Wisdom from Wizard Academy

Recently I was talking to someone I hadn’t seen in twenty years. They remained actively involved in a worldview that I had left behind somewhere in my mid-twenties. This person’s world hadn’t changed much since then. Mine had fundamentally altered in both color and shape.

Surprisingly quickly, a few things were stated as assumed facts that caused a visceral reaction in my bones. I realized I was about to have a fundamental and possibly aggressive disagreement with someone I hadn’t seen in two decades. 

They didn’t intend malice or have any desire to fight or argue. They just assumed that I was still the person they remembered from twenty years ago. They were simply making small talk with what they thought was common ground. 

Two things occurred to me. 

Our current era is an US VERSUS THEM era. That’s the water we’re swimming in. All the instincts of our culture are shouting. 

“Pick sides!
Find your enemies!
Burn things to the ground!” 

I don’t want to be a part of that world.

I want to be someone who listens, sees, and tries to understand. I want to find the human behind the opinions. It’s really hard. And I’m not always good at it. 

I had a chance to be kind, or a chance to turn our conversation into a micro version of our current culture war. 

And there was almost nothing to gain. I didn’t plan on staying in this person’s life to see it through to the end. I had no relationship skin in the game. That’s called an opinion hit-and-run. The odds of it having any value is so close to zero that the number is irrelevant. 

The second thought I had came later, and it landed like bricks.

Everything this person was saying was exactly what I used to say. Almost word for word. Effectively, I was about to have an argument with myself from 20 years ago. 

I remember that time in my life. I remember how certain I was of so many things. I remember the hubris of “knowing” that threaded through all my words and beliefs. 

I’m not that person anymore. I doubt more than I know. I’m constantly learning ways that I’m wrong. I’m constantly caught off guard by my ignorance and assumptions. It makes me less certain about anything other than relationships and people. 

Keep in mind, that doesn’t stop me from having opinions. I definitely have opinions. I’m a professional opinion-haver. But I also eat my words so frequently that it might as well be my part-time job. Hopefully this reminder is as helpful to you as it is to me.  

Hold your opinions lightly.  Especially when your theoretical opinions run up against very real human beings. 

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

“Be careful of the company you keep, because you become like them.” 

That is practically a truism. But you can’t say that without also saying this. Sometimes the company you keep fundamentally changes you in the opposite direction.

What happens when you stumble into a workplace where the worldview is foreign or even aggressively opposed to who you are? What about when circumstances force you to choose a path that is not what you wanted?

Your desperation to survive and protect yourself can also transform you, sometimes into someone you don’t want to be or someone you have a hard time recognizing.

I’m an independent and stubborn person. I tend to aggressively fight against being pulled into “sameness” in a group. I would argue that’s my default setting.

In high school and through my early 20s, I was heavily involved in religious communities. I saw myself as a true believer at the time. I was all in. But I was also not willing to abandon who I was and what I thought about the world. Because of that, I was often seen as a problem. I regularly got into trouble or was lectured and reprimanded. More than once, new rules were made because of something I had just done.

I worked various jobs to support a music career, but I always held tight to my identity as a musician regardless of what paid the bills. I might wait tables, but I wasn’t a waiter. I might bartend, but I wasn’t a bartender. I might work at a large marketing company in the customer service department, but that was incidental.

I was a musician.

Everything else was something I was forced to do in order to play music. That attitude meant I often did the bare minimum to accomplish what was needed and get out the door to my real life. Now that I’m older, I’m realizing how much that prevented real growth and understanding.

I arrived at Wizard Academy in July 2013 and crashed into a world of business thinkers and doers. People tossed around business terminology, authors, and “Thought Leader” celebrity names like popcorn in a crowded theater. In some ways, it was like entering a foreign country.

At first, I took a sort of pride in that. I thought being an outsider was my strength. Actually, I still do. But somewhere around the two-year mark, I started reading some of those authors and listening to those thinkers, and I discovered what I was missing.

There is an element of being an outsider that lets you see things clearly. But there’s also an element of being deeply connected or involved that allows you to understand and gain nuances not available to the outsider.

As of this month, I’ve been at Wizard Academy for 11 years. I’ve been the Chancellor for almost 5. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I think I’m in the middle of a journey as I write this newsletter. It feels simultaneously like I’m a road-weary traveler and like I still have so far to go and so much to learn.

This is more of a confession than advice. But I would like to tell you something, as we sip whiskey in the shadow that the tower casts across the woods. 

Pay attention to the moment.

Don’t become defined by your reactions. Take time to see yourself truly and choose your path with intention.

When you find yourself in a moment or a space that is not of your choosing, slow down, take a look around, and see what there is to learn.

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

How you live in scarcity is the true marker of your company culture. 

Wizard Academy is a business school, but the first thing we built was a wedding chapel.

Whimsy was a big part of it, because life isn’t worth living without a golden vein of whimsy threaded through it. But it was also born from the desire to give from first fruits and provide something magical for those who couldn’t otherwise afford it. Roy and Pennie have two firm beliefs that drove the creation of the chapel. The first is the importance of commitment and all that marriage symbolizes. The second is that you shouldn’t have to be rich to have your wedding in a gorgeous location. 

Never put off doing kind and generous things until there’s plenty of money. Inevitably, you’ll discover that there’s no such thing as enough. Budgets have a way of sucking up available cash flow like a teenager in a grocery store. 

I’ve been thinking about this in relation to taking care of employees and staff. Recently, quite a few business owners I know have been instituting staff resources and support that should have existed long before. Almost all of them see it as vital, but are not 100% certain they can afford it. 

What I keep telling them is they can’t afford not to. 

In the beginning of a startup, every single dollar is spoken for three times over. You’re not worried about prioritizing people’s emotional well-being as much as you’re hoping you’ll still be able to pay them next week. But that’s a dangerous paradigm. If you put off the health and mental support of your staff, you’ll burn through people like gasoline-soaked paper and fireworks. 

Name your priorities. 
Establish healthy boundaries and take care of your people. 
The well-being of your employees should be as inflexible as rent and utilities. 

You’ll watch your people go from coworkers to teammates. An inspired and healthy team will lead you straight to the treasure troves you need to be successful without sacrificing your people. 

Make the right call before the money, not after. 

Daniel Whittington –  Chancellor

How do you get to know people when they are inherently unknowable?

You look at a painting and see a magical combination of dark reds, vibrant greens, and underwater blue combining to create an image that rolls off the canvas into your retina. Then it continues until it gets translated in your brain and somehow moves you to tears. 

You can feel the gentle glide of curved glass slide into your palm as you lift a glass of wine to your nose and introduce it to a world of chemicals. But those chemicals aren’t analyzed into a spider graph of broken down components. Instead, they flood your mind with memories of campfires and rose gardens. You imagine a sunset. You hear the voice of your grandfather as you sit in the garden and spit grape seeds into an empty coffee can. 

But none of us experience the same things from those moments. Each of our brains take in the same sensory data, but we translate it into completely different memories, comparisons, and emotional cues. 

This is what makes it so hard to guide people into a shared experience of the whiskey or wine in a glass. Each person around you is carrying a unique and fully created world inside their mind. A world that is truly separate from yours. 

How do you truly connect with people within that inescapable reality?

How do you draw people to your brand while telling a true and authentic story of your company? How do you effectively broadcast your service when everyone around you is at some level unknowable?

I believe the answer is shared experience. You have to remove yourself from your own jigsaw reality and stand back to see the universal picture that it creates. 

We’re always telling business owners that their origin story is the most important thing they can communicate to their consumers. But it’s not just your autobiography we’re trying to package and promote. 

People can be impressed by the way in which you’re truly unique. But they can only be moved when you share the way in which your flaws and struggles overlap with the grand story of being human. 

We admire heroes. We relate and connect with other human beings. 

If you can get a rare moment of attention in this world, it’s important to share your story. But make sure that precious time is spent talking about the things we have in common. Contribute to the grand story of what it’s like to be a human on this beautiful, broken planet. 

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

It’s important to remember to celebrate key moments in life.

We often set goals using vague language. We say things like, “I want to be successful” or “I want to be healthy.” This tendency typically surfaces when we are young and still figuring out life. As we grow older, it becomes challenging to know what success and health truly entail, especially when the concept of adulthood is abstract.

But what happens when an ambiguous approach to goal-setting persists with age?

Going to college is a commendable goal, but what happens after you’re enrolled? Landing your dream job is a great goal, but what’s the plan after securing it?

I believe there are two key aspects in the “what’s next” phase: setting definable goals and remembering to celebrate.

Vague goals are detrimental. They make achieving anything almost impossible because you haven’t clearly defined what you want to achieve or how to attain it. Even when you do succeed, you lack a clear framework to recognize and mark that achievement.

A goal must be specific enough that anyone, even an outsider, can determine whether you’ve achieved it.

“I’m going to be a professional musician.” is not a goal. “I will release a full-length album.” is a goal. 

“I’m going to be successful in business.” is not a goal. “I will open a second location.” is a goal. 

“I’m going to be healthy.” is not a goal. “I’m going to walk 10,000 steps a day.” is a goal.

The next critical step is what happens after you’ve achieved your goal.

Celebrate.

People who work hard often struggle to celebrate their accomplishments. When you blaze a trail through life and achieve remarkable things, the destination rarely looks like what you expected.

By the time you reach your goal, the landscape is vastly different from what you imagined when you set out. You cross an ocean only to find a mountain range on the other side of the beach. You climb the first peak only to find it was merely a foothill compared to the actual mountains beyond.

Define your goals clearly and share them with those around you. Remember to celebrate when you reach your goal, regardless of how it appears when you finally arrive.

If you never celebrate, you’ll never truly feel like you’re accomplishing anything.

And that’s no way to live

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

There are four kinds of people you meet when you’re sailing the water of life.

This is a story that we tell on the roof of the tower. It’s a story about why Wizard Academy exists. It’s a story about the kind of human beings we hope to serve.

When you’re sailing on the ocean of life, the first type of person that you meet is The Drifter. You can tell a drifter because they’re floating along at the mercy of the wind, the waves, and the current. They don’t have their own energy, their own direction, or their own passions. 

You can often find a drifter by the default phrases they use. They’ll say things like, “Hey man, what’s the big deal? Don’t get so uptight. Just relax.” or “Hey man, it’ll all get figured out on its own. Just relax and let things happen. It’s no big deal.”

People sometimes choose that life. Or let that life choose them. They don’t tend to come to Wizard Academy because we ask them to accomplish things, make goals, and do something that matters. 

The second type of person that you meet is The Surfer. Surfers are doing a lot, but really they’re just fancy drifters. A surfer is a person who is always looking for the next wave to ride. They’re adrenaline junkies or opportunists hoping to take advantage of the ocean and the energy of the sea. There are some talents involved in surfing. But surfers don’t create the wave. They don’t create the current. They don’t create the moment. They just go looking for waves to ride. In business, they’re sometimes referred to as “shiny object” people. 

Sometimes surfers show up at Wizard Academy because they’ve heard we’re the new shiny object. But surfers don’t want to do the work, they just want to ride the wave. And that’s why we lose them. 

The third type of person that you meet when you’re sailing are Drowners.

This one requires a fairly large caveat.  

Everyone in their life will have to be rescued from drowning. Maybe chemically or financially. Maybe emotionally, or relationally. There are countless ways that life can take you down unexpectedly for a moment. That’s when you need your community to lift you back up and breathe air back into your lungs. 

That’s called life. That’s called being a human being. 

That is not what I’m talking about. 

What I’m talking about are professional Drowners. People who are relentlessly drowning. No matter how many times you lift them up, dust them off and try to help, they just drown themselves again. We try to avoid professional drowners because, if you don’t, you switch from living your life to becoming a full-time Coast Guard and Rescue mission. Drowners will suck the life out of everything that they touch, including you. That’s the time for healthy boundaries. There are other industries that rescue people, and we’re not one of them.

That leaves the fourth kind of person that you meet.. We call them The Sailors. 

It’s important to note, you can’t tell a sailor by their circumstances. 

You may meet a sailor when they’re in a moment with no wind and no current. That doesn’t make them a drifter. 

You may meet a sailor when the waves are going nuts, and they’re fighting to stay upright and ride it through to its finish. That doesn’t make them a surfer. 

You may meet a sailor who’s drowning. That doesn’t make them a drowner.

There’s two things that set the sailor apart from surfers, drifters, and drowners. A North Star and a Destination.

You have to have a North Star or a fixed guiding point. This is the thing by which you make all decisions. This is what everything else falls beside. This is the hill you die on. When faced with a choice, you look at which path takes you closer to your guiding point. That’s where journey will take you next.

But without a destination, a fixed point is simply an attractive sign post. The North Star is only valuable if you’re headed somewhere. 

You need to set in your mind where you’re headed, and more importantly, what it will look like when you get there. That means tangible, definable goals. Things even an outsider can see happen when you finally arrive. It can’t be, “Be successful” or “Be rich”. But it can be “Open a second location” or “Hire my tenth employee.”

And that’s why we’re here. 

Wizard Academy exists to help The Sailors find and define their North Star, find and define their destination, and equip them to get there. 

We’ll see you soon. 

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

Take your Inspiration from wherever you can, and get your ego out of the way. 

In case you didn’t know, you are a product of your influences. 

When you’re an artist or a creator of any kind, there’s the temptation to think that your ideas have to be truly original and unique.Only the product of your natural innovative mind is an idea you truly own. 

And when you think that way, a couple of things will cause you to think you are a fraud or an imposter.

When someone else you trust and respect has an idea, and you use it and it works, it can be tempting to think you get zero credit for the impact. But that way of thinking reveals a flawed understanding of how creativity works. 

The truth is far more complex. There’s no such thing as an original idea. All the ideas and creativity that lead to amazing things are born from the raw material of our influences. Sometimes it’s a little more obvious than others, but it’s always there. It’s hubris to think otherwise. 

It’s easy to look at other talented people and feel inferior. You can never be that innovative or creative. But if you asked them this question and they’re being honest, all creators only own a part of their ideas. 

So much of what we create comes straight from the minds of other people. And then we make it our own. That’s how our brains work, and that’s how creativity works. Which is why it’s important to surround yourself with people who are way smarter than you and listen to them.

Get out of your head and off the bench. You are the product of your influences. That’s okay. 

Make them your own and go accomplish amazing things.

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

You can’t fix people. 

I have a pet theory that I’m going to tell you about, but keep in mind, it’s just a pet theory. It’s my version of one way in which the world works. 

If you have a strength that makes you powerful and amazing in a certain area, you also have an equally powerful weakness that causes harm, damage, and problems for people around you.

I call it the Superman theory. The source of your strength is the source of your weakness.

Imagine you know someone who is really good at forging a path that they believe in without regard for the critics on the sideline.  Against all odds, they don’t care what people think of them. It’s simply who they are. That superpower does not stop with the people they like. Sometimes people they love also have critical words to say to counter the damage and destruction that attitude can sometimes carry. But fundamentally, they also don’t really care what you think either. And you get lumped in with the sideline critics. 

These are not balanced people. They are beautifully unbalanced in a way that makes them powerful and sometimes harmful. 

I could give a dozen other variations on this theme, but I want to talk about the important part of being in relationship with these kinds of people. 

If you try to fix their weaknesses, you’ll almost always find that you break their strengths. 

Say you fix someone’s flaw, not because of their own internal motivations, but because you have finally accomplished forcing them to change. I guarantee you, you’ve also broken what made them amazing. And even worse, when someone changes because you forced them into it, it’s not real or lasting change.

There’s a separate conversation to be had about the fact that everyone should be in the business of improving themselves as human beings. But true change can only come from inside motivation, even if it begins as outside influence. 

But I’ll finish with the other profound truth. 

What happens when you are in a business or personal relationship with somebody and they have dramatic flaws that are actually hurting you? 

That’s a different conversation and it’s called boundaries. There comes a point in relationships with people whose weaknesses cross a line that you’re not okay with. And at that point, you have the option of drawing healthy boundaries. It’s fair to say, “Hey, this thing that you do is not okay to do with me, and if you continue to do that, then we are going to be over.”

If they can find a way to manage their weaknesses so that line isn’t crossed with you, then it can be a manageable situation. But sometimes their response to your effort to draw healthy boundaries is, “Screw you, this is who I am! Get over it.” 

And that’s a relationship that you end.

That feels like a hard way to finish, but here is the bottom line. 

Don’t try to fix people.
Everyone is both strong and weak, usually from the same source.
Healthy boundaries are a real thing. 

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

How do you get back to love?

You imagine your dream job. You meet an amazing new person. You imagine an opportunity that could change your life. You look at them from the outside and see how amazing they are in every way. 

Then one day it happens. You get the girl, you get the job, you move forward on the opportunity. At some point down this path you discover what we all know but often forget. 

Nothing is perfect. People are broken. Situations are always a mixed bag of awesome and bullshit. You pulled back the curtain, and it’s just some old dude pulling levers and punching buttons.

Why does that happen with everything in life? Is it even possible to get back the feelings or emotions you had before?

I think we’re born with a built-in sense that something is missing. I also think we spend most of our life searching because we’re wired to hope. We hope that this sense of incompletion is temporary. We hope that someday we’ll find that missing piece and be made whole. 

There’s a Welsh Term called “Hiraeth” (pronounced Hee Rye th) which is a homesickness tinged with sadness. It was originally used to refer to a longing for old times of the past. Like nostalgia. Except it’s nostalgia for a home we’ve never lived in. A longing for a moment we’ve never actually had.

I think we all carry a bit of that. The hopeful part of us keeps thinking, “Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the thing?” And then it isn’t, and we take out our frustration and pain on the situation or the people for not being everything we hoped they would be. Which leads to bitterness. 

But I think you can have a shot at recovering some of the original joy by remembering that all people are broken. All situations are fragmented. All new jobs will be screwed up in their own ways. All relationships have arguments and offenses and hurts. 

More importantly we remember the same is true of ourselves. We’re often the cause of other people’s broken expectations. 

We can also remember that the magic parts we fell in love with or the sparkling gems that caused us to dream really are still magic. They’re just not the ONLY pieces of the puzzle. And that’s okay.

We can help them be more so. 

And we can help people remember. 

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

Sometimes it’s good to be a jack of all trades. 

I know I wrote an entire article about not digging a bunch of shallow holes. So here is where I will argue with myself. 

There’s such a thing as “general education”. There are some who trash it and view general ed as a basic waste of time. I understand where that comes from. So much of our current education system has resulted in mountains of debt with no clear path forward for graduates. 

But general knowledge about the world around you is the only way to be a true citizen of the world. Students who can approach the world with a Socratic style of critical thinking and implementation based on their own experiences across broad subjects can keep us from treading the same faulty paths. 

Part of being a well-rounded human is knowing a little bit about a lot of things. It’s also how we insert joy and delight into our lives. It’s how we avoid burnout.

When we’re training ad writers, one of the things we teach is that you need to READ GOOD to WRITE GOOD. 

If you spend all your energy consuming business journals, news articles, and nonfiction blogs, and books about “10 Steps to Being Better Than Everyone You Know at Literally Everything”, you can’t possibly expect to write beautiful or whimsical human ads. 

When you sit down to write, your brain pulls from the catalog of phrases and words and reassembles them. If you don’t read good, you can’t write good. 

This is why so much business writing and so many ads sound like regurgitated bullshit. 

If you want to write beautiful things, you have to consume beautiful words. Become a connoisseur of poetry and well written fiction. It will put amazing words and phrases into your head and they’ll come out in your writing. 

You do need to focus your time and resources on becoming truly magnificent at something. But spending all waking hours doing that one thing is a recipe for burnout and staleness. It’s how you grow to hate the thing you loved. 

Carve out time to learn about things, get good at things, and explore things that have absolutely nothing to do with your primary purpose. 

Choose them carefully. Choose them only because they bring you joy. 

Spend your time on them. Let them fill you back up. Take that energy back to your main thing. 

That’s how you live fully.

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

There’s no such thing as a unique selling proposition. 

In marketing terms, a “Unique Selling Proposition” is something that sets you apart from your competitors in a way that will drive sales and customer traffic. 

If you google it, you’ll find lots of “educational” examples. They’re mind-numbingly inane. Please don’t do it. I’d like to spare you from the truly terrible writing I just had to wade through. 

The problem with most marketing consultants is they spend all their energy trying to identify a unique selling proposition. Something that makes their client’s product or service unique. 

Let’s say you have a truly unique product. It’s brilliant. Everyone will want it the moment they realize it exists. Like sliced bread. Or pet rocks.

It’s unlikely, but go with me here for a second. Any product that is truly unique AND valuable will only be yours for a very small window of time. The moment the rest of the industry catches a glimpse or stumbles onto the idea themselves, it will cease to be unique.

Side note: If no one else in the industry is doing it AFTER they’ve seen you do it, then the odds are it’s not that valuable. 

But even assuming that’s a possibility, most businesses STILL don’t have a unique selling proposition. 

What do you do when your service is replicated by a dozen other businesses?

When small-minded marketing people try to force something “unique” into existence, they have to crawl further and further down the stairwell of “Important Things” until they find something unique in a musty basement closet. They strike a match, hold it up to the light, and are elated to discover a Truly Unique Thing (trademarked). Unfortunately it’s also Irrelevant (trademarked).

How do you stand out from your competitors? How can you be different from the people in your category so that your people can find you. How now, brown cow?

In short, you. You are the thing that makes your business unique. It’s not the product or service. It’s your personality, your flaws, your strengths, your passions. It’s the way those things change your delivery of a product in a certain way inside a category. 

It also helps that YOU are the one thing your competitors can’t replicate. 

Well that’s awkward. It turns out there IS a unique selling proposition. And it’s YOU.

Now what?

You need to find a way to tell your story as a part of the brand and process. Tell people why you care, and what drives you. Show them how your story overlaps with the common fundamentals of the human experience. 

You may have a unique process to your service or product. But it’s your personality and approach that led you to the unique process. 

That’s only a small piece of the story of who you are and why you do what you do. Tell your own story. Tell the whole story. 

Stop looking for bullshit “selling propositions”. 

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

Wise-ards and pretend knights. Those are the heroes of Wizard Academy

Don Quixote was written in 1605 by Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote the adventurer. Don  Quixote the madman. Don Quixote the delusional chaos creator. 

He’s sort of a Rorschach character, meaning you see in him what you bring to him. Or that you can choose which version of him you prefer. We find him the foolish knight on an adventure while the world around him wants him to just “get with the program and face reality”. 

There is a scene in Don Quixote goes after windmills thinking they’re dragons. His sidekick Sancho, tries to tell him they’re not real dragons, just windmills. Quixote replies, “It seems well,” quoth Don Quixote, “that thou art not yet acquainted with the matter of adventures. They are giants; and, if thou beest afraid, go aside and pray, whilst I enter into cruel and unequal battle with them.” 

That is our kind of crazy. Others may see the entrepreneur souls of our community launching into the world tilting at windmills. But we know, it’s all just one grand adventure. 

Then there are the three wise men, or as English re-interpreted that word “wise-ards” or “wizards”. We’re not a religious institution, but there’s something archetypal about men who found a north star and followed it to the end against all odds. 

Wizard Academy is a place that helps people find their North Star. And then helps people build the systems to follow it regardless of what those around them shout from the sidelines. 

This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far. 

Why does it matter?

There’s a quote from a book called the Engines of God, by Jack McDevitt that says “Show me what a people admire, and I will tell you everything about them that matters.”

That’s what we believe.

We show ourselves with every painting, every sculpture, every random piece of art on a wall or in the woods. All of them should hint at what we think is important about life. They should be a cracked glimpse of what we think matters. 

And so I would say to you as well, be careful what you admire. Make sure the things you admire and focus on are colors of the person you would become. 

The things you admire and surround yourself with will give you away. For better or worse. 

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor