Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

A 20 year-old kid walks the streets in Oklahoma. Married. No money. Works construction by day, changes tapes in an automated radio station from 1AM to 11AM each Saturday morning for $3.35 an hour. No microphone. No one will know if he’s doing a good job because station management is at home fast asleep.Frankly, the kid is a goober.The broken-down little radio station is ranked dead last in a city of 23 stations. Just one radio listener in 200 will ever tune in to listen to the radio preachers this station airs. The ratings book says that only 18,000 people will spend 5 minutes or more listening to his station each week and there will rarely be more than 500 people listening at any given moment. The city is home to nearly a million people.But 500 people sounds like a lot to the goober and it occurs to him that 18,000 would fill Skelly Stadium at the University of Tulsa. “If a person could reach all 18,000 listeners that would be huge and even 500 people can make a difference to a small business.” One Saturday morning the station manager calls to ask if Goober can cover the next shift. Goob happily agrees to work the rest of that day, then asks, “Why are there never any ads scheduled on our station?” The manager explains that the station makes its money by selling 14-minute and 28-minute blocks of time to radio preachers. Then on impulse he asks, “Would you be willing to sell some ads for us?” “You bet!” says Goob. “How much do I charge?” “Whatever you can get,” the manager replies. This is when our 20 year-old Goober made a decision that would change his life forever. Like most of life’s pivotal forks-in-the-road, the decision didn’t seem important at the time but in later years he would look back and remember this day as the beginning of his career. A Mom’n’Pop retailer had a small showroom filled with carpet samples at the bottom of the hill near the radio station. With a yellow legal tablet in his left hand and holding the tip of an ink pen to it with his right, he said, “I’m Roy Williams and I’m studying advertising and I’d consider it a huge favor if you could answer a couple of tiny questions for me; have you ever done any advertising that you felt was worth the money you spent?” Staring at the business owner like an eager young reporter, our 20 year-old goober wrote down exactly what the carpet store owner told him. “One last question. Have you ever done any advertising that you felt was really going to make a difference, but it wound up doing no good at all?” The carpet storeowner started laughing. Looking down and writing furiously on his yellow legal tablet, the goober said, “Tell me about it.” And then the goober did something very different. He said, “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful,” and left. He did not ask the man if he wanted to buy some advertising. A few weeks later, after the goober had spoken to hundreds more business owners, he walked in to that little carpet store and said, “Remember me?” When the carpet storeowner nodded yes, Goob said, “Another business owner told me something the other day that I thought might be helpful to you…” And then he relayed a very relevant story of a successful innovation that had been pioneered by a business owner in a different category on the other side of town. Goober then said, “I really appreciate the time you spent with me the other day. Hopefully, you’ll get some benefit out of some of the things I learn from other people.” And then he left again without asking the man if he wanted to buy some advertising. By the time our goober had his 21st birthday he was a walking encyclopedia of real-world knowledge. At least 500 business owners, each with an average of 20 years experience and an ad budget of $10,000 to $100,000 a year, had shared their best and worst experiences with Goober and received some excellent insights in return. Nearly all of them would smile when they saw the goober come in.Goober now had the results of 10,000 years of combined experience (500 businesses x 20 years) at $25,000,000 (500 businesses x $50,000) per year spent in advertising. His education had cost his instructors as much as it would cost to put 5,000 young doctors through medical school.  By the time he was 22, Goober was making $70,000 a year at the number 23 station in a city of 23 stations. This was 1980, when a really good job paid $24,000 and major league BIG money was $50,000 a year. When he was 40, Goober wrote a book about all the things he’d learned from small business owners across America. That book was very successful. The sequel became a New York Times bestseller and was ranked as the #1 Business Book in America by the Wall Street Journal. The third book in the trilogy was also a bestseller. That’s when Goober agreed to start a business school for America’s 5.91 million business owners with fewer than 100 employees. “Traditional business schools teach their students how to get a job in a Fortune 500 company. Our business school will be for owner-operators who have to wear all kinds of different hats.” That school is a 501c3 not-for-profit educational organization called Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas. Its 21-acre campus attracts more than 4,000 visitors each month from around the world. But Goober also remains a small-business consultant who makes his living by answering questions and developing ad campaigns. Today, Monday, July 18, 2011 at 11AM Central Time, he’ll be answering a few dozen questions sent in by business owners around the world in a streaming-video electronic classroom. You’re invited to attend for free if you want. Click this hyperlink and walk through that door into a whole new future. We believe you’ll look back and see it as a pivotal fork-in-the-road. Ciao for Niao, Goober

Once a year I allow myself to ramble a bit in the insane delusion that someone out there might actually want to know what’s happening in my life.Deep in my heart I know the only people who really care about my private trivia are my wife and my mom. My wife, of course, lives with me so I’ll address the rest of today’s Memo to my mom.You can eavesdrop if you like.Dear Mom,The tower is finally finished. Everyone who has seen it so far has been big-eyed and breathless. Classes are 10 times as much fun there as when they were in Tuscan Hall.The only things left to be completed on the campus are the Chris and Dave Windmill Theater, Bilbo Baggins’ home in the hillside and some landscaping. We should have all this done in less than a year and then I’ll be stepping down as Chancellor to let someone with better organizational skills take the Academy to the next level.Can you believe I’ve got to raise $40,000 to pay for another big bronze statue? It’s the final piece in the master design of the interlinked symbols on the campus. The Academy is, of course, completely without funds but that’s what always happens in the summer. I try not to worry.Due to the Academy’s predictable lack of summertime revenue, Pennie and I have moved the construction crew to our private property next door to the campus to build a spectacular new Welcome Center right at the property line where our property borders the Academy’s property. Pennie has been saving up the money to do this so the Academy will be able to catch its breath financially for the next few months.The location of the Welcome Center lets my staff greet the Academy’s visitors to the campus since the Academy doesn’t yet have the money to hire its own full-time people. When the Academy completes the final few construction projects I mentioned earlier, it should easily be able to afford to hire its own people. Till then, my staff will continue to work for the Academy for free as necessary.Sean Taylor has decided that I should teach a 1-hour class each month by streaming video. People will send in their questions and I’ll answer the best questions for everyone present in the electronic classroom and maybe throw in a few valuable tips along the way. We’ve done this for a number of companies in recent months and it’s been hugely successful, so Sean wants to start a class for anyone who is willing to pay the tuition. The whole world is invited to sit in on the first class for free next Monday, July 18, to see if they want to enroll.I’m sending the manuscript of Pendulum to the publisher this week. Like the tower, it turned out profoundly better than I had imagined. Here’s what the reader will find on the front page of the book when it hits the bookstores next spring:  “If you will see into the heart of a people, look closely at what they create. Examine the inventions to which they pay attention. Read their bestselling books.Listen to their popular music.This is how you will know them.”  – Roy H. Williams Having made my 90-minute presentation on Society’s 40-Year Pendulum to 241 auditoriums full of people in the past 8 years, I began this book by trying to disprove my own 40-year hypothesis.My friend Dr. Kary Mullis, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, said,“Roy, there are few, true scientists left in the world. Too often, a scientist will develop a hypothesis and then look for supporting evidence. They identify with their hypothesis and they want it to be correct. This is bad science. When you have a hypothesis, your job is to try to disprove it. No one knows more about your hypothesis than you do. No one else is as qualified to discover its flaws. When you believe a thing to be true, your first responsibility is to do everything you can to disprove it.”As I attacked my hypothesis to disprove it, I found 3 major loopholes:1. I had chosen the examples in my presentation after I developed my theory.2. My presentation was America-centric. I was using the Billboard charts to follow patterns in music and the New York Times bestseller list to follow patterns in literature.3. All my examples came from the past 120 years. My original motive in this was that my audience needed to be familiar with the events. But if my 40-year hypothesis was true, it should be observable in any century.With Kary’s voice ringing in my head, I decided to:A. throw out all the familiar data in my 90-minute presentation.B. begin a new investigation using completely new data whose patterns and connections I would have no way of knowing in advance. C. gather this new data from persons who had never seen my presentation.D. use the international hit-tracking website, TsorT, instead of Billboard.E. use the Publishers Weekly list instead of the New York TimesF. examine every 40-year window for the past 3,000 yearsG. use a single source, Wikipedia, for establishing the dates of events in question. (This eliminates the possibility of fudging historical dates to align with the 40-year cycles.)This book is the result of that investigation.It will, without question, absolutely blow your mind. Well Mom, that’s about it.  Pennie and I will be up to see a couple of plays with you soon. Jake and Rex and Brandi are still glowing from the 2 days they spent with you last month.Love,Ro

Chronic problems in business are usually the result of binary thinking. “It’s either this way or that way. It can’t be both.”Strangely, the answer is almost always “both.”“Should I try to attract the price-driven (transactional) customer, or should I go for the (relational) customer who cares about something other than price?”Both.  Create and schedule ads that speak convincingly to the question of price. Create and schedule other ads that speak of important matters beyond price. Just don’t try to do both in the same ad.“Should I manage with strict policies, procedures, methods and systems, or should I empower my employees to make decisions on their own?”Both. Systematize the 90 percent of your company’s activities that are recurrent so that your employees have the freedom to humanize and customize the 10 percent of your activities that are ever-changing and unusual. A company without freedoms is a sweatshop. A company without policies, procedures, methods and systems is a country club for unproductive employees.“Should I promote an exclusive brand and risk the manufacturer betraying me by allowing my competitor to sell that brand for which I’ve created all the demand, or should I create my own in-house brand so that I can remain in control of it?”Both. You need the credibility of established brands to lend strength to the new brand you will introduce. Advertise both, but never in the same ad.“Won’t this make me seem unfocused?”No. You must get on board with proven procedures. You must also do your own thing and go your own direction. It’s not only possible that you do both, it is essential.Mechanics across Europe began building cars in 1886 and each time they built a car it was different. More than 2,000 different garages built and sold cars one-at-a-time before Henry Ford’s 1913 introduction of the first moving assembly line employing conveyor belts. Henry popularized the concept of interchangeable parts. It was efficient. It also made him the richest man in the world. By 1923 Henry Ford was personally earning $264,000 a day. He was declared a billionaire by the Associated Press.More than 17,000,000 Model T’s rolled off Henry’s assembly line and you could have any color you wanted as long as it was black. The inefficiency of building cars one-at-a-time forced the other 2,000 garages to sell their cars at about $2,500 apiece while the price of a reliable, new Model T was only $849.Soon the other carmakers got on board and America became an automotive Wonderland.But we always take a good thing too far. Fifty years later, General Motors decided to take this idea to the next level. “Instead of designing 5 different brands each year and retooling our machinery to build Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs, why not just put a different interior package and grille and taillights in the same, basic car and sell that car under 5 different names?”A Chevy Cavalier is a Pontiac Sunbird is an Oldsmobile Firenza is a Buick Skyhawk is a Cadillac Cimarron.A Chevy Nova is a Pontiac Ventura is an Oldsmobile Omega is a Buick Apollo is a Cadillac Seville.A Chevy Caprice is a Pontiac Catalina is an Olds 98 is a Buick Electra is a Cadillac DeVille.On the surface, this looks like exactly the same idea that made Henry Ford rich. The problem with the “platform engineering” introduced by GM in the late 1970s is that it eroded the distinctiveness of their brands. Two decades later GM was forced to close Oldsmobile and a few years after that, Pontiac fell as well. Analysts speculate whether Buick or Cadillac will be next.Conformity is essential or you will not be efficient. Differentiation is essential or you will not be special.Differentiate the 10 percent the public sees and experiences. Manage the 90 percent that happens behind the scenes with the efficiency of systems and procedures.It’s never one or the other. The answer is always “both.”Systematize the 90. Humanize the 10.Roy H. Williams 

PROVED: Technique Beats Inspiration Wizard Academy completed an experiment last Thursday and we’re prepared to share the results of it.Amateur musicians were gathered from across North America. We refused to allow them to create music in the manner they preferred. Instead, we showed them video clips of Bob Dylan, Elton John, Richard Carpenter and other musicians explaining the tricks they used to create the greatest hits the world has ever known. Our musicians were required to do as they had been instructed.The objective of this experiment was to determine if success in the arts might be less dependent on talent, sincerity and inspiration than we have previously assumed. This is not to say the amateur musicians who volunteered to be the objects of our experiment were untalented, insincere or lacked inspiration. They simply weren’t allowed to access these traits and characteristics.Instead, they were given specific techniques, narrow guidelines, insufficient instruments and not nearly enough time.  The 17 spent the morning of the first day in training and instruction. Four of the 17 were writers. At lunchtime, the musicians were sent to the banquet hall while Trisha Sylvestre, Ashley Leroux, Mark Forrester and Scott Broderick were asked to randomly choose 4 strong emotions apiece and write a dozen short lines about each emotion. They were given a total of 28 minutes to do all of this. Their 7-minute writings were later distributed randomly to the musicians who were told these “song lyrics” could not be altered in any way.  Each musician’s assignment was to write music that expressed whatever emotion was precisely opposite the lyrics they had been given. They were then told to sing those lyrics to the music they had written. Words of rage were sung joyfully. Words of hatred were sung lovingly. Words of happiness were sung sadly. Words of anxiety were sung calmly. Deep thoughts were sung as shallow little ditties. This first exercise taught the musicians the techniques of random entry and contradiction.The songs they created were shockingly interesting.On Day Two the writers presented the musicians with a second set of lyrics that employed additional techniques they had learned. And instead of 7 minutes, the writers were allowed a luxurious 20 minutes per song.Did I mention the only instruments the musicians were allowed to use were conga drums, a violin, a flute, a bass clarinet, a harmonica, an acoustic guitar, a melodeon, an electric keyboard and an electric bass? In other words they were given instruments that could not possibly be combined to create what had been demanded of them.And yet they did it anyway.On Day Three all the songs were recorded live. No corrections or alterations were made in post-production. And just to keep things fair, the writers were each told they had to write and deliver a spoken word performance.Want to hear the results?Wizard Academy is a business school where big things are taught quickly. Come. You belong here.We think you might be our brand of crazy.Roy H. Williams 

How to Become Self-Selected, Part TwoMonday Morning, One Week Ago – “Honey, I liked this week’s memo but you never really told us how to become self-selected. You just gave us examples of other people who have done it.”I took another look at that memo and said, “You’re right, Princess. I intended the reader to read the line that says, ‘The self-selected are those who take action, the ones who participate, the ones who don’t go away,’ and understand that you select yourself for leadership when you take action, participate, and don’t go away. But now that I look at it again, I can see that I didn’t connect those attributes to the reader nearly so clearly as I thought.”Self-selection is an important life skill, so I’ve decided to make another run at explaining it:Leaders aren’t appointed or selected so much as they’re simply acknowledged.Let’s look at the example of Peter, James and John. People assume Jesus chose these three above the other nine. But I’m convinced Jesus was merely reacting to the fact that they chose him more strongly than the other nine. Anytime Jesus stood up, they stood up. When he walked to a different spot, they followed him to that spot, even if it meant getting out of the boat. They were the ones who were always with him.  Every time Jesus looked up from what he was doing, Peter, James and John were there. This is what it means to be self-selected.To be self-selected is to volunteer. No, that’s not it. To volunteer is to say that you’d be willing to take action if it were asked of you. But self-selection doesn’t wait to be asked. E.W. Howe (1853-1937) understood self-selection perfectly, I think. “When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.”The world is full of educated people waiting for an opportunity to demonstrate their competence. Most of these people will go to their graves having never gotten “their big break.”Education is one thing. Recognition is another. Education is what you receive when you choose to become informed. Recognition is what you receive when other people see the value of your expertise. Education without recognition has very little value in the marketplace.Wizard Academy is a business school. Is this beginning to make sense to you?Do you want to be a published author? Take the advice of Mark Twain, “Write without pay until someone offers to pay.” Write intelligent, clearly worded letters to the editor. Submit feature stories and op-ed pieces to magazines and websites. Write a blog on whatever subject you’d like to become known as an expert. If you have something to say worth hearing, people will tell other people and soon your readership will begin to grow. It may take a few years but if you self-select and don’t go away, you’ll someday have a book in print.Wizard Academy is a business school. Is this beginning to make sense to you?Do you want to be a public speaker? Talk constantly about your subject. Talk to the crowd that gathers at the water cooler. Talk to Ms. Johnson’s seventh grade class on career day. Talk to a breakfast club. Talk to the Rotary Club. Find 100 different opportunities to talk about your subject for free, no matter how small and insignificant your audience. Prepare for each of these audiences as if you were being highly paid. You’ll be a highly paid public speaker before you reach venue 150. The myth of a “big break” is what keeps the average person from becoming successful. They keep waiting on someone else to do something instead of simply selecting themselves and taking action. The self-selected person is not the average person. When Willie Nelson was asked what it felt like to be an overnight success, he answered, “Overnight success feels great after playing 10 years in honky-tonks behind chicken wire.” What do you want to see happen in your life? Are you willing to select yourself for it? Wizard Academy is a business school.Select yourself.Pick a class and come.Roy H. Williams

he Secret of Peter, James and John Dewey Jenkins is a self-made man, the sort of person every parent hopes their child will become. Like many of us, Dewey started with nothing, nada, zip, zero. He worked hard, was focused and patient, always tried to do the right thing, accepted his setbacks with grace and his victories with humility. In this, he is not unique. You and I have met many successful people with those qualities.I was sitting in a private auditorium in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Dewey repairs and installs heat and air conditioning systems. I was eavesdropping on the training session Dewey conducts each month with his several dozen senior managers.“If it doesn’t add value for the customer, don’t do it.” This is Dewey’s criterion for decision-making. It’s a good one, but I’ve heard customer-focused mandates like this one before and so have you. Excellent companies are always customer-focused.The surprising statement, the one that crossed my eyes, was this one: “The job of management is to focus its energies on its best people.”That statement startled me because this is not what managers do. Managers put out fires. Managers plead and threaten and cajole employees to do what they’ve been trained to do. Managers usually ignore their best and brightest people, thankful that they, at least, can be counted on.I asked Dewey to tell me more about this philosophy.“Roy, if a baseball coach has a left-fielder who is a great batter, but barely acceptable as a left-fielder, it’s tempting to work with that player on his fielding. But it’s always a mistake. No matter how hard the player tries, his fielding is likely to improve only slightly. But if that same player is coached on how to become an even better batter, he’s likely to become the League Batting Champion, a real superstar.”Just then a young man walked past. Dewey touched his arm to stop him. “Roy, this is Dennis, he’s one of our very best people. People often say, ‘Put me in, Coach, let me show you what I can do,’ but then when you put them in, they don’t do much. Dennis isn’t like that. Every time he asks to be given a chance, Dennis delivers exactly what we wanted.” Dewey then looked Dennis in the eyes and said, “Thanks for doing such a great job.” Dennis walked away with a smile. “Roy, managers should invest their time where it will give the company the highest return on investment.”“But who puts out all the little fires that spring up every day?”Instead of answering me directly, Dewey took me on a little tour. During the next 10 minutes, he introduced me to a series of different employees, not managers, whose job is to respond to all the predictable crisis that happen each day. Dewey Jenkins has a smooth-running operation with an extremely high customer satisfaction index. The employees solve the problems. The managers build the employees, focusing their highest energies on the ones who rise above average.There we have it, “the ones who rise above average.” The self-selected are those who take action, the ones who participate, the ones who don’t go away.My conversation with Dewey caused me to remember something my business partner, Manley Miller, said during a class he taught recently on Fund Raising:“A non-profit is not a democracy where everyone is equal. Non-profits have inner circles. When Jesus taught in Israel, he had thousands of observers. Among those observers were followers. Among the followers were disciples. Among the disciples were the twelve. And among the twelve were Peter, James and John. Can you imagine the scene when those three came down from the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus and saw the rest of the twelve? ‘Wow! You’ll never believe what just happened!’ You gotta know the other nine were saying, ‘Hey! Why didn’t we get to go?’”The inner circle that surrounds you will always be a self-selected group of insiders. It’s counterintuitive, I know, but the job of management is to focus its energies on these, its best people.Where have you been focusing your energies?Roy H. Williams

Curves are difficult to create in bodies, buildings and furniture. But they always attract attention.Curves are good. All the best stories have them.Good movies, plays and books curve one way then another, taking us in directions we did not anticipate. We can never see what’s around the corner.Curves are the mark of a master.Only a true craftsman can build furniture with elegant curves. A building with curves is the mark of a talented architect. Bodies with curves are maintained by exercise and a disciplined diet. DNA alone is not enough to keep sensuous curves in place.Great storytellers rarely take the onramp to the Interstate. They prefer to take the scenic route that curves through the countryside of the mind.Writing straight, flat and smooth is easy. Writing lumpy is even easier. But to write a message with curves, elegant, sculpted curves, requires time, determination and commitment.Straight, flat writing sounds like this:Early one morning I crawled onto the roof to read a book and I noticed a fox in the yard. We looked at each other and then he trotted away.Lumpy writing sounds like this:Sometimes I get up early to read and sometimes I do it on the roof. One morning I was reading up there but I can’t remember what it was, though. Doesn’t matter. That’s not really important. The point I wanted to make is that I saw a fox and it was really cool but it trotted off.Add a few elegant curves and this simple story of a girl and a fox becomes a winding road full of scenery and surprises:This one day, I got up before anyone, went up on roof with me book and something made me look up. And there he was. Staring at me. A young todd fox, full grown. The cheek of ‘im. He wasn’t scared. His eyes said, “Look at me. I’m all fox, me. I’m perfect. I’m the fancyman fox and I’ll bet you wish you were me.” I could see the dewdrops on his whiskers. He was so bright. His eyes said, “Look at me. I’m more alive than you. I do what I like and no one stops me.” But I felt alive, too. I could feel my heart bumping and something tight in my throat. And I wanted to pull up my skirts and dance for ’im, something daft like that. But what happened was, we just looked at each other like that. And then he turned and trotted away and I could see the dark marks in the grass where he put his feet.– Lydia Holly, in South Riding, a Masterpiece Theater series based on the novel by Winifred Holtby. A story can be so full of curves that it can only be described as twisted. Alice in Wonderland was such a story. Likewise, Inception was a movie whose twists required our focused attention. Advertising can be twisty, too. One of my favorite twisted ads was written by the great Steve McKenzie as an exercise during the second day of the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop. There it is. Again. The angh-angh, buzz-buzz alarm that crowbars my eyes, loudly. Is this dream or real? What day is it? Am I still employed? Where is that button of snooze? To-do, to-do, so much doo-doo. It’s sweat and Daytimers, soap-on-a-roap, aftershave, mousse with no grunts in my hair. Gotta go-go, I’m driving, I’m driven to the machine that I love, muchly. And there you are, all ground up, waiting to waterfall in my cup. It’s you and your big, red eye. It’s me and my five-gallon travel mug. It’s a marriage made in a paper filter. Sip-sip, yum-yum. I’m zooming. Awake with visions of flying pigs and everything’s possible. You did it! The roasting, the grinding, magical. Who? What? How? Hey! Stewart’s Coffee. Redeye. I’m in love.The hidden danger of twisty ads is this: they can leave the reader behind. Drive too fast through a series of tight corners and those who are following will lose sight of you. Steve took this ad right to the limit. We were able to keep up with him, but barely. At the end of the ad we knew that Steve was talking about coffee but we wanted to hear the ad again because we knew that some of it had slipped past us. Like I said earlier, the ability to navigate curves skillfully is the mark of a master. Steve McKenzie is one of those great ones.Me? I’m doing all I can just to keep it between the yellow lines.Thanks for riding along with me. I enjoy these little drives together.Roy H. Williams

Once a month my partners and I have a videoconference. We solve problems together and I share a few stories of things I learned the hard way. Craig Arthur, director of Wizard of Ads – Australia, tells me these stories are his favorite parts of our time together. Listening to my silly stories, he sees how to sidestep predictable problems. Many years ago my friend John Young said to me, “Roy, do you know the difference between a smart man and a wise man?”“Say on, John.”“A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. A wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid that mistake altogether.”I play the role of smart man for my partners so that they can be better wise men. (Wise man. Wise-ard. Wisard. Wizard. You’ll find it in the Oxford English Dictionary. Hence, Wizards of Ads.)Solomon said,“There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth… Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.”– Ecclesiastes, chapter 4The job of the consultant begins with an inventory of the client’s Limiting Factors. “What are the impediments that are tripping my client up and holding him back?”The client will always tell you the problem is “Not enough traffic. Not enough phone calls. Not enough selling opportunities.” But these are not Limiting Factors. A shortage of selling opportunities is merely the symptom of a Limiting Factor. The real question is, “Why do we have a shortage of selling opportunities?”A consultant probing for Limiting Factors is a bit like a doctor poking, prodding and asking, “Does this hurt?”About 20 years ago I was hired by a retailer who occupied a landmark location in his small town. His grandfather had opened that store 105 years earlier. My client’s problem was “not enough traffic.” My job, of course, was to increase traffic. But a question hovered in the air between us. That question quivered and glowed and throbbed until I finally blurted it out. “The people who don’t buy from us; is it because they don’t know about us? Or is it because they do?” That store had a reputation for being expensive. We solved the problem. The store began to thrive again. We did not lower prices.Sometimes the Limiting Factor isn’t the reputation but the Competitive Environment. This might be the high cost of media, a low-visibility location, the wrong inventory, or a strong competitor.When a business owner has a capable, highly motivated competitor, he or she will usually explain this Limiting Factor in one of 3 ways: 1.    “We don’t think about them. I believe we should focus on what we’re doing, not on what our competitors are doing.”2.    “Yes, they’re big, all right, but that’s not my customer. They sell to the type of customer we don’t really want. You can’t be all things to all people.” 3.   “They’re dishonest. Horrible liars and cheats. You just wouldn’t believe some of the things they do.”Every business owner has a blind spot. Do you know yours?That was a trick question. Of course you don’t know your blind spot. If you knew it was there, it wouldn’t be a blind spot.When a business owner can’t figure out how to take his company to the next level, it’s usually because the stairway that will take him there is hiding behind his blind spot.You can’t see your own blind spot because you’re on the inside, looking out. The first step of a good consultant is to be a friendly pair of eyes on the outside, looking in.A friendly pair of eyes to help you evaluate your limiting factors.A friendly pair of eyes to help you find the message you must shout to the world.A friendly pair of eyes to show you the opportunity that hides behind your blind spot.I’m very proud of my Wizard of Ads partners. They’re doing a lot of good for a lot of people.Roy H. Williams

For Traditional Retail and Service Businesses I feel a bit like the boy in the Hans Christian Andersen tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes, though I’m not nearly so brave as he. You remember, don’t you? Two weavers promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that will be invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a boy cries out, “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!”The Internet is the parade we’re watching and Facebook is its emperor. I’ve seen “naked” and this emperor sure looks it, but I hesitate to shout it out loud because this would be tantamount to a confession of professional incompetence.Let’s face it. Those weavers have spun a pretty loud buzz with “Facebook and Twitter.”The first Internet buzzword was “eyeballs.” Any site that could generate a high number of unique visitors and page views was said to be overflowing with eyeballs and its creator was considered a genius. But eyeballs didn’t translate into dollars unless you delivered a message to the brain behind those eyeballs that was judged to be highly relevant and sufficiently credible.Next it was about “going viral.” My office was deluged with a river of advertisers asking, “How can we take our message viral? We want to go viral. Do you know the secret of going viral?” I told these advertisers, “Going viral is what happens when traditional word-of-mouth is empowered by digital technology. Do you have a relevant, credible message that contains at least one of the essential three word-of-mouth triggers?”“Eyeballs” and “going viral” faded away due to a lack of success stories. I breathed a sigh of relief.Now it’s “Facebook and Twitter.”Internet acolytes say “Facebook and Twitter” in hushed tones like they’re intoning a holy mantra. Gregarious extraverts say “Facebook and Twitter” like they’re sharing the location of a keg party. Hungry business owners say “Facebook and Twitter” like they’re asking for directions on a road trip. Aspiring young consultants say “Facebook and Twitter” with an air of condescension, as though it were “Checkmate” in a chess match.This time I’m letting Lee Iacocca handle it:“Talk is cheap. Where I come from, in the auto industry, you were held brutally accountable for your programs and products. The response to any idea was, ‘Show me where it’s working.’”– Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? ch. 3 (2007)Lee is right, kids. Talk is cheap. Show me where it’s working. Google “Facebook success stories.” I did. Prepare to be underwhelmed.Facebook promises hypertargeting but this has been the promise of every media since the invention of advertising. Newspapers have been divided into sections for nearly a century. “Do you want to target men in the Sports section, women in the Lifestyle section, or businesspeople in the Business section?” Magazines were invented to allow us to target micro-groups that shared a common interest. Television and radio stations promise psychographic targeting through specific programming. Billboards promise tightly controlled geographic targeting. And each of these media is hampered by the same limiting factor as Facebook and Twitter. It is an inescapable truth: Response to your message will be dictated by its relevance and credibility, not by the vehicle of its delivery.There is benefit to be had through a presence on Facebook. Twitter is a quick way to blurt 140 characters to whomever will give you a moment’s attention. If you enjoy these things, do them. Your business will certainly derive some benefit.But they are not the highest and best use of your time and energy.This whole “Facebook and Twitter” thing reminds me of a conversation I had with a client 14 years ago in Milwaukee.  Working together we had grown his business 10-fold in just 5 years. That’s right, one thousand percent growth. He was swimming in cash because he was tenacious, hard-working, had excellent judgment and his employees loved him. All I had done was help him focus his message and his ad budget. When he arrived in Austin for his annual marketing retreat, he said, “This year I want to spend 20 thousand dollars of the ad budget for a country club membership. I really believe I can sell some product on the golf course.”Knowing my client loved to golf, I said, “Sounds like a great idea. How often do you plan to golf?”“Every Tuesday,” he answered.“I’m okay with this plan as long as we agree that you’re going to be the one responsible for selling on the golf course, not me. If you can’t make it work, it’s your fault, not mine. You okay with that?”He was okay with it. He bought the country club membership, began playing golf every Tuesday, sold a little product on the golf course and he’s still a client today. But his business is now more than 50 times the size it was when we first began working together. My client continues to golf every Tuesday but he doesn’t pretend that golf is what built his business.If you like to golf, do it. Steal a few moments of your life for living. Maketime for the things that give you pleasure. Facebook is a country club membership. If connecting on Facebook is your thing, go for it.But please, let’s not pretend it’s the highest and best investment of your time. Roy H. Williams

1. You have something to sell and2. You want to tell the world about it.These are my first questions:1. Are people already looking for it?2. Can you deliver your message in 8 words or less?If the answer to both questions is yes,Put up a big, intrusive sign.The world may be a little uglier for it, but you’ll sell a lot of stuff. For the record, 8 is the number of words a driver can read before they feel compelled to look back at the road. Put more than 8 words on a sign and you’ll be advertising to the passenger seat.A high-visibility location for your business is usually the cheapest advertising you can buy. But don’t be fooled by traffic numbers. High traffic doesn’t always mean high visibility. These are the pivotal questions:1. How many people drive past here each day?2. Are they mostly the same people each day driving to and from work, or is this a twice-a-month artery for a much larger population?3. Could a person drive past here and not notice this business? If the answer is, “No, they would definitely notice it,” then acquire the location. It’s a landmark that will serve you faithfully for many years to come.The Internet is electronic print, instantly updatable and deliverable on demand. As such, it has effectively replaced the newspaper, the telephone book, the encyclopedia and the dictionary and it is rapidly replacing the bookstore. Product brochures and catalogues are becoming “virtual,” existing only as backlit images on a screen. Lost your instruction manual? Go online. You can download it as a pdf file.Slash your Yellow Page budget and get serious about your web presence. Are your business hours and phone number easy to find on your home page? Jeffrey Eisenberg told me recently that a high percentage of visitors to the web sites of local businesses are looking for exactly that information. Don’t frustrate these customers. Put your phone number and your store hours on your home page. Do it.To think of the Internet as electronic media like television and radio is a huge mistake. Online streaming video was popularized by Youtube but the experience of it requires continual decision-making and physical participation, much like a video game. Television, on the other hand, is passive. Sit and stare. The biggest threat to the effectiveness of television commercials isn’t the Internet, but the DVR.  Gone are the days when television networks could corner us and force us to watch a sales pitch. God bless TiVo.My friend “Other Roy” Laughlin is piercingly insightful when it comes to our consumption of media. “What’s the difference between a country club and a municipal golf course?” he asked. He looked at my blank face a moment then answered his question, “The price of admission. Traditional broadcast TV commercials won’t away, they’ll just reach people who can’t afford DVRs. People with money use technology to shield themselves from commercials.” These observations might seem self-evident today but Other Roy said these things 7 years ago, back when dinosaurs roamed the land. Like I said, he’s piercingly insightful.Texting while driving is more dangerous than a loaded gun. It’s more dangerous than drugs, tobacco and alcohol combined. Your car’s lack of a built-in, hands-free device for listening to the internet is what keeps internet radio from being an immediate threat to broadcast radio.*Few people listened to FM radio until auto manufacturers began installing FM receivers as standard equipment in the 1970s. The trickle-down of new cars to used car buyers takes almost 7 years, so we’re at least that many years away from radio’s effectiveness being seriously eroded by the Internet.Yes, I am a huge proponent of radio for growing local businesses. I’ve found it to be an amazing tool for turning little businesses into big ones. But radio is often misunderstood and misused by advertisers, leaving them to say with conviction, “I tried radio and it didn’t work.”Be at Wizard Academy June 29 and 30 and I’ll tell you what you did wrong. Pay attention, correct this problem and soon your banker will commission a portrait of you to hang above his desk.The little brass plaque on its frame will read, “Our Largest Depositor.”I’m going to teach this class only once and seating is limited.A lot of people will wait to register and find themselves facing a little banner than says, “SOLD OUT.”  Many of these fine people – some of them dear friends of ours – will call Kristin or Becke or Corrine and say, “Can’t you please add just one more seat?” It is for Kristin and Becke and Corrine that I’m writing this closing paragraph. They will remember it and feel better when they are forced to say, “I really wish I could, but no, I can’t. I simply can’t. I’m sorry.”Attend this class and I promise you’ll say to yourself more than once, “Wow. How did I not know that? It’s so obvious.” You’ll then use this new knowledge to attract customers like never before. Your competitors won’t be able to figure it out. Your friends will wonder what’s gotten into you. Your business will blossom like a flower.I say it’s time to get floral. What do you say?Roy H. Williams