Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

America has been flattered by advertising (“Because you deserve it”), misled by ads (“Lowest prices anywhere”), hyped by ads (“While supplies last”), and lied to repeatedly (“Guaranteed!”). The result of all this misinformation is a growing numbness to ad-speak. We're becoming deaf and blind to it. With effortless ease we shut it out of our minds.Why are advertisers happy when their ads sound like ads?Once-effective phrases become clichés when overused. Remember the 70s? Guys with long, pointed collars and blow-dried hair used the standard pick-up line, “Do you come here often?” They did it because it worked. They quit only when the ladies began laughing at them.But advertising still wears that ridiculous collar and blow-dried hair because its rejection was never face-to-face. We don't laugh at ads. We quietly ignore them.When demand is high and supply is low, your ads need only tell the world, “We've got it!” But how often do you actually get to do this?Advertising – when you're building a brand – is merely a relationship deepener. Its job is to cause the public to like you and trust you. Accomplish this and they'll remember you when they, or any of their circle, need what you sell.Good news: A seductive new voice in advertising is softening the hearts and winning the wallets of our nation at a record pace. This new future of advertising is known as “non ads” – consumer messages written in the vulnerable, candid style of a conversation between close friends. Their language isn't aggressive and egocentric like advertising, but unguarded, playful and real. Non-ads admit weaknesses, confess fears, and never try to impress. They speak to the customer in the language of a friend, rather than a pitchman. Does it surprise you that the natural response of the customer is to give you their trust? But here's the bigger question: Do you have the courage to be a friend, tell the truth, and worry more about your customer's happiness than your own?My strong suggestion is that you adopt it sooner rather than later. The following examples of two real non-ads I've encountered lately should help you better understand this new concept and begin implementing it today.Example #1You're seated in 12-B, reading an in-flight magazine. The following words appear in white letters against a medium olive background, no photograph or graphic:Isn't it amazing how people will read anything at 36,000 ft? You, for instance, are reading this. And even though it's quite obviously an ad, and you're skeptical of advertising, you'll continue reading it. See, here you are, still reading. C'mon, don't try to deny it. And why are you still reading? Not because you find it particularly captivating, but because it's here. And you're here. And you've already exhausted your mandatory, meaningless airplane chit-chat time with your neighbor. So right about now you're probably asking yourself, 'Why am I still reading this?' Perhaps you're even pretending you're not reading it anymore. You're going to close this magazine up right now and slip it back into that pocket up there. But wait, you're still reading it, aren't you? You can't help yourself. It's here. You're here. And you still can't use your cell phone until you reach the tarmac. By the way, we know a really good bookstore around here.At the bottom of the page is the logo for Verizon and in larger letters, “Superpages.com, We know around here.”Like you and trust you. That's the goal.Example #2Walk into the men's room at Robbins Bros., The World's Biggest Engagement Ring Store, and here's what you'll see covering the wall of the toilet stall:Here's your chance. Get out now while you can. Quick, look for a window. Or the ventilation shaft. Okay, remove your clothes. Skivvies, too. Lube your entire body with that hand soap over there. Now take a penny and unscrew the corner of the duct. Now get to struggling. Conviction is important at this point. You do not want to get stuck. Imagine your bride-to-be coming in and seeing your nude lower torso poking out like some sort of modern art installation. That's an image for the mantel, isn't it? So squirm like the wind. Once free, secure some clothing and start a new life somewhere with complicated extradition laws. And then back to bachelorhood. Yes, the singularly most forlorn, emotionally vacant time of your life. Come on, is there anything more overrated than bachelorhood? If you're like most bachelors, you go to bed every night wishing you weren't one. Let's look at the sacred, time-tested bachelor traditions you'll be missing out on. Well, of course, there's being a slob. As well as extended periods of not bathing and otherwise lapsed personal hygiene. And hanging out with your unattached friends. A group of guys who with each passing year are starting to get, frankly, a little creepy. Your future is out there. Your best friend is out there. Besides, that liquid soap itches like crazy.Vision and audacity allowed these companies to leap to the top of their respective categories. And the same characteristics caused them to be among the first in America to embrace the intimate and irreverent voice of “non ads” as the advertising voice of the future. By the time the rest of the nation catches on to what they're doing, they will likely have moved on to something else.How about you? Will you change with the times?Roy H. Williams

It takes 1,800 electrons to equal the mass of a single proton.Protons and their cousins – neutrons – make up 99.95 percent of the mass in the universe. Yet it's the electrical charges of the seemingly insignificant 0.05 percent – those tiny orbiting electrons – that hold our universe together.Commitment. Purpose. Focus. Passion. These are the electrons of Happiness. Orbiting our actions. Binding us together. Keeping us from flying apart.Shift gears, new subject: Is commitment a manifestation of passion, or the cause of it? In other words, are we committed because we have a purpose? Or do we have a purpose because we chose to commit? (Please don't make me tell you the answer. I'm begging you to see it for yourself…)Ah. You see it now. I'm relieved.I'm alarmed at the number of people who act as though purpose is somehow inherent, tied to destiny, a thing mysteriously willed to a chosen few by the gods. They moan, “I don't have a purpose. I don't have a passion. I'm not happy.”Frankly, it's all I can do to keep from slapping them.Let me say this plainly: Your life's purpose will be chosen by you. It's a decision you will make. If you're waiting for your purpose to drop mysteriously from the sky, you're wasting what could have been a wonderful life.Passion comes from having a focus.Focus comes from having a purpose.Purpose comes from having made a commitment.To whom or what will you choose to commit?Shift again, third subject: The world stands knee-deep in unrewarded talent because most people are unable to survive the death of their dream.Every dream of the future is a seed. But until your dream falls into the ground and dies, it cannot burst from the ground and deliver the harvest you seek.Is your commitment strong enough to survive the death of your dream? Will you be found still hanging on when hope has fled, the room is dark and everyone believes you a fool?Believe it or not, this is usually the key to the miracles that follow.Roy H. Williams

It hit me. “I've become an eavesdropper, listening to the conversations of strangers.”It's 5:00AM and I'm sitting at the bar of an all-night café on the wrong side of town eating a three-dollar breakfast, listening to the smelly, funny stories of downtrodden people who know each other well. Their sparkling banter gives me a glimpse into problems I'll never touch, victories I'll never celebrate, a life I'll never have. These are they who will never have internet access, a credit card or cable TV.But they seem happy.I've come here to learn what it means to be an outsider in America.People tell me they want to write. I respond, “You can't find a pencil?” In truth, few want to write. Most want only to have written. People tell me they want to travel, have adventures, meet interesting people and learn about different cultures. They want to expand their world. I'm betting you can guess my answer to that one… “If you will expand your world, you must crawl on your hands and knees, get on your belly and squirm under the fence that surrounds your insulated life.”For most people, travel means being pampered by accommodating servants in exotic places. But interesting people, strange cultures and high adventure don't await you on the other side of the world. They await you on the other side of town.Are you willing to get on your belly and crawl under that fence? Will you invest an hour to enlarge your world? If you will actually do it, not just think about it, but really do it, and write to me about it, I will send you a special gift of initiation. These are the rules:1. You must arrive and be seated in a 24-hour eating establishment between 1:30AM and 5:30AM in a part of town where you rarely go. Or perhaps a truckstop beyond town's edge. The further outside your comfort zone, the better.2. If a man, you must go alone. If a woman and concerned for your safety, you can take one other person with you. But make sure your friend understands the goal isn't to chat with each other, but to glimpse a whole other world that exists side-by-side with the one you know.3. While you're eating and listening and absorbing this strange new reality, think of what these people need most and how you might help them get it. While you're at it, you might also think a little about what they have that you don't. There is a rich sense of community among the outcast.4. Write the details of your excursion within 24 hours of your meal and email them to Corrine@wizardacademy.org Be sure to provide a mailing address where we can send your special Gift of Initiation. I don't yet know what it will be.Want to hear something that will shock you? I'm fairly confident that fewer than 12 readers from among my 31,000 subscribers will actually do what I've just described, and more than half of these will be Canadian. We Americans are unlikely to discomfort ourselves except for purposes of recreation.How accurate are my predictions? A few weeks ago when I offered to send readers a free copy of my favorite book, I accurately predicted for the shipping department – within seven – the precise number of people who would respond to that offer. (Yes, that number was deep into the hundreds.)Will you join this strange new fraternity? Your gift of initiation awaits.Roy H. Williams

The bottom-rung loser in one town can move to another town and often become the king of his category. All it takes is weak competitors. I've seen it happen a dozen times.Whether you dominate your marketplace won't be determined solely by the strength of your advertising. It will be determined partly by the strength of your competitors.How good are you at what you do? How good are they?There are 4 factors that determine business success. The most important of these, competitive environment, is the factor most often ignored. The reason, I suppose, is that business owners feel they can do nothing about it. So they ignore their competitors.But their customers don't.The ability to measure your strength objectively and compare it to the strength of your competitors is essential to strategic planning.This is why Wizard Academy is developing a six-sigma Customer Experience Index, a patented instrument that will allow you to know – precisely and objectively– how you compare to each of your competitors locally. The same instrument will also compare your scores to national averages for your category in a number of critical customer touch-points. Sound interesting? Stay tuned. A Beta version of the instrument will be released in Summer '06.Today we'll take a brief look at the four factors that govern business success. (In weeks to come we'll zoom in for a closer examination of each.) In order of importance they are:1. Competitive Environment (strength of competitors)2. Business Model (strategy. creation of customer expectations.)3. Operational Execution (delivery of what was promised to the customer.)4. Message Development (total business communication, including ad writing, décor, media planning, etc.)When released, the Customer Experience Index will objectively measure what had previously been unmeasurable.And you're the first to know.Roy H. Williams

I was in the shower when my cell phone started ringing. Pennie answered it for me. It was my partner Jeff Eisenberg.Dripping, I took the phone. “Yo. Jefferson.”“I'm sending you an article from The Economist. It's something I've heard you talk about a hundred times.”“What is it?”“You know who Peter Drucker is?”“Management guy.”“Yeah. The story tells how his bestselling book, the one containing the most detailed, step-by-step instructions, is the one nobody reads anymore. The Drucker books they're studying in all the big colleges today are the ones that were poorly received at first and didn't sell very well. You talked to me about this sort of thing on the day we met.”“I remember. 'The loneliest people are the ones ahead of their time.'”Ludwig von Beethoven knew this outsider phenomenon well. Many of the musical compositions we consider to be his greatest today were panned by the critics of his time. Even his own musicians were confused by them. When the famed violinist Radicati asked Beethoven about these pieces he replied, “Oh, those are not for you, but for a later age.”We are that later age.Thankfully, Ludwig von Beethoven didn't let the dullness of the public palate affect what he chose to create. In other words, Ludy didn't pander to the finger-snapping jingle crowd.In my mind, I ask Ludwig why he doesn't try to write the kind of music that sells. I see him there. He looks quietly at me for a moment, then curls a lip, looks at the ground and spits. Then he looks back up at me. After a moment's hesitation I nod.But I'm not the only one nodding.“When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” – Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels“Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” – Albert Einstein“Funeral by funeral, science makes progress.” – Paul Samuelson. Yes, even scientists who are ahead of their time are rejected by their peers.The magnificent Emily Dickinson wrote with complete confidence that her words would never be read. It was only when her family looked in her bureau drawer on the day she died that they found 1,700 poems that would quickly be ranked among the greatest ever written.Emily Dickinson knew a freedom not felt by other writers. And it made her words soar. Feel them cut like shimmering blades:FAME is a fickle foodUpon a shifting plate,Whose table once a Guest, but notThe second time, is set.Whose crumbs the crows inspect,And with ironic cawFlap past it to the Farmer's corn;Men eat of it and die.Emily Dickinson was like Beethoven in that she had no need for public praise. She wrote for herself, an audience of one. Study the lives of the Great Ones and you'll find this to be a common characteristic among them.Cyril Connolly said it best: “Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.”I believe Peter Drucker, Jonathan Swift and Albert Einstein would agree.Ludy Von would, too.Emily says she's in.How about you? Do you have something new and different to say?Are you willing to write for an audience of one?Roy H. Williams

Great ads can be either product-specific or store-specific. Bad ads are generally category-specific. And then there are franchise ads.Franchise ads build the master brand. The hope of every franchisee is that the ads provided by the franchisor will generate enough brand magnetism to pull customers into their store. Due to the fact that a franchisor can afford to create a higher quality ad campaign than the typical local merchant, this strategy often succeeds.Category-specific ads are written broadly enough to fit every advertiser in a category. A transparent fabric of smoothly woven clichés, a category-specific ad is a generalized template into which one merely inserts a store name and address. “All you have to do is fill in the blanks.” But remember: Ads that fit everyone don't work very well for anyone. These were once called institutional ads. I do not recommend them.Product-specific ads benefit every retailer who sells the product, but they aren't really about the retailer at all. They're about the product. This is why the independent retailer should question whether or not to take the manufacturer's fifty cents to run their product-specific ads. Are they really paying for half of your advertising, or are you paying for half of theirs? Only when the co-op requirements are extremely flexible do I recommend that independent retailers accept the so-called “free money” offered by manufacturers. If you're paying half the cost, be sure at least half the message is about you.Store-specific ads are the foundation of local branding, but to write them requires intimate, detailed research on the part of an expert ad writer. Rarely will a good, store-specific ad fit another advertiser in the same category. The story I'm about to tell you is true. I've changed only the name of the store, the town, and the vegetable:Heisenberg's Jewelers had been in the same building on Main Street in Cabbage Valley for 105 years. A facelift 7 years earlier had given the store white carpet, walnut paneling and a huge chandelier in a high, domed ceiling. Heisenberg's was the Sistine Chapel of jewelry stores. Not a problem, except that Cabbage Valley is the turnip capital of the world, a little farming community of about 45,000 people. Even the wealthiest of Cabbage Valley's farmers felt they weren't dressed well enough to enter that store. Heisenberg's was truly an intimidating place.“You need to understand who our customer is,” my client told me as soon as I arrived. “Our customer is a 40 year-old woman with money. Upscale. Very upscale. Well dressed. Always buys the best. That's our customer. That's who you need to target.” This was in mid-October. I had been hired by Heisenberg's to help save Christmas because if they had another season as bad as the previous six, they were going to have to close their doors in January.“Let's get something straight,” I told them. “There's no handle I can crank that will spit out 40 year-old rich women. I'm going to have to write ads that appeal to men or you're going to have to find another way to make a living.” It's statements like those that separate consultants from salesmen.This is the radio ad that saved Heisenberg's:“Ladies, many of you will be fortunate enough this Christmas to find a small, but beautifully wrapped package under your tree bearing a simple gold seal that says 'Heisenberg's.' Now you and I both know there's jewelry in the box. But the man who put it there for you is trying desperately to tell you that you are more precious than diamonds, more valuable than gold, and very, very special. You see, he could have gone to a department store and bought department store jewelry, or picked up something at the mall like all the other husbands. But the men who come to Heisenberg's aren't trying to get off cheap or easy. Men who come to Heisenberg's believe their wives deserve the best. And whether they spend 99 dollars or 99 hundred, the message is the same: Men who come to Heisenberg's are still very much in love… We just thought you should know.”That ad was delivered slowly and thoughtfully with style and grace. No hurry. No street address. No store hours. No phone number. We simply told listeners what they already knew about Heisenberg's but made them feel differently about it. What we said in essence was, “If your husband voluntarily came to this scarily expensive store, he must really be in love with you.” It worked like magic.Throughout the month of December, men wedged themselves into Heisenberg's, waved stacks of cash at the register and shouted, “I don't care what you put in the box, but make sure it's got that damn gold sticker.” Heisenberg's made a blistering fortune that year and reversed their downward trend.Thirteen months later I got a phone call from a jeweler in Connecticut. “You the man they call the Wizard of Ads?”“Who is this?” I asked.“I ran one of them 'wizard' radio ads that's supposed to work. Had the worst Christmas I ever had. Didn't work at all. Terrible. What've you got to say for yourself?”A few probing questions revealed that my client in Cabbage Valley had given this fellow a copy of my “simple gold seal” ad as though it were some kind of miracle cure.“I have to disagree with you,” I told the man. “That ad didn't fail. It worked extremely well for whoever is the scary expensive jeweler in your town. He had a tremendous Christmas. And he has you to thank for it. The people in your town just knew that your store wasn't the one described in the ad.”Like every great store-specific ad, the Heisenberg's gold seal campaign would never have worked if Heisenberg's hadn't already had the reputation of being extremely intimidating and expensive. That same ad could just as easily have been delivered by newspaper, direct mail or television and it would have worked just as well. It was the message – not the media – that delivered our miracle.Franchise ads are for team players who want to help build a strong collective brand.Product-specific ads are for special promotions.Store-specific ads are for local branding.Category-specific “institutional” ads are a waste of money.What kind of ads are you running?Roy H. Williams

People tell me they want to learn to think outside the box.No problemo. The secret is to stay out of the box to begin with.You crawl into the box when you think about your problem and wrap its known obstacles around you. So quit. Focus instead on an interesting saying, quote, or phrase unrelated to your problem. Crawl inside that bit of wisdom and look at your problem from this cozy new perspective. Don't be surprised if your chosen phrase works like Ali Baba's “Open Sesame,” and throws open the door to innovation, wealth, and recognition.The secret to conjuring powerful strategy – also known as coming up with The Big Idea – is to free your beagle. Abandon the linear, sequential logic of your brain's left hemisphere and engage the pattern recognition of the right.Last week I wrote to you about commitment, persistence. I had a reason.“Just as a dog guards a bone safely between its paws when not actively chewing it, creative people nurture an idea even when not actively thinking about it… Creativity does not result from mysterious visions that come in dreams, or from fortuitous circumstances. Creativity and persistence are synonymous. Constantly thinking about the problem, consciously and unconsciously, maximizes the possibility that a chance occurrence is likely to be useful in solving it.” – Dr. Richard Cytowic, neurologistPick a problem that's had you handcuffed. Now let's create a “chance occurrence” like the one mentioned by Cytowic. We're going to let your beagle sniff a trail from it to your new solution:1. Go to the home page of Wizard Academy and see, in the center of that page, the random quote that was generated for you from my personal collection of nigh a thousand.2. Ponder how the core idea of that quote relates to the problem you've been trying to solve. Find a link. Use the quote as a new point of origin. Let it pull you outside the box.3. Write down the solution triggered by the quote, no matter how ridiculous.4. Click the quote generator to launch a new quote and do it all over again. “Everything in the universe is connected, of course. It's a matter of using imagination to discover the links, and language to expand and enliven them.” – Tom RobbinsIf you were able to successfully unleash the beagle in your brain, you should have 3 new “outside the box” solutions in under 4 minutes. Continue to generate random quotes and apply them to your problem until one of them makes you laugh. Then walk away from your computer and go do something with your hands. Carry out the trash. Hang those mini-blinds you bought but never installed. Vacuum the car.Don't be surprised when your beagle reappears with a juicy rabbit of an idea. One that will really work.Happy Holidays.Roy H. Williams

Determination is emotional, a moment of intense focus with clenched jaw and the visualization of a mission accomplished.The sneer is gone from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate,He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate;And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go,And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,But there is no joy in Mudville – mighty Casey has struck out.I've known men like Casey, haven't you? All hat, no cattle? Big bravado, little substance? An alligator mouth with a baboon butt?I'm sorry, but “merely determined” people seem shallow to me. Like Casey at the Bat, they get themselves all worked up, then just as quickly get unworked and wander off to do something else. Determination is transient.But commitment is irrevocable, a decision that never looks back.Ask someone you admire how they accomplished what they did, and they'll likely tell you a story of despair and the strong temptation to chuck it all, throw in the towel and quit. But they didn't. They hung on a little longer. And then one more day. And another…Big things happen for the truly committed on the far side of the breaking point, long after the merely determined have quit and gone home. Does this sound unreasonable to you? Consider the words of George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.”George Bernard Shaw understood commitment.So did Margaret Mead. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, that is the only thing that ever has.”Commitment steps up to pay the price when mere Determination runs for cover.I speak of marriage, faith, and business.In chapter 19 of the first book of Kings, Elijah, in a dark mood, runs to a cave in the wilderness and pours out his complaints to God, who instructs him to go and find Elisha, son of Shaphat, plowing with twelve yoke of oxen. Elijah found him and draped his cloak around Elisha's shoulders. Recognizing that he'd been chosen to finish the job begun by Elijah, Elisha immediately slaughtered his oxen and cooked their meat over the fires of his plowing equipment. Elisha gave the meat to his co-workers and family, then set out to follow Elijah and become his attendant.Elisha, a farmer, killed his oxen and burned his plow, leaving himself nothing to fall back on.That, my friend, is commitment.Is there anything to which you are truly and deeply committed? Is there anything for which you would kill your ox and burn your plow?On the day you can answer yes, you will have learned what it means to be genuinely happy.Roy H. Williams

Businesses don't fail due to reaching the wrong people.Businesses fail when they say the wrong things.And they say the wrong things when they believe what the public tells them.Conduct a survey. Ask the public to describe in detail the kind of place they'd like to shop. Then build that place, exactly as described, and see if they ever show up.Experience tells us they won't.We'll use furniture stores as an example. People say they want a store where they can look at all the different styles of furniture, see all the different patterns and colors of fabric and grains of wood and colors of wood stain, and then have their own 'dream furniture' made according to their choices. Today you'll find that furniture store on every corner. “And we'll even show you on a computer monitor exactly what your new sofa will look like! Want to see it in another fabric? Click this button. Another color of wood? Click this button. And we'll deliver it to your home, direct from the factory! You'll be buying factory direct!” But that's not how the big boys do it.His real name is Jim McIngvale. They call him Mattress Mac. Twenty-five years ago he dove headlong into the furniture business with just five thousand dollars. It's all he had. This year that furniture store will do nearly 200 million dollars in a single location, placing it among the most successful stores in the world.Jim occasionally buys a day of my time to pick my brain and bounce ideas off me. I should be paying him.During our last visit, I asked my friend if I could share the secret of his success with you. Graciously, he allowed it: As simple as this may sound, Jim's 200 million dollar secret is immediate delivery. When people buy new furniture, they want to see it in their home immediately. “Buy it today and we'll deliver it tonight,” is Jim's angle. He doesn't do special orders. “If you see it, we've got it.” Remember all those people who said they wanted to pick from a large selection of fabrics and wood grains? Tell them you'll deliver their new sofa in 8 to 12 weeks. Then Jim will show them something entirely different but offer to deliver it immediately. Guess who usually wins?What people say they would do is rarely what they will actually do. This is what makes it foolish to put too much faith in surveys. We don't know ourselves as well as we think.Ask any real estate agent. The homes people buy are never the ones they described to the agent when they got in the car. Not even close.Now let's talk about you. Chances are, you've been reaching the right people all along. You've just been saying the wrong things. Some ads are like waving raw meat in front of hungry dogs. Most ads are lectures, explaining to these same dogs all the joys of organic popcorn.Do you have a tasty message to deliver to the world? Or are you expecting your ad writers to apply a thick layer of creativity to hide the fact that you have nothing to say?Truthfully, what percentage of your ads say anything worth hearing?Sholem Asch was right when he said, “Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.” But Morris Hite said it brazenly, “If you have a good selling idea, your secretary can write your ad for you.”We're here if you need us.Roy H. Williams

Finances. Relationships. Health… the tall monsters we face in life's dark ocean when we awaken underwater, alone in the night, not knowing what to do.Ever been there?People respond to deep crisis in different ways. There are:1. Handwringers who talk about the problem to anyone who will listen. “You just won't believe what I'm going through.”2. Dark worriers who internalize the problem, then grow despondent and depressed. “Life sucks and then you die.”3. Positive thinkers who prop themselves up with platitudes: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” “God helps those who help themselves.” “It's not the size of dog in the fight that counts, it's the size of fight in the dog,” etc.4. Analytical planners who gather the data, calculate the odds, do whatever makes the most sense, then resign themselves to the eventual outcome. “I've done all that I can do.”5. People who abandon steps 1 through 4 and run to God like little girls. “Daddy! Daddy! Save me!”Does it surprise you that I've always been part of the run-to-God crowd?I'm not trying to be religious here. I'm trying to be helpful.Many of you will find today's memo completely irrelevant. I realize that. But with 31,000 readers, I've got to believe that at least a few hundred feel they are suffocating in darkness. (If you're in the sunshine-and-song, problem-free majority, you're free to quit reading right now if you like:)It seems to me that we're reluctant to run to God for different reasons:1. Doubt. “God doesn't exist and I'll not demean myself by caving in to that Myth after a lifetime of self-sufficiency.”2. Pride. “I ought to be able to handle this on my own.”3. Religiosity. “God is sovereign. If I suffer, it is because He has willed it.”4. Shame. “I haven't earned the right to ask God for anything.”Doubt has never been a problem for me. Maybe someday I'll tell you why.Pride is one of my less endearing traits. Frankly, I'm as territorial an alpha-male as any redneck bastard that ever drank Budweiser. But I have no pride when I ponder God. I'm arrogant. But I'm not stupid.Religiosity. I agree with Arthur C. Clarke, who said, “You can't have it both ways. You can't have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.” In other words, I believe a once-sovereign God gave up absolute control of our circumstances on the day he gave us free will and put us in charge of this world. “Religiosity” is also what Tom, a friend of Anne Lamott, was talking about when he said, “You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”Shame. Like you, I've never earned the right to run to God like a little girl crying “Daddy, Daddy, Save me.” Certainly not. Instead, I take the position, “Jesus, let's not make this about how good I am. Let's make this about how good you are.”Call me crazy. Call me delusional. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I believe in a God who likes me and is on my side. And I am no stranger to miracles.Do you need a miracle? Like it or not, I've given you what has always worked for me. It's the very best advice I've got: “God, let's not make this about how good I am. Let's make it about how good you are.”Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday.Are there things for which you are thankful?Roy H. Williams