Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

As we learned in last week's memo, a person can't imagine a personal future without assembling it from stored memories of their past.This means your customer will better understand the new and different when you relate it to the old and familiar.To do this, you must employ Symbolic Thought.(And if you're really good you'll trigger mirror neurons in your subject, causing them to vicariously experience what you describe. But I get ahead of myself…)According to Dr. Ricardo Gattass there are four kinds of thought:Verbal Thought is hearing a voice in your mind.Analytical Thought is deductive reasoning that seeks to forecast a result.Abstract Thought embraces fantasy and all things intangible.Symbolic Thought connects the pattern recognition of the right brain with the deductive reasoning of the left-brain to relate the unknown to the known.If you will educate, encourage, or persuade, you must symbolize the abstract by pointing to a concrete thing that shares an essential attribute with the abstraction you're trying to describe.This can be done using:(1.) Words.“Your life and her life have become intertwined like two ropes, joined in a knot. And that's a good thing. It gives you both something to hang onto. If you're in love, you know exactly what I'm talking about.” These three sentences were the opening lines of a radio ad that sold thousands of a specific item of jewelry.“What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.” Jesus gave the farmers of his day a glimpse of another realm by comparing it to a seed with which they were all familiar.(2.) Pictures.In his book, Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud uses graphic sequential storytelling to illustrate how we attach complex meanings to the way simple lines relate to one another. He's not talking about comic books. He's talking about visual symbolic thought. Grasp what he's teaching and you'll hold a lever that will move the world.Buy the book. It's one of those rare, breakthrough books that will make you suddenly see things that have long fluttered at the edge of your consciousness. Or better yet, if you can afford the time and money, join Scott McCloud and me for the February session of Advanced Thought Particles in Wizard Academy's Tuscan Hall.Didn't I tell you that we had some amazing guests lined up for 2007?Come if you can.Roy H. Williams

We do not remember days. We remember moments.The secret to creating a different future is to remember a different past.Literally.What do you remember about your past? Do you remember the pain? The frustration? The injustice?Unless you want to live these things again, you need to erase them from your mind.No, I haven't become a perky, positive-thinking Pollyanna. I share only what was published last week in the scientific journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.According to lead researcher Karl Szpunar, “Our findings provide compelling support for the idea that memory and future thought are highly interrelated and help explain why future thought may be impossible without memories.”Szpunar's team used advanced brain imaging techniques to show how (1.) remembering the past and (2.) envisioning the future are connected, as each one triggers similar patterns of brain activity in precisely the same areas of the brain. (These findings help explain why amnesiacs have difficulty imagining a personal future.)The cognoscenti will remember me saying, “A person can take no action until they've first imagined that action in their mind. Persuasion begins when a person imagines themselves doing what you want them to do.”Last week, The National Academy of Sciences added to our understanding by making it clear: Our ability to imagine the future is linked to our memories of the past.Ponder past failure only if you want to recreate it.Do you want a happy and successful future? Remember happy and successful moments.Musicians and athletes have known this for years; “The way you practice is the way you'll play.”In other words, you're probably going to do what you've been remembering.What have you been remembering? If you want to create a better future, you must remember better moments from your past. These moments happened to you. They definitely happened.You just need to remember them.Roy H. Williams

Sorting my email, I came upon a survey sent to me by an acquaintance:I'm about to change the name of my company from The Success Clinic to something else, and I need your help to find the best name.Which of these do you like best?____ Academy of Success and Leadership (ASL)____ Champions Training Institute (CTI)____ American Success Academy (ASA)____ Academy of Champions Training (ACT)Inexplicably, I tapped Reply and placed an X by my answer. Tap. Send.I soon received a follow-up:Hi Roy,Thank you very much for sending me your vote.You don't know how surprised and honored I was to get a response from you.I wasn't sure if you'd remember the time I visited the old Academy and you introduced me to your students as the author of Permission to Succeed and Afformations.I thought you might like to know the results so far:1. This survey produced by far the hugest response from my list EVER.(If you like, I can tell you the story of why I think this is the case and what your readers might like to learn from my experience)2. Leading the way by a huge margin is Academy of Success and Leadership.3. Your vote to me equals 10,000 votes.So I was wondering if I could ask you:Why did you say Champions Training Institute?I would really love to hear your thinking process, because I know there's a reason behind your answer (and it goes against the grain of what the “average” person would say).I really do appreciate hearing from you.Thank you again, Roy.Warm regards,NoahYou, reader, were surprised by my choice as well, weren't you?As Noah suspected, I did have my reasons. But whether they constitute method or madness, I cannot with certainty say.Noah,You asked. Here are my answers:1. Champions Training Institute offers a sharp FMI (First Mental Image.)Champions are easy to imagine. They have Succeeded at something and they Lead the way for others. Hence, Champions is an easily visualized word that replaces two words, Success and Leadership, which offer only a fuzzy, ambiguous mental image at best.2. Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” I agree. One word, Champions, is more than equal to two words, Success and Leadership.3. Training is a marvelous verb. Now that we've chosen to create Champions, how will we do this? Through training. Academy of Success and Leadership has no verb. It's a passive construct. This makes it sound like a museum.4. The place where the training will be done, “Institute”, comes at the end, where it belongs. It's the LMI (Last Mental Image.) Academy of Success and Leadership inserts the place (Academy) as the FMI.5. You've been asked, “What do you do here?”Strong Answer: “We train champions.”Weak Answer: “We teach entrepreneurs and professionals how to achieve greater success in their chosen field of endeavor. And we teach people how to lead.”6. CTI is a more sparkling acronym than the others, due to its lack of sonorant phonemes.Here's a general overview:Open Big. Close Big. FMI-LMIMake us see it clearly. “Memorable” is more important than “Accurate.” Be accurate if you can. But above all, be memorable.Verbs have magnetism. The most vivid order is Verb First, Object Last. But this is not a likely construct for a place name. “We train champions” is an example of verb first, object last.Modifiers are a mark of weakness. Delete them at every opportunity. Mark Twain said it this way, “Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your editor will edit it and the writing will be just as it should be.”Having said all this, let me close softly: Noah, please name your school whatever feels best to you. I will not feel slighted if you choose to do exactly the opposite of what I've told you. I have no emotional investment in this advice whatsoever. I just felt you asked an interesting question and I was in the rare mood to answer it.Come see our new campus.All the best.Yours,Roy H. Williams

I still don't know his last name.Gille arrived from Michigan in a small jar with his photograph on the lid. His friend had sent an email to Chapel Dulcinea asking if we'd be willing to launch some of Gille's ashes into the breeze that always blows there.We replied we'd be happy to do it.It seems that Gille's parting wish was for his ashes to be scattered at beautiful and interesting places around the world and Chapel Dulcinea was selected as one of those places. So at sunset on December 13, 2006, Tom Grimes, Brett Feinstein and I became the awkward honor guard that entrusted Gille to the winds from the western pinnacle of Dulcinea's diamond foundation.Feinstein rang the big bronze bell as Gille floated northward into forever.How are things with you? Are you ready to begin a new year?This is the time when millions of us pause to look back with regret and forward with hope. As you prepare for 2007, here are some thoughts I hope you'll ponder:It's Always Okay To Begin Again“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.” – G.K. ChestertonPay Attention to the Little Things“It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.” – Terry Pratchett“No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.” – Agnes De MilleKnow What You Want“I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.” – Mark TwainDon't Think You Know It All“The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life.” – Leo Tolstoy“And he goes through life, his mouth open, and his mind closed.” – Oscar WildeDon't Be A Couch Potato“Literacy is a very hard skill to acquire, and once acquired it brings endless heartache – for the more you read, the more you learn of life's intimidating complexity of confusion. But anyone who can learn to grunt is bright enough to watch TV… which teaches that life is simple, and happy endings come to those whose hearts are in the right place.” – Spider Robinson“If I show up at your house 10 years from now, and find nothing in your living room but Reader's Digests, nothing in your bedroom but the latest Dan Brown novel… I will chase you down to the end of your driveway and back shouting 'Where are the damn books?… Why are you living the mental equivalent of a Kraft Macaroni & Cheese life?'” – Stephen King, to the 2005 graduating class of the University of MaineYou're Going To Have Some Bad Days“Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful.” – Annette Funicello“Life is like a train. It's bearing down on you and guess what? It's going to hit you. So you can either start running when it's far off in the distance, or you can pull up a chair, crack open a beer, and just watch it come.” – Eric Forman, on That 70s Show“My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.” – MontaigneHave Courage“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.” – Helen Keller“Those of us who refuse to risk and grow get swallowed up by life.” – Patty HansenLove Your Job“Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.” – Studs TerkelDon't Forget to Have Fun“Do not take life too seriously – you will never get out of it alive.” – Elbert Hubbard“Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no one can stop it…. I think that the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair's messed, you're out of breath, and you didn't throw up.” – Jerry Seinfeld“Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.” – Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker“Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin.” – Grace HansenRemember the People Who Are Important to You“There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.” – George Sand“When you grow up, you have to give yourself away. Sometimes you give your life all in a moment, but mostly you have to give yourself away laboring one minute at a time.” – Gaborn Val Orden“I was fourteen years old the night my daddy died. He had holes in his shoes and a vision that he was able to convey to me even lying in an ambulance, dying, that I as a black girl could do and be anything, that race and gender are shadows, and that character, determination, attitude are the substances of life.” – Marian Wright EdelmanToday Is The First Day of The Rest of Your Life“Life is a journey, and with every step we reach a point of no return.” – Gaborn Val Orden“Many adventures await you upon the road of life. Enter these doors, and take your first step…” – from a placard above The Horn and Hound PubHappy New Year,Roy H. Williams

When Too Bigwedges into a head too small,When Too Hardcrowds into a life too soft,When Too Muchhas happened to make sense of it all,I am Sleep.Let me do my work.– Roy H. WilliamsHave you ever been confronted with an idea Too Big, a circumstance Too Hard, or a series of events Too Much?Thank God for the right hemisphere of your brain.You spend about a third of your life asleep because your 5 senses gather data faster than it can be processed. And the half of your brain responsible for fitting these new puzzle pieces into place works best when the other half is asleep.The left brain – logical, sequential, deductive reasoning – gathers information then goes to sleep. But the right brain – data integration and pattern recognition – doesn't sleep but works all night, connecting the dots, seeing the pattern and its possibilities.Intuiting.During the night the right brain takes a step back, puts things in perspective and gives you insight. This is why the wise say, “Let me sleep on it,” and why things always look better in the morning.The left brain demands science and data and facts and justice. The right brain seeks relationships and mercy and meaning and God. This is why you are torn between two opinions. Your left brain or “head” tells you one thing while your right brain or “heart” whispers another.The left brain is about vertical hierarchy, up and down. Dominate.The right brain is about horizontal relationship, near and far. Communicate.Most American men live in the left, worshiping at the alters of technology and sports, sneering at softness, mocking mercy, ridiculing the right. Strictly speaking, men, reading the sports page and the stock market report takes only half a brain.What are you doing with the other half?When a woman says “romance,” she means “right brain stuff.” She's talking about feelings and impressions and reactions that can't be proven and are neither right nor wrong, but are simply “yours.”You have feelings and impressions and reactions, guys. I know you do.How does the music make you feel? How about the painting, the play, the photograph, the book? Tell her. Let her remember why she married you.In just 10 more days Princess Pennie and I will celebrate 30 extraordinary years together. We are extremely married. You should be, too.If today's memo annoyed you a little, will you please let me make one final suggestion?Sleep on it.Roy H. Williams

I've created ads for local businesses from coast to coast for nearly a quarter century and I've studied the population of every place for which I've written ads; more than 100 towns in all. And I've presented seminars in an additional 92. That's a lot of travel.And I've noticed that cities have personalities.Humor can be different, for one thing. The video clip that causes an explosion of laughter in one city may trigger only the slightest giggle in the next. And women wear their makeup differently. The appreciation of art will be narrow in one city and broad in another. And religion can run shallow or deep. The work ethic is different here than there, and risk orientation with it.If you will write ads for a local business, you must first feel the pulse of the place; measure its inhibitions and embrace the rules of its morality.America is young, barely 4 human life-spans. This is why you should always begin your uncovery by asking:1. Why is this city here?2. Who founded it?3. What attracted its original population?As newcomers get involved in a community, they're affected by the town's local culture and begin subtly sliding toward the local norm. Outsiders thus become insiders.Learn the origins of a town and you'll have found a thread that will tie all your other observations together and make your ads much stronger.A town built on a discovery of gold or oil will often continue to have a “get-rich-quick” mentality to this day. Multilevel marketing will be strong there and con men will rock and roll because these cities are optimistic and have an uncanny ability to believe. Such towns are havens for entrepreneurs of every description. Silicon Valley (Sutter's Mill was there,) Denver, Tulsa…A town that originated as a military fort will usually have more grit and testosterone than neighboring cities. Compare Fort Worth to its neighbor, Dallas: Fort Worth began as a military post in 1849. Dallas began as a trading post in 1840. Today Fort Worth is known for its stockyards, aerospace, and Texas Motor Speedway. Dallas is known for Neiman-Marcus and Mary Kay.Likewise, St. Paul originated in 1819 as Fort Snelling and remains the seat of Minnesota government. Neighboring Minneapolis began as a trading post and remains a hub of commerce to this day. Ever heard of the Mall of America?An enthusiastic pair of New York real estate promoters founded Houston, Texas. The hyped-up boys assured investors it would become “a great center of government and commerce,” and then delivered what they promised.Happy Discovery, Militarism, and Energetic Commerce are just 3 of the 32 signals a city can send you to help you write more powerfully to its people.If you would be a journalist or a marketing professional, you must press your ear to the chest of your city, hear its heartbeat and smell its breath. Carl Sandburg did, 42 years before I was born:CHICAGOHOG Butcher for the World,Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;Stormy, husky, brawling,City of the Big Shoulders:They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,Bareheaded,Shoveling,Wrecking,Planning,Building, breaking, rebuilding,Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,Laughing!Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be the Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.Do you understand your city the way Sandburg understood his?If you do, you're well on your way to having a fabulous 2007.Good luck.Roy H. Williams

Happiness rarely triggers commerce. Unhappiness often does.Purchases are triggered by dissatisfaction with the way things are. We purchase when we have a need, a desire, an itch to scratch. We want to change our condition, our surroundings, our state of mind. We buy because we are dissatisfied.And this dissatisfaction is often created by the advertising that offers to remedy it.In his 1957 essay, American Advertising, Marshall McLuhan describes a letter written by an American army officer stationed in Italy after World War II. The officer “noted with misgiving that Italians could tell you the names of cabinet ministers but not the names of commodities preferred by Italian celebrities. Furthermore, the wall space of Italian cities was given over to political rather than commercial slogans. Finally, he predicted that there was small hope that Italians would ever achieve any sort of domestic prosperity or calm until they began to worry about the rival claims of cornflakes or cigarettes rather than the capacities of public men. In fact, he went so far as to say that democratic freedom very largely consists in ignoring politics and worrying about the means of defeating underarm odor, scaly scalp, hairy legs, dull complexion, unruly hair, borderline anemia, athlete's foot, and sluggish bowels.”This crass, commercial outlook described by McLuhan escalated to its zenith in the early 80's, then began to slowly subside.Today's purchases remain an expression of self, but they aren't always selfish. Our favorite brands are usually an extension of our values, a physical expression of our beliefs. This is why millions of us pay slightly higher prices for Fair Trade coffee. It tastes exactly like the coffee sold by heartless corporations, but Fair Trade coffee makes us feel differently.Those who have heard my presentation on Society's Pendulum will remember that 2006 was the 4th year of a new Civic cycle in which we're drawn toward others who believe as we do.“Every brand must have an identity and the most effective identities are those that take on the trappings of social justice: The Body Shop owns compassion, Nike spirituality, Pepsi and MTV youthful rebellion.” – Thomas Frank, (1997)“The great brands have succeeded in conveying their vision by questioning certain conventions, whether it's Apple's humanist vision, which reverses the relationship between people and machines; Benetton's libertarian vision, which overthrows communication conventions; Microsoft's progressive vision, which topples bureaucratic barriers; or Virgin's anti-conformist vision, which rebels against the powers that be.” – Jean-Marie DruYou buy what you buy because you want to scratch an itch. You are dissatisfied in some unspoken way.To increase your sales volume, you must identify the dissatisfaction that lurks in the heart of your customer.And then you must shine your flashlight of words into that darkness.How bright is your language-beacon?Roy H. Williams

Suffice it to say that last week's memo had precisely the effect I had anticipated.We'll speak no more about it.I will not dissect my own writing like a formaldehyde frog in the dim light of your monitor. But I will, for your benefit, gently press my scalpel into a paragraph written by England's brilliant Roy Clarke:“The thing about growing up is that you get fewer scabs on your knees, but more internal injuries. Do you remember the day when that little yellowhammer flew straight at the window? You picked it up. It had a drop of blood on its beak. Identical color to ours. Just one drop, like a bright bead. And then there were all those brightly plumed kids who left school, flying cheerfully and didn't get far. Ran smack into World War II. Little Tommy Naylor lying in Africa somewhere, blood on his beak. Identical color to ours.”– monologue of Peter Sallis as Norman Clegg, Last of the Summer Wine; Getting Sam Home, (1983) written by Roy ClarkeWe're not told the yellowhammer collided with the window. Neither do we read the words “dead” or “death.” Yet we know the little bird hit the window and died because of the line, “You picked it up.”We come to this conclusion on our own. This technique of “revelation by inference” pulls us into the narrative by making us fill in its blanks.Next the author shares a memory, a vividly phrased mental image: “Just one drop, like a bright bead.”The yellow cone of a bird's beak adorned with a glistening sphere of red is a sadly beautiful combination of color and shape. But we, as readers, continue to hang on to the opening statement about “growing up.” We await closure of that thought.Clarke moves us from birds to persons – and childhood to adulthood – through the metaphorical phrase “brightly plumed kids… flying cheerfully.”And then he closes the circle:“Little Tommy Naylor lying in Africa somewhere, blood on his beak.”Clarke has taken us from the scraped knees of childhood to a dead Tommy Naylor in the space of just a few seconds, our minds filling in the blanks along the way. Little Tommy never did grow old. He was one of us.“Identical color to ours.”And his death could have been our own.Read the passage again and witness the brilliant restraint. Roy Clarke flashes just a few slides onto the movie screen of our mind and we fill the gaps between them. We conclude:(1.) A yellowhammer is a bird.(2.) It hit the window and died.(3.) Tommy Naylor was a schoolmate.(4.) Tommy grew up and went to war.(5.) Tommy died in Africa in WWIIBut none of this is told to us directly. Yet we know it just as surely as if it had been.I am boring and pedantic when I say too much.I am mysterious and deep when I say too little.To hold the attention of intelligent people you must require them to fill in the blanks in your narrative. Here's another good example:“There were ripe blackberries in the hedgerows and, as the shadows lengthened, fox cubs skittering at the edge of the fields. A few miles on and the evening had almost shaded to night, but he could smell the sea now and he imagined that he could hear it, sucking and surging on the Dorset shingle. This was the ghost time of day when the souls of the dead flickered at the edges of men's sight and when good folk hurried home to their fire and to their thatch and to their bolted doors. A dog howled in one of the villages.”– Bernard Cornwell, Vagabond, p.164Have you ever known someone who took too long to say too little?Have you ever been someone who took too long to say too little?Yes, I am feeling literary. It happens to me in the fall. I hope you don't mind.Ciao for Niao,Roy H. Williams

Standing at your bedside, I don’t know if you’re dead or only sleeping.Soon our friends will lay pennies on your eyes to pay Charon for your passage. A silly ritual, our friends will do it anyway.But you were dead long before you died.Something caused life to shrivel in you, bloodless and pale, until you began to smell of despair. Did fear of failure run so deep in you?I was troubled by your passivity. I did not understand it. You refused encouragement. You sneered at good advice. You drank self-pity until it pickled your soul.Did you never realize that He who gently made the lamb made the tiger also? Who strangled the tiger in you? Was it faulty religion? An overbearing parent? Wounded pride?The tiger who fails is still a tiger. We do not laugh at it. A tiger is spectacular.You understood the Jesus who turned water into wine at the wedding feast to save the young couple from embarrassment. You believed in that Jesus, the one who was kind and anonymously generous. But you never quite believed in the Jesus who braided a whip to drive the businessmen from the temple, who flung aside the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their cash and stampeded all their livestock.Was there human blood on the whip when he was done do you think? Or did he just wave the whip over his head like a baton twirler in a halftime show and request that all the nasty, bad men please leave the premises immediately?Jesus wasn’t Gandhi. Jesus said that when someone jolted your jaw, the right thing to do was look them calmly in the eye and stick out your chin to give them a clean swing at the other side. This is how a tiger says, “Is that your best shot? You want another swing? Here, let me make this easy for you.”Turning the other cheek isn’t submissive. It’s defiant.But you were never into defiance. You were more into whining.I wish I could say I will miss you. But in truth, I’ve been missing you since the day your tiger died.Roy H. Williams

Your prospective customer has questions about you. Where's the first place they're likely to look for answers?Sadly, your wonderful “Big enough to serve you, small enough to know you” public image probably isn't going to be enough to walk that customer out to their car and drive them to your store so they can ask your friendly and knowledgeable staff.They'll probably just walk to the nearest computer and invest a few keystrokes, don't you think? And if your website doesn't deliver answers, they'll find them:1. on someone else's website, or2. a discussion string where you risk being reduced to what a detractor said about you, or3. they'll fill in the blanks using information gathered from the shadows of their own suspicious mind.Think like your customer for a moment: A company's website is silent on a subject. Why might this be? “At best, they're out of touch and behind the times. At worst, they have something to hide.”How many people do you suppose are looking for answers online?Clear Channel Communications, the world's largest mass-media company (with 1,100 radio stations and 870,000 billboards) is currently courting suitors for a possible takeover. Google, an internet search-engine company launched in 1998 by two college kids, is on the short list of possible buyers. Clear Channel's market value is currently 17 billion dollars. Google's market value is currently 145 billion dollars.So let me ask you again: How many people do you suppose are looking for answers online?Does your website provide these answers?In 2007, your website will need to deliver: Information. Clarity. Truth.Your website should be a window into the soul of your company:1. Anticipate your customer's question.This is why you must embrace persona-based writing.2. Answer the question transparently.Statements that don't ring true will score against you.3. Make the answer easy to find.This is a function of website architecture.Does it surprise you to learn that most website programmers think exactly backwards from how customers think? An organizational hierarchy that's perfectly logical in the mind of a programmer is often frustratingly illogical in the mind of a customer.Your website architecture dictates your customer's experience. Architecture has nothing to do with graphics. Did your website have an architect? Or was it designed by the programmer? By the graphic artist? By you?A programmer asks, “Does it function?”A graphic designer asks, “Does it 'feel right' and represent us well?”An owner asks, “Does it say what I want it to say?”An architect asks, “Did the customer find their answer?”Mass media says, “Create traffic first. Answer their questions after they arrive.”Search engines say, “Create answers first. Store traffic will be created by the answers you provide.”Your website should be a relationship deepener. Having already interacted with your expert, open-all-night website, customers will walk into your store the next day already sold. We're seeing it constantly.Are you?CONFESSION: Most of what I've shared with you today was gleaned from my daily chats with the Eisenberg brothers. A few minutes with these guys saves me a lot of time and money.You may recall that earlier this year Jeff and Bryan's newest book exploded onto all four bestseller lists: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and USA Today. These brothers consult many of the largest and most successful companies on earth.Would you like to experience 3 days worth of face-to-face training with them? Jeff and Bryan are donating 3 days to help build everyone's business who helped build Engelbrecht House with a donation of at least $1,000.Why are they doing this? Because we believed in them 6 years ago when they launched their company from the basement of their parents' home. The world-famous Eisenbergs are first-year AcadGrads who remember the old days when they were struggling and we were there for them.With their help, you can look back on 2006 as the old days when you were struggling and they were there for you.The door is closing soon. Jeff and Bryan and I would love for you to be here at the Academy Nov 29 – Dec 1.You coming?Roy H. Williams