The Wizard of Ads

Roy H. Williams

📚 GENRE: Business & Finance

📃 PAGES: 224

✅ COMPLETED: September 9, 2023

🧐 RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Short Summary

Roy Williams shares his unique perspective on advertising and life. Part how-to, part personal development, The Wizard of Ads helps readers become better writers and humans. 

Key Takeaways

1️⃣ “What’s In It For Me?” — At the end of the day, people only care about themselves. Nobody cares about your company history and where you’re located. They want to know how the product or service you’re selling will help them solve a problem or live a better life in some way. If you do not make this clear, they will not buy. Use techniques like curiosity, mental imagery, and storytelling to keep the reader engaged with your copy, but your core focus should never move away from the benefits you’re offering. Stay with the benefits! 

2️⃣ Prove It! — It’s not enough to just state your core benefit; you have to back it up. HOW does your product or service deliver the benefit to the customer? WHY is the product effective at solving a certain problem? What is the product made of? Are there testimonials or pieces of data that can support your message? Get into the nitty-gritty details. An unsubstantiated claim is nothing more than a cliché the prospect is tired of hearing. You have to prove what you say in every ad.

3️⃣ Close the Loopholes — Most ads are riddled with loopholes. One of the ways to write effective copy is to identify loopholes in your content and then close them. To close loopholes, put yourself in the customer’s shoes. What kind of questions do you think the customer will have as they read the copy? Like a game of Whac-A-Mole, find them and eliminate them in the next line of copy. Comb through your copy and identify all loopholes (questions), then answer each of them. Screenshots containing a few examples of this process are included in the notes below. 

Favorite Quote

“Do people relate to the things you say? Or are you merely droning on about Who, What, When, and Where, while failing to answer the pivotal question: Why? Most ads are written under the assumption that the customer is asking, ‘Who are you? What is your product? When are you open? Where are you located?’ Unfortunately, the customer's only real question is ‘Why should I care?’ Your customer is saying, ‘Tell me a story that has me in it. Don't tell me a story about you. What's in it for me? Can you save me time, make me money, reduce stress in my life, or cause people to think more highly of me? If not leave me alone. You’re wasting my time.’ Most ads are about the product or the company that makes it. Such ads yield disappointing results. The best ads are about the customer and how the product will change his life.”

Book Notes 📑

Introduction

  • About the Book — This book was written by Roy H. Williams, an advertising and marketing specialist who is best known for writing The Wizard of Ads trilogy. This is one of the three books in the series. In this book, Williams shares some of the secrets to effective advertising while providing practical life advice. The book is spread out over 100 short chapters. These short chapters were originally letters written to his clients in a weekly memo and were repurposed to make this book. 
  • Human Psychology — The core belief that drives Williams’s copywriting strategy is that human psychology hasn’t changed over time. The same triggers that persuade us today are the same ones that influenced our ancestors’ actions thousands of years ago. He frames his messages in a way that takes advantage of these deeply rooted psychological habits. 
    • Quote (P. X): “We’re still the same predictable creatures we’ve always been. People and advertising seem subject to certain laws of the universe that are impervious to change. I believe that a knowledge of these laws is the secret to finding yourself in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing in the right way.”
  • Note About Author’s Writing Style — Williams is a great writer. While reading this book, I noticed a couple of techniques he used a lot: (i) he posed a lot of questions to the reader to keep them engaged and curious; (ii) he created vivid mental images using similes and analogies (“like”, “as good as”); and (iii) he displayed great rhythm and tempo using a nice mix of short, medium, and long sentences. An example of a mental image he created using his words: “My ponytail prejudice was recently ground into dust and blown into the night breeze on the island of Kona, Hawaii.” Another one: “Will you run with the big dogs or stay on the porch? The choice is yours.”

Part 1: Chapters 1-25

  • Keep It Simple, State the Benefits — Keep your focus on the benefits that your product or service offers to the reader. Don’t get distracted trying to be too clever or creative. That stuff is great, but the customer really only cares about how the product or service will benefit their life. Keep it simple and stay focused on communicating the core benefits that you’re offering.
    • Quote (P. 79): “Too many ads today are creative without being persuasive. Slick, clever, funny, creative, and different are poor substitutes for informative, believable, memorable, and persuasive.”
  • Influencing Human Behavior — The person who can capture and hold attention is the person who can effectively influence human behavior. This was true thousands of years ago, and it’s true today. Nothing has changed about human psychology. We are influenced by the same core concepts that drove our ancestors a long time ago. Use curiosity and storytelling to your advantage, and shape your copy around persuasive psychology triggers. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini is a great book to read and reference. 
  • Creativity: Seeing the Links — Creativity is not some mythical, unattainable thing. It’s ultimately the process of linking two or more unrelated ideas together to form something that hasn’t been seen before. “Creative people” are those who have an unusual ability to see the connections better than others. Look for links and find ways to combine them. This is how you should think about creativity.
  • Interesting Fact — Isaac Newton discovered gravity after an apple fell from a tree and hit him in the head while he was eating lunch one day. He knew the planets circled the sun at tremendous speed, but he couldn’t figure out why they didn’t fly off into space. He wondered about the string that kept the planets tied to the sun. His answer came when the apple hit him in the head; he realized that there was an invisible force in play. Just like earth pulls things (the apple) to it, the sun pulls the planets to it and keeps them in orbit. He later named this invisible force and string “gravity.”
  • Copywriting: The Great Equalizer — You can have a better product, but it will not sell if the marketing and advertising around it aren’t effective. Concentrate on the copy. Use curiosity, storytelling, unforgettable mental images, benefits, and the core pathological triggers to sell the product or service. Effective marketing, advertising, and copywriting can really help boost the sales of a product or service. 
  • Know the Product, Know Humans — Glenn Frank once said “The advertising man is a liaison between the products of a business and the mind of a nation. He must know both before he can serve either.” As a copywriter, you should put a lot of time and effort into studying the products you’re selling and the psychology that drives humans. Having a strong understanding of both will make you a really strong copywriter. 
  • Grab and Hold Attention — We simply have too much going on these days. Every reader that sees your content has a million things in their head competing for his attention. The average person’s attention span has decreased rapidly over time. To grab and hold attention, you have to present information that is interesting and thought-provoking. If you don’t do it quickly, the reader is gone. This is why headlines in particular are so important. It’s also why building curiosity is critical.
    • Quote (P. 22): “You and I have so much to remember that we often forget what we’re doing. We are the unfortunate victims of overchoice: too much to do, too little time. The problem is nationwide. I tell you this to remind you of something that most advertisers forget: the customer is seldom paying attention. She simply has too many other things to think about. When exposed to your ad, she knows it’s there, the same way I know the elevator button is there. The problem is that she’s not thinking about it.”
    • Quote (P. 23): “I’m talking about enticing the customer with a thought more interesting than the thought she’s thinking. The skillful use of words is the most impressive of human powers.”
    • Quote (P. 23): “The common, the mundane, the average, the predictable are ignored; the unusual, the intriguing, the fascinating are immediately spied and examined. If your goal is to cause the customer to willingly give you her attention, isn’t the solution obvious? You must offer her a thought more interesting than the thought that currently occupies her mind. This does not require shouting. It requires art.”
  • Let It Play Out! — Launching an ad campaign is like pushing a car — it takes some time to get it moving and you have to give it time to gather momentum. The law of inertia is important to keep in mind here. Advertising doesn’t begin to work as quickly as you would like, but once it gets going, it’s hard to stop. Give your ads some time to gather momentum. Whatever you do, don’t bail on a campaign too early and then immediately go start another one around a different message. Stick with the message you’re trying to sell. If anything, improve the writing, but don’t hit the restart button by starting a whole new campaign around a different message. 
  • Take Readers On a Journey — Set the scene for the reader. Use your copy to help them see and feel themselves experiencing the product or service. Describe what it will be like when they are using it and how it will make him/her feel. Be very detailed. Use your words to create a lot of mental images. We respond very well to mental imagery. Tap into the imagination. We love storytelling and mental imagery.
    • Quote (P. 26): “If you will write powerful advertising, you must point the movie camera of language to that place in the mind where you want the listener to go. The imagination can be a powerful thing, but only when the listener is a participant in your movie.”
  • Use “You”! — Write to the customer. The best way to do this is to speak to them using the word “you.” The word “you” makes the customer a participant in your ad. It makes them feel a personal touch as they read the copy. 
  • Satisfying Experience — Good ads are either intellectual (information focused) or emotional (experience focused). A strong emotional ad vividly sets the scene and uses storytelling to help the reader visualize themselves using the product. A good intellectual ad begins by describing the main benefit and then backs it by outlining how the benefit will be delivered. You essentially substantiate the benefit. Whether the as is emotional or intellectual, your ads should deliver a satisfying experience.
    • Quote (P. 30): “Good ads are either intellectual (information focused) or emotional (experience focused). A well-written emotional ad causes the listener to imagine herself taking precisely the action you would like her to take.”
    • Quote (P. 31): “A good intellectual ad begins by delivering a punch line directly to a felt need, then quickly substantiating any claims made during the opening statement. Today’s public prefers that you prove what you say.”
  • Look for Loopholes! — Most ads are full of loopholes. One of the keys to producing successful ads that lead to sales is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and answer the question that might pop into their head as they read your content. A persuasive intellectual ad begins with a statement of benefit and quickly substantiates every claim. This is so important. Closing loopholes is the difference between informing the customer and persuading her. A great example of this in action is provided in the photos below. I’ve also provided a bad example. The customer’s thoughts (the loopholes) are in parentheses. 
  • Curiosity, AKA Velcro — You have to make your copy sticky. The goal of advertising is to get your message to stick with the customer, and the best way to do that is to sprinkle the element of curiosity throughout your content. That includes the headlines, visual element, and body copy. Ask open-ended questions in the copy, provide interesting facts, tell an interesting historical story that relates to your message, use words to create mental images in the reader’s mind, say something unexpected — these are all great ways to build curiosity. Mix it up and find ways to keep the reader interested and engaged. Don’t get predictable — that’s a curiosity killer. The more you use curiosity, the stickier your message will be. 
  • Interesting Fact — George de Mestral discovered Velcro in 1941 in the Jura Mountains of France. After a day of hunting, scrambling through woods and brush, he found his wool pants covered with burrs. No matter how he tried to remove them, those little burrs were on his pants to stay. Fascinated by their tenacity, George inspected them under a magnifying glass and found that each of them had hundreds of tiny hooks engaged in the loops of his woolen fabric. George made a machine to duplicate the hooks and loops using nylon. He called his new product VELCROÂŽ, from the French words VELours and CROchet. The rough side of Velcro is made of tiny, flexible hooks; the fuzzy side, small, soft loops.
  • Focus on ‘Why’! — Nobody cares about your company history, who leads the company, or where the company is located. People care about how the product or service will make their lives better. “Why should I buy this? What’s in it for me?” — that’s all they care about. Period. End of story. Wasting time and space talking about yourself as a company is very dumb. Keep the focus on the benefits a customer will receive by buying from you. Everything should be focused on the benefits you’re able to provide.
    • Quote (P. 44): “Do people relate to the things you say? Or are you merely droning on about Who, What, When, and Where, while failing to answer the pivotal question: Why? Most ads are written under the assumption that the customer is asking, ‘Who are you? What is your product? When are you open? Where are you located?’ Unfortunately, the customer’s only real question is ‘Why should I care?’ Your customer is saying, ‘Tell me a story that has me in it. Don’t tell me a story about you. What’s in it for me? Can you save me time, make me money, reduce stress in my life, or cause people to think more highly of me? If not leave me alone. You’re wasting my time.’ Most ads are about the product or the company that makes it. Such ads yield disappointing results. The best ads are about the customer and how the product will change his life.”
      • Takeaway — Read this passage a million times. Frame it. Put it on a sticky note. This is what it’s all about. 
  • Positioning — One of our most basic needs as humans is the need to fit in. Our need to fit in influences what we drive, how we live (lifestyle), the clothes we wear (athletic/non-athletic, etc.), the soda we drink, and much more. This is why it’s important to identify what your company stands for and clearly communicate it to attract customers who share a similar worldview. An example of this is Red Bull. Red Bull exudes a fast-past, high-octane, peddle to the metal lifestyle. The company’s positioning attracts customers who live their life in a similar manner. Find an angle and own it.
    • Quote (P. 48): “Most of our purchases involve self-expression, and we tend to buy things with which we identify.”
  • Don’t Be Predictable — Predictability is one of the big reasons ads fail. Predictability is the enemy of curiosity. Holding a customer’s attention by using curiosity is essential, but being predictable with what you say kills any chance of that. Additionally, nobody enjoys meaningless clichĂŠs and claims that are unproven. Going back to previous notes in this book, you can’t get carried away trying to be overly creative, smooth, or original. The key is to direct and believable. Explain why the product can help the customer live a better life, then show how the product will do it. Be specific. Back up your claims with proven facts, testimonials, product information, etc.
  • “Walk a Mile In My Shoes” — Maybe the best way to connect with a customer and hit on his/her pain points is to visualize a life in his/her shoes. What does his/her day look like? What are his/her motivations, frustrations, ambitions, etc.? How would the product you’re selling help him/her in daily life? Taking a few moments to visualize what life is like for your typical customer will allow you to write copy that resonates with him/her. This kind of copy is persuasive.
    • Quote (P. 60): “To be persuasive, your ads must be frank, direct, and believable. Your ad is believable only when the listener agrees with it. So how do you make the listener agree with you? Tell her what she already knows or suspects! Remind her of things you know she has experienced. Tell her her perceptions are accurate, and she’ll probably agree with whatever you have to say. (Anyone who agrees with her can’t possibly be wrong!). Build on the foundation of a common perspective. Try to see your customer’s needs as she sees her needs. Look at your product through her eyes, and you may discover how to speak to her felt needs.”

Part 2: Chapters 26-50

  • Make ‘Em See It — One of your big objectives as a copywriter is to create vivid mental images and help the reader see himself with your product. You have to try to get the reader to imagine his life with your product in it. Get into his imagination. The more you can get the reader to see himself with your profit and feel what it would be like to have it, the better your chances of getting him to take action. This includes immediate next steps — make it very clear what’s going to happen once a customer makes the purchase. Nobody likes uncertainty. 
    • Quote (P. 62): “No person takes action until he has seen himself taking such action in his mind. We always imagine doing a thing before we do it. Causing your prospective customer to imagine a visit to your store is the highest goal of advertising. A good ad artfully describes what awaits the customer. Do your ads enticingly describe what awaits your customer? Do your words create a series of mental pictures? To be effective, your ads must cause the customer to ‘see’ himself doing what you want him to do.”
  • Prove It! — As discussed earlier, your copy should state a clear benefit that the customer will after buying your product, then you need to back it up with evidence and description. Prove the benefit. Substantiate your claims. Don’t pump the copy with a bunch of fluff that can’t be proven. HOW will the product deliver the benefit? WHY is the product able to deliver such a benefit? Clearly articulate how the product is made and why this matters. This is one of the big ideas the author continues to hammer home in this book. 
    • Quote (P. 79): “An unsubstantiated claim is nothing more than a clichĂŠ the prospect is tired of hearing. You must prove what you say in every ad.”
  • Define the USP — Your unique selling proposition (USP) is the main benefit that sets your product apart from a competitor’s. It’s important to identify what that is. Every product or service has one. Your job as a copywriter is to find it and hammer it home in your copy. Craft a story around the USP. There’s not much you can do if the product you’re tasked with selling stinks. 
  • A Few Words On Success — Success isn’t lucky. When someone achieves success, it’s a sign that they have put forth an enormous amount of time, effort, passion, faith, perseverance, and tenacity to get where they’re at. It’s not luck. It’s not magic. It takes a lot of discipline and sacrifice to be highly successful, and those who have obtained it should be admired and studied rather than discredited. 
  • The Customer *Isn’t* Always Right — The interesting thing about human nature is that we don’t really know what we want, regardless of how much we claim to think we know what we want. This is why market research has to be taken with a grain of salt. Study after study has shown that we often say one thing and do another, especially when it comes to buying products. Customers will tell you they want one thing and then not buy the product after the changes have been made. Be weary of market research. 
  • One Ad, One Message — Never try to communicate several messages or benefits in one ad. Every ad should have one singular focus. One benefit. One message. One desired course of action. If you try to over-communicate, you will confuse and lose the customer. You have to keep it simple. If you want to tell a larger story, use a campaign, which usually features several ads. This will give you the opportunity to communicate a different message in each ad. 
    • Quote (P. 80): “It is foolish to believe a single ad can ever tell the entire story. The most effective, persuasive, and memorable ads are those most like a rhinoceros: they make a single point, powerfully. An advertiser with seventeen different things to say should commit to a campaign of at least seventeen different ads, repeating each ad enough to stick in the prospect’s mind.”
  • Analytics: Focus on Sales — At the end of the day, what matters are sales and conversions. Irrelevant things like ‘favorites’, ‘likes’, ‘comments’, and ‘impressions’ aren’t important; they’re just fluffy statistics used to show engagement. If the copy isn’t delivering sales, it’s not working. End of story. When performing analysis on a campaign, keep your eye focused on sales and conversion.
  • Train Employees Well — The fate of your company is in the hands of your people. It’s important to train employees well. Invest in their training; they are the boots on the ground who communicate with customers more than anybody else. A company is only as good as its people. 
  • Use “…which means…” — It’s easy to get in the habit of just listing a bunch of features without translating them into benefits for the reader. The “…which means…” tool is a great way to combat that. How does it work? After listing a feature, you can tack on “which means” and explain how that feature benefits the customer. You can keep doing this over and over. Because “which means” isn’t always necessarily the best way to write something, you can then finesse the wording to your liking. 
    • Ex. Car (Bad) — “This car has a V-8 engine, you’ll love it.”
    • Ex. Car (Good) — “This car has a V-8 engine, which means it will last longer because it doesn’t have to work as hard as a smaller engine. You’ll also have the power to pass in traffic, and most important, you’ll have the acceleration to get out of the way of traffic accidents before they happen.”
    • Quote (P. 90): “Learn to translate features into the language of the customer, whose only question is, ‘What’s in it for me?’ The customer will hear you when you speak his language.”
  • Love What You Do — People who absolutely love what they do drip passion and are almost always successful. When you love what you do, you’re obsessed with it and are always looking to get better at your craft. You’re always willing to put in the extra work and take the risks needed. Find something you love and do it. 
    • Quote (P. 107): “Riley’s ability to sell wine was born of passion. Raw passion for his product, unconditional humility, and impressive product knowledge are what make John Riley’s wine recommendations irresistible. I’ve known other men with similar passions, and each of them is wildly successful.”
    • Quote (P. 159): “Why do you do what you do? Is it for the money alone, or is it because you love to do it well? Wealth is not a destination, not a sparkling city on a hill. Wealth is simply a by-product of passion. You will become truly rich only when you learn to love what it is you do.”
    • Quote (P. 194): “Brilliant accomplishments are nearly always the result of a consuming passion. Whether in business or the arts or marriage or sport, people with passion have a motivation that can rarely be denied.”
  • Attitude & Effort — In the end, there are only two things any of us have control over: attitude and effort. Everything else is out of our hands. Go out and work hard. Be disciplined. Focus on getting better every day. Treat people well. 
    • Quote (P. 108): “But the part about Honest Abe I like best is the part not often mentioned in the history books — something he said: ‘Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.’ Yes, that’s right. Abe was a hustler, a fighter, a scrapper, an opportunist. How else does a dirt-poor farm boy become president of the United States?… In Lincoln’s eyes, the factors that set men apart were attitude and effort.”
  • Leadership: Making Decisions — It’s important to empower employees and give them the freedom to do the job they were hired to do, but you never want to ‘manage by consensus.’ This approach is the source of indecision and stagnation. As a leader, you have to make the call, and you can’t be worried about the fallout. That responsibility comes with the job. 
    • Quote (P. 110): “Please don’t confuse the popular concept of employee empowerment with ‘management by consensus.’ Employee empowerment means you give your employees the authority to do their jobs; management by consensus means you give your employees the authority to do your job.”
    • Quote (P. 111): “Leadership is not a matter of genius. It’s a matter of courage. I believe those business owners who manage by consensus do so because they want to share the responsibility for failure. Consensus lets them escape the haunting possibility they may some day have to look in the mirror and say, ‘I, alone, was wrong.’”
  • Maximizing Time — One of the ways you can make yourself valuable is by maximizing your time. Squeeze everything you can out of every hour. When you make the most of your time, you can improve yourself at a faster rate and get things done quickly. Both of these traits are valuable and will lead to success. We all have a limited amount of time every day — make the most of yours. No Netflix. No video games. Focus on getting better. When it comes to marketing, showing how your product can save the customer time is very smart. Everybody wants more time back in their day. 
    • Quote (P. 112): “A recent survey of American business owners revealed near-unanimous agreement on the most important factors in considering an employee for advancement. Topping the list was the employee’s ability to separate the important from the trivial — to prioritize. Employers don’t want their people wasting time on that which is not important. The second most highly valued characteristic was the ability to get things done speedily. In summary: the most highly valued employees are those who can quickly decide what to do and then get it done. It’s all about saving time.”

Part 3: Chapters 51-75

  • Act On Your Talent — Everybody is talented at something. Once you’ve identified your talent, go out and refine it. Work on improving and getting better at your craft. The worst thing you can do is not act on the talent you’ve been given.
    • Quote (P. 114): “I’ll wager that you, yourself, have enough talent to be world famous for something! The important question is this: Are you willing to take action, or will your talent remain unrefined, like gold that stays in the ground?”
  • Be Curious! — You can learn something from every person on this planet. Everybody has something of value to offer. As a lifelong learner, you should always be looking to learn from others. It doesn’t matter what a person’s job or background is — ask questions and learn from others. Be curious about the world. Have a thirst for knowledge. 
  • Appeal to Emotion — Most people make decisions based on how they feel, then try to justify the choice using logic. Your marketing and advertising materials should try to appeal to emotion. Make people feel a certain way.
    • Quote (P. 126): “Nothing is quite so important as emotion in advertising and selling.”
    • Quote (P. 126): “Your customer sees only what your product will do for her — and chances are your competitor’s product will do the same thing. Your customer will buy whichever product she feels best about. Make sure she feels best about yours.”
  • Failure: A Stepping Stone to Success — Failure is ultimately a stepping stone to success. You should never be afraid to fail, because every failure produces lessons that can help you improve. With this in mind, you should try to fail as much as possible. The more you fail, the closer you’re getting to success. For these reasons, this same philosophy should be in place at every organization. Every leadership team should look to build a culture where failure isn’t feared. Risk-taking should be encouraged, and there should not be any repercussions for falling short.
    • Quote (P. 134): “Take a chance. Risk failure. Change something that needs changing.”
    • Quote (P. 183): “Western society has placed such a premium on success that few of us can bear the thought of failure. Yet failure is the key to success. The person most likely to succeed is the one who recognizes the temporary nature of failure and consequently has no fear of it — a person who knows that each failure brings him one step closer to success.”
      • Takeaway — This quote is powerful. It’s so easy to be petrified of failure to the point of never risking the possibility of it. Realizing that failure is a temporary thing and that it gets you closer to success is liberating. In some ways, you should want to fail. You should be happy about it, because the lessons you learn in failure speed up your development. Ultimately, you really can’t lose when you try something; you’re either going to succeed and be able to celebrate a win, or you’re going to fail and learn something valuable from it. 
  • Keep Tinkering! — As you try to maximize your skills, you should always be experimenting with different things. The more you experiment, the more you learn. Constantly push yourself to learn and improve. Try new things in pursuit of that mission. From everything you try, you’ll learn little tips and techniques that make you better.
    • Quote (P. 135): “Experimentation is a perspective, a way of watching what happens and asking, ‘What have I learned?’ then attempting to implement what you have learned, observing the result, and asking once more, ‘What have I learned?’
    • Quote (P. 135): “Throughout his long and productive life, Thomas Edison never quit experimenting. Never quit learning. Never quit becoming better. With this in mind, is it any wonder he discovered the wonderful things he found?”
  • Gratitude: You’ve Already Won — You’ve already won the lottery just by being alive and healthy. Life is such a miracle. There’s so much to be grateful for; sometimes we all need to take a second and appreciate everything we have going for us, because there’s a ton. Try to live with gratitude at the top of your mind. Realize how fragile life really is. Be excited to see people. You never know when it could be your last day.
    • Quote (P. 149): “You have already won a lottery more amazing than humankind could ever devise. You have already been awarded a prize far richer than anything the world has to give. You are alive. You are here. Make the most of it.”
    • Quote (P. 174): “Take a moment to consider the abundance of good things in your life. Does anyone love you? Celebrate it. Is there anything you do well? Take pleasure in it. Is your health good enough to survive the day? Revel in it. If you want every day to be a happy day, you must learn to celebrate the ordinary.”
  • Vision — No matter what you’re doing, always try to look ahead and picture what things could be like. Then get to work trying to execute on that vision. Some of the most brilliant, innovative minds in history — like Steve Jobs, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Christopher Columbus — have engaged in this kind of thinking and vision. Pretend Steve Jobs was doing your job. What would he be thinking? What would be his vision for the company and your role in particular?
    • Quote (P. 150): “When undertaking any endeavor, vision is the ability to see the end from the beginning, and leadership is the ability to communicate that vision to the people around you, to accurately describe what you sincerely believe will happen… If a visionary leader such as (John F.) Kennedy or (Martin Luther) King or (Christopher) Columbus knew what you know and had your job, what do you think he would do?”

Part 4: Chapters 76-100

  • Master One Thing — There are a lot of things we can choose to focus on in life; our options are almost endless. With so many options available to us, it’s easy to try to do too much. When you try to do too much, you never end up mastering one thing. Rather than trying to be decent at many skills, focus on specializing in one. Become the absolute best at what you do. Devote the majority of your focus and attention on that one area. If you’re a copywriter, for example, focus on learning everything you can about your craft and becoming the best copywriter possible. As a copywriter, try not to spend too much time learning something like computer programming, for example. Those who have enjoyed massive success are those who devoted themselves to one thing and became insanely good at that one thing. Don’t spread yourself too thin trying to be mediocre at several things. Choose one path and master it.
    • Quote (P. 194): “More important than mere motivation, however, passion also brings focus and commitment. Passionate people are tenacious and undistracted. They have chosen to do one thing well rather than several things badly. Let me repeat: ‘They have chosen.’ Those who experience the joys of the passionate have chosen to reject all options but one. The price of passion is a willingness to say no. Passion can be purchased with no other coin. The average American cannot say no. This is why he is average… You can do things half-heartedly or one thing while-heartedly. Which do you choose?”
  • Overchoice Is Draining — Building on the point above, one of the reasons we are so tired all the time is that we have so many options available to us. Too many possibilities, too little time. So many books to read. So many shows to watch. So many skills to learn. So many places to travel. We exhaust ourselves just thinking about all of the things we haven’t been able to get to. As discussed in the previous point, the solution is to narrow your focus. When you ignore everything that isn’t relative to your life and your path, there’s a lot fewer options available. Fewer things to think about and stress about. Think about it in terms of juggling — juggling one or two balls is a lot more manageable than trying to juggle five.
    • Quote (P. 196): “We are beat up, tired, and exhausted, but it’s not the things we’re doing that are wearing us out. It’s the burden of all the things we’re not doing. It’s the knowledge of things undone that causes us to wish for more hours in a day… We will quit feeling tired only when we’ve learned to say no to overchoice.” 
  • Management vs. Leadership — Alexander the Great is considered one of history’s greatest natural leaders. Aristotle’s star pupil, he conquered all of the known world by the age of 33, and was off to tackle the unknown world when he died of an illness. What made Alexander so great was his tenacity and heart; he was an exceptional leader on the battlefield. He had a tireless work ethic. But when he died, his empire crumbled immediately because he didn’t take the time to put processes, procedures, and structures in place. In short, he was a lousy manager. Over the next 1500 years, the Roman Empire became unstoppable because the people in charge created a solid system of management that prevailed decade after decade, century after century, no matter who was leading. This comparison is the difference between strong management and strong leadership. They are not the same thing. Strong management involves looking ahead, planning for the future, and deciding who fits where. It’s about finding ways to strategically maximize your people and resources.
    • Quote (P. 199): “Not even the most brilliant manager can do the job of a natural leader, yet even more rarely will a strong leader be a consistent manager. Success is the result of having the right person in the right job at the right time. Are you a leader or a manager? Which does your company need right now?”
  • Interesting Fact — The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the French in 1886. It arrived in crates and nobody wanted to erect it, so Joseph Pulitzer (the man the Pulitzer Prize is named after) put out a series of a articles in his little paper, the New York World, urging the people of New York to come together and assemble it. It worked. In total, 121,000 people contributed to the installation of the Statue of Liberty. For every person who contributed, Pulitzer published their name in the paper. 
  • Carry the ‘Message to Garcia’ — A Message to Garcia is a short essay written by Elbert Hubbard in 1899 that, in short, ponders why some men are driven and why most men aren’t. It was inspired by a lieutenant named Rowan, who during the Spanish-American War took a letter from President William McKinley and somehow managed to navigate a dangerous jungle behind enemy lines and deliver it to Garcia, the leader of the Spanish side. The letter contained critical information, and the mission was considered one of the key moments of the war. Writing about Rowan’s heroics in his newspaper, Hubbard observed that most people choose to whine, complain, and make excuses rather than put their head down and get the job done. The essay urges people to be more like Rowan — work hard, don’t complain, and simply do the job. A brief snippet of the essay is below.
    • Quote (P. 213): “My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the boss is away, as well as when he is home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets ‘laid off,’ nor has to go on strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks will be granted; his kind is so rare that no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town, and village — in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such; he is needed, and needed badly — the man who can carry a message to Garcia.”