Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Every life has a scoreboard and how you choose to keep score is up to you.How are you measuring success?I’ve known men and women who measure success by their ability to attract the opposite sex. You’ve met these people, too, haven’t you?Some people measure success by their ability to inflict pain in the lives of others. Bullies, vandals, website hackers, internet virus creators and bad policemen are tragic examples. The fact that they momentarily control our time, emotions and energy gives them a perverted sense of power. I know of no cure for this sickness.And then there are the many who measure success by the acquisition of things that cost money. I think this definition covers most of us.John Steinbeck gave us a way to identify the scoreboard we’re using to measure our success. All one needs to do is ask oneself, “What are my plans for the future?”“A rich life is rich in plans. If they don't come off, they are still a little bit realized. If they do, they may be disappointing. That's why a trip described becomes better the greater the time between the trip and the telling. I believe too that if you can know a man's plans, you know more about him than you can in any other way.”– John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden LettersToday I submit these additional measurements of success for your consideration:1. Am I sufficiently curious?“Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”– Albert Einstein    2. How little do I need to be happy?“It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.”– Seneca the younger, (3BC-65AD)3. Have I proven that I care?“That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.”– Aimee Bender, from her short story, Tiger Mending    4. How many lives have I made better today?“In a completely rational society, teachers would be at the tip of the pyramid, not near the bottom. In that society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers, and the rest of us would have to settle for something less. The job of passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor anyone could have.”– Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? p. 217Are you satisfied with the scoreboard you’ve been using to measure success? Remember, you alone get to choose. To measure success according to a scoreboard thrust upon you by another is tantamount to psychic slavery.Don’t be anyone’s slave. Measure success by your own scoreboard. The point of today’s memo is to encourage you to choose your scoreboard consciously rather than unconsciously.When you’ve identified your personal scoreboard, come to Wizard Academy and we’ll help you run up the score.Roy H. Williams

If it takes money to make money, how does one make money when he has no money at the start?A person without capital has nothing to leverage but his or her time. This is why millions of Americans wear the handcuffs of hourly wages.When I was 14, my life sold for $1.60 an hour. At 18, an hour in the life of Roy H. Williams was selling for three dollars and thirty-five cents. People all around me talked about “the security of a steady paycheck” as though steady and unchanging were a good thing.But I found a way of escape.“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”– Howard Thurman (1900-1981)If you want to slip the handcuffs of hourly wages, you must figure out how to be paid according to your accomplishments. “How long did it take?” isn’t the question you want to answer, but rather, “What is the value of my achievement?”People paid by the hour are paid for their activities. People paid royalties, license fees, or sales commissions are paid for their accomplishments.Average people are average because they cling to an avoidance of discomfort. There is a truth – a profound, 4-word truth – known to every successful person: “Pain is my friend.”Pain is an informant, a sentinel, a lookout blowing a bugle. Pain tells us when something is wrong and indicates the location of the problem.“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” – Niels Bohr“Mediocrity has a way of keeping demons from the door.” – Marie AranaComfort leads to complacency. Solomon spoke of the dangers of going with the flow when he said,“There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”Solomon followed that statement with an immediate, sharp contrast:“The laborer's appetite works for him; his hunger drives him on.” (Proverbs 16:25-26)Wait a minute. Solomon warns us the direction most easily taken – “going with the flow” – is a road that leads to nowhere. Hunger, according to Solomon, is your ally.For what do you hunger?Are you willing to risk embarrassment?Financial loss?Damage to your reputation?Let your hunger lead you. Let it drive you on.People stay in the box because it’s safe there. And then they talk about needing to think “outside the box.”“There be tigers outside the box, matey. And ogres and monsters and people who might laugh at ye. Are ye sure ye be wantin’ out o’ that box?”I have no idea where that pirate came from.Here, after much rambling, are my points:1. The times cry out for change.2. We know change is needed because we feel pain.3. Change makes us uneasy because we cannot see the future.4. Financial death is the destination of those who refuse to change.If you have no problems, if you feel no pain, carry on. Good job. Well done. As you were.If you need to make changes but you’re not sure what to change, when to change it, or how to implement that change, consider a trip to Austin to spend a day with the Wizards.Change opens the door to a brighter future.Are you willing?Roy H. Williams

After 4 Years of Fighting ItDid you recently – finally – begin to receive the Monday Morning Memo after having subscribed some time ago? We’ve been trying to get it to you, really we have, but the internet gods have not been kind to us.We've known for 4 years that thousands of you have been unable to receive the Monday Morning Memo through no fault of your own.Today I’ll tell you how we gained the gods’ good graces. Perhaps we found answers you can use.If you manage a business, two things are certain:1. You have someone in your life you consider to be an expert in all things internet.2. That person doesn’t know nearly as much as you think they do.You and I (and most other people) believe urban legends about the internet because the legends make perfect sense. Here are a few we were told:“The ISPs have you blacklisted. You need to get white-listed.”Reality: We never found an ISP that maintains a list of any color. Email rejections are based on codes within an ISP’s system and are mostly automatic and unmonitored. The ISPs rejecting us didn’t know they were rejecting us.“Someone turned you in as a spammer to one of the SpamCop services.”Reality: Never in 15 years have we sent an unsolicited email. Nonetheless, to keep an enthusiastic subscriber from adding a friend’s address without that friend’s permission, we implemented a double opt-in system 4 years ago to make it impossible to subscribe any address other than your own. Consequently, spam cops love us.“Your emails contain too much promotional language.”Reality: The language of our emails was not the problem.“Your emails contain too many hyperlinks.”Reality: The hyperlinks were not the problem.“You’re using .jpg images. You need to switch to flash images.”Reality: jpg images were not the problem.“You need to use rotating servers.”Reality: True spammers use this technique to periodically change identities. We were able to solve our problem without having to resort to this extreme technique.Urban legends will keep you as confused as a termite in a yo-yo. My head was spinning. I felt like throwing up. I needed to find an outbound internet marketing tool similar to On Target, Jeff and Bryan Eisenberg’s inbound internet marketing tool that tells you exactly where the problems are on your website.Jeff and Bryan were unaware of any such outbound tool. Likewise, none of the other internet experts in my circle had never heard of any concrete, outbound marketing tools.When I tell you what the problem was, you’re going to say, “Of course, I could have told you that.” But hindsight is 20/20. The truth, once revealed, is always simple.If you think you know the answer, write it down. Seriously, write it down. The clearest memory is no match for pale ink. In a moment I’ll give you a link to the answer and you can compare it to your guess.I’ve written New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling business books but I was powerless to solve my email dilemma until someone finally came along with a tool – a software system – for identifying and fixing email deliverability problems. BANG. Facts and details to the rescue. No hearsay. No guesswork. Problem solved.I fell into the answer when Sean Taylor walked into my office and asked if he could buy the hot, new 1-page shopping cart for WizardAcademyPress.com. Sean said he’d been researching ecommerce software for a long time and the hands-down winner was from a New Zealand-based company called Interspire. I told Sean I wanted someone from Interspire to come and spend a few hours with us. Sean said I was being ridiculous; the software was only a few hundred dollars. I told him to make the call anyway.“Your boss is being ridiculous,” the consultant said. “This software is only a few hundred dollars.”Sean said, “I know, but I need you to ask your boss anyway.”The CEO of Interspire – Eddie Machaalani – just happened to be visiting his U.S. sales office that day and when he heard his sales consultant telling his manager about my request, Eddie said, “I was in the audience when the Wizard of Ads came to Sydney, Australia, 5 years ago. I’ve always wanted to meet him. Ask this Sean fellow what day Mr. Williams would like us to be there.”If you want to know our problem and its solution, click here.If none of this has interested you, I promise to make it up to you in the rabbit hole. You can go there now by clicking the image of the beagle and the dice at the top of the page.Aroo.Roy H. Williams

The 2009 Labor Day Message of the Wizard of AdsWhen I was a boy, I noticed that people often remember things as having been better – or worse – than they really were. I would listen to friends and family and think, “That’s not what happened at all. I was there.”Call me jaded, but I came to believe that the average American is mildly self-delusional, forever attempting to sculpt a reality that matches their view of the world.“It is a wonder to see how, when a man greatly desires something and strongly attaches himself to it in his imagination, he has the impression at every moment that whatever he hears and sees argues in favor of that thing.”– Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474-1566)Most people believe, deep in their hearts, that wealthy people are happy and poor people are sad. Am I right? So one day when I was twelve, I looked at my circumstances – broken home, no father, no money, bad neighborhood – and realized that people in the future would assume I had an unhappy childhood. So I looked into a mirror and smiled as I said out loud, “Never let them convince you of it.”Growing up poor gives you marvelous advantages. The people who love you are unable to hand you the things your friends take for granted, so you develop quick resourcefulness and humble audacity. Picking up pop bottles for the return deposit. Auctions. Auto salvages. Garage sales. Odd jobs. Bartering, trading, learning from your mistakes.Resourcefulness and audacity. Priceless.The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur is a recently published study of the personality traits of the founders of 549 high-growth companies. Funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and conducted by researchers from Duke University, USC and the University of Akron, the study found that 94 percent of those high-growth entrepreneurs came from middle-class, lower-middle-class, or “upper-lower-class” backgrounds.Hah. Told you so.Money, stability, and family connections will help you get into the best fraternities at the best schools. Then, if you’re lucky, you can graduate and go to work for someone who had the advantage of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks.“I felt I would live a long, lonely, useless life and die alone and unmissed…This is what happens to the overachieving but essentially useless children of parents who raised their children to do well on tests but failed to equip them with the poison-tipped spurs of true ambition.”– Jon Fasman, The Geographer's Library, p.5Would you like to give your children the poison-tipped spurs of true ambition? Would you like to use your own spurs to climb the slippery mountain of Success?I’ve spent the past 30 years working exclusively with self-made men and women; rule-breakers, innovators, rocket riders. Several of these have built empires worth tens of millions of dollars. They look like everyone else. But they don't think like everyone else.Want to learn how high-growth entrepreneurs think? Come to our 3-day Bootstrap Business Boot Camp, Sept. 22-24. We've priced it cheap because you're not rich yet. (We're counting on you remembering the difference we made when you ride your rocket to the sky.)The campus of Wizard Academy has been built entirely through the gifts of grateful alumni. We've never sought or accepted government money or grants from big foundations. This is a family thing.And you are family.We're with you all the way.Roy H. Williams

The Alligator and the MockingbirdFew people are as tiresome as the person who lives life in a minor key. Pessimistic people remind me of Eeyore the donkey:“I don’t think we can do it.”“This idea will never work.”“It’s probably going to rain.”On the other hand, few people are as terrifying as Eeyore’s opposite. Have you ever known a person with Fatal Optimism?“If we just think happy thoughts, everything will turn out okay.”“I am a child of the Universe. I have a right to be here.”“I’m a winner. I can do it. I’m special.”  I’m a proponent of boldness. But I also believe you should count the cost and be willing to pay the price. The comedians at Despair.com spoke the truth when they said, “FAILURE: Because sometimes your very best just isn’t good enough.”In her essay, How Positive Thinking Wrecked the Economy, Barbara Ehrenreich writes,“Besides greed, another habit of mind should get its share of the blame: the delusional optimism of mainstream, all-American, positive thinking.” Barbara writes, “Everyone knows that you won't get a job paying more than $15 an hour unless you're a ‘positive person’ — doubt-free, uncritical, and smiling — and no one becomes a CEO by issuing warnings of possible disaster.”How do we become infected with Fatal Optimism? Malcolm Gladwell says it happens slowly.“As novices, we don’t trust our judgment. Then we have some success, and begin to feel a little surer of ourselves. Finally, we get to the top of our game and succumb to the trap of thinking that there’s nothing we can’t master. As we get older and more experienced, we overestimate the accuracy of our judgments, especially when the task before us is difficult and when we’re involved with something of great personal importance.”In the early part of WWI,the British thought:1. The Turks would lose at Gallipoli,2. Belgium would be an obstacle to Germany’s advance and3. Russia was sure to crush the Germans in the east.The French believed their army would be at the Rhine within six weeks of the start of the war. Meanwhile the Germans were predicting the same amount of time would take the German army to the outskirts of Paris.Each of these predictions was horribly, tragically wrong.Do you remember all the people who claimed we would be “out of Iraq” within 30 days of the invasion? I knew it was politically dangerous and that it would cost me friends, clients and money, but I responded by voicing my concern that we were launching the next Viet Nam. More than a few people snorted and said to me, “You’re a fool if you think we’re going to fight this war with men. This will be a pushbutton war.” And then they accused me of “not supporting our troops.” That was six and a half years ago. I wonder how many of those troops wish I had shouted louder, longer, sooner?But today’s memo isn’t about politics, it’s about business. I included the Iraqi War memory because, other than the recent mortgage meltdown, I couldn’t think of a more stinging example of overconfidence than our invasion of Iraq. (Yes, I’m fully aware this comment will anger some people. But when a man volunteers to wear the handcuffs of public opinion, his words become flaccid and his advice becomes suspect. I don’t want to be that man.)In 2004, Oxford University Press published a book by psychologist Mark Fenton-O’Creevy. Too few people read it. That prophetic book was the result of a 3-year study O’Creevy conducted involving 118 managers and traders at four leading investment banks.One of O’Creevy’s tests involved a computer program that mimicked the ups and downs of the stock market. As the line moved across the screen, the traders were asked to press a series of buttons, which, they were told, might or might not affect the course of the line. At the end of each session, the traders were asked to rate their effectiveness in moving the line upward. Keep in mind the buttons had no effect whatsoever on the line. But each of the stock traders was convinced he had figured out exactly which combinations of buttons made the line go up. (Psychologists call this “magical thinking“ and it's often associated with schizophrenia.)Overconfidence is the rocket fuel of incredibly dumb decisions.As my older and wiser friend Loren Lewis used to say when I was 17, “Don’t let your alligator mouth overload your mockingbird ass.”Be bold, but count the cost.Never assume you can't lose.And remember:Failure is a temporary condition.So don't let it scare you.Roy H. Williams

Or, The Secret of Being DiscoveredThe warm-up band is leaving the stage amidst thunderous applause, bowing and waving to the crowd, throwing kisses, fists pumping into the air. Now it’s time for the headliner, the living legends, the singers you came to see.A drummer takes the stage and launches into a repeating musical figure. He’s joined by five other musicians who enter one-by-one, each adding his instrument into the mix. These aren’t the legends, this is only their band, but the repetitious groove is infectious and easy to follow.The audience begins to clap in rhythm. One of the musicians breaks into a variation. The crowd loves it. The music is cooking, the crowd is jumping, the walls are bulging outwards when a sharp-dressed man takes the stage. “Are you ready to have a good time!”The crowd shouts yes.Cupping his hand to his ear, the vamp leans forward and screams from the bottom of his soul, “I said, I said, I said, are you ready to have a GOOD time!”The crowd shouts even louder.Now the music climbs toward orgasm as the vamp screams about the exploits, the miracles, the wonders this crowd is about to see. Pacing back and forth he loses his jacket and takes off his tie.The singers you’ve come to see aren’t mortal. No, this is Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer. Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. Strawberry, Vanilla and Chocolate. Finally, at just the right moment, with sweat streaming off his face, the vamp shouts the name of the living legends as they explode onto the stage amidst a cacophony of fireworks and smoke.Then the vamp disappears. His job is done. The Poodle has taken the stage.Never underestimate the importance of the vamp.The show is never really about Jay Leno, David Letterman or Conan O’Brien. Sure they do a monologue to warm up the crowd, but the show is really about their guests. Jay, David and Conan are just famous vamps. (Did you ever notice how the band plays as each poodle comes onto the show? I told you 2 weeks ago, “Control the music and you control the mood of the room.” A vamp keeps music at his fingertips.)The vamp is the ringmaster in every circus, the selfless promoter of some one or some thing other than himself. He can work onstage or offstage, under the lights or behind the curtain, but crazy success can’t happen without him.Colonel Parker vamped Elvis from offstage. Don King vamped Muhammad Ali from the spotlight. Ron Popeil vamped the Veg-o-matic from the television screen. John the Baptist vamped Jesus from the wilderness.Did the inclusion of Jesus in that list make you uncomfortable? I’m sorry. Allow me to explain.If you believe, as I do, that Jesus is who he claimed to be, then we ought to pay attention to what Jesus said was impossible. “You cannot vamp for yourself.” Actually, he said it this way: “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that bears witness of me…” (John 5)Then, speaking of John the Baptist, Jesus said, “This is the one about whom it is written: 'I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’” (Matthew 11)Forgive me. It’s not my intention to teach a Bible lesson, I just wanted to point out that God knew his son was going to need a vamp, so he sent John the Baptizer ahead of him.Trust me, you’re going to need a vamp, too.Talented people live anonymous lives in every city, town and village, wishing they could only “be discovered.” But “discovery” isn’t what’s needed. What’s missing is a vamp, an advance man, a promoter, someone who is willing to work behind the scenes, fully dedicated to your success.Here’s the good news: your vamp doesn’t have to be powerful, knowledgeable or “connected.” He or she just has to be fearless, creative and willing.John shouted, “Get ready, get ready, he’s coming! He’s almost here. Are you ready?”Who might be willing to do the same for you?Roy H. Williams

“Give a product away, and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you’re in an entirely different business… ‘Free’ has the power to create a consumer stampede.”– Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical PriceA few weeks ago I announced that Bard Press – America’s most successful publisher of non-fiction books – had decided to give away 20,000 advance-reading copies of The Full Plate Diet. Here’s how that experiment turned out: 5,279 of you requested a free book during the first 6 days. After those books began to arrive, we saw a second surge of requests that continued to build until finally, just before Ray pulled the plug on the computer, he was receiving more than 200 orders per minute.Yes, I said “per minute.”The term “going viral” refers to that moment when word-of-mouth reaches critical mass and begins to grow exponentially.New Experiment: You liked the $20 freebie. So today we’re doing a $50 freebie. Keep reading.Last month, NASA learned their original copy of the moon landing video was nowhere to be found. Perhaps you heard about it.This historic footage was recovered when NASA scrounged four badly degraded, barely viewable copies from around the world, then painfully stacked, merged and recompiled them to recreate the video. At the time of this writing – 3 weeks into the project – $230,000 has been spent and only 40 percent of the work has been done.You thought magnetic tape lasted longer than that?Evidently, so did NASA.Now for the Bad News: The DVDs you and I burn have a shorter lifespan than videotape. Homemade DVDs last only 6 to 8 years. And the faster your burning speed, the shorter the life of your DVD.“Six to eight years? That can’t be true. I bought a Dances With Wolves DVD back in 1996 and it still plays fine.”Mass-duplicated DVDs are made using an entirely different process known as “glass mastering” that’s viable only when making a large number of copies.Oh, you bought a “gold” DVD so you think your photographs, videos, important documents and creative work are safe?UPDATE: When the information on DVDs began to disappear, we assumed the reflective backing was becoming tarnished so “gold” DVDs were introduced because gold doesn’t tarnish. But these gold DVDs are degrading just as fast as the silver ones. The tarnishing of the reflective surface was only a small problem. The big problem is the fading of the laser-sensitive ink in the sandwich layer between the clear plastic and the reflective surface. Remember when fax machines used rolls of thermal fax paper and the faxes they made would fade after a year or two? Same problem.Photographs, videos, important documents and creative work should all be carved in stone. I mean that literally, by the way, not metaphorically.A Cranberry disc is a DVD made of high-tech, man-made stone and the data carved on a Cranberry will likely last longer than the pyramids. No ink layer. No fading. Problem solved.David McInnis is a wild-eyed entrepreneur and a good friend. And he’s going to give you a $50 Cranberry if you want it.Do you want it?I’ll give you the results of today’s experiment in a couple of weeks.Roy H. Williams

We've invented a machine that lets you select your mood. This astounding device can be adjusted to make you feel however you’d like to feel. It’s called a radio.The distinct advantage of humans is our ability to attach complex meanings to sound. The most important sounds are called words.NOTE: The written word has no meaning until it has been translated into the spoken word it represents. How many times have you been lying in bed reading a book when it occurs to you that your eyes have been scanning the same paragraph over and over, but you still have no idea what it says? Falling asleep, your eyes continue to take in the written words, but the visual symbols are no longer being translated into their corresponding sounds. Consequently, no comprehension.Pitch, key, tempo, rhythm, contour and interval are elements of music, another language of sound, to which we attach complex meanings.Control the music and you control the mood of the room.Not even a chimpanzee can clap in rhythm to music. Conscious rhythm is uniquely human, a function of Broca’s area. It makes sense, doesn’t it? That same region of the brain that coordinates diaphragm, larynx, lips and tongue so that we can articulate stored sounds called “words,” also coordinates the muscles that allow us to clap, tap, and dance to a rhythm. Animals can't clap in rhythm for the same reason they can't talk. No Broca's area.Imagine an auditorium of chimpanzees clapping in unison to Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets. Pretty scary, huh?In all its variations – iPod, CD player, etc. – a radio is a mood selection device, a delivery system for the complex sounds that so greatly alter our mood. How do you want to feel right now? Just press the button.Faint traces of music driftTo my ears in the lonely nightWords barely audible yet familiarA little too familiar this timeTaking me back to times and placesI never knew I had left behind.Intending to turn the radio offI only manage to increase the volumeHoping you will somehow hearAnd miraculously returnTo sing each broken phrase with meThese opening lines of Memory Radio by Jenny Leigh were written in non-rhyming meter, also known as free verse. Meter is achieved when words are arranged so that a predictable rhythm is created in their pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.Iambic meter is soft/hard (x /)“That time of year thou mayst in me behold”Trochaic meter is hard/soft (/ x)“Tell me not in mournful numbers”Spondaic meter is hard/hard (/ /)“Break, break, break/ On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!”Anapestic meter is soft-soft/hard (x x /)“And the sound of a voice that is still”Dactylic meter is hard/soft-soft (/ x x)“This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock”Meter is magnetic.“Bounty. The quicker picker-upper.”Meter makes slogans sticky.Where do you want to go today? – MicrosoftIt's everywhere you want to be – VISAThe ultimate driving machine. – BMWWhen it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. – Federal ExpressMeter makes words musical.“Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring…” – Clement C. Moore“Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered…” – Edgar Allen Poe“My client would not, could not, did not commit these crimes.” – Johnny CochranThink of stressed and unstressed syllables as hard and soft drumbeats. Use meter to weave a musical rhythm into your message and it will, like a song hook, get stuck in the phonological loop of working memory in the dorsolateral prefrontal association area of the listener's brain. Additionally, you'll have moved your message from the suspicious left hemisphere – the half of the brain that interprets words – into the open-for-anything right hemisphere responsible for interpreting music.The right hemisphere of the brain isn't suspicious. In fact, it doesn't know right from wrong, true from false, or reality from fantasy. Hmm. This could be useful…One last thing: I've always wanted to see a billboard featuring the giant buttons of a car radio. Above those buttons are the words, “How Do You Want” and below the buttons, “To Feel Right Now?”I'm betting it would cause millions of drivers to turn on their radios.But what do I know?Roy H. Williams

A Look at Management vs. LeadershipA group of students from the University of Texas recently asked Corrine Taylor to set up an interview with me on the subject of leadership. My schedule hasn’t allowed me to do that interview yet, but their request did trigger some thoughts on the subject.Maybe I’m splitting semantic hairs, but businesspeople who say “leadership” usually mean, “being a good manager.”But leadership and management, in my experience, are virtually opposite skill sets.Management requires wisdom, patience and strength. Basically, it’s parenting, bringing forward the best of the past, enforcing the status quo.Leadership requires independence, audacity and courage. It's inherently defiant, questioning the past, challenging the status quo.And then there are those perky Chihuahuas barking “Leadership! Leadership! Put me in charge! I’ll tell everyone what to do! I’m a trained leader, I’ve been to a seminar!”No, you’re just a weasel who wishes he were the furry-hatted drum major of a marching band. (Yes, I have a prejudice against self-styled leaders. Does it show?)True leaders require no authority. They think their own thoughts, make their own decisions, carry out their own plans. They say, “This is what I’ve decided to do.”And then they do it. Others see them doing it and decide to follow.Leaders lead from the front.Managers manage from behind.Alexander the Great was always the first over the wall of an enemy city. Whether his men followed him was up to them. Alexander was a true leader. “I’m going in, boys!”Geronimo, the famous Apache leader, was not a tribal chief but a spiritual advisor, a historian of the people and a protector of their beliefs. He said, “I have something I need to do.” And when the other Apaches saw what he was doing, they decided to help him.The Architect of the landmark buildings at Wizard Academy, Marley Porter, is a true leader. Those of us who love Marley know he is barely passable as a manager but when it comes to visionary architecture, few architects are in his class.In fact, most architects have never even glimpsed his class.Who but a leader says, “Let's build the chapel over the edge of the cliff.”Then, when the real estate agent pointed into the rocky crag below that cliff and said, “Those 7 acres are throwaway land. Basically, you're getting those acres for free,” Marley Porter said, “That's where we're going to build the student mansion.”When I said, “We need a classroom tower,” Marley finished the sentence, “with an underground entrance.”Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous design, Fallingwater, is a home built over a waterfall. Any architect might have drawn it, but none had the courage to suggest something so absurd.Every American architect studied Frank Lloyd Wright in college but few of them will ever draw anything like Fallingwater. These architects have intellect, training and talent. What they lack is the audacity.How about you? Do you have the audacity to do your own thing, go your own way and ride your own bullet without ever looking back?A Marley Porter building doesn't require a lot of money, but it does require a boatload of courage. Fortunately, our board of directors has that in abundance. Oz Jaxxon, Corrine Taylor, Ray Bard, Mark Fox, Jodie Gateman and Nick Grant are a constant source of inspiration to me.Maybe boldness is genetic.Maybe it's a product of environment.But I think it's just a choice.But I wasn't at all surprised to learn that Marley's mother's mother was a Hancock. Yes, from that line of Hancocks. This boldest of American architects is a direct descendant of the man whose very name is synonymous with boldness. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” and then, in an unmistakably large, sweeping script, Marley Porter's grandfather flipped King George a polite bird.John Hancock was willing to pull the trigger and ride the bullet to wherever it took him. He was definitely our brand of crazy. Are you?Will you write your name large – John Hancock style – across the flickering tablet of life and time?Come to Wizard Academy, a nontraditional business school. We'll help you get started.Bring your pen.Roy H. Williams

How to Turn $100 into $100,000Magellan was a misfit, a visionary with a better idea, a curious explorer of things unknown. He would have fit right in at Wizard Academy.But a similar outlook on life isn’t the only thing that connects us to Magellan. There’s a tangible connection as well.More about that later.Magellan was 13 years old when Columbus returned triumphantly to Queen Isabella and Pope Alexander VI divided the world in half, the eastern half going to Portugal, the western half to Spain (1493.)Years later, when Magellan asked King Manuel of Portugal if he might sail for him, the king publicly snubbed Magellan. Humiliated, Magellan leaned forward to kiss the king's hand. King Manuel put his hands behind his back.Remembering that Spain had funded Columbus, a foreigner, Magellan went to Spain and pointed out to King Charles that no one knew exactly where the Pope's boundaries were in the East, so an explorer like himself might be able to establish the boundary between Spain and Portugal on the back side of the world and thereby prove the coveted Spice Islands belonged to Spain. King Charles liked the idea.Magellan sailed toward South America in 1519 carrying 280 men in 5 small, wooden ships: the Concepcion, the Santiago, the Victoria, the San Antonio and the Trinidad.Stay with me. I promise you an interesting twist at the end.The largest of Magellan’s ships was smaller than the Santa Maria of Columbus or the Mayflower of the Pilgrims. And Magellan didn’t just sail 4,000 quick miles to America. He covered 42,000 miles in 2 years and 11 months, hampered by plots, battles, mutiny, desertion, starvation, disease and murder. And half of those miles were across waters never before seen by any previous explorer.Only 18 of the 280 sailors made it home to Spain after circumnavigating the globe.The Santiago was wrecked in a storm at the tip of South America.The chicken-hearted captain of the San Antonio turned his ship back to Spain during the night with more than a third of the fleet’s provisions.When the 3 remaining ships finally limped into the Philippines, the islanders enthusiastically accepted Christianity. When chief Lapu-Lapu of Mactan tried to unravel those conversions, Magellan took just 60 men to face the chief’s army of 3,000 natives. And there Magellan died.There weren’t enough sailors to sail three ships, so the papers, logs, letters and diaries of Magellan were put aboard the Concepcion by the 2 captains that had been guilty of mutiny and that ship was burned in Philippine waters. (We know these things because an Italian named Antonio Pigafetta kept a secret diary. He was one of the 18 who made it home.)The Victoria and the Trinidad were headed home to Spain when the Trinidad sprung a leak and had to turn back to the Philippines. There she was captured by the Portuguese who had come to the Philippines along the traditional route, down the coast of Africa. Soon after her capture, the Trinidad was lost in a storm.FLASH FORWARD: A soldier returning from Viet Nam is stationed at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines in the late 1960’s. One day he sees a man step off a fishing boat carrying what appears to be a crustacean covered rock. Curious, the soldier investigates. The object is too heavy to be a rock. That’s why the fishermen didn’t chunk it back into the sea when it appeared in their nets.The soldier buys the curiosity and spends the next several weeks picking away at its concrete-like encasement. It turns out to be an old ship’s bell, 12 inches across and 12 inches high. Bronze.Upon his return to the states, the soldier sends photos of the bell to an underwater archaeologist who tells him the bell’s style, markings and color (high copper content) indicate it’s probably a Spanish ship’s bell from the first half of the 1500s. The archaeologist assumes the bell was found in the Caribbean. The soldier doesn’t tell him otherwise.If the soldier had revealed where the bell had been found, the archaeologist would immediately have known the bell could be from Magellan’s flagship, the Trinidad, or possibly his Concepcion, both of which were lost in the Phillipines.Realizing the bell’s value, the soldier buries it deep in his back yard to keep it from being stolen. The only witness is his little girl. When the old soldier dies, the only person on earth who knows the location of the bell is that little girl, now a mother with a teenage daughter of her own.Long story short: Pennie and I bought the bell from the soldier’s daughter.A similar bell was discovered a few years ago that experts believe could be the bell of the Santa Maria. It’s estimated to be worth 30 to 60 million dollars.Pennie and I will donate our bell to Wizard Academy if a new crew of Magellan can be located to sail into the unknown with us. We’re not asking to be reimbursed for the bell. We’re asking only that 280 people donate $100 apiece to help build a beautiful quarterdeck outside the 3rd floor lecture hall of the academy's landmark tower. This $28,000 – combined with a major gift from acadgrad John Marklin – will be enough to keep the Academy construction crews working throughout the month of August and the first part of September.Will you sail with John Marklin and Pennie and me? I guarantee we'll arrive home safely. Your name – along with the names of your 279 crewmates – will be printed on parchment in calligraphy, framed behind glass, and permanently displayed with the bell.Think about it. If it can be established that our bell is from Magellan's fleet and Wizard Academy sells it for just 28 million, your gift of $100 becomes an endowment to the school of $100,000.Are you gambler enough to make a $100 tax-deductible gift to Wizard Academy?Do it and you'll receive an instant thank-you by email that contains a hyperlink to photos of our bell: the Mark of Magellan.You're going to be shocked by its beauty.Roy H. Williams