Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

How does one reconcile these two famous proverbs?“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”That first platitude would argue that pre-emptive action is a waste of time and resources; “Leave well-enough alone.” The second platitude says quite the opposite; “A stitch in time, saves nine.”Which is true?Stanislaw Lec said, “Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a people.”George Santayana said it more plainly. “Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.”Nobel prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr said this isn’t just true in philosophy and art, but is true in science as well: “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”It would seem that every great truth in our universe has its opposite. Little ideas can be right or wrong but big ideas are both right and wrong.Is your mind broad enough to hear the beauty of birdsong in the land of your enemy?Homophobes criticize me when I quote Oscar Wilde, “He was a homosexual, you know.”Religious people criticize me when I quote Voltaire, “He was an atheist, you know.”Republicans squint at me suspiciously when I say I like Obama.Democrats’ eyebrows jump when I say I admired Ronald Reagan.“According to our present conceptions, an atom of an element is built up of a nucleus that has a positive electrical charge… together with a number of electrons, all having the same negative charge….”– Niels Bohr, from his Nobel Prize acceptance speechOur universe exists because these equal-but-opposite bits – protons and electrons – come together and interact in a strained, divine tension. The important thing, for me, is that neither of these particles is compromised by the other. Protons are no less positively-charged because of their interaction with electrons, and electrons are never corrupted because of their close proximity to protons.If electrons and protons were ever to become alike, our universe would cease to exist. The solution is never “somewhere in the middle” as is constantly suggested by dullards and cowards and lovers of gray and beige. These flaccid proponents of “the middle ground” are like wet toilet paper.And I mean that, of course, in a spirit of love.Reality – indeed, the entirety of our physical universe – requires equals-but-opposites in their purest forms, forever attracting and repelling each other as they dance the dance of creation.“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”– F. Scott FitzgeraldDo you have a first-rate intelligence?I could easily craft a compelling counter-argument against everything I’ve written today and I know that you could, too.But I won’t. Because today I am feeling neither gray nor beige.Roy H. Williams

A Brief Examination Into the Health of Your MarketingSTEP 1: What percentage of your sales volume comes from repeat or referral customers? These customers are driven to you by past satisfaction.Don’t read any further until you’ve decided on a percentage. Give it your best guess.STEP 2: What percentage of your sales volume is triggered by your location and its exterior signage? These customers come to you because of your visibility.Again, write down a percentage, your best guess.STEP 3: Add those two percentages together, then deduct from 100.The remaining percentage is your “advertising driven” traffic, new customers who come to you solely because of your ads.I’m betting this percentage is a lot lower than you would have guessed. Am I right?STEP 4: How many unique customers have you served in the past 12 months? Write down a specific number. You’ll probably need to consult your records.STEP 5: Apply your “ad-driven traffic” percentage to the total number of unique customers you’ve sold in the past 12 months. This will tell you exactly how many new customers you’ve served in the past 12 months who came to you solely because of your advertising. [If your ad-driven traffic was 20 percent and your Unique Customer Count was 5,000, then you had 1,000 ad-driven customers.]STEP 6: Divide that number into your annual ad budget.The result of that division – the quotient – is your Cost of Customer Acquisition. It’s how much you’re spending on advertising to bring one new customer through your doors. (You may notice that our equation didn’t calculate the cost of referral customers. This is because referral customers don’t come at a direct cost, as do ad-driven customers, but at the indirect costs of customer service and relationship management.)STEP 7: Write your Cost of Customer Acquisition – the number of dollars you’re paying to bring one new customer into your business – LARGE on a sheet of paper, or put it on your computer screen in a 72-point font.Stare at it for a moment.Here are the obvious questions:1. With the cost of new customer acquisition so high, why advertise at all? 2. How can we drive this Cost of Customer Acquisition way, way down?Let’s answer the first question first:If a prospective customer doesn’t give you a chance to sell them, there can only be two possible reasons:A: They haven’t heard about you. (This problem can be solved by advertising.)B: They have heard about you and they don’t like what they’ve heard. These customers – based on information given to them by others – have made the decision not to do business with you. A good ad will give them new information that may lead them to a new decision. You may also need to invest more energy in customer service and relationship management.“With the cost of new customer acquisition so high, why advertise at all?The primary goal of advertising is to acquire new customers. Your future repeat and referral business depends on it. Good customers move to other towns, or die, and you never see them again. It happens to every business and it happens every year. Additionally, new people move into your town and have no idea where to shop. Approximately 20 percent of the average American community didn’t live there 1 year ago. How are you reaching out to these newbies? Are you crossing your fingers and hoping they’ll meet one of your loyal customers? Are you counting on the newbies noticing your sign, or perhaps finding you online? These things can happen, to be sure, but is this your growth plan for 2011?“Okay, so we have to advertise, but how can we drive the Cost of Customer Acquisition way, way down?”First, let me say that it can absolutely be done. We can drive that cost down, I guarantee it. But I’m going to save the details until you arrive at Wizard Academy. (Yes, I know that makes me a total rat bastard, but you’ve been meaning to make a trip down here anyway, right?)Customer Acquisition Workshop – Monday, March 14Each registrant will leave with a customized plan to attract new customers. You will learn a little, work a lot, guided every step of the way. Register early and save the cost of a hotel room. The first 14 to sign up will enjoy 1 day/2nights at no charge in exciting Engelbrecht House, Wizard Academy’s amazing student mansion. Additionally, although this 1-day class is only $750, it will qualify you as an Acadgrad and you’ll save 50 percent on all future classes. (Acadgrads, this class is just $375 for you.) Arrive Sunday afternoon, spend the night in Austin, work like a dog all day Monday, relax in Austin that night, then return home Tuesday the 15th with an incredible new plan for customer acquisition. Well, what are you waiting for?Roy H. Williams

If you’re a man, you will definitely have a midlife crisis. When it happens – and it can happen a number of times – you can let it lift you to the next level, or you can let it unravel your life. Wizard Academy’s Dr. Richard D. Grant, a clinical psychologist, was chatting with a group of adult students one day while his microphone was still recording. I transcribed a bit of what he said because it explains for me the relationship between Don Quixote and Dulcinea, the common village girl Quixote admired from afar.(In the book, Don Quixote never meets Dulcinea; she’s never even aware of his existence, though she has a profound effect on his life.)Here’s what Dr. Grant said that day:“One of the big things that Jung talked about that becomes more and more operative as a guy gets older is that he comes into contact with the deeper parts of himself which we call the unconscious. The trap door to the unconscious is actually a gate that is feminine.”“The feminine part of a man’s personality is called the anima, the Latin word for soul. It leads him to growth and assumes many faces.”“We should pay very close attention to what we find attractive, men, at mid-life, because that’s the roadmap of where we’re going to grow next. This is, a man’s encounters with females, especially at mid-life, tell him what he needs to connect with in himself to have more life. That is what the anima experience is all about.”“This is very important for guys to know because at mid-life they get re-sensitized to females, deeply, and it doesn’t have to do with their committed relationships. And it’s very confusing for many men, and they think that they’re supposed to question their committed relationships and that life itself is in a strand of that person’s hair that they would follow.”“Actually that person is a symbol, mirroring this profound feminine part of the man that is the gateway to what lies ahead for him. And the function of the anima – the internal feminine – is to lead the man to the next part of his life.”“The rules of relationship to the unconscious are the rules of chivalry, ‘pure and chaste from afar.’ If you decide to totally get engrossed in the idealized imagery of the feminine, you’ll lose yourself. There’s danger in that. But if you have a conscious relationship – feeling the power of that, but not getting seduced by it – you will come to awareness; you’ll learn things.”“That might sound wild but chastity is really the ability to relate to a female human being, for a man, and to the anima in all its power at the same time and in the right respect, both at once, without confounding the two.”“If you attribute to a woman the goddess-like qualities of the anima, a man just melts in front of her. But if you keep them separate – you know, one’s for growth and one is to have relationship with, in all the benefits of monogamy and commitment – then you can benefit from it. Chastity is the ability to do both at once and not confuse them. That is what chastity is, not wimpy abstinence.”“If you want to see the four parts of the masculine counterpart to this for a woman – the animus – go watch The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy has four masculine figures she deals with when she goes on an adventure into a different land, learns all kinds of lessons and then comes home after her journey. So that’s an alternative story…” Right now I find myself noticing women who are lighthearted and carefree. Thanks to Dr. Grant’s little chat that day, I realize this is because I’ve been carrying the weight of fund-raising and construction for Wizard Academy for seven long years. I’m noticing these women because I need to make time for frivolous relaxation and play. The anima within me is whispering. I need to listen.Men, what is your anima saying? Ladies, is the animus within you telling you where you need to grow? Make no mistake about it. Deep and revealing conversations happen here all the time. Come. Adventure. Engelbrecht House awaits you.Engelbrecht, by the way, means “Angel, broken” in German.Just a coincidence.Roy H. Williams

The Key to Getting Attention.A Guaranteed Cure for Writer's Block.In an over-communicated society, predictability is the enemy of effective writing. A recent Yankelovich study tells us that Americans are confronted by more than 5,000 selling messages per day – radio and television and magazines and newspapers and billboards floating on an ocean of store signage, posters, point-of-purchase displays and product packaging – each one hoping to gain our eyes, ears and attention.No wonder we’ve become so adept at filtering ads from our consciousness. Those time-consuming piranhas are out to eat us alive. And they do it so painfully predictably. I’m troubled when writers tell me they want to learn to “think outside the box.” I always want to ask, “Why do you climb into the box to begin with?”The box is a self-focused perspective. Predictable ads are spawned when you sit inside the box and begin asking predictable questions: “What makes us different and better than our competitors? What makes us special?” Having focused your approach inward, on yourself, instead of outward, on your customers, your thoughts will accelerate in an ever-tightening spiral as you circle the drain. Predictable opening statements are born inside the box. I have a love/hate relationship with a certain bit of stagecraft I use when speaking publicly. The bit is always a crowd pleaser; that’s the part I love. But most of the audience misses the point; that’s the part I hate. They gasp and laugh and clap and I say to them, “This looks like a magic trick, I know, but it’s really very easy. You can do it, I promise. Just give it a try.” But they never believe me. The stagecraft begins when I ask everyone in the room to write a statement that would catch the ear of any person who overheard it. “The statement doesn’t have to make sense,” I say, “It just needs to be larger than life, evocative, difficult to ignore. The kind of statement that would make a passing stranger turn and say, ‘Huh?’” I then ask 6 volunteers to bring their statements onto the stage. “I’m now going to craft real ads for real businesses using the statements written on those papers as theopening lines for the ads. Do I have any business owners in the room?” Six business owners take the stage. I randomly pair them up with the colorful statement-holders. I have no idea what businesses are on stage or what statements are written on those papers. I owe Tom Robbins (not to be confused with Tony) for this little bit of stagecraft. In a magazine interview that accompanied the release of his novel, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, Tom said, “Everything in the universe is connected, of course. It’s a matter of using imagination to discover the links, and language to expand and enliven them.” “Business owner number one. Tell me about your business.”“I have a plumbing company.”“Name a profit center you’d like to improve.”“I’d like to get more calls for our 24-hour emergency service.”“Crazy person number one. What did you write on your paper?”“I came home and the dog was bald.” The room roars with laughter as I walk to the front of the stage and balance there – my toes hanging over the edge – as 2,000 people hold their breath.“I came home and the dog was bald. I haven’t been that surprised since I woke up at 2AM to pee and stepped out of bed into an inch of water. Thank god Martindale Plumbing never goes to sleep. At 2AM they were just sittin’ there, hoping someone would call. They fixed the problem while I made coffee. Great guys. Thank god for Martindale Plumbing, 24 hours a day. But I still got no idea what to do with a bald dog.”That would be a television or radio script.Here’s what it would look like as an email:SUBJECT:  I came home and the dog was bald.[Everyone who saw that headline in a magazine ad, a flyer or a brochure would pick it up and read it. Today’s other 4,999 messages be damned.]That whole exchange between me and the business owner smelled like a set-up, right? If you were in that audience, you’d probably suspect I had planted those people in the crowd. Like I said, I’ve got a love/hate relationship with this particular bit of stagecraft. Along with the fact that no one believes THEY can do it, half of them don’t believe I can do it, either.But not only can I do it, you can, too. “Everything in the universe is connected, of course. It’s a matter of using imagination to discover the links, and language to expand and enliven them.”The keys to Chaotic Ad Writing are:1. Randomly force upon yourself a colorful opening statement BEFORE you know what you’re going to write about.2. Look for the defining characteristic(s) of that statement.   “I came home and the dog was bald.” (surprise)   “I really need to fart.” (embarrassment)   “Her funeral was a day late because the cement vault for her coffin didn’t arrive.” (1. death, 2. Loss and mourning, 3. Dark, claustrophobic enclosure)By the way, those are 3 actual statements I was given in a single city.3. Interview the owner of the business. Learn what they most want to sell. Use the defining characteristic of your opening statement as the angle of approach into your body copy.…the dog was bald.” (Surprise) …stepped out of bed into an inch of water.” (Surprise) The business to which I needed to connect the “fart” line was a 156 year-old historic wedding chapel. No problem. I just placed that thought into the mind of the groom as he stood at the altar with his bride. His moment of relief, “ahhhh,” comes when the organist begins blasting the traditional wedding exit music. The business to which I had to connect the “coffin” line was “Florida’s Space Coast, 30 miles of pristine beaches and Kennedy Space Center, with an IMAX theater inside.” The goal is tourism. Convince people to vacation there. Go ahead. Give it a shot.Roy H. Williams 

Why America Needs Wizard AcademyAccording to the U.S. Census, our nation is home to 5.91 million business owners whose businesses have fewer than 100 employees. If the American dream is to survive, these small businesses must thrive. The success of Wal-Mart and Google is not enough. Wizard Academy is a business school – not for big corporations – but for companies operated by their owners. Can you name another? On 1/3/11 6:59 AM, <XXXXXX@yahoo.com> wrote:Roy,May I be one of the first to speak up about your “Sponsorship Opportunities?” Enough already.  Yes, it’s a good idea to have people buy in to your ideas and write checks to help build things at the Academy.  A light fixture here, some paving bricks there.  But it may be time to give it a rest.  What will we be asked to buy next, a box of paper clips? Please don’t lower yourself to standing on the streets of Austin with a pencil cup.  It would be a humbling experience but it’s unbecoming of you. Need more money? Do what the Doobies suggested and Take It to The Street.  Get back on the lecture circuit for $25K+ per day plus expenses.  There are people out here who would pay big bucks for a Roy appearance.  Heck, if Glenn Beck can do it, you can too.XXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX, VA “Get back on the lecture circuit”? Friend, you seem to think I’m raising money to build Roy-Town. You are mistaken. My goal in seeking sponsorships is to transfer psychological ownership of this school to the people for whom it is being built. The public already owns Wizard Academy legally. Now I need them to own it in their hearts. When a person donates money to fund a permanent, physical attribute of this school, his or her relationship with it is made more permanent and physical as well. I will soon pass off the scene. I’m not speaking of my death, but of my joyful departure to pursue the hands-on, face-to-face growth of small businesses across the land. If the public has not fully seized hold of this school, it will fail shortly after I walk away.I am sorry you were annoyed. I promise not to let it happen again. To make doubly sure that my tacky, lowbrow behavior no longer offends your sensitive nature, I’ve instructed Barry Skidmore to remove your name from our subscriber list. (Just out of curiosity, I checked to see if you’ve ever made a donation or paid to attend a class. No on both counts. But I did notice that you’ve been quick to fly from Virginia to attend Academy events that are free.) So with a wink and a smile and a snappy salute good-bye, I leave you to the wisdom of Glenn Beck.Roy H. Williams “No man, who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man…” – Elbert Hubbard, A Message to Garcia, 1899 (More than 100 million copies of this booklet have been distributed in the past 112 years.) You, reader, as a believer in this school for small business, are not “the average man” spoken of by Elbert Hubbard. You are generous, gracious and intelligent. You are insightful, creative and committed. You and your continuing success are the reasons this school exists. I look forward to spending these moments with you each week. Roy H. Williams

I look at Vivian Maier and remember Jane Hathaway, Mr. Drysdale’s scholarly secretary on The Beverly Hillbillies. Vivian was born in France in 1926. We don’t know how or when Vivian came to America, but at age 11 she began working in a New York sweatshop. She learned English by sitting in movie theaters, alone in the dark. Alone in the dark. That pretty much describes Vivian’s life except for 1959, the year she turned 33 and found just enough money to travel abroad to strange and exotic places; Egypt, Thailand, Vietnam, France, Italy, Indonesia, Taiwan. Highly unusual for a woman of her time, Vivian journeyed alone. Even more unusual, she often wore a man’s bulky jacket, ugly and awkward men’s shoes and a large, floppy hat. And she constantly took photographs that she never showed anyone. It appears that Vivian escaped the sweatshops by moving to Chicago in the early 1950’s and taking work as a nanny to three young boys: Matthew, Lane and John are now old men but remember Vivian as “peculiar, our own Mary Poppins. One time she brought home a dead snake to show us, another time she convinced the milkman to drive us all to school in his delivery truck. But in the 10 years she worked for our family, she never once received a phone call.” When the 3 boys were raised, Vivian became unemployed. The next half-century saw her shift from family to family, always caring for children who were not her own. One employer hired Vivian to care for his disabled daughter. “But first thing in the morning on her day off, that camera would be around her neck and we wouldn’t see her again until late at night. I remember her as a private person but one who had very strong opinions about movies and politics.” Vivian was born a French Catholic but according to her employers she died an anti-Catholic, Socialist, Feminist movie critic who hated American movies but loved foreign films. At age 83, still in Chicago, she slipped on the ice and hit her head and died. But on the other side of Chicago, alone in the dark, sat 100,000 photo negatives and more than 1,000 rolls of undeveloped film in a public storage facility. When Vivian didn’t show up to pay her storage fees, the contents of her space were turned over to an auction house. Vivian’s features remind me of Jane Hathaway but her life reminds me of Emily Dickinson. No one knew Emily was a writer until after the funeral when they cleaned out her chest-of-drawers and found more than 1,500 of the finest poems ever written in the English language. Likewise, the buyer of Vivian’s negatives was stunned by what he found. And though John Maloof has scanned only 30,000 of Vivian’s 100,000 photo negatives, Finding Vivian Maier is currently the featured exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center. A book and a documentary movie are in the works. As a longtime collector of black-and-white photography (and the publisher of Accidental Magic, a coffee-table photo book,) I believe we’ll soon see Vivian Maier photographs featured at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. From a storage locker in suburban Chicago to the finest auction houses in the world, I believe the second journey of Vivian Maier has only just begun. ARoy H. Williams

Uptight vs. Anything Goes “Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a people.”– Stanislaw Lec EXAMPLE 1. “Win the heart and the mind will follow. The intellect can always find logic to justify what the heart has already decided.” In other words, speak to the right brain – the heart – if you will persuade.EXAMPLE 2. “Specifics are more believable than generalities.” In other words, speak to the left brain – the mind – if you will persuade. “If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants flying in the sky, people will probably believe you.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, novelist, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature The conscious and the unconscious – left brain and right – struggle in a perpetual tug-of-war. Neurologist Richard Cytowic says, “Not everything we are capable of knowing and doing is accessible to, or expressible in, language. This means that some of our personal knowledge is off limits even to our own inner thoughts! Perhaps this is why humans are so often at odds with themselves, because there is more going on in our minds than we can ever consciously know.” Psychologist Carl Jung compared this “unconscious” to swimming in the silent and weightless world underwater: above the waterline exists the sunlit world of the conscious mind filled with air, birds, trees and people. But below the waterline, in the unconscious mind, is a timeless world of twilight and shadows, symbols and beauty, metaphors and music.But there are monsters in the deep. The intellect rescues us from our emotions, to be sure. But just as surely do the emotions provide escape from the cold, hard jail of the intellect. “We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.” – Tom Robbins, novelistDr. Roger Sperry won the Nobel Prize in 1981 for his discovery that humans don’t have a brain divided into halves as much as we have two separate, competing brains that perceive radically different information. The left brain gathers objective data to facilitate rational, logical, sequential, deductive reasoning. “Zoom in close and get all the details,” the left brain seeks to forecast a result. Our language functions exist in the left brain, allowing us to communicate specific details with accuracy. The left brain puts us in touch with the world that IS. The left is intellect. The left is logic. The colorful, musical right brain exists primarily for pattern recognition, observing and cataloging recurrent series of shapes and colors and musical notes and symbols and events and behaviors. Although it has no ability to interpret spoken or written languages, the right brain does interpret tone of voice as just one of the many, meaningful patterns it observes. The right brain puts you in touch with worlds that could be, should be, ought to be, might be someday. The right brain is heart, not mind. The right brain is intuition. The engineer stereotype mocks the “touchy-feely” world of the artist while the artist stereotype mocks the cold and sterile world of the engineer. Each of these stereotypes – the engineer and the artist – is a fool. Robert Frost said,“Young poets forget that poetry must include the mind as well as the emotions. Too many poets delude themselves by thinking the mind is dangerous and must be left out. Well, the mind is dangerous and must be left in.”  When Robert Frost spoke that truth about poetry, he spoke the grand truth of ad writing and salesmanship as well. But Honest Abe said it first: “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what you will, is the greatest high-road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause.” – Abraham Lincoln If you would1. Sell products or services,2. win the support of those around you and3. achieve the next level,you must win both heart and mind. Would you like to know exactly how it’s done? The penultimate squabble between left brain and right is the 3-day Magical Worlds Communications Workshop at Wizard Academy and it’s happening January 11-13. We’ve held a room open for you in Engelbrecht House so that you can stay on campus. Room and board will be on us. If you need to persuade women, or even one woman in particular, then you must – this is not a suggestion but a simple statement of fact – you must attend the inaugural session of Unzipped on January 26-27, taught by that Musical Maestra, Michele Miller, and Dancing Tom Wanek, known in South Florida as Twinkletoes Tommy.Come, make 2011 a very good year. Roy H. Williams

But the Sun Shows Us the Way.“Success is a snowflake,” she said. I was talking to the princess of my world, doing my best to ignore the day that waited impatiently outside our door. I had shown her the photo of Jane DeDecker’s Old Man and the Sea and told her the back story of Teddy Roosevelt’s famous statement, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” In Hemingway’s Nobel Prize-winning story, the old man, Santiago, tries valiantly, suffers mightily, makes all the right decisions and catches the magnificent fish… only to see it eaten by sharks before he can get it home. Did he succeed or fail? Santiago saw the snowflake. Hemingway saw the snowflake. Roosevelt saw the snowflake. Success is that snowflake: beautiful, perfect and gone too soon, leaving only spots that dance before your eyes from the bright flashbulb of Life’s photographer. “Is it over? Did I win?” Yes. Now go home. Tomorrow is another day, my friend, and you are not yet dead.We live in a culture that pretends the snowflake will last forever. “The most popular books are manuals: how to become a millionaire in ten easy lessons, how to lose fifteen pounds a week, how to recover from your divorce, and so on. People always go around looking for shortcuts and ways to escape anything they consider unpleasant: ugliness, old age, weight, illness, poverty, and failure in any of its aspects.” – Isabel Allende, My Invented Country Failure is not a flashbulb but the sun, lighting the way, revealing our mistakes, a loving teacher that causes the snowflake to sparkle beautifully as it falls. Have you been afraid of Failure? Don’t be. Tom Peters, that Dean of Worldwide Business Consultants, says, “Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.” Think of risky undertakings as “experiments.” Regardless of whether your experiment succeeds or fails, you’re going to learn something useful. And as Life’s photographer told you, “Tomorrow is another day, my friend, and you are not yet dead.”Roy H. Williams

Ray,I agree with what you said. Determination must be fed or it will fade.Commitment, on the other hand, is settled, secure, irrevocable. Costs are no longer counted.You’ve heard me say many times that one of our society’s most costly mistakes is this misbegotten belief that passion produces commitment. America’s high divorce rate testifies to our error.Commitment, I believe, produces passion. I often meet people who sigh, “I just can’t find my passion.” To them I say, “Make a commitment. Fling yourself into it. Passion will make its debut soon after.”When a commitment is fully settled in the heart, all concerns about time and money are erased; “It will take as long as it takes and it will cost what it costs.” When the objective is clear and your commitment is absolute, schedules and budgets no longer apply.Our society admires the clever, the quick, the connected and the beautiful. We even admire the brash and the reckless. We have Hollywood to thank for that. But in my 30-year observation of American small business, it is the committed owner that is most likely to succeed. I continue to believe in exponential little bits: the relentless march of a colony of ants, the mathematical magic of compound interest, the ability of rain to erode a rock.Wizard Academy exists to help committed people achieve their impossible dreams. This is not a school for gimmick mongers, multilevel marketers or twitchy little bastards.You’ve heard it said, I’m sure, “The chicken is involved in a ham-and-eggs breakfast, but the pig is truly committed.” This is a school for the pig, not the chicken.Committed people are outsiders in a society that is barely skin deep.According to the most recent US Census, our nation has 5.91 million businesses with fewer than 100 employees. These people need help if our nation is to survive.The American Dream has always been an impossible dream. God bless the travelers who follow a star, those relentless ones whose vision allows them to see past the obstacles that stand so ominously in their way.Thank You, Ray, for the vital role you have played since 1997. Thank you for the wisdom you continue to share.Yours,Roy H. Williams

A Look at Personification and Brandable ChunksGold, for thousands of years, has been the world’s only truly secure investment. The economy ebbs and flows, like the tide. It always has. It always will. But gold is like the Rock of Gibraltar. Safe. Secure. Indestructible.If all the gold in the world were melted into a single cube, that cube would be only 22 yards per side. Gold is astoundingly rare.As an investment, gold is liquid.Its value and desirability are international.Gold laughs at stocks and bonds.Gold is beautiful.Gold, in all its forms, is the thing to own.Come and meet your gold at Austin Rare Coins & Bullion.Do you remember the October 11th MondayMorningMemo about new words? One “new word” definition I gave you was: Brandable chunks: vivid, recurring phrases used by an advertiser to help position and define the brand. Slogans and taglines are out. Brandable chunks are in.In return for their donation of $500 to help build the tower at Wizard Academy, Austin Rare Coins and Bullion received the 106 words that opened today’s memo. Arranged as they are, those 106 words could be used as an email, a 60-second radio ad, or the text of a magazine ad. Those 106 words contain exactly 8 brandable chunks linked together like the cars of a freight train carrying radioactive moonbeams.Each of the eight brandable chunks can be used independently of the other seven. There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar. In how many situations and combinations do you suppose these eight brandable chunks might be used?1.   1. Gold, for thousands of years, has been the world’s only truly secure investment.2.   2. The economy ebbs and flows, like the tide. It always has. It always will. But gold is like the Rock of Gibraltar. Safe. Secure. Indestructible.3.   3. If all the gold in the world were melted into a single cube, that cube would be only 22 yards per side. Gold is astoundingly rare.4.   4. As an investment, gold is liquid. Its value and desirability are international.5.   5. Gold laughs at stocks and bonds.6.   6. Gold is beautiful.7.   7. Gold, in all its forms, is the thing to own.8.   8. Come and meet your gold.The eternal and omnipotent Webster, that thundering god of the English language, declares personification to be “attribution of personal qualities; especially: representation of a thing or abstraction as a person.”When you give human characteristics to inanimate objects, you fling open the doors of imagination as surely as if you had said, “Once upon a time.”Gold laughs at stocks and bonds.But don’t get carried away. Overuse of personification just makes you sound like a nut.Roy H. Williams