Freedom and Responsibility

Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

My friend is forever shouting about his Freedom. It is the only song he sings.

Freedom is a good thing, but our love of freedom is why family sizes are shrinking. Children are a responsibility.

Freedom and Responsibility are paired opposites, a duality. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

I had written only those few words when I received a request from the American Small Business Institute to answer a question from Glenn in Calgary; he wanted me to predict the Top Five Qualities of an Advertising Consultant in 2023.

I had the Freedom to answer however I wanted. I could be flip, funny, cute, self-serving, dismissive, scholarly, insulting, pedantic, or predictable. My Freedom was unrestrained. But I also had the Responsibility to give Glenn a list of five specific, attainable goals that would make him and his clients more successful.

I told Glenn the Top Five Qualities for 2023 would be these:

1. Ability to write good ads. I’ve never seen a business fail due to “reaching the wrong people.” Businesses fail because they say the wrong thing.
2. Knowledge of how to differentiate a business from its category. You must make your client’s business distinctive and memorable.
3. Honesty. You must be willing to accept responsibility for the failure of your ad campaign.
4. Courage to say what needs to be said to the business owner. This is how you avoid campaigns that fail.
5. Wisdom to know that good advertising will not fix a broken business. Choose your clients carefully, Glenn.

Depression and Joy are another duality. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

Pride – the inability to feel grateful – is what keeps us from feeling joy. The disembodied voice that tells us we need to be “proud, self-made men and women,” is the devil who robs us of our joy.

Depression is unfocused anger. Joy is unfocused gratitude. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

If you look for reasons to be angry, you will find them. If you look for reasons to be grateful, you will find them.

Don’t be angry. Be grateful.

Justice and Mercy are a third duality. And the tug-of-war between them is intense.

The only hard choices in life are the choices between two good things.

Justice and Mercy are both good things. When you encounter the tug-of-war between them, which one do you favor?

Opportunity and Security, a fourth duality.

When Opportunity increases, Security declines. This sounds like Risk and Reward, but it’s not. If Risk and Reward were a duality, increasing your risk would decrease your reward. But increased risk of failure increases potential reward. This makes Risk and Reward a synchronous potentiality contained entirely within the realm of Opportunity.

Ultimately, it all comes down to Choices.

Our plan is always to make good choices, not bad choices. But most choices are neither good nor bad in the moment we make them. They become good or bad in hindsight. They become good or bad due to consequences. The outcome is never entirely clear until after the show is over.

We learn more from our failures than we learn from our successes. Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.

You cannot judge a person’s experience by their age. You can judge it only by what they have experienced. A person can have 30 years of experience, or they can 1 year of experience 30 times.

Which will you have? Will you choose to embrace risk and take your beatings when you fail and learn hard lessons and win great victories? Opportunity is a good thing.

But then again, so is Security.

Roy H. Williams