QUICK MIRACLES

by Roy Williams

You’re a wounded soldier in unbearable pain during WWII, so the medics give you a shot of morphine. When your pain returns, they give you another shot. Morphine erases pain, so as long as the medics don’t run out of morphine, that’s the end of your problem, right?

Not quite. You’re still wounded, remember? The morphine is merely masking your symptoms. What you really need is life-saving surgery and a time of rehabilitation.

So what do you want me to pull out of my bag right now, Mr. Wounded-Soldier-in-Pain? Surgical tools, the solution to your problem? Or morphine, that tasty little drug that takes away the pain while you continue to bleed and die? Oh? You say that what you really want is to swallow a pill that will make the pain go away and heal the wound so that it’s like you were never wounded at all? Sorry, that pill doesn’t exist.

So what do you want to see me pull out of the bag?

Pain is your body’s warning that is has a problem that requires your immediate attention. Consequently, every businessperson in financial pain needs to understand the following:

1. Your business is telling you that it has a problem that requires your immediate attention.

2. “Slow traffic” or “a downward sales trend” is not the problem, but merely a symptom of it.

3. At best, every fast-acting Ad Gimmick is a painkiller exactly like morphine.

4. Morphine very quickly becomes addictive, and if used for too long, it will kill you.

5. No one looks forward to the surgeon’s knife, even when it’s what he or she desperately needs.

6. Because of their woefully incomplete training, most advertising people are not equipped to perform life-saving surgery, but are outfitted merely as medics to promote their own proprietary brand of morphine.

7. Recovery from life-saving surgery is painful, slow, and not the least bit fun.

8. Playing with morphine, cocaine, heroin and other painkillers is gigantic fun!

Are you beginning to understand why businesspeople are drawn to fast-acting ad gimmicks whenever they’re in financial pain?

Making morphine is easy, but using it is dangerous, and often deadly.