Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

More than 500 people have seen the earth from space and 12 have walked on the moon.Most of these people returned home strangely altered. Their families were the first to notice.In 1987 this phenomenon got a name. “The overview effect” refers to what happens when a person sees, firsthand, the Earth as a tiny, fragile ball of life hanging in the void, shielded and nourished by a paper-thin atmosphere.“National boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide people become less important, and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this pale blue dot becomes obvious.”– WIKIPEDIAIndiana Beagle has been trying to tell me this for years. When I say something is unbelievable, he says,“Unbelievable? You want to hear unbelievable? Seven billion of us are crammed on a tiny speck of dust circling an 11,000 degree fireball as it shoots through a limitless vacuum at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet and no one ever thinks about it. THAT, my good wizard, is unbelievable.”Indy opened last week’s rabbit hole with a short passage from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five in which Billy Pilgrim is talking to the Tralfamadorians:“‘…As you know, I am from a planet that has been engaged in senseless slaughter since the beginning of time. I myself have seen the bodies of schoolgirls who were boiled alive in a water tower by my own countrymen, who were proud of fighting pure evil at the time….Earthlings must be the terrors of the Universe! If other planets aren’t now in danger from Earth, they soon will be. So tell me the secret so I can take it back to Earth and save us all: How can a planet live in peace?’Billy felt that he had spoken soaringly. He was baffled when he saw the Tralfamadorians close their little hands on their eyes. He knew from past experience what this meant: He was being stupid.”I asked Indy how long it took him to find that passage after the psychopaths killed those innocent people in Paris.He said, “I posted that quote in the rabbit hole five days before the attacks.”“But why?”Indy said, “David Farland, another science fiction writer, once wrote, ‘Men who believe themselves to be good, who do not search their own souls, often commit the worst atrocities. A man who sees himself as evil will restrain himself. It is only when we do evil in the belief that we do good that we pursue it wholeheartedly.'”“Indy, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.”He looked down and tried to change the subject. I wouldn’t let him. Finally, he looked back up at me and said, “The problem with ISIS is that they believe they are doing good. We must send each of them into space so they can get a new perspective.”“But Indy!” I said, “Your plan isn’t workable. There aren’t enough rockets and there isn’t enough money and even if there was, how would we convince them to take the ride?”His only answer was to put his paws over his eyes like a Tralfamadorian.Roy H. Williams

We believe knowledge is freedom.We believe you can learn big things quickly when your instructor is experienced, passionate, organized and entertaining.We believe an expert can teach you – in less than a day – more than you can learn in 4 years of college.We believe traditional wisdom is often more tradition than wisdom.We believe in streaming video.The American Small Business Institute is the new online video division of Wizard Academy. Fascinating instructors. Priceless information. Valuable insights.It’s not for everyone.But it’s definitely for you.The Eye-of-the-Storm lecture hall in the tower at Wizard Academy was built to host transformative workshops. These require intense focus, long hours, immediate feedback from the instructor and happy encouragement from like-minded people during class breaks and at mealtimes.These Transformative events cause you to see something completely differently than you did before. Transformative events will forever sparkle their magic from the Wizard Academy campus in Austin.But Informative sessions build brick-on-brick upon what you already know. Hundreds of informative sessions will be available by video to self-selected insiders through the American Small Business Institute, a new division of Wizard Academy.A tribe is made of concentric circles of self-selected insiders, members who contribute – each according to the level of his or her ability – to the collaborative strength of the tribe.A volunteer army is a group of self-selected insiders.A sports team is a group of self-selected insiders.A political party is a group of self-selected insiders.Every club, every franchise, every trade association and certainly every college and university is a group of self-selected insiders.AA big group of self-selected insiders read the MondayMorningMemo each week. It’s free. I write it, illustrate it, record it, post it online and pay all its expenses.Another self-selected group clicks the image at the top of the memo each week to enter Indiana Beagle’s rabbit hole.But a very small self-selected group – fewer than a thousand people a year – take the elevator all the way to the top by attending classes on the Wizard Academy campus. Sadly, that’s the maximum our school can accommodate.A much larger group will be able to participate weekly in the American Small Business Institute.We’ll be uploading at least one new video for self-selected members each week at AmericanSmallBusinessInstitute.org. You definitely want to become a member. This week’s video contains all the important details to the three stories I began last week.Do you remember the convenience store, the gym and the fertilizer company?When you hear how each of those experiments turned out, you’ll laugh with glee, turn red with outrage, smile at poetic justice and shake your head in wonder at how smart people can do incredibly dumb things.Will you select yourself to be an insider?This first step requires only a tiny click.Any finger will do.Roy H. Williams

When each customer buys four and a half times the average amount of stuff per visit and you attract four times the average number of visitors, you make eighteen times as much profit. (4 x 4.5 = 18)If you run your convenience store according to the rules and conventions of convenience stores, you’re going to have yourself a conventional convenience store.(1.) But if you run your convenience store according to the rules and conventions of a successful nightclub, four times as many people will stop to buy gas from you and you’ll sell four and a half times as much coffee, candy, cookies and snacks to each visitor…You’re going to make a glowing pile of money. People will think you’re radioactive because you’ll glitter when you walk. Complete strangers will ask you for your autograph. Pretty women will throw their room keys onto the stage.Just ask my partner, Scott Fraser. He created that convenience store 12 years ago and it’s been pumping out profits like a Texas oil well ever since.His competitors tell him he’s doing it wrong.(2.) If you run a gym according to the rules and conventions of gyms, you’re going to have yourself a conventional gym. But run that gym according to the rules of an exclusive country club and… BOOM, you glitter when you walk.(3.) If you run a lawn fertilizer company as though it were(A.) a public utility, and(B.) a one-price, all-you-can-eat gourmet buffet…BOOM, room keys on the stage.Don’t conform to the rules of your business category. Reconform your business to the rules of a time-tested, proven business model that behaves completely differently than your own. A standard practice in one business category is often revolutionary in another.This isn’t “thinking outside the box.”This isn’t “a paradigm shift.”You and I aren’t going to use those worn-out phrases because you and I aren’t posers in empty suits.You and I glitter when we walk.Have you noticed how the best TV shows always cut to commercial during a climax in the action? I’m going to do that today. I hope you don’t mind.Next week I’ll tell you where you can find a video of me explaining all the real-world details of exactly what we did for that convenience store, that gym and that fertilizer company.In the meantime…Keep glitterin’, kid.It looks good on you.Roy H. Williams

You have a dream, a hope for the future. But are you willing to spend what it costs to achieve it, endure what is required of you and fight for as long as it takes?Unrelenting action is what turns starry-eyed daydreams into steely-eyed objectives.You say you have a goal.Let me look into your eyes.Now tell me what you did today.Unrelenting Action(From the Monday Morning Memo of Oct. 27, 2002)Would you like to learn the magic of the elbs?Elbs are Exponential Little Bits, tiny but relentless changes that compound to make a miracle.The power of an elb lies not in its size, but in its daily occurrence. For an elb to work its Exponential magic, the Little Bit must happen every day… every day… every day.Every day.Funny thing… When daily progress meets with progress, it doesn’t add, it multiplies.To harness the magic of Exponential Little Bits you must learn to ask yourself, “What difference have I made today?” And never go to sleep until you have done a Little Bit to move yourself closer to your goal.But you must do a Little Bit every day, no matter how tiny it might be.Exponential Little Bits work both ways. They can lift you up or hold you back.Start with a dollar. Double it every day for just 20 days and you’ll have 2,097,150 dollars. But if you diminish each day’s total by just 10 percent (a Little Bit) before the next day’s doubling, you’ll amass only 793,564 dollars. Diminish each day’s doubling by 35 percent (a larger Little Bit) and you’ll have only 56,784 dollars – a shortfall of 95.83 percent.There is nuclear power in the elbs.Now that you understand the process,you’re going to need a role model.A Society and Its Heroes(From the Monday Morning Memo of Feb. 17, 2003)Heroes are dangerous things. Bigger than life, highly exaggerated and always positioned in the most favorable light, a hero is a beautiful lie.We have historic heroes, folk heroes and comic book heroes. We have heroes in books and songs and movies and sport. We have heroes of morality, leadership, kindness and excellence. And nothing is so devastating to our sense of wellbeing as a badly fallen hero. Yes, heroes are dangerous things to have.The only thing more dangerous is not to have them.Heroes raise the bar we jump and hold high the standards we live by. They are ever-present tattoos on our psyche, the embodiment of all we are striving to be. We create our heroes from our hopes and dreams.And then they attempt to create us in their own image.The Value of Heroes(From Magical Worlds of the Wizard of Ads, 2001)The saying, “The sun never sets on the British Empire” was true as recently as 1937 when tiny England did, in fact, still have possessions in each of the world’s 24 time zones. It’s widely known that the British explored, conquered and ruled much of the world for a number of years, but what isn’t as widely known is what made them believe they could do it.For the first 1000 years after Christ, Greece and Rome were the only nations telling stories of heroes and champions. England was just a dreary little island of rejects, castoffs and losers.So who inspired tiny, foggy England to rise up and take over the world?A simple Welsh monk named Geoffrey – hoping to instill in his countrymen a sense of pride – assembled a history of England that gave his people a grand and glorious pedigree. Published in 1136, Geoffrey’s “History of the Kings of Britain,” was a detailed, written account of the deeds of the English people for each of the 17 centuries prior to 689 AD… and not a single word of it was true. Yet in creating Merlyn, Guinevere, Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table from the fabric of his imagination, Geoffrey of Monmouth convinced a sad little island of rejects, castoffs and losers to see themselves as a just and magnificent nation.And not long after they began to see themselves that way in their minds, they began seeing themselves that way in the mirror.Most people assume that legends, myths and stories of heroes are the byproducts of great civilizations, but I’m convinced they are the cause of them. Throughout history, the mightiest civilizations have been the ones with stories of heroes; larger-than-life role models that inspired ordinary citizens to rise up and do amazing things.It’s no secret that people will do in reality what they have seen themselves do in their minds.What do you see yourself doing?Are you a person who gets things done?People who get things donepush past the idea that “now is not a good time.”People who get things donebelieve that a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.People who get things doneleap off the edge, trusting that a net will appear.People who get things donebuild their rocket ship while they’re flying it.*Unrelenting actionis what turns starry-eyed daydreamsinto steely-eyed objectives.You say you have a goal.Let me look into your eyes.Now tell me what you’re going to do today.Roy H. Williams

A person is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.They say, “One picture is worth a thousand words.”I say, “In 1985, after finding that pretty but unlabeled icons confused customers, the Apple Computer Human Interface Group adopted the motto, ‘A word is worth a thousand pictures,’ and a descriptive word or phrase was added beneath all Macintosh icons. Read it for yourself in Digital Marketing: A Practical Approach by Alan Charlesworth, page 123.”They say, “It’s been scientifically proven that 93 percent of all human communication is nonverbal.”I say, “Show me the study. Show me who verified it. And please, for the love of God, don’t pretend to quote Dr. Albert Mehrabian because not one person who has ever quoted Mehrabian to me has ever read any of his books. Admit it. A sales trainer showed you a pie chart and said 55% of human communication is body language and 38% is tone of voice and only 7% are the words we speak.”Pie charts are not proof.In Mehrabian’s earliest book, Silent Messages (1971,) he speculated that during moments of extreme word/gesture contradiction, the words themselves contribute about 7 percent of the meaning we perceive, while tone of voice contributes about 38% and the rest – 55% – is body language. But Mehrabian makes it plain that these estimates pertain ONLY to moments when(1.) a speaker is describing their feelings and emotions and(2.) their physical gestures and tone of voice contradict their words.When a person is holding up their middle finger as they say, “Yeah, I love you, too,” don’t trust the words; trust the finger.In 1994, when it became obvious that sales trainers in front of white boards were grievously misquoting his 55/38/7 statement, Mehrabian said for the record “Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable.”They say, “Everything we’ve ever seen or heard is stored somewhere in our brain and under hypnosis we can remember it.”I say, “On December 10, 2000, Matt Crenson, a science writer for the Associated Press summarized what scientists have proven in countless experiments:”We often imagine our memories faithfully storing everything we do. But there is no mechanism in our heads that stores sensory perceptions as a permanent, unchangeable form. Instead, our minds use a complex system to convert a small percentage of what we see into nothing more than a pattern of connections between nerve cells. Researchers have learned that this system can be fooled. Ask a witness, ‘How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?’ and they will name a much higher speed than if they are asked, ‘How fast were the cars going when they made contact?'”They say, “Okay, now it’s your turn to name the scientist who did the research. And please, for the love of God, don’t pretend to quote Dr. Albert Mehrabian.”I say, “Yes, Matt Crenson failed to identify the unnamed ‘researchers’ he was quoting, but I immediately recognized the study as a Loftus & Palmer experiment reported by Dr. Alan Baddeley in his 1999 book, Essentials of Human Memory. In that experiment, groups of people were asked to watch the video of a collision between two automobiles. Viewers who were asked, ‘How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?’ gave answers averaging 40.8 MPH and reported having seen broken glass. But the group who was asked, ‘How fast were the cars going when they made contact?’ reported speeds averaging only 31.8 MPH and remembered no broken glass, even though both groups had just watched the same video.”They say, “But it’s been proven that we remember more of what we see than what we hear.”I say, “Would you be willing to trust the opinion of Professor Steven Pinker whose research on vision, language, and social relations was awarded prizes from the National Academy of Sciences, the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and the American Psychological Association? Would you believe Pinker? He’s also received eight honorary doctorates, won several teaching awards at MIT and Harvard as well as numerous prizes for his books The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and The Better Angels of Our Nature. Prospect magazine listed Pinker among ‘The World’s Top 100 Public Intellectuals,’ Foreign Policy named him in their ‘100 Global Thinkers,’ and Time magazine put him on their list of ‘The 100 Most Influential People in the World Today.’ Would you be willing to trust the opinion of Steven Pinker?”They say, “I don’t care what he says and I don’t care what you say, either. I’ve seen the pie charts. I know what I believe. “I say, “Yeah, I love you, too.”Roy H. Williams

I had an interesting moment a couple of weeks ago.A client came to Austin for his annual marketing retreat and brought his top lieutenants with him. His company has a couple of hundred franchisees that do about a quarter-billion dollars a year.Everyone was anxious to hear my marketing strategy for 2016.“I need you to watch carefully and say nothing for the next 10 minutes,” I told them. “When I’m done presenting my little show you can ask questions, though I suspect I will have answered them all.”“We’re scheduled to be here for 2 days,” my client said, “and you really think you can answer all our questions in just 10 minutes?”I put a finger across my lips and turned off the lights. My presentation appeared on the big TV on the wall. Ten minutes later, my client said with big eyes, “How did you know my three favorite movies? Those characters were my idols when I was a kid.”“You’ve been emulating them your whole life,” I answered. “It’s what attracts people to you and your companies. My plan for next year is simply to accelerate what I’ve been doing in your ads since the day I met you, but kick it up to a higher level.” After I gave them a few examples of what this would look and sound like and told them what I expected the impact to be, they had no other questions.His lifelong guiding characters were Dr. Dolittle, Willie Wonka and Peter Pan. The female version of this character would be Mary Poppins, of course. They don’t live in a magical world, but magic follows them wherever they go. They bring the magic with them.I decided to do it again last Friday. A woman you’ve seen many times on television arranged for Princess Pennie and me to give her a private tour of the campus before she and her associates walked into the Toad and Ostrich pub to hang out with Daniel Whittington and whoever else showed up that day.You never know who’s going to be at the Toad on a Friday afternoon at four. Sometimes it’s 3 people. Sometimes it’s 20. But the only person who showed up that day was our friend, Gene Naftulyev. At the end of the evening our celebrity guest asked one of her associates to snap a photo of her with Gene. She put her chin on his shoulder so they would be cheek to cheek as she wrapped her arms around his chest. Startled, Gene beamed like a five year-old on Christmas morning. Click.I’m fairly certain he’ll have that photo printed in poster size and mail a copy to all his friends.During our walk around campus she spoke of the challenges she faces in forming a clearly differentiated identity for a new brand she has launched.I pointed out that her public persona was merely the never-ending echo of a certain iconic character the public has always loved. My suggestion was that she allow her brand identity to be guided by the values and quirks of that character.Weirdly, she had never consciously realized the story she’s been echoing for years. You could see the gears beginning to spin behind her eyes. “Oh my God,” she exclaimed, “This solves everything.” A highly memorable and sharply differentiated brand flashed into existence in a twinkling.“Oh my God, this solves everything.”She has always been the science nerd that everyone sees as “just one of the guys” until she takes off her ugly glasses, shakes her head, a button pops open at the top of her blouse and BOOM, she’s a bombshell.Dual identity: science nerd and sex goddess. We’ve seen this character a thousand times and we always love her because she’s the worthy but unnoticed underdog who finally gets what she wants and deserves.Can you see how the guiding hand of this identity – along with a couple of other characteristics I opted not to tell you about – could help to refine the style and voice of a brand?Everyone has a story.I don’t mean a story about them, but a story that shapes them. A story that sits in a canvas sling chair, offstage, invisible, affecting all their choices and actions each day like the director of a movie.Who sits in your canvas sling chair? What story do you echo without knowing it?I talk a lot about my own stories: Don Quixote, the Wise Men who followed a star, A Message to Garcia, The Old Man and the Sea, Henry V at Agincourt. What few people realize is that each of these stories revolves around a single theme: unconditional commitment to an objective no one else can see.Dulcinea was important to no one but Quixote.The star of Bethlehem was meaningless to everyone except the wise men.Garcia set out to find a General whose location no one knew.The old man kept fishing although he had caught nothing for 84 days.Henry V believed in his ragtag band of men when everyone else thought they were bums.Examine your own favorite characters.See what they have in common.Prepare to be impressed with what you learn about yourself.And if you are wise,you will allow that characterto bring all the facets of your companyinto alignment.Roy H. Williams

You own a business.You believe in your company.You believe you deliver a better experience than your competitors.Is this confidence based on your intentions, your goals, your beliefs, your values and your personal commitment to your customer’s happiness?It is? Uh-oh.Judging yourself by your intentions isn’t a danger among friends, because a friend knows your heart even when your actions are inappropriate.But it is a real and present danger in business.We judge ourselves by our intentions but others judge us by our actions.What happens when a prospective customer makes contact with your company? Do they meet your best employee on that employee’s best day? Of course not. They meet your average employee on an average day. Or worse, they meet a below-average employee on a below-average day.And then you are confused by those negative reviews.Sad, isn’t it? Your intentions and motivations and personal commitments never quite made it to the party.Wouldn’t it be great if your employees were consistently delivering the experience you’ve always believed in?I want to help you make that happen.The process is called “message integration.”The key is to take what’s in your heart – your highest and brightest and best intentions – and bury those intentions deep in the hearts of your employees.Frances Frei, that most beloved of Harvard Business School professors, says,You can’t change a person’s performance until you first change their beliefs.”Simon Sinek, in the most popular of all TED talks, says,People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe. In fact, people will do things that they believe.”Simon Sinek agrees with Frances Frei and I agree with both of them. I’ll bet you do, too. Yet most of the people I’ve met who adored that Simon Sinek TED talk did exactly the wrong thing at the end of those magical 18 minutes. They drew concentric circles, pointed to the middle one and said, “We’ve got to start with Why.”And each of these fine people walked away from that exercise with something that felt like a fuzzy and ambiguous “unique selling proposition” or worse, a high-tone mission statement filled with words like “honesty,” “integrity,” and “value.”Right now I’m in the middle of making a video detailing HOW to implement the advice of Frances Frei and Simon Sinek. It’s a delightfully simple and effective technique and I’ve decided I want you to have it.I’ve also decided I don’t want to be perceived as hanging onto the coattails of Francis Frei and Simon Sinek, so I’m not going to make my video public. Instead, I’ll be sending a private link to all my Wizard of Ads partners and then to all my clients and then to all the alumni of Wizard Academy. Then I’m sending it to everyone who has ever made a cash donation – no matter how small – to our school.I’m going to request the Wizard Academy donor list from Vice Chancellor Whittington on Friday afternoon, October 15. And then I’ll be sending that private link. (You still have time to get your name on the list.)It really is a marvelous technique. Chances are, you’ll replace all the content on your About Us page with the results of this exercise.And that will be the smallest and least important of its uses.Roy H. Williams

Magenta.What color is that?It isn’t violet and it isn’t purple.And why isn’t it in the rainbow?Doesn’t the rainbow contain the whole color spectrum?The short answer is that magenta doesn’t actually exist. (Well, none of the colors actually exist, but we’ll get to that in a little bit. Magenta doesn’t exist in an additional way. Now that’s real commitment to not existing.)Your eyes contain three kinds of cone cells whose job is to detect certain wavelengths of light. One of these sees only blue. Another sees only green. The third sees only red. There are no cone cells to see yellow, purple, orange or any of the other colors.AMix any two colors on the spectrum and you get the color in between. (Keep in mind that we’re mixing light waves, not paints, inks or dyes.)Mix green light and blue light and you get cyan, the color in between.Mix red light and green light and you get yellow. Again, the color in between. Here’s what’s happening: the wavelength of yellow light is close to green and it’s also close to red, so both your “green” and your “red” cones send a partial signal to your wonderful, amazing brain. It somehow realizes these lightwaves are in between the wavelengths of red and green and BINGO! You see yellow.Now take a look at the extreme ends of the spectrum where the shortest wavelengths are blue and the longest are red. If your blue cones are sending a partial signal and your red cones are sending a partial signal, this should mean you’re seeing the color in between blue and red, right? But green is between blue and red! And the eye has dedicated cones for seeing green!What your brain “sees” in this instance is magenta, a completely imaginary color. If your brain had a name for magenta, it would probably be “the absence of green.”Color is a language, a mystery beyond words.Mystery. There’s an interesting word for you. The ancient Greeks had two different words for mystery. Kruptos (kroop-tos’) was a regular mystery, a secret that could be uncovered. But musterion (moos-tay’-ree-on) was a deep mystery, a secret of kings, a secret into which one had to be initiated.Science can reveal kruptos, but musterion lies beyond its boundaries.That statement chafes a little doesn’t it? We of the 21st century prefer to believe that what we have seen, heard, tasted, touched or smelled is “real,” and what cannot be detected through our senses is imaginary.That’s really funny. Because most of what our senses detect is – by definition – imaginary. It exists only in our minds.I’m not being metaphysical. I’m speaking factually of objective reality.Dr. Jorge Martins de Oliveira, a neurologist, says,Our perception does not identify the outside world as it really is, but the way that we are allowed to recognize it, as a consequence of transformations performed by our senses.We experience electromagnetic waves, not as waves, but as images and colors.We experience vibrating objects, not as vibrations, but as sounds.We experience chemical compounds dissolved in air or water, not as chemicals, but as specific smells and tastes.Colors, sounds, smells and tastes are products of our minds, built from sensory experiences. They do not exist, as such, outside our brain. Actually, the universe is colorless, odorless, insipid and silent.”Vibrations are real but sound is imaginary. It exists only in our mind.Electromagnetic waves are real but color is imaginary.Chemicals are real but smells and tastes are imaginary.Wrap your head around that and you will escape the Matrix.Welcome to the real world, Neo.You have now been initiated into the musterion.Roy H. Williams

“I could’ve bought that building 5 years ago for $70,000. It’s worth half a million now.”“I could’ve been his partner in that business. He’s worth a fortune now.”“I could’ve…”This went on all day.My host believed I would be impressed that he was “connected” and “in the know,” but the only thing I was hearing was his sad admission, “I don’t know when to pounce.”He had no sense of Kairos (KYE-ross.) All this happened 20 years ago. (Chronos)Kairos and Chronos are ancient Greek words for two different kinds of time.Chronos is sequential, linear time. The time of stopwatches, clocks and calendars. The time of step-by-step thinking and planning. The time of Newtonian physics.Kairos is the fullness of time, the perfect moment for action. That action might be a kiss, a word of encouragement, a leap of faith or the perfect storm. Kairos is when it all comes together. Kairos is the witching hour. It demands poise and intuition and responsiveness.Chronos is quantitative, a sequence of moments, step-by-step.Kairos is qualitative, the appointed time, “now or never.”If you see Kairos in hindsight, you’re qualified to write blog posts, news stories, diary entries and history books. But if you want to break away from the pack and be successful, you must not only witness Kairos, but grab hold of it with both hands and feet and ride it to where it will take you.Knowing how to pounce is a mechanical action that is easily learned. Knowing when to pounce requires that you be attuned to Kairos, the moment of opportunity.If making a fortune was a step-by-step process, we’d all be rich. But it takes more than Chronos to rise above your circumstances. Success requires a sense of Kairos, knowing when to pounce.And then it takes the courage.Go get’em, tiger.Roy H. Williams

Psychologist Carl Jung saw life as a journey on water.Above the waterline is the conscious mind, this place of sunshine and scenery that you and I call home.Below the waterline is the unconscious, a wet and moonlit world of symbols and meanings and metaphors on which we float like shadows along the upper edge of time, observing myriad mysteries in wordless wonder.Consciousness is a raft that floats on the depths of the unconscious like Huckleberry Finn on the Mississippi.Consciousness creates logic to justify what your unconscious has already decided.Voices whisper to you from the deep.Sometimes the voice is the beagle of Intuition, urging you with wiggles and whimpers to follow and see what you should see.Other times the voices are Pain and Regret, reminding you not to do what you did before. Voices of Past Experience urge you to speed up or slow down or turn around.And the soft voice of Good encourages you to make a difference.If you live entirely in the moment and never hear these voices, I fear you are living an unexamined life.I’m not saying that you should always do what they whisper! Sometimes the voice will be Superstition, that halfwit twin of Intuition. And the hissing voice of Prejudice ssslithers like a snake and must be ssstrongly resisted when it ssspeaks.The unconscious speaks to the conscious mind as a court jester to a medieval king, saying what would not be acceptable were it to be said unveiled and openly.The medieval jester was never a fool, but a trusted counselor who spoke uncomfortable things as though he were joking or telling a story.In other words, his messages were encoded.Likewise, the whispers of the unconscious are heard indirectly, through songs and movies and paintings and plays and sculptures and works of fiction.Writers call it subtext. Readers call it “reading between the lines.”Art speaks to the unconscious mind. Every work of art is a message sent to us from the heart of its creator.Deep calls unto deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.” – Psalm 42, verse 7Splashing around in the water of the unconscious is refreshing. You can float on the rhythms and notes and incongruencies of music, dive into the shapes and colors of architecture and interior design, feel the coolness of the shadows and meanings of symbols in photographs and portals and glamours, or experience the moods of postures and contours and positions in artistic sculpture… or dance. For what is ballet if not sculpture in motion?Wizard Academy exists only to help you get where you’re trying to go. We are a school for the imaginative, the courageous and the ambitious.Humans tell stories. In business we tell stories to make the sale. In politics we tell stories to get elected. In private we tell stories to connect with others.In every visit to Wizard Academy, you become a better teller of your story.Some stories are told in the language of mathematics. Other stories are told in the 43 phonemes that are the constituent components of the words we speak. (Did you know the 26 letters in our English alphabet can be combined to make only 43 meaningful sounds and the written word has no meaning until it has been translated into the spoken word it represents?)Mathematics and phonemes are 2 of the 12 Languages of the Mind.The other 10 languages help us to interpret nature and the arts.This year’s Academy Reunion on October 3rd will be a celebration of the arts, overflowing with examples and discussions and revelations of hidden things made plain.You should come.Roy H. Williams