Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

See it. Believe it. Say it.These are the first steps.But be prepared; most people will think you’re an idiot. Or delusional.Or full of yourself. Maybe they’re right. The outcome is all that separates confidence from hubris.You saw it in your mind. You believed it could happen. You spoke about it as though it were, in fact, going to happen. People laughed at you, made fun of you, sneered at you.But then it happened.  And now everyone talks about your confidence, your vision, your dream come true. The possibility of failure exists, even when you pretend it doesn’t. FAILURE: Because sometimes “your very best” just isn’t good enough.You saw it in your mind. You believed it could happen. You spoke about it as though it were, in fact, going to happen. And it never happened.And now people talk about where you went wrong. They think of you as delusional, egotistical, full of yourself. “Who did you think you were?”Can you live with that egg on your face?Count the cost, dreamer. Are you willing to pay the price? You are? Read on!“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”– Lawrence of Arabia (1888-1935)“Every man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds… Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”– Mark Twain (1835-1910)“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”– Earl Nightingale  A person would have to be pretty dense not to realize that today’s memo is the result of my contemplating the past 7 years of campus construction and the recent opening of our landmark tower.You can be sure there have been many times during these past 7 years when I thought, “You can keep the cheese. Just let me out of the trap.” But somehow we endured. You have Pennie to thank for that.As I contemplate the existence of this campus for dreamers, entrepreneurs and business owners, I cannot help but think of another tower many years ago: “But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.” – Genesis, chapter 11In that original tower story, God scattered the tower builders from Babel because they had forgotten Him. They turned their thoughts toward other things and their project was abandoned.Each reader will take something different from that tale. Some will see it as a warning of impending doom for Wizard Academy. Others will see it as a fairy tale. I am of two reactions: the dark, earthy part of me remembers the words of Edward Gorey:“Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. It almost never does; that’s what makes it so boring.”Simultaneously, the better, more spiritual part of me sings the lyrics of a song made famous in 1978:“He didn’t bring us this far to leave us.He didn’t teach us to swim to let us drown.He didn’t build His home in us to move away.He didn’t lift us up to let us down.” Let each reader take what he will from today’s rambling, self-indulgent thoughts.Next week I will write about you. Roy H. Williams

You open your mailbox and grab a handful of paper. How long does it take you to sort that mail? Do you open each envelope and consider its message, or do some of them get tossed into the trashcan unopened? More than 71 billion dollars were spent on direct mail marketing last year according to the US Postal Service and each of these dollars was spent in the hope that:1. your attention would be gained by the advertiser’s message and2. you would spend time – at least a moment – considering it. Less than one fourth the amount spent on direct mail – 17.3 billion dollars to be exact – was spent on radio advertising in 2010 according to the Radio Advertising Bureau and each of these dollars was spent in the hope that:1. your attention would be gained by the advertiser’s message and2. you would spend time – at least a moment – considering it. More than 131 billion dollars was spent on television advertising in 2010 – not quite twice the amount spent on direct mail, but nearly 8 times as much as was spent on radio – and each of these dollars was spent in the hope that:1. your attention would be gained by the advertiser’s message and2. you would spend time – at least a moment – considering it. Business owners are excited about Facebook and Twitter because these social media outlets offer them potential access to – wait for it – your time and attention.Are you beginning to see a pattern here?Time and attention are currency. Shoppers today are confronted with an unprecedented number of possibilities. Welcome to the 21st century, where shoppers carry the world in their pockets, giving them instant access to everything they want to know. Now what were you saying?A 1978 consumer behavior study by Yankelovich indicated the average American of that time was confronted by more than 2,000 selling messages per day. These “selling messages” included the signage in front of strip centers, posters in windows, point-of-purchase displays in convenience stores, product packaging on shelves, stickers on gas pumps and all the major media, of course. Yankelovich revisited that study in 2008: today’s shopper is confronted by more than 5,000 selling messages per day.Shoppers don’t buy things until they know about them. And they have far too little time to consider all their options. This is why the value of time and attention has risen to unprecedented heights.And it’s also why clarity is the new creativity.If today’s advertisers want to ring the bell, win the prize and cash the check, they must:1. Gain attention2. Speak with impact and3. Prove what they say4. In the fewest possible words. A few final thoughts:1. Radio has weathered the techno-storm better than any other media.2. Following a brief flirtation with the iPod, Americans returned en masse to broadcast radio for exposure to new music and breaking news.3. You can close your eyes, but you cannot close your ears.4. How many hours a week do you spend driving?5. World-class radio ads are cheap to produce.6. It costs big bucks to look good on TV.7. A modest budget for a national advertiser to produce a 30-second TV ad is $350,000. Your TV ads, by comparison, will always look “homemade.”8. But national advertisers have no advantage over local advertisers on radio.9. Advertising agencies can’t pay the bills by producing radio ads. Their profitability – indeed their very existence – depends on their ability to steer advertisers into high production-cost ventures: television and direct mail.10. The smart place for local advertising is usually on the radio.According to the US Census, America is home to 5.91 million businesses with fewer than 100 employees. My life’s work is to help these businesses achieve greater success.Hence, the Monday Morning Memo, 52 weeks a year since 1994.Hence, three New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers.Hence, Wizard Academy, a 501c3 nonprofit business school.And now, a new class at Wizard Academy: June 29-30, How to Grow Your Business Using Radio.I’ve spent 30 years and hundreds of millions of dollars to learn what does and doesn’t work. For you, I will compress all of this into 2 days.If someone had done this for me 30 years ago, I could have taken over the world.Come, if you want to make money.Roy H. Williams

Brands are extensions of belief systems. You are attracted to a brand when it stands for something you believe in.We buy what we buy – most of it, anyway –1. to remind ourselves and2. tell the world around us    who we are.Brands are identity reinforcement, just like art and architecture and music. Brands are a way of shouting “This is me!”Does it make you uncomfortable for me to suggest that we are such shallow and uncertain creatures that we feel the need to anchor our identities through purchases and acquisitions?I’m sorry. I’ll change the subject.Let’s talk about art.Art is a language. When you control the art in a room, you lead its viewers to where you want them to go in their minds.Have you ever noticed the high percentage of wall posters that celebrate cultural icons? Marilyn Monroe, The Statue of Liberty, Jimi Hendrix, Corvette.Cultural icons are modern archetypes. Each of them stands for something we believe in. They’re just another way of shouting, “This is what I believe in! This is me.”But art communicates a belief system even when it contains no cultural icon.A painting of cows grazing contentedly on a hillside, or of small fishing boats floating quietly offshore whispers to the viewer, “I believe in tranquility, nature, and the outdoors.”A painting of Renaissance royalty or of a castle on a mountaintop says, “I believe in pageantry and romance and I’m intrigued by the grand adventure of privilege.”A painting of young girls frolicking at a picnic says, “I believe in innocence and happiness and the togetherness of friendship.”The same person could own all three paintings, of course. Each of us wears many faces. Art is easy to sell when you understand that it’s never really about the artist, (although the artist often believes otherwise.) Art is ultimately about the person who buys it.You buy art when it looks you directly in the eye and says, “I echo something important that you hide in your heart. I am an extension of the real you.”Richard Grosbard, Richard Minsky and I were looking for a cab in Manhattan one night when Minsky muttered something so insightful that I scribbled it on the back of a receipt in my wallet:“Art has image, metaphor and surface.Image: What’s it a picture of?Metaphor: What does the picture stand for? What does it mean?Surface: What materials were used and how skillful was the artist’s execution?”“Decorative art is image first, metaphor second, and the surface doesn’t really matter. A poster is the same image and metaphor as the original painting but the surface is different.”“Fine art is surface first, metaphor second, and the image doesn’t really matter. Fine art is all about the skill of execution. It doesn’t really matter too much what it’s a picture of.”The thing Richard said next is something every artist needs to know if they want to sell a lot of art:“Commercial art is metaphor first: what does it say? Image second: what’s in the picture? Get these two things right and the skill of the artist doesn’t really matter.”Most of us buy art because we believe in what the art says.But then again, that’s what I was saying about brands, isn’t it?We seem to have gone full circle and now we’re back to where we started. I think I’ll jump off this merry-go-round and go see what Pennie is doing.Ciao for Niao,Roy H. Williams

You Can't Quit Knowing What You Know“My name is Natsu and I’ll be serving you today.”Pennie said, “Natsu… What a pretty name!”“Thank you. I was named after my grandmother. It means ‘summer’ in Japanese.”Thirty seconds earlier, Natsu had looked like any other waitress. But now that we knew her grandmother was Japanese, we couldn’t help but see the obvious signs of Japanese heritage in her face.“Obvious” knowledge such as this is the reason business owners are uniquely unqualified to write their own ads. Business owners are unable to put themselves in the shoes of their uninformed customers because they can’t quit knowing what they know.Elizabeth Newton, a psychologist, conducted an experiment on this “curse of knowledge” while working on her doctorate at Stanford in 1990. She gave one set of people, called “tappers,” a list of commonly known songs from which to choose. Their task was to rap their knuckles on a tabletop to the rhythm of the chosen tune as they thought about it in their heads. A second set of people, called “listeners,” were asked to name the songs.Before the experiment began, the tappers were asked how often they believed that the listeners would name the songs correctly. On average, tappers expected listeners to get it right about half the time. In the end, however, listeners guessed only 3 of 120 songs tapped out, or 2.5 percent.The tappers were astounded. The song was so clear in their minds; how could the listeners not “hear” it in their taps?– Janet Rae-Dupree, The New York Times, Dec. 30, 2007Experts always answer questions that no one was asking. This is why they come across as tedious, boring and obsessed. When ads are written at the level of the public’s understanding and interest, business owners complain, “But I can’t say that! It’s not accurate!”No, the statement is accurate enough. It just feels woefully incomplete to a person who knows as much as you. But guess what? The public doesn’t know as much as you.And they don’t want to know as much as you. Here’s a 30-second radio ad created for a client of the Wizard of Ads office in Australia:MALE: Sometimes, bigger is better.FEMALE: Sometimes, bigger is definitely better.MALE: Electricity bills are an exception.FEMALE: No one needs big electricity bills.MALE: Sunshine is free.FEMALE: Sunshine is happy.MALE: Sunshine is natural.FEMALE: Country Solar turns sunshine into free electricity.MALE: Talk to Country Solar. No pressure, no commitment,FEMALE: just free electricity.MALE: Free electricity.FEMALE: Get your free electricity at Country Solar dot com dot au.If you knew a little too much about this subject, your ad would sound like this:Save money and save the planet! The wind doesn’t always blow, but the sun ALWAYS shines. This is why a solar energy solution from Lester’s Alternative Energy Systems is superior to wind energy. And a solar energy solution from Lester’s has no moving parts. More than 12,000 beautiful Australian birds are killed each year by the spinning blades of wind turbines. Be a friend to the birds! Be a friend to Mother Earth! Invest in a solar energy solution from Lester’s. Most investors recover their initial investments in less than 14 years. Don’t pay the electric company, pay yourself! A solar energy solution from Lester’s can reduce your electricity bill by as much as half. Call today and we’ll test your roof to see if it qualifies for a solar energy solution from Lester’s Alternative Energy Systems, the only area alternative energy provider with a Master’s Degree in electrical engineering. Call Lester’s today. The birds will thank you. Mother Earth will thank you. The only people who won’t thank you are those coal-burning polluters at the electric company. Call the Master! Call Lester’s Alternative Energy Systems.The second ad is more informative. The first ad would work better. Which ad do you suppose Lester will be more likely to use? You’re inside your company, looking out. The public is outside, looking in. This gives the public an entirely different perspective.Simple statements work best. But simple statements always feel “incomplete” to an expert.You are an expert in your business category.Are you beginning to see why someone else should write your ads?Roy H. Williams 

Ken and Barbie are perfect.Ken and Barbie are plastic.Ken and Barbie are hollow.I do not prefer them.True friends are flawed in endearing ways. Quirky.I’ll never forget the morning when I asked a roomful of newly arrived Wizard Academy students to tell a little about themselves. The last to stand was a tall, silver-haired patriarch who said, “As I sat and listened to you people, I couldn’t help but think, ‘Never in my life have I been surrounded by as many weirdos, misfits, mavericks and renegades.’”The silence throbbed as the old gentleman slowly surveyed the room, meeting the eyes of every student, “It’s as if the Wizard sent out the mating call of the albino monkey, and this room contains the rag-tag rabble who answered.”No one was breathing.“I just can’t tell you what an honor it is to be counted here among you!” The walls flexed outward from the shockwaves of spontaneous, thunderous applause.That patrician gentleman was Keith Miller, the bestselling author of The Taste of New Wine, a revolution-triggering book that sold multiple millions of copies as it rocked religious America back in 1965.Interesting people are nonconformists, swimming tirelessly against the flow of the cultural norm.Only dead fish go with the current. “We all know bad things are happening to our political and social universe; we know that business is colonizing ever larger chunks of American culture; and we know that advertising tells lies. We are all sick to death of the consumer culture. We all want to resist conformity. We all want to be our own dog.”– Thomas Frank, Conglomerates and the Media, 1997A few months ago, Pink wrote an anthem to nonconformity, a paean to society’s outcasts, weirdos, mavericks and renegades:“Raise your glass if you are wrong in all the right ways, all my underdogs!”Raise Your Glass rocketed to the top of the charts. But we shouldn’t have been surprised. Pink’s song recalls the original American anthem found at the foot of a statue that raises not a glass, but a torch. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”“We will never be, never be anything but loud and nitty-gritty, dirty little freaks.”– Pink, Raise Your Glass, Oct. 2010Have you done any traveling lately? During their 40-year reign as the king and queen of American culture, Ken and Barbie littered our nation with identical power centers hosting the same tenants in every village, town and city.Come to Austin and we’ll proudly show you 6th Street, a few blocks in our city that are unique to our wonderful town. New Orleans has the French Quarter. Atlanta has Buckhead. Your town has its special district, too. You know where it is.But outside these highly-prized districts where we enshrine the last shreds of our uniqueness, your town and mine have precisely the same stores and restaurants as every other; perfect, plastic, and hollow.Does that make you angry? Do you want shake things up a little? Are you eager for your business to fire a shot that will be heard around the world?[I’m whispering now.] Go to Wizard Academy. You’ve got people there.Roy H. Williams

As you do or don’t know, I make my living as an advertising consultant. My income is directly tied to the growth of my clients’ businesses, so you can be sure I keep a close eye on their income trends.Although my office works with only a few dozen of America’s 5.91 million businesses, these small business clients are spread across the US and Canada and span several retail and service categories. Additionally, my Wizard of Ads partner offices work with dozens of scattered clients, as well.We keep our finger on the pulse of small business America.The media keeps its finger on the pulse of big business America and unemployment statistics and the value of the dollar and a variety of other things they like to package as news about the economy.Don’t be fooled by it.  Big business is affected by Wall Street, an insular world of fast-walking men and women who live in Manhattan and wear formal business attire and pretend they know far more than they do.Meet these people. Spend time with them. You’ll soon quit taking them seriously. This is the same crowd who thought Bernie Madoff was a profoundly insightful financial guru, remember? They even made him chairman of Nasdaq.Big business is subject to Wall Street.Wall Street is subject to the mood of traders who buy and sell a lot of securities. Small businesses like yours are subject only to the mood of the public.I’ve known for years that the mood of the public is not directly linked to Wall Street. Trends in small business America don’t always mirror the trends in big business America.The American public began to relax a bit in October. We saw it across every business category in every state. The news media didn’t seem to notice. We saw this trend continue through November and December. Most of our clients finished the 4th quarter 10 percent ahead of the same quarter the previous year.This uptick continued through January and February; not a sweeping “whoosh” back into prosperity, but an obvious collective decision among regular Americans to start spending a bit of money again. The deep fear is gone.My friend Jeff Haley is the CEO of the Radio Advertising Bureau, a vital trade association of America’s 11,000 commercial radio stations, each of whom sells advertising to several hundred local businesses. When Jeff came to visit recently, he said he’d noticed the same thing my partners and I had noticed. During the first 3 quarters of 2010, ad spending among local advertisers was dead flat against the previous year. No change. Then it jumped by exactly 10 percent in the 4th quarter.The American public relaxed a little and America’s local advertisers did, too.Donations to Wizard Academy rebounded, classes started selling out again and the weddings at Chapel Dulcinea are more lavish and festive than we’ve seen in a couple of years.The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter. Grass is greening, birds are flirting, spring is here.Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.Roy H. Williams

Most people believe advertising is scalable. These people are right.And they are wrong.SCALABLE: When a large-scale problem can be solved by the straight-line, linear expansion of a small-scale solution, that solution is scalable. Example: You want to put a box of loose snapshots into photo albums. One album holds exactly 50 snapshots. This problem is scalable. Count the snapshots, divide by fifty, then buy that many photo albums. Direct Response ads – those high-impact ads crafted to hit a target with maximum impact and trigger a purchase with a single exposure – are scalable. Reach 10 times as many targets and you’ll make 10 times as many sales. But most ads are not scalable, due to the vagaries of relevance, sleep and time. Non-scalable ads must be repeated until you reach a threshold called “breakthrough.” BREAKTHROUGH: The best way to understand breakthrough and how it differs from scalability is to consider the following statistic: There will be exactly 20 traffic fatalities for each 100 cars that try to navigate a particular corner at 100 MPH. We have the data. It is conclusive. Numbers don’t lie. Apply scalability to this data and you’ll wrongly predict there will be 2 fatalities for each 100 cars that try to navigate the corner at 10 MPH. Breakthrough is best understood as the speed-threshold at which a car becomes dangerously unstable in the corner. Breakthrough is that moment when the rules of the equation change dramatically. Q: “So how long will it be before my advertising reaches breakthrough? How many repetitions will be required before my customer finally takes action?”A: Your moment of breakthrough will be determined by 2 variables. The first of these is relevance.RELEVANCE: Does the target need the product or can a desire be stimulated for it? Direct response ads perform poorly for categories that have “moments of need” that are well defined. It’s hard to sell an engagement ring to a person who has no interest in getting engaged. Likewise, how do you convince a person to buy new tires when the car simply doesn’t need them, or a new hot water heater when the old one is working fine? When your product or service category doesn’t have the requisites for direct response marketing, your best option is to become the solution-provider the customer remembers immediately when their moment of need finally arises. “Sounds great. But how much time is that going to take?” We can answer that question only after we’ve answered this one: How memorable was your message? We’re back to that issue of relevance again.Involuntary, automatic recall is known as procedural memory among cognitive neuroscientists and the rules of its creation are simple: Relevance x Repetition = Procedural Memory. In other words, the amount of repetition your message will need will be determined by its relevance and one last thing… SLEEP: the second variable. Sleep erases advertising. This is why 12 repetitions spread over 12 months don’t have the same effect as 12 repetitions in 1 month. Becoming a household word in the mind of your public is like climbing a muddy mountain. Three steps forward and you slide 2 steps back during the night. Three steps forward, two steps back. But don’t despair. Breakthrough is on the horizon. Can you see it sparkling there in the distance? Cross that threshold and everything around you will come alive. You can do it. I have faith in you.Need some help?Come to Wizard Academy.(Sigh.) I’m sorry for that sneaky little sales pitch. In the end, I just can’t quit being an ad guy.Roy H. Williams  

What makes us America?If you were to name a single incident in American history that you feel was America’s finest hour, what would it be?Would it be a moment of patriotic sacrifice? “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”– Nathan Hale, [Sept. 22, 1776]A moment of relentless determination?“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”– Admiral David Farragut [Aug. 5, 1864]A moment of far-flung vision, an impossible dream?“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”– JFK [May 25, 1961] “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!”– MLK, Jr. [Aug. 28, 1963]A moment of come-from-behind-to-win?“…twenty-eight seconds. The crowd going insane. Kharlamov. Shooting it into the American end again. Morrow is back there. Now Johnson. Nineteen seconds. Johnson over to Ramsey. Bilyaletdinov gets checked by Ramsey. McClanahan is there. The puck is still loose. Eleven seconds. You’ve got ten seconds. The countdown going on right now. Morrow up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles?Yes!”– Al Michaels, [Feb. 22, 1980]Pennie and I were having lunch with our friend Rich Mann when he made a casual comment that sent such tremors through me that I wondered if Austin was having an earthquake. I never told Rich about the impact of his 4 littlewords on me that day, but he opened my eyes to an American greatness that had previously been hiding in my blind spot.The moment that defines America for me – the moment I’ll be proud of forever – was December 12, 2000, when no one started shooting.Remember The Month of the Hanging Chads? Al Gore won the popular vote of the nation on November 7, 2000, but George W. Bush won Florida’s 25 electoral votes by a storybook-thin margin to gain the Presidency, 271 votes to 266. But the state laws of Florida required a recount due to the microscopic margin of victory.On November 26, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified Florida’s voting results, declaring Bush to have won the state of Florida by 537 votes.Many people were upset by this because Katherine Harris had also served as co-chair of Bush’s election campaign.Gore’s team won a court hearing to challenge the Katherine Harris results. The American people were confused, nervous and anxious.On December 1, fully 3 weeks after Election Day, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments over whether the Florida Supreme Court had overstepped its authority in managing the recount. A week later, Florida’s high court upheld their previous position.Bush argued. Gore argued. And the leadership of our nation hung in the balance.Finally, on December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount, effectively declaring Bush to be the winner. That Supreme Court vote was 5 to 4.And no one in America started shooting.How many nations on this earth can rest in the knowledge that there will be a peaceful transfer of power, even in moments of heated disagreement? “No one started shooting.” – Rich Mann, Shogun Sushi, Austin, TX [Feb. 2001]God Bless America.Roy H. Williams 

“Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings.”– Proverbs, ch. 22 Stand before kings? Sounds great! But how does one get “skilled in his work?” American children were taught for 100 years that all we had to do to be successful was listen, take notes, remember what we were told and repeat it accurately when asked. Americans call this silliness “education” and we guard the concept fiercely, obstinately and ridiculously.  “You’ve got the grades to get into college…”“Smart enough to get a scholarship…”“The first of my family to go to college…”“College educated…” The worship of college runs deep in American families. To question college or to criticize it is to brand yourself a heretic. But college is no longer a religion among employers. A comprehensive study released by the Harvard Graduate School of Education on February 2, 2011, suggests that America’s “college for all” mindset may be doing more harm than good. According to the study, Americans place too much emphasis on 4-year degree programs when 2-year occupational programs would better prepare students for today’s job market. Fifty years ago 30 percent of the jobs in America were “white collar.” The white collars enjoyed more prestige, had more opportunity and made more money than the 70 percent who were “blue collar” laborers. College, we were told, was the difference. Flash forward half a century; 30 percent of the jobs in America today are “white collar,” just as before. But only 15 percent of today’s jobs are “blue collar.” The remaining 50 percent are jobs that didn’t exist half a century ago; jobs that require specialized training but not a 4-year degree. And since there aren’t enough people trained to do these jobs, our skilled “no collars” are paid wonderfully high salaries because employers are begging to hire them. The no collars make higher salaries, in fact, than two-thirds of the 30 percent whose collars are white. “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings.” And he will do it without a collar.Meanwhile, our universities graduate exactly 10 times more psychology majors each year than there are jobs for psychology majors. But these bright-eyed innocents are never told, “There will be a job for only 1 in every 10 of you. The rest of you will have to find some other way to make a living.” I’m betting you know at least a dozen young adults with college degrees who are struggling to find work today. Am I right? But the problem isn’t that there aren’t any jobs. There are plenty of jobs for people with the right skills. These “educated unemployed” simply chose a course of study for which there is no demand in today’s workplace. James Michener grew up poor, joined the Navy, earned more than 100 million dollars as a writer, was lavished with honorary degrees by the world’s most prestigious colleges and universities, then left us with a singular piercing observation shortly before he died in 1997: “If our military capacities were in as much peril as are our intellectual capacities, the nation would be taking gigantic and immediate steps to repair the deficiencies. It is scandalous that we are not taking equally huge steps to reverse the decline in our basic educational adequacy.” – This Noble Land, p. 99, (1996) But Michener wasn’t referring to traditional education. Michener understood what it takes to become “skilled in your work:” “I feel almost a blood relationship with all the artists in all the mediums, for I find that we face the same problems but solve them in our own ways. When young people in my writing classes, for example, ask what subjects they should study to become writers, I surprise them by replying: ‘Ceramics and eurhythmic dancing.’ When they look surprised I explain: ‘Ceramics so you can feel form evolving through your fingertips molding the moist clay, and eurhythmic dancing so you can experience the flow of motion through your body. You might develop a sense of freedom that way.’” – This Noble Land, p. 193 Michener – a man who stood before kings – believed form and freedom to be the factors that differentiated those who were skillful from those who were not. What form of education will you suggest to the young people who look up to you? Will you give them the freedom to do something other than “go to college?” Uh-oh. Did that question make me a heretic? Roy H. Williams

If you’re reading this sentence, it’s because the headline (A.) startled you by its intrusive, personal nature, (B.) irritated you by its assumption that God exists, (C.) intrigued you because you never really thought about it, or (D.) touched a pre-existing suspicion or belief that hides in your heart.Headlines – including the subject lines of emails and the opening sentences of speeches, sermons and radio ads – are vitally important. David Ogilvy said it best, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” The headline that pulled you into this story is interesting because it:1. is taboo, (by virtue of introducing the subject of deity.)2. is a question for which there is no “obvious” answer. You realize that I just taught you two techniques for creating good opening lines, right? (1.) Tickle a taboo. (2.) Ask a question with no obvious answer. Here’s another good headline:Four Out of Five People Think the Fifth is an Idiot That one is interesting because it:3. is funny4. says far more than it says.5. reminds you of things you already know about foolish statistics, public opinion polls and prejudices disguised as research, “Me and all my friends…” Fifteen years ago when I first began writing for Radio Ink magazine, Eric Rhoads said, “Make your readers want to cheer your name or make them want to tear you limb from limb, but never let them be bored.” That’s another useful tidbit:6. People would rather be angry than bored. One last thing about headlines:7. Never promise something in a headline that you don’t deliver in the story. Readers aren’t quick to forgive a bait-and-switch. So in the spirit of delivering what I promised in the headline, I’ll share with you the following thoughts: It is easy to believe God loves us. It is somewhat harder to believe that He likes us. You have certain people in your life that you love because they are “family.” But do you really like them? Even you-know-who? Would you have chosen that person to be your friend – the loved one you’re seeing in your mind right now – if they had not been thrust upon you by the genetic lottery? Wow. There’s #1 again. Taboo. “Do I really like all the people I love? What a question! How dare you! Have you no sense of propriety?”Calm down. Love requires a commitment that runs deeper than your feelings. This irrational, wonderful, life-giving commitment makes it possible for us to love people we don’t really like; people we would never have chosen for rational reasons.Love isn’t a feeling, it‘s something you do. Love is action. Love rolls up its sleeves and wades into messes it did not make. This is how we can love people we don’t like.But just for the record, God likes you. He actually likes you. I asked him if he was sure. He said, “Yeah, I’m sure.” Go figure. Roy H. Williams