Look for “Vengeance” with B.J. Novak on Amazon Prime. Stay with it. You will definitely enjoy this movie.

Don’s Very Bad Week A note to the wizard from his close friend in Carson City, Nevada The gods have been screwing me over recently. I think they are paying me back for my previous questionable behavior. We have 3 feet of snow on our property, 5-foot drifts. Cold weather makes it all white cement. […]

Does Your Have Company Core Values? There are only three reasons to have a list of core values.      1: Inspire and reinforce “on-brand” behavior from employees.     2: Assist in the orientation and onboarding of new hires.     3: Inform investors, customers, and other interested parties of what they can expect from you. […]

CHAPTER ONE: Most ads are not written to persuade. They are written not to offend. This is why most ads are flaccid, impotent, and ignored. EXAMPLE: a few of you mentally raised your eyebrows at the words flaccid and impotent. You would tell me those words should be changed. Perhaps I should shorten it to say, […]

Prior to “a statement that triggers more questions than it answers,” “Third Gravitating Bodies” were the things I could never explain to others as clearly as I saw them in my mind. I failed for 22 years, but I finally figured out how to do it. “The Power of the Universe at Your Fingertips” is […]

Companies are pouring big money into programs that teach “soft skills,” such as employee training, human resources, community outreach, and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.) But do they get their money’s worth?Jack and Patti Phillips developed a method for determining the return on investment for programs like these and it has become the most-used evaluation system […]

Lately I’ve been trying to explain to uncomprehending faces how the most powerful opening lines are never questions, but statements that trigger more questions than they answer. I am certain those uncomprehending faces are my fault. I fear the idea I am attempting to teach may be bigger than the teacher trying to explain it. […]

“Let’s Paper the House” I was once 16 years old. I’m not proud of that, but it was unavoidable. You’ve got to be 16 before you can move on. Do you remember – during the Covid lockdown – when toilet paper and eggs were like diamonds and gold? Back in my day, toilet paper and […]

“Ways to Eat Spaghetti” is a funny Chatbook the wizard crafted for you.

Thank you, Johnny Molson!

  Can you teach yourself and your colleagues to generate great ideas — ideas actually worth pursuing? Robin Landa has been studying where breakthrough ideas come from — so-called ideation —  and she can explain how anyone can conjure concepts that will be REVOLUTIONARY. Robin tells roving reporter Rotbart, “There are three ‘Gs’ that underlie […]

It’s weird. I had already chosen the 5th Dimension, “Would You Like to Ride…” song for the rabbit hole when our friend and fellow cognoscenti Mark Fox sent us this little Balloon video he took last week. Go figure. Synchronicity is Serendipity. – Indiana Beagle, esquire

“Wizard Academy: We’re all here because we’re not all there.”

Stephen Semple, an internationally respected marketing wizard, says that if you want your advertising campaigns to attract large numbers of new customers and generate plenty of sales, you need to rip a page from the playbooks of Google, Amazon, eBay, and Airbnb. Where are these cutting-edge Titans shifting their promotional dollars? To radio and television advertising, […]

I recall the yellow cotton dressFoaming like a waveOn the ground around your knees.The birds, like tender babies in your handsAnd the old men playing checkers by the trees.MacArthur’s Park is melting in the darkAll the sweet, green icing flowing down.Someone left the cake out in the rain.I don’t think that I can take it‘Cause […]

“One day that autumn, a staff sergeant who had written some short stories knocked on the door of Hemingway’s hotel room. He had never met Hemingway and didn’t how he’d be received. But he was ushered in and given a drink. Hemingway had seen one of his published stories, asked to see another, liked it, […]

Football player in the second rownever knew that she was beautiful.Momma’s crying with her head down low,Daddy with the video. Drummers drum and the horns all blow.Marching band is circling tight.Everyone is moving in slow-mo.She’s at the speed of light. And the valedictoriansheds her clothes in the midday, between spring and summer sun,she says, “This is […]

Inhale. Exhale. You are rolling down the road when you wonder, “If I turn off the engine and quit burning fuel, how far can I coast?” If your thought is to save fuel, you have made a costly mistake. The fuel you will burn to regain your speed is a lot more fuel than you […]

Would you like to read the wizard’s strange musings about What a Stranger Said to Me at an Airport?

Storytellers, Writers, and the Original Magic Carpet I recently read a pair of books by Arkady Martine, a writer who is new to Science Fiction. Her first novels, A Memory Called Empire (2019) and A Desolation Called Peace (2021), each won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. I like Arkady Martine and I like her books. She is […]

Cathy Nesbitt is a passionate worm advocate, a sort of worm royalty. For the past 20 years Cathy has bred and sold red wigglers and European nightcrawlers to enthusiastic customers who use the squigglers to facilitate composting — converting household garbage into nutrient-rich fertilizer. Cathy is that rare entrepreneur who is willing to get her hands […]

Blaxploitation is a portmanteau of the words Black and Exploitation coined by by Junius Griffin, president of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood NAACP in 1972, four months after these Academy Awards. Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there. (Frisbeetarianism is a portmanteau of Frisbee and Presbyterian.)

Introvert’s Retreat Week: Golden Silence is a solitary vacation.

The Rice and Beans Millionaire: The Case of an Improbable Entrepreneur by Wizard Academy Instructors Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg. Short chapters. You’ll read several stories about Wizard Academy starting in Chapter 27: The Crazy Ones. Read and review this book. Do this and you will not leave a 20-foot skid mark on the track like Gil […]

I am not sure how many people have read the original play called Peter Pan or the boy who wouldn’t grow up, written by J.M. Barrie in 1904, but it is a far cry from the innocent tale presented by Walt Disney. We know from the Disney film that Peter Pan doesn’t want to grow […]

Peter Pan – the 1911 novel – was written after the 1904 play became a huge success. On opening night, Mrs. Snow spoke to J.M. Barrie about her late husband, …and he would so have loved this evening. The pirates, and the Indians; he was really just a boy himself, you know, to the very […]

Travis Jacobs is among the great poets of the world. And this one he SINGS! Don‘t miss this. All I want for Christmas is a little more time with the people I miss. All I want for Christmas is a little less time with all the bullshit. Currently they say it’s eight below but feels […]

For most of us, our only exposure to Peter Pan has been through the 1953 Disney cartoon version or the 1955 television version starring Mary Martin. But the 1911 novel by J.M. Barrie is neither vapid nor childish. “Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter when she was tidying up her children’s minds. It is the […]

I want you to:be more productive, reduce your mistakes, shorten your learning curve, and elevate your success. If I am going to help you do these things, we must first look at what’s hiding in your blind spot. Are you ready? Teamwork in Business is Highly Overrated. Teamwork is never the answer. Individual responsibility is the […]

“Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.” – George F. Will

“Working Together for the Common Good.” “It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication […]

Wizard of Ads partner Jeff Sexton sent this to our attention. Thanks, Jeff. – Indy

Barbara Brown Taylor (born 1951) is an American Episcopal priest, academic, and author. In 2014, Time magazine placed her in its annual Time 100 list of most influential people in the world.

Never read Pendulum? Here’s a free PDF of the entire book.

“One can justify pretty much whatever one wants to justify by scripture. What are you reading the Bible for? What are you trying to do with it? What is your theological-moral starting point? We all have one (or several). Be honest about it. It’s a bit frightening because suddenly you need to take responsibility for […]

Let’s Celebrate Christmas!

“When Flora got married, she was fourteen. Now she has three kids and the village wells are dry and the nearest reliable water source is a two-hour walk from her home. Here in the Funhalouro District adolescent moms like Flora spend about six hours a day searching for and transporting water. Yesterday she walked three […]

“In February 1933, a man shot at FDR, who was riding in an open car in Miami, but succeeded in killing Anton Cermak, the mayor of Chicago, who was with the president-elect. FDR was calm and deci­sive, ordering the driver to go immediately to the hospital, paying no attention to his own security, and talking […]

Abraham Lincoln, in the middle of the civil war, uttered these words in his second inaugural address, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds…” […]

“Wherever we are and whatever we do, we are all, always, part of a story… In many organizations there is hardly time for lunch, let alone assessing the past… A leader who does not know what story he or she is in, and where they are within it, is missing an essential route to inspiration.” – […]

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference […]

Jeff Sylvestre in Northern Saskatchewan

Would you like to flip through “Jesus, the Wise Men, and the Shepherds”?

“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love.” – Marcus Aurelius “If you wear a falconry glove to the park and frantically look around the sky, everyone with a small dog will leave.” – Friar Duck “A purpose of human life, no […]

“In many ways, online marketing and online media has done itself a disservice by focusing on targeting more than reach. A couple of very interesting studies are out there. One was a study by Nielsen, about the relative contributions of reach versus targeting in effectiveness, and they concluded, with a survey of about 500 econometric […]

“I met a couple of brilliant young D2C (direct to consumer) millennials last year who waxed so lyrically about the power of radio I was visibly taken aback. When I queried why a couple of smart but sockless wonders would throw perfectly good Instagram money away on radio, they explained that their extensive data had […]

  After ten years of running her own business with a hit-and-miss method of recruiting staff, Andrea Hoffer decided there had to be a better way. So she developed a structured process for bringing on new employees. That method turned out to be so successful that she now runs an agency that helps companies identify, hire, and […]

Ted Clark started out as a shipping clerk, then climbed the heights of the wealth ladder. He now advises people on how to leverage their way into society’s upper crust. The secret? OPM. (Other People’s Money) How to get it. How to use it. 

Joseph Fung has founded five technology companies, backed 20 more, and now is the CEO of an international educational organization that provides lifelong career training. Roving reporter Rotbart describes Joseph as, “a walking encyclopedia of business wisdom.” Listen as Rotbart and Fung discuss how to generate company culture, prepare employees for long-term success, invest in early-stage […]