Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Back when I was an advertising salesman, business owners would often dismiss me by saying, “I believe in word-of-mouth.” Then with a smug, self-satisfied look, they’d say it again, as though the words made them feel fine and righteous. “Word of mouth is the best form of advertising.”I almost opened The Word-of-Mouth Advertising Agency in 1984. My plan was to hire people to ride up and down in elevators of tall buildings and say things like, “Have you tried that new café over on Third Street? I hear it’s really good.”My fantasy response was to say to business owners, “You believe in word-of-mouth? Great! That’s what I sell!”Today you can invest in a form of quasi-advertising similar to my elevator plan. We hear about it everywhere we go: “Social media is the new marketing.”But it isn't true.Lest you think me out of touch, let me remind you that I accurately predicted the impact of social media in my “40-Year Pendulum of Society” presentation in December 2003, long before Facebook, MySpace and Twitter came into being. In January, 2004, I made the same presentation in Stockholm, Sweden, to the great advertising agencies of Europe. From there I took it to Sydney, Australia, then on to Canada and the United States.Social media is not “the new marketing.”Now before you get all worked up and send me an email explaining why you respectfully disagree, give me a moment to share my definitions for 3 commonly used terms: (I've learned over the years that many disagreements revolve around the lack of any definition of terms.)1. Advertising is what you buy from the sales department of any media.2. Public Relations are what you get for free from the news department of any media.3. Social media is word-of-mouth empowered by internet and cell phone technologies.(Based on these definitions, the purchase of targeted ads on Facebook would be classified as advertising, not as social media.)REUTERS – Oct 8, 2009: “Three-quarters of small businesses say they have not found sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn helpful for generating business leads or expanding business in the past year, according to a survey conducted for Citibank Small Business of 500 U.S. businesses with fewer than 100 employees.”If you haven't yet invested a few hundred hours in a social media campaign for your business, let REUTERS and me save you the time: Three-quarters of the businesses who have tried it were disappointed in the results.Are there business examples of success using social media? Of course there are:1. Using Twitter, businesses are building lists of bargain hunters who want to be the first to know about new offerings. Announce a highly desirable product at a highly desirable price – or free – and you can draw quite a crowd. But that’s always been true, hasn’t it?2. Barack Obama’s skillful use of social media helped propel him to the presidency. His secret? From the beginnings of their campaigns, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were both sending tweets on Twitter. The difference is that when Obama had 44,596 subscribers following his tweets, he was following 46,252 others. Hillary was following no one. Imagine how those 46,252 people felt: “Hillary Clinton wants me to hear her opinions. Barack Obama wants to hear my opinions.”3. Feasibility studies are hugely enhanced by social media. A single question, “Who likes the flavor of bacon?” resulted in 35,000 possible customers, 10,000 inquiries and 3,500 sales of Bacon Salt.4. Entertainment has always triggered word-of-mouth. People will stand in the lobby and text their opinions to their friends before ever leaving the theater. Hollywood studios are realizing that opening day is the only day that can be helped by advertising. After that, the movie's future is in the hands of the viewers. Are you in the entertainment business?Bottom Line:1.   Not every business is equally suited to leverage social media.2.   Many businesses are jumping onto the social media bandwagon without understanding the limitations of the vehicle. 3.   Social media is not a replacement for advertising.4.   The most universal benefit of social media is that you can search your own company name (on Facebook, etc.) and find out what's being said about you.5.   The business benefits of social media often fall short of an acceptable return on the time invested.   6.   Create ecstatically happy customers and they’ll spread the word through social media. Create disgruntled customers and they’ll spread bad word even faster.7.   Focus your attention on your customers. Social media will take care of itself.Now go get ready for Christmas.Roy H. Williams

In 1869, Monet was painting at La Grenouillere when he realized that the color of an object is modified:1. by the light in which it is seen,2. by reflections from other objects, and3. by contrast with juxtaposed colors.Monet translated his observations into the glowing phenomenon we know as French Impressionism.Remember: “The color of an object is modified by the light in which it is seen.”Sunlight contains the full spectrum of visible light waves. When full-spectrum light falls on an object, the pigments in that object absorb (subtract) all the light waves except the ones you see. An orange appears orange because the orange light alone is not absorbed, but reflected back to your eyes.The primaries of Subtractive Color Theory (reflected light) are red, yellow and blue. This is useful when mixing paints, pigments and ink. CMYK is Cyan (blue) Magenta (red) Yellow (yellow) and K (black.)So why do televisions and computers have adjustments for red, green and blue? What happened to the yellow?AProjected light doesn’t use pigments, but creates color by adding light waves together. Red light and green light combine to make yellow light. Go figure.The primaries of Additive Color Theory are Red, Green and Blue. (Click the thumbnail of the RGB wheel to see enlarged RGB and CMYK color wheels along with a short, introductory video on color relationships.)Pennie and I met Nathan Bludworth while we were climbing a mountain of boxes at a wholesale electrical supply company whose owner had skipped town. If we could just figure out what we needed for the academy's new tower, we could buy it from the landlord for pennies on the dollar. But we had no idea what we needed.Noticing our confusion, Nathan – the only other customer in the place – said, “Do you guys need some help?”He looked friendly enough and he seemed to know what he was doing, so I blurted it out. “There's a certain kind of light above the tables at Houston's Restaurant that put a pool of light on each tabletop, but leave the chairs mostly in the dark. Those lights create an an amazing atmosphere we've never seen anywhere else. We're just trying to figure out how they did it.”Nathan smiled and stuck out his hand. “I'm Nathan Bludworth. I designed and installed the lights at Houston's.”Nathan Bludworth paints with light, just like Monet painted with color.The Color Rendering Index (CRI) measures color rendering from light sources with respect to natural sunlight. Natural sunlight equals 100 CRI, the best light available. So the closer the CRI number is to 100, the more closely colors will appear as they do in sunlight. Lights with the highest CRI numbers produce the clearest, most vibrant and natural-looking colors.Electric lights can vary in “color temperature” between 2,000 degrees Kelvin (warm) and 9,500 degrees Kelvin (cold.) Low-temperature lighting is progressively warmer (more red/yellow), while high-temperature lighting grows progressively colder (more blue). Natural sunlight – 100 CRI – is 5,000 degrees Kelvin.If the light contains no red wavelengths, the objects on which that light shines will not be able to reflect red back to your eyes…Monet was right. “The color of an object is modified by the light in which it is seen.”By using different bulbs – 2700 K, 3500 K, 5000 K and 6400 K – and shining them from different angles, Nathan Bludworth makes nature dance and glow and change colors as you move through it.Nathan is one of those people that Wizard Academy Cognoscenti call, “our brand of crazy.”You might meet Nathan during your next trip to Wizard Academy. If you're lucky, he'll teach you how to use light to give your customers whatever feelings you want them to have.Do we have the coolest business school in the world, or what?Roy H. Williams

Business midgets focus on profit margin, “I can sell these for double my cost!” But business giants focus on turn, “How many more would I sell if I lowered my price?”Retailers call it “inventory turn.” Restaurateurs call it “table turn.” Either way, it’s a measurement of how efficiently a business uses its assets.Inventory turn tells the retailer how many times he sold and replaced his inventory over a period of time. Table turn tells the restaurateur how many times he emptied and filled his restaurant during a single mealtime.Turn is Sales divided by Inventory.Bob and Samantha are competitors. Bob makes a 100 percent markup on everything he sells. Samantha adds only a 50 percent markup. Which of them has the better business?Your instincts tell you Bob makes more money but actually, it’s Samantha. Bob carries an average inventory of 6 million dollars and sells each of his items an average of once a year at twice the price he paid for it: 12 million dollars in sales with an annual gross profit of 6 million dollars. Bob “turned” his inventory once.Samantha carries an average inventory of just 1 million dollars. She sells and replaces each item an average of 12 times a year, adding only a 50 percent markup each time. Samantha does 18 million dollars in sales and her annual gross profit is 6 million dollars, exactly the same as Bob’s.But Samantha turned her inventory 12 times.Both retailers made 6 million dollars but Bob is slowly going broke. Samantha is quickly becoming rich and powerful.Bob invests 6 million to make a gross profit of 6 million a year. This means Bob has to make a 6 million dollar investment every time he wants to open a new store. And Bob’s inventory is getting out-of-date because he has to sit on it for a whole year before he can replace it. This problem compounds itself each year.Samantha invests just 1 million dollars to make 6 million. She can open a new store with just a million dollars invested in inventory. But wait, it gets better.Bob bought only 6 million dollars worth of product last year. Samantha bought 12 million. And Samantha is opening new stores. Lots of them. This is what makes Samantha powerful. Soon the suppliers will be charging Samantha lower prices than they charge Bob because Samantha is a much better customer. And the suppliers will give her 90 days to pay but Bob must continue paying immediately.Do you realize what just happened? Not only can Samantha open a new store with an investment of just 1 million dollars in inventory, she can sell that inventory for 1.5 million dollars each month for 3 months – putting a total of 4.5 million into her bank account – before she has to pay the first million dollars for the first month’s inventory. This leaves 3.5 million dollars sitting in Samantha’s bank account, allowing her to inventory 3 new stores, each of which will be able to fund 3 additional stores in just 90 days. Samantha has opened 12 stores in just 6 months. If she keeps it up, she’ll have 432 stores at the end of the year. And Samantha started with just 1 million dollars in inventory while Bob started with 6 million.Bob likes to boast that he offers “6 times the selection,” but the public knows Bob charges $100 for the same item Samantha sells for just $75.Care to make a guess how this is going to turn out?The moral of the story is this: you can’t get a high inventory turn without offering the public what they really want. In my opinion, the person who selects a company’s inventory is the most important person in that company. I could be wrong.But I don't think so.Roy H. Williams

Every life has a scoreboard and how you choose to keep score is up to you.How are you measuring success?I’ve known men and women who measure success by their ability to attract the opposite sex. You’ve met these people, too, haven’t you?Some people measure success by their ability to inflict pain in the lives of others. Bullies, vandals, website hackers, internet virus creators and bad policemen are tragic examples. The fact that they momentarily control our time, emotions and energy gives them a perverted sense of power. I know of no cure for this sickness.And then there are the many who measure success by the acquisition of things that cost money. I think this definition covers most of us.John Steinbeck gave us a way to identify the scoreboard we’re using to measure our success. All one needs to do is ask oneself, “What are my plans for the future?”“A rich life is rich in plans. If they don't come off, they are still a little bit realized. If they do, they may be disappointing. That's why a trip described becomes better the greater the time between the trip and the telling. I believe too that if you can know a man's plans, you know more about him than you can in any other way.”– John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden LettersToday I submit these additional measurements of success for your consideration:1. Am I sufficiently curious?“Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”– Albert Einstein    2. How little do I need to be happy?“It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.”– Seneca the younger, (3BC-65AD)3. Have I proven that I care?“That's the thing with handmade items. They still have the person's mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in. Nobody cooked that burger.”– Aimee Bender, from her short story, Tiger Mending    4. How many lives have I made better today?“In a completely rational society, teachers would be at the tip of the pyramid, not near the bottom. In that society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers, and the rest of us would have to settle for something less. The job of passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor anyone could have.”– Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? p. 217Are you satisfied with the scoreboard you’ve been using to measure success? Remember, you alone get to choose. To measure success according to a scoreboard thrust upon you by another is tantamount to psychic slavery.Don’t be anyone’s slave. Measure success by your own scoreboard. The point of today’s memo is to encourage you to choose your scoreboard consciously rather than unconsciously.When you’ve identified your personal scoreboard, come to Wizard Academy and we’ll help you run up the score.Roy H. Williams

If it takes money to make money, how does one make money when he has no money at the start?A person without capital has nothing to leverage but his or her time. This is why millions of Americans wear the handcuffs of hourly wages.When I was 14, my life sold for $1.60 an hour. At 18, an hour in the life of Roy H. Williams was selling for three dollars and thirty-five cents. People all around me talked about “the security of a steady paycheck” as though steady and unchanging were a good thing.But I found a way of escape.“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”– Howard Thurman (1900-1981)If you want to slip the handcuffs of hourly wages, you must figure out how to be paid according to your accomplishments. “How long did it take?” isn’t the question you want to answer, but rather, “What is the value of my achievement?”People paid by the hour are paid for their activities. People paid royalties, license fees, or sales commissions are paid for their accomplishments.Average people are average because they cling to an avoidance of discomfort. There is a truth – a profound, 4-word truth – known to every successful person: “Pain is my friend.”Pain is an informant, a sentinel, a lookout blowing a bugle. Pain tells us when something is wrong and indicates the location of the problem.“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.” – Niels Bohr“Mediocrity has a way of keeping demons from the door.” – Marie AranaComfort leads to complacency. Solomon spoke of the dangers of going with the flow when he said,“There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”Solomon followed that statement with an immediate, sharp contrast:“The laborer's appetite works for him; his hunger drives him on.” (Proverbs 16:25-26)Wait a minute. Solomon warns us the direction most easily taken – “going with the flow” – is a road that leads to nowhere. Hunger, according to Solomon, is your ally.For what do you hunger?Are you willing to risk embarrassment?Financial loss?Damage to your reputation?Let your hunger lead you. Let it drive you on.People stay in the box because it’s safe there. And then they talk about needing to think “outside the box.”“There be tigers outside the box, matey. And ogres and monsters and people who might laugh at ye. Are ye sure ye be wantin’ out o’ that box?”I have no idea where that pirate came from.Here, after much rambling, are my points:1. The times cry out for change.2. We know change is needed because we feel pain.3. Change makes us uneasy because we cannot see the future.4. Financial death is the destination of those who refuse to change.If you have no problems, if you feel no pain, carry on. Good job. Well done. As you were.If you need to make changes but you’re not sure what to change, when to change it, or how to implement that change, consider a trip to Austin to spend a day with the Wizards.Change opens the door to a brighter future.Are you willing?Roy H. Williams

After 4 Years of Fighting ItDid you recently – finally – begin to receive the Monday Morning Memo after having subscribed some time ago? We’ve been trying to get it to you, really we have, but the internet gods have not been kind to us.We've known for 4 years that thousands of you have been unable to receive the Monday Morning Memo through no fault of your own.Today I’ll tell you how we gained the gods’ good graces. Perhaps we found answers you can use.If you manage a business, two things are certain:1. You have someone in your life you consider to be an expert in all things internet.2. That person doesn’t know nearly as much as you think they do.You and I (and most other people) believe urban legends about the internet because the legends make perfect sense. Here are a few we were told:“The ISPs have you blacklisted. You need to get white-listed.”Reality: We never found an ISP that maintains a list of any color. Email rejections are based on codes within an ISP’s system and are mostly automatic and unmonitored. The ISPs rejecting us didn’t know they were rejecting us.“Someone turned you in as a spammer to one of the SpamCop services.”Reality: Never in 15 years have we sent an unsolicited email. Nonetheless, to keep an enthusiastic subscriber from adding a friend’s address without that friend’s permission, we implemented a double opt-in system 4 years ago to make it impossible to subscribe any address other than your own. Consequently, spam cops love us.“Your emails contain too much promotional language.”Reality: The language of our emails was not the problem.“Your emails contain too many hyperlinks.”Reality: The hyperlinks were not the problem.“You’re using .jpg images. You need to switch to flash images.”Reality: jpg images were not the problem.“You need to use rotating servers.”Reality: True spammers use this technique to periodically change identities. We were able to solve our problem without having to resort to this extreme technique.Urban legends will keep you as confused as a termite in a yo-yo. My head was spinning. I felt like throwing up. I needed to find an outbound internet marketing tool similar to On Target, Jeff and Bryan Eisenberg’s inbound internet marketing tool that tells you exactly where the problems are on your website.Jeff and Bryan were unaware of any such outbound tool. Likewise, none of the other internet experts in my circle had never heard of any concrete, outbound marketing tools.When I tell you what the problem was, you’re going to say, “Of course, I could have told you that.” But hindsight is 20/20. The truth, once revealed, is always simple.If you think you know the answer, write it down. Seriously, write it down. The clearest memory is no match for pale ink. In a moment I’ll give you a link to the answer and you can compare it to your guess.I’ve written New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling business books but I was powerless to solve my email dilemma until someone finally came along with a tool – a software system – for identifying and fixing email deliverability problems. BANG. Facts and details to the rescue. No hearsay. No guesswork. Problem solved.I fell into the answer when Sean Taylor walked into my office and asked if he could buy the hot, new 1-page shopping cart for WizardAcademyPress.com. Sean said he’d been researching ecommerce software for a long time and the hands-down winner was from a New Zealand-based company called Interspire. I told Sean I wanted someone from Interspire to come and spend a few hours with us. Sean said I was being ridiculous; the software was only a few hundred dollars. I told him to make the call anyway.“Your boss is being ridiculous,” the consultant said. “This software is only a few hundred dollars.”Sean said, “I know, but I need you to ask your boss anyway.”The CEO of Interspire – Eddie Machaalani – just happened to be visiting his U.S. sales office that day and when he heard his sales consultant telling his manager about my request, Eddie said, “I was in the audience when the Wizard of Ads came to Sydney, Australia, 5 years ago. I’ve always wanted to meet him. Ask this Sean fellow what day Mr. Williams would like us to be there.”If you want to know our problem and its solution, click here.If none of this has interested you, I promise to make it up to you in the rabbit hole. You can go there now by clicking the image of the beagle and the dice at the top of the page.Aroo.Roy H. Williams

The 2009 Labor Day Message of the Wizard of AdsWhen I was a boy, I noticed that people often remember things as having been better – or worse – than they really were. I would listen to friends and family and think, “That’s not what happened at all. I was there.”Call me jaded, but I came to believe that the average American is mildly self-delusional, forever attempting to sculpt a reality that matches their view of the world.“It is a wonder to see how, when a man greatly desires something and strongly attaches himself to it in his imagination, he has the impression at every moment that whatever he hears and sees argues in favor of that thing.”– Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474-1566)Most people believe, deep in their hearts, that wealthy people are happy and poor people are sad. Am I right? So one day when I was twelve, I looked at my circumstances – broken home, no father, no money, bad neighborhood – and realized that people in the future would assume I had an unhappy childhood. So I looked into a mirror and smiled as I said out loud, “Never let them convince you of it.”Growing up poor gives you marvelous advantages. The people who love you are unable to hand you the things your friends take for granted, so you develop quick resourcefulness and humble audacity. Picking up pop bottles for the return deposit. Auctions. Auto salvages. Garage sales. Odd jobs. Bartering, trading, learning from your mistakes.Resourcefulness and audacity. Priceless.The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur is a recently published study of the personality traits of the founders of 549 high-growth companies. Funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and conducted by researchers from Duke University, USC and the University of Akron, the study found that 94 percent of those high-growth entrepreneurs came from middle-class, lower-middle-class, or “upper-lower-class” backgrounds.Hah. Told you so.Money, stability, and family connections will help you get into the best fraternities at the best schools. Then, if you’re lucky, you can graduate and go to work for someone who had the advantage of growing up on the wrong side of the tracks.“I felt I would live a long, lonely, useless life and die alone and unmissed…This is what happens to the overachieving but essentially useless children of parents who raised their children to do well on tests but failed to equip them with the poison-tipped spurs of true ambition.”– Jon Fasman, The Geographer's Library, p.5Would you like to give your children the poison-tipped spurs of true ambition? Would you like to use your own spurs to climb the slippery mountain of Success?I’ve spent the past 30 years working exclusively with self-made men and women; rule-breakers, innovators, rocket riders. Several of these have built empires worth tens of millions of dollars. They look like everyone else. But they don't think like everyone else.Want to learn how high-growth entrepreneurs think? Come to our 3-day Bootstrap Business Boot Camp, Sept. 22-24. We've priced it cheap because you're not rich yet. (We're counting on you remembering the difference we made when you ride your rocket to the sky.)The campus of Wizard Academy has been built entirely through the gifts of grateful alumni. We've never sought or accepted government money or grants from big foundations. This is a family thing.And you are family.We're with you all the way.Roy H. Williams

The Alligator and the MockingbirdFew people are as tiresome as the person who lives life in a minor key. Pessimistic people remind me of Eeyore the donkey:“I don’t think we can do it.”“This idea will never work.”“It’s probably going to rain.”On the other hand, few people are as terrifying as Eeyore’s opposite. Have you ever known a person with Fatal Optimism?“If we just think happy thoughts, everything will turn out okay.”“I am a child of the Universe. I have a right to be here.”“I’m a winner. I can do it. I’m special.”  I’m a proponent of boldness. But I also believe you should count the cost and be willing to pay the price. The comedians at Despair.com spoke the truth when they said, “FAILURE: Because sometimes your very best just isn’t good enough.”In her essay, How Positive Thinking Wrecked the Economy, Barbara Ehrenreich writes,“Besides greed, another habit of mind should get its share of the blame: the delusional optimism of mainstream, all-American, positive thinking.” Barbara writes, “Everyone knows that you won't get a job paying more than $15 an hour unless you're a ‘positive person’ — doubt-free, uncritical, and smiling — and no one becomes a CEO by issuing warnings of possible disaster.”How do we become infected with Fatal Optimism? Malcolm Gladwell says it happens slowly.“As novices, we don’t trust our judgment. Then we have some success, and begin to feel a little surer of ourselves. Finally, we get to the top of our game and succumb to the trap of thinking that there’s nothing we can’t master. As we get older and more experienced, we overestimate the accuracy of our judgments, especially when the task before us is difficult and when we’re involved with something of great personal importance.”In the early part of WWI,the British thought:1. The Turks would lose at Gallipoli,2. Belgium would be an obstacle to Germany’s advance and3. Russia was sure to crush the Germans in the east.The French believed their army would be at the Rhine within six weeks of the start of the war. Meanwhile the Germans were predicting the same amount of time would take the German army to the outskirts of Paris.Each of these predictions was horribly, tragically wrong.Do you remember all the people who claimed we would be “out of Iraq” within 30 days of the invasion? I knew it was politically dangerous and that it would cost me friends, clients and money, but I responded by voicing my concern that we were launching the next Viet Nam. More than a few people snorted and said to me, “You’re a fool if you think we’re going to fight this war with men. This will be a pushbutton war.” And then they accused me of “not supporting our troops.” That was six and a half years ago. I wonder how many of those troops wish I had shouted louder, longer, sooner?But today’s memo isn’t about politics, it’s about business. I included the Iraqi War memory because, other than the recent mortgage meltdown, I couldn’t think of a more stinging example of overconfidence than our invasion of Iraq. (Yes, I’m fully aware this comment will anger some people. But when a man volunteers to wear the handcuffs of public opinion, his words become flaccid and his advice becomes suspect. I don’t want to be that man.)In 2004, Oxford University Press published a book by psychologist Mark Fenton-O’Creevy. Too few people read it. That prophetic book was the result of a 3-year study O’Creevy conducted involving 118 managers and traders at four leading investment banks.One of O’Creevy’s tests involved a computer program that mimicked the ups and downs of the stock market. As the line moved across the screen, the traders were asked to press a series of buttons, which, they were told, might or might not affect the course of the line. At the end of each session, the traders were asked to rate their effectiveness in moving the line upward. Keep in mind the buttons had no effect whatsoever on the line. But each of the stock traders was convinced he had figured out exactly which combinations of buttons made the line go up. (Psychologists call this “magical thinking“ and it's often associated with schizophrenia.)Overconfidence is the rocket fuel of incredibly dumb decisions.As my older and wiser friend Loren Lewis used to say when I was 17, “Don’t let your alligator mouth overload your mockingbird ass.”Be bold, but count the cost.Never assume you can't lose.And remember:Failure is a temporary condition.So don't let it scare you.Roy H. Williams

Or, The Secret of Being DiscoveredThe warm-up band is leaving the stage amidst thunderous applause, bowing and waving to the crowd, throwing kisses, fists pumping into the air. Now it’s time for the headliner, the living legends, the singers you came to see.A drummer takes the stage and launches into a repeating musical figure. He’s joined by five other musicians who enter one-by-one, each adding his instrument into the mix. These aren’t the legends, this is only their band, but the repetitious groove is infectious and easy to follow.The audience begins to clap in rhythm. One of the musicians breaks into a variation. The crowd loves it. The music is cooking, the crowd is jumping, the walls are bulging outwards when a sharp-dressed man takes the stage. “Are you ready to have a good time!”The crowd shouts yes.Cupping his hand to his ear, the vamp leans forward and screams from the bottom of his soul, “I said, I said, I said, are you ready to have a GOOD time!”The crowd shouts even louder.Now the music climbs toward orgasm as the vamp screams about the exploits, the miracles, the wonders this crowd is about to see. Pacing back and forth he loses his jacket and takes off his tie.The singers you’ve come to see aren’t mortal. No, this is Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer. Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. Strawberry, Vanilla and Chocolate. Finally, at just the right moment, with sweat streaming off his face, the vamp shouts the name of the living legends as they explode onto the stage amidst a cacophony of fireworks and smoke.Then the vamp disappears. His job is done. The Poodle has taken the stage.Never underestimate the importance of the vamp.The show is never really about Jay Leno, David Letterman or Conan O’Brien. Sure they do a monologue to warm up the crowd, but the show is really about their guests. Jay, David and Conan are just famous vamps. (Did you ever notice how the band plays as each poodle comes onto the show? I told you 2 weeks ago, “Control the music and you control the mood of the room.” A vamp keeps music at his fingertips.)The vamp is the ringmaster in every circus, the selfless promoter of some one or some thing other than himself. He can work onstage or offstage, under the lights or behind the curtain, but crazy success can’t happen without him.Colonel Parker vamped Elvis from offstage. Don King vamped Muhammad Ali from the spotlight. Ron Popeil vamped the Veg-o-matic from the television screen. John the Baptist vamped Jesus from the wilderness.Did the inclusion of Jesus in that list make you uncomfortable? I’m sorry. Allow me to explain.If you believe, as I do, that Jesus is who he claimed to be, then we ought to pay attention to what Jesus said was impossible. “You cannot vamp for yourself.” Actually, he said it this way: “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that bears witness of me…” (John 5)Then, speaking of John the Baptist, Jesus said, “This is the one about whom it is written: 'I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’” (Matthew 11)Forgive me. It’s not my intention to teach a Bible lesson, I just wanted to point out that God knew his son was going to need a vamp, so he sent John the Baptizer ahead of him.Trust me, you’re going to need a vamp, too.Talented people live anonymous lives in every city, town and village, wishing they could only “be discovered.” But “discovery” isn’t what’s needed. What’s missing is a vamp, an advance man, a promoter, someone who is willing to work behind the scenes, fully dedicated to your success.Here’s the good news: your vamp doesn’t have to be powerful, knowledgeable or “connected.” He or she just has to be fearless, creative and willing.John shouted, “Get ready, get ready, he’s coming! He’s almost here. Are you ready?”Who might be willing to do the same for you?Roy H. Williams

“Give a product away, and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you’re in an entirely different business… ‘Free’ has the power to create a consumer stampede.”– Chris Anderson, Free: The Future of a Radical PriceA few weeks ago I announced that Bard Press – America’s most successful publisher of non-fiction books – had decided to give away 20,000 advance-reading copies of The Full Plate Diet. Here’s how that experiment turned out: 5,279 of you requested a free book during the first 6 days. After those books began to arrive, we saw a second surge of requests that continued to build until finally, just before Ray pulled the plug on the computer, he was receiving more than 200 orders per minute.Yes, I said “per minute.”The term “going viral” refers to that moment when word-of-mouth reaches critical mass and begins to grow exponentially.New Experiment: You liked the $20 freebie. So today we’re doing a $50 freebie. Keep reading.Last month, NASA learned their original copy of the moon landing video was nowhere to be found. Perhaps you heard about it.This historic footage was recovered when NASA scrounged four badly degraded, barely viewable copies from around the world, then painfully stacked, merged and recompiled them to recreate the video. At the time of this writing – 3 weeks into the project – $230,000 has been spent and only 40 percent of the work has been done.You thought magnetic tape lasted longer than that?Evidently, so did NASA.Now for the Bad News: The DVDs you and I burn have a shorter lifespan than videotape. Homemade DVDs last only 6 to 8 years. And the faster your burning speed, the shorter the life of your DVD.“Six to eight years? That can’t be true. I bought a Dances With Wolves DVD back in 1996 and it still plays fine.”Mass-duplicated DVDs are made using an entirely different process known as “glass mastering” that’s viable only when making a large number of copies.Oh, you bought a “gold” DVD so you think your photographs, videos, important documents and creative work are safe?UPDATE: When the information on DVDs began to disappear, we assumed the reflective backing was becoming tarnished so “gold” DVDs were introduced because gold doesn’t tarnish. But these gold DVDs are degrading just as fast as the silver ones. The tarnishing of the reflective surface was only a small problem. The big problem is the fading of the laser-sensitive ink in the sandwich layer between the clear plastic and the reflective surface. Remember when fax machines used rolls of thermal fax paper and the faxes they made would fade after a year or two? Same problem.Photographs, videos, important documents and creative work should all be carved in stone. I mean that literally, by the way, not metaphorically.A Cranberry disc is a DVD made of high-tech, man-made stone and the data carved on a Cranberry will likely last longer than the pyramids. No ink layer. No fading. Problem solved.David McInnis is a wild-eyed entrepreneur and a good friend. And he’s going to give you a $50 Cranberry if you want it.Do you want it?I’ll give you the results of today’s experiment in a couple of weeks.Roy H. Williams