A 20 year-old kid walks the streets in Oklahoma. Married. No money. Works construction by day, changes tapes in an automated radio station from 1AM to 11AM each Saturday morning for $3.35 an hour. No microphone. No one will know if he’s doing a good job because station management is at home fast asleep.Frankly, the kid is a goober.The broken-down little radio station is ranked dead last in a city of 23 stations. Just one radio listener in 200 will ever tune in to listen to the radio preachers this station airs. The ratings book says that only 18,000 people will spend 5 minutes or more listening to his station each week and there will rarely be more than 500 people listening at any given moment. The city is home to nearly a million people.But 500 people sounds like a lot to the goober and it occurs to him that 18,000 would fill Skelly Stadium at the University of Tulsa. “If a person could reach all 18,000 listeners that would be huge and even 500 people can make a difference to a small business.” One Saturday morning the station manager calls to ask if Goober can cover the next shift. Goob happily agrees to work the rest of that day, then asks, “Why are there never any ads scheduled on our station?” The manager explains that the station makes its money by selling 14-minute and 28-minute blocks of time to radio preachers. Then on impulse he asks, “Would you be willing to sell some ads for us?” “You bet!” says Goob. “How much do I charge?” “Whatever you can get,” the manager replies. This is when our 20 year-old Goober made a decision that would change his life forever. Like most of life’s pivotal forks-in-the-road, the decision didn’t seem important at the time but in later years he would look back and remember this day as the beginning of his career. A Mom’n’Pop retailer had a small showroom filled with carpet samples at the bottom of the hill near the radio station. With a yellow legal tablet in his left hand and holding the tip of an ink pen to it with his right, he said, “I’m Roy Williams and I’m studying advertising and I’d consider it a huge favor if you could answer a couple of tiny questions for me; have you ever done any advertising that you felt was worth the money you spent?” Staring at the business owner like an eager young reporter, our 20 year-old goober wrote down exactly what the carpet store owner told him. “One last question. Have you ever done any advertising that you felt was really going to make a difference, but it wound up doing no good at all?” The carpet storeowner started laughing. Looking down and writing furiously on his yellow legal tablet, the goober said, “Tell me about it.” And then the goober did something very different. He said, “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful,” and left. He did not ask the man if he wanted to buy some advertising. A few weeks later, after the goober had spoken to hundreds more business owners, he walked in to that little carpet store and said, “Remember me?” When the carpet storeowner nodded yes, Goob said, “Another business owner told me something the other day that I thought might be helpful to you…” And then he relayed a very relevant story of a successful innovation that had been pioneered by a business owner in a different category on the other side of town. Goober then said, “I really appreciate the time you spent with me the other day. Hopefully, you’ll get some benefit out of some of the things I learn from other people.” And then he left again without asking the man if he wanted to buy some advertising. By the time our goober...