Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo – Details, episodes & analysis

FACT: We live in an over-communicated society.

This is why we have learned how to quickly filter out messages that do not interest us.

FACT: We will happily spend several hours binge-watching shows that appeal to us.

Where’s your theory about a short attention span now?

If you want to get people’s attention and hold that attention, talk to them about things they already care about.

I wrote an ad this morning for a jewelry store. This is how the ad begins:

RICK: Sicily is the island at the toe of the boot of Italy,

SARAH: and the town of Catania is situated on the seashore, staring at the toe of that boot.

MONICA: That’s where Jay, one of our owners, traveled to meet Italy’s most exciting new jewelry designer.

RICK: Tell us about it, Jay.

JAY: When I met Francesco and saw what he was working on, I almost hyperventilated.

Those 5 lines do not sound like the typical jewelry store ad.

But I’ll bet you’d like to hear the rest of it.

FACT: Ads rarely work for products that people don’t want. The ad writers and the media will always get the blame, but the real mistake is made when business owners convince themselves that advertising can sell things that no one wants.

Advertising cannot, in fact, do that.

I recently spoke to a friend who sent out 20,000 postcards that failed to get a response. This led him to conclude that “direct mail doesn’t work.”

When he told me what was featured on those 20,000 postcards, I told my friend the truth. “Your experiment proved only that a weak offer gets weak results. Direct mail didn’t fail. Your offer did.”

Direct Response – immediate result advertising – can be measured with ROAS (Return On Ad Spend.) Pay-per-click is perhaps the most common type of direct response advertising, but direct response offers are routinely made using every type of media. If you plan to introduce, explain, and sell a product or service to a customer with whom you have no previous relationship, you are rolling the dice of direct response. You can always measure the effectiveness of direct response ads with ROAS.

Direct Response is a sport for surfers who like to ride the wave of a trend. It is a wild and crazy rollercoaster ride of feast-and-famine. If you like excitement, you should definitely do it. But be aware that the most successful direct response marketers are spending 25% to 35% percent of top line revenues on advertising. You need at least a 20x markup to play that game.

I prefer sowing and reaping. Seedtime and harvest.

Brand Building creates a long-term bond with the customer. The goal of brand building is to make your name the one that customers think of immediately – and feel the best about – when they finally need what you sell. Your Return on Ad Spend –ROAS – will look terrible when you first begin, but it will get better and better as you build a relationship with the public. In the long run, nothing can touch brand building. It is always the most cost-effective way to invest your ad budget if you have patience, confidence, and a good ad writer.

Roy H. Williams

But in the real world, dismissing employees is far more complicated —emotionally, ethically, and legally. How to dismiss employees isn’t taught in business school, and managers often fumble the process. Mahesh Guruswamy has spent much of his career delivering bad news — not just to employees but also to customers, investors, and even his superiors. Today Mahesh is sharing his hard-earned wisdom with roving reporter Rotbart. Make time for this episode! You are about to learn some incredibly valuable things at MondayMorningRadio.com.

Allow me to explain.

Anyone who talks to a jeweler will be told that diamonds are graded according to the 4 C’s: Color, Clarity, Carat weight, and Cut.

Customers ask the jeweler, “Which of the 4 Cs is most important?”

This seems like a perfectly reasonable question, but the truth is that the 4 C’s cannot be compared to one another. There is no rubric, no metric, no algorithm that can equate them. The 4 C’s are distinctly separate from one another. They are not interchangeable.

Advertising is like that. Each of the characteristics of highly effective advertising are distinctly separate from one another. They are not interchangeable.

Natural diamonds can be an infinite number of shades of yellow, grey, brown, green, blue, red, or a mixture thereof. Diamonds can also be colorless.

Color is a measurement of rarity, not beauty.

Clarity is another measurement of rarity, not beauty.

“Flawless” clarity refers to a diamond which is free of inclusions under 10x magnification. But under 40x magnification every flawless diamond is swimming with inclusions that cannot be seen under 10x. So get this idea of “flawless” out of your head, okay? It is a myth.

Seven clarity grades below flawless is another clarity known as SI2, which looks flawless to the naked eye. Not even a jeweler can tell the difference without 10x magnification. But there is a huge difference in price between flawless and SI2 because Clarity is a measurement of rarity, not beauty, remember?

Carat weight is how the size of a diamond is measured. We’ll come back to this in a minute.

Cut does not refer to the shape of the diamond, but to the ability of the diamond to gather light, bounce it between the facets, and then shine it upward toward the eyes. When diamonds are cut perfectly, they do not leak light out of the bottom of the diamond. A perfectly cut diamond returns 100% of internalized light upward and outward in a wild spectacle of sparkles.

When you cut a diamond crystal perfectly, you lose more than half of that diamond’s Carat weight. But if you cheat the cut a little, the diamond won’t sparkle as much but it will weigh more and sell for more money.

If you cut the diamond with a thick girdle and a deep pavilion, the diamond will be dull because its internal mirrors will be misaligned, but it will be much heavier than if it were cut properly.

A Carat is a unit of weight. There are 141.748 Carats in an ounce. This means that a small pouch of 1-Carat diamonds worth just $4,000 each will cost you $567,000 an ounce.

Pure gold is less than $3,000 an ounce.

Are you beginning to understand why diamond cutters are loath to grind away precious carat weight in the quest for maximum sparkle?

Your logical mind tells you that it should be possible to create a diamond algorithm that says, “one colorgrade = 0.05 carats = 0.78 of a clarity grade = 2.13% excess weight above the projected carat weight for a perfectly cut diamond of this diameter.”

Your logical mind tells you this because you continue to believe that dissimilar properties such as color, clarity, carat weight, and cut can be quantified, codified, and reconciled.

In truth, they cannot.

The rubric used to calculate the Gross Rating Points achieved in media schedules makes perfect sense until you realize it equates dissimilar properties and treats them as though they are interchangeable:

Reach = the total number of different people who experienced your ad within a specified period of time.

Frequency = how often the average person experienced your ad.

If half the people experienced your ad only once, and the other half experienced it twice, your ad campaign would score a Frequency of 1.5 in your specified window of measurement.

How Gross Rating Points are calculated. (And they will always automatically be calculated by the media sellers.)

STEP ONE: Reach x Frequency (repetition) = Gross Impressions

STEP TWO: Gross Impressions

cast as a percentage of the Nielsen population of your trade area

= Gross Rating Points. (GRP’s)

STEP THREE: Cost Per Gross Rating Point or CPP (Cost Per Point) is calculated by

A: the cost of the schedule

B: divided by the number of Gross Rating Points it delivers.

If the population of your trade area is 765,432 people and your ad schedule delivers 765,432 Gross Impressions in the specified window of time, your schedule achieved 100 Gross Rating Points, (the mathematical equivalent of having reached 100% of your trade area 1 time)

Perhaps you reached 50% of the city twice.

Maybe you reached 33.3% of the city 3 times.

You might have reached 25% of the city 4 times.

Or 10% of the city 10 times, 5% of the city 20 times,

Or 1 sad bastard 765,432 times.

Do you believe that each of those schedules will deliver the same result?

Of course not.

But each of them delivers 100 Gross Rating Points.

The fatal mistake was made in Step One. Reach and Frequency (repetition) are not interchangeable. You cannot multiply one times the other to get “Gross Rating Points.” That’s just stupid.

Any local business that evaluates ad schedules based on their Cost Per Point will always reach too many people with too little repetition.

Reach is easy to achieve. Frequency is hard to achieve unless you bite the hook of broad rotators which are added to your schedule at little or no cost. If you allow this “added value” to be included in the calculation of your reach and frequency, you are going to be deeply disappointed in the results of your ad campaign.

You do not want to reach 100% of the people and convince them 10% of the way when the same small ad budget will let you reach 10% of the people and convince them 100% of the way.

Repetition is what you’re after. You need an absolute minimum frequency of 2.5 per week, every week. If you accept the logic that “on a week, off a week” is all that you can afford, your schedule is going to fail.

The Nielsen schedule report you want to see is a report that no one wants to show you. (Did I say Nielsen? Yes, I said Nielsen. I did not say another name.) You want to see Net Persons and Frequency for a ONE WEEK schedule, Monday through Sunday. And no broad rotators – zero – can be included in this calculation. And you must buy this ONE WEEK schedule 52 weeks per year.

But the second 25% – giving you Net Persons that total around 50% of the city – will cost you nearly twice the amount you spent to buy the first 25%.

The problem you run into is the declining efficiency of achieving new Net Reach due to cume duplication, or “shared audience.” But if you schedule that first 25% of the population correctly, you will soon be able to easily afford the price of reaching and owning that second 25%. Because you will have grown monster big.

You are fooling yourself if you believe you can efficiently reach more than 50% of your city.

And when I say city, I mean the 18+ Nielsen Population of your trade area.

Like I said, buying advertising is far more complicated than buying diamonds.

Roy H. Williams

Next Week: Media Measurement Mistakes: Chapter 2

By the way, the Tiny Tribe and I have prepared an exceptional rabbit hole for you today. To enter the rabbit hole just click the image of me at the top of this page. And once inside, each image you click will take you one page deeper. – Indy Beagle

Israel Duran shows people how to transform their businesses. And then he shows them how to leverage that success to impact, inspire, and influence their communities. Israel describes himself as an “impact architect” who helps business owner make money, make a name, and make a difference. Learn how to do it at MondayMorningRadio.com

GOOD NEWS: Our bonds with our families and friends are as strong as ever.

BAD NEWS: The bridges we once extended to strangers have collapsed.

Jesus talks about a socially unacceptable “Samaritan” man who sacrificed his time, energy, and money to help an unconscious stranger who had been robbed and left to die at the side of the road. According to Jesus, two different religious people had already seen the wounded man, but crossed over to the other side of the road so they could pretend they hadn’t seen him.

They saw a stranger in need and felt nothing.

The internet promised to bring us closer together through instantaneous, worldwide, one-on-one communication.

But then came the algorithms, those digital sheepdogs that segregate us into echo chambers where every voice we hear sounds exactly like our own.

The easiest way to build an online audience – or a church – is to criticize and demonize “them,” the people who are “not like you… not like us.” Algorithms will help you do this. All you have to do is craft a message that says, “All the world’s problems are caused by ‘them,’ and it is up to ‘us’ to save the future, and America, and the world, from ‘them.'”

You don’t build bridges to people that you believe are “getting what they deserve.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” – Jesus

David Brooks recently posted a YouTube video that will make you feel wonderful and give you hope.

I hope you will invest the time to watch it. In fact, I challenge you to watch the first 3 minutes. The odds are extremely high that you will happily choose to watch the remaining 18 minutes.

That YouTube video is titled “David Brooks: Making People Feel Seen: How to Do It Right.”

I’m betting it will be your favorite 21 minutes of the week.

It will also be a signal to the algorithm that you are headed in a new direction.

Merry Christmas.

– Roy H. Williams

“If people looked at the stars each night, they’d live a lot differently. When you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day.” – Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes 

Jeffrey Eisenberg and Dewey Jenkins don’t know each other but each of them taught me the importance of removing the friction.

Dewey sings it to every person in his company, “Make it easy for customers to do business with us.” And they do. Inventing new ways to “make it easier” is the job of every person in every department.

Jeffrey Eisenberg calls this “removing the friction in the buying process”.

I am convinced that a number of other companies are building electric vehicles that are as good ­– or better – than Tesla, but Tesla remains the big name with the big stock price. At the time of this writing, Tesla is selling for $181 a share while Volkswagen is at $18, Subaru is at $8, Ford is at $13, Audi is at $19, Mercedes is at $20, BMW is at $35, and Rivian is at $15.

Buying a car from Tesla is as easy as buying a book from Amazon. And I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean that literally. People who order a car from Tesla look up from their computer screen with a puzzled look on their face and ask, “Did I just buy a new car?” And then they look back at their computer screen and nod their head up-and-down slowly as they say, “Yes, I just bought a new car.”

Go ahead and try it. It will only cost you $500.

Princess Pennie ordered a Tesla a couple of months ago and was startled by how easy it was. Two weeks later, she decided she wanted to add the optional third row of seating. I watched her add that third row in less than 30 seconds with just two clicks. Tesla immediately displayed her new delivery date, and she closed her laptop. Done.

Meanwhile, our younger son spent an entire day at the Volkswagen dealer trying to order an electric SUV. He persevered for 8 grueling hours, but he got it done and the car soon arrived. He loves that vehicle, and rightfully so, but he says he would rather endure a tax audit, a root canal, and a prostate exam than go through the process of buying a Volkswagen again.

1-800-GOT-JUNK is a company entirely committed to removing the friction. Led by its founder, Brian Scudamore, “Making it easier for the customer” is an ongoing source of enthusiastic discussion at every level in that company.

Meanwhile, Google is introducing all kinds of new friction. Google “Best Electric Vehicles” and you will see pages of ads from manufacturers who want to sell you a car. Enter a different, more specific phrase and you’ll get that same list. In fact, any query that includes the word “electric” followed by any synonym for “car” will get you that list of ads.

Google got big by putting the customer ahead of the advertiser. They’re clearly not doing that anymore, so I’ve decided to give Bing a chance. I suspect there might be millions of other people slowly coming to that same conclusion right now.

But even though I am profoundly frustrated with Google, I remain encouraged that Dewey and Jeffrey and Brian Scudamore and the customer service team at Tesla remain committed to removing the friction at every point of contact, making it ever-increasingly easy for customers to do business with them.

I’m just an ad writer, so I’m not particularly good at refining the internal processes of running a business, but I highly admire those people who know how to do it.

How about you? Can you think of 10 tiny-little-things that would each make it a-little-bit-easier for customers to do business with you? Think of those 10 things as Exponential Little Bits; they don’t just add up, they multiply and go exponential.

And when you have implemented those 10 things, think of 10 more, and then implement those.

Rinse and repeat.

Keep it up and you’ll become the Tesla of your category.

Roy H. Williams

PS: After writing this memo, I went to Bing for the first time and entered “Best Electric Cars.” The top two listings were the answers to my question, both from reputable sources.

https://www.forbes.com/wheels/best/electric-cars

https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car

It’s possible that Bing will get greedy and lazy at some point in the future and lose their customer focus, but for now, they are my huckleberry. (“A penny for whoever will unload my supplies,” said the man with the wagon. “I’m your huckleberry,” replied a young man on the street.)

If you didn’t graduate from Harvard Business School, making sense of today’s bank failures, debt ceilings, inflation, currency fluctuations, and trade deficits – can be daunting. Eric Johnson is an instrument-rated pilot, surfer, black belt, astrophotographer, angel investor, and former CEO of a software engineering firm. He has spent 15 years decoding the mysteries of economics and can explain what an economy is and how it works. Eric shares these insightful answers with roving reporter Rotbart this week at MondayMorningRadio.com.

We're building a school of the communication arts. Do you want to come along?

Oh, the questions we'll answer together! The interesting things we'll find! We've built a chapel where we can think big thoughts. And a grand auditorium where we can exchange ideas. The things we'll talk about!

We need only a place to lay our heads when day is over and twilight darkens and campfires dim and talk is done. Will you help us build this place?

The Mainstream Many saw only rickety old windmills and a delusional old man. But Don Quixote saw defiant giants that had to be defeated for the good of the world.

“What giants?” said Sancho Panza.

“Those you see there,” answered his master, “with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long.”

“Look, your worship,'' said Sancho. “What we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the vanes that turn by the wind and make the millstone go.”

“It is easy to see,” replied Don Quixote, “that you are not used to this business of adventures.”

– Don Quixote, 1605, by Miguel de Cervantes

I can relate to Don Quixote, can't you? Like him, I often feel that no one else sees the ugly giants that loom so large on my horizon. And like Quixote, I'm often told I'm delusional and irrelevant.

But the giants I see are real.

The Mainstream Many believe that all is well, education isn't broken, journalism hasn't lost its way, music and literature and art were never really important, and traditional advertising is working just fine. “All is well,” the many tell us. But when you look again with the eyes of your heart, you'll see a nation growing dumber, journalism becoming propaganda, art fading into yesterday, and advertising working less and less well.

There are currently 30,299 readers of these Monday Morning Memos who see the same giants I see. And together we're building Wizard Academy, a school of the communication arts. Our goal is to enhance the world's ability to communicate. I'm not talking about inventing new devices to help us reach each other. We already have those. I'm talking about knowing better what to say through this vast megaphone of technology. And how to say it better.

The citizens of the world have been handed cell phones and DVRs, satellite phones and Skype, websites and blogs, email attachments and streaming video and podcasting and Boomerang. We are children with loaded guns. Do you remember when terrorists beheaded an American and streamed his murder onto the internet? Millions of curious voyeurs witnessed it on their computer monitors. How many of those do you suppose were 8 year-olds who will forever carry the itching scab of that wound in their minds? No, don't tell me it was the same as in video games. Even 8 year-olds know that video games aren't real.

He was wearing an orange jump suit.

Can new messages be created to counteract that message? I believe they can. The next 3-day Magical Worlds Communications Workshop is scheduled for Dec. 6-8 at the new, 33-acre campus of Wizard Academy. You really should come and spend time with us.

Maybe we're crazy, tilting at windmills. Maybe we're defeating giants. You decide.

Roy H. Williams

How many months has it been since you went looking for information in the yellow pages? How many minutes has it been since you asked your favorite search engine?

I think you just answered the question about whether or not your local business needs a website.

Without a doubt, websites are the most overlooked vehicle of advertising for small, owner-operated businesses. Every retailer needs one. Every dentist, lawyer, accountant and minister needs one. Every café, restaurant, coffee shop and nightclub needs one. Every wholesale supply company needs one.

I'm not suggesting that all these need to accept online orders and actually transact business online. I'm just saying that everyone listed in yesterday's yellow pages needs to be available on today's internet. It's where your customers expect to find you.

Properly constructed, a website allows your prospects to gather information from the privacy of their computer monitors. What are the questions you answer every day? And what, exactly, do you say to customers when you're speaking to them face-to-face? This is exactly the information that needs to be available on your website.

Think of your website as a relationship deepener, a half-step between your advertising and your front door.

Do you suppose it's easier:

(1.) to convince customers to visit your website, or

(2.) to convince them to get in their car, drive to your store, park that car and walk in your door?

Additionally, internet is heaven-on-earth for the 49 percent of our population that's introverted.

Introverts prefer to gather information anonymously, unlikely to dial your telephone number except as a last resort. Even more unlikely is that they'll choose to walk into your store and engage a chatty salesperson. But don't think introverts are shy. They simply like to gather the facts before putting themselves into a position where they're likely to be asked to answer questions. Forty-nine percent of your customers prefer to know what they're coming to buy before they walk in your door. And even the extraverted, chatty 51 percent will appreciate an informative website that functions as an expert salesperson during the hours you're not open for business.

Don't think for a moment that your customers aren't already online.

Every time a client tells me their customers are too old, too monied, or too traditional to be online, I immediately gather a crowd of them and ask, “How many of you have used a search engine in the past 7 days to research a product or service you were considering?” I raise my own hand.

The hands raised in echo are never less than 85 percent of the crowd.

Launch a website. Make it interesting. And watch your in-store sales begin to climb.

Roy H. Williams

Mabel is a widow deep in poverty with two hungry children of her own. Washing other people’s laundry ten hours a day, Mabel earns barely enough money to keep them fed. To keep a roof over their heads, she works for a real estate man who moves her and the children from shack to shack “to clean them up and make them salable.” But poor though she is, Mabel can’t watch a baby go unloved, so she makes room in her home and her heart for Jimmy, an abandoned baby that was left on her doorstep.

Throughout his childhood, Jimmy will wear old, second-hand clothes because that’s the best Mabel can do. His shoelaces will be broken and knotted. He’ll never own a pair of skates, a bicycle, a baseball glove or a toy of any kind. But when his little town opens a public library, he and a girl named Margaret will be the first in line to receive library cards. One day, as the pair are searching for books they’ve not yet read, the librarian says, “Goodness, Margaret and Jimmy, I believe you’ve read all the children’s books we have! If you wish, you can start on the other shelves.”

Margaret Mead will grow up to author 20 books and serve as president of a number of important scientific associations, including the American Anthropological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She will receive 28 honorary doctorate degrees from America’s leading universities and in 1978, be given the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

As an adolescent, Jimmy hitchhikes his way from Pennsylvania to Florida and back again with only 35 cents in his pocket. By the time he graduates from high school, he will have visited all but 3 of the 48 contiguous states. In the Navy, Jim rises to the rank of lieutenant commander, serving on some 49 different islands in the South Pacific during World War II. Each night, he writes his thoughts and impressions in a journal.

“Sitting there in the darkness, illuminated only by the flickering lamplight, I visualized the aviation scenes in which I had participated, the landing beaches I’d seen, the remote outposts, the exquisite islands with bending palms, and especially the valiant people I’d known: the French planters, the Australian coast watchers, the Navy nurses, the Tonkinese laborers, the ordinary sailors and soldiers who were doing the work, and the primitive natives to whose jungle fastnesses I had traveled.”

The book that will emerge from Jim’s journal will be published as Tales of the South Pacific and win the Pulitzer Prize in 1948. And by the time he’s done, James Michener will have written more than 40 books that will collectively sell more than 100 million copies. He will be granted more than 30 honorary doctorates in 5 fields and receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977. His cash donations to public libraries and universities will exceed 117 million dollars.

It seems a child can learn a lot by just reading.

Roy H. Williams

No one wants to be average. But everyone wants to be normal.

What's up with that?

You can't imitate your way to excellence. It can be achieved only by breaking away from the pack, abandoning the status quo.

But breaking away from the pack is also the way to spectacular failure.

Are you beginning to understand why there is so little excellence in the world?

A weird person who succeeds is called eccentric. A weird person who fails is called a loser. Most people just walk the middle path and wonder what might have been.

If there is, somewhere, a Book of Days, what will be written in it about you? Will the book say you played it safe, never took a chance and were buried in such-and-such a place?

I think Tom Peters gave excellent advice to managers when he said, “Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.”

The New York Times tells us, “She embarked on a show-business career at 15 by going to Manhattan and enrolling in John Murray Anderson's dramatic school. From the first, she was repeatedly told she had no talent and should return home. She tried and failed to get into four Broadway chorus lines, so she became a model for commercial photographers. She won national attention as the Chesterfield Cigarette Girl in 1933. This got her to Hollywood as a Goldwyn chorus girl. For the next two years she played unbilled, bit roles in two dozen movies. She then spent seven years at RKO, where she got leading roles in low-budget movies. But she was wrongly cast and mostly wasted in films.”

In all, Lucille Ball appeared in 72 B-movies before she became too old to be credible as a female love-interest. Her lackluster career on the silver screen ended without fanfare in 1948. So at the age of 37, Lucy left the movies, swallowed her pride and became Liz Cooper on the live radio show, My Favorite Husband.

Jess Oppenheimer, her director, tells the story. “I remember telling Lucy, 'Let go. Act it out. Take your time.' But she was simply afraid to try. So one day, at rehearsal, I handed Lucy a couple of Jack Benny tickets. She looked at me blankly. 'What are these for?'

'I want you to go to school,' I told her.

It did the trick. When Lucy came into the studio for the next rehearsal, I could see she was excited. 'Oh my God, Jess,' she gushed, 'I didn't realize!'

She just couldn't wait to get started trying out the new, emancipated attitude she had discovered. On that week's show Lucy really hammed it up, playing it much broader than she ever had before. She coupled this with her newfound freedom of movement, and there were times I thought we'd have to catch her with a butterfly net to get her back to the microphone. The audience roared their approval, and Lucy loved it. So did I.”

Released from her fear, Lucy Ricardo had been born.

In 1951, a middle-aged Lucy leaped out from our black-and-white television screens into every living room in America. “To say that Lucille Ball was a phenomenon is an understatement. Through sheer determination and hard work, this one woman fundamentally changed the broadcast industry forever.” – Susan Lacy, winner of 5 Emmys as executive producer of American Masters

Most people, when they finally become successful, become conservative. Fearful of losing what they've gained, they abandon the behaviors that brought them success. But not Lucy. As the fearless owner of Desilu Studios, she took two enormous chances: Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. American television would never be the same.

On April 27, 1989, the New York Times ran her obituary. Its last few sentences were these:

Addressing a group of would-be actors, she said the best way to get along with tough directors was “don't die when they knock you down.” She said she was very shy at the start of her career, but overcame it when “it finally occurred to me that nobody cared a damn.”

Associates called Miss Ball self-reliant, sympathetic and sometimes tempestuous. ''Life is no fun,'' she once said, ''without someone to share it with.''

Miss Ball is survived by her husband, her daughter, her son and three grandchildren.

Funeral plans were incomplete last night.

Lucille Ball failed often and well, seeing failure only as a form of education. She broke the old rules and wrote new, redheaded ones, inspiring you and me to do the same.

When you leave behind a legacy of courage, are funeral plans – or even funerals – ever really “complete?”

Roy H. Williams

Relentless repetition was once enough to drive your message home. But it isn't quite that simple anymore. The impact of your message in this over-communicated hour depends largely on the structural basis of your statements.

A statement is either fact-based or values-based.

A fact-based statement must be true or false. If true, it is a correct statement. If false, it is incorrect. But it is a fact-based statement either way.

Fact-based statements can be proven or disproven objectively. They cannot, by nature, include opinion. But the 'truth' of a values-based statement hinges on agreed-upon values. Consequently, values-based statements have the look and feel of fact-based statements to persons of the same opinion.

“Our parking lot has spaces for 38 cars” is a fact-based statement. It can be proven or disproven objectively. Just count the spaces. Personal values and opinions don't matter.

“There's always plenty of parking” is a values-based statement. (How much parking, exactly, is 'plenty'?)

“D-color diamonds are more rare than J-color diamonds,” is a fact-based statement.

“D-color diamonds are more beautiful than J-color diamonds,” is a values-based statement. (And in my opinion, entirely untrue.)

“The Academy Reunion and Open House is October 15 on the new campus of Wizard Academy,” is a fact-based statement.

“We've planned some fabulous surprises for you,” is values based.

“Iraq has weapons of mass destruction” is a fact-based statement.

“Saddam Hussein is a bad ruler” is entirely values-based.

Calm down. I use that example only to illustrate how quickly disagreements can arise over statements that are values-based.

Modern advertising overflows with values-based statements: “Big selection.” “High quality.” “Low prices.” “Easy credit.” Even though these statements may be true in the mind of the advertiser, the public has heard them all before.

The left hemispheres of our brains detect fact-based statements and prefer them to statements that are values-based. Having been suffocated by hype for the past 40 years, we hunger today for statements of fact.

Seven years ago I wrote a chapter called The 12 Most Common Mistakes in Advertising. Among those mistakes was, “4. Unsubstantiated claims. Advertisers often claim to have what the customer wants, such as 'highest quality at the lowest price,' but fail to offer any evidence. An unsubstantiated claim is nothing more than a cliché the prospect is tired of hearing. You must prove what you say in every ad. Do your ads give the prospect new information? Do they provide a new perspective? If not, prepare to be disappointed with the results.” Today I accelerate that statement: If you would persuade today's hype-resistant customer, you must learn to make fact-based statements in your ads.

Specifics are more believable than generalities.

Roy H. Williams

Do you want more free time? Then you must buy it. Free time is never free.

There are only four ways you can buy free time:

1. Work fewer hours. Learn to say no. You'll have more free time immediately.

Cost: Lost opportunities, reduced income.

2. Develop systems, methods and procedures that save time.

Cost: Time and money spent in developing those systems, methods and procedures.

3. Recruit, hire, train and manage other people to do your work for you.

Cost: Time and money spent in recruiting, hiring, training and managing.

I heartily recommend these three methods. But I recommend against number four:

4. Be the recipient of a large inheritance or insurance settlement, win the lottery, marry a rich person.

Cost: Loss of identity, loss of self.

That last statement will surely win me a flurry of emails from angry “happy people” who married someone rich. “How dare you say that! I married a rich person and my life has been full and complete.” Okay, so you're the rare exception. But I'm sure you'll agree that money is an insulator. It shields us from problems, and perhaps that's good. But it shields us from challenges as well. Money is the glove that keeps us from feeling the texture and ripples of life.

Nothing is so rewarding as making a difference. Especially when it involves self-sacrifice. But when a challenge can be overcome by the mere stroke of your pen, the reward always seems less intimate. Is this perhaps what Jesus meant when he said, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven?” (Note to Anxious Expositors: that question was rhetorical. I'm not really asking what Jesus meant, okay?)

In the tenth chapter of Mark's history, a wealthy young man asks Jesus how to receive life. Mark tells us, “Jesus looked at him and loved him.”

Okay, so far so good. Jesus really likes this guy and wants to help him experience the visceral joy he craves. “One thing you lack,” Jesus said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me.”

Mark reports the young man walked away sad. Removing the glove of wealth was, for him, a price too high to pay for joy.

Please note that neither Mark nor I are insinuating that it was the young man's moral duty to liquidate his holdings. Jesus was merely pointing out the high emotional cost of wearing the glove of wealth.

What's my point? Only this: excitement and reward exist only outside your comfort zone. You'll experience neither of them until you make yourself do something you really don't want to do.

So what is it that scares the hell out of you?

Roy H. Williams