Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

The Beagle Sings with BubleMy staff can hardly get any work done. It seems the whole world is calling to ask what I think will happen with our economy.The President of the United States made a primetime speech last week. The press is an interesting animal. The Chicago Tribune predicted the president’s speech would “live among the annals of man,” while its competitor, the Chicago Times, editorialized that “the cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the president.” Those papers were talking about Abraham Lincoln. The speech was the Gettysburg Address.Before I go any further, let me acknowledge that I’m aware of how dangerous it is to speak of politics or religion. No matter what I say on either subject, I’m going to get a firestorm of emails correcting me.Even so…All indications are that President Obama’s speech lifted the mood of the nation.When the mood of the nation is optimistic, our economy sings like Michael Bublé and money flows like water in the street.More than one friend has told me that Obama’s plan will end in disaster. I choose to believe otherwise.I choose to believe.I choose.A jet is low over New York City. Both engines have failed. Any idiot can see that everyone on the plane is going to die. The pilot can fly into a building and kill all the people inside, or he can line up on a street and kill unsuspecting motorists instead. These are his only options.Well, I’m on that jet and I say this pilot is going to land on the Hudson River and the plane is going to float long enough for everyone to get out safely and then we’re all going to hop onto some big passenger ferries that will be exactly where we need them to be.Don’t laugh. It could happen.By the way, you’re on this jet, too.I bought a book at the airport the other day. Barack Obama wrote Dreams From My Father fifteen years ago. As a writer, I was deeply impressed. If a man can be judged by what he writes when he is young, we have an extremely intelligent president.A history book of ancient Israel tells of a starving city surrounded by an enemy army. “Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? If we say, 'We'll go into the city'-the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let's go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”That story ends happily. Not just for the lepers, but for everyone in the city. Well, not quite everyone. There was one man who insisted that God himself couldn’t save the city. Interestingly, everyone made it safely onto the ferryboats except for that guy. He was the moron screaming hysterically ‘We’re all going to die!’ while the pilot was trying to land the plane on the Hudson.It’s really an interesting story. You ought to read it.Roy H. Williams

of the Wizard of AdsTen years ago I taught you how to create relational ads that target the right hemisphere of the customer’s brain. Advertisers who learned this technique made a lot of money.Five years ago I taught you that 2008 would be the final year in a series of 40-year cycles and that the position and direction of society’s pendulum meant 2009 would likely be 1929 all over again. If you haven’t been a little freaked out by the accuracy of that prediction, then you haven’t been paying attention.Today I’m offering you another chunk of glittering gold:A high percentage of relational customershave shifted to a transactional frame of mind.In other words, the rules of marketing are changing.What I teach about writing ads today is quite different from what I taught as recently as 1 year ago. Today, in addition to giving your customer a feeling of connectedness, you must infuse your ads with facts, details, logic and information.NOTE TO THE COGNOSCENTIOF THE MAGICAL WORLDSCOMMUNICATIONS WORKSHOP:The buying mode and mood of the general public has moved from Intuitive and Feeling (NF, right brain/right brain, pattern recognition) to Sensing and Thinking (ST, left brain/left brain, sequential reasoning.) Frosted Frank, not Monet, will win the heart today. Abandon fuzzy angles of approach. Be direct, clear, concise. Clarity is more important than creativity. But it’s also more difficult to achieve.ConsiderThe Economy,accelerated byAccess to Information (Google,)moving in unison withThe Direction of Society’s Pendulumand you’ll understand why consumers have begun buying with their heads instead of their hearts.The irrational right-brain remains powerful, but the logical left is winning the tug-of-war more often than ever before. Impulse purchases are becoming more restrained. We crave romance but we do not trust it.Ad writers, you’re going to have to work harder than ever but so are your clients.Money is tight.Unemployment is rising.People aren't shopping.Traffic is King.To drive traffic,select – in unison with your client – an exciting item or service at apopular price point. Selecting the right item is critical.feature that product or service with a vivid ad full of details and benefits.Q: How is a “featured product” ad different from the price-and-item ads of yesteryear?A: Price-and-item advertising was about offering the lowest price on a common commodity. Featured product ads require new and surprising information. A featured product is an exciting, uncommon item at a popular price point. The ads cannot be hype. Many businesses will resort to Sale! Sale! Sale! Resist the temptation of this cocaine. Featured product ads must contain new information your customer will be glad to know. The selection of what to feature is critical. This is where the business owner is going to need help from the ad writer. Use logic, details, facts to entice the customer to “come and take a look.”We live in exciting times.Wizard Academy awaits.Roy H. Williams

Magic Words to Penetrate the Filter,Erase Suspicion and Lower the Guard It was exactly 10 years ago. I was on the telephone with an 87 year-old man I had been hunting for several weeks. I needed this man’s permission to publish a private letter he had written to America’s Chief of Naval Operations back in 1963. The man’s name was William Lederer.“Where you calling from young man?”“Austin, Texas.”“I was there recently. Nice town.”“What brought you to Austin sir?”“I was there to bury my best friend Jim.”“I’m sorry to hear that.”“You would have liked Jim. Everyone did. He once gave me some advice that changed my life.”“What was it?”“William,” he said, “the public is more willing to believe fiction than non-fiction.”Mr. Lederer now had my full attention.Our bodies contain approximately 100 million sensory receptors that allow us to see, hear, taste, touch and smell physical reality. But the brain contains 10 thousand billion synapses. This means we’re roughly 100,000 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist, than a world that does.The first step in persuasionis to entice your targetto imagine doing the thingyou want them to do.Four and a half years ago in the summer of 2004, a screenwriter named Eli Attie began creating a persona for a new fictional character that would appear on The West Wing. Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) would be a young congressman, new to Washington, a working-class member of an ethnic minority. Prior to running for public office, our fictional character Santos had been a community organizer in a major city (Houston.)Screenwriter Eli Attie admitted to The Guardian, a British newspaper, that he was inspired in 2004 by a young Illinois politician – not yet even a US senator – by the name of Barack Obama, a community organizer from Chicago.As a result of Attie’s attraction to Obama, the 2006 television season showed us a glittering, fictional candidate for the presidency, a happily married, young minority male with 2 children who would run against a moderate Republican opponent from a western state.The imaginary Republican senator, Arnie Vinick (played by Alan Alda,) was unpopular with his conservative base due to his moderate views. His principal opponent in the fictional Republican primary was the Rev. Don Butler, a Christian preacher. Keep in mind these West Wing episodes aired 18 months before the nomination battle between John McCain and Mike Huckabee.But wait, it gets weirder.Ten years ago, Aaron Sorkin admitted that he based The West Wing’s Josh Lyman on Rahm Emanuel, who served in Bill Clinton’s White House. Both Lyman and Emanuel are Jewish. Both are brilliant. Both mail dead fish to opponents who make them angry.In the 2006 season of The West Wing, seasoned White House staffer Josh Lyman serves as campaign manager for the long-shot, minority candidate. When his candidate wins, Lyman is named Chief of Staff.Two years later Rahm Emanuel, the real Josh Lyman, will become Barack Obama's Chief of Staff.Was it all a plot? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just an example of how we tend to act out the things we’ve seen in our mind. By the way, here’s the end of the Lederer story:“How did Jim’s advice change your life Mr. Lederer?”“Well, I had written a few books but none of them sold very well. So in 1958 I showed Jim the manuscript for my newest book and he told me to go back and fictionalize the name of the country, the characters, everything. ‘The public is more willing to believe fiction than non-fiction.’”“How did it turn out for you?”“Well, that book, The Ugly American, stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 78 straight weeks and sold more than 3 million copies in its first year. Marlon Brando starred in the movie. But of course that’s nothing compared to what Jim did.”“What do you mean?”“Jim wrote more than 40 books, sold more than 100 million copies and won the Pulitzer Prize.”There was an awkward silence.“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t think of what Jim you might mean.”“I’m sorry, son. You probably knew him as James. James Michener.”Roy H. Williams

America, I think, is not a place. If another people lived here, the geography would be the same but it would not be our nation.America, I think, is not a government. Our pendulum swings from one extreme to the other and our politics are not unique.America, I think, is not an economy. Free markets exist in other nations and we hold no patent on capitalism.America is a people, an outlook and a family. (A dysfunctional family, yes, but aren’t they all?)Eighty-three years ago the American son was a swaggering youth with glinting eye, proud of his muscle and chin held high. Mark Twain wrote about his American strut in a 1926 letter from Europe to President Calvin Coolidge: “We, unfortunately, don't make a good impression collectively… There ought to be a law prohibiting over three Americans going anywhere abroad together.”Saul Bellow, in his Adventures of Augie March, gave our American boy a voice during the Great Depression: “I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, and will make a record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.”America. Land of Opportunity. A chicken in every pot and a car in every driveway. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Hard work never killed anybody. Cream rises to the top. Second place is the first loser. You can do it.And we did. “Leaders of the free world, liberators of the oppressed,” we’re less than 5 percent of the world’s population yet consume 26 percent of its energy and 30 percent of its resources.A few years later Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of that ocean-crossing hero, began to worry that things were getting out of balance: “America, which has the most glorious present still existing in the world today, hardly stops to enjoy it, in her insatiable appetite for the future.”John Steinbeck echoed Anne’s words. “Then there is the kind of Christmas with presents piled high, the gifts of guilty parents as bribes because they have nothing else to give. The wrappings are ripped off and the presents are thrown down and at the end the child says – ‘Is that all?’ Well it seems to me that America now is like that second kind of Christmas. Having too many THINGS they spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and Nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedyand sick.”John Steinbeck was immediately accused of being a Communist sympathizer.America didn’t listen to Anne or John but became more intense in the pursuit of whatever it was we were chasing.“Go to college. Get good grades. Go to college. Rise to the top. Go to college. Enjoy the good life.”Eighteen years ago Faith Popcorn wrote in her famous Popcorn Report, “The trouble in corporate America is that too many people with too much power live in a box (their home), then travel the same road every day to another box (their office).”Charles Osgood spotlighted this disconnection on CBS Sunday Morning, March 30, 2008, “The average urban dwelling American sees up to 5,000 advertising 'messages' –from T-shirts to billboards – every day. That compares with 2,000 thirty years ago.” [Source: Yankelovich, Inc.]Wow. No wonder we’ve become a nation of consumers. With 5,000 messages hammering us every day, we hardly have time to think about anything else.And now it’s 2009. The whole planet waits to see whether America has the strength, the wit and the will to correct our mistakes. They wait because the economy of the world depends on whether we're able to buy the stuff they need to sell us.The solution appears to be that the world needs better ad writers.Roy H. Williams

How to Advertise in a Recession“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,winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in LiteratureAh, the power of details.Every ad has style and substance, cheese and meat. Most ads are cheese because ad writers are rarely given meat. Style cheese includes layout, angle, tone of voice and hyperbole. Substance meat is provable fact and concrete detail.My success as a writer is due to the fact that I demand meat from the business owners I serve. I'd much rather fight over meat to put in their ads than apologize to them for their ads not working.Style affects how people feel. Cheese.Substance changes what they know. Meat.Is your advertising meaty or cheesy?Here's an example of a 146-word, cheese-filled ad:Pearls have always been off-white, but not anymore! [STORE] has just received a shipment of colored freshwater pearls. We have a whole panorama of colors to choose from! Come and see these wonderful new fashion items that have arrived just in time for the Spring Season. Come early and shop while the selection is best. Don't be left out in the cold! Step into Spring with a spring in your step with fashionable, colored freshwater pearls. You’ll always find the newest thing in cutting-edge fashion at [STORE] where we’ve been serving the good people of [TOWN] since [YEAR.] Colored pearls are hot! Colored pearls are cool. And you won't believe the price. Get yours before they’re all gone at [STORE] where you can see them from 9AM to 6:30PM Monday through Saturday. Colored, freshwater pearls, exclusively at [STORE, LOCATION] or online at [WEBSITE.COM] or call 555-5555.Here's another 146-word ad, but with accelerated style and a few chunks of meat:MALE: When a painting has gentle colors and a soft glow, it’s usually a watercolor. I love watercolors. I like their optimism. I like the way they make me feel. So when I saw the Watercolor Pearls from the town of Wen-chow on the coast of the East China Sea, I ordered a hundred strands for the women of [TOWN].FEMALE: Wait till you see the colors!MALE: Silky black,FEMALE: Blushing pink,MALE: Supple green,FEMALE: Wet blueMALE: Smooth whiteFEMALE: Moonglow silverMALE: Translucent apricotFEMALE: Dripping chocolateMALE: Each strand is 16 inches long.FEMALE: Some strands are all one color.MALE: Others are multiple colors, a pastel rainbow of freshwater pearls.FEMALE: At just 79 dollars a strand, 100 strands won’t last long.MALE: And the East China Sea is a loooooong way from here.FEMALE: Take a look right now at ____________.comMALE: Or try them on up-close and personal at [LOCATION.]FEMALE: Watercolor pearls, exclusively at [STORE.]Meat chunks:1. the town of Wen-chow2. a hundred strands3. black, pink, green, blue, white, silver, apricot, chocolate4. Some strands are all one color5. Others are multiple colors6. 16 inches long7. 79 dollars a strand.8. East China SeaSpecifics are more powerful than generalities, even when those specifics merely accelerate your style:1. Rainbow is more specific than panorama and is therefore more easily visualized.2. In his first appearance, the MALE voice says “…make me feel.”3. Each specific color name is then accelerated by the use of a modifier that might also describe a woman's skin: gentle, soft, silky, supple, wet, smooth, translucent, dripping.4. And most of those tactile words follow the phrase, “the women of [TOWN].”Any questions?Roy H. Williams

As We Look at the Business Climate of 2009:A new generation of entrepreneurs is emerging from the shadows. None of these is well funded but they are focused, relevant, and in step with the public. Some of them will grow to become business icons by mid-2012. (Three and a half years from now I’ll give you a hyperlink back to this column so that you can see how right I was.)Yes, I know that sounded horribly egotistical.The air is cold, the sky is clear, these are my trend predictions:Cheap Thrills“If it feels good, do it.”Sales of alcohol, movie tickets and ice cream will increase. This happens during every recession. How might you offer your customer an altered consciousness, an alternative reality, an escape from the merely mundane? Think about it.Repair Instead of Replace“Instead of buying a new one, I’ll hold on to the one I’ve got.”Sellers of new houses, new cars, clothing and jewelry are going to have to get creative. Repair businesses will trend magically upward. Expensive items will find their way to eBay as we liquidate the luxuries we bought in better days. Resale shops will appear in nicer parts of town. How might your business participate in this trend?Tightrope Budgeting“Should I shepherd my resources or push harder than ever?”Market share is up for grabs because your competitors have slashed their ad budgets. Should you hunker down and try to hang on, or push harder than ever while your competitors hibernate? Some businesses will quit advertising and go broke as a direct result. Other businesses will advertise aggressively and go broke because they lacked financial staying power. Your correct course of action depends on your competitive environment. Do you know how to read your competitive environment or do you need help?Fewer Competitors“If the economy stays tough and fewer businesses occupy my category, won’t that leave more for me?” (1.) What was the sales volume of the failed competitor? (2.) How much has your category shrunk? If the competitor’s volume exceeded the shrinkage of your category, you might see some benefit. But if your competitor was a minor player, the shrinkage of your category will erase any good you might have experienced. You’ll get a larger slice, but of a smaller pie.Media Makeover“I walk to the end of the driveway each morning to retrieve a newspaper telling me things I’ve known for 24 hours.” Very few newspapers are healthy. The New York Times, that standard bearer of journalism, would have collapsed but for last week’s infusion of $250 million by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. With that newspaper’s $1 billion in debt recently reduced to junk-bond status and only $46 million in cash reserves, the Times would have failed in May, 2009. In the past, “columnists” and “reporters” were merely people who had access to a publishing pipeline. But in an Internet-connected world, isn’t every blogger both columnist and reporter? Last week MSNBC.com said, “Got some good photos of the inauguration? Send them to us.” How many more months will pass before newspapers are published digitally and round-the-clock from volunteer reports submitted from around the world?Websites are EssentialHillary Clinton and John McCain underestimated the power of the Internet. Barack Obama did not. Now tell the truth, don’t be embarrassed: Was your website designed by an acquaintance who “is really good with computers?” Someone who “knows all about the internet?” Then why isn’t it doing more for you? This is the year to get serious about your website. Your webmaster is learning by trial and error. You should buy him or her some expert guidance.You’re About to Read an Ad:Call to Action, a book about the internet published by Wizard Academy Press, became a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller in 2005. It was the first book ever to reach bestseller status without brick-and-mortar distribution. Call to Action by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg is a landmark in the publishing hall of fame. Its sequel, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? hit all four bestseller lists, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and BusinessWeek.The world’s most successful online companies pay the Eisenberg brothers lavishly for their advice. Their consulting company, Future Now, is currently traded on NASDAQ.And they were students at Wizard Academy long before they became famous.Would you like Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg to:1. monitor your website 24/72. analyze the actions of all your online visitors, and then3. suggest specific changes you should make to your website?This new service from Future Now is available for as little as $1,000/mo. Detailed feedback with specific recommendations for you to implement. Tested, proven, productive. No more trial-and-error.Roy H. Williams

Change is inevitable. Growth is optional. *We’re living in a time of tumultuous change.A misinformed president declares a war. The value of homes – which were never supposed to fall – fell. The SEC can’t make Wall Street color between the lines and 700 billion dollars goes missing. A 50 billion-dollar Ponzi scheme is perpetrated by one of the most respected men on Wall Street. A governor tries to sell a seat in the Senate. I saw gasoline sell for a dollar a quart and watched General Motors become insolvent.But I’m not worried. I was born in a briar patch.Pennie and I began our lives together during the term of another president who wasn’t quite up to the job.It’s 1976. Mortgage interest rates are 18 percent and jobs are scarce. If you see a line of cars at a gas station, get in it. Gas stations don’t always have gas. The middle-eastern boogeyman of that era, the Ayatollah Khomeini, brazenly invades a U.S. embassy and kidnaps 52 U.S. diplomats. Newscasters remind us nightly of our shame. When we send our best and brightest soldiers to rescue our diplomats, we crash two of our aircraft, eight soldiers die and we return home empty-handed. The Ayatollah holds us hostage for 444 days.“Elected largely on his promise to never lie to the American people, Carter soon seemed out of place in the vastness of the presidency. Events conspired to further impede his progress: rising energy costs, high unemployment, Americans held hostage in Iran, Soviets in Afghanistan. A man of peace who took pride in bringing together age-old antagonists, Carter was finally viewed by his countrymen as lacking presidential stature.” – American Experience, PBSAnd the whole time, it seems the only thing we needed was a head cheerleader with a more beautiful dream. Ronald Reagan took office with a sparkling smile. “Things are fine. Expand your business. All is well. Go out to dinner. Life is good.” And we believed him.Economy rebounded, cold war ended, Mary Lou Retton vaulted a perfect 10 and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.Barack Obama has a good smile, too. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.In defiance of the current recession, Wizard Academy is moving forward with the construction of its new classroom tower. Perhaps we’re being foolish. Maybe the right thing would be to hunker down and cover our heads with our hands. But did you ever notice how “hunker” sounds like clunker, junker, lunker and dunker? I prefer “dream,” as in team, gleam in the eye, beaming smile and cream of the crop.“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.” – T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia)Hunker down or dream. It's your call.The 7 Steps to Hunkering Down:1. Stay scared. Call it “street smart.”2. Cultivate cynicism. Call it “straight talk.”3. Praise pessimism. Call it a “reality check.”4. Believe you are wiser than everyone else.5. Feel secretly superior.6. Take no action that might improve your condition.7. Crow “I told you so” when things get worse.The 7 Steps to Pursuing Your Dream:1. Know what you're trying to make happen.2. Expect good things to happen for you.3. Plant seeds of good things daily.4. Trust that some of your seeds will grow.5. Measure success by your own criteria.6. Make progress daily without fail.7. Believe in the power of the Elbs. (Exponential Little Bits)Do you believe in your dream, or do you think it's only a fantasy?Moving forward with just a thousand dollars:I showed today's memo to 5 of my most successful friends and said, “Talk is cheap and I don't want to be seen as one of those pollyanna happy-talk motivational goobers without substance. Action makes things happen, but not everyone is free to attend classes at Wizard Academy. If a business person is ready to begin taking action, what would you be willing to do for just a thousand dollars to help them make progress toward their goal?” I was blown away by their generous offers.Would you like to see what they said they'd be willing to do?Good thingshappen to dreamerswho remain standingwith open eyes.Stand up.Roy H. Williams

Turn It Upside Down. Do It Backwards.TRIZ is the Russian acronym for a string of words that mean “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving,” an innovation matrix of the late Genrich Altshuller, a Soviet scientist who proved:1. there are only about 1,500 basic problems in life and2. implementing one or more of 40 archetypal answers can solve each of these problems. These “archetypal answers” are known as the 40 Principles of TRIZ.Mark Fox is1. a rocket scientist,2. the youngest Chief Engineer in the history of the Space Shuttle project, and3. a director on the board of Wizard Academy.Mark co-teaches a class with me called DaVinci and the 40 Answers in which we teach students how to use the Principles of TRIZ as lenses that allow them to see their limiting factors from a new perspective.New perspectives yield new answers.New answers produce new outcomes.Today we’ll aim one of these Principles at a common problem:“How can I get more customers?”Would you like to hear an innovative new answer to that question?I’ve selected Principle 13, “Do It Backwards,” to be our solution stimulator. But before we can solve the problem backwards, we must first understand how the question is usually solved.QUESTION“How can I get more customers?”USUAL ANSWERClassic marketing revolves around the question, “Who is your customer?” Marketers study surveys, evaluate data and observe customer characteristics in the hope of more narrowly defining your “core customer” and thereby increasing your ability to more efficiently target these people. The assumption is that if you can clearly identify who is buying from you, you can find efficient ways of reaching out to other people just like them.BACKWARDS ANSWERInstead of looking at who you’re getting and why, take a look at who you’re not getting and why you’re not getting them.1.   Who isn’t coming to you?2.   Why are these people not coming to you?3.   Are you prepared to broaden your message to appeal to people who haven’t been attracted to you in the past?Gosh. That little window of insight reveals a whole new horizon of possibilities, doesn’t it?The marketplace pie is shrinking for most business categories.If, in fact, fewer customers spend fewer dollars in your category in 2009 than they did in 2008, doesn’t it make sense that you enact a plan to increase the size of your slice?Wizard Academycame into beingfor such a time as this.Our mission: to help people accomplish their dreams.What’s yours?Roy H. Williams

Tiny, Reliable Indicators are Clockwork AngelsA successful consultant uses small indicators to make big decisions. If he explains his methods to data-worshippers, he sounds like an idiot. When it later turns out that he was right, the doubters claim he was lucky, saying, “You can’t possibly extrapolate that outcome from that data.”Consider the following:A large group of 4-year old children are led into a room, one at a time. The room is equipped with a two-way mirror. Each child is seated and given a marshmallow. “You can eat the marshmallow right now if you want. But if you wait until I come back to eat your marshmallow, I’ll give you a second marshmallow to go with it.” The giver of marshmallows then leaves the child alone in the room.Is there anything we could learn from such a test? Could it tell us anything important about a child’s future?One third of the children ate the marshmallow immediately.One third held out for a short time, then ate the marshmallow.One third waited 15 to 20 minutes until the giver of marshmallows returned with the promised, second marshmallow.Small indicators are valuable to a savvy consultant, just as they were valuable to Walter Mischel*, a scientist at Stanford 40 years ago.Fourteen years later, at the age of eighteen, each of the original 216 children was located. Those who didn’t eat the marshmallow scored an average of 210 points higher on the SAT (610 verbal and 652 math versus 524 verbal and 528 math.)At age 40, the group that didn’t eat their marshmallows had more successful marriages, higher incomes, greater career satisfaction and better health than the marshmallow eaters.   The 4 year-old who eats the marshmallow is oriented toward the present.The 4 year-old who waits is oriented toward the future.Yes, we can learn big things from small indicators.Six years ago I sent you a Monday Morning Memo that linked your ability to accumulate wealth to your orientation toward the future. Do you remember it?2009 is going to be a year of upheaval.Will you be oriented toward the future?Or are you trapped in the present?Before you eat that marshmallow, let’s talk.Roy H. Williams

Albert Schweitzer. In background, clockwise from lower left: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ann Radcliffe, Horace Mann, J.M. Barrie, Marian Wright Edelman, Anne FrankAlbert Schweitzer was a musician and physician who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. This is the message he left for us when he died: “I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”Now lest you think I’ve gone all touchy-feely, riding my unicorn over the rainbow as I sprinkle sparklies on the world below, I'll poke you with the pointed advice of Ann Radcliffe: “One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world.” In other words, “No one wants to hear what you believe. We’re watching. Show us.”You go, Ann.Talk is cheap. Beautiful dreams are for rainbow riders. Small actions, relentless actions, committed actions are the signature of people who change the world.Are you a world changer?“The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society – more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.” – Charlotte Perkins GilmanHave you found your real job? Are you doing it?No? (Don’t worry, if you’re not yet sure of your real job, Sid Lloyd will help you find it on March 13.)“You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day. A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back – but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.” – Marian Wright EdelmanIn the spirit of Marian Edelman, Horace Mann challenged the 1859 graduating class of Antioch University thusly: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”“Be ashamed to die.” It takes real teeth to say things like that. Horace had him some teeth.Remember the happiness promised to us by Albert Schweitzer? Jimmy James Barrie gave us Peter Pan, then said, “Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves.” I'm thinking he was right.I have confidence in the words of these 7 worthies because they agree with the Jewish rabbi we quoted last week. “Anyone who seeks his own happiness will not find it. But those who seek the happiness of others will find happiness in all they do.” – a transliteration of the words of Jesus from Mathew 16Hiding for her life in an attic, the irrepressible Anne Frank said, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”This was a buoyant attitude for a teenage girl hiding in an attic. But you're not hiding in an attic. You’re staring into the mirror of a brand new year, full of possibilities.Look into the eyes of that mirror.Who will you be in 2009?Roy H. Williams