Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

BONUS: The Wizard’s Prediction of What’s About to HappenIs there any part of your business you’d like to improve?Listen to me: You won’t improve what you don’t measure.Here’s how to get the ball rolling:Step One: Identify, clearly, what you’re trying to make happen.Step Two: Determine how progress might be measured. (This is the hardest step by far.)Step Three: Measure current performance – prior to making any changes – to create a baseline. Step Four: Implement a change you believe will alter the outcome.Step Five:  Measure again, and compare the results to your baseline measurement.Repeat steps Four and Five until satisfied.You’ve heard of “consumer confidence,” right? But did you know Reuters News Service and the University of Michigan established the original Consumer Confidence Index by(1.) measuring the mood of the American public in December, 1964, and(2.) arbitrarily assigning that mood a value of 100?So in effect, when someone says, “Consumer Confidence is up,” or “Consumer Confidence is down,” what they’re really saying is, “Here’s how Americans are feeling compared to December, 1964.”I’ll bet you considered the Consumer Confidence Index to be more authoritative than that, didn’t you?The Index was later revised to use 1985 as the new baseline because it was a year without peaks or troughs. The Federal Reserve looks at the CCI when determining interest rate changes, and it also affects stock market prices. That’s powerful stuff.Here’s my point: Someone – let’s call him RALPHIE – got up one morning and said, “We should monitor the mood of the public.” Step One was completed in that single sentence. An objective had been clearly identified.Now it was time for Step Two:FRIEND: “How are we gonna do that?”RALPHIE: “I dunno.”FRIEND: “Wanna just forget about it and go have a beer?”RALPHIE: “No, let’s ask around. Maybe someone will have an idea.”FRIEND: “Okay.”They bumped into someone who said, “The government’s already measuring the Gross Domestic Product, so why don’t you just compare that to how much Americans are spending each month?”RALPHIE: “Sounds good to me.”And then a person who overheard all this said, “You could ask people their opinion of current economic conditions.”RALPHIE: “Okay. We’ll add that in.”FRIEND: “And while we’ve got them on the phone, we’ll ask them what they think the economy is about to do!”RALPHIE: “Okay, here’s what we’ll do: We’ll look at that Gross Domestic thing that first dude mentioned and then factor in people’s answers to our two questions.”FRIEND: “Do we give both questions equal weight?”   RALPHIE: “No, we’ll give their opinion about the future 50 percent more weight that their opinion of current conditions.”FRIEND: “That sounds complicated.”RALPHIE: “I think it’s just a 60/40 thing but we’ll ask someone down at the university.”FRIEND: “Well, 60 is 50 percent more than 40, but we should go ahead and ask the university dudes because that’ll give us credibility.”RALPHIE: “Now all we need is a really official name.”FRIEND: “You mean like ‘The Better Business Bureau?’”RALPHIE: “Exactly. Bureau is a power word. It makes’em seem official.”FRIEND: “Maybe we could call our thing an ‘Index.’”RALPHIE: “Ralphie’s Index?”FRIEND: “No, but we’ll think of something.”RALPHIE: “Yeah, we’ll think of something.”There are currently two trends in America that have me utterly fascinated. I’ll tell you what they are in a minute, but first let me tell you how these trends were observed:(1.)    My partners, my staff writers, my media buyers and I maintain ongoing conversations with small businesses across the US and Canada.(2.)    Our income is tied to how much these businesses grow or decline each year, so we keep a close eye onhow they’re trending.(3.)    We write ads and buy media all day, every day, for these clients.(4.)    This requires us to have thousands of conversations each year with local media reps in cities large and small from coast to coast. In turn, each of these media reps is in touch with dozens of local businesses in their towns.(5.)    These conversations give us a finger on the pulse of Small Business America. They allow us to spot trends long before the trends become news.Think back a couple of years: Bernie Madoff and the Mortgage Meltdown were a one-two punch that dropped us to our knees. America got scared and hunkered down. People were frightened about losing their jobs and their homes. Credit got tight and the price of gold soared.The worst now seems to be over. But strangely, the sales volumes of businesses aren’t climbing at quite the same rate as public confidence.Here’s what’s happening:Trend One: People are feeling more confident than they were a year ago. Quite a bit more confident in fact. This confidence would normally indicate a strong Christmas.Trend Two: People have learned they don’t need as much as they once thought they did. We’re learning to live within our means.Uh-oh. These are conflicting trends. And both of them are strong. My gut tells me these trends will cancel each other out and Christmas 2010 will look a lot like Christmas 2009. Focused business owners – those who keep a sharp eye on the ball –  will be slightly up over last Christmas. Average business owners – and those unlucky enough to be in small communities that experienced the loss of a major employer – will be flat to slightly down.Powerful trends are afoot but I don’t think there will be any strong indication of those trends this Christmas because they sort of cancel each other out.Weird, huh?Now all I need is a catchy name for these observations and a university to give me credibility.Roy H. Williams 

Old ideas are carried by old words.New ideas are carried by new words.Old words keep you inside the box.New words help you escape it.If you want to remain inside the box and fall behind the pack, just keep talking about target customers, demographics, gross impressions and unique selling propositions.Do you want to keep up with the times, get ahead of the curve? Grasp the new ideas. Learn the new words.These are the new ideas. These are the new words:Felt need: A desire in the heart of the customer. To speak to an unfelt need is to answer a question that no one was asking.Relevance: A message has relevance to the degree it speaks to a felt need.Credibility: A message has credibility to the degree it is believed.Impact quotient: Relevance + Credibility.Competitive environment: an objective assessment of (A.) the market and (B.) your place in it. Your strengths and weaknesses compared to the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, including location, reputation, selection, product lines, unaided recall (brand awareness,) etc.Limiting factor: anything that’s holding you back.Unleveraged asset: an ace you forgot you had up your sleeve.Core competence: what you’re all about, really.Market potential: the total dollars available in your business category in your marketplace. Easily measured if you know your NAICS code.Share of voice: An advertiser’s percentage of all the advertising done in their category. Location visibility, signage, word-of-mouth, etc. are included in this metric.Share of mind: The mental real estate an advertiser owns in the mind of the public. Share of voice x impact quotient = share of mindShare of market: An advertiser’s percentage of the total business volume done in their category.Authenticity: Being what you say you are.Transparency: showing your dirty laundry; admitting a downside rather than ignoring it. Transparency increases credibility.Personal Experience Factor: Buzz is triggered by personal experience. If the experience of your customer – the word on the street – does not line up with your message, your message has no credibility. Unscripted, unedited, unpolished testimonials have credibility because they carry the credentials of personal experience and the markings of authenticity.Ad-speak: Cliché’s, empty phrases, unsubstantiated claims and hyperbole – the language of yesterday’s advertising. Words without weight, having neither relevance nor credibility.Curse of knowledge: The blinders that come with expertise.Brandable chunks: vivid, recurring phrases used by an advertiser to help position and define the brand. Slogans and taglines are out. Brandable chunks are in.Black words: empty words that fail to contribute to a colorful mental image. The objective of every good writer is to remove the black words so that the others shine more brightly. Were you waiting for me to discuss metrics, unique visitors, page views and the other jargon of digital media? No need. Those things are already being discussed as much as they need to be.The 4 keys to a rainbow future are these:1. Relevance2. Credibility3. Speak to a felt need.4. Be what you say.That’s it, really. The rest is just bookkeeping.Roy H. Williams

from our correspondent in St. Petersburg, RussiaARoy, Ogilvy’s St P. office is a client of ours, only there are a tonne of project managers there, and we had really only one contact person, with a few other managers who knew vaguely about us. I was chatting to the lovely Katya, my contact person, on skype one day. Joked something about her using our corporate plane if she needed it; she said she hadn’t time, but couldn’t we send our pilot to Paris early one morning to pick up some croissants and deliver them to her?Well, needless to say we don’t have a corporate plane, let alone a pilot, but the idea took seed, and a few weeks later, costumes hired, boxes specially made, 65 croissants ordered, we barged into the Ogilvy offices mid-morning and distributed to an amazed team of advertising and PR professionals a load of fresh croissants.The initial silence was followed by the odd “WTF?”, and then a huge round of applause, posing for photos, and many grins all around. Followed numerous thanks emails, and lots of comments on the facebook photos. Plus everyone I know and work with in St P, and further afield, saw the pictures too. For an outlay of about 350 USD, that was some awesome publicity in itself. But the best bit was the orders that followed. We’ve seen a huge surge in translation and interpreting orders from them since, so the costs were covered within a month. Result!I was wondering about popping in to WA in Jan, but so far no details on courses for then. Saw another of my missives in a rabbit hole the other week – thanks.William.William,Well done! You’re doing amazing things.This latest was a perfect example of Buzz Snatching.  Take a look. https://wizardacademy.org/scripts/prodList.asp?idCategory=362February 2nd.Yours,Roy H. WilliamsRoy,That sounds delightful, thanks. I’ll see if I can tie it in.Quick question: listening to Moondance by Van Morrison, I suddenly wondered whether hit songs by artists who continually pump out hit songs also depend on 3rd Grav Bods for their success? I ask because I couldn’t identify one in the song, and then I remembered that we only looked at one-hit wonders in the example. So I figured perhaps there was a different formula for repeat successes?William. The Answer to the question posed by William Hackett-Jones can be found in the rabbit hole. Do you know how to get in?Aroo.Roy H. Williams

I was talking to an old friend. He asked the usual questions.“Family okay?”“Everyone is great.”“Business good?”“Busier than ever.”“But are you having fun?”He asked the question as any child of the ‘60s would ask it. The anthem we sang as young men was, “If It Feels Good, Do It.” Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse. Life is kicks, fun, adrenaline: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Dylan Thomas, Anna Nicole, Paris Hilton.I wasn’t sure how to answer his question.At the root of every misunderstanding is a lack of definition of terms.“Fun” is a term that screams for definition:Late at night, ask a weary mother nursing a sick child, “Are you having any fun?”Ask Mohandas Gandhi on the 20th day of a hunger strike, “Are you having any fun?”Ask Martin Luther King in Birmingham City Jail, “Are you having any fun?”Each of these saw a change that was needed and happily paid the price to bring that change to pass. But change never happens quickly.“The North Americans’ sense of time is very special. They are short on patience. Everything must be quick, including food and sex, which the rest of the world treats ceremoniously. Gringos invented two terms that are untranslatable into most languages: ‘snack’ and ‘quickie,’ to refer to eating standing up and loving on the run … that, too, sometimes standing up. The most popular books are manuals: how to become a millionaire in ten easy lessons, how to lose fifteen pounds a week, how to recover from your divorce, and so on. People always go around looking for shortcuts and ways to escape anything they consider unpleasant: ugliness, old age, weight, illness, poverty, and failure in any of its aspects.”– Isabel Allende, My Invented CountryMy friend Don Kuhl is one of the world’s leading experts on how change happens. A couple of weeks ago Don said something on the telephone that I hastily scribbled down: “Change is not an event. It’s a tiny decision made over and over again. Change isn’t once. It’s daily.”I recorded Don’s words because I heard in them an echo of the note my father scribbled to my sister and I as he struggled for one last breath in his final 60 seconds: “All the little things in life add up to your life. If you don’t get it right, nothing else matters.”If you define fun as reckless, heady abandon spiraling upwards to climax in an intoxicating sense of personal freedom and power, then no, I’m not having any.But if you define fun as the little things in life that add up to your life, nursing a child, doing without, paying the price for what you believe, then I would have to say that I’m having quite a time.The time of my life.Roy H. Williams

“Numbers don’t lie” is what people say when they defend their faulty logic. Their math is always flawless. The problem is that they gathered the wrong numbers. But the wrong numbers always look so right. Wizard Academy teaches its students to gather different information and use it to make different decisions. This is what we mean when we say Wizard Academy is a nontraditional business school. Let me give you an example:Half the people in town live north of the river. The other half live south. People rarely drive across the river to go to a restaurant. Everyone stays on their own side. The people north of the river are better-educated and own higher value homes. In fact, 64 percent of all discretionary income resides in the pockets of people north of the river. Only 36 percent of discretionary income is to be found down south. You’re planning to open a cloth-napkin restaurant. Where will you put it? If you said, “North of the river,” you instinctively used traditional logic to come to the same conclusion as the previous 99 people who opened a new restaurant in this city. As a result, you’re 1 of 100 restaurants fighting over 64 percent of the cloth-napkin dinner dollars.If you get your fair share of the market potential, you’ll be forced to subsist on 0.64 percent of the cloth-napkin dinner dollars. Meanwhile, the 9 upscale restaurants south of the river enjoy long lines and are making huge profits. You could have been number 10 but you were seduced by the wrong information. So now you’re living on 0.64 percent of the dinner dollars in this city when you could have had a waddling 3.6 percent if you had only opened your restaurant down south. (A “waddling” profit is so fat it walks like a duck.) You assumed higher-income people buy cloth-napkin dinners more often. But you were wrong. Those people live in more expensive houses, drive more expensive cars, shop in more expensive furniture stores and pay higher taxes but they don’t buy cloth-napkin dinners any more often than we “poor” people down south. You focused on an illusory target customer when you should have been gathering data on the actual competitive environment. Instead of asking, “Where do the people with money live?” you should have asked, “Where in this city are restaurants like mine doing far more business than they should?” The answer would have rung like a bell: “Down south. Down south. Down south. Down south.”Your choice of Competitive Environment is at least 20 times more important than your selection of Target Customer.That example wasn’t imaginary, by the way. The city is Austin, Texas.  Measurement and the Mind – Oct. 12-13 – is going to be a fabulous class. Take a look at the course description and you’ll immediately see why I’m the lightweight speaker in the group. During my short session I’ll explain in detail the dangers of using traditional cost-based accounting to make decisions about marketing. Calculating the purchases of your “average” customer is always a mistake but most people do it instinctively. Come to this class and I’ll give you a much better metric to monitor. Likewise, I’ll show you the hidden dangers of calculating Gross Impressions, Gross Rating Points, Cost Per Point, and Cost Per Thousand when making marketing decisions. And no, I’m not advocating a psychographic “target customer” approach to choosing your media. I’m simply going to give you a different equation for calculating the most efficient media plan. Like I said, I’m the lightweight in this group. The other 4 speakers are power hitters who can whack the ball over the centerfield wall, completely out of the ballpark, where it will roll across the parking lot and finally come to rest under a black Buick on row L-17. Change your plans. Come to Measurement and the Mind. You’ll learn things that will make a monster difference in your business.Whack! There it goes…waddle-waddle-waddle. Roy H. Williams

Two young people are given the same directive by their boss. One of them, palms upward, says, “But I don’t know how.” The second one doesn’t know how, either, but quietly thinks, “I’ll figure it out.” The first one grows up to become a manager who believes training to be the key to success. “Go to college. Learn to do things correctly. Get a good job.” The employee who won’t ask for help frustrates the manager. The second person grows up to be a leader who believes initiative to be the key to success. “Start a business. Innovate. Stay a step ahead of the pack.” The employee who won’t make an independent decision frustrates the leader. Most of us tend to think of ourselves as both manager and leader, exhibiting the qualities of each at the appropriate time. But the worldview of a manager is antithetical to the worldview of a leader. You lean one way more than you lean the other. Which is your natural inclination? Managers believe in bringing the best of the past forward. They talk about best practices and agree with Blackie Sherrod who said, “The reason history must repeat itself is because we pay too little attention the first time.” Managers believe in compliance, conformity and steady evolution. Franchises exist because the mind of a manager says, “Why reinvent the wheel?” Managers believe in “tweaking” things to reach “the next level.” They say, “One step at a time and with each step taken, move the finish line one step further away.” Managers make money. Leaders make memories and sometimes, history. They talk about sweeping change and a new day and agree with Albert Einstein who said, “It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant – aside from stimulation – stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to rack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the engagement of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.” Leaders believe in vision, innovation and revolution. They say, “Set your sight on your goal and never give up.” Possibilities are the currency of a leader.Realities are the currency of a manager.Leaders create things from nothing. And then managers slowly improve those things. Which are you, leader or manager? More importantly, which are you not? It doesn’t really matter because both are equally valuable. The keys to success are: 1. to know exactly when each perspective is needed and2. to skillfully ask for help from your opposite when your own perspective isn’t paying off. Has your own perspective been paying off? Evolution and revolution are cyclical. In what part of the cycle is your business right now? Have you just completed a revolution? Is it now time to slowly evolve? Or have you been evolving too long already? Has the time come to reinvent your business for a new generation? RevoLUtion! These are just a few thoughts to think as summer gives way to autumn and cotton sweater season blusters in from the North and Santa winks a twinkling eye at us from the distant, snowy horizon. Or is that a star?Roy H. Williams  

1. No man is an island. 2. Every man is an island. John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island” in 1624. The entire passage reads, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less… Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” – Meditation XVII But Anne Morrow Lindbergh expressed the opposite idea, “I feel we are all islands – in a common sea.” I agree with both statements even though they’re mutually exclusive, don’t you? Niels Bohr once said, “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” Interesting bit of trivia: Niels Bohr wasn’t a pantywaist philosopher; he was a physicist who won the Nobel Prize.  There are Laws of Reality, it seems, that are reliable across all disciplines and specialties. I believe this equal-but-opposite Law of Duality to be among them. Actio et Reactio. “If a force acts upon a body, then an equal and opposite force must act upon another body.” – Isaac Newton The bodies involved in today’s discussion are (1.) you, and (2.) the people around you. Each of us is an island surrounded by land; an individual within a society. To the degree that you align yourself with Groupthink you trap yourself “inside the box” of Traditional Wisdom. To the degree that you isolate yourself from Groupthink you trap yourself within your own limitations as you ignore the experience of others. Wisdom is to bring the best of the past forward. Why reinvent the wheel? Wisdom is to escape the shackles of the past and embrace an entirely new perspective. “Think outside the box.” Actio et Reactio. Male and Female. Proton and electron. Left and Right. Which of these is wrong? If you can wrap your mind around this Law of Duality, you will have a gained a priceless tool in problem solving: we too often trap ourselves by labeling things as either “good” or “bad,” refusing to consider that the opposite might also be true. Few things are good or bad of themselves.In the words of Buckminster Fuller, “Don’t fight forces, use them.”What “bad” forces are you facing today? Aim them for your good.Roy H. Williams

A brief summary of this episode

I’m going to explain a sophisticated ad-writing technique to you today, but I have confidence you’ll understand it perfectly.Learn to incorporate it into your writing and your ads will produce better results, generate more comments and make people smile.Tight-asses will criticize you, of course, but hey, they’re tight-asses.We’ll begin with a couple of examples from a flyer I edited recently for a fish market that donated $500 to help finish the tower at Wizard Academy. The flyer offered a complete fish dinner for 4 for just 39.95, including gourmet salads and side dishes. When I finished my revision, the last 2 points made at the end of the meal description were these: Fresh-baked homemade bread.(Be sure you’re sitting down when you take your first bite. This bread is so amazing that people have been known to pass out from the sheer wonderfulness of it.) You got questions? We got Answers,and much better fish than you’ll find at the grocery store. No pesticides, No growth hormones, No color added. Fish so healthy you’ll live forever. The left hemisphere of the brain wants facts, details, descriptions and benefits. Lefty is all about sequential logic and deductive reasoning. Lefty looks for loopholes and discrepancies and is full of doubt. But the right hemisphere cares for none of that. The right half of the brain is where fantasy lives. And Righty doesn’t know fact from fiction.If you merely exaggerate, your customer’s left brain will shoot your claims full of holes. But if you go beyond mere exaggeration – so far beyond it that the left brain knows you’re just clowning – the right brain will happily embrace your glowing fantasy in all its positive glory. This is the technique:Open with 2 or 3 quick jabs of fact: 1. “fresh-baked” 2. “homemade bread” Then hit the right brain with everything you’ve got: “Be sure you’re sitting down when you take your first bite. This bread is so amazing that people have been known to pass out from the sheer wonderfulness of it.”Again, 2 or 3 quick jabs of fact:1. No pesticides, 2. No growth hormones, 3. No color added. Then electrify Righty with an impossible dream: “Fish so healthy you’ll live forever.” Yes, we’re speaking to the unconscious. We don’t need the customer to believe our silly, over-the-top promise. They don’t even have to think it’s cute. All they have to do is hear it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is deep branding. One last benefit of this technique is that Right Hooks often become “word flags” that are repeated by smiling customers. As they place their orders, they’re likely to say, “Make sure you give me some of that bread that makes you pass out!” And as they lift their fish dinners off the counter and turn to leave the store, they’re likely to smile again and say, “Fish so healthy you’ll live forever.” You gotta love it when customers quote memorable lines from your ads.Anyone who has been in advertising longer than 10 minutes knows that saying, “Mention this ad and receive 10 percent off,” doesn’t work. My theories are: 1. It makes people feel like Oliver Twist asking for another bowl of porridge. 2. Customers fear they’re going to mention the ad and some mouth-breathing employee is going to say, “What ad?” If they answer, “The ad that says I get ten percent off for mentioning it,” they risk Mouth Breather saying with a snort and a sneer, “Nice try.” Or worse, MB throws his head back and shouts across the store, “Ralphy! Do you know anything about an ad that says this guy gets ten percent off?”Play it safe. Plant a word flag with a Right Hook. Customers mention word flags because it’s fun; a moment of friendly connection that’s guaranteed to make 3 people smile: 1. The witty customer who repeats the line.2. The happy advertiser who hears it, and3. The above-average writer who wrote it. Be that above-average writer. Roy H. Williams

Life is a journey on water. We spend our lives floating between the sunlit scenery of the conscious mind and the shadowy depths of the unconscious below. Dr. Richard D. Grant tells us our relationship to the unconscious is exactly our relationship to water.1. We need it by the cupful to survive.2. A plunge into it is refreshing. (Art speaks to the unconscious.)3. Stay under too long and we’ll drown. (A psychotic break.)4. There are monsters in the deep.When we talked about How to Spot a Wiener Dog a couple of weeks ago, you may recall that I said every product, service or idea has:1. Limiting Factors – (factors that limit it. Impediments.)2. Defining Characteristics – (characteristics that define it. Brand essence.)The same is true of you and me. You and I have Limiting Factors and Defining Characteristics.Drifters on the ocean of life define themselves by their circumstances. Pushed here and there by the winds and waves of chance, their mantra is, “whatever.”Surfers on the ocean of life define themselves by their activities. Riding the swells this way and that, they dream of the perfect wave.Drowners in the ocean of life define themselves by their limiting factors. Sad and mournful, they are professional victims, the walking wounded, an army that never heals.Navigators sailing happily on the ocean of life define themselves by their commitments. Navigators know exactly what they’re trying to make happen and they’re willing to pay the price.Do you know what you’re trying to make happen? Are you willing to pay the price?Lorian Hemingway chose not to drown in life’s ocean. In her marvelous book, Walk on Water, she speaks of childhood loneliness and a hollow stepfather who abused her alcoholic mother. But Lorian chose not to let these limiting factors become her defining characteristics. She chose instead to admire the toothless but resilient old black woman, Catfish, who cooked hamburgers at the café. Lorian was also shaped by encounters with her mother’s sister, Freda:“At the age of thirty-five Freda had had a mastectomy. The bow and arrow was her therapy, to strengthen what was left of her chest muscles. Her body had been perfect, a sculptor’s model, and she’d worn her summer shirts tied up high under her breasts, braless most of the time. She still wore her shirts knotted at the rib cage, but now they were men’s cotton pajama tops, the material thicker so you could not see through; but often when she bent forward I could see the scarred bony place where the breast had been. I never knew if she was bitter for the loss, if she stared at the deformity in the mirror and wished for a time when she’d been whole. She never said. I never asked. She was not a woman martyred by tragedy, nor was she at all acquainted with self-pity…”“Freda was a dazzle, a virtual watercolor of a woman whose moods and mannerisms were as electric as her wild black hair. Her grin alone, a flash of Ipana-white teeth, head tossed back, stopped men in their tracks, delayed them in traffic, and threatened their wives so completely even the milkman was not allowed to deliver at Freda’s house…”“She’d tried once to kill my stepfather, whom she’d always referred to by his first and last names, Bill McClain, the two words run together in her odd accent so it came out ‘Bimicain,’ sounding like a fungal cream.”– Lorian Hemingway, Walk on Water, p. 38-39Limiting factors are outside you.Defining characteristics are within.Catfish and Freda taught Lorian Hemingway not to swallow her limiting factors.Has your self-image been damaged by things you did not choose? Have you internalized your limiting factors? Spit them out. Ceremoniously and with contempt. Spit them out. Limiting factors can be fought or ignored but they should never be accepted. To accept them is to move them inside you.I’m not uneducated. Uneducated people are dull. I simply chose not to go to college.I’m not a bald guy. Bald guys are pitiable. I’m just a guy who has no hair.And I’m certainly not scruffy and poorly dressed. I’m a man whose mind is filled with things other than his personal appearance. The fact that this makes me look like a homeless beggar is nothing more than a meaningless coincidence.I am deeply committed to my wife, astoundingly loyal to my friends and surprisingly dangerous to my enemies. See how easy it is to choose your identity?You alone decide who you will be.What have you decided?Roy H. Williams