Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

1. Never promise everything you plan to deliver.Leave something to become the delight factor. That unexpected, extra bit you deliver “because we love you” will go a long way toward helping the customer forgive and forget any areas where you may have fallen short. Great ads are written in three steps: (1.) How to End. What will be the Last Mental Image your ad presents to your customer? Begin with the end in mind. (2.) Where to Begin. A clear but interesting angle of approach will gain the customer’s attention. (3.) What to Leave Out. Surprise is the foundation of delight. What will you intentionally leave out of your ad so that you can deliver a delightful surprise? What will you leave out so that the imagination of the customer is engaged?2. Never begin a sentence with the word, “Imagine…”If you’re planning to take your customer on a journey of imagination, plunge them into it. “The wheels of your airplane touch down, but not in the city you were promised…” “You must now choose between two good things…” “If you had more enemies like these, you wouldn’t need friends…”3. Never include your name in an ad more often than it would be spoken in normal conversation.Cramming your name where it doesn’t belong is AdSpeak. Back when Americans encountered one thirtieth as many ads each day, the rule was to repeat the name of the advertiser as often as possible. Do this today and your ads will sound like they were written in the 1940s.4. Never conjure an unpleasant mental image.Fear and disgust work face-to-face, but they often backfire when used in mass media. Conjure these unpleasant emotions in the minds of the masses and you’ll leave your listeners with a vaguely bad feeling attached to your name. They’ll want to avoid you, but they won’t be able to recall exactly why.5. Never respond to a challenge from a competitor smaller than you. Drawing attention to a smaller competitor makes them larger in the eyes of the public. Conversely, if someone bigger than you is foolish enough to shine their spotlight on you, dance in it.6. Never claim to have exceptional service.Most people won’t believe you. And those who do believe you will expect more from your staff than they can possibly deliver. It’s a lose/lose proposition. Rather than promise exceptional service in your ads, tell the public something objective, factual and verifiable that causes them to say, “Wow. Those people really serve their customers.” Never praise yourself. Do things that make the customer praise you.7. Never mention the recession.I understand how tempting it is to say, “In order to help you combat the recession we’re offering…” But all that really does is remind the customer that now is not a good time to be spending money.8. Never make a claim you don’t immediately support with evidence.Unsubstantiated claims are the worst form of AdSpeak. Give the customer facts, details and objective proof if you want to win their confidence. Specifics are more believable than generalities.9. Never use humor that doesn’t reinforce the principal point of your ad.Here’s the litmus test: If remembering the humor forces you to recall the message of the ad, the humor is motivated. Good job. But if recalling the humor doesn’t put you in memory of the ad’s main point, the humor is unmotivated and will make your ad less effective. Sure, people will like the ad. They just won’t buy what you’re selling.10. Never say things in the usual way.From billboards to storefronts to packaging to messages on T-shirts, ads whisper and wheedle and cajole and shout to win our attention. A 1978 Yankelovich study reported that the average American was confronted with more than 2,000 advertising messages per day. But that was 30 years ago. When Yankelovich revisited the study in 2008, the number had jumped to more than 5,000 messages per day. The mundane, the predictable and the usual are filtered and rejected from our consciousness. Win the customer’s attention with words and phrases that are new, surprising and different.Come to Wizard Academy. We’ll teach you how.Roy H. Williams

I am reminded of what Michel Eyquem De Montaigne said with tongue in cheek during the French Renaissance 450 years ago, “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”As expected, we received a firestorm of email 2 weeks ago as a result of the Monday Morning Memo of March 2 in which I said I had chosen not to be fearful about the future. It seems that a lot of people take pleasure in fretting and they want me to get on board.But a frightened person frightens other people. And these newly frightened people will frighten still more people until finally no one is spending any money. Fear is the fuel of recession. I understand perfectly what’s happening in the world. I simply choose not to be afraid.You can choose, too. We are worth more than many sparrows.Warren Buffett agrees with this outlook.“Fear is very contagious. You can get fearful in 5 minutes, but you don’t get confident in 5 minutes.” – Warren Buffett on CNBC, Monday, March 9, 2009CNBC: “We’ve been getting thousands and thousands of emails from our viewers. Warren, we’d like to start with one that echoes a theme we heard again and again. This one comes from Terry in San Antonio, Texas, who asks, ‘Will everything be all right?’”BUFFETT: “Everything will be all right. We do have the greatest economic machine that man has ever created. We started with 4 million people back in 1790 and look where we’ve come. And it wasn’t because we were smarter than other people. It wasn’t because our land was more fertile or we had more minerals or our climate was more favorable. We had a system that worked. It unleashed the human potential. It didn’t work every year. We had 6 ‘panics’ in the 19th century. In the 20th century we had the Great Depression, World Wars, all kinds of things. But we have a system – largely free market, rule of law, equality of opportunity – all of those things that cause the potential of humans to get unleashed. And we’re far from done. Your kids will live better than mine. Your grandchildren will live better than your kids. There’s no question about that. But the machine gets gummed up from time to time. If you take the bulk of those centuries, probably 15 years were bad years. But we go forward.”Did you notice the quote the twitchy news people of America lifted from Buffett’s very upbeat, 3-hour interview? They filtered out all kinds of affirming, positive statements (such as the one above) to create the headline, “Warren Buffett Says ‘The Economy Fell Off a Cliff.”Slippery Wall-Streeters triggered this recession but the twitchy news media seems committed to making sure it progresses.And now for happier news: Wizard Academy has contacted the person I consider to be the best in America at making BIG things happen quickly. Within the next few weeks I hope to announce the dates of a special, 2-day workshop that will allow you to interact with this marketing giant in person. I’ve never met him but I’ve read his books and I look forward to having him on campus. Are there any big things you'd like to make happen quickly?When that announcement is made, you’ll want to act quickly. There are only 100 seats available in Tuscan Hall and many more than that will want to attend this event. It will likely be the most profitable thing any of us do in 2009.And now for a final thought: Fear is contagious. Don’t spread it. And if you meet any twitchy, fear mongering news weasels, slap them and say, “Stop it. Stop it right now.”They’ll know what it’s for.Roy H. Williams

8,000 years before Stonehenge and the PyramidsThe rocks of Gobekli Tepe (pronounced Go-beckly Tepp-ay) are a curiosity, and curiosity rocks.Travel with me to that ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southeastern Turkey.A shepherd wandering on the hillside where grows a solitary Mulberry tree, spies the top of an oblong rock that appears to have been shaped by human hands. He notices others like it in a pattern. He returns to the village and tells what he has seen. The digging begins. The year is 1994.“Gobekli Tepe is the most important archaeological site in the world.”– David Lewis-Williams, Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg“Gobekli Tepe changes everything.”– Ian Hodder, Stanford University.Stonehenge was built 5000 years ago in 3,000 BC and the pyramids of Giza in 2,500 BC. Carbon dating of organic matter adhering to the megaliths of Gobekli Tepe reveal it to be 12,000 years old, meaning it was built around 10,000–9,000 BC.“Gobekli is thus the oldest such site in the world, by a mind-numbing margin. It is so old that it predates settled human life. It is pre-pottery, pre-writing, pre-wheel, pre-everything. Gobekli hails from a part of human history that is unimaginably distant.” – Tom CoxPerhaps the strangest part of the Gobekli story is that around 8,000 BC, its inhabitants entombed their temple under thousands of tons of earth, creating the artificial hills on which the unnamed shepherd walked in 1994. It was a task of unspeakable labor.No one knows why Gobekli was buried.“The modern history of Gobekli Tepe begins in 1964, when a team of American archaeologists combed this remote province of southeast Turkey. The archaeologists noted that several odd-looking hills were blanketed with thousands of broken flints, a sure sign of ancient human activity. Despite this, the US scientists drifted away and did no excavating. Today, they must feel like the publisher who rejected the first Harry Potter manuscript.” – Sean ThomasThirty years later, a shepherd saw a pattern of rocks peeking through the soil and said, “I wonder…”Google Gobekli Tepe and you’ll find that everyone mentions the shepherd but none can name him.I want to locate that shepherd and bring him to Wizard Academy. For it’s people like him – men and women without credentials, funding or permission – who notice the daily miracles that surround us and point them out for all to see. Galileo,Da Vinci,Buckminster Fuller,and the shepherd of Gobekli Tepe;to these servants of Curiosity,I give my highest Salute.Roy H. Williams

The Beagle Sings with BubleMy staff can hardly get any work done. It seems the whole world is calling to ask what I think will happen with our economy.The President of the United States made a primetime speech last week. The press is an interesting animal. The Chicago Tribune predicted the president’s speech would “live among the annals of man,” while its competitor, the Chicago Times, editorialized that “the cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat, and dishwatery utterances of the president.” Those papers were talking about Abraham Lincoln. The speech was the Gettysburg Address.Before I go any further, let me acknowledge that I’m aware of how dangerous it is to speak of politics or religion. No matter what I say on either subject, I’m going to get a firestorm of emails correcting me.Even so…All indications are that President Obama’s speech lifted the mood of the nation.When the mood of the nation is optimistic, our economy sings like Michael Bublé and money flows like water in the street.More than one friend has told me that Obama’s plan will end in disaster. I choose to believe otherwise.I choose to believe.I choose.A jet is low over New York City. Both engines have failed. Any idiot can see that everyone on the plane is going to die. The pilot can fly into a building and kill all the people inside, or he can line up on a street and kill unsuspecting motorists instead. These are his only options.Well, I’m on that jet and I say this pilot is going to land on the Hudson River and the plane is going to float long enough for everyone to get out safely and then we’re all going to hop onto some big passenger ferries that will be exactly where we need them to be.Don’t laugh. It could happen.By the way, you’re on this jet, too.I bought a book at the airport the other day. Barack Obama wrote Dreams From My Father fifteen years ago. As a writer, I was deeply impressed. If a man can be judged by what he writes when he is young, we have an extremely intelligent president.A history book of ancient Israel tells of a starving city surrounded by an enemy army. “Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? If we say, 'We'll go into the city'-the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let's go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”That story ends happily. Not just for the lepers, but for everyone in the city. Well, not quite everyone. There was one man who insisted that God himself couldn’t save the city. Interestingly, everyone made it safely onto the ferryboats except for that guy. He was the moron screaming hysterically ‘We’re all going to die!’ while the pilot was trying to land the plane on the Hudson.It’s really an interesting story. You ought to read it.Roy H. Williams

of the Wizard of AdsTen years ago I taught you how to create relational ads that target the right hemisphere of the customer’s brain. Advertisers who learned this technique made a lot of money.Five years ago I taught you that 2008 would be the final year in a series of 40-year cycles and that the position and direction of society’s pendulum meant 2009 would likely be 1929 all over again. If you haven’t been a little freaked out by the accuracy of that prediction, then you haven’t been paying attention.Today I’m offering you another chunk of glittering gold:A high percentage of relational customershave shifted to a transactional frame of mind.In other words, the rules of marketing are changing.What I teach about writing ads today is quite different from what I taught as recently as 1 year ago. Today, in addition to giving your customer a feeling of connectedness, you must infuse your ads with facts, details, logic and information.NOTE TO THE COGNOSCENTIOF THE MAGICAL WORLDSCOMMUNICATIONS WORKSHOP:The buying mode and mood of the general public has moved from Intuitive and Feeling (NF, right brain/right brain, pattern recognition) to Sensing and Thinking (ST, left brain/left brain, sequential reasoning.) Frosted Frank, not Monet, will win the heart today. Abandon fuzzy angles of approach. Be direct, clear, concise. Clarity is more important than creativity. But it’s also more difficult to achieve.ConsiderThe Economy,accelerated byAccess to Information (Google,)moving in unison withThe Direction of Society’s Pendulumand you’ll understand why consumers have begun buying with their heads instead of their hearts.The irrational right-brain remains powerful, but the logical left is winning the tug-of-war more often than ever before. Impulse purchases are becoming more restrained. We crave romance but we do not trust it.Ad writers, you’re going to have to work harder than ever but so are your clients.Money is tight.Unemployment is rising.People aren't shopping.Traffic is King.To drive traffic,select – in unison with your client – an exciting item or service at apopular price point. Selecting the right item is critical.feature that product or service with a vivid ad full of details and benefits.Q: How is a “featured product” ad different from the price-and-item ads of yesteryear?A: Price-and-item advertising was about offering the lowest price on a common commodity. Featured product ads require new and surprising information. A featured product is an exciting, uncommon item at a popular price point. The ads cannot be hype. Many businesses will resort to Sale! Sale! Sale! Resist the temptation of this cocaine. Featured product ads must contain new information your customer will be glad to know. The selection of what to feature is critical. This is where the business owner is going to need help from the ad writer. Use logic, details, facts to entice the customer to “come and take a look.”We live in exciting times.Wizard Academy awaits.Roy H. Williams

Magic Words to Penetrate the Filter,Erase Suspicion and Lower the Guard It was exactly 10 years ago. I was on the telephone with an 87 year-old man I had been hunting for several weeks. I needed this man’s permission to publish a private letter he had written to America’s Chief of Naval Operations back in 1963. The man’s name was William Lederer.“Where you calling from young man?”“Austin, Texas.”“I was there recently. Nice town.”“What brought you to Austin sir?”“I was there to bury my best friend Jim.”“I’m sorry to hear that.”“You would have liked Jim. Everyone did. He once gave me some advice that changed my life.”“What was it?”“William,” he said, “the public is more willing to believe fiction than non-fiction.”Mr. Lederer now had my full attention.Our bodies contain approximately 100 million sensory receptors that allow us to see, hear, taste, touch and smell physical reality. But the brain contains 10 thousand billion synapses. This means we’re roughly 100,000 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist, than a world that does.The first step in persuasionis to entice your targetto imagine doing the thingyou want them to do.Four and a half years ago in the summer of 2004, a screenwriter named Eli Attie began creating a persona for a new fictional character that would appear on The West Wing. Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) would be a young congressman, new to Washington, a working-class member of an ethnic minority. Prior to running for public office, our fictional character Santos had been a community organizer in a major city (Houston.)Screenwriter Eli Attie admitted to The Guardian, a British newspaper, that he was inspired in 2004 by a young Illinois politician – not yet even a US senator – by the name of Barack Obama, a community organizer from Chicago.As a result of Attie’s attraction to Obama, the 2006 television season showed us a glittering, fictional candidate for the presidency, a happily married, young minority male with 2 children who would run against a moderate Republican opponent from a western state.The imaginary Republican senator, Arnie Vinick (played by Alan Alda,) was unpopular with his conservative base due to his moderate views. His principal opponent in the fictional Republican primary was the Rev. Don Butler, a Christian preacher. Keep in mind these West Wing episodes aired 18 months before the nomination battle between John McCain and Mike Huckabee.But wait, it gets weirder.Ten years ago, Aaron Sorkin admitted that he based The West Wing’s Josh Lyman on Rahm Emanuel, who served in Bill Clinton’s White House. Both Lyman and Emanuel are Jewish. Both are brilliant. Both mail dead fish to opponents who make them angry.In the 2006 season of The West Wing, seasoned White House staffer Josh Lyman serves as campaign manager for the long-shot, minority candidate. When his candidate wins, Lyman is named Chief of Staff.Two years later Rahm Emanuel, the real Josh Lyman, will become Barack Obama's Chief of Staff.Was it all a plot? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just an example of how we tend to act out the things we’ve seen in our mind. By the way, here’s the end of the Lederer story:“How did Jim’s advice change your life Mr. Lederer?”“Well, I had written a few books but none of them sold very well. So in 1958 I showed Jim the manuscript for my newest book and he told me to go back and fictionalize the name of the country, the characters, everything. ‘The public is more willing to believe fiction than non-fiction.’”“How did it turn out for you?”“Well, that book, The Ugly American, stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 78 straight weeks and sold more than 3 million copies in its first year. Marlon Brando starred in the movie. But of course that’s nothing compared to what Jim did.”“What do you mean?”“Jim wrote more than 40 books, sold more than 100 million copies and won the Pulitzer Prize.”There was an awkward silence.“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t think of what Jim you might mean.”“I’m sorry, son. You probably knew him as James. James Michener.”Roy H. Williams

America, I think, is not a place. If another people lived here, the geography would be the same but it would not be our nation.America, I think, is not a government. Our pendulum swings from one extreme to the other and our politics are not unique.America, I think, is not an economy. Free markets exist in other nations and we hold no patent on capitalism.America is a people, an outlook and a family. (A dysfunctional family, yes, but aren’t they all?)Eighty-three years ago the American son was a swaggering youth with glinting eye, proud of his muscle and chin held high. Mark Twain wrote about his American strut in a 1926 letter from Europe to President Calvin Coolidge: “We, unfortunately, don't make a good impression collectively… There ought to be a law prohibiting over three Americans going anywhere abroad together.”Saul Bellow, in his Adventures of Augie March, gave our American boy a voice during the Great Depression: “I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, and will make a record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.”America. Land of Opportunity. A chicken in every pot and a car in every driveway. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Hard work never killed anybody. Cream rises to the top. Second place is the first loser. You can do it.And we did. “Leaders of the free world, liberators of the oppressed,” we’re less than 5 percent of the world’s population yet consume 26 percent of its energy and 30 percent of its resources.A few years later Anne Morrow Lindbergh, wife of that ocean-crossing hero, began to worry that things were getting out of balance: “America, which has the most glorious present still existing in the world today, hardly stops to enjoy it, in her insatiable appetite for the future.”John Steinbeck echoed Anne’s words. “Then there is the kind of Christmas with presents piled high, the gifts of guilty parents as bribes because they have nothing else to give. The wrappings are ripped off and the presents are thrown down and at the end the child says – ‘Is that all?’ Well it seems to me that America now is like that second kind of Christmas. Having too many THINGS they spend their hours and money on the couch searching for a soul. A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and Nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedyand sick.”John Steinbeck was immediately accused of being a Communist sympathizer.America didn’t listen to Anne or John but became more intense in the pursuit of whatever it was we were chasing.“Go to college. Get good grades. Go to college. Rise to the top. Go to college. Enjoy the good life.”Eighteen years ago Faith Popcorn wrote in her famous Popcorn Report, “The trouble in corporate America is that too many people with too much power live in a box (their home), then travel the same road every day to another box (their office).”Charles Osgood spotlighted this disconnection on CBS Sunday Morning, March 30, 2008, “The average urban dwelling American sees up to 5,000 advertising 'messages' –from T-shirts to billboards – every day. That compares with 2,000 thirty years ago.” [Source: Yankelovich, Inc.]Wow. No wonder we’ve become a nation of consumers. With 5,000 messages hammering us every day, we hardly have time to think about anything else.And now it’s 2009. The whole planet waits to see whether America has the strength, the wit and the will to correct our mistakes. They wait because the economy of the world depends on whether we're able to buy the stuff they need to sell us.The solution appears to be that the world needs better ad writers.Roy H. Williams

How to Advertise in a Recession“If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants flying in the sky, people will probably believe you.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez,winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in LiteratureAh, the power of details.Every ad has style and substance, cheese and meat. Most ads are cheese because ad writers are rarely given meat. Style cheese includes layout, angle, tone of voice and hyperbole. Substance meat is provable fact and concrete detail.My success as a writer is due to the fact that I demand meat from the business owners I serve. I'd much rather fight over meat to put in their ads than apologize to them for their ads not working.Style affects how people feel. Cheese.Substance changes what they know. Meat.Is your advertising meaty or cheesy?Here's an example of a 146-word, cheese-filled ad:Pearls have always been off-white, but not anymore! [STORE] has just received a shipment of colored freshwater pearls. We have a whole panorama of colors to choose from! Come and see these wonderful new fashion items that have arrived just in time for the Spring Season. Come early and shop while the selection is best. Don't be left out in the cold! Step into Spring with a spring in your step with fashionable, colored freshwater pearls. You’ll always find the newest thing in cutting-edge fashion at [STORE] where we’ve been serving the good people of [TOWN] since [YEAR.] Colored pearls are hot! Colored pearls are cool. And you won't believe the price. Get yours before they’re all gone at [STORE] where you can see them from 9AM to 6:30PM Monday through Saturday. Colored, freshwater pearls, exclusively at [STORE, LOCATION] or online at [WEBSITE.COM] or call 555-5555.Here's another 146-word ad, but with accelerated style and a few chunks of meat:MALE: When a painting has gentle colors and a soft glow, it’s usually a watercolor. I love watercolors. I like their optimism. I like the way they make me feel. So when I saw the Watercolor Pearls from the town of Wen-chow on the coast of the East China Sea, I ordered a hundred strands for the women of [TOWN].FEMALE: Wait till you see the colors!MALE: Silky black,FEMALE: Blushing pink,MALE: Supple green,FEMALE: Wet blueMALE: Smooth whiteFEMALE: Moonglow silverMALE: Translucent apricotFEMALE: Dripping chocolateMALE: Each strand is 16 inches long.FEMALE: Some strands are all one color.MALE: Others are multiple colors, a pastel rainbow of freshwater pearls.FEMALE: At just 79 dollars a strand, 100 strands won’t last long.MALE: And the East China Sea is a loooooong way from here.FEMALE: Take a look right now at ____________.comMALE: Or try them on up-close and personal at [LOCATION.]FEMALE: Watercolor pearls, exclusively at [STORE.]Meat chunks:1. the town of Wen-chow2. a hundred strands3. black, pink, green, blue, white, silver, apricot, chocolate4. Some strands are all one color5. Others are multiple colors6. 16 inches long7. 79 dollars a strand.8. East China SeaSpecifics are more powerful than generalities, even when those specifics merely accelerate your style:1. Rainbow is more specific than panorama and is therefore more easily visualized.2. In his first appearance, the MALE voice says “…make me feel.”3. Each specific color name is then accelerated by the use of a modifier that might also describe a woman's skin: gentle, soft, silky, supple, wet, smooth, translucent, dripping.4. And most of those tactile words follow the phrase, “the women of [TOWN].”Any questions?Roy H. Williams

As We Look at the Business Climate of 2009:A new generation of entrepreneurs is emerging from the shadows. None of these is well funded but they are focused, relevant, and in step with the public. Some of them will grow to become business icons by mid-2012. (Three and a half years from now I’ll give you a hyperlink back to this column so that you can see how right I was.)Yes, I know that sounded horribly egotistical.The air is cold, the sky is clear, these are my trend predictions:Cheap Thrills“If it feels good, do it.”Sales of alcohol, movie tickets and ice cream will increase. This happens during every recession. How might you offer your customer an altered consciousness, an alternative reality, an escape from the merely mundane? Think about it.Repair Instead of Replace“Instead of buying a new one, I’ll hold on to the one I’ve got.”Sellers of new houses, new cars, clothing and jewelry are going to have to get creative. Repair businesses will trend magically upward. Expensive items will find their way to eBay as we liquidate the luxuries we bought in better days. Resale shops will appear in nicer parts of town. How might your business participate in this trend?Tightrope Budgeting“Should I shepherd my resources or push harder than ever?”Market share is up for grabs because your competitors have slashed their ad budgets. Should you hunker down and try to hang on, or push harder than ever while your competitors hibernate? Some businesses will quit advertising and go broke as a direct result. Other businesses will advertise aggressively and go broke because they lacked financial staying power. Your correct course of action depends on your competitive environment. Do you know how to read your competitive environment or do you need help?Fewer Competitors“If the economy stays tough and fewer businesses occupy my category, won’t that leave more for me?” (1.) What was the sales volume of the failed competitor? (2.) How much has your category shrunk? If the competitor’s volume exceeded the shrinkage of your category, you might see some benefit. But if your competitor was a minor player, the shrinkage of your category will erase any good you might have experienced. You’ll get a larger slice, but of a smaller pie.Media Makeover“I walk to the end of the driveway each morning to retrieve a newspaper telling me things I’ve known for 24 hours.” Very few newspapers are healthy. The New York Times, that standard bearer of journalism, would have collapsed but for last week’s infusion of $250 million by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. With that newspaper’s $1 billion in debt recently reduced to junk-bond status and only $46 million in cash reserves, the Times would have failed in May, 2009. In the past, “columnists” and “reporters” were merely people who had access to a publishing pipeline. But in an Internet-connected world, isn’t every blogger both columnist and reporter? Last week MSNBC.com said, “Got some good photos of the inauguration? Send them to us.” How many more months will pass before newspapers are published digitally and round-the-clock from volunteer reports submitted from around the world?Websites are EssentialHillary Clinton and John McCain underestimated the power of the Internet. Barack Obama did not. Now tell the truth, don’t be embarrassed: Was your website designed by an acquaintance who “is really good with computers?” Someone who “knows all about the internet?” Then why isn’t it doing more for you? This is the year to get serious about your website. Your webmaster is learning by trial and error. You should buy him or her some expert guidance.You’re About to Read an Ad:Call to Action, a book about the internet published by Wizard Academy Press, became a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller in 2005. It was the first book ever to reach bestseller status without brick-and-mortar distribution. Call to Action by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg is a landmark in the publishing hall of fame. Its sequel, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? hit all four bestseller lists, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and BusinessWeek.The world’s most successful online companies pay the Eisenberg brothers lavishly for their advice. Their consulting company, Future Now, is currently traded on NASDAQ.And they were students at Wizard Academy long before they became famous.Would you like Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg to:1. monitor your website 24/72. analyze the actions of all your online visitors, and then3. suggest specific changes you should make to your website?This new service from Future Now is available for as little as $1,000/mo. Detailed feedback with specific recommendations for you to implement. Tested, proven, productive. No more trial-and-error.Roy H. Williams

Change is inevitable. Growth is optional. *We’re living in a time of tumultuous change.A misinformed president declares a war. The value of homes – which were never supposed to fall – fell. The SEC can’t make Wall Street color between the lines and 700 billion dollars goes missing. A 50 billion-dollar Ponzi scheme is perpetrated by one of the most respected men on Wall Street. A governor tries to sell a seat in the Senate. I saw gasoline sell for a dollar a quart and watched General Motors become insolvent.But I’m not worried. I was born in a briar patch.Pennie and I began our lives together during the term of another president who wasn’t quite up to the job.It’s 1976. Mortgage interest rates are 18 percent and jobs are scarce. If you see a line of cars at a gas station, get in it. Gas stations don’t always have gas. The middle-eastern boogeyman of that era, the Ayatollah Khomeini, brazenly invades a U.S. embassy and kidnaps 52 U.S. diplomats. Newscasters remind us nightly of our shame. When we send our best and brightest soldiers to rescue our diplomats, we crash two of our aircraft, eight soldiers die and we return home empty-handed. The Ayatollah holds us hostage for 444 days.“Elected largely on his promise to never lie to the American people, Carter soon seemed out of place in the vastness of the presidency. Events conspired to further impede his progress: rising energy costs, high unemployment, Americans held hostage in Iran, Soviets in Afghanistan. A man of peace who took pride in bringing together age-old antagonists, Carter was finally viewed by his countrymen as lacking presidential stature.” – American Experience, PBSAnd the whole time, it seems the only thing we needed was a head cheerleader with a more beautiful dream. Ronald Reagan took office with a sparkling smile. “Things are fine. Expand your business. All is well. Go out to dinner. Life is good.” And we believed him.Economy rebounded, cold war ended, Mary Lou Retton vaulted a perfect 10 and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.Barack Obama has a good smile, too. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.In defiance of the current recession, Wizard Academy is moving forward with the construction of its new classroom tower. Perhaps we’re being foolish. Maybe the right thing would be to hunker down and cover our heads with our hands. But did you ever notice how “hunker” sounds like clunker, junker, lunker and dunker? I prefer “dream,” as in team, gleam in the eye, beaming smile and cream of the crop.“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.” – T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia)Hunker down or dream. It's your call.The 7 Steps to Hunkering Down:1. Stay scared. Call it “street smart.”2. Cultivate cynicism. Call it “straight talk.”3. Praise pessimism. Call it a “reality check.”4. Believe you are wiser than everyone else.5. Feel secretly superior.6. Take no action that might improve your condition.7. Crow “I told you so” when things get worse.The 7 Steps to Pursuing Your Dream:1. Know what you're trying to make happen.2. Expect good things to happen for you.3. Plant seeds of good things daily.4. Trust that some of your seeds will grow.5. Measure success by your own criteria.6. Make progress daily without fail.7. Believe in the power of the Elbs. (Exponential Little Bits)Do you believe in your dream, or do you think it's only a fantasy?Moving forward with just a thousand dollars:I showed today's memo to 5 of my most successful friends and said, “Talk is cheap and I don't want to be seen as one of those pollyanna happy-talk motivational goobers without substance. Action makes things happen, but not everyone is free to attend classes at Wizard Academy. If a business person is ready to begin taking action, what would you be willing to do for just a thousand dollars to help them make progress toward their goal?” I was blown away by their generous offers.Would you like to see what they said they'd be willing to do?Good thingshappen to dreamerswho remain standingwith open eyes.Stand up.Roy H. Williams