

Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo
Roy H. Williams
Thousands of people are starting their workweeks with smiles of invigoration as they log on to their computers to find their Monday Morning Memo just waiting to be devoured. Straight from the middle-of-the-night keystrokes of Roy H. Williams, the MMMemo is an insightful and provocative series of well-crafted thoughts about the life of business and the business of life.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Feb 25, 2008 • 3min
2008: Year of the Beagle
Courage… Curiosity… Intuition.In the biggest news since Tiger Woods won the U.S. Open a beagle has taken top honors at Westminster for the first time in history. Arooo! Aroo-Aroooooo!In the happy little village where I spend a lot of time, beagles are the symbol of curiosity and intuition, reliable guides to success in 2008.Haven’t you heard? Maintaining the status quo will yield a decline in 2008 for most business categories.The February 8 issue of the Wall Street Journal had this to say:“Retailers turned in their worst monthly sales results in nearly five years, and big chains appeared to be girding themselves for a prolonged slowdown in consumer spending by announcing plans to close hundreds of stores and cut thousands of jobs.”“Even gift-card redemptions, which were expected to give January sales figures a bigger lift, instead offered a glimpse at just how strapped consumers are. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. yesterday noted that redemptions were below its expectations, and said consumers were holding onto the cards longer — or using them to buy groceries rather than treats like electronics.”The beagle called Intuition might seem to be a chaser of rabbits, a rowdy without decorum, a runaway balloon on a windy day, but the joy of the beagle is neither random nor reckless. Her path connects the dots of an image too big to see, a pattern you’ll recognize when you’ve climbed higher than where you stand.Do you want to climb higher? Follow your beagle. She'll lead you to success.2008 will be a grand adventure if you'll raise an intuitive ear and listen to what's blowing on the wind.Do you plan to run with the beagles or stay on the porch?Arooo! Aroo-Arooooooo!Roy H. Williams

Feb 18, 2008 • 4min
7 Step Secret of Success How to Get Where You Want to Go
1. See your destination in your mind.“When you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”– White Rabbit2. Start walking.“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”– Lao Tzu (604 BC – 531 BC)3. Think ahead as you walk.“It’s like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E.L. Doctorow 4. Don’t quit walking.“Don't wait. Where do you expect to get by waiting? Doing is what teaches you. Doing is what leads to inspiration. Doing is what generates ideas. Nothing else, and nothing less.” – Daniel Quinn5. Make no deadlines.“Patience is the best remedy for every trouble.”– Titus Maccius Plautus (254 BC – 184 BC)“I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.”– Margaret Thatcher, April 4, 19896. Look back at the progress you made each day.“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day.” Genesis 1:317. If evening finds you at the same place you were this morning, take a step before you lay down.The magic isn’t in the size of your actions, but in the relentlessness of them. “It is better to burn the candle at both ends, and in the middle, too, than to put it away in the closet and let the mice eat it.” – Henry Van Dyke Never let a day pass without making, at the very least, a tiny bit of progress. Do NOT tell yourself you’ll make up for it tomorrow. (That seductive lie is the kiss of death.) Make a phone call. Lick a stamp. Correct a misspelled word. Something. Anything.You realize I'm talking about business, not hiking, right?A second common mistake is to get these steps out of order. If you skip Step 1, “See your destination,” and go straight to step 2, “Start walking,” you’ll be a wanderer, a drifter on the ocean of life, sadly on your way to lying beneath a tombstone that says, “He Had Potential.”Even more dangerous is to go from Step 1, “See your destination,” directly to Step 3, “Think ahead,” without ever doing Step 2, “Start walking.” These are the people who never get started. Analysis paralysis. Lots of anxiety and plans and meetings and revisions and studies and evaluation and research can make you think you're getting somewhere when you're not.Gen. George S. Patton said it best, “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” In other words, there is no perfect plan. Shut up and get started.Visitors to Tuscan Hall will recall a beautiful stairway that leads into a wall, then does a 180 halfway up to finish in exactly the opposite direction. At the top of those stairs a magnificent catwalk runs the entire length of the building to a gallery of fine art overlooking the floor below.This is the Journey of Life.If you find yourself headed in the wrong direction, you can always correct your way.But only if you know your destination.Have a great week.Roy H. Williams

Feb 11, 2008 • 6min
Once Upon a Time
I was freshly married to Pennie and barely old enough to see over the dash of a car but I wanted to show her the magical places of my childhood, so we saved up enough money for 3 tanks of gas and made the 200-mile drive from Broken Arrow to Ardmore, Oklahoma.I never knew my father’s father. A couple of photographs and a pocket watch are all that remain of the original Roy H. Williams. But my mother’s dad I knew. Roy Pylant (PIE-lant) was the iceman in Ardmore for more than half a century.My career as an iceman began one afternoon when I was five. A restaurant called for 100 pounds of crushed ice and I went with Daddy Py to deliver it. I watched him dump the ice into the restaurant’s icemaker and then I carried the empty canvas bag back to the truck. I wasn’t big enough to do much else.As I walked away I heard, “Looks like you got you a new helper.”“That’s my grans-ton Little Roy. He saves me a lotta steps.”Daddy Py couldn’t say “grandson” without putting a T in it.Daddy Py’s house had chickens and a little stone washhouse and a garage from which you could see the edge of the world if you climbed up onto its flat tar roof.Once, when I was nine, Daddy Py and I took a break from crushing ice to go with Larkin from Larkin’s Bait Shop. He needed to check his trot lines and asked if we wanted to go along. Trot lines were illegal, of course, but Larkin knew how to hide them so he never got caught. He got a big catfish that day and I got my first ride in a motorboat. I also saw Tucker Tower. It was even cooler than the garage at Daddy Py’s house.Summer after summer, Daddy Py and I would roll out of bed early, drive to the ice plant and slide 300-pound blocks of ice onto his ‘65 Chevy long-narrow pickup. Roll the tarp over the ice, drive to Lake Murray, crush and bag the ice, toss it quick onto the truck, cover it again with the tarp and deliver it to the convenience stores.I was good at it.As a child, it never occurred to me that my family spent summer vacations at Daddy Py’s because we didn’t have the money to go anywhere else. I figured we went there because it was the grandest place on earth. And Mama Py took care of us all.Back then they didn’t let you become a grandmother unless you could cook and Mama Py was a grandmother of five. Her food glowed like the sword Excalibur. Dopers would give up drugs for it. Ministers praised it from the pulpit. Shakespeare wrote sonnets about it.Mama Py had a vegetable garden. Bright rays of color would shine from her kitchen windows as she prepared tomatoes, okra and corn on the cob with bowls of beans and fried potatoes. Her kitchen table glimmered like a leprechaun’s pot of gold.Then Daddy Py would arrive with a tinfoil bundle and 2 mysterious jars of liquid. The quart Pepsi bottle with the screw-on cap contained a thin, grey-brown au jus, redolent with course black pepper. The baby food jar contained an equally thin, red liquid that sparkled with what appeared to be cayenne. The tinfoil contained sliced brisket. Airplanes buzzed the house to get a sniff of it. This was Lieutenant McKerson’s barbecue.We delivered ice to him every morning.The sidewalk in front of McKerson's was broken. The building had no air conditioner. A tightly sprung screen door traded magical aromas for outside air. There was a hole worn in the linoleum in front of the serving counter, its edges smooth, tapering down to a mirror of grey cement, the silent work of a million shoes standing, twisting, turning to leave with their tinfoil treasures and sparkling jars. I looked into that mirror and saw the soul of America.And it was beautiful.Rich men had tried for decades to get McKerson’s recipe by offering to franchise his little place, but McKerson had no interest. He cooked for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.Each morning I’d hold open the screen door and Daddy Py would plunge into the mist with a 12-and-a-half-pound block of ice. I never saw McKerson’s face. These early morning hours had him boiling Pepsi bottles and baby food jars in a 25-gallon aluminum pot. I saw only the white apron strings tied behind his neck and back. He didn't turn to see who we were. Our delivery of the ice was a morning ritual worn as smooth as the hole in the linoleum. We were gone in less than ten seconds. Ice is an impatient master.One day as we drove away, I asked, “What branch of the service was Lieutenant McKerson in?”“He was never in the military. His mama just liked the name.”A decade later I sat with Pennie, my young wife, across the street from Lieutenant McKerson’s in Ardmore. Daddy Py and Mama Py were dead. I told Pennie about the Pepsi bottles, the baby food jars and the soul of America. We were gazing in silence at the tired little building when an ancient man emerged in a glowing white apron. He hung an Open sign on a hook outside. We watched as he went back in.I sat and thought.Then I drove away, unwilling to taint the taste of the memory.Roy H. Williams

Feb 4, 2008 • 3min
Clarity is the New Creativity
In the language of academics:The central executive of working memory is the new battleground for marketers. Writers are successfully surprising Broca, thereby gaining the momentary attention of the public, but an absence of salience remains.In the language of newscasters:Are your ads gaining the attention of the public but failing to get results? Find out why and learn exactly what you can do about it. Stay tuned for complete details. (Insert commercial break here.)In the language of the street:Ads have gotten more creative, but they haven’t gotten more convincing. This sucks for advertisers and the public isn’t helped by it, either.In the language of clarity:Can your product be differentiated?Can you point out that difference quickly?Can you explain why the difference matters?This is effective marketing.To differentiate your product powerfully and clearly:1. See it though the eyes of the public. (Insiders have too much knowledge.)2. Ignore everything that doesn’t matter.3. Focus on what the public actually cares about.4. Say it in the fewest possible words.5. Close the loopholes by anticipating the customer’s unspoken questions.Have a great week.Roy H. Williams

Jan 28, 2008 • 2min
Hello and Goodbye from John and Jane Doe
January 28, 2008John and Jane Doe4321 Happily Thereafter Ave.Everytown, USATo the Companies Who Want Our Money,Yesterday’s selling techniques aren’t working so good. Have you noticed?We’re betting that your traffic has been trending downward for the past few months. Are we right? (If we’re wrong, keep up the good work. You’re doing all the right things.)But if your traffic has, in fact, been trending downward, here are some things for you to think about:Today’s customer expects easy access to information.And that information includes the price.Quit trying to romance everything. Cut the hype. Just say it clean and tight, shoulders back, looking us directly in the eye.Give us the truth with clarity. Transparency. Openhanded disclosure. Nothing hidden behind your back.If you tell us about a product or service online and we wonder what it costs and we learn the only way you’ll tell us the price is if we give up our contact information, we think: 1. you’re charging too much and you know it.2. you want an opportunity to “overcome our objections” or3. you’re planning to contact us and control the conversation with rigged questions under the pretense that you’re “consulting” us for our own good.4. you want us to give you a credit card number,5. but what you really need is a clue.Sorry, we don’t mean to be rude.You seem to be sincere in your confusion about why traffic is down and we’re just trying to tell you the truth you need to hear.Yes, it’s partly the economy.But you’ve also lost touch with the times.You’ve got reasons for not disclosing your prices. We understand that. You don’t want to give your competitors “the edge” or something or other. But companies with good prices aren’t afraid to share them. In their ads. Over the phone. On their websites. From the housetops.Or at least that’s how it seems to us.Have a great 2008.John and Jane Doe

Jan 21, 2008 • 9min
2008: Year of Transition
In January of 2004 I launched a public presentation: Society’s 40-year Pendulum. Audiences from Stockholm to Sydney to Vancouver to Myrtle Beach will recall my statement, “2003 was the first year in a 6-year transition from the Idealist perspective to the Civic.”2008 will be the sixth and final year of that transition.Labels like Baby Boomer and Gen-X and Soccer Mom assume a person’s outlook is determined by when they were born. This is a very foolish assumption.Look around and you’ll see that Baby Boomers aren’t Boomers anymore. Most have adopted an entirely new outlook and are becoming part of what’s happening now. By the end of 2008 there won’t be a Baby Boomer left in America. The last, reluctant holdout will finally admit that Woodstock is over, Kennedy is dead, and the Idealism of the 60’s was a wistful dream.In their 1993 book, Generations, Strauss and Howe asserted that western society swings from an Idealist outlook to a Civic perspective and back again with the precision of pendulum. And at the bottom of each arc, the new views introduced by that generation's youth will be adopted by the adults within 6 years of the tipping point.1963 introduced the Idealist outlook we associate with “Baby Boomers.” 1968 was the final year of that transition. By 1969, everyone in America, regardless of their age, was seeing through rose colored lenses.2003 was 1963 all over again, but this time we're headed in the opposite direction.2008 will be the last year of our transition to a Civic perspective.Here’s what to remember when selling in 2008:1. Efficiency is the new Service.Your customer is saying, “Quality and price and quick, please. I’ve got things to do. Thanks.” Service and selection still matter, but not nearly so much as they once did. Inefficient organizations built on high-touch “relationship” selling will decline. Today’s customer is magnetically drawn to efficiency. This attraction will increase over the next few years.2. Authenticity is essential.Listen to the street. “Being cool” has become “Keepin’ it real.”Naiveté is rare today. Your customer is equipped with a bullshit detector that is highly sensitive and amazingly accurate. And the younger the customer, the more accurate their bullshit detector.When selling, remember: If you don’t admit the downside, they won’t believe the upside.Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Leonard Pitts gave us an example of “keepin’ it real” when he opened his syndicated column recently with the following lines:I’ve got nothing against fame. I’m famous myself. Sort of.OK, not Will Smith famous, or Ellen DeGeneres famous. All right, not even Marilu Henner famous.I’m the kind of famous where you fly into some town to give a speech before that shrinking subset of Americans who still read newspapers and, for that hour, they treat you like a rock star, applauding, crowding around, asking for autographs.Then it’s over. You walk through the airport the next day and no one gives a second glance. You are nobody again.Dave Barry told me this story about Mark Russell, the political satirist. It seems Russell gave this performance where he packed the hall, got a standing O. He was The Man. Later, at the hotel, The Man gets hungry, but the only place to eat is a McDonald’s across the road. The front door is locked, but the drive-through is still open. So he stands in it. A car pulls in behind him. The driver honks and yells, “Great show, Mark!”For the record, I consider Leonard Pitts to be one of the greatest living writers in the world today. Read his column and see if you don’t agree.3. A Horizontal Connectedness is replacing yesterday’s vertical, social hierarchy. Labels like “white collar” and “blue collar” sound almost racist today. The new American dream isn’t about pulling ahead and leaving the others behind. It’s about becoming a productive member of the team.“Winning” has become less important than “belonging.”Listen to the streets. “I’m number one,” gets the response, “You ain’t all that, dog. You ain’t all that.”Labor unions were deader than a bag of hammers in 2004, a relic of the past, so when I predicted that collective bargaining would reawaken and gain momentum during the coming Civic outlook, audiences often laughed or folded their arms and curled a lip, thinking I was advocating organized labor. (I wasn’t.)Have you heard about the Hollywood writer’s strike? Expect to see Wal-Mart unionized in the upcoming years. Hide and watch. See if I’m not right.4. Word-of-Mouth is the new Mass Media. Video games and cable TV stripped our kids of their innocence at an early age, but the Technology that robbed them of idyllic childhood also empowered them with cell phones, blogs and blackberries.Viral marketing wasn’t created by the advertising community. It’s simply the result of a horizontally-connected generation (1.) sharing their happy discoveries with each other and (2.) trying to protect one another from mistakes. WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS: It’s no longer enough just to have great advertising. When your customers carry cell phones and can email all their friends with a single click, you need to be exceptionally good at what you do.5. Boasting is a waste of time.Your customer is saying, “Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.Don’t tell me what you believe. Show me.”IN YOUR ADS, do you include “proofs of claim” your reader, listener or viewer can experience for themselves?6. Everyone is broken a little.And the most broken are those who pretend they are not.It’s time to take the advice of Bill Bernbach, “I’ve got a great gimmick. Let’s tell the truth.”7. Keep in mind that during the next 12 months, as we complete the transition from the Idealist outlook to the Civic perspective, these trends will be accelerated by the facts that:(1.) Access to information is going up and(2.) Access to money is going down.By the way, if I ever win a Pulitzer, I’ll immediately start wearing French shirts with 3-inch cuff links that spell out PULITZER PRIZE WINNER in diamonds.But if what I said earlier about “the last, reluctant holdout” is true, I expect my attitude will change approximately one second before midnight on December 31, 2008.Have a great week.Roy H. Williams

Jan 14, 2008 • 4min
The Glass Ceiling
Every business that tries to rise to its full height will bump its head on a glass ceiling they didn’t realize was there.That glass ceiling is created by the business owner’s core beliefs about the customer.Traditionally, 5 out of 10 customers will be in transactional shopping mode. The other 5 will be in relational shopping mode.Shoppers in transactional mode are looking for information, facts, details, prices. Their thoughts revolve around the product itself, not the purchase experience.Relational-mode shoppers are looking for a pleasant experience. They want to find the right place, the right person from whom to buy, an expert they can trust. Meanwhile, the transactional shopper is gathering the information that will allow them to be their own expert.A customer can be a relational shopper in one category and a transactional shopper in another. The labels don’t define the customer. They describe only the mode of shopping, the momentary mindset of the decision maker, the type of ad to which he or she will respond.Here’s what’s currently happening in America:One of the 5 relational shoppers has begun to think transactionally.The reasons are:(1.) concerns about the economy,(2.) access to information via search engines.Americans spent $29.7 billion online at Christmas (Nov. 1 to Dec 31,) approximately $100 for every man, woman and child in the nation, up 19% from the previous year. In other words, there was $100 fewer dollars per person spent in brick-and-mortar stores in your town than was being spent just a few years ago at Christmastime.And for the first time in the history of Starbucks, traffic is in decline.Starbucks has always sold relationally. We pay for the atmosphere of the café with its half-lit earthtones and iconic logo – the idea of affordable luxury – as much as we pay for the coffee. But some of us have begun to compare the quality and price of the coffee itself to the quality and price available from other providers.Beginning to get the picture?Starbucks has found the glass ceiling. In other words, they’re selling as much coffee as can be sold relationally.I’m sure you have your own idea about how Starbucks should respond to their decline in traffic, but the point of today’s memo is this: A glass ceiling exists when you overestimate the number of people who prefer to buy the way you prefer to sell.People never really change their mind. They merely make new decisions based on new information. Will Starbucks give us new information, a new perspective in 2008, or will they just whine at their marketing department for the inexplicable decline in traffic?More importantly, what new information will you deliver in 2008? (You realize this memo isn’t really about Starbucks, right? I don’t care about Starbucks. I care about you.)The Tiny Giant is that 1 relational shopper in 5 who is moving to a transactional perspective. This effectively shifts the marketing balance from 5/5 to 6/4. This doesn’t sound like a big thing until you realize that 6 is 50% more than 4.Do you have the clear answers that 6 in 10 shoppers demand? Are you willing to provide the growing tribe of transactional shoppers with the information, facts, details and prices they expect?Or will you simply demand that your marketing team deliver more customers in relational shopping mode? (Please, I’m begging you for your own sake, don’t fall into the trap of believing the answer is to “target” relational shoppers though some magical mailing list, email list, or sponsorship package.)Think about it, won’t you?Your financial future hangs in the balance.Roy H. Williams

Jan 7, 2008 • 3min
2008 Business Forecast from high atop Wizard's Tower
America split into 3 camps last year.Those camps came sharply into focus at Christmas.1. The Hunker-Down crowd cut back their purchases, uneasy about dwindling dollars and rising debt. Traffic in non-discount retail stores was sluggish as a result.2. The Full-Speed-Ahead crowd did business as usual. God bless’em. “Damn the torpedoes! I choose not to participate in a recession! The only thing to fear is fear itself!”3. The I’m-Too-Rich-To-Worry crowd spent somewhat more on Christmas than last year, almost enough to offset the penury of the Hunker Downs. While the total number of transactions was down for December, the average sale was slightly up, due to the largesse of this group.Here’s what to expect in 2008:We’re going to see an increasing number of purchases influenced by the head instead of the heart. Service and selection are taking a back seat to quality and price. In the language of Myers-Briggs, we’re shifting from an F (feeling) mindset to a T (thinking) perspective.In Advertising, both the Hunker Downs and the Full Speed Aheads are looking for clear statements of benefit. The I’m-Too-Rich-To-Worries are looking for exclusive brands.Efficiency providers like Sam’s Club and Costco will continue to thrive. As will sellers of prestige brands that are never discounted. Retailers who have built their businesses on service and selection will feel pressure to reinvent themselves. It’s going to be a very good year for consultants.How about you? Would you like to gain some insight about what to do next?Wizard Academy is a 21st Century Business School.Your goals are your own business.Helping you reach them is ours.Q: How is a 21st century business school different than a 20th century business school?A: We recognize the value of intuition. Traditional business schools teach that decisions should wait until all the data is available. But intuitive innovators who know the right answer before all the data is available are now leapfrogging businesses who continue to follow the old-school logic. The big fish are no longer eating the little fish. The fast fish are eating the slow.Which fish will you be?Begin 2008 with a visit to Wizard Academy and see if it doesn't brighten your future.We'll see you when you get here.Roy H. Williams

Dec 31, 2007 • 4min
Gravity of the Edge
Whether it exists in the public consciousness or only in my mind, I can't be sure, but there’s an anxiousness about 2008 that gives me pause. We seem to be pushing our way to the edge.Presidency, economy, war.What will happen?I take a breath and close my eyes and remember the words of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus published 1800 years ago, “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”Anthony Hopkins shared a similar thought with James Lipton during a recent interview on Inside the Actor's Studio, “Today is the tomorrow I was so worried about yesterday.”A client recently shared with me one of those amazing “weapons of reason” Marcus Aurelius spoke about:I asked, “How is traffic trending? Are we ahead of last year?”“Roy, I don’t measure traffic.”“You’re kidding.”“Last week one of my salespeople made 63 sales presentations and closed only 24 of them. That tells me 39 people bought somewhere else. And right now they’re telling all their friends why they bought where they did. They’re showing off their purchases and explaining why they didn’t buy from us.”“Good point.”“That salesperson is no longer with us.”“You’re really serious about this.”“Today’s close rate is the most reliable indicator of tomorrow’s traffic. When close rate is high, traffic increases. When close rate begins to slide, traffic soon begins to slide as well.”Does it surprise you that this client keeps better records than any we’ve ever served and that he’s currently our fastest growing client in North America? Thankfully, he knows what information can be correlated and what cannot. He doesn’t let his statistics lead him to ridiculous conclusions.But the part of our conversation that jerked my eyebrows upward was that he was aware of the weekly close rate of each of his nearly 100 salespeople.Wow.You can’t improve what you don’t measure.What are you measuring?“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be.”– Sir William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, Electrical Units of Measurement, 1883There are lots of things business owners are secretly trying to achieve. And usually these goals are secret, even to themselves.In a couple of weeks I’ll begin 3 intensive days of planning for 11 different companies. We’ll all sit in a circle on the first morning and I’ll ask each of them separately, “How will we measure success? What do you want me to help you make happen?”I’ve been asking that question of business owners for nearly 30 years. It’s never easy to get an answer.But it’s a whole lot easier to win the game when you’re clear on how points are scored.Are you playing to win in 2008?Your goals are your own business.Helping you reach them is mine.Roy H. Williams

Dec 24, 2007 • 4min
Actions Speak Louder Than
I’m a big believer in the power of words. But when words aren’t backed by corresponding actions, talk is cheap.Have you ever felt a disconnection between what a company promised you in their ads and what they actually delivered?I carry a list of companies in my head called the “Never Again As Long As I Live” list. I’ll bet you have one, too.Was it the advertising of these companies that put them on our lists? Of course not. It was their actions.One dumb decision can undo years of good advertising.What decisions have you made that send signals to your customers?“Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.”– Ralph Waldo Emerson1. What are you saying in your ads?2. Who are you being in your store?3. Is there a disconnect?AA dog doesn’t have to growl to let me know it’s dangerous. Just bare you teeth, doggie. I’ll understand. This small, direct signal from the dog overrides all the assurances of its owner: “He won’t bite, he’s a friendly dog. I’ve had him for 10 years. His breed never bites. It’s been proven. Here, watch this. See, he didn’t bite me and he won’t bite you either. What are you afraid of? Here are some testimonials from other people who have petted him. Did you know this dog was voted Most Pettable Dog of 2007? He won’t bite you, he likes you. Trust me. We care about our customers.”What is advertising but the assurances of a dog owner?Talk, when it costs you nothing, is cheap.“Here are ten, hundred-dollar bills. Put them in your pocket. If this dog so much as snaps at you, they’re yours. He wasn’t baring his teeth to scare you. He was smiling at you.”Wow. A smiling dog. I think I’ll pet him.Actions are powerful signals when they agree with your words.These action-signals gain credibility to the degree they cost you one or more of the following:1. Material Wealth2. Time & Energy3. Opportunity4. Power & Control5. Reputation & Prestige6. Safety & Well BeingWhat do your signals cost you? What are you risking?Words that cost you little have little meaning.Tom Wanek is an authority on how to use signals and counter-signals in business. Tom has agreed to speak for one very special hour on the subject during the next Free Public Seminar in Austin, Texas.Prepare to be amazed.Roy H. Williams


