Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

“Hello ladies. Look at your man. Now back to me. Now back at your man. Now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me. But if he stopped using lady-scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me. Look down. Back up. Where are you? You’re on a boat with the man your man could smell like. What’s in your hand? Back at me. I have it. It’s an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love. Look again. The tickets are now diamonds. Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady. I’m on a horse.” Much has been made of the new TV ad from Old Spice, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” Yes, its seamless one-shot videography and old-school stage effects are impressive and I’m certain the oyster in his hand is supposed to trigger unconscious sexual appetite, especially when its location is invaded by a massive, Old Spice cylinder that rises slowly upward.But these are not the things that captivate us. Impressive special effects and hidden sexual triggers are everywhere, no big deal.That script, however, is a big deal. It’s fabulous.I’m going to pause for a moment to applaud the writer of that ad.Okay, I’m back now. (And yes, I really did quit typing and applaud.)The magic of the Old Spice script is hidden in plain sight; imperative voice is the sound of command: “Look at your man. Now back to me.” Swim to Kansas. Walk your dog. Kick a can. Lead the imagination. Don’t be ignored. Write imperative voice.Imperative:1.  Expressing a command or plea.2. Having the power or authority to command or control.3. Impossible to deter or evade; pressing.Do it. Open with a 3-word sentence. Make the first word a verb. Prepare to be amazed. Imperative voice gets attention.Lift the receiver. Dial the number. Two nine five, fifty-seven hundred. Kristin will answer. Make a donation. Finish the tower. Attend a class. Go home smiling. Make big money.The area code is 512.I shared all this with my partners during a 2-day training session last month. Tim Miles, a brilliant ad writer with so many clients that he no longer accepts new ones – ka-ching – sent me the following email a few days later:Subject: Short Sentences Rock!Dude,That short, impactful sentence exercise we did last week? I used it to write lines for an ad that started Monday. We saw an immediate increase in the number of generated leads. Seriously – BANG like a gun.Thanks for the technique.TimHere’s a 10-second example:Swim to Kansas. Forget the water. The arms of the propeller on your Piper Meridian will move you quickly, safely and in powerful style. Swim the grand ocean… of the sky.These are the keys:1. Short sentences.   Four words are okay. Three are better. Two rock.2. Open with verbs.   Walk. Sing. Wiggle. Kick. Dance. Jump. Swim. Lift.3. Imperative voice.   Tight. Taut. Command.This week’s memo is short.       I’m on a horse.Roy H. Williams

A fortress protects you and makes you feel safe. A strongly held belief is a fortress. It protects your view of reality. You defend your fortress when you feel it’s under attack.But is every strongly held belief true?The sincerity of the believer does not determine the truth of the belief.Don’t panic, I’m not attacking your fortresses. I have no idea what you believe but I do know you have 4 categories of beliefs:1. Beliefs about GodIs he there or not? Does he care or not? Has he spoken to us or not? Is the future written or do you have free will? You have a belief.2. Beliefs about SelfAre you essentially good or basically bad? Are you broken or whole? Do you matter? You have a belief.3. Beliefs about OthersDo others give to you or take from you? Can they be trusted? What do you mean to them? You have a belief.4. Beliefs about CircumstancesDo you shape your circumstances or do they shape you? Will they get better or grow worse? What do you really deserve? You have a belief.Is there a chancethat one of your beliefs is wrongand your fortress has become a prison?I’m not a motivational speaker. I’m a business consultant. Stay with me.Frances Frei of Harvard Business School says you cannot change a person’s behavior until you change their beliefs. I agree with her.Feelings are the products of actions.Actions are the products of beliefs.Ms. Frei teaches business owners how to change the behavior of employees by changing what employees believe.I teach how to change the behavior of customers by changing what customers believe. But in each instance, the first change of belief must happen in the heart of the business owner.Are you up for it?Roy H. Williams

I’m always stunned, slack-jawed, big-eyed and stupid when a person chooses to do what obviously won’t work. I stand there in a daze, awed by the fact that Jesus can love such idiots as the human race. Maybe I overreact.My first big-eyed moment happened when I was 21 years old. I was a sales rep in a radio station back before we learned to call ourselves Account Executives. Yes, I’m talking about the really old days. Cell phones didn’t exist. If you needed to make a call, you dug in your pocket for a quarter and looked around for a phone booth. There were no such things as CD players or the internet. The only way for the public to hear new music was on the radio.Radio stations played black vinyl circles with grooves cut into them. A diamond needle on a mechanical arm would ride the groove and its vibrations are what created the music. You’ve probably seen this on the Flintstones.My desk at the radio station faced a window that looked into the parking lot. About once a week I’d see a band show up in their finest show-clothes and walk toward our door with hope shining from their faces like Christmas morning. The leader would carry the band’s privately produced album like it was the Ark of the Covenant, a disc with the power to spin them into superstars at thirty-three and a third revolutions per minute.They imagined themselves greeted by a receptionist with a beaming smile. “My!” she would say, “You’re obviously an important, up-and-coming band. I can tell by your impressive show-clothes. Let me get the person in charge of the radio station so he can officially discover you.”Curious and hopeful, I'd always walk down the hallway to see their pitch.Our receptionist was as polished as a teller in a drive-thru bank. You could almost see the bulletproof glass. “I’m sorry but he can’t see you right now… No, you’ll need to leave that with me. If he likes it he’ll give you a call… Yes, I promise I’ll give it to him personally.”And that would be the end of it.Unless… I liked these people. In those rare cases I would follow them into the parking lot and say, “Did you bring another one of those with you?”In a wink I was surrounded by wide eyes and white teeth. Christmas morning had returned and I was Santa Claus. It was scary. “Do you work for Love 98 FM?” they’d ask.“No, I work for their AM sister station.”An album would magically appear in my hands and a voice would say, “What’s your format? We do all kinds of music. We’ve got slow songs, fast songs, rock songs, country songs, ballads, you name it. What kind of music do you play?”“My station doesn’t play music but I can still help you.”Disappointed and suspicious they would look at me as if Santa had said, “I didn’t bring you any toys this year.”And then I would tell them how to get the attention of every radio station in America.“The person who chooses the music is called the Program Director. And all along the baseboard of his office are stacked at least 2,000 unsolicited record albums he plans to evaluate as soon as he has time. Each album has 10 songs. Finding a hit in that pile of 20,000 songs will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. And to make matters worse, privately produced albums have covers that always look a little bit homemade. This creates an expectation of low-budget sound. And guess what? That’s exactly what he hears when he drops the needle. Ten seconds into the first song, he lifts the needle and the party’s over. The album goes back into the jacket, never to be seen again.”Now they’re looking at Santa like he kicked their puppy.I had been told I lacked people skills but I plunged ahead, “Unsolicited albums are added to the stack along the baseboard but 45 RPM singles get a needle dropped on them immediately, especially when they’ve got the same song on both sides. A 45 RPM single says to the Program Director, ‘Somebody really believes in this song.’ And singles are packaged in plain paper sleeves so there’s no cover art to prejudice his opinion.”I’m doing this because I want to help these people, remember? So I’d always tell them, “Pick your best song and pull out all the stops. Hire an arranger and a producer. Pay studio musicians to play those little accent parts that turn good songs into great ones. A high-budget single costs less money to produce than a low-budget album.”We’d stand there in awkward silence until one of them broke the stillness. “You’re an idiot,” the voice would say, “With an album we’ve got 10 chances to get airplay but with a single we’ve only got one chance.” And then they’d climb in the van and drive away while I stood there in the parking lot, dumbfounded.Not once did they ever say, “Wow. Thanks for caring enough to share that with us.”I knew the bands were delusional. I just never realized that I was, too.Strangely, I never quit advising people. In fact, I made a career of it.But a good friend told me something that has saved everyone a lot of pain. “Unsolicited advice is abuse,” he said. So I no longer offer unsolicited advice.And just to play it safe, I no longer try to help musicians.Roy H. Williams

And How Will You Measure Progress?Violent crime in America declined each year from 1993 to 2004. Then just about the time the iPod became popular in 2005, violent crime began trending upward.CONCLUSION: iPods cause violent crime. Or at least that was the conclusion of a 2007 report published by The Urban Institute, a research organization based in Washington. (I swear I’m not making this up.)Bad advertising strategies stem from just such logic: “Since one event precedes another, the first event must be the cause of the second.” This fallacy of logic is so common it has a Latin name: Post hoc, ergo, propter hoc, “after this, therefore, because of this,” referring to the mistaken belief that temporal succession implies a causal relation.Most business owners look around, observe their circumstances and then try to make sense of it all. Their thoughts and plans are guided by what they see. But any scientist will tell you correlation and causation are not the same thing.Don’t tell me what you see. Tell me what you want to see. “What are you trying to make happen? And how will you measure progress?” When I ask these questions, most business owners stammer, stutter and hedge, then change the subject by asking a question of their own.I usually ignore that question and ask, “How am I supposed to help you make something happen when you can’t tell me what it is?”Sigh.“When you don’t know where you’re going,any road will get you there.”– Cheshire Cat, Alice in WonderlandHow many of your actions are actually reactions triggered by circumstances? (Please know that I am as guilty of this as the rest of you.) Are we allowing the merely urgent to set aside the truly important?Do you know what you’re trying to make happen? Can you tell me exactly how you plan to measure progress? The shortest distance from Point A to Point B is always a straight line. The best marketing strategies begin by drawing a straight line from Where We Are Today to Where We’d Like To Be Tomorrow.You can’t navigate a ship by studying the wind and waves. Fix your gaze on your goal, a non-negotiable, fixed position that can never change. Let that be your lighthouse, your reference point, your North Star.No stack of dollars can be your lighthouse. Dollars are merely a byproduct. Money fails as a compass because it can be found in every direction. Guiding directives and unifying principles are never merely financial.Where do you want to be tomorrow?Now point to your North Star so that I can see it, too.Good. Now let’s get started.Roy H. Williams

Moses was 40 years old when he tried to lead Israel out of Egypt by the strength of his own arm. He failed, then ran from the anger of Pharaoh like a little girl. But who can blame him for trying? He was, after all, the only Israelite who lived in the palace under the protection of Pharaoh’s daughter: “I’m unique. I’m special. I was born for this.”Moses at 40 was brash, confident, full of himself; the kind of leader who would stand on the deck of an aircraft carrier, look into the lens of a TV camera and say, “Mission accomplished.”But Moses at 80 was a completely different man. In the book of Numbers we read, “Now the man Moses was very meek, the most humble man on the face of the whole earth.” Having lived 40 years as a shepherd on the backside of the desert, Moses had lost his hubris and developed a speech impediment.Remember how many years the unbelieving Israelites had to wander in the desert before they became a completely different people? Bingo. 40 years.That phrase – “40 years” – appears 25 times in the Bible and in virtually every instance it refers to a window of transformative change. Do we in fact become a different people every 40 years?William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote a book about this 40-year phenomenon in 1991. Those authors never mention the Bible but focus instead on the historical record of Western society from 1584 to the present. That book, Generations, asserts that we go through a series of 4, approximately 20-year cycles or “generations” in a predictable order. (Think of a generation not as birth cohorts but as life cohorts. Everyone alive in a society is part of the same generation in that moment.)Here’s how those 20-year cycles look when overlaid onto the story of Moses.1. Idealist, marked by infatuation,ending with full-of-himself Moses at 40,“I’m special.” 1963-19832. Reactive, marked by disillusionment,ending with Moses at 60 after 20 years in the desert,“I’m searching for something better.” 1983-20033. Civic, marked by a power struggle,ending with burning-bush/10 Plagues Moses at 80,“I’m just a regular person trying to make it through the day.” 2003-2023 (and 1923-1943)4. Adaptive, marked by reluctant acceptance,ending with Israel-in-the-wilderness Moses at 100, “I’m part of a team on a journey.” 2023-2043 (and 1943 to 1963) (In the middle of the last Adaptive cycle (1943-1963) a friend of Jack Kerouac, the poet John Clellon Holmes wrote, “You know, everyone I know is kind of furtive, kind of beat…” – Go, (1952) And from that Beat generation came the beatniks who inspired the idealist hippies of the 1960’s.)When the cycle has gone full circle it returns to where it began:1. Idealistending with Moses at 120, full of himself again, striking the rock to bring water instead of speaking to it as God had instructed. 2043-2063Please note that each of these 20-year cycles is attended by sparkle and darkness. None of them is inherently better than the others.Society hungers for individuality and freedom during the upswing of an Idealist cycle. Nothing wrong with that. But we always take a good thing too far. What begins as a beautiful dream of self-discovery (1963) ends as hollow, phony posing (1983.) And from that shining disco of lights and glitter our hunger falls back, feather-like, toward what we left behind: working together for the common good.But this beautiful dream of working together to build a better tomorrow slowly hardens into duty, obligation and sacrifice. We become bound by rules and the expectations of others.And we grow weary.Finally, we begin to move toward what we left behind: individuality and freedom of expression.“If you look at the history of youth cultural movements, they tend to go one of two ways. One is in the direction of individual expression and creativity; the best example is the '60s. The other way is to lose themselves in the collective, binding themselves into a gang…” – Jaron LanierThe declining Idealist pendulum reached the bottom of its arc in 2003, right on schedule. We’re now in our 7th year of a new Civic cycle, “losing ourselves in the collective, binding ourselves into a gang,” as the pendulum swings toward another Civic zenith in 2023.On the sunny side of a Civic upswing are transparency, volunteerism and authenticity. But in the dark you’ll find smug self-righteousness, legalism and bureaucracy.If history can be trusted as a guide, we’re now entering the time of a power struggle. Everywhere it will be “us” versus “them.” And both sides will believe they work purely for the common good. “God is clearly on OUR side.”“You don’t care enough about global warming,or free enterprise,or civil liberties,or the rights of the unborn,or the downtrodden in Tibet.You’re not committed to family valuesand you don’t recycle.You don’t support our troops.Frankly, we’re disappointed in you.You’re not doing your part.Shape up.”The coming zealot will want to make sure you’re doing your part for the team. You’ll be interrogated, evaluated and castigated. When you have capitulated, you’ll be authenticated, approximated and appropriated. In the end you’ll be assimilated.Or you can hide out at Wizard Academy. As society becomes more sharply divided, we’ll remain committed to the insanity of open-mindedness. We'll listen and hear and understand what both sides are trying to say. We'll see things no one else notices.And we will use this knowledge to make a difference in our businesses and our communities.Come to Wizard Academy.You’re going to like it here.We know how to make moneyand we remember how to have fun.Roy H. Williams

Even When They're WrongChristian Jürgensen Thomsen was a young man interested in archaeology so when the Danish government of 1816 needed someone to climb into the attic of Copenhagen’s Trinitatis Church and sort through the rubble that had collected there, Thomsen was their man.Upon entering the attic, Thomsen reported random items in “dust and disorganized disarray, hidden away in chests and baskets, among bits of material and paper. It was total chaos.” Sounds like my attic. Yours too, I’ll bet.The first thing young Christian Jürgensen Thomsen did was to organize the antiquities according to their material: stone in one pile, bronze in another, iron in a third. When the public was invited to an exhibition in that same church loft in 1819, this was the first time the false division of the past into three “ages” was ever used.“So familiar has Thomsen’s tripartite division of the past into a Stone, a Bronze and an Iron age become, so complete the authority it has acquired, that we easily forget its comparatively recent vintage and attribute to it a degree of reality that it scarcely has a right to.” – Historian Robert FergusonFerguson says “Stone Age,” “Bronze Age” and “Iron Age” are false labels adopted by people looking for categories where none exist. Likewise, I believe “Baby Boomer,” “Gen-Xer” and “Millennial” to be false labels.People are not imprinted at birth with values systems they carry throughout their lives.Search the phrase “Attributes of Baby Boomers” and you’ll read some truly idiotic assertions that have come to be widely believed, such as, “People born between 1946 and 1955 are experimental, value individualism and are free spirited. People born between 1956 and 1964 are less optimistic, distrust the government and are generally cynical.”- WikipediaStone, bronze and iron refer not to time periods but to materials. Likewise, Baby Boomer, Gen-X and Millennial refer not to people born during a certain window of years but to values systems that were popular for a while in our society.New systems of values are first adopted by the youth. Later, when those values become mainstream and are embraced by the rest of society, the values continue to be associated with the birth cohorts that first embraced them.In truth, the pendulum of Western society swings in a very predictable 40-year arc and all of us are carried along with it. When our societal pendulum is moving toward individuality and self-expression we live in a “Me generation.” When we’re swinging away from these virtues and begin working together for the common good, we live in a “We generation.” The move from one extreme to the other takes 40 years.We’ve recently seen our pendulum reach the bottom of its arc (2003) as we shifted from “Me” back to “We.”Next Monday I’ll tell you exactly what you can expect from the coming decade.Roy H. Williams

Frankly, I Cheat. You Can, Too.I became an advertising salesman so I could buy groceries. A college dropout with no financial safety net, I installed aluminum guttering on houses during the day and changed reel-to-reel tapes in an automated radio station at night. Our format was radio preachers who needed your money to pay for the airtime we sold them.We were the number 23 station in a city of 23 stations. Our best ratings book showed us with a cumulative weekly audience of 18,000 people in a city of 1.3 million. We had between 400 and 800 people listening at any given moment. That sounded like a lot of people to me. One day I asked the manager why our station played no ads.“You think you could sell some ads?” he asked.I nodded like a bobblehead doll.“Do it,” he said as he walked away.I asked the back of his head how much I should charge.“Whatever you can get,” he answered, without ever looking back.When you sell ads on the tiniest station in town, you don’t compete with the other stations, you sell only those businesses with too little money to afford anyone else. In fact, the money my clients gave me every month was usually all the cash they had. If my ads didn’t work, I’d have groceries in my pantry but my clients wouldn’t. A man learns fast in that environment.The first thing I learned is that people are bored by advertising for the same reason they’re bored by anything else: lack of relevance.“If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.”- Emil CioranWhen ads are relevant, customers respond. Are your ads relevant, or are they answering questions no one is asking?My job at the radio station paid $3.50 an hour plus 15 percent commission. Within 3 years I was making about $6,000 a month. That was doctor/lawyer money 30 years ago.Strangely, I never made that many sales calls. Most of my clients called the station to ask if they could buy ads from me. Usually, a friend had told them how much money they were making as a result of the ads I was writing and they wanted in on the action.“What does it cost?” they'd ask. These people didn't care about the radio station or its format. They just wanted to grow their businesses.When the owners of my radio station sold it for 11 times what they paid for it, I decided I’d rather become a self-employed ad consultant than move to Los Angeles and become a station manager for them.The second thing I had learned, you see, is that good ads work no matter how they’re delivered. I saw my ads work on virtually every radio and TV station in the city and with tiny variations these same ads performed as direct mail letters and fax machine blasts.The secret wasn’t in reaching the right people. The secret was in crafting a message that would be relevant to the public.My ads worked because I cheated: I insisted my clients let me deliver a message guaranteed to move the needle on the “Who Cares?” meter.Ads fail when no one cares.An extremely common mistake is to believe that discounting the price of a product is guaranteed to win the interest of the public. But I've seen that strategy fail dozens of times. A half-price turd is still a turd.When a client belligerently demanded that I write some magic words to help him sell a load of crap that no one in their right mind would ever want to buy, I looked down at the ground, dropped a wad of spit on the toe of his shoe, then looked up into his face and said, “No.”Yes, it was a rude and vulgar thing to do but I can assure you it shortened the argument. Word of my little stunt spread. Some saw it as the action of an egotistical lunatic. It’s possible these people were right. But others saw it as the mark of a young man who had the courage of his convictions. These people may have been right, too.Every business owner is on the inside, looking out, and what they see is entirely different from what their customers see. Customers are on the outside, looking in.Great ad writers remain on the outside, looking in. They are advocates, not of the business owner, but of the business owner’s customer. This gives them their great advantage.Do you have the courage to learn what your company looks like from the outside, looking in? Would you like to know what your customer is thinking?Twice a year I gather my Wizard of Ads partners from around the world for 2 days of continuing education in Austin, Texas. This year we’re looking for 7 business owners willing to be guinea pigs for us on February 25, the second day of class. These selected business owners will be responsible for their own airfare and accommodations. Since this is not a Wizard Academy event, we can’t offer you a room in Engelbrecht House. Sorry.In return for your investment of time, travel costs and courage, you’ll receive 1 hour of focused attention from the brightest ad consultants on earth.If you own a business and are interested, email PaulBoomer@WizardOfAds.com or call Paul Boomer at (573) 268-4109. Please, no advertising professionals.I hope to see 7 owners of interesting businesses in Austin on February 25.It is good to be a guinea pig.Roy H. Williams

Guilty PleasureFebruary 1, 2010ListenAJanuary 27, 2010: It’s weird when you think about it: Apple releases the iPad just as Salinger breathes his last. It feels like the ending of a play.J.D. Salinger and Jack Kerouac were the tortured voices that led us into forbidden places in our minds. We followed them, spellbound, as they sauntered into dark rooms we would never have entered alone.Then Salinger’s Holden Caulfield shuffled onto the big screen as James Dean and gave us brooding angst in Rebel Without a Cause and Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty bopped onto the little screen as Maynard G. Krebs and gave us freedom of expression in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.America said, “The movie was good, but the book was better.”But America has since changed her mind. Today she says, “Out with the old literature!” that requires focused attention as you experience a story in the quiet of your mind. “In with the new literature!” that requires nothing from you but to sit, slack-jawed and drooling as flashing images enter your brain.Joseph Brodsky saw this day coming and tried to do something about it. When he was named Poet Laureate in 1991, Brodsky proposed a populist poetry initiative that might “turn this nation into an enlightened democracy… before literacy is replaced with videocy.”Methinks it may be too late, Joseph.The glittering iPad promises movies, TV shows and YouTube videos at our fingertips, 24 hours a day, wherever we happen to be. No need to carry a pill bottle. Just touch the screen and go unconscious. This tablet is electronic.Yes, I’ll buy one.Of course I will.And I will feel sad.Roy H. Williams

In 1969, spending time with your friends meant piling into a car and driving around.Every town had a strip called “the drag,” a place to see and be seen as you cruised back and forth at 20 miles an hour. It's how you made contact. And when you and your friends weren’t in your car, you were sitting on the hood of it in a parking lot, talking to the people sitting on the hood of the car next to yours.Did we shape our technology or did our technology shape us?Had you asked us in 1969 to describe our vision of 2009, we would have told you of flying cars, driverless cars and carburetors that would get 200 miles per gallon.If you told us the cars of 2009 would travel at the same speeds and get about the same gas mileage we were getting in 1969, we would have rolled our eyes and thought you a fool.Forty short years ago General Motors stood tall as one of the most powerful corporations on earth.Not one person in 1969 would have said,“In 2009 we’ll carry cordless telephones that will have TV screens in them and all the world’s knowledge will be at your fingertips because you’ll be connected to a thing called the worldwide web. And that TV screen will show you any movie and let you listen to any song, any time you want. And you’ll be able to tell it where you want to go and the screen will show you a map of how to get there. And as you travel, the map will continually update to show you where you are. The map will even talk to you and tell you where to turn. And there won’t be any long distance charges.”No American in 1969 would have predicted the iPhone because we were a nation on the move, obsessed with transportation. Then somewhere along the way we fell out of love with transportation and became obsessed with communication.But not quite in the way you think.In the January 18, 2010 issue of Time magazine, Joel Stein explains why people today are uninterested, not just in videophones, but in talking on the regular phone as well. “We want to TiVo our lives,” he says, “avoiding real time by texting or emailing people when we feel like it.”Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor who studies the social aspects of science and technology, says, “VideoSkype, which was the fantasy of our childhood, gets you back to sitting there and being available in that old-fashioned way. Our model of what it was to be present to each other, we thought we liked that. But it turns out that time-shifting is our most valued product. This new technology is about control. Emotional control and time control.”Again, are we shaping our technology or is our technology shaping us?Jaron Lanier, the internet guru who coined the term “Virtual Reality,” has become worried about the real reality we’re creating.Commenting on Lanier’s new book, You Are Not a Gadget, Michael Agger says that Lanier is asserting,“The Internet's long tail helps only the Amazons of the world, not the little guys and gals making songs, videos, and books. Wikipedia, a mediocre product of group writing, has become the intellectual backbone of the Web. And, most depressingly, all of us have been lumped into a ‘hive mind’ that every entrepreneur with a dollar and a dream is trying to parse for profit.”In essence, Jaron Lanier believes that Web 2.0 technologies are based on the assumption that an aggregator of content (Google) is more important than an actual creator of content. Additionally, the implied belief of Web 2.0 technologies is that a million men are wiser than one man.But “individual genius” is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men.Which do you believe?And by the way, are you shaping your technology? Or is your technology shaping you?When's the last time you had an extended, face-to-face conversation with someone who was important enough to you that you turned your cell phone completely off, rather than just setting it to vibrate so you could check to see if the caller was important enough to interrupt the conversation?Something to think about.Roy H. Williams

Today's memo is a long oneBut worth reading if you want to make money.If you knew it was there, they wouldn’t call it a blind spot.Hidden within your blind spot is your limiting factor, the thing that holds you back and limits your success.Find your blind spot and stare your limiting factor in the face. Acknowledge the reality of it. Then decide whether or not you want to overcome it.*That’s right. It’s entirely possible that your blind spot – and within it your limiting factor – is simply an extension of your fundamental worldview.You may already know your worldview is wrong but you’d rather continue being wrong – and suffer the consequences – than change it.I can respect that. I have no problem with a person who is willing to pay the price for their self-indulgence. What I can’t respect is:     1.    a person who is wrong and can’t admit it.     2.    a person who makes a choice and then whines about the price of it.I don’t want to get all sappy and personal with you, so let’s move this discussion to the marketplace. Blind spots and limiting factors are easily observed in business.Here are the most common limiting factors hidden within the blind spots of business owners:    1.    Market Opportunity(A.) Opportunity is staring you in the face and you can’t see it. SOLUTION: Open your eyes.(B.) You’ve overestimated the potential of your trade area. Consequently, you’re bumping your head on the low, glass ceiling of a small population. SOLUTION: (a.) Expand your product offering or (b.) open in a second trade area.If you’re doing okay but have been looking for better ways to target the demographic and psychographic profile of “your customer” and these efforts haven’t been paying off, your limiting factor is almost certainly(1.) Market Opportunity or(2.) Product Appeal. Keep reading. 2.    Product Appeal(A.) Your product is flawed and you can’t see it. SOLUTION: Find someone who has the courage to tell you the truth. Then correct the problem they show you. Don’t live in denial.(B.) Your product has a characteristic whose appeal you’ve underestimated. SOLUTION: Promote the newfound characteristic.EXAMPLE: My partner Peter Nevland recently bumped into the owner of a bottled water service who asked him for some free advice. Peter asked, “Why should the customer of another water service switch to yours?”“We’re locally owned.” “Ten percent of our profits go to charity,” blah, blah, blah.Peter was unimpressed.Exasperated and grasping at straws, the man mentioned his water had recently been voted “Best Tasting” by the readers of an obscure, local business journal.“Why do you think you won?”The man hung his head, “We cheat.”“How?”“Our water is saturated with dissolved oxygen, twice the amount found in regular water.”“What does that do?”“Dissolved oxygen is what makes water taste good. It’s why cold water tastes better than warm water. Cold water contains more dissolved oxygen.”“You’re saying your room temperature water tastes like cold water?”The man nodded his head.“Do you always saturate your water with dissolved oxygen?”“Yes, why do you ask?”SAD ENDING: Peter was unable to convince the man to promote his better tasting water with dissolved oxygen. I swear I’m not making this up. The man remained convinced his ads needed to say, “We’re locally owned and give ten percent of our profits to charity.”3.    Staff Competence(A.) Your front-line people see opportunities and solutions you don’t see. You limit your success by not listening to your people. SOLUTION: Listen to them.(B.) Your people aren’t nearly as smart as you think. You keep listening to them and they’re wrong, but dammit, they’re enthusiastic and they make sense and they’re just so sincere! SOLUTION: Make some executive decisions. Be the leader. Tell your employees what you want. If they can’t get on board with it, let them swim in the cold waters of unemployment. (If that suggestion horrifies you, then it’s almost certainly your limiting factor.)4.    Message Clarity(A.) You understand the benefits of your product but have been unable to communicate them persuasively to the public. SOLUTION: Hire an experienced ad writer with a history of success. (I know a lot of writers like Peter Nevland. You can meet them and read their stuff at AmericanSmallBusiness.com.)(B.) You don’t understand how the public views your product category. Consequently, your ads are irrelevant to them. EXAMPLE: You’ve been saying, “We guarantee our work” when your customer’s real anxiety is, “Will these people show up on time or will I have to wait around all day?” SOLUTION: Speak to what the customer actually cares about.5.    Message Delivery (A.) You have a song to sing, you just haven’t been singing it. (In other words you haven’t been advertising.) SOLUTION: Sing, little bird, sing!(B.) You know who would be interested in your product, you just can’t figure out how to reach them.EXAMPLE: You sell engagement rings and want to reach people who are about to get engaged, or you sell houses and want to reach people who are about to go house shopping.SOLUTION: (a.) You can reach the online crowd with Google Adwords and/or use Search Engine Optimization to lift your website to the first page of search engine results. (I have 7 partners who specialize in this. Contact them through their posts at AmericanSmallBusiness.com.) (b.) Reach the general population with a memorable message using mass media and then wait for them, or one of their circle, to need what you sell. Become the solution people think of immediately and feel the best about. Build your reputation with ads that have a high Impact Quotient.6.    Competitor Strength (A.) Your category has a strong leader and it isn’t you. SOLUTION: Use the leader’s reputation like a basketball backboard. Connect yourself to them through indirect acknowledgment.EXAMPLE: Avis came out of nowhere to become a major contender to Hertz with the claim, “We’re Number Two. We Try Harder.” Burger King separated themselves from McDonald’s with the statement, “Have it your way at Burger King.” This statement would have made no sense if the public had not been acutely aware that McDonald’s made all their burgers the same.(B.) Your category has never had a leader because it’s a category that makes people yawn. SOLUTION: Say something memorable. Do something ridiculous. Push far enough beyond the norm to get criticized. Just make sure they spell your name right. Choose who to lose as a potential customer. You can’t have insiders without having outsiders.It’s not what you include, but what you exclude that defines you.How are you defining yourself?Most people limit themselves because of a blind spot. The things they exclude are excluded unconsciously.The purpose of my note to you today has been merely to suggest that you choose consciously, rather than unconsciously, what you will exclude from 1. your business, 2. your reality, 3. your life.Open your eyes. Look in the mirror. Make some choices. The clock is ticking.Roy H. Williams