Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

This is what good marketers see when they close their eyes:Win the heart and the mind will follow. The mind of the customer will always create logic to justify what their heart has already decided.We buy what we buy to remind ourselves – and announce to the world around us – who we are.A tribe is a group of self-selected insiders.Identify a tribe, (an affinity group.)Develop that tribe.Market to the tribe you have developed.Gathering your tribe is easy. (A.) In your first encounter, make sure they win big. Give them far more than they gave you. (B.) Speak to your tribe about what they ALREADY care about.All of the above can be summarized in two words: Identity Reinforcement.Entertainment is the currency with which you can purchase the time and attention of a too-busy public.Television and radio, YouTube videos, blog posts and social media deliver results because they deliver entertainment.Information is medicine. Entertainment is a spoonful of sugar.Reaching the customer is mechanical, a question of media selection.Convincing the customer is artistic, a question of message creation.Reaching the right people is easy. Saying the right thing is hard.Online, when you target the right customer at the zero moment of truth you are fishing with a hook for today’s customer.At the zero moment of truth online, the best hooks are information, availability, and free shipping.Customers seeking information have not yet chosen a preferred provider.Customers seeking availability want the product immediately.Customers seeking free shipping want to save money.When using mass media – TV and radio – at the zero moment of truth, your message must be urgent.Urgency is achieved when the desire is widespread, but the availability is limited.Customers in transactional mode are worried about spending money. They are willing to spend time to save money.Customers in relational mode are worried about spending time. They are willing to spend money to save time. This is why they will choose someone they feel they can trust. In the absence of a previously chosen preferred provider, they will choose to trust Google reviews and Amazon reviews.Television and radio are called mass media for a reason: they reach the unfiltered masses. When you use mass media, you are fishing with a net for future customers and their influencers.The goal of advertising in mass media is to become the preferred provider, the one the customer thinks of first and feels the best about.Mass media – TV and radio – can deliver big results quickly, but only for products that have broad appeal and a short purchase cycle.Food and entertainment have broad appeal and a short purchase cycle.Engagement rings and air conditioners have broad appeal and a long purchase cycle.The longer you use mass media, the better it works. The effects of mass media are cumulative. But it only works for products and services that have broad appeal.When using mass media long-term for products with a long purchase cycle, your message must be memorable.Mass media fails miserably for products with narrow appeal.When your product has narrow appeal, online media is your answer.Make your store and your website interesting. The seller who gets more of the customer’s time is the one most likely to get their money.Online, when you want to target the customer at the zero moment of truth, you have to bid on the right keywords or buy the right list.Unbranded keywords are the ones that everyone in your category is bidding on.Unbranded keywords are expensive.Branded keywords are those signature phrases – brandable chunks – for which your company is known.Branded keywords deliver 7x to 10x higher return-on-investment than unbranded keywords.Branded keywords are most easily created through mass media – TV and radio – but they can also become known through blog posts, YouTube videos, and other social media.Don’t set out to make money. Set out to be the kind of company that people want to do business with.If people like you, they will create their own logic for buying from you.Do you remember our opening statement? “Win the heart and the mind will follow. The mind of the customer will always create logic to justify what their heart has already decided.”These are some of the things you will study in-depth when you become a member of the Ad Masters Guild at the American Small Business Institute.Coming soon. Just email Zac@WizardAcademy.org to get your name on the early notification list.Roy H. Williams

Every beginning starts with an ending.This is one of the principles of Pendulum theory.And the middle is always in the middle.When our fight with King George ended in 1783, thirteen powerless colonies became “The United States.” This was the beginning of the first America; 3 million citizens clinging to the eastern edge of a vast, uncharted wilderness. Truly, “a land of opportunity.”Eighty years later – 1863 – we were in the middle of a war between ourselves. (1861-1865)And July 2nd of that year – the middle day in the 3-day Battle of Gettysburg – was also the middle day of the middle year in our 5-year Civil War.Fourteen years after the Civil War ended, Charles M. Russell and Frederic Remington headed west to capture the ending of the Wild West. Their paintings and sculptures of those ending days now sell for millions of dollars.Nineteen years after Charlie and Fred headed West, Teddy Roosevelt led his “rough riders” up a hill during the Spanish-American War. His arrival on that hilltop signaled the end of the Wild West, the end of the Spanish Empire, and the end of the first America.1As I said earlier, every beginning starts with an ending.The second America began when Teddy became President in 1901. This second America was a land of progress and achievement, a World Power, a country of cars and department stores and Coca-Cola, electric lights, running water, and houses everywhere.Do you remember when Whitney Houston sang, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”? America’s memory of the Civil War was more recent than that when they elected Teddy Roosevelt.One of Teddy’s first official actions was to invite Booker T. Washington, a black educator, to dinner at the White House. White-hot rage was ignited across the South. According to historian Deborah Davis, “There was hell to pay… This story did not go away. An assassin was hired to go to Tuskegee to kill Booker T. Washington. He was pursued wherever he went… There were vulgar cartoons of Mrs. Roosevelt that had never been done before.”The Revolutionary War ended and the first America began: Opportunity America.One hundred and twelve years later – 1901 – the second America began: Achievement America.One hundred and twelve years later – 2013 – the third America began: Virtual America,a “sharing economy” featuringvirtual ownership, (Airbnb, Uber, TaskRabbit)virtual currency, (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin)virtual reality. (Facebook, Twitter, TikTok)2013 was also the halfway point in the upswing of society’s pendulum toward the zenith of our current “We” cycle. The halfway point is where we begin to take a good thing too far. In 2013 we shifted from “fighting together for the common good” to simply “fighting together.”Western Civilization2 has done this every 80 years for the past 3 millennia.I wrote at length about it in Pendulum several years ago:1783 marked the ending of our Revolutionary War.1783 was the zenith of a “We.”80 years later…1863 marked the middle of our Civil War.1863 was the zenith of a “We.”80 years later…1943 marked the middle of WWII.1943 was the zenith of a “We.”80 years later…2023 will mark the zenith of our current “We.”I wonder what we’ll be in the middle of then?Roy H. Williams1 the America of George W. and Thomas J. and Benjamin F. and Samuel Adams, the patron saint of beer. 2 Western Civilization began 3,000 years ago in Israel and Persia, then expanded to ancient Greece, then to Rome, then to Britain who took it to North America and Australia.

Dr. Seuss had1. the courage to make up new words,2. the confidence that his readers would understand what these new words meant, and3. he was a master of meter, the rhythm that is created when you arrange your words so that the stressed and unstressed syllables fall into patterns.There are a couple dozen types of meter, but Dr. Seuss used only one of them, anapestic meter, sometimes called galloping meter because it tumbles off the tongue.People often conflate meter with rhyming. But meter does NOT have to rhyme to work its magic.“What magic?”The magic of being musical.“Meter makes words musical?”Yes.“Even when read silently?”Yes, even when read silently.“So, what’s the benefit of it?”When words become musical, they enter into the non-judgmental, pattern-recognition portion of your mind.“Non-judgmental?”The right hemisphere of the brain doesn’t know fact from fiction; that’s the left brain’s job. Pierre de Beaumarchais understood this way back in 1775.“How do you know?”It was in 1775 that Beaumarchais wrote in The Barber of Seville, “Anything too stupid to be spoken is sung.”“I think you’re making all this up.”Dr. Roger Sperry documented it in 1981 and they awarded him the Nobel Prize for it.“Oh… so maybe I should just shut up and listen?”Might be a good idea.“Please continue.”Bounty, the quicker-picker-upper.BMW. The ultimate driving machine.My client would not, could not, did not commit these crimes. If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.“Are those examples of anapestic meter?”No, anapestic meter is two light stresses followed by a heavy third stress, like this:Oh, the sea is so full of a number of fish,if a fellow is patient, he might get his wish…and that’s why I think that I’m not such a foolwhen I sit here and fish in McElligot’s Pool.And who could forget,The children were nestled all snug in their beds,While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,Had just settled down for a long winter’s nap,When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.Away to the window I flew like a flash,Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snowGave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,When what to my wondering eyes should appear,But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer…“Okay, but can you give me an example of anapestic meter that doesn’t rhyme?”And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn has blown,For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,And so there lay the rider distorted and grey,And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,So I walk by the edge of a lake in my dream.“But you said Dr. Seuss made up new words and trusted that people would know what they mean.”You want to hear some made-up words?“Yeah, but not from Dr. Seuss.”Why not?“Because I won’t be speaking or writing to little kids. My people are old enough to drive cars, drink beer, and vote.”Fair enough. Here are some grown-up, made-up words.The reason you haven’t seen me out is because I’ve been Hiberdating.I type slowly because I’m Unkeyboardinated.Give me a bus ticket to anywhere. I’m going Columbusing.I can’t remember where I went last night. I think I’ve got Destinesia.The doctor and I had a Nonversation. It was very Unlightening.I don’t hang out with Todd anymore. He was always staring at his phone in a high state of Textpectation, so I Dudevorced him.You can’t say Idiot anymore. You’ve got to say Errorist.I was so exhausted I fell into bed and had a Bedgasm.“Okay, I get it.”But can you do it?“What do you mean?”Sixty-nine years ago, John Steinbeck wrote a note to his best friend, Pascal Covici:“I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing. … And one thing we have lost – the courage to make new words or combinations. Somewhere that old bravado has slipped off into a gangrened scholarship. Oh! you can make words if you enclose them in quotation marks. This indicates that it is dialect and cute.”– John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters“Okay, so you’re saying what?”I want you to honor Dr. Seuss and John Steinbeck by finding the courage to make new words and new combinations.“Why should I go to the trouble?”1. It will make you interesting.2. It will make you memorable.3. It will make you money.“Are you saying that if I don’t do this I’m an Errorist?”That’s exactly what I’m saying.“Where should I send my sentence with a made-up word in it?”indy@WizardOfAds.com.“Do you think he’ll publish it in the rabbit hole?”I have no idea. Indy does what he wants in the rabbit hole.“How long do I have?”Until Saturday, November 21st at midnight. You need to write two sentences; one with a made-up word that we instantly understand PLUS a second sentence featuring an unexpected combination of two or more words.“Can you give me some examples of unexpected combinations?”It was a bicycle morning. Anticipation rang the bell on my happiness meter until a telephone call ended it all and my words froze and shattered in the airless air.“Did you just make that up?”Yeah. Now it’s your turn.Roy H. Williams

Jacques Cousteau, the man who made the world care about the ocean,said, “A lot of people attack the sea. I make love to it.”But he was French.Not being French, I don’t see each day’s work as a choice between attacking or love-making. I see the future unfurl each morning as a fork in the road. Will I choose the battleground or the playground?Do you see business as a necessity of life, a battleground swarming with vendors, employees, customers and competitors that have to be kept at bay? Or do you see each day as a playground where the principal game is called, “How can we make others happy?”I have lived a strange life these past 40 years, spending all day, every day talking with business owners about their best and worst experiences in business.What I have noticed is that there are patterns, one of which is that the “business is a playground” people are happier and more successful.They didn’t become happy because they were successful. They became successful because they were happy and wanted to make other people happy, too.1. Are you making people happy?2. How are you doing it?3. Where do you find your inspiration?Inspiration is an interesting subject. Decades of searching for it have taught me, “Take your inspiration from wherever you find it, no matter how ridiculous.”My hero Robert Frost found inspiration in ridiculous places as well.The way a crowShook down on meThe dust of snowFrom a hemlock treeHas given my heartA change of moodAnd saved some partOf a day I had rued.Here are three ridiculous places where I have found inspiration:J. Peterman catalogueChuck Lorre Vanity CardsChipotle Story CupsJ. Peterman catalogueIt’s Friday night at a 200-year-old pub off O’Connell Street in Dublin. World headquarters for conversation. Dark mahogany walls. Lean-faced men. Ruddy-faced women. The bursts of laughter aren’t polite, but real, approaching the edge of uncontrol. The stories being told are new, freshly minted, just for you. There is no higher honor. The room roar is high (but still, not as bad as in New York restaurants where you can’t make out what it is you, yourself just said). These Irishmen, in collarless Irish shirts and tweed caps, have managed to keep their mouths shut all week, saving up the good stuff for now, for Friday night, this very place, this very moment… How could one single city possibly give birth to Yeats, Shaw, Joyce, Wilde, Beckett… and all those here tonight as well? Working-Class Irish Pub Shirt, well-suited for both the intoxication of talk and the difficult art of listening. Not bad for just hanging out, either. Or, when absolutely necessary, for looking interesting. Simple collar band. Seven-button placket. Stud at neck. No-nonsense, rounded shirttails. Two-button cuff. No pocket. You’ve got to carry everything you’ve got… in your head.Chuck Lorre Vanity Cards# 397 CENSORED BY ME (by myself) I’ve decided to save everybody a lot of unhappiness and not submit this week’s vanity card to the CBS censors (I know when I’ve crossed the line with these things and I don’t need a bunch of corporate lawyers getting their cotton blend panties in a bunch). Accordingly, I’ve banished the offending card to that dark place where all my offending cards go – the internet. View the censored 397.#634  Russia, if you’re reading this, hack into the Nielsen computers and make our ratings higher.Chipotle Story CupsIn 2014, Chipotle asked a number of America’s best writers to craft stories to print on the sides of their cups. This is the story written by bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver:“Two-Minute Cheer for the Home Team”The ancient human social construct that once was common in this land was called community. We lived among our villagers, depending on them for what we needed. If we had a problem, we did not discuss it over the phone with someone in Mumbai. We went to a neighbor. We acquired food from farmers. We listened to music in groups, in churches or on front porches. We danced. We participated. Even when there was no money in it. Community is our native state. You play hardest for a hometown crowd. You become your best self. You know joy. This is not a guess, there is evidence. The scholars who study social well-being can put it on charts and graphs. In the last 30 years our material wealth has increased in this country, but our self-described happiness has steadily declined. Elsewhere, the people who consider themselves very happy are not in the very poorest nations, as you might guess, nor in the very richest. The winners are Mexico, Ireland, Puerto Rico, the kinds of places we identify with extended family, noisy villages, a lot of dancing. The happiest people are the ones with the most community.But here’s my favorite part of the Chipotle story:“The Yale Collection of American Literature collects American Literature in all its formats and in all media, documenting the ways great American writers reach diverse and unusual audiences beyond standard book publishing,” says a statement from the world-famous library at Yale.You guessed it. Yale acquired the whole series of Chipotle cups for the Yale University Library.Evidently, I’m not the only one who finds inspiration in ridiculous things.Roy H. Williams

The economy, commerce, business, the stock market and free trade: all of these were built on our ability to sell things to each other.This is why the job of the ad writer is incredibly important.Television and radio, newspapers and magazines, direct mail and email, word-of-mouth and live chat, social media and outdoor, telephone calls and sales calls are just different channels of communication.Every point-of-contact with your customer is a channel of communication.Your website is where questions are answered and additional information is gathered. But this doesn’t happen until the customer first hears about you and is intrigued enough to seek you out.External messaging – advertising, social media, news stories, and word-of-mouth – is where the conversation begins.External messaging usually triggers a visit to your website.This is the first hand-off in the relay race.If your website is built for ecommerce, the sale might be closed there, and the conversation ended. But if you have a phone room, or face-to-face salespeople, their job is to continue the conversation begun by external messaging and accelerated by your website.When a customer leaves your website to contact a salesperson, this is the second hand-off in the relay race. The baton is now in the hand of the third runner, a live human being.Have you ever seen a three-legged race where the right leg of one team member is tied to the left leg of another team member, requiring them to run in a synchronized manner?The first runner is your ad writer. The second runner is your salesperson. The bond that ties them together is your website. When these are synchronized, coordinated, and singing the same song, you have channel alignment and a high close rate.When they are managed separately, each of them going their own way, you have salespeople complaining that they aren’t getting “good leads” and that your ads are “reaching the wrong people.”I’ve never seen a company fail due to reaching the wrong people. But I’ve seen countless companies struggle due to a lack of channel alignment.I’m done talking now.Roy H. Williams

Seinfeld was “a show about nothing,” but we couldn’t get enough of it because each of us knew a George, an Elaine, and a Kramer.Rebecca Solnit’s book, The Faraway Nearby, reminds me of Seinfeld. I love this book, but I can’t really explain what it’s about. Solnit can write about nothing and keep you mesmerized. Sort of like Tom Robbins, but entirely different.Sigh.I’m not sure what else to tell you.“In this gorgeously written and insightful book, Solnit weaves essay and memoir so that the nature of the story itself is sharply drawn from every imaginable angle. Personal history, geography, maps, ice, mirrors, and breath play back and forth, as the structural threads of narrative are wound, knotted, and unwound… In a world increasingly bereft of the genuine, Solnit’s writing shines with heart, wit, and soul.”– Lindsay Hill, Publishers Weekly“The product of a remarkable mind at work, one able to weave a magnificent number of threads into a single story, demonstrating how all our stories are interconnected.”– Bookforum“A brilliant, genre-refuting book.” – San Francisco ChronicleHere is an example of what those people – and me – are trying to describe:“I used to go to Ocean Beach, the long strip of sand facing the churning Pacific at the end of my own city, for reinforcement, and it always put things in perspective, a term that can be literal too. The city turned into sand and the sand into surf and the surf into ocean and just to know that the ocean went on for many thousands of miles was to know that there was an outer border to my own story, and even to human stories, and that something else picked up beyond. It was the familiar edge of the unknown, forever licking at the shore.”“I found books and places before I found friends and mentors, and they gave me a lot, if not quite what a human being would. As a child, I spun outward in trouble, for in that inside-out world, everywhere but home was safe. Happily, the oaks were there, the hills, the creeks, the groves, the birds, the old dairy and horse ranches, the rock outcroppings, the open space inviting me to leap out of the personal into the embrace of the nonhuman world.”“Once when I was in my late twenties, I drove to New Mexico with my friend Sophie, a fierce, talented, young black-haired green-eyed whirlwind who had not yet found her direction. We had no trouble convincing ourselves it was worthwhile to drive the two days each way to New Mexico because there was a darkroom there that she could use to print photographs for a project we had. In those days we were exploring what we wished to become, what the world might give us, and what we might give it, and so, though we did not know it, wandering was our real work anyway.”“I had discovered the desert west a few years before with the force of one falling in love and had learned something of how to enter it and move through it…”– Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby, p. 31-32We relate to Seinfeld because we, too, have had Jerry’s friends but called them by different names.We relate to Rebecca Solnit because we, too, have felt alone, discarded, and ignored.We relate to Rebecca because we have driven to New Mexico with a crazy friend.Who was your crazy friend?What crazy things did you do together?How did it happen that you fell out of touch?Roy H. Williams

If you are going to communicate effectively with a person, you need to know something about their beliefs.Most writers assume their readers see and believe as they do. And when they knowingly write to people who believe differently, their writing often takes the tone of an argument, leaning heavily on evidence and examples, with undertones of disparagement and mischaracterization. Such writers persuade no one, but rather drive the wedge deeper.1. To make the sale, you must win the respect of your audience.2. Belief is never a matter of evidence; it is always a matter of choice.3. You cannot take a person where you want them to go, until you first meet them where they are.4. (A) Perspective: You have to see through their eyes.(B) Empathy: Feel what they feel.(C) Use the words they love. When you meet your customer in that safe place, and establish the bond of a common perspective, then you can gently begin to give them new information.5. People never change their minds. If you give them the same information they were given in the past, they will continue to make the same decision they made in the past. They will continue to disagree with you.6. When a person appears to have “changed their mind,” they have simply made a new decision based on new information. And this new information should always be shared from the platform of a common perspective.7. Win the heart and the mind will follow.The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.This will be the first ad in a one-year series:My name is Tim Schmidt and you’ve probably never heard of my company. We teach people how to avoid danger, save lives, and keep their loved ones safe. We currently have nearly half-a-million members. But still, you’ve probably never heard of us. Because our members are trained NOT to talk about it. Chances are, some of our members are friends of yours. And they’ve never told you. Because talking about it is NOT what we do. What we do is avoid danger, save lives, and keep our loved ones safe. Our members are doctors and single moms and firemen and grandmothers and Veterans and Democrats and Republicans and members of every faith. We are thoughtful, responsible, and non-violent. But when you are with one of our members, you are safe, because they know exactly what to do if something crazy happens. More importantly, they know exactly what NOT to do. We are the United States Concealed Carry Association. See what we’re all about at USConcealedCarry.com.DEVIN: Discover the little-known backstory of the US Concealed Carry Association at USConcealedCarry.comHere’s an interesting question:Q: Why would anyone ever knowingly walk into a minefield?A: Because they need to get to the other side.Is there a minefield you need to cross?Have you been avoiding it because everyone keeps telling you how dangerous it is?Are you ready to get started?Roy H. Williams

Every book is an island that exists only in the mind of its writer, and the hope of every writer is that you will visit their island and be glad you did. But in The Faraway Nearby, her book about how we make our lives out of stories, and how we are connected by empathy, narrative and imagination, Rebecca Solnit says,“The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read. And its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds and the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.”I think of books as islands, but Rebecca Solnit thinks of them as sheet music, or as seeds. I followed that trail of thought until I realized that she and I had simply discovered different metaphors to describe how books are literary portals of escape into alternate realities.Bored with my navel-gazing, I decided to search the 5,067 passages in the random quotes database at MondayMorningMemo.com to see how many other writers had spoken of islands. So I logged into the admin section, typed the word “island” into the search window, and was delighted to find that I had transcribed “island” passages from no fewer than a dozen of my favorite authors.“Something of the sense of holiness on islands comes, I think, from this strange, elastic geography. Islands are made larger, paradoxically, by the scale of the sea that surrounds them. The element which might reduce them, which might be thought to besiege them, has the opposite effect. The sea elevates these few acres into something they would never be if hidden in the mass of the mainland. The sea makes islands significant.”– Adam Nicolson, Sea RoomFrom 1888 until his death in 1894, Robert Louis Stevenson lived in the South Seas. The diary of his island travels was published immediately after his death.“Few men who come to the islands leave them; they grow grey where they alighted; the palm shades and the trade-wind fans them till they die, perhaps cherishing to the last the fancy of a visit home, which is rarely made, more rarely enjoyed, and yet more rarely repeated. No part of the world exerts the same attractive power upon the visitor, and the task before me is to communicate to fireside travelers some sense of its seduction, and to describe the life, at sea and ashore, of many hundred thousand persons, some of our own blood and language, all our contemporaries, and yet as remote in thought and habit as Rob Roy or Barbarossa, the Apostles or the Caesars.”Three years later, Mary Kingsley spoke of her Travels in West Africa, an 1897 bestseller.“Once a hippopotamus and I were on an island together, and I wanted one of us to leave. I preferred it should be myself, but the hippo was close to my canoe, and looked like staying, so I made cautious and timorous advances to him and finally scratched him behind the ear with my umbrella and we parted on good terms. But with the crocodile it was different….”But 30 years before Robert Louis Stevenson or Mary Kingsley wrote about their islands, Mark Twain had a few words to say about the proposed US annexation of the Sandwich Islands.“When these islands were discovered the population was about 400,000, but the white man came and brought various complicated diseases, and education, and civilization, and all sorts of calamities, and consequently the population began to drop off with commendable activity. Forty years ago they were reduced to 200,000, and the educational and civilizing facilities being increased they dwindled down to 55,000, and it is proposed to send a few more missionaries and finish them. It isn’t the education or civilization that has settled them; it is the imported diseases, and they have all got the consumption and other reliable distempers, and to speak figuratively, they are retiring from business pretty fast. When they pick up and leave we will take possession as lawful heirs.”In his book, Marina, Carlos Ruiz Zafon writes of a strange island in the heart of Barcelona.“The Sarrià cemetery is one of Barcelona’s best-hidden corners. If you look for it on the maps, you won’t find it. If you ask locals or taxi drivers how to get there, they probably won’t know, although they’ve all heard about it. And if, by chance, you try to look for it on your own, you’re more likely than not to get lost. The lucky few who know the secret of its whereabouts suspect that this old graveyard is in fact an island lost in the ocean of the past, which appears and disappears at random.”“The memories of hundreds of people lie here. Their lives, their feelings, their expectations, their absence, the dreams that never came through for them, the disappointments, the deceptions and the unrequited loves that poisoned their existence… All that is here, trapped forever.”And then we have the laughable, lovable wit of Bill Bryson in his book, At Home.“Columbus’s real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer. It would be hard to name any figure in history who has achieved more lasting fame with less competence. He spent large parts of eight years bouncing around Caribbean islands and coastal South America convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset. He never worked out that Cuba is an island and never once set foot on, or even suspected the existence of, the landmass to the north that everyone thinks he discovered: the United States.”Eighty years ago, John Steinbeck published Sea of Cortez, the travelogue of an ocean journey with Ed Ricketts, his best friend.“The Western Flyer hunched into the great waves toward Cedros Island, the wind blew off the tops of the whitecaps, and the big guy wire, from bow to mast, took up its vibration like the low pipe on a tremendous organ. It sang its deep note into the wind.”In his book, The Pillars of Hercules, Paul Theroux wrote about two kinds of islands.“Alert but detached, Bowles was reclining on a pallet in his heavily curtained bedroom, overheated by a primitive heater, a blowtorch attached to a gas canister. He liked the heat, had once spent his winters on a Sri Lankan island he had purchased. And now in this small hot room, with the shades drawn, he was on another island. No living space could have been smaller than this back room where he obviously lived and worked; he ate here, he wrote here, he slept here. His books, his music, his medicine. His world had shrunk to these walls. But that was merely the way it seemed…. His world was within his mind, and his imagination was vast.”Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the mother of a 20-month-old son that was famously kidnapped and murdered, later wrote,“I feel we are all islands – in a common sea.”But she was contradicted 300 years earlier by the most famous island quote of all.“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less… Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”– John Donne, 1624, Meditation XVIIBut my favorite island quote comes from the wonderful Walt Disney, who said,“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.”Amen, Walt. Amen.Roy H. Williams

I was 24 and Phil was 60 and he was a most unusual man. Articulate but quiet, passionate but calm, and possibly the world’s greatest listener.By the age of 60, Phil had traveled to more than 40 countries, published stories, articles, and poems in more than 50 magazines, and assembled a personal library of books that overflowed the small rooms of his modest home.It occurs to me as I write this that books are what all my friends seem to have in common.Phil and I traded stories for only 3 years before Pennie and I moved away, but we corresponded once a month until that fateful day in 2019 when he left this world to move in with a friend.He was 97 years old.Phil always wore a tie. He didn’t have many, but each of them was special to him. He gave his wife, Barbara, careful instructions before he died regarding which tie he wanted each of his friends to have. The tie I received is covered with books on bookshelves. It hangs over the draperies in my study at home.When Barbara passed away in 2020, I received a phone call from their grandson, Cooper, informing me that Phil had left me his library.Phil’s library was as eclectic as he was:The Autobiography of A.A. Milne, (author of Winnie the Pooh)The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by TarbellLiterature and Western Man, by J.B. PriestlyUnderstanding Types, Shadows, and Names. A 2-volume set.The Gospel of Moses, by Samuel J. SchultzHawksbill Station, by Robert SilverbergThe Little Minister, by J.M. Barrie (the author of Peter Pan)The Shepherd of the Hills and When a Man’s a Man, by Harold Bell WrightAnd Behold The Camels Were Coming, by Edward Cuyler KurtzAnd then we have Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Zane Grey, Louisa May Alcott, Theodore Roosevelt, and the complete works of James Whitcomb Riley and William Makepeace Thackeray.And because Phil was a pastor and a Bible scholar, we haveA fat 4-volume set of Word Studies in the Greek New Testament,A Lawyer Examines the Bible,The Treasury of David,The Old Testament and the Fine Arts, by Cynthia MausChrist and the Fine Arts, by Cynthia Mausand a few dozen books about the Tabernacle in the Wilderness,along with a couple of hundred Biblical commentaries and Expositions of Holy Scripture.And then there is the gorgeous 27-volume set featuring the paintings of all the greatest artists of the last 600 years.Pennie and I bought a new trailer to send with Joe Davis when he went to pick up the books 500 miles away. That trailer is 17 feet long, 8 1/2 feet wide, has a 9-foot ceiling, and is rated to carry 3 1/2 tons. Joe drove home slowly because the trailer was overloaded.You will notice a couple of new things in the Welcome Center upon your next arrival at Wizard Academy. The first of these will be the smell of delicious food. Pennie is pursuing a coffee cafe license so that people can have something to eat while they sit with a book or a computer or a friend and a glass of wine and forget about their cares for awhile.The second thing you’ll notice will be the thousands of books adorning the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with rolling ladders in the James Phillip Johnson reading room. And on the wooden header where those rolling ladders roll, you’ll read the last words Phil ever spoke to me:“You acquire an education by study, hard work and persistence. But you absorb culture by viewing great art, listening to great music and reading great books.”I scribbled those words on a scrap of paper so that I could add them to the Random Quotes database when I got home.I had no idea that I would never hear Phil’s voice again.Roy H. Williams

I sit with a bag of popcorn and watch the frantic climbers of the ladder of success.The climbers who capture my interest are the ones who consider themselves to be “clever.” But look closely and you’ll see their only “cleverness” is that they are uncommitted and disloyal. Every person is a steppingstone for them and every relationship is transactional.I ask them about this and they say with pride, “I am an independent thinker. I am my own dog.”But isn’t that just another way of saying, “stray dog, dog without a home, dog that nobody wants”?Clever climbers have no master. This means no commitment, no loyalty to anyone or anything other than themselves. But happy dogs have masters to whom they are loyal and committed.Climbers envision a life of recreation and leisure.But recreation and leisure are medicine, not a lifestyle.Medicine, used wisely, restores us to health.Medicine as a lifestyle is the definition of a drug addict.When you live for something bigger than you are, you gain identity, purpose, and adventure.Identity: Who am I?Purpose: Why am I here?Adventure: What must I overcome?We spend our lives searching for security and then hate it when we get it. Security is the death of adventure.Self-made people speak of being their happiest during days of struggle and uncertainty. This is when they knew exactly who they were, why they were here, and what it was they had to overcome. Hence the saying, “It is the journey, not the destination, that matters in the end.”This is the self-perception that I will be sending to indy@wizardofads.com.I hope you will use this same format when you send him your self-perception.Identity: I am a mailman.Purpose: I deliver messages.Adventure: I must overcome ignorance, insulation, and apathy.Ignorance: I must cause those who don’t know, to know.Insulation: I must penetrate the insulation that surrounds their brains.Apathy: I must touch their hearts so that they care.STEP ONE is to summarize in three, short phrases, your identity, your purpose, and your adventure.STEP TWO is to explain how you will overcome the obstacles that are the essence of your adventure.Disclosure: the reason I’m asking you to send your self-perception to Indy is because you will give deeper thought to your introspection if you know that another person – even a lowly beagle – is going to read it. This exercise is not for my benefit and it’s not for Indy’s rabbit hole. It’s for you.If you deliver good newsand solutions for problemsand try to alleviate sufferingand make people happy,you are doing the work of God.You are no longer your own dog.You are God’s dog.Roy H. Williams