Garcia.“I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to anyone else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him… Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular fire-brand of discontent.”Twenty-five years after that meeting with Zig Ziglar, I had a similar moment with the great David McInnis. “I finally figured out how to improve employee morale,” David said, “Productivity skyrockets and everyone loves coming to work. It’s a program that never fails. Works every time.”I stood there looking at David.He stood there looking at me.Finally, I raised my shoulders and turned my palms upward. Looking steadily into my eyes, David said, “Fire all the unhappy people.” Those words struck me with such comical force that I began to laugh. But David wasn’t laughing.None of us wants to run a sweatshop. None of us wants to be that hard-hearted boss who fails to appreciate the humanity of employees. None of us wants to abuse our people with the cold pragmatism displayed by Wal-Mart.And this is why so many businesses become country clubs for employees.Here’s how it happens: a whiner makes a reasonable request and you grant it. That request is expanded upon and accelerated until it ceases to be a privilege granted to employees and becomes an inalienable right. And that was only the first request in an unending stream of others brought to you by an increasingly dissatisfied staff. And you, sadly, are now seen as the oppressive King George.But this revolt is unlike that famous one of 1776. This time it will be King George that delivers the declaration of independence to the whiner.David’s advice, and mine, is that you identify the “firebrand of discontent” within your company – if you have one – and give that person a smiling declaration of independence as you...

And the People Behind It In the world of bricks-and-mortar,1. a spectacular building,2. good signage and3. an excellent locationare the best advertising money can buy.In the binary world where Ones are bricks and Zeroes are mortar,1. your website is your building,2. your masthead is your signage and3. your domain name is your location.But that’s where the metaphor falls apart.In the world of air and sunshine, an interesting building with a memorable sign on a high-traffic road will be noticed and remembered. But in the airless void of ones and zeroes, your building doesn’t exist until a visitor arrives at your specific street address, then WHOOSH, it is conjured from code in an instant.Welcome to virtual reality, where no one sees you until they get there.But in this vacuum of cyberspace, the laws of physics still apply. So the Great and Glowing Truth you can count upon above all other truths is this: Advertising will only accelerate what was going to happen anyway.A purely online business lives or dies through its website and other digital interactions. But a brick-and-mortar business lives or dies through real-world interactions with its customers. Successful online businesses provide an exceptional online experience. Successful face-to-face businesses provide an exceptional face-to-face experience.Wizard Academy is a face-to-face experience. Wizard Academy was founded by an ad man, but the school has never spent a penny on advertising and the WizardAcademy.org website is unattractive, outdated and clunky. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the ugliest website in Virtual Reality.Search engine optimization? Nope.Pay-per-click? Not yet.But we were doing Content Marketing before it had a name.In 1994, when the internet was still a secret and the Monday Morning Memo was sent by fax, we called each tidbit flung into the world a Free Product Sample, FPS for short. And when we flung those tidbits from a microphone we called it a Free Public Seminar. Again, FPS for short. And then came email.Regardless of the vehicle used for distribution, the idea remained unchanged: people will give you their time if you give them something valuable in exchange for it.People value information, entertainment, and hope. If you give them these from an open hand and an open heart, they will probably forgive your unattractive, outdated and clunky method of delivery.Our Number One Priority is to send you something each week worth reading.Number Two is to build you a country home to which you can escape any time you feel the need to be free. That country home, the Wizard Academy campus, is nearly complete.A new website should appear by the end of the year.But there won’t be any time or money for that until first we’ve finished Bilbo Baggins House, the Lenhard-Murray Amphitheater, and the Jeff Morris Worldwide Invitational Bocce Ball Court.Priorities.Bittersweet: Late this autumn, when the miraculous Daniel Denny hangs up his tool belt and moves back to Oklahoma to build, at long last, a home for himself and his wife, Pattie, their adobe mansion at Wizard Academy will become additional student housing.Your country home is nearly complete.And thanks to you, it’s debt-free.Imagine what we could have done if only we’d had a better website.Roy H. Williams

A person capable of creating is happiest when they are creating.Artists create visual and auditory artifacts that affect our thoughts, moods and attitudes. Riddle-solvers perform feats of engineering and invention. Teachers create new understanding in the minds of their students. Entrepreneurs create businesses that offer us new and different experiences. Communicators create stories and speeches and ads.Made in the image of God, humans are creators by nature. All humans.Yes, that includes you.What do you create? What do you change? What effect do you have on the world around you?The Success Myth of our culture is an evil one. We are told that “the freedom to do nothing” is the reward provided by great wealth. Have you spent much time among the idle rich? Sadly, I have, and on many occasions.Leisure feels good when you are weary from intense creating. Leisure is restorative, allowing you to return to your creation with renewed intensity. But when you are satiated with food, it is no longer pleasant to eat. When you are satiated with rest, it is no longer pleasant to rest.The idle rich aren’t bored because they are rich. They are bored because they are idle. The idle poor have exactly the same feelings as the idle rich, but the idle poor call it “hopelessness.”Political radio shows exist because people would rather be angry than bored. Horror movies exist because people would rather be frightened than bored. Sensational films and photos exist because people would rather be shocked and offended than bored.Boredom is a kind of death. Being angry, frightened or offended reminds you that you are alive. But these emotions are sad and fruitless substitutes for the joy that comes from creating.Happy people value something much more than they value themselves. If there is nothing in your life that means more to you than you do, I fear you will be unhappy. No, that’s not right. I fear you are already unhappy.Are you feeling lethargic? Apathetic? Bored? Aimless? Hopeless? Get off your ass and do something. It won’t be the outcome that brings you joy; it will be the effort. You’ve probably excused yourself from taking action in the past by saying, “but I’m not very good at it.” Friend, no one is ever “good at it” in the beginning. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly until you get better at it.Find something that needs to change. It can be anything bigger than you. Fight for it, work for it, throw all your creative energies into it. You will soon be frustrated, angry, disappointed and tired.But happy.I’m sorry if this offends you. I thought it might. But I care enough about you to say it anyway.Doing the best I can.Roy H. Williams

Your Spotlight of Words?A radio commercial begins, “I’m Ronald Watersdown, and I’m here to tell you about a very important opportunity that I’m sure you won’t want to miss. It’s an incredible chance for you to…”What did those twenty-nine words make you see in your mind?Not much, right? But what about these?“Owl was neither wise nor old. She was a teenage assassin whose large, dark eyes said she was sleepy or depressed or bored. I was never really sure which.”You saw (1.) a momentary owl, then (2.) a young female assassin with half-shut eyes, then (3.) you considered the emotions she might be feeling and (4.) you wondered about the relationship between her and the narrator. All in just twenty-nine words.Perhaps you’re thinking, “Well, radio ads just can’t be as interesting as the opening lines of novels.”But why is that, do you suppose? Why couldn’t a radio ad begin with twenty-nine words about a teenage assassin?“Owl was neither wise nor old. She was a teenage assassin whose large, dark eyes said she was sleepy or depressed or bored. I was never really sure which. But her sister Procrastination was even harder to read. Procrastination… the passive assassin of Opportunity. Silently killing one day at a time… Don’t let Procrastination take what you love. Give yourself a new [name of item] today and feel on top of the world. Feel like you can fly. Feel like liquid Springtime. Procrastination says ‘wait.’ But what do you say?”The absence of a real product disallowed the inclusion of specifics in that ad, so we can’t be sure it would bring in customers, but it would definitely hold the attention of listeners with a much tighter grip than the limp, wet hand of Ronald Watersdown.“A great big, bright red…”English is a language built backwards. We speakers-of-English string together a list of modifiers before naming the thing we modify. In so doing, we require our listeners to commit to memory those modifiers so they can later be applied to the thing we name. I’m told the Romantic languages have solved this problem with a more efficient sentence structure: “A rose, bright red and big.”A good ad is a series of vivid mental images projected onto the movie screen of imagination. Here are a few tips for writing opening lines that will flash and crackle in the mind with the smell of burnt electricity:1. Name something easily seen.2. Modify it only after you have a named it.3. Choose verbs that carry context. I said “flash… crackle… burnt electricity,” and you saw lightning even though I never used the word. You were engaged by the language, a willing participant in our co-creation of a vivid mental image.4. Clarity first, creativity last. A few paragraphs ago I wrote, “English is a language built backwards. We speakers of English…” My original line was, “We speakers of this inverted tongue…” but I decided that was a little too clever. “Inverted tongue” is visual, yes, but it’s also potentially confusing.Creativity that blurs clarity is pretentious.Creativity that sharpens clarity is genius.Words carry energy. What will you light with them?Isaac Newton discovered that impact is mass times acceleration. How big is the idea in your mind? How quickly can you transfer it?5. Shorter is quicker, and quicker hits harder.Always hit hard.Roy H. Williams

Laid side-by-side, a stick and a rope of the same length share a similar appearance. Likewise, rules and principles look alike even though they have virtually nothing in common.Rules are like sticks.You can prod people with them.You can threaten people with them.You can beat people with them.But you cannot lead people with them.When a rule doesn’t fit the circumstance, your only choice is to break it.Principles are like ropes, able to conform to the shape of any problem. They are less brittle than rules, and stronger. Principles whisper valuable advice and people are happily led by them.A rule requires obedience.A principle requires contemplation.Rules are demanded by peoplewho have not the wit to understand and applythe appropriate, all-encompassing principle.Segmentation is a principle. Elimination is another. These are, in fact, the first two principles of TRIZ, an uncanny toolbox of 40 Answers that shine their own, unique light on your problem from 40 different directions, revealing a wide range of creative solutions.The principle of segmentation urges you to consider the perspective of connected pieces. Trains, chains and sliding windowpanes are expressions of segmentation.The principle of elimination urges you to consider that less is more. Pruning a plant, cropping a photograph and editing an ad are expressions of elimination.If the other 38 principles of TRIZ were as self-explanatory as these, I’d simply encourage you to tap T-R-I-Z into your favorite search engine and study it on your own. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy.Go ahead. Do it. Throw some Google on that acronym and see what you find: T-R-I-Z. I believe you’ll see that a journey into the jungle of TRIZ would make a lot more sense with an experienced guide at your side.Anti-Weight (Principle 8,)Preliminary Anti-Action (Principle 9,)Equipotentiality (Principle 12,)Another Dimension (Principle 17,)Homogeneity (Principle 33,) andPhase Transitions (Principle 36)are easy to understand when SuperFox reveals them. Not so easy when you attempt to follow someone else.Mark Fox is the Chairman of the Board at Wizard Academy. Before rising to that illustrious position, he was the youngest Chief Engineer in the history of the space shuttle project. Yes, Mark is a rocket scientist. He’s also been Chief Marketing Officer of some famous hi-tech companies. My favorite thing about Mark, though, is that he’s a fascinating instructor and a lot of fun. You’ll want a room in Engelbrecht House when Mark unleashes the 40 principles of TRIZ in his world-changing workshop, Da Vinci and the 40 Answers. (If you’re smart, you’ll register for the October session today while free rooms are still available.)If October isn’t an option, you’ll at least want to read the book. A working knowledge of the 40 Answers is like having Batman’s utility belt.Wizard Academy is a school for the imaginative, the courageous and the ambitious. Dull people, cowardly people, and people without purpose find nothing here they can use.But you, you’ll find exactly what you need. We built this whole place for you and frankly, it’s pretty amazing.Come. Even if it’s just for the principle of the thing.Roy H. Williams

The principal benefit of creative thought is hope.New possibilities are electric, and hope is the light that shines from them.Creativity is the source of hope even when your hope is in God: “I don’t see a way out of this, but I’m betting that He does.” We depend upon God’s creative thoughts to do what we cannot.I’m sorry if my mention of God annoys you. (Just for the record, He is never annoyed when I mention you.)Creative thought is much on my mind these days.President John F. Kennedy told a story in 1962 about a mother who wrote to the principal of her son’s school, “Don’t teach my boy poetry, he’s going to run for Congress.” Kennedy commented, “I’ve never taken the view that the world of politics and the world of poetry are so far apart. I think politicians and poets share at least one thing, and that is their greatness depends upon the courage with which they face the challenges of life.”Hope is the glow that surrounds creativity, and courage is the confidence we gain in that light. Kennedy seemed to know this.We want to think ‘outside the box’ because we can’t breathe in there. The box is made of rules and the lid of the box is the heaviest rule of all.Rules are created with the gentlest of intentions.We know a thing best when we’ve learned it the hard way. Wisdom springs from experience. The best of the past is brought forward when we give others the benefits of what we’ve learned. Such advice is valuable and often deeply appreciated until some fool carves it in stone and it becomes an unbreakable rule. Did you notice how quickly the darkness fell? What happened to the breeze? Why can’t I breathe?Help me push open this heavy lid.Rules kill hope by suffocation.Creativity brings hope to life again.I see a person in your life with whom you have some difficulty. I see a health issue about which you’re worried. I see financial fears. Possibilities, possibilities, possibilities.I came to encourage you.Eighteen hundred years ago, Marcus Aurelius, the last of Rome’s Five Good Emperors, said, “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”The day after this day is called Tomorrow and it’s never been here before. I hope you’ll show it a good time.A touch of creativity is all it takes. And you’ve got the touch.Roy H. Williams