Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

What makes us America?If you were to name a single incident in American history that you feel was America’s finest hour, what would it be?Would it be a moment of patriotic sacrifice? “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”– Nathan Hale, [Sept. 22, 1776]A moment of relentless determination?“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”– Admiral David Farragut [Aug. 5, 1864]A moment of far-flung vision, an impossible dream?“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”– JFK [May 25, 1961] “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!”– MLK, Jr. [Aug. 28, 1963]A moment of come-from-behind-to-win?“…twenty-eight seconds. The crowd going insane. Kharlamov. Shooting it into the American end again. Morrow is back there. Now Johnson. Nineteen seconds. Johnson over to Ramsey. Bilyaletdinov gets checked by Ramsey. McClanahan is there. The puck is still loose. Eleven seconds. You’ve got ten seconds. The countdown going on right now. Morrow up to Silk. Five seconds left in the game. Do you believe in miracles?Yes!”– Al Michaels, [Feb. 22, 1980]Pennie and I were having lunch with our friend Rich Mann when he made a casual comment that sent such tremors through me that I wondered if Austin was having an earthquake. I never told Rich about the impact of his 4 littlewords on me that day, but he opened my eyes to an American greatness that had previously been hiding in my blind spot.The moment that defines America for me – the moment I’ll be proud of forever – was December 12, 2000, when no one started shooting.Remember The Month of the Hanging Chads? Al Gore won the popular vote of the nation on November 7, 2000, but George W. Bush won Florida’s 25 electoral votes by a storybook-thin margin to gain the Presidency, 271 votes to 266. But the state laws of Florida required a recount due to the microscopic margin of victory.On November 26, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified Florida’s voting results, declaring Bush to have won the state of Florida by 537 votes.Many people were upset by this because Katherine Harris had also served as co-chair of Bush’s election campaign.Gore’s team won a court hearing to challenge the Katherine Harris results. The American people were confused, nervous and anxious.On December 1, fully 3 weeks after Election Day, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments over whether the Florida Supreme Court had overstepped its authority in managing the recount. A week later, Florida’s high court upheld their previous position.Bush argued. Gore argued. And the leadership of our nation hung in the balance.Finally, on December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount, effectively declaring Bush to be the winner. That Supreme Court vote was 5 to 4.And no one in America started shooting.How many nations on this earth can rest in the knowledge that there will be a peaceful transfer of power, even in moments of heated disagreement? “No one started shooting.” – Rich Mann, Shogun Sushi, Austin, TX [Feb. 2001]God Bless America.Roy H. Williams 

“Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings.”– Proverbs, ch. 22 Stand before kings? Sounds great! But how does one get “skilled in his work?” American children were taught for 100 years that all we had to do to be successful was listen, take notes, remember what we were told and repeat it accurately when asked. Americans call this silliness “education” and we guard the concept fiercely, obstinately and ridiculously.  “You’ve got the grades to get into college…”“Smart enough to get a scholarship…”“The first of my family to go to college…”“College educated…” The worship of college runs deep in American families. To question college or to criticize it is to brand yourself a heretic. But college is no longer a religion among employers. A comprehensive study released by the Harvard Graduate School of Education on February 2, 2011, suggests that America’s “college for all” mindset may be doing more harm than good. According to the study, Americans place too much emphasis on 4-year degree programs when 2-year occupational programs would better prepare students for today’s job market. Fifty years ago 30 percent of the jobs in America were “white collar.” The white collars enjoyed more prestige, had more opportunity and made more money than the 70 percent who were “blue collar” laborers. College, we were told, was the difference. Flash forward half a century; 30 percent of the jobs in America today are “white collar,” just as before. But only 15 percent of today’s jobs are “blue collar.” The remaining 50 percent are jobs that didn’t exist half a century ago; jobs that require specialized training but not a 4-year degree. And since there aren’t enough people trained to do these jobs, our skilled “no collars” are paid wonderfully high salaries because employers are begging to hire them. The no collars make higher salaries, in fact, than two-thirds of the 30 percent whose collars are white. “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings.” And he will do it without a collar.Meanwhile, our universities graduate exactly 10 times more psychology majors each year than there are jobs for psychology majors. But these bright-eyed innocents are never told, “There will be a job for only 1 in every 10 of you. The rest of you will have to find some other way to make a living.” I’m betting you know at least a dozen young adults with college degrees who are struggling to find work today. Am I right? But the problem isn’t that there aren’t any jobs. There are plenty of jobs for people with the right skills. These “educated unemployed” simply chose a course of study for which there is no demand in today’s workplace. James Michener grew up poor, joined the Navy, earned more than 100 million dollars as a writer, was lavished with honorary degrees by the world’s most prestigious colleges and universities, then left us with a singular piercing observation shortly before he died in 1997: “If our military capacities were in as much peril as are our intellectual capacities, the nation would be taking gigantic and immediate steps to repair the deficiencies. It is scandalous that we are not taking equally huge steps to reverse the decline in our basic educational adequacy.” – This Noble Land, p. 99, (1996) But Michener wasn’t referring to traditional education. Michener understood what it takes to become “skilled in your work:” “I feel almost a blood relationship with all the artists in all the mediums, for I find that we face the same problems but solve them in our own ways. When young people in my writing classes, for example, ask what subjects they should study to become writers, I surprise them by replying: ‘Ceramics and eurhythmic dancing.’ When they look surprised I explain: ‘Ceramics so you can feel form evolving through your fingertips molding the moist clay, and eurhythmic dancing so you can experience the flow of motion through your body. You might develop a sense of freedom that way.’” – This Noble Land, p. 193 Michener – a man who stood before kings – believed form and freedom to be the factors that differentiated those who were skillful from those who were not. What form of education will you suggest to the young people who look up to you? Will you give them the freedom to do something other than “go to college?” Uh-oh. Did that question make me a heretic? Roy H. Williams

If you’re reading this sentence, it’s because the headline (A.) startled you by its intrusive, personal nature, (B.) irritated you by its assumption that God exists, (C.) intrigued you because you never really thought about it, or (D.) touched a pre-existing suspicion or belief that hides in your heart.Headlines – including the subject lines of emails and the opening sentences of speeches, sermons and radio ads – are vitally important. David Ogilvy said it best, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” The headline that pulled you into this story is interesting because it:1. is taboo, (by virtue of introducing the subject of deity.)2. is a question for which there is no “obvious” answer. You realize that I just taught you two techniques for creating good opening lines, right? (1.) Tickle a taboo. (2.) Ask a question with no obvious answer. Here’s another good headline:Four Out of Five People Think the Fifth is an Idiot That one is interesting because it:3. is funny4. says far more than it says.5. reminds you of things you already know about foolish statistics, public opinion polls and prejudices disguised as research, “Me and all my friends…” Fifteen years ago when I first began writing for Radio Ink magazine, Eric Rhoads said, “Make your readers want to cheer your name or make them want to tear you limb from limb, but never let them be bored.” That’s another useful tidbit:6. People would rather be angry than bored. One last thing about headlines:7. Never promise something in a headline that you don’t deliver in the story. Readers aren’t quick to forgive a bait-and-switch. So in the spirit of delivering what I promised in the headline, I’ll share with you the following thoughts: It is easy to believe God loves us. It is somewhat harder to believe that He likes us. You have certain people in your life that you love because they are “family.” But do you really like them? Even you-know-who? Would you have chosen that person to be your friend – the loved one you’re seeing in your mind right now – if they had not been thrust upon you by the genetic lottery? Wow. There’s #1 again. Taboo. “Do I really like all the people I love? What a question! How dare you! Have you no sense of propriety?”Calm down. Love requires a commitment that runs deeper than your feelings. This irrational, wonderful, life-giving commitment makes it possible for us to love people we don’t really like; people we would never have chosen for rational reasons.Love isn’t a feeling, it‘s something you do. Love is action. Love rolls up its sleeves and wades into messes it did not make. This is how we can love people we don’t like.But just for the record, God likes you. He actually likes you. I asked him if he was sure. He said, “Yeah, I’m sure.” Go figure. Roy H. Williams

How does one reconcile these two famous proverbs?“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”That first platitude would argue that pre-emptive action is a waste of time and resources; “Leave well-enough alone.” The second platitude says quite the opposite; “A stitch in time, saves nine.”Which is true?Stanislaw Lec said, “Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a people.”George Santayana said it more plainly. “Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.”Nobel prize-winning physicist Niels Bohr said this isn’t just true in philosophy and art, but is true in science as well: “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”It would seem that every great truth in our universe has its opposite. Little ideas can be right or wrong but big ideas are both right and wrong.Is your mind broad enough to hear the beauty of birdsong in the land of your enemy?Homophobes criticize me when I quote Oscar Wilde, “He was a homosexual, you know.”Religious people criticize me when I quote Voltaire, “He was an atheist, you know.”Republicans squint at me suspiciously when I say I like Obama.Democrats’ eyebrows jump when I say I admired Ronald Reagan.“According to our present conceptions, an atom of an element is built up of a nucleus that has a positive electrical charge… together with a number of electrons, all having the same negative charge….”– Niels Bohr, from his Nobel Prize acceptance speechOur universe exists because these equal-but-opposite bits – protons and electrons – come together and interact in a strained, divine tension. The important thing, for me, is that neither of these particles is compromised by the other. Protons are no less positively-charged because of their interaction with electrons, and electrons are never corrupted because of their close proximity to protons.If electrons and protons were ever to become alike, our universe would cease to exist. The solution is never “somewhere in the middle” as is constantly suggested by dullards and cowards and lovers of gray and beige. These flaccid proponents of “the middle ground” are like wet toilet paper.And I mean that, of course, in a spirit of love.Reality – indeed, the entirety of our physical universe – requires equals-but-opposites in their purest forms, forever attracting and repelling each other as they dance the dance of creation.“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”– F. Scott FitzgeraldDo you have a first-rate intelligence?I could easily craft a compelling counter-argument against everything I’ve written today and I know that you could, too.But I won’t. Because today I am feeling neither gray nor beige.Roy H. Williams

A Brief Examination Into the Health of Your MarketingSTEP 1: What percentage of your sales volume comes from repeat or referral customers? These customers are driven to you by past satisfaction.Don’t read any further until you’ve decided on a percentage. Give it your best guess.STEP 2: What percentage of your sales volume is triggered by your location and its exterior signage? These customers come to you because of your visibility.Again, write down a percentage, your best guess.STEP 3: Add those two percentages together, then deduct from 100.The remaining percentage is your “advertising driven” traffic, new customers who come to you solely because of your ads.I’m betting this percentage is a lot lower than you would have guessed. Am I right?STEP 4: How many unique customers have you served in the past 12 months? Write down a specific number. You’ll probably need to consult your records.STEP 5: Apply your “ad-driven traffic” percentage to the total number of unique customers you’ve sold in the past 12 months. This will tell you exactly how many new customers you’ve served in the past 12 months who came to you solely because of your advertising. [If your ad-driven traffic was 20 percent and your Unique Customer Count was 5,000, then you had 1,000 ad-driven customers.]STEP 6: Divide that number into your annual ad budget.The result of that division – the quotient – is your Cost of Customer Acquisition. It’s how much you’re spending on advertising to bring one new customer through your doors. (You may notice that our equation didn’t calculate the cost of referral customers. This is because referral customers don’t come at a direct cost, as do ad-driven customers, but at the indirect costs of customer service and relationship management.)STEP 7: Write your Cost of Customer Acquisition – the number of dollars you’re paying to bring one new customer into your business – LARGE on a sheet of paper, or put it on your computer screen in a 72-point font.Stare at it for a moment.Here are the obvious questions:1. With the cost of new customer acquisition so high, why advertise at all? 2. How can we drive this Cost of Customer Acquisition way, way down?Let’s answer the first question first:If a prospective customer doesn’t give you a chance to sell them, there can only be two possible reasons:A: They haven’t heard about you. (This problem can be solved by advertising.)B: They have heard about you and they don’t like what they’ve heard. These customers – based on information given to them by others – have made the decision not to do business with you. A good ad will give them new information that may lead them to a new decision. You may also need to invest more energy in customer service and relationship management.“With the cost of new customer acquisition so high, why advertise at all?The primary goal of advertising is to acquire new customers. Your future repeat and referral business depends on it. Good customers move to other towns, or die, and you never see them again. It happens to every business and it happens every year. Additionally, new people move into your town and have no idea where to shop. Approximately 20 percent of the average American community didn’t live there 1 year ago. How are you reaching out to these newbies? Are you crossing your fingers and hoping they’ll meet one of your loyal customers? Are you counting on the newbies noticing your sign, or perhaps finding you online? These things can happen, to be sure, but is this your growth plan for 2011?“Okay, so we have to advertise, but how can we drive the Cost of Customer Acquisition way, way down?”First, let me say that it can absolutely be done. We can drive that cost down, I guarantee it. But I’m going to save the details until you arrive at Wizard Academy. (Yes, I know that makes me a total rat bastard, but you’ve been meaning to make a trip down here anyway, right?)Customer Acquisition Workshop – Monday, March 14Each registrant will leave with a customized plan to attract new customers. You will learn a little, work a lot, guided every step of the way. Register early and save the cost of a hotel room. The first 14 to sign up will enjoy 1 day/2nights at no charge in exciting Engelbrecht House, Wizard Academy’s amazing student mansion. Additionally, although this 1-day class is only $750, it will qualify you as an Acadgrad and you’ll save 50 percent on all future classes. (Acadgrads, this class is just $375 for you.) Arrive Sunday afternoon, spend the night in Austin, work like a dog all day Monday, relax in Austin that night, then return home Tuesday the 15th with an incredible new plan for customer acquisition. Well, what are you waiting for?Roy H. Williams

If you’re a man, you will definitely have a midlife crisis. When it happens – and it can happen a number of times – you can let it lift you to the next level, or you can let it unravel your life. Wizard Academy’s Dr. Richard D. Grant, a clinical psychologist, was chatting with a group of adult students one day while his microphone was still recording. I transcribed a bit of what he said because it explains for me the relationship between Don Quixote and Dulcinea, the common village girl Quixote admired from afar.(In the book, Don Quixote never meets Dulcinea; she’s never even aware of his existence, though she has a profound effect on his life.)Here’s what Dr. Grant said that day:“One of the big things that Jung talked about that becomes more and more operative as a guy gets older is that he comes into contact with the deeper parts of himself which we call the unconscious. The trap door to the unconscious is actually a gate that is feminine.”“The feminine part of a man’s personality is called the anima, the Latin word for soul. It leads him to growth and assumes many faces.”“We should pay very close attention to what we find attractive, men, at mid-life, because that’s the roadmap of where we’re going to grow next. This is, a man’s encounters with females, especially at mid-life, tell him what he needs to connect with in himself to have more life. That is what the anima experience is all about.”“This is very important for guys to know because at mid-life they get re-sensitized to females, deeply, and it doesn’t have to do with their committed relationships. And it’s very confusing for many men, and they think that they’re supposed to question their committed relationships and that life itself is in a strand of that person’s hair that they would follow.”“Actually that person is a symbol, mirroring this profound feminine part of the man that is the gateway to what lies ahead for him. And the function of the anima – the internal feminine – is to lead the man to the next part of his life.”“The rules of relationship to the unconscious are the rules of chivalry, ‘pure and chaste from afar.’ If you decide to totally get engrossed in the idealized imagery of the feminine, you’ll lose yourself. There’s danger in that. But if you have a conscious relationship – feeling the power of that, but not getting seduced by it – you will come to awareness; you’ll learn things.”“That might sound wild but chastity is really the ability to relate to a female human being, for a man, and to the anima in all its power at the same time and in the right respect, both at once, without confounding the two.”“If you attribute to a woman the goddess-like qualities of the anima, a man just melts in front of her. But if you keep them separate – you know, one’s for growth and one is to have relationship with, in all the benefits of monogamy and commitment – then you can benefit from it. Chastity is the ability to do both at once and not confuse them. That is what chastity is, not wimpy abstinence.”“If you want to see the four parts of the masculine counterpart to this for a woman – the animus – go watch The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy has four masculine figures she deals with when she goes on an adventure into a different land, learns all kinds of lessons and then comes home after her journey. So that’s an alternative story…” Right now I find myself noticing women who are lighthearted and carefree. Thanks to Dr. Grant’s little chat that day, I realize this is because I’ve been carrying the weight of fund-raising and construction for Wizard Academy for seven long years. I’m noticing these women because I need to make time for frivolous relaxation and play. The anima within me is whispering. I need to listen.Men, what is your anima saying? Ladies, is the animus within you telling you where you need to grow? Make no mistake about it. Deep and revealing conversations happen here all the time. Come. Adventure. Engelbrecht House awaits you.Engelbrecht, by the way, means “Angel, broken” in German.Just a coincidence.Roy H. Williams

The Key to Getting Attention.A Guaranteed Cure for Writer's Block.In an over-communicated society, predictability is the enemy of effective writing. A recent Yankelovich study tells us that Americans are confronted by more than 5,000 selling messages per day – radio and television and magazines and newspapers and billboards floating on an ocean of store signage, posters, point-of-purchase displays and product packaging – each one hoping to gain our eyes, ears and attention.No wonder we’ve become so adept at filtering ads from our consciousness. Those time-consuming piranhas are out to eat us alive. And they do it so painfully predictably. I’m troubled when writers tell me they want to learn to “think outside the box.” I always want to ask, “Why do you climb into the box to begin with?”The box is a self-focused perspective. Predictable ads are spawned when you sit inside the box and begin asking predictable questions: “What makes us different and better than our competitors? What makes us special?” Having focused your approach inward, on yourself, instead of outward, on your customers, your thoughts will accelerate in an ever-tightening spiral as you circle the drain. Predictable opening statements are born inside the box. I have a love/hate relationship with a certain bit of stagecraft I use when speaking publicly. The bit is always a crowd pleaser; that’s the part I love. But most of the audience misses the point; that’s the part I hate. They gasp and laugh and clap and I say to them, “This looks like a magic trick, I know, but it’s really very easy. You can do it, I promise. Just give it a try.” But they never believe me. The stagecraft begins when I ask everyone in the room to write a statement that would catch the ear of any person who overheard it. “The statement doesn’t have to make sense,” I say, “It just needs to be larger than life, evocative, difficult to ignore. The kind of statement that would make a passing stranger turn and say, ‘Huh?’” I then ask 6 volunteers to bring their statements onto the stage. “I’m now going to craft real ads for real businesses using the statements written on those papers as theopening lines for the ads. Do I have any business owners in the room?” Six business owners take the stage. I randomly pair them up with the colorful statement-holders. I have no idea what businesses are on stage or what statements are written on those papers. I owe Tom Robbins (not to be confused with Tony) for this little bit of stagecraft. In a magazine interview that accompanied the release of his novel, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, Tom said, “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.” “Business owner number one. Tell me about your business.”“I have a plumbing company.”“Name a profit center you’d like to improve.”“I’d like to get more calls for our 24-hour emergency service.”“Crazy person number one. What did you write on your paper?”“I came home and the dog was bald.” The room roars with laughter as I walk to the front of the stage and balance there – my toes hanging over the edge – as 2,000 people hold their breath.“I came home and the dog was bald. I haven’t been that surprised since I woke up at 2AM to pee and stepped out of bed into an inch of water. Thank god Martindale Plumbing never goes to sleep. At 2AM they were just sittin’ there, hoping someone would call. They fixed the problem while I made coffee. Great guys. Thank god for Martindale Plumbing, 24 hours a day. But I still got no idea what to do with a bald dog.”That would be a television or radio script.Here’s what it would look like as an email:SUBJECT:  I came home and the dog was bald.[Everyone who saw that headline in a magazine ad, a flyer or a brochure would pick it up and read it. Today’s other 4,999 messages be damned.]That whole exchange between me and the business owner smelled like a set-up, right? If you were in that audience, you’d probably suspect I had planted those people in the crowd. Like I said, I’ve got a love/hate relationship with this particular bit of stagecraft. Along with the fact that no one believes THEY can do it, half of them don’t believe I can do it, either.But not only can I do it, you can, too. “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.”The keys to Chaotic Ad Writing are:1. Randomly force upon yourself a colorful opening statement BEFORE you know what you’re going to write about.2. Look for the defining characteristic(s) of that statement.   “I came home and the dog was bald.” (surprise)   “I really need to fart.” (embarrassment)   “Her funeral was a day late because the cement vault for her coffin didn’t arrive.” (1. death, 2. Loss and mourning, 3. Dark, claustrophobic enclosure)By the way, those are 3 actual statements I was given in a single city.3. Interview the owner of the business. Learn what they most want to sell. Use the defining characteristic of your opening statement as the angle of approach into your body copy.…the dog was bald.” (Surprise) …stepped out of bed into an inch of water.” (Surprise) The business to which I needed to connect the “fart” line was a 156 year-old historic wedding chapel. No problem. I just placed that thought into the mind of the groom as he stood at the altar with his bride. His moment of relief, “ahhhh,” comes when the organist begins blasting the traditional wedding exit music. The business to which I had to connect the “coffin” line was “Florida’s Space Coast, 30 miles of pristine beaches and Kennedy Space Center, with an IMAX theater inside.” The goal is tourism. Convince people to vacation there. Go ahead. Give it a shot.Roy H. Williams 

Why America Needs Wizard AcademyAccording to the U.S. Census, our nation is home to 5.91 million business owners whose businesses have fewer than 100 employees. If the American dream is to survive, these small businesses must thrive. The success of Wal-Mart and Google is not enough. Wizard Academy is a business school – not for big corporations – but for companies operated by their owners. Can you name another? On 1/3/11 6:59 AM, <XXXXXX@yahoo.com> wrote:Roy,May I be one of the first to speak up about your “Sponsorship Opportunities?” Enough already.  Yes, it’s a good idea to have people buy in to your ideas and write checks to help build things at the Academy.  A light fixture here, some paving bricks there.  But it may be time to give it a rest.  What will we be asked to buy next, a box of paper clips? Please don’t lower yourself to standing on the streets of Austin with a pencil cup.  It would be a humbling experience but it’s unbecoming of you. Need more money? Do what the Doobies suggested and Take It to The Street.  Get back on the lecture circuit for $25K+ per day plus expenses.  There are people out here who would pay big bucks for a Roy appearance.  Heck, if Glenn Beck can do it, you can too.XXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX, VA “Get back on the lecture circuit”? Friend, you seem to think I’m raising money to build Roy-Town. You are mistaken. My goal in seeking sponsorships is to transfer psychological ownership of this school to the people for whom it is being built. The public already owns Wizard Academy legally. Now I need them to own it in their hearts. When a person donates money to fund a permanent, physical attribute of this school, his or her relationship with it is made more permanent and physical as well. I will soon pass off the scene. I’m not speaking of my death, but of my joyful departure to pursue the hands-on, face-to-face growth of small businesses across the land. If the public has not fully seized hold of this school, it will fail shortly after I walk away.I am sorry you were annoyed. I promise not to let it happen again. To make doubly sure that my tacky, lowbrow behavior no longer offends your sensitive nature, I’ve instructed Barry Skidmore to remove your name from our subscriber list. (Just out of curiosity, I checked to see if you’ve ever made a donation or paid to attend a class. No on both counts. But I did notice that you’ve been quick to fly from Virginia to attend Academy events that are free.) So with a wink and a smile and a snappy salute good-bye, I leave you to the wisdom of Glenn Beck.Roy H. Williams “No man, who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man…” – Elbert Hubbard, A Message to Garcia, 1899 (More than 100 million copies of this booklet have been distributed in the past 112 years.) You, reader, as a believer in this school for small business, are not “the average man” spoken of by Elbert Hubbard. You are generous, gracious and intelligent. You are insightful, creative and committed. You and your continuing success are the reasons this school exists. I look forward to spending these moments with you each week. Roy H. Williams

I look at Vivian Maier and remember Jane Hathaway, Mr. Drysdale’s scholarly secretary on The Beverly Hillbillies. Vivian was born in France in 1926. We don’t know how or when Vivian came to America, but at age 11 she began working in a New York sweatshop. She learned English by sitting in movie theaters, alone in the dark. Alone in the dark. That pretty much describes Vivian’s life except for 1959, the year she turned 33 and found just enough money to travel abroad to strange and exotic places; Egypt, Thailand, Vietnam, France, Italy, Indonesia, Taiwan. Highly unusual for a woman of her time, Vivian journeyed alone. Even more unusual, she often wore a man’s bulky jacket, ugly and awkward men’s shoes and a large, floppy hat. And she constantly took photographs that she never showed anyone. It appears that Vivian escaped the sweatshops by moving to Chicago in the early 1950’s and taking work as a nanny to three young boys: Matthew, Lane and John are now old men but remember Vivian as “peculiar, our own Mary Poppins. One time she brought home a dead snake to show us, another time she convinced the milkman to drive us all to school in his delivery truck. But in the 10 years she worked for our family, she never once received a phone call.” When the 3 boys were raised, Vivian became unemployed. The next half-century saw her shift from family to family, always caring for children who were not her own. One employer hired Vivian to care for his disabled daughter. “But first thing in the morning on her day off, that camera would be around her neck and we wouldn’t see her again until late at night. I remember her as a private person but one who had very strong opinions about movies and politics.” Vivian was born a French Catholic but according to her employers she died an anti-Catholic, Socialist, Feminist movie critic who hated American movies but loved foreign films. At age 83, still in Chicago, she slipped on the ice and hit her head and died. But on the other side of Chicago, alone in the dark, sat 100,000 photo negatives and more than 1,000 rolls of undeveloped film in a public storage facility. When Vivian didn’t show up to pay her storage fees, the contents of her space were turned over to an auction house. Vivian’s features remind me of Jane Hathaway but her life reminds me of Emily Dickinson. No one knew Emily was a writer until after the funeral when they cleaned out her chest-of-drawers and found more than 1,500 of the finest poems ever written in the English language. Likewise, the buyer of Vivian’s negatives was stunned by what he found. And though John Maloof has scanned only 30,000 of Vivian’s 100,000 photo negatives, Finding Vivian Maier is currently the featured exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center. A book and a documentary movie are in the works. As a longtime collector of black-and-white photography (and the publisher of Accidental Magic, a coffee-table photo book,) I believe we’ll soon see Vivian Maier photographs featured at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. From a storage locker in suburban Chicago to the finest auction houses in the world, I believe the second journey of Vivian Maier has only just begun. ARoy H. Williams

Uptight vs. Anything Goes “Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a people.”– Stanislaw Lec EXAMPLE 1. “Win the heart and the mind will follow. The intellect can always find logic to justify what the heart has already decided.” In other words, speak to the right brain – the heart – if you will persuade.EXAMPLE 2. “Specifics are more believable than generalities.” In other words, speak to the left brain – the mind – if you will persuade. “If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants flying in the sky, people will probably believe you.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez, novelist, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature The conscious and the unconscious – left brain and right – struggle in a perpetual tug-of-war. Neurologist Richard Cytowic says, “Not everything we are capable of knowing and doing is accessible to, or expressible in, language. This means that some of our personal knowledge is off limits even to our own inner thoughts! Perhaps this is why humans are so often at odds with themselves, because there is more going on in our minds than we can ever consciously know.” Psychologist Carl Jung compared this “unconscious” to swimming in the silent and weightless world underwater: above the waterline exists the sunlit world of the conscious mind filled with air, birds, trees and people. But below the waterline, in the unconscious mind, is a timeless world of twilight and shadows, symbols and beauty, metaphors and music.But there are monsters in the deep. The intellect rescues us from our emotions, to be sure. But just as surely do the emotions provide escape from the cold, hard jail of the intellect. “We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.” – Tom Robbins, novelistDr. Roger Sperry won the Nobel Prize in 1981 for his discovery that humans don’t have a brain divided into halves as much as we have two separate, competing brains that perceive radically different information. The left brain gathers objective data to facilitate rational, logical, sequential, deductive reasoning. “Zoom in close and get all the details,” the left brain seeks to forecast a result. Our language functions exist in the left brain, allowing us to communicate specific details with accuracy. The left brain puts us in touch with the world that IS. The left is intellect. The left is logic. The colorful, musical right brain exists primarily for pattern recognition, observing and cataloging recurrent series of shapes and colors and musical notes and symbols and events and behaviors. Although it has no ability to interpret spoken or written languages, the right brain does interpret tone of voice as just one of the many, meaningful patterns it observes. The right brain puts you in touch with worlds that could be, should be, ought to be, might be someday. The right brain is heart, not mind. The right brain is intuition. The engineer stereotype mocks the “touchy-feely” world of the artist while the artist stereotype mocks the cold and sterile world of the engineer. Each of these stereotypes – the engineer and the artist – is a fool. Robert Frost said,“Young poets forget that poetry must include the mind as well as the emotions. Too many poets delude themselves by thinking the mind is dangerous and must be left out. Well, the mind is dangerous and must be left in.”  When Robert Frost spoke that truth about poetry, he spoke the grand truth of ad writing and salesmanship as well. But Honest Abe said it first: “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what you will, is the greatest high-road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause.” – Abraham Lincoln If you would1. Sell products or services,2. win the support of those around you and3. achieve the next level,you must win both heart and mind. Would you like to know exactly how it’s done? The penultimate squabble between left brain and right is the 3-day Magical Worlds Communications Workshop at Wizard Academy and it’s happening January 11-13. We’ve held a room open for you in Engelbrecht House so that you can stay on campus. Room and board will be on us. If you need to persuade women, or even one woman in particular, then you must – this is not a suggestion but a simple statement of fact – you must attend the inaugural session of Unzipped on January 26-27, taught by that Musical Maestra, Michele Miller, and Dancing Tom Wanek, known in South Florida as Twinkletoes Tommy.Come, make 2011 a very good year. Roy H. Williams