Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

And How Will You Measure Progress?Violent crime in America declined each year from 1993 to 2004. Then just about the time the iPod became popular in 2005, violent crime began trending upward.CONCLUSION: iPods cause violent crime. Or at least that was the conclusion of a 2007 report published by The Urban Institute, a research organization based in Washington. (I swear I’m not making this up.)Bad advertising strategies stem from just such logic: “Since one event precedes another, the first event must be the cause of the second.” This fallacy of logic is so common it has a Latin name: Post hoc, ergo, propter hoc, “after this, therefore, because of this,” referring to the mistaken belief that temporal succession implies a causal relation.Most business owners look around, observe their circumstances and then try to make sense of it all. Their thoughts and plans are guided by what they see. But any scientist will tell you correlation and causation are not the same thing.Don’t tell me what you see. Tell me what you want to see. “What are you trying to make happen? And how will you measure progress?” When I ask these questions, most business owners stammer, stutter and hedge, then change the subject by asking a question of their own.I usually ignore that question and ask, “How am I supposed to help you make something happen when you can’t tell me what it is?”Sigh.“When you don’t know where you’re going,any road will get you there.”– Cheshire Cat, Alice in WonderlandHow many of your actions are actually reactions triggered by circumstances? (Please know that I am as guilty of this as the rest of you.) Are we allowing the merely urgent to set aside the truly important?Do you know what you’re trying to make happen? Can you tell me exactly how you plan to measure progress? The shortest distance from Point A to Point B is always a straight line. The best marketing strategies begin by drawing a straight line from Where We Are Today to Where We’d Like To Be Tomorrow.You can’t navigate a ship by studying the wind and waves. Fix your gaze on your goal, a non-negotiable, fixed position that can never change. Let that be your lighthouse, your reference point, your North Star.No stack of dollars can be your lighthouse. Dollars are merely a byproduct. Money fails as a compass because it can be found in every direction. Guiding directives and unifying principles are never merely financial.Where do you want to be tomorrow?Now point to your North Star so that I can see it, too.Good. Now let’s get started.Roy H. Williams

Moses was 40 years old when he tried to lead Israel out of Egypt by the strength of his own arm. He failed, then ran from the anger of Pharaoh like a little girl. But who can blame him for trying? He was, after all, the only Israelite who lived in the palace under the protection of Pharaoh’s daughter: “I’m unique. I’m special. I was born for this.”Moses at 40 was brash, confident, full of himself; the kind of leader who would stand on the deck of an aircraft carrier, look into the lens of a TV camera and say, “Mission accomplished.”But Moses at 80 was a completely different man. In the book of Numbers we read, “Now the man Moses was very meek, the most humble man on the face of the whole earth.” Having lived 40 years as a shepherd on the backside of the desert, Moses had lost his hubris and developed a speech impediment.Remember how many years the unbelieving Israelites had to wander in the desert before they became a completely different people? Bingo. 40 years.That phrase – “40 years” – appears 25 times in the Bible and in virtually every instance it refers to a window of transformative change. Do we in fact become a different people every 40 years?William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote a book about this 40-year phenomenon in 1991. Those authors never mention the Bible but focus instead on the historical record of Western society from 1584 to the present. That book, Generations, asserts that we go through a series of 4, approximately 20-year cycles or “generations” in a predictable order. (Think of a generation not as birth cohorts but as life cohorts. Everyone alive in a society is part of the same generation in that moment.)Here’s how those 20-year cycles look when overlaid onto the story of Moses.1. Idealist, marked by infatuation,ending with full-of-himself Moses at 40,“I’m special.” 1963-19832. Reactive, marked by disillusionment,ending with Moses at 60 after 20 years in the desert,“I’m searching for something better.” 1983-20033. Civic, marked by a power struggle,ending with burning-bush/10 Plagues Moses at 80,“I’m just a regular person trying to make it through the day.” 2003-2023 (and 1923-1943)4. Adaptive, marked by reluctant acceptance,ending with Israel-in-the-wilderness Moses at 100, “I’m part of a team on a journey.” 2023-2043 (and 1943 to 1963) (In the middle of the last Adaptive cycle (1943-1963) a friend of Jack Kerouac, the poet John Clellon Holmes wrote, “You know, everyone I know is kind of furtive, kind of beat…” – Go, (1952) And from that Beat generation came the beatniks who inspired the idealist hippies of the 1960’s.)When the cycle has gone full circle it returns to where it began:1. Idealistending with Moses at 120, full of himself again, striking the rock to bring water instead of speaking to it as God had instructed. 2043-2063Please note that each of these 20-year cycles is attended by sparkle and darkness. None of them is inherently better than the others.Society hungers for individuality and freedom during the upswing of an Idealist cycle. Nothing wrong with that. But we always take a good thing too far. What begins as a beautiful dream of self-discovery (1963) ends as hollow, phony posing (1983.) And from that shining disco of lights and glitter our hunger falls back, feather-like, toward what we left behind: working together for the common good.But this beautiful dream of working together to build a better tomorrow slowly hardens into duty, obligation and sacrifice. We become bound by rules and the expectations of others.And we grow weary.Finally, we begin to move toward what we left behind: individuality and freedom of expression.“If you look at the history of youth cultural movements, they tend to go one of two ways. One is in the direction of individual expression and creativity; the best example is the '60s. The other way is to lose themselves in the collective, binding themselves into a gang…” – Jaron LanierThe declining Idealist pendulum reached the bottom of its arc in 2003, right on schedule. We’re now in our 7th year of a new Civic cycle, “losing ourselves in the collective, binding ourselves into a gang,” as the pendulum swings toward another Civic zenith in 2023.On the sunny side of a Civic upswing are transparency, volunteerism and authenticity. But in the dark you’ll find smug self-righteousness, legalism and bureaucracy.If history can be trusted as a guide, we’re now entering the time of a power struggle. Everywhere it will be “us” versus “them.” And both sides will believe they work purely for the common good. “God is clearly on OUR side.”“You don’t care enough about global warming,or free enterprise,or civil liberties,or the rights of the unborn,or the downtrodden in Tibet.You’re not committed to family valuesand you don’t recycle.You don’t support our troops.Frankly, we’re disappointed in you.You’re not doing your part.Shape up.”The coming zealot will want to make sure you’re doing your part for the team. You’ll be interrogated, evaluated and castigated. When you have capitulated, you’ll be authenticated, approximated and appropriated. In the end you’ll be assimilated.Or you can hide out at Wizard Academy. As society becomes more sharply divided, we’ll remain committed to the insanity of open-mindedness. We'll listen and hear and understand what both sides are trying to say. We'll see things no one else notices.And we will use this knowledge to make a difference in our businesses and our communities.Come to Wizard Academy.You’re going to like it here.We know how to make moneyand we remember how to have fun.Roy H. Williams

Even When They're WrongChristian Jürgensen Thomsen was a young man interested in archaeology so when the Danish government of 1816 needed someone to climb into the attic of Copenhagen’s Trinitatis Church and sort through the rubble that had collected there, Thomsen was their man.Upon entering the attic, Thomsen reported random items in “dust and disorganized disarray, hidden away in chests and baskets, among bits of material and paper. It was total chaos.” Sounds like my attic. Yours too, I’ll bet.The first thing young Christian Jürgensen Thomsen did was to organize the antiquities according to their material: stone in one pile, bronze in another, iron in a third. When the public was invited to an exhibition in that same church loft in 1819, this was the first time the false division of the past into three “ages” was ever used.“So familiar has Thomsen’s tripartite division of the past into a Stone, a Bronze and an Iron age become, so complete the authority it has acquired, that we easily forget its comparatively recent vintage and attribute to it a degree of reality that it scarcely has a right to.” – Historian Robert FergusonFerguson says “Stone Age,” “Bronze Age” and “Iron Age” are false labels adopted by people looking for categories where none exist. Likewise, I believe “Baby Boomer,” “Gen-Xer” and “Millennial” to be false labels.People are not imprinted at birth with values systems they carry throughout their lives.Search the phrase “Attributes of Baby Boomers” and you’ll read some truly idiotic assertions that have come to be widely believed, such as, “People born between 1946 and 1955 are experimental, value individualism and are free spirited. People born between 1956 and 1964 are less optimistic, distrust the government and are generally cynical.”- WikipediaStone, bronze and iron refer not to time periods but to materials. Likewise, Baby Boomer, Gen-X and Millennial refer not to people born during a certain window of years but to values systems that were popular for a while in our society.New systems of values are first adopted by the youth. Later, when those values become mainstream and are embraced by the rest of society, the values continue to be associated with the birth cohorts that first embraced them.In truth, the pendulum of Western society swings in a very predictable 40-year arc and all of us are carried along with it. When our societal pendulum is moving toward individuality and self-expression we live in a “Me generation.” When we’re swinging away from these virtues and begin working together for the common good, we live in a “We generation.” The move from one extreme to the other takes 40 years.We’ve recently seen our pendulum reach the bottom of its arc (2003) as we shifted from “Me” back to “We.”Next Monday I’ll tell you exactly what you can expect from the coming decade.Roy H. Williams

Frankly, I Cheat. You Can, Too.I became an advertising salesman so I could buy groceries. A college dropout with no financial safety net, I installed aluminum guttering on houses during the day and changed reel-to-reel tapes in an automated radio station at night. Our format was radio preachers who needed your money to pay for the airtime we sold them.We were the number 23 station in a city of 23 stations. Our best ratings book showed us with a cumulative weekly audience of 18,000 people in a city of 1.3 million. We had between 400 and 800 people listening at any given moment. That sounded like a lot of people to me. One day I asked the manager why our station played no ads.“You think you could sell some ads?” he asked.I nodded like a bobblehead doll.“Do it,” he said as he walked away.I asked the back of his head how much I should charge.“Whatever you can get,” he answered, without ever looking back.When you sell ads on the tiniest station in town, you don’t compete with the other stations, you sell only those businesses with too little money to afford anyone else. In fact, the money my clients gave me every month was usually all the cash they had. If my ads didn’t work, I’d have groceries in my pantry but my clients wouldn’t. A man learns fast in that environment.The first thing I learned is that people are bored by advertising for the same reason they’re bored by anything else: lack of relevance.“If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.”- Emil CioranWhen ads are relevant, customers respond. Are your ads relevant, or are they answering questions no one is asking?My job at the radio station paid $3.50 an hour plus 15 percent commission. Within 3 years I was making about $6,000 a month. That was doctor/lawyer money 30 years ago.Strangely, I never made that many sales calls. Most of my clients called the station to ask if they could buy ads from me. Usually, a friend had told them how much money they were making as a result of the ads I was writing and they wanted in on the action.“What does it cost?” they'd ask. These people didn't care about the radio station or its format. They just wanted to grow their businesses.When the owners of my radio station sold it for 11 times what they paid for it, I decided I’d rather become a self-employed ad consultant than move to Los Angeles and become a station manager for them.The second thing I had learned, you see, is that good ads work no matter how they’re delivered. I saw my ads work on virtually every radio and TV station in the city and with tiny variations these same ads performed as direct mail letters and fax machine blasts.The secret wasn’t in reaching the right people. The secret was in crafting a message that would be relevant to the public.My ads worked because I cheated: I insisted my clients let me deliver a message guaranteed to move the needle on the “Who Cares?” meter.Ads fail when no one cares.An extremely common mistake is to believe that discounting the price of a product is guaranteed to win the interest of the public. But I've seen that strategy fail dozens of times. A half-price turd is still a turd.When a client belligerently demanded that I write some magic words to help him sell a load of crap that no one in their right mind would ever want to buy, I looked down at the ground, dropped a wad of spit on the toe of his shoe, then looked up into his face and said, “No.”Yes, it was a rude and vulgar thing to do but I can assure you it shortened the argument. Word of my little stunt spread. Some saw it as the action of an egotistical lunatic. It’s possible these people were right. But others saw it as the mark of a young man who had the courage of his convictions. These people may have been right, too.Every business owner is on the inside, looking out, and what they see is entirely different from what their customers see. Customers are on the outside, looking in.Great ad writers remain on the outside, looking in. They are advocates, not of the business owner, but of the business owner’s customer. This gives them their great advantage.Do you have the courage to learn what your company looks like from the outside, looking in? Would you like to know what your customer is thinking?Twice a year I gather my Wizard of Ads partners from around the world for 2 days of continuing education in Austin, Texas. This year we’re looking for 7 business owners willing to be guinea pigs for us on February 25, the second day of class. These selected business owners will be responsible for their own airfare and accommodations. Since this is not a Wizard Academy event, we can’t offer you a room in Engelbrecht House. Sorry.In return for your investment of time, travel costs and courage, you’ll receive 1 hour of focused attention from the brightest ad consultants on earth.If you own a business and are interested, email PaulBoomer@WizardOfAds.com or call Paul Boomer at (573) 268-4109. Please, no advertising professionals.I hope to see 7 owners of interesting businesses in Austin on February 25.It is good to be a guinea pig.Roy H. Williams

Guilty PleasureFebruary 1, 2010ListenAJanuary 27, 2010: It’s weird when you think about it: Apple releases the iPad just as Salinger breathes his last. It feels like the ending of a play.J.D. Salinger and Jack Kerouac were the tortured voices that led us into forbidden places in our minds. We followed them, spellbound, as they sauntered into dark rooms we would never have entered alone.Then Salinger’s Holden Caulfield shuffled onto the big screen as James Dean and gave us brooding angst in Rebel Without a Cause and Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty bopped onto the little screen as Maynard G. Krebs and gave us freedom of expression in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.America said, “The movie was good, but the book was better.”But America has since changed her mind. Today she says, “Out with the old literature!” that requires focused attention as you experience a story in the quiet of your mind. “In with the new literature!” that requires nothing from you but to sit, slack-jawed and drooling as flashing images enter your brain.Joseph Brodsky saw this day coming and tried to do something about it. When he was named Poet Laureate in 1991, Brodsky proposed a populist poetry initiative that might “turn this nation into an enlightened democracy… before literacy is replaced with videocy.”Methinks it may be too late, Joseph.The glittering iPad promises movies, TV shows and YouTube videos at our fingertips, 24 hours a day, wherever we happen to be. No need to carry a pill bottle. Just touch the screen and go unconscious. This tablet is electronic.Yes, I’ll buy one.Of course I will.And I will feel sad.Roy H. Williams

In 1969, spending time with your friends meant piling into a car and driving around.Every town had a strip called “the drag,” a place to see and be seen as you cruised back and forth at 20 miles an hour. It's how you made contact. And when you and your friends weren’t in your car, you were sitting on the hood of it in a parking lot, talking to the people sitting on the hood of the car next to yours.Did we shape our technology or did our technology shape us?Had you asked us in 1969 to describe our vision of 2009, we would have told you of flying cars, driverless cars and carburetors that would get 200 miles per gallon.If you told us the cars of 2009 would travel at the same speeds and get about the same gas mileage we were getting in 1969, we would have rolled our eyes and thought you a fool.Forty short years ago General Motors stood tall as one of the most powerful corporations on earth.Not one person in 1969 would have said,“In 2009 we’ll carry cordless telephones that will have TV screens in them and all the world’s knowledge will be at your fingertips because you’ll be connected to a thing called the worldwide web. And that TV screen will show you any movie and let you listen to any song, any time you want. And you’ll be able to tell it where you want to go and the screen will show you a map of how to get there. And as you travel, the map will continually update to show you where you are. The map will even talk to you and tell you where to turn. And there won’t be any long distance charges.”No American in 1969 would have predicted the iPhone because we were a nation on the move, obsessed with transportation. Then somewhere along the way we fell out of love with transportation and became obsessed with communication.But not quite in the way you think.In the January 18, 2010 issue of Time magazine, Joel Stein explains why people today are uninterested, not just in videophones, but in talking on the regular phone as well. “We want to TiVo our lives,” he says, “avoiding real time by texting or emailing people when we feel like it.”Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor who studies the social aspects of science and technology, says, “VideoSkype, which was the fantasy of our childhood, gets you back to sitting there and being available in that old-fashioned way. Our model of what it was to be present to each other, we thought we liked that. But it turns out that time-shifting is our most valued product. This new technology is about control. Emotional control and time control.”Again, are we shaping our technology or is our technology shaping us?Jaron Lanier, the internet guru who coined the term “Virtual Reality,” has become worried about the real reality we’re creating.Commenting on Lanier’s new book, You Are Not a Gadget, Michael Agger says that Lanier is asserting,“The Internet's long tail helps only the Amazons of the world, not the little guys and gals making songs, videos, and books. Wikipedia, a mediocre product of group writing, has become the intellectual backbone of the Web. And, most depressingly, all of us have been lumped into a ‘hive mind’ that every entrepreneur with a dollar and a dream is trying to parse for profit.”In essence, Jaron Lanier believes that Web 2.0 technologies are based on the assumption that an aggregator of content (Google) is more important than an actual creator of content. Additionally, the implied belief of Web 2.0 technologies is that a million men are wiser than one man.But “individual genius” is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men.Which do you believe?And by the way, are you shaping your technology? Or is your technology shaping you?When's the last time you had an extended, face-to-face conversation with someone who was important enough to you that you turned your cell phone completely off, rather than just setting it to vibrate so you could check to see if the caller was important enough to interrupt the conversation?Something to think about.Roy H. Williams

Today's memo is a long oneBut worth reading if you want to make money.If you knew it was there, they wouldn’t call it a blind spot.Hidden within your blind spot is your limiting factor, the thing that holds you back and limits your success.Find your blind spot and stare your limiting factor in the face. Acknowledge the reality of it. Then decide whether or not you want to overcome it.*That’s right. It’s entirely possible that your blind spot – and within it your limiting factor – is simply an extension of your fundamental worldview.You may already know your worldview is wrong but you’d rather continue being wrong – and suffer the consequences – than change it.I can respect that. I have no problem with a person who is willing to pay the price for their self-indulgence. What I can’t respect is:     1.    a person who is wrong and can’t admit it.     2.    a person who makes a choice and then whines about the price of it.I don’t want to get all sappy and personal with you, so let’s move this discussion to the marketplace. Blind spots and limiting factors are easily observed in business.Here are the most common limiting factors hidden within the blind spots of business owners:    1.    Market Opportunity(A.) Opportunity is staring you in the face and you can’t see it. SOLUTION: Open your eyes.(B.) You’ve overestimated the potential of your trade area. Consequently, you’re bumping your head on the low, glass ceiling of a small population. SOLUTION: (a.) Expand your product offering or (b.) open in a second trade area.If you’re doing okay but have been looking for better ways to target the demographic and psychographic profile of “your customer” and these efforts haven’t been paying off, your limiting factor is almost certainly(1.) Market Opportunity or(2.) Product Appeal. Keep reading. 2.    Product Appeal(A.) Your product is flawed and you can’t see it. SOLUTION: Find someone who has the courage to tell you the truth. Then correct the problem they show you. Don’t live in denial.(B.) Your product has a characteristic whose appeal you’ve underestimated. SOLUTION: Promote the newfound characteristic.EXAMPLE: My partner Peter Nevland recently bumped into the owner of a bottled water service who asked him for some free advice. Peter asked, “Why should the customer of another water service switch to yours?”“We’re locally owned.” “Ten percent of our profits go to charity,” blah, blah, blah.Peter was unimpressed.Exasperated and grasping at straws, the man mentioned his water had recently been voted “Best Tasting” by the readers of an obscure, local business journal.“Why do you think you won?”The man hung his head, “We cheat.”“How?”“Our water is saturated with dissolved oxygen, twice the amount found in regular water.”“What does that do?”“Dissolved oxygen is what makes water taste good. It’s why cold water tastes better than warm water. Cold water contains more dissolved oxygen.”“You’re saying your room temperature water tastes like cold water?”The man nodded his head.“Do you always saturate your water with dissolved oxygen?”“Yes, why do you ask?”SAD ENDING: Peter was unable to convince the man to promote his better tasting water with dissolved oxygen. I swear I’m not making this up. The man remained convinced his ads needed to say, “We’re locally owned and give ten percent of our profits to charity.”3.    Staff Competence(A.) Your front-line people see opportunities and solutions you don’t see. You limit your success by not listening to your people. SOLUTION: Listen to them.(B.) Your people aren’t nearly as smart as you think. You keep listening to them and they’re wrong, but dammit, they’re enthusiastic and they make sense and they’re just so sincere! SOLUTION: Make some executive decisions. Be the leader. Tell your employees what you want. If they can’t get on board with it, let them swim in the cold waters of unemployment. (If that suggestion horrifies you, then it’s almost certainly your limiting factor.)4.    Message Clarity(A.) You understand the benefits of your product but have been unable to communicate them persuasively to the public. SOLUTION: Hire an experienced ad writer with a history of success. (I know a lot of writers like Peter Nevland. You can meet them and read their stuff at AmericanSmallBusiness.com.)(B.) You don’t understand how the public views your product category. Consequently, your ads are irrelevant to them. EXAMPLE: You’ve been saying, “We guarantee our work” when your customer’s real anxiety is, “Will these people show up on time or will I have to wait around all day?” SOLUTION: Speak to what the customer actually cares about.5.    Message Delivery (A.) You have a song to sing, you just haven’t been singing it. (In other words you haven’t been advertising.) SOLUTION: Sing, little bird, sing!(B.) You know who would be interested in your product, you just can’t figure out how to reach them.EXAMPLE: You sell engagement rings and want to reach people who are about to get engaged, or you sell houses and want to reach people who are about to go house shopping.SOLUTION: (a.) You can reach the online crowd with Google Adwords and/or use Search Engine Optimization to lift your website to the first page of search engine results. (I have 7 partners who specialize in this. Contact them through their posts at AmericanSmallBusiness.com.) (b.) Reach the general population with a memorable message using mass media and then wait for them, or one of their circle, to need what you sell. Become the solution people think of immediately and feel the best about. Build your reputation with ads that have a high Impact Quotient.6.    Competitor Strength (A.) Your category has a strong leader and it isn’t you. SOLUTION: Use the leader’s reputation like a basketball backboard. Connect yourself to them through indirect acknowledgment.EXAMPLE: Avis came out of nowhere to become a major contender to Hertz with the claim, “We’re Number Two. We Try Harder.” Burger King separated themselves from McDonald’s with the statement, “Have it your way at Burger King.” This statement would have made no sense if the public had not been acutely aware that McDonald’s made all their burgers the same.(B.) Your category has never had a leader because it’s a category that makes people yawn. SOLUTION: Say something memorable. Do something ridiculous. Push far enough beyond the norm to get criticized. Just make sure they spell your name right. Choose who to lose as a potential customer. You can’t have insiders without having outsiders.It’s not what you include, but what you exclude that defines you.How are you defining yourself?Most people limit themselves because of a blind spot. The things they exclude are excluded unconsciously.The purpose of my note to you today has been merely to suggest that you choose consciously, rather than unconsciously, what you will exclude from 1. your business, 2. your reality, 3. your life.Open your eyes. Look in the mirror. Make some choices. The clock is ticking.Roy H. Williams

Transactions can be immediate or transactions can happen over time.The purchase of a “Flashing Blue Light Special” is an immediate transaction. I give you something. You give me something. Now we’re done. Transactions like these indicate an Exchange Market where customers are in Transactional shopping mode.Make no mistake about it: Big things can happen fast when you make the right offer in an Exchange Market.The danger of an Exchange Market is that customers can be lost as easily as they were won. You might sell 10,000 customers in 2 hours but these customers were never attracted to you, they were attracted to your product and its price. If a snazzier product comes along, or the same product at a better price, “your” customers will become someone else's customers.It is extremely difficult – but not impossible – to build a strong company using the methods of an Exchange Market. K-Mart thought they knew how to do it. They were wrong. (K-Mart and WalMart are 2 of the case studies we’ll reveal in our upcoming class, How to Make Big Things Happen Fast. If you want to leap forward in 2010 you really need to come.)Growing a fruit tree, winning the heart of a woman and building a brand happen over time, like putting money in the bank and receiving interest on it. Big miracles that happen slow and steady are the product of Exponential Little Bits. Transactions like these indicate an Interest Market where customers are in Relational shopping mode.If you buy gasoline wherever it happens to be cheapest this week, you buy your gas Transactionally. But if you buy your gas from the same one or two places, you’re buying your gas Relationally. Maybe you know why you always go to those places. Maybe you’ve never really thought about it. Doesn’t matter. You’re making your decision based on something other than price-per-gallon.Half the nation buys gasoline Transactionally. The other half buys gasoline Relationally. Both halves are convinced they are typical. Ask them questions about advertising and marketing and they’ll tell you with deep conviction everything you need to do to begin selling “everyone.” In the end, you’ll be as confused as a termite in a yo-yo.The keys to winning short-term, Transactional customers in an Exchange Market are:1.   Make a compelling offer and2.   Impose a time limit, or3.   Make a limited quantity available.The keys to winning long-term, Relational customers in an Interest Market are:1.   Specific details.2.   Honest evaluation.3.   Deliver what you promise.(And be sure to leave a little bit unpromised so you can add “a delight factor.”)The things I’ve told you today are true and reliable. But if these things were all you need to know, we wouldn’t be having a 2-day workshop, now would we?Jon Spoelstra has written a number of bestselling business books. So have I.I like Jon a lot. His talents and preferences are exactly the opposite of mine. That’s why he was chosen to co-teach How to Make Big Things Happen Fast.Would you like your company to be 1 of the 5 that Jon and I develop to show the rest of the class how it’s done? Between the two of us, Jon and I have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in countless real-world experiments over a number of decades. These dollars and years allow us to separate good ideas “that ought to work” from the good ideas that actually do.A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid that mistake altogether.Be the wise man. Come and learn How to Make Big Things Happen Fast, March 30-31.Roy H. Williams

The Full Plate Diet is EverywhereYou’re about to begin seeing The Full Plate Diet everywhere you look; bookstores, grocery stores, airports, wholesale clubs… everywhere.This is an interesting story. I think you’ll enjoy it. Especially since you’re a big part of it. Read on.Ray Bard served as the first chairman of Wizard Academy, a 501c3 nonprofit educational organization in Austin, Texas. He’s also the most successful publisher of business books in the world today. No brag, just fact. More than half the books published by Bard Press have been Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestsellers. No other publisher has had even 10 percent of its titles reach bestseller status. So yes, Ray is a very big deal in the world of publishing.A little more than a year ago, I asked Ray to look at a manuscript written by 3 students of Wizard Academy. Ray agreed to do it because I’m one of the few people in his life who NEVER ask him to look at books written by my friends. Like all successful publishers, Ray Bard is relentlessly pestered by would-be authors who use Ray’s friends to get to him. But I was one of the few “safe” people in Ray’s life. I was spending valuable currency just to ask Ray for this favor.He liked the book.Naturally, Ray kept me involved in most of the discussions about the book’s title, graphics, photography and narrative style. Nearly 5,000 of you received a free copy of a test version of The Full Plate Diet several months ago. Much of the book has been altered since then. It's even better.The final hardcover is glossy and lays flat when opened, like a cookbook. And it overflows with lavish, full-color photos that extend all the way to the edges of the page. About half the content has also been changed. It's more interesting, more useful, more fun.Ray did 2 things on the test cover to get your attention:1: The cover photo of the empty plate contradicts the title above it: The Full Plate Diet. This subtle dissonance works like magic because it’s resolved within the first few pages. You get to fill your plate with whatever you like.2. The test-cover photo also had the spoon on the wrong side and the edge of the knife turned outward. This caused such anxiety among readers that we put the silverware into its proper place on the cover of the final edition. The backwards silverware wasn’t just attention getting; it was a distraction.AIf you were one of the 5,000 Monday Morning Memo readers to receive a free test copy of The Full Plate Diet, I’m hoping you’ll do a couple of things for Ray and me:1.   Go to the Full Plate Diet Page at Amazon.com and write a review of the book. Don’t wait until you have enough time to do a 1st-class job of it. Do whatever you can do in 60 seconds, but please do it right now. This is much more important than you might suspect.2.   Buy a copy while you’re there. You’re going to be deeply impressed with the final product from Bard Press. Amazon’s release-week discount brings the $20 cover price down to just $13.22. You’re going to be glad you bought a copy. This diet works.3.   Mention the book this week to your network of friends. More than one million dollars in printing and promotional costs are on the line. The authors and the publisher are people we really care about. They're part of Wizard Academy.Besides, it’s fun to say, “This bestseller was written by some doctors who go to the same business school I attend. And here’s a copy of the test book they sent me half-a-year before the final book was released. Notice how the silverware is in the wrong place. They decided not to do this on the final cover because…”If enough of us buy a book this week, your fellow alumni are going to become bestselling authors and Wizard Academy will have a new feather in its cap.Thanks for being there. You're what makes the difference.You'll find the MondayMorningMemo I had originally planned for this week – 2010: The Changing of the Guard – in the rabbit hole. Dive into it by clicking the photo at the top of this page but go to Amazon.com first, okay?Roy H. Williams

Read to the End and Find a Business ApplicationIt’s entirely possible that today’s memo will make you think less of me. Maybe not. We’ll see.People fall into 4 categories in my mind:1. People I owe.2. People I know.3. People Invisible.4. People I must fight.If you object to people being put in categories, please keep in mind I said we’re talking about the world inside my head, not yours.People I Owe: When a person has been there for me and helped me when I was down, or gotten involved with something I was trying to do, I’ll always watch for a way to repay them. Some of the People I Owe have earned huge equity in my life and I’ll happily do things for them that no one else dare ask.I’ll bet you’re like that, too.So here’s my question for you: what did your “People I Owe” do for you that you’ve never forgotten? What was it that lifted them to such lofty heights in your heart and mind?Do those same things for other people.People I Know is a category that might have been labeled “friends and acquaintances” but it’s much broader than that in my mind. People I Know are the fabric of the social construct that exists within the scope of my limited vision. In essence, People I Know are the population of RoyWorld. I’m aware of their actions and I care about them.Strangely, the population of RoyWorld contains no newscasters. They are, to me, Invisible. I’m being completely serious with you. Newscasters have no place in my mind. I don’t hate them exactly, but I have no use for them. They don’t matter to me. Consequently, newscasters don’t exist in my private world.People Invisible are those who don’t count.Who doesn’t exist in your private world? How many billions of people live beyond the edges of your peripheral vision? You might like to believe you care about all living things and value all human life equally but your mind isn’t big enough for that. You can’t wrap your consciousness around everyone and everything on earth. So there will always be People Invisible in your world whether you like it or not.I’m suggesting only that you begin 2010 by choosing the populations of your categories consciously rather than unconsciously. Who will you owe? Who will you know? Who will be invisible? Who will you fight?Last week Pennie and I listened to People We Know talk about their Christmas traditions. One man we know – I don’t know his name – watches each year for the sanitation workers who pick up the garbage in his upscale neighborhood. Walking to the curb, he gives each man a Christmas card containing a surprisingly large cash tip. He said, “It makes them part of our community. It proves we recognize them, know their value, and consider them to be part of us.”The men on that garbage truck honk and wave and smile as they pass his home each week. The glow of his recognition stays on them all year. Our friend moved his service workers from People Invisible all the way up to People I Owe. And they have never forgotten it.If you’re in business, your customers are People You Owe. If you let them slip down to People You Know, or worse, People Invisible, your business will definitely suffer for it.But if that happens, don’t sweat it. You can always blame your advertising.Roy H. Williams