Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

When James Madison drafted the First Amendment, “the press” referred to the newspapers of our nation, such as the Pennsylvania Gazette owned by Benjamin Franklin, the most popular paper in the 13 colonies.Things rocked along swimmingly for about 200 years, then one day we walked outside to get the newspaper, sat down to read it, and realized it was yesterday’s news.Welcome to the 21st Century, where your telephone is also your newspaper, TV, encyclopedia, magazine, restaurant menu, instruction manual, shopping mall, worldwide map, and phone book.The computer chip gave us the internet, an unregulated realm where irresponsible people are free to spray false reports, fabricated data, and doctored photos across our society like a flamethrower washing over a field of dry grass.Presto, the world is on fire.I believe that people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.When I was a younger man, television and radio newscasts were trustworthy places to gather reliable facts, even when the presentation of those facts was slanted by the opinion of the reporter.News directors took their guardianship of journalistic integrity seriously, as did most of the rank-and-file reporters. But their collective consciences and good intentions were not what kept us safe.The people of the United States own the airwaves of our nation.Regulating the access to those airwaves began with the Radio Act of 1912, later to be replaced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1934.For most of the 20th century, America had safeguards that made television and radio news reliable, but in the 9 years between 1987, the 7th year of the Reagan presidency, and 1996, the 4th year of the Clinton presidency, those safeguards were quietly dismantled.Let’s take a look at the most important ones:1. The Fairness Doctrine: Introduced in 1949, the Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was honest, equitable, and balanced. If you failed to serve the public in this way, you could lose your license to broadcast.Broadcasters hated the Fairness Doctrine, of course, because it was a pain in the ass.In 1987, Edward O. Fritts, president of the National Assn. of Broadcasters, argued that “broadcasters believe in fairness” and that the Fairness Doctrine was “unconstitutional and an infringement on free speech. It is an intrusion into broadcasters’ journalistic judgment.” President Reagan agreed and issued an executive order.Poof… No more Fairness Doctrine.TV and radio stations were now free to slant the news as aggressively as they wanted.2. Ownership Limits: In 1927, we began to worry about what might happen if too few people controlled the news. Consequently, no one was allowed to own more than three TV stations nationwide. That number was increased to five stations in 1944, then the 7-7-7 rule of 1953 said no one could own more than 7 TV stations, 7 FM radio stations and 7 AM radio stations. In 1985, 7-7-7 became 12-12-12.Then in 1996, the FCC eliminated all limits on radio stations, and said you could own as many TV stations as you wanted as long as those TV stations were collectively reaching no more than 35% of the national audience. As a result, truckloads of investor dollars were gathered and broadcast “consolidation” began.Then in 2002, the 5-member FCC voted 3-2 along party lines (3 Republicans, 2 Democrats) to throw out the national audience limit.Bingo… If you could put together enough money, you could now control the news.American newscasters were no longer required to serve the public interest, or to present both sides of an issue, or even to tell the truth.So for the past 18 years we’ve been surrounded by flamethrowers on every side.I’m sure glad it hasn’t resulted in a polarized population.Roy H. Williams

Two weeks ago, I appeared onscreen during a business symposium in Montreal to answer a series of questions about, “How to Advertise Effectively.”Toward the end of my hour with them, a person in the audience asked, “What do you consider to be the top 3 books about Advertising?” The moderator smiled and said, “I can answer that,” and held up copies of The Wizard of Ads, Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads, and Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads.The audience laughed.I smiled and shook my head, “no.”“Number one is Marketing Outrageously by Jon Spoelstra. Number two is The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout. Number three is Ogilvy on Advertising.”The audience went silent as everyone wrote those titles down.Prior to the publication of Jon Spoelstra’s book in 2001, my recommended reading list contained only two books. But I discovered a kindred spirit in Jon Spoelstra. Even better than that, the thing Jon does best is the very thing I try to avoid.Let’s take a look at the similarities and differences between Jon and me.Similarities: Jon and I agree that it is your message, not the media, that determines your success or failure. Likewise, we agree on the vital importance of avoiding the predictable by employing the new, the surprising, and the different. Thirdly, we both appreciate the role of intuition and agree that, loosely speaking, rules are for fools.Difference: Jon enjoys making big things happen fast, I do not.* When your back is against the wall and time is of the essence, Jon is the man to call.On numerous occasions, Jon has generously agreed to teach at Wizard Academy and he’s always done it for free. But now he needs something from you and me.Don’t worry. Like all of Jon’s offers, this one is irresistible: Jon has a new book coming out next month and he’s giving each of us an immediate download of it in exchange for our promise to post a book review on Amazon. You can say whatever you like in the book review. The goal is for Jon to have at least 100 reviews posted on the day his book is officially launched.100 Amazon reviews sounds like it would be easy to accomplish, right? Trust me, it’s not.Are you in?Here’s where to begin.Roy H. Williams*Although I understand how to make big things happen fast, I find the anxiousness of it to be exhausting. Adrenaline is not my friend. It gives most people an energizing rush of excitement, (flight,) but in me it triggers only the rage of combat, (fight.) Consequently, I avoid clients who need an immediate miracle. This is undoubtedly selfish of me, but hey, I’m self-indulgent. You already knew that, right? – RHW

You’ve heard it all your life: “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.”This seems to be a worthy admonition on the surface. But let’s not stop at the surface. Let’s look into the heart of it.Those seven words, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well,” assume that one has the ability to do the thing well. But what if you don’t have that ability? Is it okay to do it badly at first?I gathered some essays and photos in 1997, then paid a printer to print 7,500 copies of a little homemade book. The title was ill-conceived, the cover was ridiculous, and my layout failed to anticipate the binding, so the text was tucked too far into the spine. You had to pull the cheeks apart and look down into the crack to read it.Is it okay that I did a bad job on that first book?Is it okay that I continue to love that quirky little puppy even if it never sold a copy?My second book became the #1 business book in America according to the Wall Street Journal, and my third book was a New York Times bestseller, then my wife and I spent the next 20 years building a school for misfit and maverick entrepreneurs, those innovators and improvisers, renegades and rebels who are suspicious of traditional wisdom.I have never worn the handcuffs of Perfectionism or Conformity and I do not recommend them to you. Wearing them too tightly causes analysis paralysis: that paralyzing fear of failure.When a person who is facing a big challenge begins to share their performance anxieties with me, I always grab them by their shoulders, look deep into their eyes and say with all the love I can muster, “Just shut up and do it.”Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.If you are not willing to golf badly at first, you are never going to be a great golfer.If you are not willing to write badly at first, you are never going to be a great writer.If you are not willing to cook badly at first, you are never going to be a great chef.One of the things I do each day is get dressed. But no one has ever accused me of doing it well. Putting on clothes is definitely worth doing. I just don’t believe it’s worth doing well. Looking rumpled and unsuccessful is my natural condition because I’ve seen the time and effort it takes to look crisp and sharp, and frankly, I don’t feel it’s worth it. At least not for me.Julie DeMille was stressing out about finding two socks that matched when the absurdity of the moment slapped her in the face. So she decided to adopt a sock motto: “If you can’t find a mate, find a friend.”I think Julie DeMille might be my brand of crazy.Are you my brand of crazy? If so, let me, as your older brother, offer you some encouragement and advice:Good decisions come from experience.Experience comes from bad decisions.You will feel guilty from time to time and that can be good.Feelings of guilt will cause you to make changes you need to make.But I pray that you never become ashamed.Guilt is about what you have done.Shame is about who you are.Perfectionists will come into your life and say that you have “real potential” and that you could be just like they are – crisp and prompt, well-groomed and with good posture – if only you pushed yourself a little harder. They will tell you to repent from your heresy of being happy and contented and say, “No pain, no gain,” as though they are quoting holy scripture.I’ve looked: it’s not in the Bible.These same people will tell you that should never be satisfied. They will lift their chins and proudly say, “Good enough, never is.”That’s not in the Bible, either. But if you read the musical, magical parts of the Bible – I suggest the gospel of John – you will look at yourself in the mirror and smile and say, “Good enough! God likes me just as I am.”Can I, as your older brother, offer you three suggestions?1: Wherever you go, accept people as they are and try to have a good time.2: Whatever you do, do it wholeheartedly and with gusto! And let the outcome be what it is.3: To speak with God, to accept yourself and be content, is the greatest possible wealth.And that, by the way, is in the Bible.Roy H. Williams

The junkyard dogs of the business community are those misfits and mavericks, renegades and rebels, innovators and improvisors who know that traditional wisdom is often more tradition than wisdom.Lee Iacocca was a junkyard dog.The son of an immigrant hot-dog vendor, Iacocca was the visionary who gave us the Ford Mustang. He was later fired by Henry Ford II, a showdog, because Henry II said he didn’t want Iacocca to become CEO. Aware that the time for his own retirement was approaching, Henry II made it clear that he wanted to turn the company over to his son Edsel II, then just 28.After being fired, Iacocca cheerfully went to work at Chrysler where he rescued that company from extinction by inventing the minivan. Later, when he told Chrysler’s head of engineering that he needed a prototype LeBaron convertible to use in a TV ad, the showdog engineer told him how many months it would take to design one. A true dog of the junkyard, Iacocca smiled and said, “Just get a LeBaron and cut the top off. I need it tomorrow.”Focused on the outcome rather than the process, junkyard dogs are always messy.Junkyard dogs worry about accomplishment.Showdogs worry about appearances.When the weather is calm and the water is smooth, the showdog owns the horizon. But when the storm is upon you and people are about to die, you want a junkyard dog at the helm.In 1962, 16-year-old Miguel fled Cuba wearing a jacket his mother had hand-stitched from cleaning rags. He arrived alone in America. “Hamburger” was his only English word. Five years later Miguel married a teenage mother and adopted her 3-year-old son, little Jeffrey Jorgensen. Miguel gave Jeffrey the skill and confidence to survive and thrive. He also gave Jeffrey his proud Cuban name: Bezos. When Junkyard Jeffrey was 30, he borrowed money from friends and family to start a business in the garage of his rented home. He named that business after the largest river in South America. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.As a boy, one of Jeffrey’s heroes was Walt Disney, the fourth of five children in a family so poor that two of his older brothers, sick of the constant work and poverty, ran away when Walt was just 4 years old. When Walt was 16, he tried to join the Navy so that he could serve in WWI but was turned down because of his age. He then tried unsuccessfully to join the Canadian Armed Forces. Finally, he was accepted as a Red Cross ambulance driver.Walt did not have an impressive résumé. Junkyard dogs rarely do.When the war was over, Disney’s first company, Laugh-O-Gram, went bankrupt in Kansas City, so he moved to Hollywood where his first animated series, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was a big success. Disney lost the rights to that character when his distributor cheated him. So Walt, ever the junkyard dog, started working on another animated character, a mouse. Perhaps you’ve heard of him, too.Disney Studios went on to make Lady and the Tramp, a movie about a showdog princess who falls in love with a junkyard dog. And then they made The Aristocats, a movie about an alley cat named O’Malley who rescues a housecat named Duchess who then falls in love with him. And when we saw The Rescuers a few years later, we all fell in love with a little junkyard girl named Penny when she stood up to the alligators of Madame Medusa.Now that I think about it, has there ever been a successful Disney film that didn’t give us a misfit, junkyard dog to cheer for?For the record, (and I quite literally mean “the record,”) no individual has ever received as many Academy Awards as Walt Disney. In fact, no other person has ever been nominated for as many.I began contemplating today’s memo when I paused the movie, Public Enemies, to transcribe a bit of dialogue between J. Edgar Hoover, that little showdog director of the FBI, and Melvin Purvis, his golden-boy agent who was tasked with bringing the murderous bank robber, John Dillinger, to justice, dead or alive. After Purvis fails repeatedly, he calls J. Edgar Hoover.Hoover: “John Dillinger held up a bank for $74,000 while you failed to arrest (Babyface) Nelson.”Melvin Purvis: “Sir, I take full responsibility. Now, I would like to make a request that we transfer men with special qualifications to augment the staff here in Chicago. There are some former Texas and Oklahoma lawmen currently with the bureau in Dallas.”Hoover: “I thought you understood what I am building; a modern force of professional young men of the best sort.”Melvin Purvis: “I’m afraid our type cannot get the job done.”Hoover: “Excuse me, I cannot hear you.”Purvis: “Our type cannot get the job done.”Hoover: “I cannot hear you.”Melvin Purvis: “Our type cannot get the job done. Without qualified help, I will have to resign this appointment. Otherwise, I’m leading my men to slaughter.”Furious, Hoover sends Charles Winstead (Stephen Lang) a junkyard FBI agent to help Purvis locate and assassinate Dillinger. Starring Johnny Depp as Dillinger and Christian Bale as Purvis, Public Enemies is an interesting look at life in America back when we were headed toward the zenith of our previous “We” cycle.The zenith of that “We” was 1943. If you want to see what happened immediately after that zenith, watch Trumbo (2015) with Brian Cranston.The current “We” will zenith in 2023.Hang on, it’s going to be a wild ride.Roy H. Williams

The beagle who lives in the right hemisphere of your brain has an entirely different set of skills than the nerd who lives next door.The beagle in my brain is named Indy. What is the name of the beagle in yours?Your beagle gives you impulsive intuition and instinctive insight. Your beagle gives you romping recklessness, gut feelings and hunches.Your beagle has a bitterly sharp, piercingly beautiful sense of global pattern recognition which triggers the occasional premonition.Poindexter is the nerd who lives in the other half of my brain. He is forever having to push his glasses back onto his nose.What is the name of the nerd in yours?Poindexter uses Google.Indy uses Giggle.My Poindexter is a friend of Mr. Peabody, the smartest person in the world. Do you remember Mr. Peabody and his adopted son, Sherman, from the Rocky and Bullwinkle show? If not, Indy has a video on page 4 of the rabbit hole that will joggle your memory.The interesting thing about Sherman and Mr. Peabody is that Jay Ward reversed their roles. It is the human, Sherman, who is naïve about science, and Peabody, the beagle, that is the uptight nerd who leans on cold deductive reasoning.Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Cold deductive reasoning has its place, but the golden fire of inspiration and the money-green glow of innovation come from that piercingly beautiful sense of pattern recognition that sees the relationships between all the parts.Your intuitive beagle sees what is and isn’t there. And it sees what could be added or left out to make a thing more elegant and beautiful. This fabulous pattern-recognizing beagle lives in the wordless right hemisphere of your brain and it notices more than just visual patterns. It notices patterns of behavior, patterns of history, patterns of music and speech. And it recognizes the shapes of problems and the shapes of their solutions. Shapes are merely patterns. This is why jigsaw puzzles are calisthenics for your beagle. The shapes of the pieces and their patterns of color and the position of each piece on the table as you begin is pattern, times pattern, times pattern, times the number of pieces in the box. (Ray Bard, that was for you.)Your right-brain beagle is the heart and soul of inspiration and innovation, and its only food is play. Reckless, intuitive wandering, that artistic, purposeful wasting of time, that thing you do because you want to, not because you have to. Play is what recharges your batteries. What, for you, is the highest form of play?More importantly, how long has it been since you’ve done it?Go. There you will find your answer.Roy H. Williams

The Genius of What Isn’t ThereJune 1, 2020ListenAThree friends, who have never met each other, all sent me the same advice last week.What makes this convergence particularly interesting is that there was no common trigger. Each of the three messages I received was prompted by something different.The essence of those messages?You’ve got to leave things out.Genius is rarely about what is there.Genius is about what isn’t there.David Freeman is a world-famous coach of fictional character construction. His credentials and accomplishments are staggering. David read in my memo of May 18 that, “I am finally writing that screenplay I’ve been thinking and talking about for 15 years. It’s a buddy movie about a guy with 12 friends. I plan to shoot it in New Orleans next year.” So he sent me an email from Hollywood.“If you’re going to have 12 characters, the traditional wisdom is that 1, 2, 3, 4, and maybe 5 should be far more primary the others. The more characters we’re supposed to know and care about, the less emotion the audience feels because we can’t get deeply invested in any one character if our attention is split between too many. Characters require screen time for us to get emotionally involved with them. The more major characters, the less screen time for each.”According to David, a screenwriter has to choose which characters get fully realized. The others are effectively left out.Stephen Semple is a lifelong student of the sales process. He studies every aspect of persuasion, from advertising to lead generation to product demonstrations to sales presentations. Stephen wrote to me about how reading the transcripts of his Zoom conferences taught him how people speak differently than they write.“We repeat words, finish other people’s sentences, and forget about grammar.”According to Stephen, when highly engaged in an inspired conversation, we leave out much of what we would have written.Tom Grimes is a scholar, a thinker, a philosopher and a friend, and the President Plenipotentiary of the Worldwide Worthless Bastards. Tom owns a booming business, but he is always available to take your phone call or respond to your email. So I asked him what he does all day.Tom replied,“Famous ‘leaders’ are often very noisy people… or they were dealing with a crisis. We sometimes think leadership is about dealing with the aftermath when the sh#t hits the fan. We fail to appreciate that the real objective is to never let the sh#t hit the fan in the first place.One time I was at the water treatment facility of a large manufacturing plant. The place was eerily quiet. When I made the observation that it looked like the staff was doing next to nothing, the head operator explained that the secret to running a facility like his was a stringent Preventive Maintenance program. He said that if you see people running around it meant there was a problem. And the objective of the maintenance team was to prevent problems before they became problems. A quiet place was the sign of a well-run operation.”According to Tom, the secret of being a great leader is to leave out the emergencies.When asked the secret of writing bestselling novels, Elmore Leonard said, “I leave out the parts that people skip.”Impressionistic painters leave out the details, requiring us to supply them from our storehouses of imagination.Talented photographers leave out sections of what they photograph, requiring us to imagine the parts that extend beyond the framelines.When writing ads, if you try to appeal to everyone, you will appeal to no one. You’ve got to choose who to lose.Indy Beagle has some great examples of this in the rabbit hole.He suggests that you hurry. The rabbit is afoot.The adventure has begun.Roy H. Williams

Jaguars and leopards are classified as “Big Cats” (Pantherinae) because they have a U-shaped hyoid apparatus in their throats which gives them the ability to roar. Cheetahs and pumas are just as big as jaguars and leopards, but they are classified as “Small Cats” (Felinae) because their ossified hyoid bones prohibit them from roaring.Among cats, it is your voice that determines your size.But dogs are not like cats. According to Indy Beagle, the size of a dog determines the depth of its voice. You never see a “Little Yapper Dog” (Yapperdus Petitae) with a deep voice, and you never see a “Working Dog” (Woofus Grande) with a squeaky voice.Among dogs, it is your size that determines your voice.But when it comes to people, all of that goes out the window. Big people can have little voices and little people can have big voices.Among people, it is your voice that determines your voice.In review:Among cats, it is your voice that determines your size.Among dogs, it is your size that determines your voice.Among people, it is your voice that determines your voice.But what about books? What determines the voice of a book?In non-fiction writing, “the voice of the book” is essentially the style of the narrator. It is the way the author likes to phrase things. It is syntax, diction, punctuation and vocabulary, as well as the manner in which knowledge is revealed to the reader. The author’s own voice will inform the voice of the book, indicating angle of view, philosophical bent, pride of education, religiosity, rurality, intimacy, mastery, academia, bureaucracy, condescension, insecurity, simple-mindedness, bitterness, mental illness, and wit, or lack thereof.Similes, metaphors, and examples are the literary devices that give us the greatest insight into an author, showing us how he or she sees the world.The voice of a fiction book is a composite of the voices of all its characters, evidenced through their words, actions, and thought patterns.Unlike non-fiction, the narrator’s voice in fiction is often just another created character, giving us little, if any, insight into the mind of the author.Let’s circle back to the voices of people for a moment.Psychiatrists tell us there are four kinds of people who live in fictional, inner worlds.Narcissists tell themselves and others that everyone loves them even though they do not. They want to believe it and so they say it.Pathological liars believe their own lies and will recreate their internal realities to accommodate those lies.Sociopaths and psychopaths never exhibit remorse after lying or hurting others because they are extremely egocentric and lack empathy. The difference between the two is that sociopaths are made but psychopaths are born.Last week I wrote to you about the intense disagreements that can occur when two opposing truths come into conflict.But not all conflict is about truth.“It used to be that your character and your beliefs were what made people look up to you. But now it’s about whether you have a Rolex, a big house, and a Jag in the driveway.”A smiling executive from a prominent advertising agency made that statement to eight of us sitting in a conference room in west Tulsa in 1982. I’ve never forgotten that moment, that statement, or his face, because I was jarred by the fact that he said it in celebration, rather than remorse.The “Me” generation would reach its zenith the following year.I rarely write to you while I am still in the process of distilling my thoughts, but for some reason I decided this week that I would share all the little things that are tumbling around in my mind like socks in the dryer and let you sort those socks into pairs on your own.[If you have been reading carefully, right now you are recalling what I said earlier about how, “Similes, metaphors, and examples are the literary devices that give us the greatest insight into an author, showing us how he or she sees the world.” But to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what this socks-in-the-dryer simile might indicate about me.]John Steinbeck was born one year before the zenith of the previous “Me” generation, so he saw it slowly decline from that zenith as he grew up. Late in his life, John wrote to a close friend,“Do you remember two kinds of Christmases? There is one kind in a house where there is little and a present represents not only love but sacrifice. The one single package is opened with a kind of slow wonder, almost reverence. Once I gave my youngest boy, who loves all living things, a dwarf, peach-faced parrot for Christmas. He removed the paper and then retreated a little shyly and looked at the little bird for a long time. And finally he said in a whisper, ‘Now who would have ever thought that I would have a peach-faced parrot?'””Then there is the kind of Christmas with presents piled high, the gifts of guilty parents as bribes because they have nothing else to give. The wrappings are ripped off and the presents are thrown down and at the end the child says – Is that all? Well it seems to me that America now is like that second kind of Christmas. Having too many THINGS they spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and Nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick.”And now you have seen the socks that are tumbling in my mind.Roy H. Williams

Q: What do Jesus and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus have in common?A: Grown-ups told us stories about them when we were children.And then one day we realized the grown-ups had been lying. Yes, they did it because they loved us and they wanted us to be happy, but that didn’t change the fact that they were lying.Some of us were able to separate the stories about Jesus from the stories about the other three, but not all of us. I, myself, continue to believe in Jesus. I choose to believe, “…we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” (1st John 4:14)But many of my closest friends choose not to believe and I understand that choice. Belief is not rational.But I’m not writing to you today to tell you about my belief in Jesus. I’m writing to talk to you about the difference between your heart and your mind.Your belief in your team is not supported by science. It supported by facts you have chosen to believe, but there are just as many facts that would indicate your team doesn’t have a chance. It doesn’t matter whether your team is the Red State team, the Blue State team, the Chicago White Sox or the Green Bay Packers, each of us chooses the facts to which we cling.But mostly we choose a perspective, a way of looking at things, an angle of view.Belief is not rational, it is heart-felt. Belief is not logical, it is intuitive. But that doesn’t mean it is wrong.Albert’s intuition told him that the energy contained in an object was equal to its mass times the speed of light, times the speed of light. Son-of-a-bitch! He was right! E=MC2 has been demonstrated to be an incontrovertible truth.But not all truth is incontrovertible.Do you believe in love and democracy and patriotism and the American Dream? So do I, but these beliefs are not supported by science. They are supported by selected facts and a ferociously guarded perspective that has been handed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years.Love and Democracy and Patriotism and the American Dream are not science, they are a cultural perspective, a way of looking at things, an angle of view that you and I have chosen.Justice and Mercy are not science, they are two different perspectives. And they often come into conflict.Honesty and Loyalty are not science, they are two different perspectives. And they often come into conflict.Freedom and Responsibility are not science, they are two different perspectives. And they often come into conflict.The voice of Freedom shouts to my mind, “It’s my life, and I can do with it what I choose.”But the voice of Responsibility whispers to my heart, “I should be careful, not for myself, but for all the people I care about, and who care about me.”Explosive issues can always be found at the intersection of two perspectives.I suppose the reason I have these things on my mind right now is because I am finally writing that screenplay that I’ve been thinking and talking about for 15 years.It’s a buddy movie about a guy with 12 friends. I plan to shoot it in New Orleans next year.Roy H. Williams

Admiral Boulevard is the margin of the page in Tulsa.It is that place where a person can do well while doing no good. It is where discipline encounters temptation and good fortune meets bad luck. Admiral Boulevard is the margin Johnny Cash sings about in “I Walk the Line.”The Outsiders – both the book and the movie – take place along Admiral Boulevard. The book has sold more than 14 million copies making it the bestselling young adult novel of all time. Susie Hinton was a junior at Will Rogers High School just 5 blocks south of Admiral Boulevard when she wrote it. She was given a D in creative writing that year.Admiral Boulevard is bordered on the east by the Mingo traffic circle and on the west by the tragic Greenwood District. The six miles between those bookends is what I once described as “the neighborhood of Ponyboy Curtis, an unfiltered assortment of bent automobiles, broken houses and discarded people.”Susie encountered hostility when her book was released in 1967. She says, “I think the first hostile reaction was to the idea that not all teens were living in a ’50s sitcom. People know better nowadays.”Susie is just 9 years older than me, so we know some of the same people. We all grew up with one thing in common; those little teeth nipping at our heels wasn’t a puppy, it was poverty.The once-rich and influential Greenwood District of Tulsa was known as “Black Wall Street” in the years following the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt, but on May 31, 1921, a white mob set fire to hundreds of black-owned businesses and homes, killing 300 Americans and leaving more than 10,000 homeless.Forty square blocks were smoldering when the sun came up the next morning.No one was prosecuted.Susie’s book is about life on the margin of that page in history forty-five years later. The Outsiders is about the tensions between country-club whites and those paycheck-to-paycheck whites like Susie and me.Francis Ford Coppola won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1970 for Patton, and two years later he won three more Oscars for The Godfather. Then he discovered Susie’s book, turned it into a screenplay, gathered up some no-name kids and gave them a chance to become superstars.Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez, and C. Thomas Howell were barely more than children when they made The Outsiders in 1983.Two years later we saw The Breakfast Club, and the following year, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.The Outsiders served as a launchpad for a number of careers and a whole new genre of movies. The ripple effect of a well-told story is staggering.You have a story.Your business has a story.And your future is a story yet to be written.Very soon Daniel Whittington will announce The Ad Writers Masters Class on behalf of the American Small Business Institute. This will be be your chance to write an altogether different future for yourself and the people you love.My thoughts about Susie Hinton and The Outsiders were triggered by something written by Mike Dooley:“The one thing all famous authors, world class athletes, business tycoons, singers, actors, and celebrated achievers in any field have in common is that they all began their journeys when they were none of these things.”Have a golden week.Roy H. Williams

Bart Giamatti was a professor of English Renaissance literature, the president of Yale University, and the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. In less than 3 minutes, Giamatti caused me to understand “home” in a new way. I believe his thoughts on the subject are profoundly insightful.“There is no great, long poem about baseball. It may be that baseball is itself its own great, long poem. This had occurred to me in the course of my wondering why home plate wasn’t called fourth base. And then this came to me, ‘Why not? Meditate on the name, for a moment, ‘home.’’“Home is an English word virtually impossible to translate into other tongues. No translation catches the associations, the mixture of memory and longing, the sense of security and autonomy and accessibility, the aroma of inclusiveness, of freedom from wariness that cling to the word ‘home’ and are absent from ‘house’ or even ‘my house.’ Home is a concept, not a place; it’s a state of mind where self-definition starts. It is origins, a mix of time and place and smell and weather wherein one first realizes one is an original; perhaps like others, especially those one loves; but discreet, distinct, not to be copied. Home is where one first learned to be separate, and it remains in the mind as the place where reunion, if it were ever to occur, would happen.”“All literary romance, all romance epic, derives from The Odyssey and it is about going home. It’s about rejoining; rejoining a beloved, rejoining parent to child, rejoining a land to its rightful owner or rule. Romance is about putting things aright after some tragedy has put them asunder. It is about restoration of the right relations among things. And ‘going home’ is where that restoration occurs, because that’s where it matters most. Baseball is, of course, entirely about going home. And to that extent – and because it’s the only game you ever heard of – where you want to get back to where you started. All the other games are territorial; you want to get his or her territory. But not baseball. Baseball simply wants to get you from here… back around to here.”Bart Giamatti was 20 years older than me.For most of my life, I thought of wisdom as always coming from people older than me. But these days, there aren’t that many people older than me. AIn recent years, I’ve been learning from younger men.I believe my young friend, Shawn Craig Smith, may understand romance epic as well as did Bart Giamatti. In class at Wizard Academy, Shawn wrote, “Prometheus gave man fire, but the power every one of us carries each day, heartbeat by heartbeat, is his story. Come to the circle, bring your spark. We can live as men without fire, but without story, without art, we freeze alone in the cold white waste.”Jonathan Berman travels a lot. He taught me, “Home is not a place, but a feeling of wholeness and contentment you can take with you wherever you go.”Jeff Sexton taught me that not every ad writer gathers all the information and then figures out what parts of it to use and how to organize those parts. Jeff made me understand that lots of great ad writers have a template in mind, and then they search for the information that will satisfy that template.My son Rex taught me that “discovery content” brings new people into contact with your YouTube channel, your blog or other online body of work, and “community content” keeps them coming back again and again after they have discovered you.My son Jacob showed me that people will like and respect you when it becomes obvious that your hard work and attention-to-detail is for their benefit, not yours.Tucker Max taught me that a person can benefit from your experience when you tell them (1.) what happened, (2.) how it made you feel, and (3.) what you learned from it.Tim Miles took the time to tell my son Jacob what a great job he was doing. When I felt ashamed for not having already done it myself, I learned, “No matter how busy you are, when you notice that someone is doing a great job, always take the time to tell them so.”Daniel Whittington, the chancellor of Wizard Academy, taught me how to be funny at the expense of no other person.Joe Davis showed me how to take everything in stride and maintain my composure when troubles are stacking up like firewood.Zac Smith, vice-chancellor of Wizard Academy, showed me the power of passing good things forward so that our students know that we see them, we hear them, and we miss them when they are gone.Ryan Deiss taught me how to trim sprawling ideas onto a manageable template, “then when the student masters the template, they can throw it away and venture beyond its boundaries.”Chris Maddock showed me how the most powerful teaching is to give students personalized feedback about each of their attempts to do what you previously explained.Manley Miller taught me how to turn a small circle of followers into a team, and then turn that team into a tribe, and then make that tribe into a force that can change the world.Ray Seggern revealed to me the fascinating, interwoven relationships between the culture you create for your employees, the story you tell in your advertising, and the experience you deliver to your customers.JP Engelbrecht showed me how to lead without being in the spotlight, and how to make money without banging a drum.Brian Brushwood taught me how to act when you’re in the spotlight, and how to bang a drum so that it can be heard around the world.Jonathan Bancroft showed me how to listen to a person’s suggestions in full, even when you are certain they are wrong.Anthony Dina taught me how to turn my attention toward others instead of myself.And today I have tried my best to do that.Have a happy day, a great week, and a fruitful year.Roy H. Williams