Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

We've invented a machine that lets you select your mood. This astounding device can be adjusted to make you feel however you’d like to feel. It’s called a radio.The distinct advantage of humans is our ability to attach complex meanings to sound. The most important sounds are called words.NOTE: The written word has no meaning until it has been translated into the spoken word it represents. How many times have you been lying in bed reading a book when it occurs to you that your eyes have been scanning the same paragraph over and over, but you still have no idea what it says? Falling asleep, your eyes continue to take in the written words, but the visual symbols are no longer being translated into their corresponding sounds. Consequently, no comprehension.Pitch, key, tempo, rhythm, contour and interval are elements of music, another language of sound, to which we attach complex meanings.Control the music and you control the mood of the room.Not even a chimpanzee can clap in rhythm to music. Conscious rhythm is uniquely human, a function of Broca’s area. It makes sense, doesn’t it? That same region of the brain that coordinates diaphragm, larynx, lips and tongue so that we can articulate stored sounds called “words,” also coordinates the muscles that allow us to clap, tap, and dance to a rhythm. Animals can't clap in rhythm for the same reason they can't talk. No Broca's area.Imagine an auditorium of chimpanzees clapping in unison to Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets. Pretty scary, huh?In all its variations – iPod, CD player, etc. – a radio is a mood selection device, a delivery system for the complex sounds that so greatly alter our mood. How do you want to feel right now? Just press the button.Faint traces of music driftTo my ears in the lonely nightWords barely audible yet familiarA little too familiar this timeTaking me back to times and placesI never knew I had left behind.Intending to turn the radio offI only manage to increase the volumeHoping you will somehow hearAnd miraculously returnTo sing each broken phrase with meThese opening lines of Memory Radio by Jenny Leigh were written in non-rhyming meter, also known as free verse. Meter is achieved when words are arranged so that a predictable rhythm is created in their pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables.Iambic meter is soft/hard (x /)“That time of year thou mayst in me behold”Trochaic meter is hard/soft (/ x)“Tell me not in mournful numbers”Spondaic meter is hard/hard (/ /)“Break, break, break/ On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!”Anapestic meter is soft-soft/hard (x x /)“And the sound of a voice that is still”Dactylic meter is hard/soft-soft (/ x x)“This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlock”Meter is magnetic.“Bounty. The quicker picker-upper.”Meter makes slogans sticky.Where do you want to go today? – MicrosoftIt's everywhere you want to be – VISAThe ultimate driving machine. – BMWWhen it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight. – Federal ExpressMeter makes words musical.“Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring…” – Clement C. Moore“Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered…” – Edgar Allen Poe“My client would not, could not, did not commit these crimes.” – Johnny CochranThink of stressed and unstressed syllables as hard and soft drumbeats. Use meter to weave a musical rhythm into your message and it will, like a song hook, get stuck in the phonological loop of working memory in the dorsolateral prefrontal association area of the listener's brain. Additionally, you'll have moved your message from the suspicious left hemisphere – the half of the brain that interprets words – into the open-for-anything right hemisphere responsible for interpreting music.The right hemisphere of the brain isn't suspicious. In fact, it doesn't know right from wrong, true from false, or reality from fantasy. Hmm. This could be useful…One last thing: I've always wanted to see a billboard featuring the giant buttons of a car radio. Above those buttons are the words, “How Do You Want” and below the buttons, “To Feel Right Now?”I'm betting it would cause millions of drivers to turn on their radios.But what do I know?Roy H. Williams

A Look at Management vs. LeadershipA group of students from the University of Texas recently asked Corrine Taylor to set up an interview with me on the subject of leadership. My schedule hasn’t allowed me to do that interview yet, but their request did trigger some thoughts on the subject.Maybe I’m splitting semantic hairs, but businesspeople who say “leadership” usually mean, “being a good manager.”But leadership and management, in my experience, are virtually opposite skill sets.Management requires wisdom, patience and strength. Basically, it’s parenting, bringing forward the best of the past, enforcing the status quo.Leadership requires independence, audacity and courage. It's inherently defiant, questioning the past, challenging the status quo.And then there are those perky Chihuahuas barking “Leadership! Leadership! Put me in charge! I’ll tell everyone what to do! I’m a trained leader, I’ve been to a seminar!”No, you’re just a weasel who wishes he were the furry-hatted drum major of a marching band. (Yes, I have a prejudice against self-styled leaders. Does it show?)True leaders require no authority. They think their own thoughts, make their own decisions, carry out their own plans. They say, “This is what I’ve decided to do.”And then they do it. Others see them doing it and decide to follow.Leaders lead from the front.Managers manage from behind.Alexander the Great was always the first over the wall of an enemy city. Whether his men followed him was up to them. Alexander was a true leader. “I’m going in, boys!”Geronimo, the famous Apache leader, was not a tribal chief but a spiritual advisor, a historian of the people and a protector of their beliefs. He said, “I have something I need to do.” And when the other Apaches saw what he was doing, they decided to help him.The Architect of the landmark buildings at Wizard Academy, Marley Porter, is a true leader. Those of us who love Marley know he is barely passable as a manager but when it comes to visionary architecture, few architects are in his class.In fact, most architects have never even glimpsed his class.Who but a leader says, “Let's build the chapel over the edge of the cliff.”Then, when the real estate agent pointed into the rocky crag below that cliff and said, “Those 7 acres are throwaway land. Basically, you're getting those acres for free,” Marley Porter said, “That's where we're going to build the student mansion.”When I said, “We need a classroom tower,” Marley finished the sentence, “with an underground entrance.”Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous design, Fallingwater, is a home built over a waterfall. Any architect might have drawn it, but none had the courage to suggest something so absurd.Every American architect studied Frank Lloyd Wright in college but few of them will ever draw anything like Fallingwater. These architects have intellect, training and talent. What they lack is the audacity.How about you? Do you have the audacity to do your own thing, go your own way and ride your own bullet without ever looking back?A Marley Porter building doesn't require a lot of money, but it does require a boatload of courage. Fortunately, our board of directors has that in abundance. Oz Jaxxon, Corrine Taylor, Ray Bard, Mark Fox, Jodie Gateman and Nick Grant are a constant source of inspiration to me.Maybe boldness is genetic.Maybe it's a product of environment.But I think it's just a choice.But I wasn't at all surprised to learn that Marley's mother's mother was a Hancock. Yes, from that line of Hancocks. This boldest of American architects is a direct descendant of the man whose very name is synonymous with boldness. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” and then, in an unmistakably large, sweeping script, Marley Porter's grandfather flipped King George a polite bird.John Hancock was willing to pull the trigger and ride the bullet to wherever it took him. He was definitely our brand of crazy. Are you?Will you write your name large – John Hancock style – across the flickering tablet of life and time?Come to Wizard Academy, a nontraditional business school. We'll help you get started.Bring your pen.Roy H. Williams

How to Turn $100 into $100,000Magellan was a misfit, a visionary with a better idea, a curious explorer of things unknown. He would have fit right in at Wizard Academy.But a similar outlook on life isn’t the only thing that connects us to Magellan. There’s a tangible connection as well.More about that later.Magellan was 13 years old when Columbus returned triumphantly to Queen Isabella and Pope Alexander VI divided the world in half, the eastern half going to Portugal, the western half to Spain (1493.)Years later, when Magellan asked King Manuel of Portugal if he might sail for him, the king publicly snubbed Magellan. Humiliated, Magellan leaned forward to kiss the king's hand. King Manuel put his hands behind his back.Remembering that Spain had funded Columbus, a foreigner, Magellan went to Spain and pointed out to King Charles that no one knew exactly where the Pope's boundaries were in the East, so an explorer like himself might be able to establish the boundary between Spain and Portugal on the back side of the world and thereby prove the coveted Spice Islands belonged to Spain. King Charles liked the idea.Magellan sailed toward South America in 1519 carrying 280 men in 5 small, wooden ships: the Concepcion, the Santiago, the Victoria, the San Antonio and the Trinidad.Stay with me. I promise you an interesting twist at the end.The largest of Magellan’s ships was smaller than the Santa Maria of Columbus or the Mayflower of the Pilgrims. And Magellan didn’t just sail 4,000 quick miles to America. He covered 42,000 miles in 2 years and 11 months, hampered by plots, battles, mutiny, desertion, starvation, disease and murder. And half of those miles were across waters never before seen by any previous explorer.Only 18 of the 280 sailors made it home to Spain after circumnavigating the globe.The Santiago was wrecked in a storm at the tip of South America.The chicken-hearted captain of the San Antonio turned his ship back to Spain during the night with more than a third of the fleet’s provisions.When the 3 remaining ships finally limped into the Philippines, the islanders enthusiastically accepted Christianity. When chief Lapu-Lapu of Mactan tried to unravel those conversions, Magellan took just 60 men to face the chief’s army of 3,000 natives. And there Magellan died.There weren’t enough sailors to sail three ships, so the papers, logs, letters and diaries of Magellan were put aboard the Concepcion by the 2 captains that had been guilty of mutiny and that ship was burned in Philippine waters. (We know these things because an Italian named Antonio Pigafetta kept a secret diary. He was one of the 18 who made it home.)The Victoria and the Trinidad were headed home to Spain when the Trinidad sprung a leak and had to turn back to the Philippines. There she was captured by the Portuguese who had come to the Philippines along the traditional route, down the coast of Africa. Soon after her capture, the Trinidad was lost in a storm.FLASH FORWARD: A soldier returning from Viet Nam is stationed at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines in the late 1960’s. One day he sees a man step off a fishing boat carrying what appears to be a crustacean covered rock. Curious, the soldier investigates. The object is too heavy to be a rock. That’s why the fishermen didn’t chunk it back into the sea when it appeared in their nets.The soldier buys the curiosity and spends the next several weeks picking away at its concrete-like encasement. It turns out to be an old ship’s bell, 12 inches across and 12 inches high. Bronze.Upon his return to the states, the soldier sends photos of the bell to an underwater archaeologist who tells him the bell’s style, markings and color (high copper content) indicate it’s probably a Spanish ship’s bell from the first half of the 1500s. The archaeologist assumes the bell was found in the Caribbean. The soldier doesn’t tell him otherwise.If the soldier had revealed where the bell had been found, the archaeologist would immediately have known the bell could be from Magellan’s flagship, the Trinidad, or possibly his Concepcion, both of which were lost in the Phillipines.Realizing the bell’s value, the soldier buries it deep in his back yard to keep it from being stolen. The only witness is his little girl. When the old soldier dies, the only person on earth who knows the location of the bell is that little girl, now a mother with a teenage daughter of her own.Long story short: Pennie and I bought the bell from the soldier’s daughter.A similar bell was discovered a few years ago that experts believe could be the bell of the Santa Maria. It’s estimated to be worth 30 to 60 million dollars.Pennie and I will donate our bell to Wizard Academy if a new crew of Magellan can be located to sail into the unknown with us. We’re not asking to be reimbursed for the bell. We’re asking only that 280 people donate $100 apiece to help build a beautiful quarterdeck outside the 3rd floor lecture hall of the academy's landmark tower. This $28,000 – combined with a major gift from acadgrad John Marklin – will be enough to keep the Academy construction crews working throughout the month of August and the first part of September.Will you sail with John Marklin and Pennie and me? I guarantee we'll arrive home safely. Your name – along with the names of your 279 crewmates – will be printed on parchment in calligraphy, framed behind glass, and permanently displayed with the bell.Think about it. If it can be established that our bell is from Magellan's fleet and Wizard Academy sells it for just 28 million, your gift of $100 becomes an endowment to the school of $100,000.Are you gambler enough to make a $100 tax-deductible gift to Wizard Academy?Do it and you'll receive an instant thank-you by email that contains a hyperlink to photos of our bell: the Mark of Magellan.You're going to be shocked by its beauty.Roy H. Williams

and Get Real SkinnyThe Full Plate Diet is an incredibly cool book. And because you’re a friend of Wizard Academy, you can have a no-charge advance copy. That’s right. No charge. Nada. Zero. Zip. The publisher – Wizard Academy board member Ray Bard of Bard Press – is giving away 20,000 pre-release copies to trigger a nationwide buzz. The Full Plate Diet will be in every bookstore in America in January but you can have your advance copy today.It’s even okay to tell your friends how they can get a no-charge copy, too. I highly recommend it.FLASHBACK: A young man starts a newspaper that becomes extremely successful. He sells the company and then he dies. His last will and testament stipulates that the money – a mountain of it – is to launch a non-profit organization whose only mission will be to create a healthier, happier, slimmer America.The man’s dying wish became the Lifestyle Center of America. Its board of directors built a multi-million dollar medical facility and hired the Who’s Who list of medical research doctors in America. The chairman of the board is Dr. House. I’m not making this up.The first thing the medical marvels created was a diet that reverses Type 2 diabetes. But that didn’t fulfill their mission. The newspaper mogul’s dream was to touch every American, not just diabetics. So the Lifestyle Center contacted Corrine Taylor and mailed her some money to set up a meeting with me.My team and I spent a day talking with the Lifestyle Center people and then agreed to work with them. That was a little more than a year ago. Toward the end of the day my 290-pound media analyst, Joe Hamilton, asked, “Would the diet you talked about work for someone who isn’t diabetic?” The doctors said, “Absolutely. It’s how human beings were meant to eat.”A few days later I told Ray Bard what the doctors had said. He seemed mildly interested. And I mentioned it to a couple of my out-of-town partners.A couple of months later I was pouring a cup of coffee when Joe Hamilton walked into the room. I looked up and said, “Joe, you’re losing weight.”Joe said, “I’ve been doing what those doctors talked about and I’ve lost 35 pounds.” By the end of that year, Joe had lost 90 pounds. No exercise. And he hasn’t gained a bit of it back. (See before-and-after photos of Joe at the bottom of this page.)A couple of weeks after I saw Joe Hamilton I saw Ray Bard and he had never looked better. “Roy, I did what you said those doctors talked about and I’ve dropped 30 pounds. I'd like to meet them.”Then, at the partner meeting, one of the partners I’d told about the diet said he had done what I described and lost 20 pounds. The other partner had lost 24.The Full Plate Diet is not a deprivation diet. There’s nothing you “can’t have.” And you’ll never go hungry.I use the Monday Morning Memo to promote classes at Wizard Academy, a 501c3 nontraditional business school, but I never use the memo to sell things and I’m not selling you anything today.But you really ought to look into this diet.You can meet 3 of the doctors in a fun, online video produced by Sunpop Studios and request your no-charge advance copy of the Full Plate Diet at FullPlateDietBeta.orgNext week I’m going to tell you a true story that will blow your mind.Your mind will be blown. You’ll be walking into walls. Boy Scouts will have to hold your hand when you cross the street. After hearing this story you'll need to lay down and put a cold rag on your head.The story begins in 1519 and it involves Wizard Academy.And you.Roy H. Williams

A close friend told me last week why his wife doesn’t like me: having seen me speak before a crowd, she is convinced I lack humility. I am a boastful man, arrogant and unprincipled, merciless and cold.She’s not the first to have said these things.I see her point and I make no argument. Marketing is a high-stakes competition for the time and attention of the public. Every business asking for time and attention is in a wrestling match with every other. The same is true of public speaking. It is survival of the fittest. “And though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For I am the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley.”Yes, I definitely see her point.In 2006, one of my longtime clients told me his principal competitor had filed bankruptcy and all his assets were being auctioned. I said, “Great. I’ve been trying to break that man for years.” My client was appalled until I reminded him that it was my job to plan the battles in which good men die. “Do you really want me to adopt the attitude that there’s enough business out there for everyone? ‘Be happy with what you’ve got? Don’t push for more?’ If that’s what you want from me, just say the word and my job will get a whole lot easier.” I reminded him of a statement by General George S. Patton, “You don’t win wars by dying for your country. You win by making the other poor bastard die for his.”My client, a kind and generous man, finally understood my role as a marketing consultant and we never spoke of it again.Strangely, I’m not a natural competitor. Nobody wants me on their side in sports because I don’t care if we win or not. My daily vehicle is an 8 year-old pickup truck without electric windows and when I’m not speaking before a crowd, I wear clothes I’ve owned for more than a dozen years. Privately, I'm so boringly average as to be perfectly invisible.But yes, when someone plunks down $25,000, a whole other fellow shows up. “It's Showtime! Prepare to be amazed!”The Magical Worlds Communications Workshop begins with an investigation of duality in which we study the open contradictions of life, those equal-but-opposite realities that are the basis of all existence. “When confronted with a duality,” I tell the class, “a poor student will choose one side and disparage the other. But a brilliant student will bring both sides of the duality into close proximity and feel the electricity that passes between them.”Protons are contradicted by electrons. Inhalation is undone by exhalation. Ice and steam are both water? Really?In the third chapter of his Ecclesiastes, Solomon puts it this way:There is a time for everything,and a season for every activity under heaven:a time to be born and a time to die,a time to plant and a time to uproot,a time to kill and a time to heal,a time to tear down and a time to build,a time to weep and a time to laugh,a time to mourn and a time to dance,a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,a time to embrace and a time to refrain,a time to search and a time to give up,a time to keep and a time to throw away,a time to tear and a time to mend,a time to be silent and a time to speak,a time to love and a time to hate,a time for war and a time for peace.What time is this? For you, I mean.My family adopted a homeless mutt when I was in the third grade. She slept in my bedroom until the day she died, 10 years later. Pearl was a mellow dog, laid-back and lazy, playful and fun; unless you acted as though you were going to hurt me. Then, in a horrible flash of fur and teeth, playful Pearl became a bloodthirsty beast that hungered only for your throat. People who witnessed this transformation were stunned. My happy little dog had the soul of a tiger. Pearl understood the difference between playtime and wartime.What time is this? For you, I mean.“In peace there's nothing so becomes a manAs modest stillness and humility;But when the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger;Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood…Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,Hold hard the breath and bend up every spiritTo his full height.”– William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act iii. Scene 1The Jesus of Sunday school is a passive, Gandhi-like man who urges us to turn the other cheek. But the Jesus of John chapter 2 is a man of premeditated violence who “made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.”Will you turn the other cheek today, or make a whip of cords?“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity.”What time is this? For you, I mean.Roy H. Williams

Did you know I’ve been writing these Monday Morning Memos for 15 years now? And in all that time:1. There’s never been a Monday when I didn’t send a Memo.2. I’ve never repeated a Memo that had been previously sent.I’m going to break that second rule today because I think it’s what you need.Last week the Wizard of Ads partners gathered for 3 days of planning and training. When Paul Boomer told me he hadn’t made any progress on his book since our last meeting, I told him about the magic of the elbs.Later, as I was preparing my opening comments for the upcoming class at Wizard Academy, Checklist for Your Journey of 1,000 Miles, I realized that what the attendees would need most is the magic of the elbs.Then, when I was reading a play-by-play analysis of how America was sucked into a whirlpool of economic doubt by subprime lending, it occurred to me that nothing can reverse a whirlpool like the magic of the elbs. That sucking downward into darkness is reversed to become a fountain into the sky.“Hey Stupid,” I said to myself, “you need to resend that memo. It’s been 7 years and the people who read it have mostly forgotten it. This is the magic America needs today.”So here it is, repeated from October 27, 2002:Makers of miracles have magical little helpers. Is there a miracle you’d like to make?Would you like to learn the magic of the elbs?Elbs are Exponential Little Bits, tiny but relentless changes that compound to make a miracle. The power of an elb lies not in its size, but in its daily occurrence. For an elb to work its Exponential magic, the Little Bit must happen every day… every day… every day.Every day.Funny thing… When daily progress meets with progress, it doesn’t add, it multiplies. To harness the magic of Exponential Little Bits you must learn to ask yourself, “What difference have I made today?” And never go to sleep until you have done a Little Bit to move yourself closer to your goal. But you must do a Little Bit every day, no matter how tiny the thing might be.Exponential Little Bits work both ways. They can lift you up or hold you down. There is much power in the ELBs.Start with a dollar. Double it every day for just 20 days and you’ll have 2,097,150 dollars. But if you diminish each day’s total by just 10 percent (a Little Bit) before the next day’s doubling, you’ll amass only 793,564 dollars. Diminish each day’s doubling by 35 percent and you’ll have only 56,784 dollars – a holdback of 95.83 percent.There’s a line in Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” that says, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down! I could say ‘Elves’ to him, but it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather he said it for himself.”Is there a wall between you and your miracle?I could say how to bring it down.But I’d rather you said it for yourself.Roy H. Williams

What will be your customer's memory of you?“It [the Cheshire Cat] vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.” – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)I never ask the graduates of Wizard Academy, “What could we have done differently? How might we improve?” To do so would be to ask them to search their memories for disappointing moments. These are not the images I want to cement in their minds. Instead, I ask, “What was your favorite moment during your time with us?” This causes the students to recall each of the high-impact moments during their time on campus and relive those moments in their mind. It doesn’t matter what they choose as their favorite, I just want to flood their minds with happy memories.The grin will remain after the rest of it is gone.It is important to control the Last Mental Image (LMI.) What procedures do you employ to make sure your customer has a positive LMI of their experience with you?Today the world is forming its LMI of Michael Jackson. So far, the stories and comments have centered on his impact as a performer and his contributions to music. The foibles and flaws that interested us yesterday no longer seem important. Michael Jackson is dead and the world seems a tiny bit smaller.Want to hear something bizarre? A few hours before Michael Jackson died, I woke in the night with an itch in my brain. The scratching of that itch became the subject of a rabbit hole far deeper than any I had ever created. When I finally realized the depth of the project I had begun, I said, “No one will ever click to even the halfway point. This is going to be the rabbit hole to China.”The itch in my brain made a lot more sense when I heard Michael Jackson had died.He and I were exactly the same age.Roy H. Williams

Maybe it’s because I was a young adult in the Dress-for-Success, go-go 80’s and retain vivid memories of those hollow days.Maybe it’s because Pennie and I had close friends who stepped on the landmines of “Get Rich in Real Estate With No Money Down,” “How To Make Millions Selling Soap,” and other glistening schemes promoted by effervescent conmen with perfect teeth who said, “You can do it. You’re a winner.”Maybe it’s because the positive-thinking cult believes Man is God and this disturbs me to the core of my soul.Or maybe I’m just a Grinch who doesn’t like to hear the singing of the happy Whos in Whoville. You be the judge. But the truth is that I have no goals and I’m annoyed by conversations about them. Does this shock you?“Goal,” in my experience, is a favorite word of people who talk and dream and dream and talk. And then they get together to “network” with other talkers. There’s always a lot of noise in these meetings but it’s unlikely than anything of consequence is going to happen. People who chatter about goals are rarely willing to die on that mountain.I have no goals. But I do have plans.A plan puts you in motion toward a destination. The destination you choose is irrelevant. It is (1.) motion, (2.) determination and (3.) commitment that separate destination-reaching explorers from goal-setting chipmunks.Count the cost, explorer. “Am I willing to die on this mountain?”There are laws against discharging firearms. They’re loud and noisy and someone might get hurt. But discharging a firearm isn’t the same as “shooting with intent to kill.”“Intent.” That’s the word. Plans have intent. Goals do not.A goal without a plan is wishful thinking.A plan without action is self-delusion.Wizard Academy helps people get where they’re trying to go. We teach people of action. We have little time for drifters who just want to talk and dream and sigh.Do you remember the 3 questions I asked you to answer in a recent Monday Morning Memo about my friend, David Rehr?1. What are you trying to make happen?2. How will you measure success? 3. What’s the first thing you need to do to get started?I asked 43,000 readers to send me their answers to these questions. Doubtless, everyone who read the memo thought about doing it. But only 0.7 percent – 307 people – actually pulled the trigger and rode the bullet.Here’s where that bullet will take them:Thursday, July 9th at Wizard Academy, a 1-day workshop.Checklist for Your Journey of 1,000 Miles:Things You’ll Need Along the Way.This 1-day workshop is $750 and a bargain at that price.The 307 riders of the bullet whose names appear on this list will be allowed to register for only $50 (approximately what it costs the academy – per person – to cater lunch and dinner.) Normally we’d be magnanimous and pick up the tab for everyone, but tower construction has squeezed the bank account dry. Sorry about that.Twenty-six hundred years ago Lao-Tzu said, “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”Take that first step. Be in Austin on July 9th as we create the Checklist for Your Journey of 1000 Miles. It's going to be a challenging, disturbing, inspiring, life-changing day.Are you coming or not?Roy H. Williams

How to Get Customers to Give You Their Time.Portals create intrigue in paintings, photographs, literature and movies. Architects use them to lengthen the time we spend in landmark stores and theme parks. Portals say, “Come on in. Stay awhile.”Dr. Nick Grant, a close friend, was examining a group of photographs in my Accidental Magic collection when he said, “Oh! You’re a portal person. I should have known.”“A what?”Pointing with his finger to each of the portals in the photographs, he explained, “Portals in art help us move from one state of consciousness to another.” Dr. Grant, I should mention, is a clinical psychologist.And thus my study of portals began.Doorways, windows, tunnels, bridges and stairs are portals. Each of these whispers a promise of change, “Things beyond here are different than where you are.”I’m teaching you about portals and partial reveals because customers prefer to spend their time in places where there’s more to explore, the lure of discovery, a promise of adventure.Do you offer these things? In your store, your offices, your landscaping?Go to the mall and you’ll see that most of the stores have no entry portal, no doorway. They stand wide open, naked, with nothing hidden or obscured. This makes it easy for you to wander into them and just as easy to wander out. Stores without doors see a lot of traffic with low curiosity and no commitment.A door creates a threshold barrier, but once you’ve passed through it you’re insulated from the world you left outside. Customers spend more time in stores with doors.An open portal offers a partial reveal. Notice the image at the top of this page. If the window were closed it would still be a portal though it would no longer offer a partial reveal.A partial reveal is a glimpse, an enticement, a tease. Occasionally it’s offered through an open portal, but more often through a space between impediments. The more partial reveals you display, the longer the customer stays in your store.Curiosity is stimulated by a partial reveal. If this were not true, there would be no long skirts with slits up the side and men would not buy their wives negligees.A full reveal delivers the promise of the partial reveal. You catch a glimpse – the partial reveal – and are drawn toward the carefully crafted full reveal. BAM! Your world is rocked.Water, music, and spirals are soft portals – shadow portals – but we’ll leave any further discussion of these for the upcoming class on Enticement: Visual Cues and the 12 Languages of the Mind I’ll be teaching August 18-19. We'll study in depth all the things I've written to you about in the past 4 Monday Morning Memos.Come and you’ll see multiple examples of how a series of partial reveals – created by multiple piercings of the horizontal plane through the careful placement of display artifacts – will elevate interest in your store, office, home, garden or artwork. You’ll also see dozens of examples of how illumination affects the customer’s perception of value. Then we'll look at the foundation of all these effects – the 12 languages of the mind.Don’t worry, once you’ve seen some examples you’ll realize this stuff isn’t nearly so complicated as it sounds.The only way you can attend this class is to purchase a portal for the Tower. Yes, it’s time for us to pay for the doors and windows and Wizard Academy needs your help. This class should be at least $2,500 but it's not. You can fund a window for as little as $400 or put your name on a fabulous feature door for as much as $7,000. Take a look.It’s going to be another unforgettable class. (If you can't come to the class but would still like to fund a door or window, you will forever be remembered as a leader of your people. Thanks.)Roy H. Williams

I write today with some hesitation, the same hesitation I felt 2 weeks ago when I wrote about the romance of shadows and the piercing of horizontal planes. You may recall that I asked, “Was this stuff interesting for you or did it go over your head?”Three hundred and ninety-one responded with variations of “More! More!” and only 2 said they didn’t quite get it. If the 391 spoke for the 42,712 subscribers they would statistically represent, you’re going to enjoy today’s memo. If by some sad chance of luck or fate those 391 represented only themselves, I offer you this apology in advance:“What crazies we writers areour heads full of language like buckets of minnowsstanding in the moonlight on a dock.”– from Ray, by Hayden CarruthThere is an objective reality but we are ill equipped to experience it. You and I live in private, perceptual realities.“Our perception does not identify the outside world as it really is, but the way that we are allowed to recognize it, as a consequence of transformations performed by our senses. We experience electromagnetic waves, not as waves, but as images and colors. We experience vibrating objects, not as vibrations, but as sounds. We experience chemical compounds dissolved in air or water, not as chemicals, but as specific smells and tastes. Colors, sounds, smells and tastes are products of our minds, built from sensory experiences. They do not exist, as such, outside our brain. Actually, the universe is colorless, odorless, insipid and silent. Although you and I share the same biological architecture and function, perhaps what I perceive as a distinct color and smell is not exactly equal to the color and smell you perceive. We may give the same name to similar perceptions, but we cannot know how they relate to the reality of the outside world. Perhaps we never will.”– Dr. Jorge Martins de OliveiraA yarmulke covers the sensory association area, that part of the brain that gathers and tabulates sensory data collected from the sensory receptors in the ears, eyes, muscles and skin.Associative memories are added to this information equation as it flows toward Broca’s area of the brain where the predictable information is subtracted. Information that’s new, surprising or different flows beyond Broca’s area into conscious awareness – imagination – where the central executive of Working Memory searches for relevance. Only after the central executive gives the information the thumbs up is it forwarded to the prefrontal cortex – located just behind your forehead – for a decision about whether or not to take action.No, I didn’t make any of this up. I read it in the writings of Alan Baddeley, Susan Gathercole, Ricardo Gattass, Silvia Helena Cardoso, Burkhard Maess, Steven Pinker and Jorge Martins de Oliveira, cognitive neuroscientists, all.This next part, however, is all mine and yes I might be crazy or just plain wrong.But I don’t think so.There are 12 languages of the mind that supply the constituent components of concrete, analytical thought. It is these 12 languages that enable our perceptual realities.A signal received in one language of the mind can reinforce, or contradict, a signal received in another. Signal reinforcement deepens perception. Signal contradiction elevates interest. 1. Shape – angles send a different message than curves. 2. Numbers – a language of relativity. Many or few? 3. Phonemes – sounds represented by letters of the alphabet. 4. Color – often combined with shape and radiance. 5. Proximity – near/far, large/small, left/right, up/down, etc. 6. Music – any sound that isn't a phoneme. 7. Radiance – energy sent outward or sucked inward. 8. Motion – fast/slow 9. Symbols – messages with secondary meaning.10. Taste – tongues do it.11. Feel – skin and muscles do it.12. Smell – noses do it.Each of these 12 has a shadow language that supplies the components of emotional, philosophical, abstract thought. But that’s another matter for another day.Control the signals and you control the perceptions.Control the perceptions and you control the conclusions.Control the conclusions and persuasion is accomplished.Next week’s memo will be easier to understand and infinitely more useful to most of you. We’re going to talk about how Portals, Reveals, and Partial Reveals can be used to take people where you want them to go.And now it is time for meto go.Roy H. Williams