Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

I was the new kid in a new town, ­getting ready to start the third grade.We had moved into a rented house beyond the outer perimeter of Skiatook, Oklahoma. There were no other houses within sight, so there were no neighbors to visit, no new friends to meet, nothing to do except walk in circles.School had not yet started. Our house – like most houses back then – had no air conditioning.The Oklahoma air was too hot, too dusty to breathe.That’s when Indy showed up and introduced himself.He said, “What are you doing?”“Walking in circles.”“Can I do it with you?“Sure.”I wasn’t surprised that Indy could talk, and I wasn’t surprised that he could walk into photographs and paintings and talk to the people in them. When he walked out of those images, he would tell me the most amazing stories.Indy suggested I should become a writer.The following summer, I was the new kid in another new town – Broken Arrow – but we had neighbors and a park and a house with air conditioning. Mrs. Fisher would read to the class for about 15 minutes each day while Indy slept beneath my desk. She read Charlotte’s Web and Way Down Cellar and then she told us to write a poem about anything we wanted.I wrote a poem about a dog.Everyone was impressed, even Mrs. Fisher.Pennie and I were 19 and had been married about a year when I launched “Daybreak,” a daily, prerecorded message of encouragement you could hear if you knew the right telephone number to call. You couldn’t leave a message because it was an “announce-only” machine that Pennie and I leased from the telephone company for $50 a month. I never told anyone my name or how they might be able to contact me. “Daybreak” was just the voice of a stranger on the telephone, talking to you as though he knew you. I woke before dawn each day and spent a couple of hours writing and recording a new 2-minute message and then I went to work.Fax machines had not yet been invented. The internet wasn’t even a fantasy.“Daybreak” grew to the point where Pennie and I had to add a roll-over line and lease a second answering machine from the telephone company because too many people were getting a busy signal when they called.One thousand different “Daybreak” messages were written and recorded in 1,000 days between 1977 and 1980.“Daybreak” cost us about $130 month which is a lot of money when you make $3.35 an hour before taxes.With 25% of our income going down those telephone lines each day, I got a second job monitoring an automated radio station in Tulsa once a week. I was given the shift that no one wanted. I went to work each Friday night at midnight and worked until 11AM on Saturday morning. Indy would always go with me to keep me company.I had been there for more than a year when the General Manager walked in one Saturday morning about 9AM with a few notes scribbled on the back of a napkin about “Amir’s Persian Imports,” a local place that sold Persian rugs. He asked me to write an ad for them, so I wrote a 60-second story that took listeners into the sky on a magic carpet ride.The ad performed well. Amir was impressed. My boss was impressed enough to offer me a full-time job.Indy just smiled and winked at me.Roy H. Williams

You’ve heard it said, and might even have said it yourself, “Knowing what I know now, if I had it all to do over again, I would…”Let’s play a game. Let’s pretend that you, “have it all to do over again.” You can return to any day in your past to begin reliving your life differently, but you must do it without “knowing what you know now.” You will have a second chance at a different outcome, but you must return to that day with no memory of what you did, or how it turned out.Will you trade your current circumstances and relationships for the “new and different choices” a second you will probably make? Think about it. If you travel to a time before your child was born, that child is not likely to be born. Another child, perhaps, but not that one.In fact, the jobs you get, the friends you make, and where you live are likely to be different the second time around.“Having it all to do over again” might create a better future for you, or it might create a worse one.Are you ready for the surprising second half of this game?Here it is: all of this has already happened. The original you was given the opportunity to return to any specific day in your past and THIS is the day to which you chose to return.Everything that originally happened after this moment has been erased. Your second chance has now begun.Why did you choose to return to this day? What different decision did you hope you would make?Is it something that you can decide today, or is it a choice you will need to make a number of days from now?Are you here for a second chance to have a conversation that never happened? To schedule a medical check-up before it is too late, or to take some other action that you deeply wish you would have taken?The only thing we can know for sure is this:“With every decision we make, we pass a point of no return and wonder what might have been.”Go. Live your life. Quit second-guessing yourself.Remorse is not where you want to live.Roy H. WilliamsNOTE FROM INDY – Let’s spend a day together.The Wizard Academy reunion is October 15. You should come.

I was writing about third gravitating bodies and I needed to know the year that Henri Poincaré wrote The Third Body Problem and won that huge cash prize from King Oscar II of Sweden.I typed “third gravitating bodies” into the Google search block. At the top of the results page was a featured snippet and something about it looked familiar. When I glanced at the source link, I saw that it was a Monday Morning Memo I had written recently.Evidently, Google thinks I know far more about third gravitating bodies than I actually do, because they seem to be under the mistaken impression that I am an expert in the field of theoretical physics, and I can assure you that I am not.But that’s not what freaked me out.When I clicked the source link, it took me to a Monday Morning Memo I wrote a few months ago. I had a clear memory of writing that memo, and for some strange reason I have a particularly clear memory of creating the image at the top of the page. I created that image by selecting three different magazine covers over which I overlaid an image of the Broadway cast of Hamilton.My memory of writing that memo and creating that artwork felt like it was only four or five weeks ago, but I knew that it was more likely four or five months.What freaked me out was when I looked at the date of that memo.I has been almost 6 years since I wrote it.I felt like Rip Van Winkle.I looked up at the door in the room where I was sitting, and waited for Rod Serling to step into that open doorframe. I could already hear his voice.“Consider if you will, the man who stared so deeply into the void of his computer, that when he looked up, he was 6 years older. There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call The Twilight Zone.”My friend and business partner Ray Seggern spent yesterday afternoon with me. Ray is old enough to have an adult daughter who has completed college and worked for companies like Luis Vuitton and Rolls Royce and who will soon be married. Ray is 9 years younger than me.Shortly after he arrived for our meeting, he said, “You know how time seems to pass more quickly as you get older?”I nodded, so he continued, “What’s the word for that? Everyone says that a year seems like a long time to a 5-year-old because it’s 20 percent of his lifetime, but that same year goes by 10 times faster for a 50-year old man because it’s only 2 percent of his lifetime. What’s the word for that?”Ray and I sat and thought and scratched our heads and looked at each other for a long while.Here’s why I’m writing to you today: What’s the word for that?If you know – or even if you just made up a good word for it and are willing to share ­– send the word to indy@wizardofads.comYour name will appear in the dictionary we are compiling.More about that in the rabbit hole.Indy says Aroo.Roy H. Williams

Before Gandhi, there was Tolstoy.When Leo Tolstoy was 54, he wrote a book about the ethical teachings1 of Jesus as revealed in the Sermon on the Mount. For the rest of his life, Tolstoy advocated the use of peaceful, non-violent forms of resistance in the struggle for social change.Gandhi – the person we associate with peaceful, non-violent resistance – was 12 years old when Tolstoy’s book was published.Martin Luther King – the man who popularized peaceful, non-violent resistance in America – would not be born for another 45 years.In 1854, during the Crimean War, a British light brigade was ordered to charge the cannons of the Russian Empire.A “light brigade” carried only light weapons, such as sabers and pistols.Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote about this famous headlong charge toward certain death:Half a league, half a league,Half a league onward,All in the valley of DeathRode the six hundred.“Forward, the Light Brigade!Charge for the guns!” he said.Into the valley of DeathRode the six hundred.“Forward, the Light Brigade!”Was there a man dismayed?Not though the soldier knewSomeone had blundered.Theirs not to make reply,Theirs not to reason why,Theirs but to do and die.Into the valley of DeathRode the six hundred.Cannon to right of them,Cannon to left of them,Cannon in front of themVolleyed and thundered;Stormed at with shot and shell,Boldly they rode and well,Into the jaws of Death,Into the mouth of hellRode the six hundred…Leo Tolstoy was a Russian artillery officer in that war and was forever changed by it.That war – the first modern war – led Tolstoy to the Sermon on the Mount and convinced him of the truth of Jesus’ words.“Blessed are the peacemakers… blessed are the meek… blessed are the merciful…”Tolstoy was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 3 times, but each time he wrote to the committee and asked them to remove his name from consideration.When the public grew angry that Tolstoy never received the Nobel, he confessed that he had privately rejected it and wrote,“First, it has saved me the predicament of managing so much money, because such money, in my opinion, only brings evil. Secondly, I felt very honored to receive such sympathy from people I have not even met.”Tolstoy was loved by everyone except religious leaders.Remember that book he wrote in 1882 about the ethical teachings of Jesus? It did not appear in Russia for 24 years because it was blocked by the Orthodox Church, the leaders of the Christian faith in Russia. They were worried that Tolstoy might have been talking about them when he wrote,“I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means – except by getting off his back.”The religious leaders became angry again when Tolstoy wrote,“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”Mark Twain, a contemporary of Tolstoy, may well have been making a joke about religious leaders in America when he wrote,“By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.”Tolstoy saw Jesus and his teachings as gold surrounded by the mud of religiosity. He said,“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”This reminds me of Michelangelo’s description of how he carved an angel from a block of marble:“I just removed everything that was not angel.”I will leave you now,to consider all that you have been told,and wash the mud from the gold,and remove everythingthat is not angel.Roy H. Williams1 Tolstoy’s A Confession, (1882) was originally titled, An Introduction to a Criticism of Dogmatic Theology.NOTE: Dogmatic Theology has nothing to do with dogs. – Indy Beagle

Predictability is the silent assassin of persuasion.When static electricity saturates the sky, lift the lightning rod of the new, the surprising, and the different and let the concert begin. The booming of the big bass drum will make the draperies tremble as the lasers light up the night.Give that anxious electricity something to focus on. Win the attention of the storm. Don’t tell us, “It was a dark and stormy night.”Light it up.When your jagged blade rips a gash in the sky and makes the darkness cry, we will lift our faces into the wet and laugh until the grass is green again.Light it up.We rarely raise our faces from these glittering screens because you rarely have anything new to say. We stare at the electricity behind this glass because it is always new, always surprising, always different.Look into our eyes and you will see the static electricity of our boredom is always there, always anxious, always looking for an outlet. Lift your lightning rod into that darkness. Set our world ablaze with the unexpected. We will reward you with our attention.Pixies, faeries, sprites and elves run naked through the darkness, laughing at everything, giggling with glee, eyes twinkling, feet flying, they run with abandon, afraid of nothing.What are you afraid of?Do you read boring, fact-filled fluff? Or do you read fluff made of different stuff?As you read, so will you write.When colorful, unexpected words fill your sight, you have raised your ink pen into the night and filled it with ink of electric light.Now write.When you have nothing to say, don’t let anyone convince you to say it.But when you have something to say, don’t say it regular and tidy with tucked-in corners. Say it with the rhythm of faeries running naked through the night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Where you begin is unimportant. How you proceed is all that matters.‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even the faerie hiding behind the curtains with a match in one hand and a bottle of vodka in the other.This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning.So tell me, what happens next?Roy H. Williams

Rugged individualism is the essence of America.It is also the reason that we, as a people, feel isolated and lonely.Our focus on personal, individual success is the reason we feel disconnected from one another. This is happening even in our marriages according to Ian Kerner, author of the book, So Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Sex, and Terrence Real, author of Us: Getting Past Me and You.“Individualism is not a natural fact; it has a history. In American Colonial days, society was communalism on a small scale. It was about farms and small towns and small villages. When you lived face to face with your neighbor, it was a palpable reality that the good of all was the good for each of us. Civic virtue was the force that went beyond individual gratification. It was part of being a civilized person that you had a sense of civic virtue. With the Industrial Revolution, and the myth of the self-made man, all of that went by the wayside and it was each man for himself.”– Terrence RealWe are living in a very conflicted time because most of us hold two conflicting beliefs. (1.) We believe in a culture of individual achievement, “ME”, (2.) but as we approach the zenith of a societal “WE”, there is a desire to find our tribe, to join, to belong, to work as a group for the common good.Next year is the zenith of our current “WE.” It happens once every 80 years.The previous “WE” zenithed in 1943 when America was united against Hitler. We threw ourselves into something bigger than ourselves; something we believed in, something that satisfied our need to belong and make a difference.And now you know why we see all those deeply impassioned splinter groups in the news each week.Here’s the good news: you can harness that same “need to belong” to recruit and retain good employees.Good employees are attracted to companies with a strong culture. They are looking for a company they can believe in, a place where they can belong and make a difference.When you want to strengthen your company culture, you need to publish your Unifying Principles. I have previously called these your “We Believe” statements.Publishing them is the easy part. The difficult part is that you have to live them.About eight minutes into his famous TED-X talk at Puget Sound, Simon Sinek says,“The goal is not just to hire people who need a job; it’s to hire people who believe what you believe. I always say that, you know, if you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money, but if they believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”Indy Beagle will tell you about Culture Wizards in the rabbit hole.Roy H. Williams

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

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

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

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