Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

The genius of the human race lies in our ability to attach complex meanings to sounds.But not all of these sounds are words. There is a second, wordless language of pitch, key, tempo, contour, interval and rhythm: music is an auditory fractal, a 3-dimensional map of a chaotic system. (Chaos, in science, is not randomness but precisely the opposite. It’s a level of order and organization that’s beyond our ability to grasp and comprehend.)Whoever controls the music controls the mood of the room.When the message of that first language of sound – words – contradicts the message of the embedded second language of sound – music – our interpretation of the song will be guided by the music more often than by the words because words encoded in music are not interpreted in the same way as when they arise from silence or come piercing through an ocean of background noise.Words are interpreted in the rational, logical, sequential, deductive reasoning hemisphere of your brain – the left hemisphere* – while complex patterns of pitch, key, tempo, contour, interval and rhythm are interpreted in the pattern-recognition hemisphere of your brain, the non-judgmental right.**The right hemisphere makes no judgments, has no morals and doesn’t know the difference between fact and fiction. This is perhaps why, in the words of Voltaire, “Anything too stupid to be spoken is sung.” The right hemisphere gives us the ability to enjoy fiction books and movies we know to be untrue. The right hemisphere is why we’re happy to bellow song lyrics at the tops of our lungs without needing to understand what we’re singing.These are some of the things you’ll learn in the opening session of the communications workshop we call Magical Worlds.Daniel Whittington was a touring musician for 18 years prior to becoming vice-chancellor at Wizard Academy. After participating in the Magical Worlds workshop a couple of times he said, “Every musician on earth should take this class.” The next day he employed TRIZ principle 13 (Turn it upside-down, do it backwards,) and TRIZ principle 32 (Change the color) as he played a melancholy version of a perky, pop mega-hit from 1980, Celebration by Kool & The Gang. Then he applied a similar set of inversion principles to I Just Want to Celebrate, another big, happy-energy song from Rare Earth, circa 1971.I said, “Let’s do a whole album of those.”Daniel spent the next several months writing music, recruiting talent, and recording that album. And then he shifted into planning, coordinating and delivering the April concert we held in Tuscan Hall on the campus of Wizard Academy.The album is called Bring the Dark. You’re going to be impressed.You can download the studio version of the album and then watch the live concert video at DanielWhittington.com. Indiana Beagle is going to show a few highlights from that video in today’s rabbit hole.One of our objectives in this project was to demonstrate the attractive power of highly divergent elements brought into reconciliation through the use of third gravitating bodies. The secret, as every cognoscenti knows, is to add something that absolutely doesn’t belong, and then make it fit perfectly. WHAM! Surprise becomes delight. This is incredibly attractive to the unconscious mind but it often goes undetected by the conscious mind because when a highly divergent element fits, it feels as though it belongs.Here’s an example from the concert: You’re listening to a countrypolitan version of Staying Alive by the BeeGees when you hear the signature harmonica passage from Neil Young’s Heart of Gold and then a rap artist pops in and raps awhile and the whole thing is integrated so seamlessly that it never occurs to you that any of this is unusual in any way.How about Abba’s perky Take a Chance on Me played with drunken Bourbon Street trumpet accents and an agonized Bonnie Raitt-style guitar solo? It doesn’t sound wrong at all.How about Girl From Ipanema, the definitive Bossa Nova song, sung as a male/female call-and-response duet without a Bossa Nova rhythm? You’ll hear it and think it’s always been that way.Highly divergent elements reconciled through the use of a third gravitating body are the unwavering signature of high-interest communication. Ask any Cognoscenti of Magical Worlds.Now enjoy the album and concert video at DanielWhittington.com while we plan another fun album and an even bigger concert for next year.You’re coming, right?Roy H. Williams

A Partial Dictionary of the CognoscentiJune 8, 2015ListenAAngle – the direction from which a writer, speaker, photographer or illustrator approaches their chosen subject. Some angles are more interesting than others.Brandable Chunks – memorable phrases that become associated with a brand.Innovation Model – a proven template that allows you to generate a superior result.Business Topology – a technique used for the discovery of innovation models that have been proven, tested and refined in a business category other than your own.Defining Characteristics – distinctive triggers of identification.Chaos – a level of order and organization that exceeds the capacity of the human mind.Third Gravitating Body – a reliable disruptor of predictability that allows you to gain and hold human attention.Daguerre – an academic style of communication that is accurate, but tedious.Dick and Jane – an unintelligent style of communication that employs predictable clichés.FMI – First Mental Image; the first vivid idea presented in an ad, a speech or a presentation, or the first thing noticed in a work of art.LMI – Last Mental Image; the closing thought in an ad, a speech or a presentation; the final feeling or impression communicated by a work of art.Full Circle – when the Last Mental Image in an ad, a speech or a presentation revisits the First Mental Image. “Going Full Circle” creates an elegant sense of closure.Fractal – a kaleidoscope-like image created as the result of mapping a chaotic system.Frameline Magnetism – an effect that is created when an image is extended – in the imagination – beyond what is revealed.Frank – a style of communication noted for (1) approaching its subject from an interesting angle, (2) brevity and clarity (3) frameline magnetism, (4) a highly restrained use of adjectives. (Named after the photographer Robert Frank.)Frosting – to replace common words and phrases with less common, more colorful ones. (Named after the poet Robert Frost.)Frosted Frank – A style of writing marked by the characteristics of Frank, but with the added color and surprise of Frosting.Free the Beagle! – unleash your intuition! take a chance!Meter – a rhythm constructed from the stressed and unstressed syllables of words. Meter makes language more easily remembered by making it musical.EXAMPLE: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.”   – George Gordon, Lord Byronfrom The Destruction of SennacheribMonet – an impressionistic style of communication marked by subjective feelings and opinions rather than objective, clear facts.Neapolitan – a transitionary device that creates a longing for closure.Portal – an auditory or visual trigger that helps a reader, listener or viewer move from one feeling or state of consciousness to another feeling or state of consciousness.Put It Under Water – delete information that is already known to – or can easily be figured out by – the reader, listener or viewer. (Essentially, “putting it under water” is frameline magnetism applied to words, calling upon the imagination to fill in what was left out by the writer, speaker or actor.)Random Entry – a technique used in Chaotic Ad Writing in which a randomly chosen, high impact sentence is used as the opening sentence of an ad.Purple Coffee – red wine that is consumed before noon.Seussing – to create your own words in the manner of Dr. Seuss.Schema – a pre-existing belief system that helps humans organize and interpret their experiences. Your schema allows you to take shortcuts in interpreting information, but it can also cause you to exclude pertinent information when it doesn’t conform to your previously held beliefs.Surprising Broca – to gain attention by introducing something that is new, surprising or different.TLB – Twitchy Little Bastard; a person who is counterproductively anxious for results.Turtles All The Way Down – Extremely very incredibly excellent.Verb Avalanche – a style of writing that slaps the cheek of the imagination and jerks open the eyes of the mind by firing rocket-like verbs to explode in the darkness and brighten the horizon. You leap out of the way of a mental image plummeting toward you only to find that another is hurtling at your face. Adrenaline surging, heart pounding, knees flying, lungs gasping, you’re having a wonderful time.These are just a few of the tools the cognoscenti have at their fingertips to turn backwards into forwards and failure into success.Come to Wizard Academy. We’ll give you these tools, teach you to use them, and then watch with satisfaction as you happily work miracles.When you can work miracles, people smile when they see you.And then they give you money.Roy H. Williams

The left side of your brain wants perfect symmetry, but in the words of Francis Bacon 400 years ago,There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”In chaos theory, this “strangeness in the proportion” is called the strange attractor and it triggers a level of organization so vast the human mind cannot contain it. (Chaos, in science, does not mean randomness but precisely the opposite.)Perfect symmetry is predictable. Consequently, it has no style.Randomness never resolves into meaning. Consequently, it makes no statement.Beauty – meaningful style – is essentially off-balance symmetry: something is wrong, but somehow it fits.Flaws, mistakes, anomalies, gaps and disturbances are the essential elements of style.Look for a moment at the image at the top of this page. There are several things wrong with it, but each of these is unconsciously – or consciously – reconciled in your mind.These are a few of the wrong or off-balance things:1. The upper left triangle is slightly higher than the one on the right.2. The capital letter A in Academy lacks a crossbar. It also drops slightly below the line of the other letters.3. The left leg of the W in wizard is too long.4. There is a single star in the sky.But then your mind begins to see how these mistakes fit a bigger pattern.1. The negative space between the triangles forms an implied W whose left leg is slightly longer than the one on the right, a perfect echo of the W in wizard.2. The center peak of this negative space W is also the top of the letter A, whose legs extend in the imagination to a point slightly below the line on which the W sits. This echos the placement of the A in Academy.3. The missing crossbar in the letter A prompts you to see how it echos the implied A in the negative space. (If the A in Academy had a crossbar, we would need to see that crossbar as a black line running through the middle of the lower white triangle.) Consequently, we see in our minds a black W A implied by the triangles.4. In the minds of the cognoscenti of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop, the three out-of-balance triangles immediately imply “third gravitating bodies,” our trigger for chaos. The fact that the cognoscenti will notice this immediately when other people don’t will be something of a secret handshake among them.5. The three triangles are arranged in the classic position of the three wise men (wise-ards) who followed a star to Bethlehem 2000 years ago.6. This star also recalls our hero Don Quixote who sings the anthem of Wizard Academy,This is my quest: to follow that star,no matter how hopeless, no matter how far…”– The Impossible Dream, from Man of La ManchaThe three images of Indiana Beagle aren’t part of the Wizard Academy logo. Indy is the mascot of the Monday Morning Memo and is not an official icon of the Academy. He just dressed up as Goals, Frank-sent-this and Mirth to help illustrate the “wise men” connection.If you’ve ever attended a class at Wizard Academy, you understand. The crown and the rose represent the goals you bring with you. The cowboy hat and the sword represent the marvelous things you receive from your fellow students during mealtimes, at breaks, and in the evenings after classes. The propeller beanie represents the quirky nerd science and humor that is part of every class.*I’m sorry if I have explained the obvious. It wasn’t my intention to be tedious. My goal was merely to encourage you not to be afraid of imperfections.Flaws – presented with confidence and restraint – are the essence of style.Be flawed.Have style.Roy H. WilliamsPS – But don’t take a good thing too far. In the words of our audio producer, Dave Nevland, “There’s a fine line between ‘lack of skill’ and ‘personal style.’” Competence is important. Restraint is the key.

I’ve met people who say absolute truth does not exist, that all truth is subjective and exists like beauty in the eye of the beholder.I believe those people are sadly misguided.Absolute truth absolutely exists. If you don’t believe me, just ask me again because I am absolutely certain.But we’re not talking about absolute truth today.We’re talking about his very beautiful sister, personal truth.Can you share your perceptions with someone else?Can you cause them to feel a little of what you feel?Can you make them see in their mind what you see in yours?Do you have a contagious sort of confidence?Congratulations. You are an artist, a persuader.Every artist is a salesman and every salesman is an artist.*The left hemispheres of our brains are wired for empirical, scientific, objective reality: absolute truth.The right hemispheres of our brains are sponges thirsty for impressions, symbols, metaphors, connections and patterns. These patterns can be auditory, visual or behavioral.Auditory patterns are called music.Visual patterns are called art.Behavioral patterns are called personality.The more complex the pattern, the deeper the beauty.The goal of every artist – no matter their field of art – is to give us a glimpse of personal truth, the beautiful sister of absolute truth.Personal Truth is also known as Perceptual Reality and like Don Quixote’s Dulcinea, she lives in your heart and mind. Jory MacKay calls her “referential meaning.”Embodied meaning is intrinsic—it’s inherently inside something and doesn’t rely on our emotions or experiences to have meaning. Referential meaning is dependent on the network of associations activated when we are exposed to the stimulus. In other words, we create meaning through what we think of when we see it.”A persuasive message – an advertisement – can be crafted from the absolute truth of facts or the personal truth of values and the self-image we see reflected in them.I once knew an attorney who put it this way:When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the truth is on your side, argue the truth. When the law is on your side, argue the law. When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”In other words, when the facts are not on your side, appeal to self image, personal truth, subjective reality: values.Last week, Indiana Beagle asked for your opinion of six different images of himself. You could give each logo from one to five stars and add comments, if you wished. What strong opinions you have about him! Reading those comments, Indy was delighted. I’ve known Indiana Beagle for many years but I had never before seen him prance.Each of the six logos had its advocates who proclaimed it to be the obvious only choice, and each of the six had its detractors who said it was a criminal mischaracterization.Each of you sees Indy differently because each of you brings a different set of values to the party. Indy is merely a trigger. “Referential meaning is dependent on the network of associations activated when we are exposed to the stimulus. In other words, we create meaning through what we think of when we see it.”John Steinbeck said the same thing was true in storytelling.A story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure.”Speaking to values instead of facts is one of the more complex methods of indirect targeting in ad writing. We’ll reveal all the simpler methods in August when the Wizard of Ads Partners unveils their new 1-day seminar on Indirect Targeting.It may even become a class at Wizard Academy.Interested? Shoot Andrew@WizardOfAds.com an email and he’ll keep you updated.One last thing: our plan all along was to purchase all the logos from all the artists and rotate them with every visit to MondayMorningMemo.com.Indy is exactly like you: he is much too big to be contained in a single image.Roy H. Williams

In 1738, Alexander Pope gave a dog to Frederick, Prince of Wales.Engraved on the dog’s collar were these words:“I am his Highness’ dog at Kew;Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?”Alexander Pope hitched his wagon to Prince Frederick, a rising star.If you’ve seen the Masterpiece Theater television series, Wolf Hall, you’ll remember a similar conversation between Thomas Cromwell and his wife, Liz, as he explains why he has chosen to work for Cardinal Wolsey:You know what they say in Italy? ‘Il principe bisogna sceglierlo… You have to pick your prince.'”Later, Cromwell says to Rafe, his right-hand man,The question is, have you picked your prince? Because that is what you do, you choose him and you know what he is. And then, when you have chosen, you say yes to him — ‘yes, that is possible, yes, that can be done.'”Anyone that has ever risen through the ranks knows these things.But this is America, where each of us wants to be his own dog, so we contrive new and different names for the princes we serve during every phase of our lives:A child’s prince is called a role model.An athlete’s prince is called a coach.An employee’s prince is called a manager.A businessperson’s prince is called a mentor.An actor’s prince is called a director.A director’s prince is called a producer.A producer’s prince is called an investor.An ad writer’s prince is called a client.There is no end to the chain of princes.Make no mistake, you have chosen a prince. In fact, you have chosen more than one.What? You still believe that you are free and independent, without alliances and the obligations that come with them? I hope for your own sake this is not true.The dog that is its ownis a strayand has no home.Each of us is stronger when we are bound to others.Dogs are known for their ability to bind themselves to others. This instinctive loyalty allows them to form powerful alliances against animals that are much faster and stronger than they.Solomon spoke of the power of such alliances in Ecclesiastes, chapter 4.Two people can accomplish more than twice as much as one; they get a better return for their labor. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But people who are alone when they fall are in real trouble. And on a cold night, two under the same blanket can gain warmth from each other. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.”My friend Roy Laughlin is known for his miraculous ability to do things in business that can’t be done. Years ago, I asked him his secret.When I was a boy in elementary school, my grandfather pulled me aside one day and said, ‘Roy, the outcome of the game is determined the moment the captains pick sides. Pay attention to your playmates and you’ll always know, ‘If I can get him and him and her, we can win this thing.’ Know who you need on your team and figure out how to get them on your side. This is the secret of success. Never listen to anyone who says differently.'”In other words, you must pick your princes, the rising stars to which you will hitch your wagon.And they, in turn, will hitch their wagons to you.Roy H. Williams

Say what people expect you to say.Do what people expect you to do.They will be bored, I promise you.Predictability is the essence of cliché.Surprise is the foundation of delight. Without an element of surprise, there can be no delight.But irrelevant surprise is randomness, the essence of confusion.To gain and hold attention, you must do or say something unexpected, but relevant. This is the foundation of every art.When the surprising element – the thing that doesn’t belong – unexpectedly and miraculously and perfectly fits, surprise resolves into understanding. Delight will leap from the eyes. You’ll see it dancing at the corners of the mouth.Don’t be tedious. Be delightful.Before you read any further, I’d like you to go back to the beginning and read down to here again. When you’ve read these eight opening paragraphs three consecutive times, you’ll be ready to continue reading further.You thought you could just keep reading and not get caught? Go back and do what I told you.Sheesh.Magicians call it misdirection – sleight of hand – but what they’re really doing is surprising you again and again and each time they do, it’s delightful.The magician that bores you is the one whose trick is predictable.A comedian is no different, really. The punch line you don’t see coming – but that fits perfectly when delivered – makes you gasp for breath laughing and feel the lightheaded joy of youth.When the punch line is predictable, we moan.I learned all this from Robert Frost.We never met.He died when I was 5 years old, but Robert left me a lot of poems to read and in each one he took me to a place I didn’t see coming. When Paul Harvey told me the rest of the story it deepened my skill to a more frightening level.Robert and Paul taught me how to move from surprise to understanding to delight.Surprise that resolves into understanding always looks like magic.If you can insert surprise and delight into a message for a business, you are a Wizard of Ads.Can you?You can?Excellent. Now all you need to do is practice each day and build a reputation and soon you’ll be earning more than a million dollars a year.I’m not exaggerating or trying to be colorful. Later this morning – at 11AM Central Time to be exact – I’m going to explain How to Make a Ton of Money in Advertising in 10 Not-Easy Steps during the opening few minutes of my monthly webcast. (Monday, May 11, 2015)You trust me to help you each week without trying to get in your pocket. That’s why you give me these few minutes. So I’m going to ask Sean Taylor to video the opening section of today’s webcast and post it online for you so that you can view it for free. If you’d like to see me explain those 10 Not-Easy Steps, just send your email address to my Wizard of Ads partner Andrew@WizardOfAds.com and he’ll send you a link to the video as soon as we have it posted.If – after you watch the video – you think you might have what it takes to become a Wizard of Ads partner, just let Andrew know and we’ll set aside a day to talk with you about it in Austin.I don’t care that you didn’t study advertising in college. I didn’t either. In fact, I didn’t even go.But people don’t seem to care about that when you’re helping them make a lot of money.Email Andrew.Let’s start this thing up.Roy H. Williams

Throughout the presidency of her husband, Martha Washington hosted a weekly reception each Friday evening for anyone who would like to attend. At these gatherings, men and women from the local community would mingle with Members of Congress and visiting dignitaries at the presidential mansion where they would enjoy refreshments and talk.Martha didn’t do this because she loved to entertain. She did it to encourage people, brighten people, connect people.One hundred years later, Stéphane Mallarmé would open his modest home each Tuesday night to the literary and artistic misfits of Paris. Among the writers who gathered there each week were Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, André Gide, Paul Valéry, Paul Verlaine and Rainer Maria Rilke.What conversations they had! Arthur Schopenhauer was likely talking about these Tuesday nights when he wrote, “The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.”Debussy named Stéphane Mallarmé as his inspiration for The Afternoon of a Faun and Ravel wrote a mystical piece of music, Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé dedicated to the memory of his Tuesday night host. The visual artists who mingled with those writers and musicians on Tuesday nights were Manet, Degas, Gaugin, Whistler, Renoir, Edvard Munch and Auguste Rodin. The combined works of these artists today are worth – quite literally – many billions of dollars.These men did not get together because they were exceptional.They became exceptional because they got together.*In the spirit of Martha Washington and Stéphane Mallarmé, Wizard Academy launched just such a weekly gathering one year ago.You should start one, too.If ever you’re in Austin on a Friday afternoon, we gather at 4PM at the Toad and Ostrich, the private pub on the campus of Wizard Academy. Just climb the tower fire escape to the quarterdeck and go through the door on your left.We go home to our families at 5:30.These are the rules of our gathering:If you talk about business or politics, we throw you out.Although the topic of conversation may wander like a butterfly in springtime, we have a single conversation with everyone participating. No side conversations, please.Daniel Whittington is our host at the Toad and Ostrich, our Martha Washington, our Stéphane Mallarmé. While you’re here, you might even learn why we call him “Brittington.”Be prepared to laugh.Be prepared to sing.Be prepared to live.Do this in your town, too.Roy H. Williams

When Glenn Gould retired from playing the great concert halls of the world, he climbed aboard a Canadian train and rode it north to the end of the line. During this journey, Glenn recorded the conversations of his fellow passengers and mixed them into a strangely compelling audio presentation called The Idea of North (1967). It was the first installment in his Solitude Trilogy.Solitude is when you push the world away.Isolation is when the world pushes you away.A simple reversal of energy is all that separates the two.Energy must always have a direction. Glenn Gould knew this.Music is energy.Life is energy.Notes in a song can go North or South: up or down.Life has its ups and downs, too.The movement of music West to East – left to right – is tied to the passage of time. So we experience music all in one direction, exactly as we experience life. The speed of music is called its tempo.What is the tempo of your life?The line traced by the rising and falling of the notes as we move left to right is called musical contour: melody.If your emotions could be charted throughout the day, you would see that a day, a month, a season, a life has a melody, too.Does night follow day,or does day follow night,or does the earth just spinaround a ball of light?Evidently, these are the things I think about when I’m on vacation.When I’m not on vacation I think about how to attract customers to your business.I’ll bet you’ll be glad when I get back from vacation, right? I look at what I’ve written so far and think, “It’s good that I don’t keep track of how many people subscribe and unsubscribe, because a Monday Morning Memo like this one is likely to set a new record for losing the largest number of readers in a single day.”That’s as much as I had written when I received an email from Mia Erichson, the woman that caused Jeffrey Eisenberg to abandon Brooklyn.This is what she wrote:For no reason that matters to this discussion, this afternoon I was thinking about The Trivium.The Trivium is a systematic method of critical thinking used to derive factual certainty from information perceived with the traditional five senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.The Trivium – is the lower division of the Seven Thinking ArtsGrammar  – the art of lettersLogic – use and study of valid reasoningRhetoric – the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the capability of writers or speakers to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situationsThe Quadrivium – is the upper division of the Seven Thinking ArtsArithmetic (number)Geometry (number in space)Music (number in time)Astronomy (number in space and time)Mia then went on to describe – rather brilliantly and with details – how the curriculum of Wizard Academy might be organized in a similar way, thereby giving students a clear path of progression toward their goals.Mia’s note was encouraging to me for a variety of reasons:It made my wandering thoughts feel a little less crazy and a lot less irrelevant. (I’d never heard of the Quadrivium, so I Googled it and learned that Plato and Pythagorus and the scholars who followed them thought of medicine and architecture as practical arts, but the Trivium and Quadrivium were the liberal or “thinking” arts. Wow. People have been pondering this idea of mapping things in space and time for more than two thousand years.)It reminded me that Wizard Academy is being built by many hands and minds. Now in its fifteenth year, the Academy is growing increasingly independent of Pennie and me with every passing month. This is a very, very good thing.Mia is the very successful Chief Marketing Officer of a large national company. Her 9 to 5 job is similar to my own and her idle thoughts are just as crazy as my own, so maybe there’s nothing wrong with me after all.Perhaps Pennie and I need to take more vacations.Roy H. Williams

You’re twelve.Everyone treats you like a kid, but you and I know better, right?You’ve known the difference between boys and girls for a lot longer than anyone suspects. But girls aren’t the mystery you suppose them to be. They’re far more mysterious than that. You’re going to spend the rest of your life trying to figure out just one of them.I remember twelve.You’re about to start getting a lot of advice from people who love you and some of that advice will be pretty good. But you’re also going to be told some things that are absolute crap.You’ll be told the secrets of success are to be smart and to work hard. But that’s not entirely true. The world is full of successful people who rose to the top simply because they overcame their fear and took chances other people weren’t willing to take.Successful people usually fail multiple times before they succeed.If working hard were the way to wealth, men who dig ditches in the heat of summer would be the wealthiest of us all.We’re paid according to the size of the responsibilities we’ve been entrusted to carry.You’ll be given responsibility when you demonstrate that you’re willing to do what other people aren’t willing to do. You’re not going to want to do those things, either. But do them and do a good job. That’s how you gain authority.People will tell you that a single success can cause you to be “set for life” or that a single mistake can “ruin your life.” But success and failure are both temporary conditions.Grown-ups will tell you that you need to go to college to be successful. If you want to become an employee and climb the corporate ladder, college will definitely help you do that. But the downside of college is that it trains you to think like everyone else. If you want to leave your fingerprints on the world you’re going to need to have your own way of thinking.Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions. So never be afraid to experiment. Just make sure you can afford to fail.People will tell you that you need to “find your purpose.” But this would lead you to believe that you have only ONE purpose and that it’s a secret.Piffle and pooh. You don’t need to find a purpose; you need to choose one.You fall in love with a purpose exactly like you fall in love with a girl: by reaching out and touching it each day. When you make daily contact with something, it becomes an important part of your life. You make your mark on it, and it makes its mark on you.You’ll be told that you must plan your work and work your plan. But the winners are those who know how to improvise when things don’t go according to plan.You can choose what you want to do, but you can’t choose the consequences.There’s a big difference between the way things ought to be and the way things really are. If you moan about how things ought to be, you’re a whiner. And the only people who like whiners are other whiners.But if you work to make things better, you’re an activist. If you fling yourself headlong into making things better, you’re a revolutionary. Congratulations, you found a purpose.Grown-ups with good intentions will tell you that you should “enjoy these years of no responsibility, blah, blah, blah.” But grown-ups who have warm and fuzzy memories of the years between twelve and sixteen aren’t remembering those years as well as they think.It’s pretty cool when you can hop into a car and go anywhere you want to go. But after a few years you’ll realize that no place is quite as special as the place you came from. But you can never really go home again because “home” changes just like you do. This is what Heraclitus meant when he said you can’t step into the same river twice.The best advice I can give you is that you should marry your best friend and never let anyone or anything be more important to you than her. If you’ve always got your best friend with you, life is pretty amazing.Hang in there, kid.And remember what I told you.Roy H. WilliamsPS – As Pennie and Indy and I are out outside the U.S. for 2 weeks, the fact that you’re getting this MMMemo at all is a miracle. Our internet here is dial-up slow when it’s working at all. Anyway, there’s a chance you won’t have an audio memo next week, but we’ll move heaven and earth to make sure you get the text version. We haven’t missed one of those since the Monday Morning Memo began in 1994. – RHW

This is an ad you’ll be hearing soon for the world’s fastest-growing franchise for in-home elder care:When Peter Pan first appeared in 1904, children didn’t understand the significance of the crocodile that swallowed an alarm clock. But as those children grew older, they realized that time is the ticking crocodile that chases us all. Time… we just can’t outrun it. I’m Cathy Thorpe, president of Nurse Next Door. Let us help you fight the crocodile. You can live in your OWN home and get all the help you need. It’s what we do… (two second pause) because we care. Nurse Next Door dotcom.”“Young boys should never be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older. And then before you know it, they’re grown.”– Johnny Depp playing J.M. Barrie in a movie called Finding Neverland.Have you accomplished things that other people said you could never do?Welcome to Neverland. You’re obviously one of the Lost Boys.The Lost Boys are risk-takers who rise above their circumstances, constantly dodging the Crocodile of Time, narrowly escaping the Bear Trap of Tradition, zigzagging away from competitors and fools, always happy, always helping, forever embracing that moment called Now.It is a marvelous tribe. When they get together and tell stories it’s like summer camp for grown ups. So they should have a tree house, right?On the first page of today’s rabbit hole, Indiana Beagle is showing off Marley Porter’s architectural rendering of The House of the Lost Boys – soon to be Wizard Academy’s third student mansion – three interconnected towers facing Chapel Dulcinea from directly across the valley of Engelbrecht. Each of those towers will have two rooms, raising our total number of on-campus rooms to twenty-four.One of the reasons they’re called the Lost Boys is because they’re invisible; you can’t find them.The House of the Lost Boys is being funded by a secret society of men and women who are donating $15,000 each toward the cost of construction. In return, they will attend a special 2-day event on the campus of Wizard Academy each year for the next five years (2015 – 2019) where they will enjoy the edgiest teaching, the most futuristic thinking and the liveliest discussions of the year.The names of the Lost Boys will never be listed. The Lost Boys themselves will be the only people who know the identities of the other members of the tribe. A Lost Boy is free to tell you they’re a member, but they’re forbidden to name anyone else in the group. Cool, huh?The seven Lost Boys who have already stepped forward are an amazingly magnetic group. If I published their names and accomplishments, we’d attract a big crowd of outsiders anxious to donate 15k apiece just to get next to these men and women for a couple of days each year. But we’re not going to let that happen.One of the most deeply embedded traditions of Wizard Academy is that no one tries to do business while they’re here. We’re not a networking organization. We’re a school, a retreat, an island of restoration and stimulation and recovery where interesting and excited people prepare for the next stage of their journey.Yes, we’re a little bit ridiculous.Okay, maybe more than a little bit. But that’s what keeps us safe from people whose minds are narrow and closed.Can I tell you my biggest fear? I worry that someday the wrong people will gain control of our school and rename it the American Small Business Academy. After all, we already own AmericanSmallBusiness.com, .net and .org and a simple name change would instantly escalate the revenues and authority of this place to a dramatically higher level.But then the magic would be gone, the laughter would stop, and music would no longer fill the air.Thank you for being a little bit ridiculous with me. It makes me feel good to know you’re there.Roy H. Williams