Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Roughly 10 percent of the American population is worried about having enough money to pay the rent and enough food in the pantry to make it until payday. A good day is when their biggest fear is whether or not the car will start and get them to work. This is called living “hand-to-mouth.”I did it for years. Perhaps you’ve done it, too.Another 10 percent of America has these basic needs met but a dysfunctional household – or perhaps a troubled neighborhood – keeps them from feeling safe. These unhappy souls wear the dark handcuffs of fear and dread as they walk silently through what David called, “the valley of the shadow of death.”I don’t pretend to have a solution.At the other end of the spectrum are the 15 percent whose biggest concern is whether or not they’re getting sufficient recognition from the people whose opinions matter to them.And then there are the rest of us, the 65 percent in the middle who are “figuring-it-out-as-we-go.” Usually, our greatest need is that we’re searching for where we belong. Each of us is looking for the mirror tribe who will finally see us and know us and value us and miss us when we are absent.Pennie and I spent the last 15 years building a place for that tribe to meet. These Monday Morning Memos are a sort of homing beacon…Okay, I’m back now. I had to wipe a tear from my cheek as the gushing memory of a friend flooded my mind. I wasn’t thinking of him when I began this piece, but the words “homing beacon” burst the dam of a memory I’ve decided to let flow.More than a dozen years ago I decided to teach a class about unleashing your Intuition. We called it “Free the Beagle.” As is my custom, I opened that class by having each of the 30 students stand up and tell us their names and a little bit about themselves. The last person to stand was a white-haired man sitting in the far corner of the back row.My name’s Keith Miller.” He stopped and his stern gaze swept the room. “As I sat here and listened to you introduce yourselves, I realized that never in my life have I been surrounded by so many weirdos… misfits… mavericks… renegades… rebels and rule breakers.” The room went silent as a tomb. “It’s almost as if the wizard sent out the mating call of the albino monkey and this is the strange group that answered that call.” Then he shouted with happy joy, “And I just can’t tell you what a privilege it is to be counted here among you!” The room exploded with laughter and applause.When I saw how masterfully he had handled the room without telling us anything about himself, I wondered, “Could this be that Keith Miller?”During the first break, I slipped into my library and pulled out a hardback, The Taste of New Wine, a monumental book that sold more than 4 million copies when it was released in 1965. I handed it to Keith privately and said, “Could I convince you to sign that?”His eyes fell and he frowned a little. He had hoped he would not be discovered.I chose not to inquire about the sequence of events that led Keith to seek the shadows of oblivion. That’s one of the markers of our tribe; we don’t hold you accountable for your past. We know you only by the future you’re trying to create. Keith’s enthusiastic involvement in the academy for the next 10 years made it clear he had found a home. He passed away in 2012 at the age of 84.God, I miss him.Each of us needs to know we belong.If you believe traditional wisdom is often more tradition than wisdom…If you can happily embrace a friend whose religious and political views differ wildly from your own…If you want to make a difference…If you want your future to be brighter than your past…If you have the courage to let your choices dictate your actions…There’s a strong possibility that you might be part of The Albino Monkey Tribe of the late Keith Miller.I never again taught that class. Free the Beagle was a one-time thing, although a number of people who were there that day have since told me it was their favorite class of all time.Should we do it again? You can vote Yes by sending an email to Daniel@WizardAcademy.org. To vote No, do nothing. If enough of you want to do it, perhaps he’ll add it to the Wizard Academy schedule for 2015.This isn’t what I planned to write about today, but the memory of Keith swept me away.I know you will forgive me.Because that’s what albino monkeys do.Roy H. Williams

I have a theory about people who succeed: they cheat. And I’m in favor of it.I saw you recoil from that word a little, so I’ll say it more delicately: they’re quick to embrace an unfair advantage.Exceptional marketing gives a business an unfair advantage. Businesspeople who embrace this advantage are usually the ones who succeed.Here’s why I call it “an unfair advantage”: marketing doesn’t improve the product or the service you provide but it can make a customer choose you anyway, even when your competitor is offering a better value.Your competitor’s problem is that he doesn’t know how to win attention and create a memorable impression. He’s expecting his product to speak for itself.Products rarely do that.A strong location gives your business a second unfair advantage.Choosing a location is one of the most important marketing decisions you’ll ever make. A strong location wins attention and creates a memorable impression. A weak location doesn’t do that.Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg spent the past 12 months leading a team of programmers in the development of an online tool that helps you choose the ideal spot for your business. All you have to do is type in an address and the system will instantly evaluate more than 15,000 different metrics for that location, including demographics, psychographics, social signals, traffic patterns, search traffic, area competition and beneficial anchors.The blind tests they ran produced mind-boggling results.The first test involved a restaurant chain who provided the address and sales volume of their strongest location along with the address and sales volume of their weakest location. The IdealSpot software then accurately predicted precisely how all the other locations in the restaurant chain would rank. When Bryan pointed at the results page and said, “the location at this address should do 85% of the volume of the leading store,” the COO looked at his records and said, “that store does exactly 85% of the volume of our leading store. How could you possibly know that?”The brothers did the same thing for several other chains of stores and in every instance, the IdealSpot software accurately predicted what the owners of those stores already knew and were able to confirm.Remember those 15,000 metrics the software is pulling down from Big Data? One of them is “pet ownership,” so it really shouldn’t surprise you that the IdealSpot system was able to accurately predict the performance of every location in a chain of pet supply stores.Technology provides an unfair advantage. Whether or not you choose to embrace that advantage when choosing a location is up to you.When I wrote The Wizard of Ads trilogy more than a decade ago, I included a chapter called, “How to Calculate an Ad Budget.” My formula is unique in that it considers your cost of occupancy (rent) as part of the cost of marketing. Entrepreneur magazine published our formula in February 2004 and it created quite a stir. In my 35 years of experience I’ve never had reason to back away from my statement, “Expensive rent is the cheapest advertising your money can buy.”Make sure you get the most for your money.The IdealSpot website went live just last week. The company is still in its infancy. You’re one of the very first people on earth to know about this new technology.My suggestion is that you take a look at IdealSpot.com and then bookmark the website in your browser. The odds are high that you’re going to bump into someone who really needs to know about this.Choosing a location is a big decision.My advice? Embrace the unfair advantage.Roy H. Williams

Do you sometimes identify with Don Quixote, the self-appointed knight-errant who set out on his horse, Rocinante, along with his friend Sancho Panza on a donkey, to right the world’s wrongs and change the course of history?He was a delusional, but happy old fart.You and I are not the first to identify with him.John Steinbeck saw Don Quixote as a symbol of himself. Thus, he traveled to Spain and La Mancha in 1954 out of a special affinity for the place, and began his journey to rediscover the soul of America in a camper he affectionately christened Rocinante. The fruits of his journey – Operation Windmill as he called it – eventually found expression in Travels with Charley.”– Stephen K. George,  A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia, p. 55Travels with Charley, Steinbeck’s diary of his journey to see America with his dog, was published in 1962. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature later that year.Steinbeck’s 1960 GMC pickup with camper is on display at the Steinbeck center in Salinas, California.I decided that you and I should have our own Rocinante to park beneath the trees along the path to Engelbrecht House.We’ll run electricity to it so that it can be heated and cooled and offer it as a room on campus for any adventurous alumni who wants to travel with Steinbeck and Charley.”Vice-Chancellor Panza, I mean Whittington, agreed with me and we enthusiastically set out to find our truck.As it turns out, most of the 1960 GMC trucks we found online had already been sold, many of them more than a year ago. And the trucks that were available needed vast amounts of restoration. Uh-oh. This was going to be harder than we thought. But we couldn’t give up because a group of Wizard Academy alumni had already donated more than $6,000 toward the effort.Two weeks ago Pennie showed me 17 photographs of what can only be described as a 1-in-300,000,000 unicorn. Seriously, what are the odds that a professional mechanic would buy the same pickup and camper as John Steinbeck – brand new – and then keep it in his garage for more than 50 years?He ran the engine periodically, but drove the truck only once a year on a hunting trip with his son. That truck has only 20,000 original miles. Certified. It looks like it just drove off the showroom floor and it runs like the day it was born. What are the odds of this truck actually existing?I promise I’m not making this up. The old mechanic passed away and his son is selling the truck.Do you want to go along on this adventure?Photos of the proposed truck and camper can be found in the rabbit hole. Just follow Indiana Beagle at the top of this page. A click is all it takes.Three more bits of extremely, very excellent news:(1.) A romantic, Valentine’s Retreat, February 13-14 (Fri-Sat.) Stay on the Wizard Academy campus with your special someone for 2 days and 3 nights. Good food, new friends, and fabulous sessions with our beloved Dr. Richard D. Grant and Chairman of the Board, Jean Backus. This is going to be magical, especially the music, the insights, and the dress-up banquet. Laugh and snuggle and be happy. And with 2,000 bottles of wine in the cellar, I doubt that we’ll run out. Discount Code: Type “alumni” and save 50 percent.(2.)We’ve made big progress on Secrets of the Wizard Academy Campus, the comprehensive, pictorial guidebook we’ve been promising for the past 6 years. It contains backstories and explanations and interpretations of the artistic and architectural symbols of our campus and it’ll be available before the Academy’s 15th anniversary in May. In a couple of weeks we’ll give you a link to the online version-in-progress so you can make sure your name is spelled correctly in all the right places. The story of Rocinante II and the names of Steinbeck’s 100 will also be in that book.(3.) To help complete this pictorial guidebook, Wizard Academy is hosting a 2-day/3 night Photographer’s Round Table, April 8-9.  The price of tuition is that you must donate the photos you take while you’re here. Other than that, it’s free. If you’re a professional photographer or an accomplished amateur and would like to be part of this year’s Round Table, just send an email to Daniel@WizardAcademy.org. Tell us a little about your experience and show us a bit of your work. We can only accept 18 photographers and 6 of those have already been invited, so we can’t make any promises, but it’s definitely worth sending in your application. We’re going to teach you some amazing things and you’re going to demonstrate that you understood by taking photos using those techniques during lab time. Those photos, of course, will be used in our guidebook.Gosh this is a fun place.Here are some other fun classes on the near horizon, including a marvelous half-day course this Friday with Chris Maddock and a 2-day writing course next week with Peter Nevland.Come if you can.Roy H. Williams

Although he lived more than 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci drew pictures of machines that would not be invented for more than 400 years. His paintings of the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and the Vitruvian Man are perhaps the most widely recognized images in the world.WIKIPEDIA says Leonardo “was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest polymaths of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.”“Leonardo da Vinci” is an idea that is larger-than-life in our minds. But when I show you a photograph of the house in which he died, he becomes more of an actual human being.That photo of the house is what I call “a reality hook,” a point of contact that connects the world of abstract imagination to the world of concrete fact.You can buy a print of the Mona Lisa on Amazon.com for less than ten dollars and the image will be identical to the original. But the value of the original is beyond estimation because Leonardo da Vinci actually touched it.An original work of art gives you a point of contact with the artist.An historical artifact gives you a point of contact with a specific moment in time.Understand this, and you understand the heart of every collector.Just as Leonardo da Vinci became more “real” when you saw the house in which he died, he comes into chronological focus when I tell you that Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus and King Henry VIII shared his lifetime. Leonardo becomes gut-wrenchingly real when I tell you that his diaries speak of a “gang of four” that raped him repeatedly when he was a boy.BAM. Reality hook.Stories and descriptions become more believable when you give them context.There are four ways to create reality hooks:Connect to something the reader/listener has already experienced.“Have you ever bought a car and then began seeing cars like yours everywhere you went?”Use terms of description that are specific and highly visual; shapes, colors, and the names of familiar things. “A man pulling radishes pointed my way with a radish.”Include details that can be independently confirmed. These bits that can be confirmed lend credibility to those parts of your story that cannot be confirmed. “There’s a restaurant in Austin at 4th and Colorado called Sullivan’s. It was there that I met Kevin Spacey and Robert Duvall.”Make logical sense. People are quick to believe things that seem correct, even when those things are not true. “If your advertising isn’t working, it’s because you’re reaching the wrong people.”Later this morning (Monday, January 12, 2015 at 11AM CST) I’ll spend the better part of an hour presenting examples of each of the 4 categories of reality hooks and talking about when and how to use them.Reality hooks are the hammer, screwdriver, pliers and duct tape of an ad writer. You can use them to fix practically anything.I really should have told you about today’s webcast a week ago, but it didn’t occur to me.Sorry about that.Here’s how I’ll make it up to you: the next time you come to a class at Wizard Academy, tell Vice-Chancellor Whittington that you’d like to see my examples of reality hooks and we’ll figure out a way to make that happen for you (and anyone else in your class that wants to join you.)2015 is going to be a year unlike any other.Hang on tight.Roy H. Williams

Andy Warhol’s greatest work of art was Andy Warhol. Other artists first make their art and then celebrity comes from it. Andy reversed this. For me the Factory was a place of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, for some of the others it was: from ferment comes art.”– Nat Finkelstein, Andy Warhol: The Factory Years, 1964-1967The son of a Coney Island cab driver, Nat Finkelstein was a Brooklyn boy who entered Andy Warhol’s Art Factory as a photographer in 1964 and remained there as a photojournalist for 3 years. His photographs are famously iconic of the times.In 1966, Finkelstein was taking photos of Andy for a proposed book project when it became obvious that everyone in the room was jockeying to be included in the background of the photographs.Warhol said, “Everyone wants to be famous.”Finkelstein answered, “Yeah, for about fifteen minutes, Andy.”A year later, when Warhol was interviewed for a 1968 exhibition in Stockholm’s Museum of Modern Art, he quipped,“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”The reporter dutifully wrote it down and it was included in the program handed out to attendees of the exhibition.Although he was just repeating a funny line in the hopes of saying something quotable, it would become the most famous thing Andy Warhol ever said.But Andy, you said more than you know. Hundreds of millions of us walk the streets today with little calculators in our pockets the size of 8 cigarettes placed side by side.These pocket calculators also function as televisions that let us watch any TV show or movie anytime we want. They’ll even work in moving cars.Our little calculators also function as movie cameras. We use them to make movies we broadcast to the entire world for free.And it’s also a typewriter – we can use it to type a note.And it’s a telegraph – we can send that note to any group of people in the world and it will instantly appear on their little television screens.And it’s a telephone – we can use it to call anyone on earth, even when they’re not at home.Our little 8-cigarette televisions – movie cameras – typewriters – telephones – are also photography cameras that use no film. These photographs don’t need to be developed so we can send them to anyone, anywhere, instantly.The same device gives us instant access – 24 hours a day – to the collected knowledge of the world. And we can add our own thoughts and photographs and movies to this collected knowledge store anytime we want. Since they travel at the speed of light, it takes only one millionth of a minute to deliver our creations to every person in the world.Andy, the future you described in 1968 has finally arrived, but our 15 minutes of fame is given to us in microbursts of one millionth of a minute.Fifteen million flashes of worldwide fame take quite a while to create.As it turns out, a lifetime.So I’m not sure what, exactly, has changed.Roy H. Williams

You can hope the value of a stock will rise, but when you invest money in that stock, your hope becomes faith. Did you make a foolish commitment?Time will tell.We believe the sun will rise because we’ve seen it rise day after day.It is a repeatable observation.We believe what we have seen.We believe it will rise.Belief is not faith.Belief is rational.Faith is irrational.Belief is based on evidence.Faith is based on hope.This is where it gets tricky.When our hope compels us to action, our faith is made evident.Not just to others, but to ourselves.Without action, our hope is just wishful thinking.Faith is hope that has written its name in the wet cement of time.Faith is that realm where actions speak louder than words.Like I said, this is where it gets tricky.One thousand and twenty years ago – 1095 to be exact – Pope Urban II decided that christians should reclaim all the geography related to the life of Jesus. In 1291, these Crusades were abandoned with the fall of Acre, the last christian stronghold in Israel.You’ll notice that I’m spelling christian with a lower-case c. This is because I believe those actions taken in the name of Christ were not, in fact, sanctioned by him. In essence, the leaders of christianity were signing his name to checks he did not write.Sadly, leaders of movements tend to do this.It would be easy to declare – as many have done – that faith is foolish and evil and the world would be better off without it. Heck, John Lennon’s most popular song, “Imagine,” is that very idea set to music.Imagine there’s no heaven.It’s easy if you try.No hell below us,Above us, only sky.Imagine all the peopleLiving for today.Imagine there’s no countries.It isn’t hard to do.Nothing to kill or die for.And no religion, too.Imagine all the peopleLiving life in peace…”Juergen Todenhoefer is an international journalist who interviewed a leader within ISIS after 300 of their fighters took the Iraqi city of Mosul, even though more than 20,000 Iraqi army soldiers were stationed there when that attack was launched.So you also want to come to Europe?” Todenhoefer asked him.“It is not a question of if we will conquer Europe,” the man said, “just a matter of when that will happen. But it is certain … For us, there is no such thing as borders. There are only front lines. Our expansion will be perpetual … And the Europeans need to know that when we come, it will not be in a nice way. It will be with our weapons. And those who do not convert to Islam or pay the Islamic tax will be killed.”“What about the 150 million Shia, what if they refuse to convert?” Todenhoefer asked.“150 million, 200 million or 500 million, it does not matter to us,” the fighter answered. “We will kill them all.”Have you ever wondered how 2 Christians can read the same Bible and walk away with entirely different understandings of what they have read? Well, the same is true of Moslems and the Koran, I think.John Steinbeck may have been thinking the thoughts of God when he wrote,[The reader of my book] is just like me, no stranger at all. He’ll take from my book what he can bring to it. The dull witted will get dullness and the brilliant may find things in my book I didn’t know were there. And just as he is like me, I hope my book is enough like him so that he may find in it interest and recognition and some beauty as one finds in a friend.”Each of us takes from ancient scripture what we bring to it.Angry persons find an angry god.Demanding persons find a demanding god.Forgiving persons find a forgiving god.Happy persons find a happy god.Peaceful persons find a peaceful god.You will notice that I haven’t suggested an answer to the problem of ISIS aggression. This is because I don’t have one. I’m just saying that faith is not the problem.2015 will be a year of surprises.Remember to celebrate the happy ones.Roy H. Williams

You don’t need to go to college to become successful.What Americans call education is usually just the passing along of traditional wisdom, which, when you think about it, is essentially a deepening of the status quo: conformity, indoctrination, groupthink.When students can imitate their teachers perfectly, we claim they have achieved excellence. But aren’t they just imitating the norm, the average, the standard?If this is excellence, where will we find progress?I’m not the only one who feels this way.Laszlo Bock is the head of people operations at Google.In a conversation with Tom Friedman of The New York Times reported by Max Nisen at Quartz, Bock made a startling series of statements about what Google has learned from studying its own employees:Graduates of top schools often lack “intellectual humility”“They commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s because someone’s an idiot or I didn’t get the resources or the market moved.”People that make it without college are often the most exceptional.“When you look at people who don’t go to school and yet make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people…. What we’ve seen [at Google] is that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, ‘here’s a new fact,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.’”Learning ability is more important than IQSucceeding in academia isn’t always a sign of being able to do a job. Bock says that college can be an “artificial environment” that conditions students for one type of thinking.Want to hear something silly?Professors in American business schools usually have no experience in running a successful business. They’re just repeating what they were told by someone else who was taught it by someone else who learned it from an endless string of bloodless people holding chalk in front of blackboards in drab little rooms.Why do we revere the graduates of these places? It would seem to me that the very definition of mediocrity would be, “a highly developed ability to repeat what you were told.”But you don’t just repeat what you were told. You think for yourself.Mistakes don’t frighten you. You learn from them.The smell of mediocrity does not follow you.You are not average.You have imagination and courage and humility and a marvelous sense of humor.You, my special friend, are a wonderful and valuable brand of crazy.Merry Christmas.Roy H. Williams

The Grand Illusion of AdvertisingDecember 15, 2014ListenAYou own a business.You sell a product or a service.Your growth is limited by one of two things:The right people haven’t heard about you. Because if they had, they would surely be buying from you.The right people have heard about you. They just didn’t care.The grand illusion of advertising – perpetuated by every seller of ads – is that your problem is #1: the right people haven’t heard about you.But the painful truth is probably that the right people heard but didn’t care.Your mind recoils from that a little, doesn’t it?Don’t let it. Good news is on the way.Your problem is that you’ve been trying to find a date for your sister by telling your friends,She’s really pretty in the face.”That qualifier, “in the face,” is a deal-killer. The only way to make it worse would be to add,… and she’s got a really good personality.”Yes, men appreciate pretty faces and good personalities. That’s not the point. The point is that you qualified your recommendation in a way that made it seem like you were hiding something.Are you selling at “competitive” prices? Is your location “convenient” and do you have “an impressive selection?” Do you talk about how your “friendly” and “expert” sales associates really “care about finding the right solution?”Dude, your sister is never getting a date until you modify what you’re saying about her. There is no recommendation quite so damaging as faint praise.“Too good to be true” is another language of Ad-Speak that’s exactly the opposite of faint praise:My sister is drop-dead gorgeous and a lot of fun but no one wants to take her out.”Here’s how that sounds in business: “Highest quality at the lowest prices.”“We absolutely MUST sell 400 Toyotas this weekend!” “Prices too low to advertise.”Most ads are ignored because every customer has a mental filter that evaluates and dismisses both of these languages of Ad-Speak with a single question: “What are they not telling me?”Everyone hears what you’re not saying.My sister moved to town last week. She’s the new director of the animal shelter. Here’s a picture I took of her when we had dinner last night. It would be good if she had someone besides her brother to show her the city. Are you up for it?”Great ads close the loopholes.Loophole #1: Is she attractive? “Here’s a picture I took of her last night.”Loophole #2: Is she intelligent? “She’s the new director of the animal shelter.”Loophole #3: Why does she not have a boyfriend? “She moved to town last week.”Sure, I’d love to show your sister the city. See if you can get her on the phone right now and introduce her to me.”You’ve been reaching the right people all along and it was the same sister in all 3 ads. But you’ve been talking Ad-Speak.Come to Wizard Academy. We’ll make sure you never use Ad-Speak again.Your sister is going to be so happy.Roy H. Williams

Since the year 2000, the cognoscenti of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop have happily endured the fanfare and pageantry of my 3-day explanation of Third Gravitating Bodies. It remains the most highly attended class at Wizard Academy.For the uninitiated, a Third Gravitating Body with a high degree of divergence and an explicit moment of convergence is the single common characteristic shared by every mass-appeal success.Every one of them. No third gravitating body, no mass-appeal success.Third Gravitating Bodies make good things GREAT.And that’s the reason they’re so rarely discovered.1. You’ve created something that’s obviously good.2. Why would you risk adding something that doesn’t belong?A Third Gravitating Body is an element that doesn’t belong, but fits.When Francis Bacon said, “There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion,” the strangeness to which he referred was a Third Gravitating Body.Thou Shalt Not Argue with Francis Bacon.*The importance of Third Gravitating Bodies was demonstrated by Henri Poincare in 1887 when he used them to mathematically answer the nagging question of King Oscar II of Sweden, who for some weird reason felt he just had to know, “Is the solar system stable?”Here’s what I wrote about Third Gravitating Bodies in 2002.Here’s what a Cognoscenti of Magical Worlds wrote about them in 2006.Here’s what I wrote about them in 2012.But now, finally, after 15 years, I’ve figured out how to logically explain Third Gravitating Bodies in a single, highly condensed hour-long webinar.That magical hour will happen on Saturday Morning, April 4th, 2015. But due to the vagaries of Kickstarter, you’re going to have to pull the ripcord that opens your parachute before January 7th.If you want a detailed explanation of what will be happening and why, here’s some additional information.But if you’re a riverboat gambler with half a Franklin – or if you just inexplicably trust me – I believe you’ll be delightfully entertained, confused and titillated by this strange and unusual page on Kickstarter.And thus another adventure begins.Roy H. Williams

In 1879, Ferdinand Cheval was a postman in France who tripped on a strangely shaped stone and stumbled awkwardly forward. He was 43 years old.This would not normally be news but Cheval continued to stumble awkwardly forward each day for 33 more years. His was not the 10,000 hours to excellence championed by Malcolm Gladwell. Cheval stumbled forward for more than 10,000 days. The miracle he left behind in his garden is protected by France as a cultural landmark and admired by more than 120,000 visitors each year.Ferdinand Cheval was our brand of crazy.Just like you and me, Cheval initially dismissed his strange idea for fear that people would think he was crazy. But when the idea came back to him like a boomerang thrown by an Australian shepherd boy, he said, “Screw it. Let’s do this thing.”The next day, Cheval gathered cement and wire and picked up rocks while walking his 18-mile postal route.In a dream I had built a palace, a castle or caves, I cannot express it well… I told no one about it for fear of being ridiculed and I felt ridiculous myself. Then fifteen years later, when I had almost forgotten my dream, when I wasn’t thinking of it at all, my foot reminded me of it. My foot tripped on a stone that almost made me fall. I wanted to know what it was… It was a stone of such a strange shape that I put it in my pocket to admire it at my ease. The next day, I went back to the same place. I found more stones, even more beautiful, I gathered them together on the spot and was overcome with delight… It’s a sandstone shaped by water and hardened by the power of time. It becomes as hard as pebbles. It represents a sculpture so strange that it is impossible for man to imitate, it represents any kind of animal, any kind of caricature. I said to myself: since Nature is willing to do the sculpture, I will do the masonry and the architecture”AIn the 8th Psalm, David considers outer space and then asks a question of God:When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,The moon and the stars, which you have ordained,What is man that you are mindful of him,And the son of man that you visit him?For you have made him a little lower than the angels,And you have crowned him with glory and honor.You have made him to have dominion over the works of your hands;You have put all things under his feet…”The 8th Psalm doesn’t tell us whether God answered David’s question that day, but if he had, I think God’s answer might have gone something like this:David, David, David… Have you never considered the laughter of little girls or heard the songs of singers singing or read the words of men unafraid or seen the magic that leaps from the heart of every carrier of messages?”Ferdinand Cheval took his inspiration from where he found it, even though it was ridiculous.My Christmas hope for you is that you might have the courage to do the same. You, too, are a carrier of messages.Tell me, what is your ridiculous dream?Roy H. Williams