Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Caterina dumps baby Lenny on her boyfriend, then moves to town and gets married to someone else. Neither Lenny's father nor his mother is willing to give Lenny their family name, so he is known only by the name of the mountain under whose shadow he was born: Lenny Albano.An unwanted child, Lenny grows up strangely in this remote, rural neighborhood without access to comic books or video games. Estranged parents. Odd relationships. A badly broken situation.But his imagination is intact. Is your imagination intact?Long walks in the hills surrounding Mount Albano cause Lenny to fall in love with animals. He loves them so much that he buys caged creatures just so he can set them free. How Lenny makes his money is unimportant. But how he spends it reveals his soul.How do you spend your money?People laugh when Lenny becomes a vegetarian. He doesn't care. People have laughed at him since the day he was born. Lenny hides from them by taking journeys in his mind. He goes exploring, deep inside his own head. Lenny is amazed by the things he finds.Lenny scribbles his thoughts in journals and draws little pictures in the margins. Although no publisher is willing to publish these random thoughts, Bill Gates recently paid 30 million dollars for just one of Lenny's journals.Lenny is very smart.But Lenny's deep curiosity causes him to be easily distracted. Although lots of people are willing to buy his paintings, rarely can he stay focused long enough to finish one.Lenny isn't completely alone in his quirky curiosity. When Lenny is 40, a man named Chris sails west to look for the east. Go figure.Long after Lenny dies, the world realizes how far ahead of his time he'd been. Sigmund Freud said Lenny “was like a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep.”But we no longer call him by the name of the mountain under whose shadow he was born. We choose instead to call him by the name of the village he was from. And for some strange reason we insist on calling Lenny of Vinci, “Leonardo.”I think Lenny would have laughed had he known.And I think he would have fit right in at Wizard Academy.What do you think?Roy H. Williams

Pricing – If you're not worried that you're pricing it too cheap, you're not pricing it cheap enough. That's the best advice I can give you about Pricing in a single sentence.Never ask, “How much might someone be willing to pay for this?” Ask instead, “At what price could I sell a huge number of these?” Read the biographies of Henry Ford and Sam Walton and you'll learn that this was the one question asked by both men throughout their lives. The correct answer to that question lifted Henry and Sam out of the shadows of obscurity to stand among America's wealthiest citizens.Please don't listen to well-meaning friends who try to tell you that “Anyone who would pay ten dollars for this would just as quickly pay fifteen.” The Model T was invented when Henry Ford set out to “design a car that could be manufactured and sold at a profit for $850.00” Every other car in the world sold for at least $2,500 at the time. Nearly 2,000 automobile manufacturers had been launched and failed during the 22 years prior to Henry's launch of the Model T in 1908. (It was called the Model T because Models A through S failed to meet Henry's pricing criteria. The Model A that replaced the Model T was the beginning of Henry's second trip through the alphabet.) The assembly line was invented only as a tool to help Henry achieve his price.Read Made in America, the biography of Sam Walton written while he lay on his deathbed, and you'll quickly see that Sam was just another Henry Ford. Can anyone say Michael Dell?Value – People don't trade money for things when they value their money more highly than they value the things. No trade will be made unless they want the thing more than they want their money. This is why things-with-stories sell faster than things-without-stories. How much faster depends on the story.Notice that I didn't say things-with-stories necessarily sell for more money, I said they sell faster. Stories, like refurbishments and repairs, can increase the salability of an item without increasing its actual value. Ask anyone who has ever sold a home or a car. All that repainting, repair and clean-up didn't raise the price as much as it made the home or car more salable. Likewise, stories increase salability more often than they increase the value or the price.The value of an item – in the mind of a consumer – is simply the difference between the anticipated price and the price on the tag. When the anticipated price is higher than the price tag, it's a “good value.” When the anticipated price is lower than the price tag, it's a bad value. Good stories raise the anticipated price. Finding the untold story is the goal of a process we call the Uncovery.Salability – The salability of an item can often be improved while the value itself remains unchanged. A good story often increases the salability of an item without increasing its actual value. NOTE: The fact that an item is selling briskly doesn't always mean that you can increase its price. And the fact that an item isn't selling well can't always be cured by lowering its price.Sometimes the secret to increasing the sales volume of an item is to tell a better story about it. Sometimes the secret is simply to lower the price. Do both and you can take over the world.Just ask Henry, Sam and Michael.Roy H. Williams

“You can be anything you want to be,” was once the anthem of America. But we seem to have twisted that sunlit dream into a shriveled demon that whispers, “Hurry, hurry, hurry and you can be everything you want to be.”Too much to do, too little time. Tossed and turned by a too-much world, we're as tired as a termite in a yo-yo. And all along, we were just trying to find our way home.“Why am I here? What is my purpose? Who are my people? Where is my tribe?”Branding is built on our need to belong. The majority of our decisions-to-purchase revolve around self-definition. We buy what we buy to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are.And most of your customers are doing exactly the same thing. What are you doing to brighten the mirror of who your customers believe themselves to be? Do you even know who they believe themselves to be?Successful Branding is to:1. Know your customer.2. Reinforce their self-image.3. Make them feel they've found “home.”Overlay Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs onto the preference profiles of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and you'll soon recognize the four faces of your customers. And each of them is looking for something different from you:Leader/Early Adopter, wants to be first-on-the-block:Show them things that “just came in.” Hang a sign on every New Arrival.– approximately 10 percent of our populationOutsider/Goes his-her own way, proudly stands alone (with all the other loners):Follow his-her lead. These people will strongly resist any attempt to direct them.– approximately 9 percent of our population.Analyst/Skeptic, looks for details, facts, and statistics:Have credible data available for them. Answer their questions precisely as asked.– approximately 24 percent of our populationFollower/Member of the Club, wants to be part of the “In” crowd:Show these people “what's hot.” NOTE: Very few people are willing to define themselves as followers, even though they admit they're attracted to best-selling items.– approximately 57 percent of our populationLeader, Outsider, Analyst, Follower; every business attracts these four faces. Your business category likely has other, more specific customer personas that are unique to it. And each of these comes to you for different reasons and with different expectations.Do you keep your customer personas clearly in mind when creating your ads?Are you prepared to sell each of these customers “their way?” Have you trained your staff how to recognize each type of customer and how to serve each of them differently?If your business is average, your people are closing the sale slightly more often than 2 times out of every 10 customer encounters. If you could help them get just 1 more smiling “yes” from the remaining crowd of nearly 8 unsold customers, your sales volume would increase by 50 percent… with no increase in advertising and no additional store traffic.Sound like something you might want to check into?Roy H. Williams

Nehemiah is a book of the history of the Jews. Have you ever read it?450 BC – It is the time of Socrates, just a few years before Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander the Great: Nehemiah is a government worker who becomes distressed with the way things are and decides to do something about it. “Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem. They said to me, 'Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.' When I heard these things, I sat down and wept.”Have you ever learned something that made you want to sit down and weep? Emptiness. Violence. Illiteracy. Loneliness. Disease. Poverty. The world is full of sadness.But Nehemiah wasn't like most people. He didn't think it was enough just to be sad. He decided to do something, even though he was very afraid.“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” – Ambrose Redmoon, quoted by my friend Susan Ryan just before she left for AfghanistanSpeaking to King Artaxerxes of Persia, Nehemiah said, “If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it.” The king gave his permission. And thus Nehemiah began the long labor for which he would be forever remembered.“Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.” – Samuel Johnson“When you grow up, you have to give yourself away. Sometimes you give your life all in a moment, but mostly you have to give yourself away laboring one minute at a time.” – Gaborn Val OrdenDo you have a plan for making the world better, or at least your little corner of it? Tell us about it in your application to be selected for Wizard Academy's World Changers curriculum July 10-12, 2006. Perhaps you'll be one of the two-dozen carefully chosen students to receive a full scholarship.No paid seats will be available for this course.Month after month, Wizard Academy equips people who want to make a difference. This is why journalists and scientists and artists and educators and business owners and advertising professionals and ministers are attracted to our little school. But for 3 hot days each July, we train 24 students who want to make a difference, but who don't have the funds for tuition.Six of the World Changers for 2006 will be chosen by Dr. Glenn Cherry. Six will be chosen by Wizard Academy board member Corrine Taylor. Six will be chosen by board member Dr. Richard D. Grant. The final six will be chosen by Pennie Williams, President and co-founder of the Academy.If you believe you should be in this class, please read the list of qualifying criteria and be sure your application for scholarship reaches us prior to midnight, June 10, 2006. Successful applicants will be notified on or before June 17, 2006.Talk is cheap. The world doesn't want to hear what you believe.They're watching to see what you do.Roy H. Williams

A Very Interesting AdThe doctor's waiting room glowed with old magazines.As I stood there amidst this strange illumination, I noticed an ad for IBM Consulting that featured an executive woman peering thoughtfully into the distance. In the foreground hung the three questions that haunt every business that has ever achieved success:How do we keep our latest innovation from becoming our last?How do we keep our organization as agile as a startup?How do we keep a fear of risk from blinding us to opportunity?The selection of these questions was pure genius. I applaud the ad writer. Even more brilliant was the fact that none of them was answered. For that, you'd have to call IBM Consulting.To pass the time, I decided to draft my own answers to each of these haunting questions:How do we keep our latest innovation from becoming our last?Trust your intuition. Remember how to play. Do at least one crazy thing each day.SPECIFICALLY: When your mind begins to wander and you find yourself thinking a strange and unproductive thought, ask, “What would it cost me to chase this rabbit right now?” If you can afford the time, unleash the fun-loving beagle in your brain to chase that zigzagging rabbit of distraction. But don't be surprised if these furry little friends lead you to a brilliant innovation. The rabbit of distraction is often a topological recognition cue and the beagle is always pattern recognition, a function of your brain's intuitive and wordless right hemisphere. Having recognized a possible solution to a puzzle you've been unconsciously trying to solve, the freewheeling beagle in your right brain whispers to the logical lawyer of the left, “Woo-hoo! Did you see that? Follow me!” It is the rabbit of inexplicable distraction, Alice, that will guide you into Wonderland.How do we keep our organization as agile as a startup?Carve into the top of your desk where you can see it every day, “The truth shall make you free, but first it shall make you angry.”SPECIFICALLY: Allow people who haven't drunk your Kool-Aid and have no reverence for your success to study your core strengths in search of the weaknesses that could be exploited by a challenger. When a competitive strategy is discovered that could actually work, do it to yourself before someone else does. Become your own competitor. And be merciless.Recognize that all answers are temporary. Allow no cow to become sacred. Yesterday's brilliant insight is tomorrow's traditional method.Specifically: Hang a 12-foot banner on the wall in the hallway, “I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.” Gather your staff every morning and have them say these words out loud in unison like the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm not just being colorful here. I'm being completely serious. The inertia of corporate, cultural memory cannot be overcome without employing a physical action and repeating it as a group for at least 13 consecutive days. This is absolutely essential if you plan to overcome “the way it's always been.” Changing corporate policy, having a meeting, and sending out a memo just won't get it done.How do we keep a fear of risk from blinding us to opportunity?Remember that proof-of-concept never requires you to bet the farm. Ideas that seem prohibitively dangerous can always be affordably tested. Create a culture of experimentation whose mantra is, “There are no ideas too crazy to test.”SPECIFICALLY: Budget for failure. Set aside hard dollars for testing new ideas with “an increase in knowledge” being the only expected outcome. Risk is now eliminated. Fear is gone. You will have created the perfect environment for successful Research and Development.Hopefully, there is something here you can use. I always give you my best.Roy H. Williams

I've noticed a disturbing trend. Maybe you have, too:Cashiers have become the new pitchmen.The old pitchman came to your door and knocked. He sold encyclopedias or vacuum cleaners or miracle soap. Whatever. But you were trapped by your own politeness. You couldn't think of a way to get rid of him without being offensive. So you gave him your time. And often, your money.The new pitchman traps you at the cash register, saying effectively, “You're not leaving here with that merchandise until you listen to my pitch and answer a few questions.” I'm not talking about suggestive selling. This is much more annoying than that.The first time I was cashier conned was at the Apple Computer Store in the mall. My laptop needed repair so I decided to buy a new one, upload my data into it, repair the old one and give it to Barry. I had to have the new laptop immediately so I went to the Apple Store. I love Apple. If I was ever going to get a tattoo, it would probably be of that multicolored Apple logo. Is that nuts? Okay then, guilty.I stood at the cash register, credit card in my hand, as the cashier asked, “Would you like a copy of Microsoft Office for an extra fifty bucks?”“Fifty bucks? Sure.” So he stuck the software in the bag with my new computer, ran my credit card and had me sign the dealie. Then he slipped my receipt into the bag with a curious looking folder. On impulse, I pulled the folder out. It was a long and complicated application for a $150 rebate. The little rat bastard had charged me $200 for the software and silently slipped me a rebate application.“Am I supposed to fill this out?”Eye roll. “Yes, sir.”“Did you say to me, and I quote, “Would you like a copy of Microsoft Office for an extra fifty bucks?”Self-righteous now. “Yes, sir.” The little RB was acting like I was out of line for being annoyed by this.“Sorry, but I don't fill out rebate forms. Here's your software. Give me back my money.” I'll never visit another Apple Store. Future purchases will be strictly online where I can read all the fine print before I say yes. I'm glad I didn't get the tattoo.A couple of weeks later my Dodge pickup needed a safety inspection. The outdated little sticker in its windshield screamed to the police that I was driving an illegal vehicle. I pulled in at Jiffy Lube.“Do you do safety inspections?”“Yes, sir. We sure do.”I had them change the oil, replace the air filter and install new windshield wipers. As they handed me my keys, I said, “You forgot the new safety sticker.”“Oh, we don't do official safety inspections, sir. We do Jiffy Lube inspections.”This time the con was so outrageous that I got tickled. “Oh, so you looked everything over and it seems oky-doky to you?”“Yes, sir.”“Great. Now I can sleep at night.” I beamed a big smile and left. Small people complain. I just never go back. Is there a chance the little jiffy weasel honestly misunderstood my safety inspection inquiry? Zero. His response was trained. Every day, thousands of Texans have to get their vehicles safety inspected. Jiffy Lube doesn't want the hassle but they obviously want the traffic. They're hoping we'll chalk it up as honest miscommunication. And most of us probably will. Once. The jiffy weasel knew that if he told me the truth, that they don't do safety inspections, I would have taken my truck somewhere else. Jiffy Lube used to be another of my favorite companies. Now I feel violated by them, a little bit raped. Sorry for the language, but that's how I feel.Somehow, I'm betting I'm not the only one.The most recent cashier con happened at Best Buy. “Your purchase today qualifies you for 8 free issues of Sports Illustrated or Entertainment Weekly. Which do you prefer?” I firmly declined both.Do you think maybe I was just being paranoid? The thought definitely flickered across my mind. Fearful that I might be seeing con men where none existed, I went online and found that the cashier con at Best Buy was perhaps the oiliest of them all.I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.In the short run, these cashier cons are likely to elevate profits. But can you think of a faster way to grind away brand image and erode brand loyalty? I traded with these companies because I believed in them. And now I don't anymore. I let them keep my money. But I did not let them keep my heart.I share these stories with you only to alert you to the dangers of shallow, short-sighted marketing. Quicky-tricky profits often come at a terrible long-term price.Roy H. Williams

You are a column of wax.Your purpose began as a spark, a flicker easily ignored. But you didn't ignore it. You turned to face it and your head caught fire.Grace Hansen admonishes, “Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid it will never begin.” In other words, be afraid you will never catch fire.Lethargy. Apathy. Malaise. Aimlessness. Depression: Five different words for the absence of a flame.What is it that burns in your soul and shines through your eyes?Did you know that humans would rather be angry than bored? Anger is an ugly flame, but it feels better than no flame at all. This is why people who have no creative vision spend so much time being angry. Anger gives them purpose.Try not to walk in their shadow.Jorge Luis Borges, consumed by the tiger of time, is gone. But when he walked among us he looked directly into the lens of life's camera and said, “Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that tears me apart, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.”Time is the fire, the animator of us all. You step into it at birth. You step out of it at death and grow cold, a column of wax once more. Your candle is spent.What did it light?You've heard me say it many times… I repeat it again today, not because I can think of nothing else to say, but because it's vitally important to your happiness:“Lives, like money, are spent. What are you buying with yours?”Roy H. Williams

My computer-programmer friend Akintunde used to spend his Sunday afternoons with Pennie and me. When my audio-book Thought Particles: Binary Code of the Mind was released, Akintunde took home a copy and listened to it several times. We had long talks about it. Then he was whisked away to Kyoto, Japan, to create the next generation of video games for some of the world's most powerful game companies. I wish I could tell you more, but I can't. Akintunde is sworn to deep secrecy.Akintunde is the essential Outsider.Tiny protons, neutrons, and electrons are generally considered to be the building blocks of matter. In a similar fashion, I believe Thought Particles – the smallest units of thought – to be the building blocks of communication. Learn how to skillfully stack them and you will communicate with greater power.Last week I wrote about Pandora.com because music is the oldest example of Thought Particle technology. “If a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws. Ancient legislators knew they could not reform the manners of a city without the help of a songwriter and a poet.” – Andrew Fletcher, to Scottish Parliament in 1704A radio is essentially a mood selection device. How do you want to feel? Just press the appropriate button.Likewise, visual artists arrange lines and colors, using shape and ratio, position and juxtaposition to compose nonverbal “statements.” They provide us with light-wave, rather than sound wave, examples of carefully stacked Thought Particles. My friend David Freeman explains exactly how to craft visual statements in his outsider book, Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering. When that book was released, David, like Akintunde, was immediately flown to Japan.If Akintunde and David ever get together, they'll probably take over the world. I suspect the Japanese game companies know this, too.Another team of Wizard Academy graduates is currently investigating the science of using of shape and color to make nonverbal statements in corporate logos. Think of it as visual Pandora.Additionally, the Academy is studying the statements made to customers through a business owner's choices in landscaping, signage, flooring, lighting, etc. A Beta version of the resulting Customer Experience Index will be released in Summer '06.We're in the throes of tumultuous change in the world of marketing. We're being tossed topsy-turvy, tumbled by technology. New techniques are being introduced that sharply reduce the need for creative talent, intuition, and gut feel.Have you ever seen one of those little Bluetooth earpieces that hooks around your ear and becomes a wireless headset for your cell phone? Now imagine marrying one of those to a next generation lie detector and using it to measure the raw, unfiltered responses of people to various ads.Bye-bye, Focus Groups.Using this new application of Thought Particle technology, you'll no longer need to ask people how they feel about a particular ad. Just hook the earpiece around their ear, tape the lead wire to their temple, play the ad for them and then you can tell them how they feel about it. Or let the person flip through a series of proposed magazine ads. The earpiece will clearly tell you which ad would be most effective. I imagine there'll soon be auditoriums full of people with earpieces listening to spec radio ads, watching spec TV spots and reading spec magazine ads.How do I know about this?Sigh.Shortly after Thought Particles: Binary Code of the Mind was released, a student arrived from the Pentagon to attend the 3-day Magical Worlds Communications Workshop. Then came the engineers and astrophysicists from NASA. And then a series of doctors signed up, including one winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry. One recent student was a department head from the Los Alamos Nuclear Research Lab.Evidently, scientists found Thought Particles fascinating. And so did a lot of musicians, journalists, ministers, artists and educators. What did all of them have in common? They were Outsiders, one and all.“Poor reading, like poor writing, is imposing what you already know on texts. You should go into reading to discover, not to reaffirm what you know.” – Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, to Edward Nawotka in an interview.Azar Nafisi is obviously an Outsider. Her comment was aimed at the blindness that comes from living in that hard-edged little box Insiders call home, a dreary existence known as “The Status Quo.”My friend Akintunde speaks of Japanese society as being “group-based.” He says they have a saying in Japan, “The nail that sticks out is hammered back in.” “Or worse,” he adds, “if not hammered back in, is left out to dry, a fish out of water.”Birds, in my opinion, are fish out of water. Singing fish, swimming in the sky.Would you like to come sing with us?That last bit probably caused a few of you to recoil, “Sing like a fish? Uh-oh, now he's just talkin' crazy.”Interestingly, Japanese executives are smart enough to realize their need to overcome the limitations of group-think. So they seek out the brightest and best of the western Outsiders to help them see what had previously been invisible.Is it possible that important ideas are hiding just outside your peripheral vision?I'm betting we'll see a few executives from the big videogame companies at Jeff and Bryan's unveiling event on May 9-10. If not, you can be certain the amazing Eisenbrothers will be whisked away to Japan as soon as their new book is released.I'm planning to be in Tuscan Hall with Jeff and Bryan Eisenberg for their unveiling event on May 9-10, 2006.Are you?Roy H. Williams

Thought Particle Technology has ArrivedI consider Pandora.com to be the first commercial application of Thought Particle technology. Have you allowed Pandora to read your mind yet?Pandora.com is a streaming music service crafted by a couple of hundred really serious music experts whose ideas about music are much bigger and more divergent than the mere idea of “format” or “genre.” Tell Pandora what songs you like and she'll soon figure out what all those songs have in common that you never realized. Pandora also learns from the songs you tell her you don't like.I fed Pandora everything from James Taylor and Jimmy Buffett to the blistering rage of Bone Thugs and System of a Down. I even admitted a fondness for certain songs of Janice Ian and Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.Pandora says I tend to like songs with a subtle blues or country influence, Likewise, I'm a sucker for paired harmony, a syncopated rhythm, interesting part writing and strong melodies. And that's just a few of the characteristics my songs tend to have in common. But you've got to tell her what you like.The benefit of all this back-and-forth interaction with Pandora is that she will soon begin playing songs you never knew existed, songs that make you say, “Wow! This is the coolest music I've ever heard in my life!” Even as I write this, I've got Pandora playing through my laptop. A moment ago I heard, I Concentrate on You, by Steve Tyrell. Never heard it before in my life. Loved it. Right now Pandora is playing It's Alright by Big Head Todd & The Monsters. Who the heck is Big Head Todd?Pretty soon Pandora will change the tempo and take me in another of my favorite directions. Wow. What a coincidence. Just as I typed “another of my favorite directions,” the mellow mumblings of Big Head Todd segued into the bee-sting guitars of Ten Years After playing another song I've never heard in my life, When It All Falls Down.Click the image that appears on your monitor while a song is playing and Pandora will let you give it a Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down. She'll link you to iTunes to buy the mp3 or to Amazon to buy the CD. She'll even explain why she chose that song for you.Yes, Pandora has leaped light-years beyond Amazon's suggestion of “People who bought this CD also bought…..”No, I'm not making a penny off any of this. I'm suggesting that you meet Pandora for your benefit, not hers.You need her a lot more than she needs you.Next week I'll tell you about a few other soon-to-be-released technologies built on Thought Particles, the simple but practical application of a bizarre pattern-recognition system that is easily encoded into software to create powerfully convincing artificial intelligences.The day of Thought Particles has arrived.Roy H. Williams

I like to think God said, “Let there be…” and then paused to think for a moment. Suddenly it came to him, “Light!”If you accept the book of Genesis, then God is a creator by nature. And he created us in his image, little miniatures of himself. That means we're creators by nature, too. Creativity is our heritage. It's in our DNA. When we create, we're being Godlike. We're doing what we're supposed to do. Musicians, inventors, landscapers, cooks, beauticians and actors and writers of books are just following the call of a creative plan and fulfilling the destiny of a thing called Man.What do you create?In the fifty-fifth chapter of his book, Isaiah reports God as saying, “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”Now back to the nature of God for a moment. When he said, “Let there be light,” we can be sure he didn't use vocal cords to create vibrations that traveled through air. The fourth part of the letter to the Hebrews tells us “the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”Did you catch that first part, about how God's statements are “living,” alive?John's gospel skips Bethlehem and the begats. John takes us back to the big bang, “Let there be… Light!” Here's how he puts it: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him [the Word,] and without Him nothing was made that was made… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”Writers, like God, speak worlds into existence. Likewise, every artist takes visitors to a world that isn't there. Photographers take us to long-ago moments by freezing a frame in this filmstrip we call the space-time continuum. Painters take us to places we've never been. Actors introduce us to people that don't exist. Landscapers create moods and feelings we didn't have before, as do musicians and interior decorators. Video games create emotion in us by allowing us to star in our very own movie. They are an art form like every other.What is the form of your art? Into what moist clay are you leaving your fingerprints? Are you molding the minds of young men and women? Are you, like Alberto Mendieta, causing buildings to rise from piles of materials? Are you able to swing his hammer?Please don't insult God by telling me you aren't creative. You are creative. And every creative effort brings a rich reward.Read the first chapter of Genesis. And then create something. Do it so the thing will exist. Fling it into existence from the fingertips of your mind.And then watch what happens.Roy H. Williams