Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

We can listen much faster than we speak. Consequently, a listener’s mind will wander when we take too long to make a point. This isn’t new. What is new, however, is the current trend toward voluntary, rapid distraction. Defenders of this practice call it ‘multi-tasking.’ But brain-imaging studies reveal that ‘multi-tasking’ is merely the switching of attention back and forth between two tasks.The danger of multi-tasking is that it trains the brain to be more easily distracted. Combine this with the exponential growth of information that assaults our brains each day and you’ll see why – and how – radio ads must change.Information saturation has risen to the point that an auditory neuroscientist at Brown University, Seth Horowitz, published a stern warning about it in the Nov. 9, 2012 issue of the New York Times: “Listening is a skill that we’re in danger of losing in a world of digital distraction and information overload.”In other words, few people these days can listen to a single voice drone on and on about a product or service for sixty, or even thirty, seconds. The only way for an ad to elbow its way into the customer’s fragmented attention is to become the most interesting and surprising thing that’s happening at that particular moment.Horowitz goes on to explain that focused attention is what separates mere hearing from active listening. “Attention is not some monolithic brain process. There are different types of attention, and they use different parts of the brain.”1. The sudden loud noise that makes you jump activates the simplest type: the startle. A chain of five neurons from your ears to your spine takes that noise and converts it into a defensive response in a mere tenth of a second. This simplest form of attention requires almost no brains at all and has been observed in every studied vertebrate.2. More complex attention kicks in when you hear your name called from across a room or a birdcall in an underground subway station. This stimulus-directed attention is controlled by pathways through the temporoparietal and inferior frontal cortex regions, mostly in the right hemisphere — areas that process raw, sensory input, but don’t concern themselves with what you should make of that sound.3. When you actually pay attention to something you’re listening to, the signals are conveyed through a dorsal pathway in your cortex, a part of the brain that does more computation, which lets you actively focus on what you’re hearing and tune out sights and sounds that aren’t as immediately important.A high percentage of radio ads are being tuned out because they are judged by the brain to be “not immediately important.” Radio has not yet embraced the giddy pace of 2012.To embrace the new pace:1. Talk faster, say more.2. Use big ideas, presented tightly.3. Introduce a new mental image every 3 to 5 seconds.4. Use fewer adjectives.5. Embrace unpredictable timing and intonation.6. Say things plainly. Bluntly, even.7. Emotion is good. Even negative emotion.8. Allow distinctly different voices to finish each other’s sentences.9. Prepare for lots of complaints. Listeners want to be able to ignore radio ads. When they can’t ignore your ads, they complain. A lot.10. Prepare to make more money.We have proven this technique works, but you can definitely take it too far: the confusion that results from going too far is a condition I call Cloud Atlas. (Those of you who are laughing right now have seen the movie.)Would you like to listen to a performance of numbers 1 through 7 simultaneously? Visit YouTube and type “Ze Frank The Doctor’s Office.” Watch the video and you’ll realize that Ze requires your entire attention just to keep up with him.These are the tightly-connected, verbally-delivered surprises that will bloody your nose in the first 30 seconds of this delightful video:1. Pain day2. Double-stacked3. Purposely forgot4. A physical5. prehypertension6. bacon7. pre-dead8. R.D. Lang9. sexually-transmitted disease10. 100 percent mortality11. Hallway of Shame12. make you tell lies13. drink and exercise14. people watchThose first 14 ideas are delivered at an average pace of one idea every 2.15 seconds. But the story continues:15. inflatable arm-cuff16. swimmies17. puked in the pool18. hard to get up speed19. totally traumatic dog-paddling20. arm cuff hurts21. life and death battle with a robot22. Good News23. 11 cups of coffee24. NurseWow. Twenty-four ideas in 60 seconds is exactly 1 idea every 2.5 seconds. Give Ze’s verbal riff 60 seconds and I promise you’ll keep listening. And you’ll laugh when he says “Australian puke me,” because strangely, it will make perfect sense.How to do this – across all media – will be the focus of a 2-day workshop called How to Advertise in a Noisy World. You need to be there.January 23-24 at Wizard Academy, America’s small business institute.2013 can be a fabulous year if you want it to be.Roy H. Williams

Everyone wants to make the same three things,” the Princess said, “money, a name, and a difference. But our actions are dictated by the one we want most.”You can make a name for yourself – become famous – or you can make a lot of money in complete obscurity. Either way, people will consider you a success. But famous people with piles of money seem always to be haunted by the need to make a difference, don’t they?You’ve seen it. So have I.Getting is more fun than having.Building is more fun than maintaining.Giving is more fun than receiving. Just ask Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.Bob Buford says, “The first half of life is a quest for success, the second is a quest for significance.”Success is measured by the money and the name you’ve made.Significance is measured by the difference you’ve made.GOOD NEWS: Making a difference doesn’t always require money and it certainly doesn’t require a name.Significance is achieved by caring and doing.Caring without doing is the mark of frightened, tentative, whiners. That’s right; small people complain. But big people don’t whine. They swing the hammer, bang the problem, sing a song and alter the world.In other words, shut up and do something.Our world is full of people who have achieved success without significance. Edwin Arlington Robinson wrote about these people 115 years ago:Whenever Richard Cory went down town,?We people on the pavement looked at him:?He was a gentleman from sole to crown,?Clean favored,* and imperially slim.??And he was always quietly arrayed,?And he was always human when he talked;But still he fluttered pulses when he said,?‘Good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked.??And he was rich – yes, richer than a king -?And admirably schooled in every grace:?In short, he was everything?To make us wish we were in his place.??So on we worked, and waited for the light,?And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;? And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,?Went home and put a bullet through his head.The day is young. There’s still plenty of time to make a difference.Someone should have told Richard. Roy H. Williams * good-looking

Most people believe in The Way Things Ought to Be.Others embrace The Way Things Are.Arguments, terrorism and war happen at the intersection of these Ways.“Here’s what you ought to do.”“That’s just not going to happen.”“Okay, then we’ll fight.”An even weirder, three-way intersection happens atThe Way I Remember It,The Way You Remember It, andThe Way It Actually Was.Standing in the reflection of that intersection is like standing in a house of mirrors.My friend Dean Rotbart believesyou are three different persons:1: The person you believe yourself to be.2: The person others believe you to be.3: The person you really are.This means there is:1. the person I see when I look in the mirror.2. the person you see when you look at me.3. the person God knows me to be.The Roy I See lives in my mind.The Roy You See lives in your mind.The Roy God Sees lives in God’s mind.(I’d like to meet that Roy, wouldn’t you?)Sorry, but these are the strange things I’ve had on my mind this week.If you judge these contemplations to be the disjointed ramblings of an overworked ad man at Christmastime, you will doubtless be correct. But if you discover among these 312 words a worthy nugget to contemplate, and it grows to become a portal in your mind that allows you to see new and wonderful things; well, that’s okay, too.Final thought: I was contemplating the word “encouragement” when it hit me: Encouragement happens when a person needs courage… so you give them yours.Your friend was worried and fearful.You had courage, and gave it to them.They were encouraged.What a gift!Encourage someone out there today, okay?People who need it are all around us.Roy H. WilliamsA

ahrenheit RevisitedPennie and I were at the airport in San Francisco about to board a flight for home. I needed a book to read.I’d been thinking about the halfway points in Pendulum theory as well as pondering a phenomenon I’ve decided to call Information Saturation. Both are heady topics. I needed to take a break.The two halfway points of our most recent “Me” cycle were 1973 (halfway up to the “Me” zenith of 1983,) and 1993, (halfway down from it.)Similarly, the halfway points in our previous “We” cycle were 1933 (halfway up to the “We” zenith of 1943,) and 1953, (halfway down from it.)Whether halfway up or halfway down, the Pendulum is in the same position. Consequently, the motivations and values that drive our society will be surprisingly similar even though these halfway points are 20 years apart. There will be striking parallels in the inventions we create to satisfy the hungers we feel, and our most popular music and literature will reflect surprisingly similar fixations and orientations at every halfway point of a “We.” A different set of fixations and orientations occupy us at the halfway points of a “Me,” but they are no less predictable.The second topic of consideration, Information Saturation, is a communications phenomenon: a feeling of too-much-coming-at-you-too-quickly, resulting in a state of constant, rapid distraction. The statistics I’ve gathered on our current state of Information Saturation are mind-boggling.I walked into the airport bookstore and spotted Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. I’d heard people speak of this book, but I had never read it. At just 46,118 words Fahrenheit is a slim volume, but that hasn’t keep it from selling more than 10 million copies. I looked at the date of publication: 1953.Wait a minute. Wasn’t 1953 one of the halfway points in our previous “We” cycle? And in a few more weeks won’t it be 2013, a halfway point in our current “We”? And don’t all the halfway points mirror one another in “We” after “We” after “We”?I bought the book. Soon I was reading highly accurate descriptions of Information Saturation. On page 52, Beatty describes to Montag the condition of media in their society:“Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”“Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click? Pic? Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!”“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.”If those comments sound contemporary, please remember that Harry S Truman was president when those words were written and Dwight D. Eisenhower was president when they were published. The top TV shows were I Love Lucy, Dragnet, and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.Ten years ago, while being interviewed about Fahrenheit 451, the late Ray Bradbury said,“Fahrenheit’s not about censorship. It’s about the moronic influence of popular culture through local TV news, the proliferation of giant screens and the bombardment of factoids. We’ve moved in to this period of history that I described in Fahrenheit 50 years ago.”Wow. This Pendulum stuff is real; frighteningly predictive, profitably instructive, and highly propulsive. 1953 was the halfway point of a “We.” 2013 will be another. Is there anything we can learn from 1953 that will help us succeed tomorrow?A COMMAND PERFORMANCE:During a meeting of the directors of Wizard Academy last week, I was asked to share my thoughts on the climate for small businesses in our society. I shared with the board my concerns about Information Saturation and how this phenomenon is making it harder for advertisers to gain and hold human attention. “How can a business fight back?” they asked. “What can be done to defeat the auditory and visual noise?”“It’s time to start flinging third gravitating bodies,” I told them.Chairman Mark Fox said, “I want you to teach a class on this. Set a date right now.” Mark opened his laptop. “I’m putting it on my calendar to be there.”The other 6 board members flipped opened their laptops and said, “Me, too.”This is when Mark said the comment he receives from students most often is that I should offer advanced training on the creation of third gravitating bodies. Evidently, the cognoscenti of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop realize the power of the 3GB technique they learn on the third and final day of that class, but feel the need for additional exercises and examples.The time for that is now.How to Advertise in a Noisy World:Piercing Information Saturationwith Third Gravitating Bodies.January 23-24, 2013.Register for it at WizardAcademy.org and accelerate past your challengers.Roy H. Williams

How Much Are They Holding You Back?The pervasive fantasy in business today is that you can tweak your way to success. Tweakers believe you need only “monitor your metrics” to ratchet your way to the top of the mountain. “Hold your position, then make a tiny change and click up to the next level.” Tweakers find comfort in numbers, decimal points, percentages and line graphs.Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in monitoring. You cannot improve what you do not measure. But you won’t see big differences in that line graph until you make some meaningful changes.Incremental change is the path to quiet evolution.Significant change unleashes noisy revolution.There are no quiet revolutions.AIn 1979, Sony put lightweight headphones on a tightly-compacted cassette tape player to create the ‘Walkman,’ a worldwide hit that allowed you to take your music with you when you went walking, shopping or jogging. Sony retained a 50% market share in the U.S. for more than a decade even though their Walkman cost at least $20 more than its numerous rivals.Sony in 1990 was like Apple today; seemingly invincible.So why didn’t Sony invent the iPod?Sony fell into the trap of scientific, incremental change; an eternal series of tiny improvements in the hope of making an increasingly better Walkman; a process known in Japan as “kaizen.” 30-SECOND HISTORY LESSON: To help restore Japan in the aftermath of WWII, America provided experts to assist the rebuilding of Japanese industry. A Management Training Program was developed and taught by Homer Sarasohn and Charles Protzman in 1949-50. Sarasohn later recommended W. Edwards Deming to provide further training in Statistical Methods. And thus, Japanese “kaizen” was born. Sony introduced a courageous product and it made them hugely successful.And then Sony began playing it safe.Your friends, family, staff, and customers – all the people who care about you – want you to be safe. And the safest thing you can do, they believe, is to conform to the accepted norm. This is why they will always “express their concern” when they see you stray from the straight and narrow path.But isn’t “playing it safe” in business the least safe thing you can do? Sony methodically kept improving the Walkman long after they should have replaced it with an entirely new concept. Big Success is rare because it requires audacity and courage.Or maybe I’m wrong.What do you think?Roy H. Williams

Travel agencies were eliminated as a business category when the Digital Age arrived. Likewise, encyclopedias found they were no longer needed. Soon we were opening the newspaper each morning to read headlines we already knew about. Newspaper doubled over in pain and fell to its knees. The Yellow Pages got dusty and catalogues quit arriving in the mail.“Why print on paper when we can put our stuff on a computer screen that’s already in the customer’s home?” A single, online catalogue company – Amazon.com – now facilitates 25 percent of all the online purchases in the United States.* And isn’t a blog just an electronic diary, a journal open to public view?Electronic media has been damaged far less than print media by the arrival of the Digital Age. In short, TV and radio are doing just fine.Right now you’re thinking, “But what about iPods and Pandora and smart phones and online listening and satellite radio? Does anyone listen to regular radio anymore?”Research Director tells us the average American spends only 15.4 hours a week listening to the radio these days, a decline of 11 percent since 1970. Media Audit says the decline is 13 percent, down to just 17 hours per week. And a 2010 Bridge Ratings study puts the decline at 18 percent, bringing the average down to about 18 hours per week in radio listening. Obviously, these research firms don’t agree on the details, but they do agree on this: Radio alarm clocks wake America in the morning and radio remains our companion in the car. People who work alone at night – about 14 percent of our nation – think of the radio as a friend.Roughly 3 years after online radio becomes standard equipment in the dash of new cars, geographically targeted online radio advertising will become a powerful tool. Trust me. I’m keeping a very close eye on this.But what about right now, today?My clients across America currently air 52-week radio schedules on more than 700 radio stations, so it can reasonably be said that I’ve spent a few hundred million dollars buying airtime over the past 25 years.Radio is considered “mass media” for a reason: It reaches the unwashed, unfiltered masses. Rich and poor alike. Homeowners, apartment dwellers, and children still bumming a room from their parents. Generally speaking, radio is not good at targeting specific types of persons, but it’s great for building a reputation. If you want the public to think of you when they need what you sell, a nonstop radio schedule will work wonders.But don’t fall into the trap of overpaying to be on the “right” station. Radio goes fishing with a net, pulling up thousands of fish with each pass through the waters. If you want to sit on the riverbank with a pole and a hook and target a specific type of customer, use magazines or a list or invest in Google Adwords. But know this: the success of your ad campaign won’t be determined by your choice of media. The success of your ad campaign will be determined by your choice of message.Weak ads fail, regardless of which media delivers them.Strong ads succeed, regardless of which media delivers them.How strong are your ads?Want to make them stronger?Roy H. Williams

A New Book is in the Making. Want to Be Part of It?More than 1,000 businesses will be featured in this book. Each will have fewer than 100 employees. On average, they’ll have been operating for at least 20 years. We’re going to ask them about their advertising.Research tells you what ought to work.We’re going to ask these businesses what actually worked.Actual experience is the highest form of research.Each of these businesses will be part of a new book to be published in 2013, the halfway point in the upswing of our current “We” generation:20,000 Years of AdvertisingLessons Learned. Fortunes Made.Pendulum was released last week. This week we’re making a run at the bestsellers list. Wish us luck.Two weeks ago, the Wizard of Ads partners held their semi-annual partner meeting in the Veranda Room of the Enchanted Emporium at the entrance to Wizard Academy.Be patient. All these things are connected. You’ll see.Each of the partners was given an advance copy of Pendulum. Here’s part of what it says on the back flap:Roy H. Williams dropped out of college on the second day, choosing instead to “figure it out” for himself. At age 19, he began asking local business owners, “Have you ever done any advertising that you felt really worked? Tell me about it.” After cataloguing their answers, he asked, “Have you ever done any advertising that you thought was brilliant—something you were really excited about— that failed miserably?”“You only have to ask a few hundred business owners,” says Williams, “before it all becomes crystal clear . . . everyone makes the same mistakes for the same reasons. And the things that work brilliantly have common denominators as well. All the answers, of course, are initially counterintuitive. That’s why everyone makes the same mistakes. I was given thousands of years of collective experience and the results of more than one hundred million dollars in advertising expenditures . . . for free. All I had to do was see the patterns. What a country!”At 20, Williams began consulting small business owners across America, guiding dozens of them to unprecedented success. Twenty years later, his Wizard of Ads trilogy of business books rose to the top of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists.Princess Pennie, the love of my life, said to the partners, “Not long after we were married, Roy spent all day, every day, asking business owners about their experiences in advertising. I think we should do it again. Who is willing to interveiw 50 business owners about their best and worst experiences in advertising?”The room was a sea of raised hands. I’ve got the greatest partners on earth. 20,000 Years of Advertising Lessons Learned, Fortunes Made, will clearly identify the common denominators of successful small business advertising as well as those costly, seductive mistakes we all seem to make. We’ll quote many of the businesses who participate and we’ll identify our stringers as well. The reader will gain the benefit of 20,000 years of recent, real-world experience on the battlefield of marketing. And this won’t be patty-cake business school theory, either. AThese battles will have been fought with live ammunition: hard dollars spent by small business owners performing the kinds of marketing experiments entrepreneurs do every day.What’s a stringer, you ask? A stringer is an independant reporter who is not on the payroll of a major news network but who contributes from the sidelines in exchange for national recognition. The stringer brings a story to the attention of the network and then benefits from the recognition of that association. The first step in getting hired by a major network is to become a valuable stringer.If you own a small business and would be willing to be interviewed by telephone, please email your name, business name and phone number to Devin@WizardOfAds.com.If you know at least 20 business owners and would be willing to suggest to them that they volunteer to be interviewed by us, just have them email their name, business name and telephone number to Devin@WizardOfAds.com and be sure they tell us that it was you that asked them to do it. Participants and stringers will be recognized in the book for their contributions and each will receive an advance copy of the hardback when it’s published next year.Stringers whose names are mentioned in more than 20 emails from business owners will be invited to a special Wizard of Ads training event and given free access to the Wizard of Ads LIVE monthly webcast for a full year, (usually $1,440.)20,000 Years of Advertising is going to increase the success and prosperity of every small business owner who reads it. And make no mistake; the success of a nation’s small business owners is what drives the economy of that nation. A “We” generation is about working together for the common good.Let’s get to work.Roy H. Williams 

How much do your name, logo and color scheme really matter?A schmuck falls off the balcony on the 30th floor.A putz is the guy he lands on.A putz is passively stupid; ridiculously unlucky.Could a company succeed with a name like Putzmeister?Could a company win if its logo was indistinctive and boring and literally gray?Putzmeister was founded by Karl Schlecht in 1958. Today it employs 3,900 people that produce more than $ 1.5 billion in annual sales in 154 countries on 5 continents, name and logo and color be damned.$1.5 billion, by the way,is fifteen hundredtimes a thousand,times a thousand.Fifteen hundred million. Just sayin’.Wal-Mart may have the dumbest name in the history of the world. “My name is Walton, so I’ll call the store Wal-Mart.” Really? And yet he became so rich that just six of his descendants are worth more today than the combined net worth of 30 percent of our nation. That’s right, a tiny company begun in 1962 with an idiotic name and a drab logo and an unimaginative color scheme became the most successful retail empire in the history of the world in less than 30 years.And they never bothered to change the name or the logo.I meet Chicken Little advertising people every day who squeal, “the sky is falling” over names and colors and logos.Color is a language. It definitely matters. A little.Shape is a language. It can contradict or reinforce your choice of colors. Shape matters. A little.Product and company names are words that carry conscious and unconscious associations. They absolutely matter. But what matters most of all is what matters to the customer.Customers who buy from your competitors aren’t choosing your competitors because they have better logos. Your problem is something else entirely.Customers care about things like products and procedures and policies that might affect them. They care about your offers and assurances. They care about the experience you create for them.Will your prospective customer be glad they chose you? Yes? How are communicating this? What do you offer as evidence? Testimonials are suspect. Bold promises sound like Ad-speak. What are you doing to give your prospective customer real confidence that choosing you is the right thing to do?You need a consultant because you have a blind spot.(If you knew what it was, they wouldn’t call it a blind spot.)You’re on the inside, looking out. It’s hard to read the label when you’re inside the bottle. Your consultant is on the outside, looking in.If your marketing people talk a lot about colors and logos and layouts, you’re dealing with graphics artists posing as marketing consultants.If you’d like to talk about how to take your company to the next level for real, my partners and I are ready. Are you?If you’re a person who is interested in marketing and would like to expand your skill set, Wizard Academy was built for you, for today, and for the challenges you’re about to face.Come. It’s time for you to rise up to your full height. You, we, have work to do.Roy H. Williams

I am, by profession, a communications consultant. I craft strategies, write ads and buy media. My clients ask for my advice. They even pay me for it.Advice is dangerous to give.If you are thinking, “Yes, it’s dangerous to give advice because your advice might be wrong,” you probably haven’t worked full-time in a focused specialty for 30 years. Yes, there is a chance my advice might be wrong, but that’s not the principal danger.Advice is always dangerous because a person only needs it when:1. they’re making decisions based on incorrect assumptions.2. they made a mistake that triggered unhappy repercussions.3. they’re looking at a situation from an unproductive angle.Jeffrey’s experiences in life have been different from my own. Jeff has traveled more extensively, speaks multiple languages, has a different religious background, a different political bent and his education has been completely unlike anything I have experienced.Weirdly, we get along extremely well. This is possible only because I know Jeff likes me and respects me and he knows I feel the same about him.Jeffrey taught me three new terms: educational bias, cultural bias and religious bias.Educational bias is what happens when native intellect encounters new information. How smart are you? How extensive and reliable is the information to which you’ve been exposed? How well do you assimilate knowledge into your actions? These things form the basis of your educational bias. There are things you know a lot about and other things you know very little about.Cultural bias is formed by the persons with whom you interact. Your inherent beliefs are shaped – to some degree – by the nations, the communities and the families in which you have lived.Religious bias originates with your beliefs about God. Is there a supreme being or is there not? And if such a being exists, what is his attitude toward us? Your religious bias is the foundation of your beliefs about how the world works. Do we live in an organized Newtonian universe of cause-and-effect or do we live in a mystery-and-awe universe of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle? When a person says, “That’s the way things are because, well, that’s just how they are,” their religious bias is talking.Now let’s look at those three, highly volatile moments when a person needs advice:1. When your friend or client is making a decision based onincorrect assumptions, such assumptions are usually based on:(A.) a popular myth, such as, “People remember more of what they see than what they hear,” or(B.) outright misinformation, such as, “Saddam Hussein is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.”When you challenge the reliability of a false assumption, you are:(A.) telling your friend that he or she has been misled. You are exposing their educational bias, questioning their intellect and gently calling them naïve. How do you suppose this will make them feel?(B.) suggesting that their teacher was either a liar or a fool. In this case, your advice will be dangerous to precisely the degree they loved and respected that teacher.2. When your friend or client has made a mistake that triggered unhappy repercussions, you can be certain they are feeling some pain. Their educational bias is on display for the world to see and surmise, “They didn’t know what they were doing.” Your friend will either be embarrassed and sensitive or angry and defiant, “I wasn’t wrong. Everyone else was wrong.” Either way, you must choose your words carefully.3. When your friend or client is looking at a situation from an unproductive angle, your advice is going to challenge their worldview, their belief system, their interpretation of their own past experiences. Be careful or your advice will make them feel like you’re saying their whole life was built upon a mistake up until now. An unproductive angle of view is usually the result of a cultural bias or a religious bias and both go all the way to the bone.My advice to you is this: never, under any circumstances, offer unsolicited advice. Unsolicited advice is the junk mail of life.Even when you are asked for advice, be very careful. Your relationship with this person will be significantly altered by what you are about to say.And yes, I realize I’ve been giving you unsolicited advice for about 5 minutes now. I took this chance because advice that’s distributed widely doesn’t carry the same accusatory impact as advice that’s delivered one-on-one.And I took the chance because I like you and I respect you and I think you know this.Roy H. Williams

Every “Me” cycle in society begins with:1. a beautiful dream of freedom from restraint2. a hunger for self-expression3. a search for individualityOur last “Me” cycle began in 1963 and reached its zenith in 1983 when freedom from restraint had evolved into conspicuous consumption and individuality was being “self-expressed” through costumes, big hair, disco and phony poses.The upside of a “Me” zenith is optimistic entrepreneurialism and national pride. Of course Peter Ueberroth was able to raise 215 million dollars more than was needed to host the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Of course it was the grandest spectacle the world had ever seen. Of course it was. And our movie-star handsome, wavy-haired President is about to stand at the Brandenburg Gate on worldwide television and command the leader of the world’s other superpower to “Tear down this wall!” as though he’s telling a naughty child to clean his room.We tend to overdose on everything, don’t we? “If a little ‘Me’ pride is good, a lot is better.” The slow deflation of the over-pumped “Me” was known as Gen-X (1983-2003,) but Generation-X was never about birth cohorts. A generation is about life cohorts. Emergent values will be embraced first by the youth and this causes people to mistakenly believe those birth-cohort myths about “Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers and Millennials.” But our attitudes aren’t a reflection of when we were born; they’re a reflection of the times in which we live.Ultimately, we’re all in this generation together, regardless of when we were born or how soon after the tipping point we embrace the new values, outlook, and perspective.A “Me” is about vertical hierarchy, “Who is on top?”A “We” is about horizontal connectedness, “To what am I committed?”And we move as a group between these perspectives in a predictable swing of society’s pendulum that takes precisely 40 years to travel between zeniths.The bottom of the pendulum’s arc is the tipping point. 1963 began the “Me” that reached it’s zenith in 1983 and then declined back to a new tipping point twenty years later.Our current “We” cycle began in 2003 with:1. a beautiful dream of working together for the common good2. a hunger for acceptance as a member of a team3. a search for significanceWe’re approaching the halfway point (2013) in the 20-year upswing of a “We” that will zenith in 2023. If the recurrent and undeniable patterns of the past 3,000 years can be trusted, we’re about to enter a very dangerous time.The upside of a “We” zenith is that the prevailing attitude is “I’m OK – You’re Not OK.” This can manifest itself as genuine concern for others, “Things are good for me right now, but not so good for you. How can I help?” Volunteerism zeniths in a “We” as teamwork and significance are celebrated as supreme virtues.The downside of a “We” zenith is that “working together for the common good” often escalates into a self-righteous gang mentality. “I’m OK – You’re Not OK” can also be translated as, “I am correct and good. You are incorrect and evil.”Yes, we’re entering a dangerous time indeed.What can be done?Tune in tomorrow (Sept. 18) for a live, 1-hour webcast hosted by yours truly. No money. Just an hour of your time. We’ll look at some real-world, right-now examples of the upswing of the “We.”The book will be released October 2nd.Roy H. WilliamsA