Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

I learned about advertising from listening to my eighth-grade football coaches.“Every play is a touchdown play if everyone on the team does their assignment properly.”That was one of the two things they bellowed at us every day. The other one was this:“If you succeed in football, you will succeed in life.”I was only 12 years old but that didn’t mean I was an idiot. I finished that season, but I never played football again. Those coaches believed what they were saying and that made my head spin because I knew it wasn’t true.If you believe, deep in your bones, in always doing what is correct and expected, right and proper, then I want you to be the engineer that builds the bridges I drive across. I want you to be the surgeon that operates on me. I want you to be the policeman that cruises the streets I drive. I want you to be the running back, the tight end, the wide receiver of the team I am playing against.When you’re playing offense and you know exactly what you are going to do and how you are going to do it, the defense knows it, too. You’re “telegraphing the play.” Defenders can read you like an open book.When you’re carrying the ball and the defenders don’t know what you’re about to do, it’s because you, yourself, don’t know. You are an amazing “broken field runner” because you make every decision at the last split second. You are never where anyone expected you to be. They leap to tackle you and grab empty air.If you believe in doing what is correct and expected, right and proper, I want you to write all the ads for the company my client and I are competing against.Predictable platitudes drip from the lips of people who say what is correct and expected, right and proper. Predictable platitudes flow like ink from the pens of the world’s worst ad writers. Predictable platitudes cause people to roll their eyes and say, “Get real.”I’ll tell you a secret if you promise not to be offended. I’ve never met a great ad writer who was taught how to write ads in college.Great ad writing is counterintuitive.You learn how to write great ads by keeping careful track of all the good ideas that should have worked, but didn’t. When you finally run out of good ideas and decide to do something crazy, dangerous, and ill-advised, tell your neighbors to keep an eye on the sky because the airshow and the fireworks are about to be spectacular.Congratulations, you have finally written a good ad.Every play is a touchdown play when your team is the only team on the field. But that’s not how football is played, is it? When you begin with the wrong premise, you always reach the wrong conclusion.To write an ad that is “correct and expected, right and proper” is the most foolish thing you can do.That’s all I have to say today, but Indy Beagle is going to take this discussion to a much deeper level in the rabbit hole.That’s where I’m headed now.Care to join me?Roy H. Williams

Twenty-three years ago, roving reporter Rotbart said to me,“You are three different people.1. There is the person you see when you look in the mirror.2. There is the person other people see when they look at you.3. There is the real you, the person no one can see but God.”Objective reality exists. I do not dispute it. Rotbart’s argument – and mine – is that you and he and I are not equipped to experience it.I live in a perceptual reality; a world that I perceive.You live in a perceptual reality; a world that you perceive.You see your own actions in the forgiving light of your motives, intentions, and regrets, while the “you” that is seen by others is shaped and shaded by their preferences, prejudices, and perspectives.John Steinbeck speaks of this in his preface to East of Eden,“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 knew that we tend to see what is already within us.On May 1, 1831, an unspecified writer for The Atlas in London wrote,“We cannot see things as they are, for we are compelled by a necessity of nature to see things as we are. We can never get rid of ourselves.”Twenty years ago, my friend Kary Mullis challenged my musings about perceptual reality in front of a roomful of people. He said that his belief, as a scientist, was that “real” things can be measured, tested, and weighed. “Real things exist,” he said. “If it is not physical, it is imaginary.”I said, “Are emotions and opinions and beliefs real?”Kary described scientific method and Koch’s postulates, (the four criteria designed to establish a causative relationship between a microbe and a disease,) while I dragged a barstool to the front of the room. Holding up a copy of his book, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, I said, “Kary, would you be willing to sit on this barstool and read the dedication page to us?”As Kary read the page he wrote to his wife, Nancy, his voice tightened and he stopped speaking as tears rolled down his cheeks. I said, “Keep reading, Kary. It’s all imaginary, remember?”When he could speak again, he admitted I was right, and that a whole world of reality exists beyond the reach of physical science.Kary Mullis was a highly confident genius who was willing to change his mind.Persons like Kary Mullis are exactly the people Desmond Ford was talking about when he said,“A wise man changes his mind sometimes, but a fool never. To change your mind is the best evidence you have one.”Kary is gone now and I miss him deeply.The world of 2022 needs more people like him, and quickly.Roy H. Williams“Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.” – Meg Chittenden“Ever realised how surreal reading a book actually is? You stare at marked slices of tree for hours on end, hallucinating vividly.” – Katie Oldham, Sept 12, 2014, retweeted 3,837 times, favorited 3,728 times

“Hoare writes with the license of the nonexpert; you can feel the delight he takes in being unbound by anything but his enthusiasms.”John Williams was describing Philip Hoare when he wrote that line, but he could easily have been describing me. As a nonexpert, I am free to speculate and arrive at my own conclusions.So are you.And so is your customer.You, me, and your customer claim we use deductive reasoning, but it simply isn’t true. Deductive reasoning – the basis of scientific method – would require us to work diligently to disprove what we believe.Do you know anyone who actually does that?Rather than use deductive reasoning, we use inductive reasoning to search out information confirming that our values, beliefs, instincts, and preferences have been right all along.When confronted with contradictory information, our confirmation bias kicks in to assure us the contradictory information is not correct, so we dismiss it with the flick of a mental finger.Let me help you with that flicking away of contradictory information. I am an ad writer. Magical thinking, inductive reasoning, and confirmation bias sparkle at my fingertips.My job is to speak to that which is already within you. You have more than enough information. Let me agree with what you already believe.Google and Facebook will use their algorithms to help us build a community where we can surround ourselves with like-minded people who share our opinions and beliefs. Everyone who doesn’t agree with us is uninformed, misinformed, fooled by faulty data, foolish rumor, or evil geniuses.Magical thinking, inductive reasoning, and confirmation bias sparkle at the fingertips of every evil genius. But I am not an evil genius. I am the genius that agrees with you.Magical thinking is difficult to explain, but Kurt Andersen does a pretty good job:“Americans have always been magical thinkers and passionate believers in the untrue. Our nation was started by Puritans in New England who wanted to create a Christian utopia as they waited for the imminent second coming of Christ and the End of Days. To the south, a bunch of people were convinced, absolutely convinced, that this place they had never been was full of gold waiting to be plucked from the dirt in Virginia. They stayed there looking and hoping for gold for 20 years before they finally faced the facts and decided they weren’t going to get rich overnight.”“This was the beginning of America. Next we had centuries of ‘buyer beware’ charlatanism and medical quackery to an extreme degree, along with increasingly exotic, extravagant, implausible cults and religions.”“All those things came together and were supercharged in the 1960s, when you were entitled to your own truth and your own reality. A generation later the internet came along, giving each of those realities, no matter how false or magical or nutty they are, their own kind of media infrastructure.”A wonderful story is dazzling and attractive, regardless of whether or not it is true. This is the basis of all successful advertising.“Hoare writes with the license of the nonexpert; you can feel the delight he takes in being unbound by anything but his enthusiasms.”John Williams wrote those words in his recommendation of Philip Hoare’s new book, “Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and How Art Imagines Our World.”John Williams book review column is titled, appropriately, “Books of the Times.”Roy H. Williams

The limiting factors that will challenge business owners in 2022 are inflation, Covid, and the recruitment of good employees.The bad news is that I can give you the solution to only 1 of these 3 problems.The good news is that it’s the big one: the recruitment of good employees.Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel prize for proving it’s not hard to sell a dog on the taste of meat.Successful jewelers know it’s not hard to sell a man on the woman he loves.Recruitment problems disappear when you know how easy it is to sell a parent on their child.A couple of years ago, Dewey Jenkins and I had a series of conversations about opening a free, private day-care center as a benefit for the employees of Morris-Jenkins Air Conditioning and Plumbing. The thing that kept us from doing it was that the majority of his employees – the technicians – drove their trucks home every night and went straight to their first repair each morning. Consequently, they would have no opportunity to drop off their child.But still, it was a great idea.Do your employees report to a specific location each day? Have you noticed that space for lease just down the street from you?Lease that space.Get a daycare license.Hire 2 or more people to run it.Open your recruitment ads with the words “Free, Private Daycare.”(And now you know why I was explaining the importance of “framing.” – Indy Beagle)Prepare to be amazed at the quality and volume of job applicants.Your employee problem has now been permanently solved.You’re welcome.What? What did you just say?“I can’t afford it.”Raise your prices. Inflation is happening whether you participate or not.“It’s easier to pay a big signing bonus.”Signing bonuses attract job-hoppers.“It sounds like a lot of trouble.”Paying big money for bad employees is another kind of trouble. Is that the kind you prefer?“I’ll just wait it out. Things will go back to normal pretty soon.”Here’s a fun fact I’ll bet you didn’t know: to maintain our population and our workforce, American women need to birth an average of 2.1 children each. The parents of today’s workforce produced only 1.8 births per woman and the birth rate today is at 1.64 and declining.We are at least 10 percent short of having an adequate workforce because that 10 percent was never born. So if you’re waiting for the workforce to get larger, you’re going to need to convince women across America to have more kids and then wait 20 years for those kids to grow up.Child-care is a huge, for-profit business that is crippling the buying power of single-parent (and two-parent) households across America. It is within your power to solve that problem for a small group of people, and in so doing, solve your own problem as well.Give it some thought.And may you have a Prosperous and Happy New Year.Roy H. Williams

Matthew McConaughey writes in his book, Green Lights,“Cool is a natural law. If it was cool for THAT time, then it is cool for ALL time. A fad is just a branch on Cool’s trunk; a fashionable fling whose 15 minutes can never abide, no matter how long she trends to try. Cool stands the test of time, because cool never tries. Cool just is.”My friend Crazy Tony taught me about “cool” 45 years ago when we attended Broken Arrow High School together. Tony made a lot of money buying and selling old cars. I was known as Beatermaker because Tony was forever frustrated by my uncanny ability to drive a fabulous car and, within a week, make it look like a beater.“Beatermaker,” he said, “every guy who has found an old car in perfect condition believes he has found a gold mine. But it’s almost never true. If a car wasn’t highly desirable when it was new, no one wants it 20, 30, or 50 years later. But if a car was admired and desired on the day it was born, it will be cool forever, no matter what condition it’s in.”That was the insight that made Crazy Tony tens of thousands of dollars when we were in high school.The passage of time, the recklessness of the human race, and the slow smokeless burning of decay make old things rare. But it it does not make them wonderful. Remarkable buildings and books and paintings and songs don’t get better with age. They were wonderful the day they were born. I know it, Matthew McConaughey knows it, and now you know it.But what makes them wonderful?Wonderful things were touched by someone who knew the secret of wonder and how to capture it. When you know how to capture wonder, you carry it in your head, your heart, and your hands. You glitter when you walk.Isaac Newton knew how to capture wonder and he passed the secret of it forward in just 14 words. Countless millions have read those words and assumed Newton was talking about himself. He was not. Newton was giving you his most precious advice. He was telling you how to capture wonder. He was telling you how to glitter when you walk.In 1675, Newton wrote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”Isaac Newton stood on the shoulders of Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus in astronomy, Huygens, Euclid, Henry Briggs, and Isaac Barrow in math, Kepler and Descartes in optics, and Plato, Aristotle, and Maimonides in philosophy. Newton combined the insights of all these men and made them uniquely his own.Choose your giants. Stand on their shoulders. Repurpose the proven.Vincent Van Gogh stood on the shoulders of Monticelli and Hiroshige. Long after they were dead, they taught him how to paint. He studied their paintings, captured their wonder, and made it uniquely his own.Johnny Depp stood on the shoulders of Pepe Le Pew, the cartoon skunk, and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones. They taught him how to become Captain Jack Sparrow. Depp studied their mannerisms, captured their wonder, and made it uniquely his own.I stand on the shoulders of John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost, Asimov, Tolkien, Paul Harvey, and Edwin Arlington Robinson. They taught me how to write. In fact, I borrowed “the slow smokeless burning of decay” from Robert Frost and “glitter when you walk” from Robinson. They don’t mind. Each of them stood on the shoulders of giants of their own choosing.Do you have time for me to give you one more example?In the rabbit hole you’ll find “Summer Wine,” a hit song written by Lee Hazlewood that made the Billboard Hot 100 in 1967. When you listen to it, you will think it sounds like a movie score. This is because Hazlewood took three famous movie themes that don’t belong together and made them fit. He captured their wonder and made it uniquely his own.Yes, cognoscenti, you understand.The 3 giants on whose shoulders Hazlewood was standing are obvious. First, you have Nancy Sinatra sounding like every Disney Princess in every Disney movie ever made. And then you notice the unmistakable horse-trot rhythm of every theme song from every western starring Clint Eastwood, followed by the voice of the definitive cowboy-hero tough guy. And then about two-thirds of the way through the song you’ll hear the unmistakable 4-note signature of the title sequence of every James Bond movie: da-dum, da-DAHHHH.Indy Beagle is waiting to show you all these things in the rabbit hole.Have you chosen your giants? Don’t worry that they are silly and don’t make sense. Johnny Depp chose a cartoon skunk and a rock guitarist to teach him acting. I chose a novelist and a poet to teach me ad writing. Hazlewood chose a Disney Princess, a spaghetti western, and James Bond to teach him songwriting.Take your inspiration from wherever you find it, no matter how ridiculous. Repurpose the proven. Stand on the shoulders of giants.Merry Christmas.Roy H. Williams

When your intuitive mind senses a pattern and begins to search for the completion of that pattern, we call this, “curiosity”.But sometimes our searching for the completion of a pattern goes sideways, takes a shortcut, gets it wrong. The false logic that springs to mind as a result of this wrong turn is so common that it has a Latin name, “Post Hoc, ergo Propter Hoc.”Blame Isaac Newton.Newton taught us to think of cause and effect as sequential: a pool cue strikes a ball, which strikes another ball. As a result of our trust in Newtonian physics, the often-wrong logic of Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc is almost irresistibly seductive because it begins with the observation that two events occurred in sequence.Remember a TV show called The West Wing?Jed Bartlet: C.J., on your tombstone it’s going to say Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc.C.J.: Okay, but none of my visitors are going to be able to understand my tombstone.Jed Bartlet: It means, “One thing follows the other, therefore it was caused by the other.” But it’s not always true. In fact, it’s hardly ever true. We did not lose Texas because of the hat joke. Do you know when we lost Texas?C.J.: When you learned to speak Latin?Do you remember The Big Bang Theory? In a 2009 episode, Sheldon Cooper was speaking to his mother on the phone:“The Arctic expedition was a remarkable success, I’m all but certain there’s a Nobel prize in my future. Actually, I shouldn’t say that. I’m entirely certain… (audience laughter) No, Mother, I could not feel your church group praying for my safety… (audience laughter) The fact that I’m home safe does not prove that it worked. That logic is Post Hoc ergo Propter Hoc… (audience laughter) No, I’m not sassing you in Eskimo talk.”Similar to “Post Hoc” is the broken logic of simultaneous occurrences, Cum Hoc ergo Propter Hoc, “With this, because of this.”“The bigger a child’s shoe size, the better the child’s handwriting. Therefore, having big feet makes it easier to write.”The mental sleight-of-hand of “Post Hoc” and “Cum Hoc” are what make advertising – and conspiracy theories ­– so easy to believe.@WardQNormal writes,“The trouble with conspiracy theories is that a lack of evidence is taken as proof that the conspiracy is everywhere. This is like thinking that the reason you never see elephants hiding up in treetops is because they’re good at it.”Seeing patterns where they don’t exist can be costly and dangerous. But still, I am wildly in favor of curiosity.Zora Neale Hurston wrote,“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”Albert Einstein said,“Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”Gemma Stone,“When we enter a conversation with curiosity, we allow ourselves to see things differently and to be surprised by what we discover.”Tom Robbins,“Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.”Dorothy Parker,“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”And none other than Daniel Boone – yes, THAT Daniel Boone – said,“Curiosity is natural to the soul of man and interesting objects have a powerful influence on our affections.”Like I said, I am wildly in favor of curiosity. If I could, I would inject it into your arm with a needle. Curiosity will take you on trips like no other drug.Roy H. Williams

I’ve been saying for 20 years that I’m going to write a buddy movie about Jesus and the 12. I’ve got the whole thing in my head.But who am I to put words in the mouth of Jesus? The idea of creating a fictional Jesus who does and says things that are not in the Bible could easily be the pinnacle of hubris.I believe John Steinbeck was gripped by a similar fear. He and Elaine rented a cottage in England in 1959 so that he could work on his 20th century update of Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory, after he abandoned his half-finished story of Don Quixote as an old man in California who has watched one-too-many westerns on TV.He explained his motive for Le Morte d’Arthur shortly before he left England.“Malory wrote the stories for and to his time. Any man hearing him knew every word and every reference. There was nothing obscure, he wrote the clear and common speech of his time and country. But that has changed—the words and references are no longer common property, for a new language has come into being. Malory did not write the stories. He simply wrote them for his time and his time understood them … And with that, almost by enchantment the words began to flow…”– John Steinbeck, from a letter dated March 27, 1959.Steinbeck’s unfinished works, King Arthur and His Noble Knights and Don Keehan, Marshall of Manchon, are both amazing, and he never explained why he didn’t publish them. But having read everything Steinbeck ever wrote – including 50 years of his private correspondence published as A Life in Letters – I am convinced that John Steinbeck heard the same voice in his mind that I hear in mine, “Just who the hell do you think you are?”But still, I remain committed to making my buddy movie about Jesus and the 12.It occurred to me 2 years ago that I could save a lot of money on set design and costumes if I moved the story from Israel 2,000 years ago to the city of New Orleans today; interesting people in comfortable clothes in a colorful city.Little did I know that Chris Poché already had my idea. But Chris didn’t discover his buddy movie in the Bible. Chris Poché, like John Steinbeck, saw a buddy movie in Don Quixote de La Mancha.In a recent interview with Mike Rowe, Poché said,“And when I started reading it, what struck me was that it’s not a big epic tale. It’s little. He never gets out of his neighborhood. He’s on this cruddy old horse that can’t go very far. He just rides around the neighborhood doing crazy crap. And I’m reading and thinking, ‘Well, that could happen to anybody, any place, any time. I don’t need the desert in Spain in 1605. I don’t need to see a monster through his eyes. That windmill was not a giant. That was the whole point. He’s nuts… Maybe I could just make this [movie] right here. Doesn’t matter where it is. Doesn’t matter what year it is. It could happen to anyone.’ Little did I know, at that moment it was happening to me.”Chris Poché of New Orleans is what the cognoscenti of Wizard Academy call, “our brand of crazy.” And it is this special brand of craziness that has made Chris and a few dozen of his buddies an important part of Mardi Gras.“Everyone in New Orleans is Don Quixote. Everyone. That stupid little Mardi Gras club happened because I looked at my buddy who is my accomplice in all things stupid. I looked at him and said, ‘Do you know what? We’re going to start one of these clubs, but we’re not marching, we’re riding around in power recliners dressed like lounge lizards.’ And he went, ‘Yeah.’ And eight months later, we were in the biggest parades because everyone here supports madness and Quixotic quests. Nobody looks at you like you’re crazy. They look at you like, ‘Hey, that’s a great idea.’ The stupider the better.”Are you willing to be my accomplice in something stupid?It would be irresponsible to call this a class, because a class has a focused educational agenda; something that will save you time or solve a problem or make you money. I don’t plan to do any of that. I’m just going to tell a bunch of true stories about success and failure and show some fascinating movie clips and answer a lot of interesting questions and eat a lot of good food and maybe have an ad-venture or two. Who knows.But we will talk a little about Jesus and Don Quixote and John Steinbeck and String Theory and Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea and I’ll share a few memories of the late Kary Mullis, the inventor of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and the winner of the Nobel Prize.Kary was our brand of crazy.And somewhere along the way we’ll look into the science of creating magnetically attractive characters in fiction, and do some associated exercises that will help you create a more interesting brand, a more entertaining movie, a more widely-read book, a more effective ad; whatever it is you are doing that deserves more attention than it’s been getting.In a nutshell, I’m going to be sharing the most important things I’ve learned during the last 40 years about how to write ads, how to influence people, how to build a successful business.I’ve seen it, been it, done it, hundreds of times.Let me save you from years of frustration making costly mistakes.Are you coming?Roy H. Williams

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with.” – Rebecca SolnitIn just 25 words, Rebecca gave “hope” a new identity, introduced a new purpose for it, and caused us to imagine the beginning of a new adventure. She supplied the words, but we created the movie in our minds.Persuaders don’t tell you the truth; they lead you to it and let you discover it for yourself. Rebecca Solnit is a talented persuader, a gifted teacher, and a wonderful storyteller. She made us see hope as a powerful tool that can smash down barriers and give us access to things we desire.We broke down the door that kept us out, so now we are… where?That is up to you. What do you hope for?# # # #I will now reveal – bit by bit – my true purpose in writing these things to you:“Astral projection is a term used in esotericism to describe an intentional out-of-body experience that assumes the existence of a soul called an ‘astral body’ that is separate from the physical body and capable of travelling outside it throughout the universe.” – WIKIPEDIA“That sounds a bit woo-woo, so I’m out.”“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen… Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” – Hebrews 11:1-3, in the Bible“That sounds religious, so I’m out.”“Every morning, Tony Robbins engages in a 10-minute priming exercise to channel his energy and create the ideal conditions for a fulfilling day. By taking charge of his mindset and emotions, he cultivates a positive state, which greatly increases the odds that he will experience happiness, success and fulfillment throughout his day.” – tonyrobbins.com“That sounds like mind-over-matter, so I’m out.”“Don’t worry. Be happy.” – Bobby McFerrin“Wishful thinking is self-delusion, so I’m out.”“Stay focused, ignore the distractions, and you will accomplish your goals much faster.” – Joel Osteen“Every elementary school teacher has said that to every little kid in America for the past 100 years. I’m out.”“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with.” – Rebecca SolnitEach of us has hope. We cling to it. Rebecca told us precisely what all those other people were trying to tell us, but she chose the word “hope” instead of “visualize,” “focus,” “priming exercise,” “faith,” “Astral projection” or “The Law of Attraction,” because each of those other words and phrases have associations and connotations that might push us away from the truth.What is the truth?This is the truth: You imagine action before you take it. You see yourself do it before you do it. No person has ever cheated on their life partner without first imagining it in their mind, and no person has ever created anything marvelous or good without first seeing it in their mind. And no person has ever sold anything without first causing the customer to imagine buying it.The job of an ad is to cause people to imagine taking an action.I asked earlier, “What do you hope for?”Let me ask it differently, “What action do you want your customer to take?”Do what Rebecca Solnit did. Begin with something familiar; something that you and your customer agree on. Then build a bridge from that point of agreement to where you want them to go.You cannot take your customer where you want them to go until you first meet them where they are.What does your customer already believe in? Start with that.Roy H. Williams

My friend Don has a time machine. He takes me with him sometimes. You should come, too! Every person who rides in Don’s time machine is changed by it.The United States Department of Justice has booked passage on Don’s time machine for countless prison inmates. State and local governments and hundreds of rehab centers have booked journeys for people as well. Thirty-five million in all.Each trip through time begins with a series of words.My friend Don is a storyteller.Stories of the past help us to know who we are.Stories of the future help us to see who we can become.Stories are more effective than facts for changing beliefs and behaviors. Facts cause us to put our shields up and become skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard.With these thoughts in mind, Don invented “interactive journals,” booklets that allow people in crisis to revisit their past and imagine a better future. Each reader of an interactive journal becomes the co-creator of two stories. (1.) the story of how they got into this mess, and (2.) the story of a brighter tomorrow.We imagine every action before we take it. If we want to change our behaviors, we need only to imagine different actions than the ones we have imagined in the past.Stories are portals of escape into alternate realities.An examination of the brain of any mammal will let us know its superpower. Monkeys can swing artfully through trees, not because their bodies are different, but because more than half their brain mass is devoted to depth perception, color differentiation, and guided grasping.According to Professor Steven Pinker of MIT and Harvard,“The human brain, too, tells a story. Our brains are about three times too big for a generic monkey or ape of our size. The major lobes and patches of the brain are different as well. The olfactory bulbs, which underlie the sense of smell, have shriveled to one third of the expected primate size (already puny by mammalian standards), and the main cortical areas for vision have shrunk proportionally as well…while the areas for hearing, especially for understanding speech, have grown…to twice what a primate our size should have.”The superpower of we humans is our unique ability to attach complex meanings to sounds.Every word in the English language is composed of just 44 sounds called phonemes. We arrange these into clusters called words which we string together in rapid succession so that others can see in their minds what we see in ours.In the first chapter of Genesis, God says, “Let there be this” and “Let there be that” for 25 verses, and then in verse 26 he says, “Let us make mankind in our own image.”According to that ancient story, God spoke the world into existence and then gave you and me the power to do the same. When you, as a storyteller, speak a world into existence in the hearts and minds of your listeners, you are doing the work of God.Don Kuhl has spent the past 30 years unleashing the power of storytelling to help 35 million people find peace, hope, and happiness, and now he has written a book for you and me. It will be published early next year.I’ll make sure you know when it’s available.Roy H. Williams

Creativity is counterintuitive. You hate it when you are handcuffed and expected to do your best work, but the secret of doing your best work is to be handcuffed. Creative restraints bring out the best in you.When Sean Jones sold controlling interest in Spence Diamonds a number of years ago, I left that company when he did, just as I left when Dewey Jenkins sold his company two weeks ago.My relationship is always with the business owner, never with the company. Here’s why: a brand without trust is just a product, and a product can be replaced. To become truly trusted, you have to forge a bond with the customer.People don’t bond with corporations. People bond with people.I am a better-than-average ad writer,(1.) because I cheat.(2.) because I don’t fight the handcuffs.This is how I cheat:(1.) I never work with a person unless I really enjoy talking with them. My relationship with that person is the source of my inspiration. How can I make the world love and trust someone if I don’t love and trust them myself?(2.) My new friend must have unconditional authority to say “absolutely yes” without having to check with someone else. Anything with two heads is a monster.(3.) Their company must be operationally excellent. Great ads won’t grow a broken business.(4.) The product or service they sell must have a solid profit margin and a long purchase cycle. A short profit margin is the father, and a short purchase cycle is the mother, of every twitchy little bastard that has ever been born.I hit home runs because I never swing at a pitch that is not in my sweet spot. Ad writing isn’t like baseball. A baseball batter gets to look at only 6 pitches – 2 strikes and 4 balls – before they have to leave the batter’s box. But the independent ad writer doesn’t face a pitch count. You can wait for the perfect opportunity that is in the center of your happy little sweet spot.The crack of the bat shatters the crystal silence as the adrenaline pumps the crowd screaming to their feet the ball arcs through space toward a little boy in the seventh row who has been waiting patiently all day with his baseball glove.Your sweet spot may be different than mine. This just means you have a different superpower.The secret of success is to know your superpower.I promise you have one. It doesn’t matter that you’re not an ad writer, you have a superpower! If you don’t know what it is, ask the people who know you best.So now you know how I cheat.I mentioned a second thing that makes me a better-than-average ad writer: I don’t fight the handcuffs. Yes, I scream at the handcuffs, I mourn the day they were born and I suggest to the handcuffs that they do things that are not anatomically feasible, but then I calm down and pretend they are cuff links and that I am the kind of guy who wears cuff links.A few months ago Sean Jones asked me to meet the new CEO of Spence Diamonds. His name is Callum Beveridge. Callum flew to Austin and we spent a couple of days together and I really like him. When he asked me if I could bring back the magic of the old Spence Diamonds radio campaign. I told him that it would be impossible because Sean Jones was no longer available as a voice actor. Any attempt to bring that campaign back to life without its principal character would be like trying to swim the English Channel wearing handcuffs. It would impossible.Callum reminds me of Dewey Jenkins. Both of them, when I said, “It’s impossible,” asked me the same innocent question: “Well, if it could be done and you were going to do it, how would you go about it?”“Well, Callum, the only way would be to use Sean Jones as a character that never appears on-stage. Conversations with him would always have to take place off-stage. The first time I saw this done was when I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Asimov brings you time and again to the edge of a climactic moment, then you turn the page and that event is now in the past. All the action took place off-stage! We saw a similar thing in that TV series with Tom Selleck, Magnum P.I. Magnum was the head of security at an estate owned by Robin Masters, whom we never once saw or even heard speak, so Magnum gets his instructions from the never-seen Robin Masters through Higgins, the butler. Hey Callum! We should do that! Sean Jones will be the never-seen Robin Masters, you’ll be Magnum, and Higgins will be my partner Michael Torbay! And we’ll bring back the old Spence scream of joy, but with a twist! This is going to be awesome!”Callum said, “Okay, let’s do that.”It worked like magic when Isaac Asimov did it in his books.It worked like magic when Magnum P.I. did it on TV.And it’s working like magic on the radio in Canada.MICHAEL:  Do you remember Sean Jones? [SFX – Scream of joy]I am his executive assistant. My name is Michael.CALLUM: And I’m Callum Bev-MICHAEL: [Cutting him off]   Not yet, Callum. I’ll tell you when.CALLUM:  [Big, Audible Sigh]MICHAEL:  If you have been wondering what Sean Jones has been doing ­–and you probably haven’t – he has been searching theentire world for the perfect person to run Spence Diamonds.CALLUM: Do I talk now Michael?MICHAEL: [aside] Not yet, Callum. I’ll tell you when.[speaking again to the audience] And we finally found the perfect person… in Scotland.CALLUM:  Now?MICHAEL: Yes. And be sure to sound Scottish.CALLUM:  I have some questions for Mr. Jones.MICHAEL:  Okay, Callum. What is your first question?CALLUM:  I have noticed that our diamonds at Spence shine brighterand have more sparkle than other diamonds. Why is that? I need to understand.MICHAEL:  Callum, that is an excellent question and I will get back to youwith a detailed answer from Mr. Jones. In the meantime, I need you to practice something.CALLUM:  Okay, what is it?MICHAEL: [Michael does a good imitation of the Spence Scream of Joy.] Now you do it.CALLUM:  [Callum does his best to imitate what Michael has done.]MICHAEL:   You keep practicing that, and I’ll get back to you.LOCATION TAG – DEVIN:  Spence [Devin does his best Scream of Joy, then adds the location.]Like I said, “I cheat.”Roy H. Williams