Wisdom from Wizard Academy

Unless the product you sell is a demographic product, you shouldn’t be asking demographic-based questions.

What’s the age range of snowboarders?
What’s the income range of yoga students?
What is the average income of whisky drinkers?

Your mind wants to answer those questions—but your heart knows that, even if there is an answer, it’ll probably be ridiculous.

We live in an era of data. Too many people believe we can solve every marketing question in the world—as long as we get enough data. I think that’s because the world we live in right now was mostly built by people who see the world that way. And those same people control most of the advertising platforms. They’re also the ones building the “measurability metrics.”

That skews the entire market down the road of: We just need to get the right data, and our marketing will never be a problem again!!!!

So they go chasing “open rates” and “target audiences” and bullshit metrics designed to be gamed by the people selling them to you.

The problem is: data is really good at telling you what happened. But it’s terrible at telling you what will happen next, or what you should do about it.

That’s because marketing is a human relationship problem—not a data metrics problem.

Ask any dating app company how hard it is to quantify the mystery and magic of falling in love. Ask anyone on a dating app how effective it actually is.

So what questions should define your marketing approach?

Remember the snowboarders, the yoga people, and the whisky drinkers?

The question isn’t “What are their measurable demographics?” The question is “What do they have in common?”

Hills, snow, and a love of adrenaline are what snowboarders have in common. Yoga is what yoga people have in common. Whisky is the only thing whisky drinkers have in common.

Talk about what they love—and what it’s like to love what they love—and your people will find you.

Prepare to be surprised by who they are, instead of who you thought they would be.

If you can talk about that, you can win their hearts.
And once you win the heart, the mind will follow.

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

I really hate any version of a sentence that effectively equates to “kids these days.”

“Our earth is degenerate in these latter days,” it reads. “There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end. Bribery and corruption are common. Children no longer listen to their parents.” — around 2,800 BC, on a Babylonian tablet

“No hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words.” — Hesiod, a Greek poet

Ahh, the irony that we think we are saying something insightful as we get older when we dismiss or disparage the incoming generation.

Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you’re not an idiot. Just because they’re younger doesn’t mean they “don’t get it.”

I heard it over and over in the music industry. Each year, spoken about a new style, a new genre, or a new artist. But as a music instructor, that wasn’t my experience.

Sometime in the early aughts, I was giving guitar lessons at my friend’s music academy in San Luis Obispo. I walked in early one day and nearly tripped over the stretched out legs of a 12-year-old surf rat. Stringy blond hair, black Dickies, and a hoodie pulled over his eyes—he wore headphones and leaned up against an electric guitar case like an old sock.

I stopped and recognized him as one of my bandmate’s students and said, “Hey, man!”

He paused, glanced up my way without lifting his head, and peeled one headphone off an ear. “Hey. Yeah?”

“Watcha listening to?” I asked.
 “Crossroads,” he replied.

I was both surprised and gratified. If a walking teenage stereotype is rocking one of the great ’60s rock bands of all time, then we are definitely going to be okay.

“Nice!” I replied. “Cream!”

He then looked up at me with a look of disdain I have never seen matched since.

“No,” he muttered. “Robert Johnson.”

He looked at me. I looked at him. He slid his headphone back into his ear as I walked to my music room. 

“Kids these days,” I thought. “No respect for their elders.”

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

The whisky industry is in a bit of a crisis.

Everywhere I turn these days, there are reports of big corporations closing distilleries, halting production, and craft distilleries shuttering and closing.

It can be a really scary time, not knowing what the future holds.

I see a lot of the same thing in other industries across the globe as tariffs, the economy, and a general uncertainty create ripple effects that roll over small business owners.

Here’s a small message to those people in my life.

I would say it’s a message to the big guys too, but I think they’re too busy with shareholder meetings to read our newsletter.

Invest in your people.

Sure, you can cut costs. It’s healthy to work your way through your expense reports and slice out the fat. It might even be necessary to bring your staff down to the people most committed to each other and the company’s vision of the future.

But once you’ve done that, understand the opposite profound truth: money spent training and developing your people is investment in the growth and stability of your company. It’s always been about people. It’s the people that will take you higher and further.

A part of your marketing budget should be training programs, team development, leadership education, and sales training.

When the whole world is vanishing and hiding, that is the exact right time to put all your energy into your people.

You can’t afford not to.

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

You were born for the sea. You didn’t realize it until later, but looking back, it seems obvious.

You remember the first taste of salt on your tongue. You remember waves lashing the railing as you clung to the ropes. You remember the shouted orders, the flurry of activity, and the aching muscles of a job well done.

You remember when you went from stumbling across decks to running around the rolling ship like a monkey through storm-driven trees.

At first, it was just a job.
Then you began to enjoy it.
Then you fell in love.

Passion followed the joy, and it became your north star—your driving force. You had dreams about the sea and the ship. You would swear you heard the sea speaking directly to you. You were certain that the ship recognized your feet on its deck. You became frustrated when other people just plodded through the day or were satisfied with inferior work.

Then one night, you realized you wanted to be the captain of your own ship.

Welcome to entrepreneurship.

You’ve been a captain for two years. Your passion and love are still there, but they’ve sunk their roots into a deeper source. It’s not the first blush of affection. You see the flaws along with the virtues. You see the larger story that encompasses this journey. You handle the books, juggle charts, argue with port officials, and bargain with tight-fisted merchants.

Sometimes you get out on the deck, and the salt air flashes a quick reminder of that first love. But it’s different now. This ship and its men are your responsibility. It’s your job to care for them first, above all things. And that means you have to trust them. You have to know that each sailor on the ship can do everything you ask of them—preferably better than you can.

If you want to be the captain, you can’t also be the sailors, the bosun, and the chef. It’s your job to steer them on ever-greater adventures and protect them and the cargo. You’ve hired the best and put them in the right roles. Now you have to learn to trust them.

A person who can trust their crew is unstoppable.

Daniel Whittington — Chancellor

Last week we taught the core class that founded the entire Wizard Academy campus, Magical Worlds of Communications. We have a tradition in that class where we start the day with an audio recording Roy made years ago to narrate the true origin story of Wizard Academy and the Wizard’s Tower. It occurred to me that you may not have heard it! So here it is. You can watch the video and listen to Roy and Pennie tell the story in their own words. The full transcript is below. 

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

THE ORIGIN OF WIZARD ACADEMY

by Roy and Pennie Williams

Wizard Academy began with an itch and an image. I got the itch in Tulsa in 1978 when I was 20 years old. I saw the image online in 1994 when I was 36. The itch was to help small businesses succeed. The image was of a boy sitting beneath the stars with an open book in his lap. The crenels and merlons in the battlements beyond him suggested that he was sitting on the top of a castle tower.

Looking at that cartoon image on my computer screen I knew I was going to build that tower.

I know this makes me sound crazy, but there have been a handful of moments in my life when I quietly but suddenly knew what was going to happen. I’m not talking about premonitions, or visions, or dreams, or hopes, or wishes. I’m not talking about goals or goal setting. I am talking about knowing something as surely as if it had already happened. 

Did I mention that I know this makes me sound crazy?

I was 13 when I saw a photograph of Pennie Compton and knew that I was going to marry her. The two of us had never met. A few months earlier I had been flipping through a 1963 Reader’s Digest Atlas of the world when I noticed a city Austin in the center of Texas. I remember raising an eyebrow when I suddenly knew I would move there someday. The sequence of events that would cause these things to happen remained an absolute mystery to me, but the outcome was never in question.

So I knew I was going to build that tower, but I had no idea why.

My 1978 itch to help small businesses grow led to a string of remarkable successes. By 1992, I was traveling 40 weeks a year teaching ever larger groups of business owners how to lift themselves to higher levels of success. I hated it. Dorothy was right. There’s no place like home. I have suffered from separation anxiety throughout my life.Travel for me is the Little Death, 

“Honey,” said Pennie in 1993. “Let the people who want your help come to Austin, schedule a monthly class in our conference room, and if someone wants to come to it, they can come.”

When we outgrew that conference room, we began to rent the ball rooms of luxury hotels. By the time we paid for those rooms and rented the projection equipment and bought the coffee at $60 a pot and fed lunch to all our guests, we were spending about $20,000 per event to host those classes. Did I mention that we weren’t charging anyone to attend to the classes and that we had no capacity to serve additional clients?

So we built a new headquarters building for our marketing business with a large open room on the second floor that we could use as a classroom. That worked for about two years. Then we built a classroom building next to the main office building that bought us an extra four years. Then in 2004, Pennie said, “Honey, I found some land we should buy.“

Why do we want to buy some land? 

“We’ll build some stuff for ourselves on one half of it, and then donate the other half to Wizard Academy and let the school become whatever it wants to become.”

When she showed me the land, I smiled. There on the top of that majestic plateau was the tower I had seen 10 years earlier. It wasn’t physically there, of course, but I knew that someday it would be.

If you have a crazy image in your mind of a possible future, an inexplicable guiding star that encourages you in the dark moments and lights your way one step at a time, never forget that you have a tribe and they built a fascinating place for you to come. When you need guidance or instruction or fellowship or encouragement.

Do you have an idea?
An itch?
A hunger?

Do you see something that no one else can see? Are you willing to leave a trail of sweat and tears and dollars behind you as you struggle to make it real?

Welcome to Wizard Academy. You, my friend, are exactly our brand of crazy.

Let the adventure begin.

Roy Williams – Founder and Chancellor Emeritus of Wizard Academy

In class this week, Chris Maddock said, “Marketing ideas that aren’t true to the core beliefs have killed way more companies than bad ideas in the operations department.”

He followed with,” There’s nothing more dangerous to a well established marketing campaign for a leading brand than the idea that new is better. For proof, see almost every “rebrand” ever done by an established company.”

So why do so many companies keep chasing the “Newest Greatest Marketing Campaign Ever”?

Most companies don’t know who they are. They don’t take the time to figure it out. They’re not entirely sure what they have to say, and why it matters. Smaller companies talk endlessly about their services, their lowered fees, and their discounts. Larger brands spend ungodly amounts of money on flash and bang to gain attention and make a splash in the mind waters. 

When your brand has no identity, it doesn’t make a huge difference what campaign you launch next. Feel free to follow the next shiny object. Chase the new app. Create profiles on the new social media sites. Hire the famous movie star. Work with that famous director. 

It’s a very different story for you. You’ve figured out who you are, what you do, and why it matters. You’ve taken the time to define your identity and spent years carving your name into the mindscape. Your messages land. Your brand is trusted and connected. Maybe even loved.  

Then something changes. You get bigger and feel the need to do things with your company that make you “legitimate”. You may attempt to follow the playbook of the Fortune 500 hoping you’ll be one of them. You sell to private equity or hand off leadership to a new team of people hoping they’ll take you to the next level.

This is the moment that the NEW BIG IDEAS show up at your doorstep. Almost immediately they open up their playbook of “How to run professional campaigns” and start dismantling everything you’ve spent years building. They have to. If they simply come and say, “You’re doing great, let’s keep doing what you’re doing.”, how do they justify their paycheck?

They don’t understand identity building. They don’t understand “Win the heart and the mind will follow.” They understand shiny things and expensive production budgets. They can’t help but play it safe. And they do that by spending money instead of time. But they spend the money on things that don’t matter. 

It takes years to turn your company into the trusted source. It takes way less time to destroy all progress and grind your name into oblivion. 

Be careful of anyone you bring into the room who doesn’t understand this dynamic. 

Sometimes we need.a refresh. Sometimes we needed to be brought back to the big picture when we lose our way daily weeding in the garden. 

Don’t bring in people trying to sell you the New Shiny Thing. Bring in people that remind you who you are. Bring in the people who spend all their time and energy helping you carry your message to the world. 

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor 

People are the main thing.

In my role as a Whisky Sommelier and Chancellor of Whisky Marketing School, I get dropped into more than my fair share of conversations about whisky. When people are excited and knowledgeable about something, conversation can quickly devolve into really nerdy discussions and disagreements on minutia. Arguments about things that the vast majority of the planet don’t even know exist.  

And it’s always because we forgot the role of whisky.

Whisky is not the main thing. People and relationships are the main thing. We can get lost in the details, especially if we love something. Often our experiences, opinions, and knowledge become the primary focus of our energy and the topic of a lot of conversations. 

But the point of whisky is the way it makes a moment special. It’s how it opens up conversations, and deepens relationships. It’s how it gives us a “third thing” to talk about that allows even strangers to make quick connections and have meaningful discussions. 

I have the same conversations at Wizard Academy when I teach about marketing. 

As marketing and business humans, we often get lost in the fine details and minutia of the business and marketing world. We study it, eat it, breath it, and we forget what the actual point of it is. 

Good marketing is about people, because people are the point of being in business and serving others.

The point of marketing is to allow one human to communicate with another human. It’s about letting someone’s voice be heard and letting someone else feel seen (You may have read that in my recent newsletter). 

No matter what your passion is it helps to be constantly aware that people are the point, and everything else should exist to serve the main goal. 

We all crave a deeper and more meaningful life and deeper and more meaningful relationships. 

I hope you’re having those moments, and I hope you are surrounded by those kinds of people. It starts with us. In the long run it’s how we help heal our little piece of the world. 

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

We are not authors of our lives. We are stewards. 

I don’t have a lot of patience for the idea of the “self-made man”. To me, it bleeds hubris. I also don’t believe it’s real. Somewhere deep down, the people who promote that idea believe that having help or advantages is something to be ashamed of. You can’t admit you had an edge. If you didn’t do it ALL BY YOURSELF, then it’s not REAL. 

Ahh, the absurdity. Like a 3 year old child saying “I do it by myself!”

Now let’s state the opposite profound truth. 

Hard work is meaningful. Discipline is important and even vital for a life well-lived. Your family, your work, and your passions will all stagnate and fail if you can’t master yourself; if you can’t find a way to move forward with your own weaknesses and hurdles.

It is an important thing to work hard and carve a way forward in life. It is also an honorable thing. If you are someone who has fought your way through obstacles into success, you definitely deserve admiration and respect. 

But never for once think you did it on your own. We have different starting marks in the race. 

It’s possible you were prepared for the journey by the way you were raised. Maybe your family helped you, guided you, and instilled important values when you were young enough to listen and old enough to understand. 

It’s possible that genetics gave you a personality or a temperament that allows you to walk through things that would cause others to step down or step aside. 

It’s possible you didn’t have to deal with a neuro-divergent brain that made some struggles harder for you. Even if you do, it’s possible you have access to medicine and environmental accommodations that exist primarily in the western world. 

If you went to school, you sat through programs that gave you insight and leverage. If you grew up in America or anywhere in the west, you likely started with an advantage that people in third world countries could only dream of.

If you attended Wizard Academy, you were given insight into human communication and marketing that has the potential to change the future. (shameless plug). 

But you are not the author of it. It’s hubris to stand on the pedestal and brag about what you’ve accomplished. Only a fool forgets that the pedestal was built by others who paved the path.

We are stewards of what we are given. It is up to us to take whatever advantages we have and carry the adventure forward with discipline and grace. 

I think that’s even more powerful than being self-made. 

If you’re simply the author, you’re owed admiration. But if you’re a steward, you owe thankfulness and grace. You have a responsibility to not waste what you’ve been given. 

So be a good steward. And don’t forget to honor all the people and moments that helped bring you to where you stand right now. 

Then, find a way to do that for others. 

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

Marketing is about people. I know that doesn’t sound very revelatory, but hear me out. 

Today I was on a call with our Ask the Wizard’s group, and my Wizard of Ads partner, Paul Boomer, asked a question,

“What unexpected insight about human connection has most transformed your approach to crafting messages? How has that understanding changed the way you support your team’s clients in creating work that feels both authentic and effective?“

The point of good consulting is to help the business owner feel seen and be heard. It’s to make the moment of consulting discovery be more human. Plenty of business books offer quick tips, numbered lists of best practices, and “Insider Secrets to Make You the Wealthiest Person in Whatever Room You Happen to be Standing In”. (trademarked). But that’s not what good consulting is. 

The person behind the business is what makes the business magical. Why did they start the business? Why do they choose to spend their life solving this specific problem in the world? What makes them get up in the morning and keep doing it? What brings them joy?

Those are the questions that a good consultant uncovers with their client as the relationship progresses. 

But there is another very important (some would say vital) part of the equation for entrepreneurs. 

Customers. 

Good marketing accomplishes the same thing. Great messages make people feel seen and heard. They give them something to identify with and remember. They provide hope. The part of the business story that is the most human is the same part that will resonate with the customers. 

What I love most about working with business owners is sitting in the room with them and helping them discover and remember those things. And even more fun is finding the most magnetic and interesting way to tell that larger story to the public. We love creating something that they can fall in love with and hold on to. 

That’s what great marketing is truly about. Making people feel seen and heard. 

Everything else is just noise. 

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

I can’t wait to see you at Wizard Academy soon. I’d love to help you remember your story and show you how to tell it to the world. 

My brain is tired.

This week we walked 7 business owners through building their character diamond, messaging, and marketing strategy from soup to nuts. I had the honor of sharing the instructor load with Johnny Molson, Gary Bernier, and Dave Young.

It was one of the most productive and practical classes I’ve ever been a part of at Wizard Academy.  The students were engaged, thoughtful, and ready for the challenge. I think we all walked out of that class with more hope for the future. 

It was also a fresh reminder of something I love about the Academy Alumni. They don’t sit around looking for easy shortcuts and ways to trick people into being customers. They don’t look for an easy way out.

They are willing to do the hard work that everyone else tries to avoid.

And that’s what makes them “our kind of crazy”.

Stephen King said, “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

It’s similar to what I’ve heard my dad, who has published 9 books, say many times over. “A writer is someone who writes. I know a lot of people who really want to be an author, but most of them never actually get down to the writing part.”

Wizard Academy focuses on “doing the thing”. That’s why I love to spend my time here surrounded by hard-working people seeking to change their lives; People willing to take a look at themselves and make the necessary changes to improve their business. 

They’re a rare breed.

If you’re reading this, it means you are one of us. 

Take a bow. 

You should be able to hear me slow-clapping in the background.

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

Do you know one of the primary weaknesses of most entrepreneurs?

You get bored.

You work your ass off creating a magical world out of thin air—you hire people, invest in marketing, grow your operations, and begin to execute your vision. Then one day, you wake up, and all the dragons have been slain. It’s a smoothly running machine. You’ve done it.

Unfortunately, now your list is made up of a myriad of annoying complexities in the day-to-day operations—because that is what it takes to run a successful business.

And that’s when you either stop doing the things that made you great or start breaking things that are working.

Most people love predictability. One of the biggest desires of a customer is to not be negatively surprised by their interaction with you. They want to know they can reach out to you, and you will deliver the exact thing they’ve always loved.

But when you get bored and start switching things up to “keep it fresh,” you risk destroying the most stable parts of your company identity.

What if you went to see James Taylor, and he refused to play Fire and Rain? What if you went to see U2, and they forgot Where the Streets Have No Name?

Anyone up for a New Coke?

We run this risk at Wizard Academy all the time. We deliver the same classes, eat the same meals, and run through the same class rituals 30–40 times a year. It’s easy for everything to become normal to us. It’s easy for our team to start mixing things up just because we’re bored of our own repetitions.

I remember when we switched from Salt Lick BBQ to Keith’s BBQ. We spent years trying to make people feel better about not getting Salt Lick on their one annual visit to Wizard Academy. Most of them remembered when a visit to the actual Salt Lick was a key part of the Wizard Academy experience. If Keith ever stops making BBQ, we’ll have to do it all over again.

This week in class, we had the gift of a student we hadn’t seen on campus in over a decade. It was wonderful. And it was also, in my mind, a reminder that we have to be careful to protect the core experiences that make Wizard Academy “home” to so many people.

We can’t have you coming home to Wizard Academy after a few years away only to discover your favorite Engelbrecht room has been converted into a “man cave” or a “she shed.” Or possibly a Whisky Vault expansion pack.

This is a song for those who have actually achieved the stability that is every entrepreneur’s dream.

Don’t let boredom destroy what made you great.

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

You might have a leadership problem. 

A few years back I reached a crossroads at Wizard Academy. It was a combination of high stress life events, heavy workload, and the daily accumulation of a decade of emotional heavy lifting. 

I walked the campus surrounded by staff, but felt like I was the only one working and I was all by myself. It felt like everywhere I turned things were not getting done, staff weren’t paying attention to the right priorities, and growth on campus was suffering. I spent 40-50 hours a week on campus but left each day with this nagging feeling that my people weren’t doing their jobs and we weren’t making any progress. I felt like the whole thing would collapse if I diverted my attention for even a moment.

Sounds like burnout, right? Anyone smell burnt toast? 

Then one day I called a friend of mine named Pegeen. Pegeen is a storytelling genius with high-level talent for organizational development and a focus on the human aspects of organizational change. I called her to see if I needed to start firing, hiring, or altering the staff structure at Wizard Academy. 

I complained about the whole situation for about an hour. It felt heavy and emotional. As I was venting, I realized how much I was carrying. Way too much. 

When I got done, Pegeen asked me these questions:
Do you think your people are lazy?
Do you think your people are incompetent?
Do you think any of your people may not belong on staff at Wizard Academy?

I answered no to all of them. 

Then she said, “Well, Daniel, it sounds to me like you don’t have an employee problem. It sounds to me like you have a leadership problem.”

Dammit. 

When I got to WA, I was the only human on WA payroll for over a year. I did every single job at Wizard Academy except clean the lodging on campus, (but I did clean bathrooms and the tower). I walked into a well run chaotic system, but it WAS chaos. Mostly because all the people before me were doing a dozen other jobs on top of maintaining Wizard Academy. I was the first person to focus 100% of my energy on it. I spent years building systems, structure, and making the future of WA stable both financially and operationally.

On the call with Pegeen, I realized I was still trying to run things as if it was all just me with a few “helpers”. 

I hadn’t built operational systems for the staff. We didn’t have great communication structures in place. We had vaguely defined job descriptions. It was ALL HANDS ON DECK WHEN NEEDED scenarios every single week. It led to chaos and things getting dropped, overlapped, or forgotten. 

With Pegeen’s help I spent the next 3 months putting everything in place. By the end of that year, we had the highest net profit in the history of WA. Employee morale was (and still is) the best I’ve ever seen in my 12 years on this campus. And we’re still climbing. 

If all your people are trustworthy and hardworking, but things aren’t being accomplished and the company is struggling, then you don’t have a people-problem. You have a leadership problem.

Daniel Whittington – Chancellor

PS, We’d love to help.

PSS. Pegeen is now on the Board of Directors at Wizard Academy and is one of our instructors!