Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

I was whining to Clay Cary about the interest rate the bank was going to charge me to fund a real estate investment. I felt the percentage was way too high.Clay asked, “Is the deal you’re about to make a good deal? How much money will you make from it?”I answered his question conservatively. He said, “Now let’s calculate the total amount of interest that you will pay on the loan that makes this deal possible.”We calculated the dollar amounts.I was going to make hundreds of times more money on the real estate than I was going to pay in interest on the loan.Clay said, “As a rule of thumb, if the interest rate you are paying determines whether or not the deal you are making is good or bad, you are definitely making a bad deal. Don’t judge according to percentages. Judge according to dollars.”Here’s a thought.Why do banks never get angry about the huge profits that YOU make on deals using THEIR money?I have never heard a bank say, “We supplied the money, but you are keeping most of the profits. That’s not fair. You should give us more money than we originally agreed upon.”Banks never say that because banks always remember that YOU found the deal and decided to let THEM make some money on it with you.Here’s another example of how percentages can be misleading.Woody Justice had been in business for 6 years when I met him in 1987. His business was circling the drain. Woody’s biggest year had a top line of $350,000. His goal was to someday sell $1,000,000 worth of jewelry in a single year. That would put Woody in the top 10% of jewelers nationwide.I began working with Woody and we grew more than 100% a year for two years in a row. We blew past the $1,000,000 mark in the second year. About a dozen years later, Woody was grumpy. He said, “We used to grow by big percentages. But last year we only grew by ten percent. You need to get your shit together.”“Woody, how many dollars did our top line grow last year?”“We grew by a million dollars,” he said.“Woody, when we first began working together, a million-dollar jump from $350,000 to $1,350,000 would have been a 286% increase. We would have nearly quadrupled your best year ever and you would have wet your pants. Evaluate yourself by dollar growth, not percentage growth. Percentages will lead you to believe that you are doing better, or worse, than you really are.”Woody made a face but didn’t say anything, so I continued. “And by the way, we’re running out of people in this Dairy Queen town. If you want to grow by big percentages again, we’re going to need to open another store somewhere else.”I could say those things to him because we were close friends.Woody died unexpectedly 14 years ago but I still have his number on my cell phone. I tell myself that if I press that number, Woody will hear his phone ring.As long as I don’t delete that number from my phone, Woody Justice will never be gone.Roy H. WilliamsPS – “A Dairy Queen town” is Oklahoma slang for a place that is too small to have a McDonald’s. – Indy Beagle“Do it before you die.” Those five words sum up Carl Barney’s advice to wealthy individuals who want to experience a deeper level of satisfaction. “He who gives while he lives knows where it goes.” Barney believes in “pre-questing” meaningful gifts to individuals and institutions while you can still witness the impact of your generosity.Just this month, for example, Warren Buffett announced plans to donate another $6 billion to charity, bringing his total charitable giving to about $60 billion. (And most people would agree that Buffet is happier and more contented than the average billionaire.) Generosity brings happiness to every giver, no matter their financial condition. Get energized as Carl Barney shares his blueprint for happiness with roving reporter Rotbart and his deputy rover, Maxwell, at MondayMorningRadio.com

Pain is a signal that something is wrong.Pain whispers, shouts, and screams, “Pay attention. Be careful. Something is wrong.”Jean Marzollo wrote a children’s poem in 1948 that romanticized Christopher Columbus. It inspired a generation of children during the Captain Kangaroo years. Her proud poem begins,“In fourteen hundred ninety-twoColumbus sailed the ocean blue”Bill Bryson wrote an insightful summary of that famous voyage on page 205 of his book, “At Home.”“Columbus’s real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer. It would be hard to name any figure in history who has achieved more lasting fame with less competence. He spent large parts of eight years bouncing around Caribbean islands and coastal South America convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset. He never worked out that Cuba is an island and never once set foot on, or even suspected the existence of, the landmass to the north that everyone thinks he discovered: the United States.”We learn the meaning of pain as children, but we train ourselves to ignore it as adults.Why do we do that?I’m talking to you about the pain of your Google spend.Is there a chance that you should pay attention – and be careful – because something is wrong?Twenty years ago, Google inspired and electrified American business owners with their promise of “holding ad budgets accountable” by making advertising results, “identifiable, measurable, and scalable.”Business owners romanticized Google by shouting,“Hooray! Advertising will now become just another mathematical equation! Hooray! Hooray! To double my customer count, all I will have to do is double my ad budget!”I watched a friend of mine raise his monthly Google budget from $20,000/mo. to $70,000/mo because he was convinced that he would get three-and-a-half times as many leads. When it didn’t work, I asked him to look closely at how many clicks he had purchased and compare that number to the total population of his trade area.Have you done that math?I watched another friend of mine elevate her Google budget until she was spending $90,000 a month. Her business was no longer profitable. I asked her to look at how many clicks she had purchased and compare that number to the total population of her trade area.Have you done that math?Have you ever raised your Google budget and had Google say to you, “We’re sorry, but it is not possible to spend that much money on your LSA. There simply aren’t enough people each day who are searching for what you sell.”Do the math.The past two decades have been the Captain Kangaroo years for millions of business owners.Bill Bryson wrote that Columbus was, “convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset.”How many years have you been believing that your big payday from Google was at the edge of every sunset? Have you been saying,“All we need to do is tweak our plan a little. As soon as we figure out the Google algorithm, we’re going to be rich.”A business owner from a major American city recently spent a day with me. He had been spending $100,000 on Google ads each month for the past few years because he was convinced that he could not afford mass media in his city.His budget could easily have made his name a household word by using television or radio. I know the town well. I have had clients there for many years.His budget would reach more than 2 million people in his city who spend enough time listening to broadcast radio each week that each 0ne of those 2 million people would hear the ad 3 times each weekfor 52 weeks for a total of 156 repetitions per year.Do you sell a big-ticket item that has a long purchase cycle? You cannot win that game unless your name is the one that people think of first – and feel the best about – when they finally need what you sell.That is when the customer will type your name into Google. It is a cheap click with a high conversion rate because they have already chosen you.It takes time and patience, but it always works.Roy H. WilliamsRuth Milligan is the public speaking trainer who was the driving force behind TEDxColumbus where she spent a decade observing good and bad presenters. Today she is helping people improve their presentation skills before large auditorium audiences, intimate groups of employees, and most importantly, customers. Ruth doesn’t tell people what they should talk about. She says that to produce the desired results, what you say is often less important than how you say it. Listen and learn as she explains it all to roving reporter Rotbart at MondayMorningRadio.com.

You want to succeed.But will you recognize success when it happens?What will be its indicators? How will you measure it?Most importantly, how long are you willing to pursue it?You probably overestimate what you can accomplish in a year, and underestimate what you can accomplish in ten years.How many years have you been pursuing your dream?Experience is the name you are allowed give to your mistakes, but only if you have learned from them.Some people have ten years of experience.Most people have one year of experience ten times.Ninety-nine percent of business owners* will continue to defend their marketing beliefs and management practices even when those beliefs and practices continue to underperform year after year.These business owners underperform because traditional wisdom often feels like common sense.The problem with traditional wisdom is that it is usually more tradition than wisdom.Here’s how that happens:Your goal is lead generation.You create an ad that mixes urgency – a limited-time offer – with a strong value proposition. The features-and-benefits of your limited-time-offer dramatically outweigh the price.Your plan is to upsell the customer after they allow you into their home.This is called “transactional advertising” because you are advertising a transaction.Here’s the problem: Transactional ads don’t differentiate you. In fact, they blur you into your category, making you indistinguishable from your competitors.This is Today’s Traditional Wisdom:STEP 1: Give Google most of your profits and keep your fingers crossed. Keep a sharp eye on your cost-per-lead, your conversion rate, and your gross profit per sale.STEP 2: Keep doing this, week after week, month after month.STEP 3: Once a year, calculate how much your cost-per-sale has increased.STEP 4: Contact the people in your peer group to see if their experience has been the same as yours.STEP 5: Yes. Their experience has been the same as yours.STEP 6: Tell yourself, “Everyone else in our category is experiencing exactly what we have been experiencing. This means that everything is under control.”STEP 7: Continue to do this. In 9 more years, you will have had one year’s experience 10 times.Roy H. WilliamsPS – A smart person makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise person finds a smart person and learns how to avoid that mistake altogether.A wise person discovers relational marketing.*ADDENDUMWe gathered data from 64 reputable sources. It can reasonably be estimated that there are about 117,000 companies in the US that provide HVAC services, 132,000 provide plumbing services, and 252,000 provide electrical services. (117,000 + 132,000 + 252,000 = 501,000)Let’s assume for the sake of this example that those numbers are elevated. A lot of home service companies offer two or more services.Let’s further assume that a lot of them are going to be commercial, not residential. So we will reduce the aggregate estimate of 501,000 companies down to just 100,000 companies competing for the opportunity to serve homeowners across America.Here is the fascinating part: we know for a fact that only 638 of those companies have a top line of $20,000,000 or more each year, and just 280 of the 638 will do $40,000,000 or more.Having worked with many of those over-performers, I can assure you that none of them were built on traditional wisdom. – RHWJackie Lapin’s passion was for traveling the world and taking photos. But Jackie’s passion has now blossomed into a thriving business with an impressive community of members. She is providing blog posts, photos, curated reading lists, historical insights, and exclusive travel resources with people who share her wanderlust. In this marvelously candid interview with deputy roving reporter Maxwell Rotbart, Jackie will convince you that turning your passion into a thriving business isn’t just possible; it may be the most direct and rewarding path to a robust income stream. MondayMorningRadio.com

The Muses of Greek mythology were nine goddesses associated with the arts, sciences, and memory.They were the source of inspiration for artists, thinkers, poets, dancers, musicians, and philosophers. They were the goddesses of knowledge, embodying the wisdom and creative power found in poetry, songs, and myths.This is the point: a muse is never an actual woman.When a man chooses a flesh-and-blood woman to be his muse, she becomes the symbol of something deeper, wiser, and much more mysterious than herself.A muse is a point of access that puts a man in touch with his feminine side while allowing him to pretend that he does not have a feminine side.A muse is essentially the Jungian anima, the perfect woman who exists only in the imagination of a man.Just now, my muse whispered to me,“The reader will want to ask you, ‘What is a woman’s muse?’”“What shall I tell them?”“Tell them to ask a woman,” she said.In his book, The Magic Synthesis, Silvano Arieti writes,“Creative products are always shiny and new; the creative process is ancient and unchanging.”Arieti believed that perception is not just binary, with logic on the left side and pattern recognition on the right. He believed that our minds can blend rational with irrational, sophisticated with primitive, conscious with subconscious to create a third type of perception known as “creativity.”Psychology Today begins their praise of Arieti with this paragraph:“Silvano Arieti’s book Interpretation of Schizophrenia was awarded the 1975 U.S. National Book Award in the Science category. More than 40 years later, it remains the most significant contribution to the psychological understanding of schizophrenia since Kraepelin and Bleuler. Contemporary psychiatrists and psychotherapists would be wise to review Arieti’s vast contributions to the field.”Silvano Arieti was born in 1914. When he died in 1981, Arieti was perhaps the world’s foremost authority on schizophrenia. He wrote an award-winning book about it.The other book he wrote was about creativity.Coincidence? Perhaps. But I am convinced that creativity is a mild form of schizophrenia. How else would you describe a marvelous blend of rational with irrational, sophisticated with primitive, conscious with subconscious?Creativity is a wild and spontaneous act employed by artists, thinkers, poets, dancers, musicians, and philosophers. It is that conflicted insanity to which our Muses give us access.I think that “mild schizophrenia” is the perfect description.But perhaps I am wrong.Roy H. WilliamsToday’s rabbit hole is as wacky as today’s memo. You should check it out. I’m Indy Beagle.Steven Gaffney’s client list reads like a “Who’s Who of America’s Best Corporations.” His clients include including Allstate, Amazon, American Express, Best Buy, Booz Allen Hamilton, and BP. And those are just the “A”s and “B”s. Steven Gaffney builds high-achieving teams that set brave goals and then exceed them. In this week’s amazing conversation with roving reporter Rotbart, Steven Gaffney shares big-picture insights and detailed actions that will help any business improve their results over the next 30 days. Get your running shoes on, because the race is about to begin at MondayMorningRadio.com

The Muses of Greek mythology were nine goddesses associated with the arts, sciences, and memory.They were the source of inspiration for artists, thinkers, poets, dancers, musicians, and philosophers. They were the goddesses of knowledge, embodying the wisdom and creative power found in poetry, songs, and myths.This is the point: a muse is never an actual woman.When a man chooses a flesh-and-blood woman to be his muse, she becomes the symbol of something deeper, wiser, and much more mysterious than herself.A muse is a point of access that puts a man in touch with his feminine side while allowing him to pretend that he does not have a feminine side.A muse is essentially the Jungian anima, the perfect woman who exists only in the imagination of a man.Just now, my muse whispered to me,“The reader will want to ask you, ‘What is a woman’s muse?’”“What shall I tell them?”“Tell them to ask a woman,” she said.In his book, The Magic Synthesis, Silvano Arieti writes,“Creative products are always shiny and new; the creative process is ancient and unchanging.”Arieti believed that perception is not just binary, with logic on the left side and pattern recognition on the right. He believed that our minds can blend rational with irrational, sophisticated with primitive, conscious with subconscious to create a third type of perception known as “creativity.”Psychology Today begins their praise of Arieti with this paragraph:“Silvano Arieti’s book Interpretation of Schizophrenia was awarded the 1975 U.S. National Book Award in the Science category. More than 40 years later, it remains the most significant contribution to the psychological understanding of schizophrenia since Kraepelin and Bleuler. Contemporary psychiatrists and psychotherapists would be wise to review Arieti’s vast contributions to the field.”Silvano Arieti was born in 1914. When he died in 1981, Arieti was perhaps the world’s foremost authority on schizophrenia. He wrote an award-winning book about it.The other book he wrote was about creativity.Coincidence? Perhaps. But I am convinced that creativity is a mild form of schizophrenia. How else would you describe a marvelous blend of rational with irrational, sophisticated with primitive, conscious with subconscious?Creativity is a wild and spontaneous act employed by artists, thinkers, poets, dancers, musicians, and philosophers. It is that conflicted insanity to which our Muses give us access.I think that “mild schizophrenia” is the perfect description.But perhaps I am wrong.Roy H. WilliamsToday’s rabbit hole is as wacky as today’s memo. You should check it out. I’m Indy Beagle.Steven Gaffney’s client list reads like a “Who’s Who of America’s Best Corporations.” His clients include including Allstate, Amazon, American Express, Best Buy, Booz Allen Hamilton, and BP. And those are just the “A”s and “B”s. Steven Gaffney builds high-achieving teams that set brave goals and then exceed them. In this week’s amazing conversation with roving reporter Rotbart, Steven Gaffney shares big-picture insights and detailed actions that will help any business improve their results over the next 30 days. Get your running shoes on, because the race is about to begin at MondayMorningRadio.com

The greatest companies are the ones with the happiest customers.To create happy customers, you need to be customer-centric.Every company believes they are customer-centric. But while a great company keeps the happiness of their customer in the center of their thoughts, the average company puts their customer in the center of the cross-hairs of a rifle scope.Great companies ask, “How can we give our customers the buying experience that they would prefer?” They work at removing the friction from the customer experience.Average companies ask, “How can we get our customers to give us more money, more often?” Average companies tells their marketing teams, “Sales is just a numbers game. Bring us twice as many leads and we’ll make twice as many sales. You bring’em in. We’ll close’em.”But no matter what those marketing teams do, a decreasing number of people will respond to their ads. A negative customer experience drives customers away faster than marketing can bring them in.Do you want to see what real customer-centric thinking looks like?A client of mine recently wrote this email and sent it to all the people who work in his company. He forwarded it to me only as an afterthought.SUBJECT: Pricing Reflection — Serving the Everyday Working AmericanTeam,Today I had a realization around some of our pricing. I’m all for setting prices that protect our margins and keep the business strong – but I’m equally committed to making sure we have price point items that the everyday working American can actually afford.Let’s take a simple example: a toilet. Right now, most of our toilet installs are priced over $1,000. If we assume the median household income is $85,000, divided over 26 pre-tax paychecks, that’s $3,269 per check. A $1,000 toilet install is over 30% of that paycheck. That’s significant.We need to remember who we’re here to serve – the nurse, the police officer, the office worker, the firefighter. These are people raising families, keeping their homes together, and doing the best they can. We cannot price them out of basic service. If we do, we risk not only losing today’s job – but any future relationship with that customer.Let me be clear: I’m not trying to run a low-margin business.But I do want to make sure we have real options for real people. Today’s pricing structure on some of these essential services is a barrier – not just to customers, but to our own techs who are trying to present them.Because of this realization, I immediately asked Jacob to find a toilet that we could install at a price point of $699. Well, guess what – we found one today. And we’re bringing it in and adding it to the price book at $649.This one change will give our team more confidence to present a basic toilet option. What I’ve heard from Will – and it’s been consistent – is that this has been a never-ending battle. Technicians don’t feel comfortable presenting a $1,000 toilet to customers, especially when many of them wouldn’t pay that themselves. That lack of confidence translates to lower conversions and frustrated customers.This reminds me of what we went through in HVAC when we had no system options below $15,000. We lost installs constantly – not because we weren’t good, but because we didn’t have a simple, no-frills option for people who just needed heating and air. Once we corrected that, we started closing more jobs and rebuilding our pipeline.We need to apply that same logic here. During times like this, let’s price effectively so we can keep building our customer base and generate revenue day by day. When the tide turns – and it will – we can always maximize margin percentage where appropriate.There’s an opportunity here. We can maintain strong margins where they make sense – but also have a few key products that are accessible. That builds trust, drives volume, and keeps us connected to the people we serve.Let’s make sure we’re building a business that works for our margins and for our community.The man who wrote that note to his employees owns a great company.His current sales volume is more than 10 times the amount the average business owner in his category hopes to do “some day.”The average company hunts for customers, targets customers, and closes customers.Great companies use mass media to distribute the seeds of relationship far and wide. They continually shine the warm sunlight of humility and vulnerability on those seeds and water them with generosity.Great companies grow mighty orchards that produce happy fruit for generations.Are you willing to work with a shovel, a rake, and a hoe?Or do you prefer to carry a rifle?Roy H. WilliamsJohnny Molson can explain – in just 2 words – what it takes for an advertising campaign to soar above the campaigns of its competitors. Johnny is one of the elite Wizard of Ads partners. Employing the groundbreaking strategies developed by Roy H. Williams, he and his fellow Wizards of Ads craft powerful brand identities that turn a business owner’s financial dreams into financial realities.In today’s episode of Monday Morning Radio, Johnny Molson explains the difference between ads that drive immediate sales — and ads that build long-term customers and spectacular profitability. What is Johnny’s two-word formula? Listen and WIN as Johnny joins roving reporter Rotbart and his deputy, Maxwell, for a deep dive into magical advertising at Monday Morning Radio dot com.

The strongest brands are the ones with the most distinctive personalities. But even a weak and faded personality is better than none at all.A brand with a personality is an imaginary character in the minds of the customers of that brand. It is similar to the characters in syndicated television shows, bestselling novels, and big movie franchises.Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, and Robin Williams are actors, but they are also characters in your mind.Willie Nelson, Michael Jackson, and Taylor Swift are musicians. but they are also characters in your mind.Brands are like that.Two people are now going to tell us about books.Dear Person Reading This,A writer can fit a whole world inside a book. Really. You can go there. You can learn things while you are away. You can bring them back to the world you normally live in.You can look out of another person’s eyes, think their thoughts, care about what they care about.You can fly. You can travel to the stars. You can be a monster or a wizard or a god. You can be a girl. You can be a boy. Books give you worlds of infinite possibility. All you have to do is be interested enough to read that first page…Somewhere, there is a book written just for you. It will fit in your mind like a glove fits your hand. And it’s waiting.Go look for it.Neil GaimanA Velocity of Being, Letters to a Young Reader, p. 22Brands are like novels and movies and TV shows. Brands are like hit songs. Brands are like actors and musicians. Brands are like good books.Here is the second person.Dear Reader,When I was 12, I was given a scholarship to a private girl’s school in the town where I lived. All the other girls came from another – wealthier – town. They were driven to school in Jaguars and Mercedes Benzes. They ate artichokes. No way would I ever fit in.In the midst of my funk, the English teacher assigned A Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers. As it happens, Frankie, the book’s heroine, is also 12 and also wants to belong. Her yearning is such that she wants to know everyone in the world and for everyone to know her – exactly what I wanted!That’s what stunned me, not just the intensity of the longing, but the specificity. It meant – it had to mean – there were other people in the world like me. Not just Frankie, a fictional character, but the author who had to have felt that way herself in order to give Frankie that longing. I felt such an intimate connection with her, as if she’d looked deep inside me and knew me in the way I wanted the world to know me. Reading didn’t just offer escape; it offered connection!All these years later, I just have to look at my copy of A Member of the Wedding on my bookshelf to experience again how I felt when I first read it and to feel the full force of that connection: to Frankie, to Carson McCullers, to the 12-year-old girl I was, and to 12-year-olds everywhere.Emily LevineA Velocity of Being, Letters to a Young Reader, p. 52A brand with a personality is like A Member of the Wedding, written by Carson McCullers.Who was the first ad writer to give a brand a distinctive personality?That’s like asking, “Who built the first car?” To answer that question, we would first have to agree upon the defining characteristics of a car.For us to agree upon “Who was the first ad writer to give a brand a distinctive personality,” we would first have to agree upon a definition for the word “distinctive,” and then we would have to agree upon what constitutes a “personality.”We could do that, or you can just trust me when I say that Carl Benz built the first car in July of 1886 and Bill Bernbach created the first brand with a distinctive personality in 1958. The ad is not logical. It does not speak of features and benefits. It does not feel like an ad.Ads with personality are captivating and engaging because they give you a look at something through the eyes of someone else.In this case, we are listening to a catty cat, an obvious metaphor for a snobbish society matron.You might be thinking, “That ad isn’t special. I see ads like that all the time.”These are my responses:(1.) No, you see ads like that occasionally, perhaps 1 in every 1,000 ads you encounter. You only think that you see them “all the time” because when you do see one, it has an impact on you. Your mind has been ignoring the 999 others because they are uninteresting and predictable.(2.) Keep in mind that we are talking about 1958. In those days, this ad was revolutionary.A year after Bill Bernbach wrote that first Ohrbach’s ad, a group of Germans came to America and asked, “Where can we find the man who writes those ads for Ohrbach’s?” And thus the legendary “Think Small” campaign for Volkswagen was born.Volkswagen, a small car with an air-cooled engine from Germany, quickly became a powerful brand with a cult-like following. And this happened in America just 14 years after the end of WWII. Don’t tell me that ad writers don’t make a difference.I began this journey by accident.For many years, I have quoted Bill Bernbach’s famous statement, “I’ve got a great gimmick. Let’s tell the truth.”The truth is that he never said it, and he never claimed to have said it.Bill was searching for a new gimmick for Ohrbach’s Department Stores when his client Nathan Ohrbach looked at him and said, “I’ve got a great gimmick. Let’s tell the truth.”It is foolish to create a personality for a company that doesn’t already have one. Great ad writers perceive the personality that is already alive within the company. And then they amplify it.If you try to give a personality to a company that doesn’t already have one, the customers who respond to your ads will feel they have been deeply misled and betrayed. You can put lipstick on a pig, but everyone who encounters that pig will still recognize it as a pig.Bill Bernbach never did that. He found the truth, amplified the truth, and then proclaimed the truth. When I recently learned what Bill Bernbach really did say, it freaked me out a little. Things that I have discovered, developed, practiced, and written about for more than 40 years had been discovered by Bill Bernbach before I was born.This is Bill Bernbach:“A great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it’s bad.”“There is no such thing as a good or bad ad in isolation. What is good at one moment is bad at another. Research can trap you into the past.”“We are so busy measuring public opinion that we forget we can mold it. We are so busy listening to statistics, we forget we can create them.”“Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.”“An idea can turn to dust or magic depending on the talent that rubs against it.”“The real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.”“If you stand for something, you will always find some people for you, and some against you. If you stand for nothing, you will find nobody against you, and nobody for you.”Richard Kessler owned an invisible little jewelry store in a sad little strip center in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. Everyone in Menomonee Falls was willing to drive 21 miles to Milwaukee, but no one in Milwaukee was willing to drive 21 miles to Menomonee Falls.But that’s exactly what we needed them to do.Richard had vision and courage, but so do a lot of other business owners. The reason I agreed to work with the Kess-Man is that he was willing to be vulnerable. The man had genuine humility.If a client doesn’t have humility, they won’t let you write ads that reveal their heart.We had a tiny little ad budget, so we ran weird radio ads late at night that ended with Richard saying, “Kesslers Diamonds, inconveniently located on Appleton Avenue in Menomonee Falls.”Humorless people assumed that Richard had misspoken. They called the radio stations and said, “He’s not saying ‘conveniently located.’ He’s saying ‘inconveniently located.’ That man is saying ‘inconveniently located!’ You need to correct that.”My goal was for you to feel that you knew Richard Kessler. I liked Richard and I wanted you to like him, too. To like him, you just needed to get to know him.We did it in 60-second increments.If you win the heart, the mind will follow. The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.Kessler taught every employee to think and feel like they owned the store. He gave each of them his full authority. No employee at Kesslers ever had to “check with the boss” to make a decision. They were able to make gigantic decisions without having to check with him or with anyone else. That’s real vulnerability.When Richard Kessler had grown the company 70 times bigger than it was when we got started, he gave his employees the company.Kesslers Diamonds is the largest employee-owned jewelry store in America. They have 9 big stores across Wisconsin and Michigan with plans to open a lot more.I shared that story with you to make you understand a transformative truth: Passion, pride, and confidence are overrated. The world is full of idiots who are passionate, proud and confident.Untempered passion, pride, and confidence create a strutting peacock, a coarse cliché, a cardboard cut-out wearing an Armani suit. If you write ads for such a person, you must target people who want to be that person. Count me out.If you want to write successful ads that win the hearts and minds of millions, look for business owners who have humility, vulnerability, and generosity.America loves Warren Buffett – not because he has billions of dollars – but because he has humility, vulnerability, and generosity.Be like Warren Buffett.© Roy H. WilliamsExecutives often make trade-offs, prioritizing wealth and recognition over family and a grounded life. But are the benefits of these trade-offs worth it? That question prompted Butch Meily to write a memoir about the years he spent as an aide to Reginald Lewis, the first African-American to build a billion-dollar company. Reginald reached extraordinary heights and brought Butch along with him. But the lives of these men provide a cautionary tale of the price each of them paid for their achievements. Spend a few minutes with Butch Meily and roving reporter Rotbart today and you will learn how to build boldly, lead wisely, and never forget to live. MondayMorningRadio.com.

“Around the swimming beagles, bright stars danced on rippling waters like a thousand little fishes of light scurrying in a sea of darkness.Can there be a more beautiful sight than when sky meets ocean in the black of night?” The lawyer whispered to himself, the beagles, and the sea as the soft blanket of summer wrapped them all in her warm embrace.Night is a time of reflection. Not of stars in water only, but of times past and times to come. And such a night was this.”– Beagles of Destinae, chapter 4Ideas pour into the dark waters of the unconscious mind, sparkling like reflected stars. As above, so below. The natives always said it was so.But as Gemini sat on the throne of Aquarius, a dragonfish was born. And thus our story begins.The twins did not mean to unleash a dragonfish, but they had never promised not to, either. And besides, a dragonfish is an adventure.Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea,and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff,And brought him strings, and sealing wax, and other fancy stuff.Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail,Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff’s gigantic tail.Noble kings and princes would bow whenever they came,Pirate ships would lower their flags when Puff roared out his name.A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys,Painted wings and giant’s rings make way for other toys.One gray night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more,And Puff, that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.“Puff the Magic Dragon” with lyrics by Leonard Lipton and music by Peter Yarrow appears on the 1963 Peter, Paul and Mary album, “Moving.” An urban myth soon arose that the song was about drugs. It’s really a backward look at childhood, and all that was left behind.“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart. All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.”– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry“He saw two boats standing by the lake; but the fishermen had gone from them and were washing their nets. Then He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat. When He had stopped speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.'”– Luke, ch. 5The book “Peter Pan” was written only after the 1904 play became a huge success.On opening night, Mrs. Snow spoke to the playwright and author, J.M. Barrie about her late husband…“And he would so have loved this evening. The pirates, and the Indians; he was really just a boy himself, you know, to the very end. I suppose it’s all the work of the ticking crocodile, isn’t it? Time is chasing after all of us. Isn’t that right?”“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old; they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”– Gabriel Garcia Marquez“The secret of The Muppets is they re not very good at what they do. Kermit’s not a great host, Fozzie’s not a good comedian, Miss Piggy’s not a great singer… Like, none of them are actually good at it, but they love it. They’re like a family, and they like putting on the show. And they have joy. And because of the joy, it doesn’t matter that they’re not good at it. That’s what we should all be. Muppets.”– Brett Goldstein“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust…If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I’ll never grow up.”– Peter Pan, by JM BarrieIn 1909, five years after the play “Peter Pan” was a huge success, ‘Goat’ Fowler decided to name his playful acapella musical group at Yale University after a mythical dragonfish named Whiffenpoof. The group has continued for the past 116 years.And He said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter into heaven.”– Matthew, ch. 18It is important that we retain childlike qualities.Next week I will show you how all of these things are essential when your goal is to build a brand that will win the hearts and minds of people.Aroo.Roy H. WilliamsRob Kessler is a talented and ambitious entrepreneur. His company sells a brand of shirts with proprietary collar inserts designed to be worn without ties. Rob is the son of Richard Kessler who worked with the wizard for 35 years and became one of the most famous diamond jewelers in America before he retired. (Richard was one of the first guests that roving reporter Rotbart showcased when he launched Monday Morning Radio 13 years ago in June, 2012.) Rob’s path has been different than his dad’s, but the 12-year entrepreneurial journey he shares this week is a study in entrepreneurial persistence, innovation, and market adaptation. Rob and our roving reporter will get started the moment you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com

Pennie and I had a difficult week a long way from home.It began with a piece of gravel that cracked her windshield.Looking back, we should have just lived with it. But we didn’t know that at the time.We dropped her car off at the appointed time on the appointed day. When Pennie picked it up, the upper-left corner of her new windshield whistled loudly at speeds above 30mph. She called the windshield people. They gave her a new appointment.When we picked it up for the second time, the whistle was a little less loud than it had been, but she decided to live with it. There are a lot of things in life more annoying than a whistling windshield.We didn’t know it, but we were about to experience several of them.Driving for 4 hours in a rainstorm to see your mother in the hospital is not a bad experience unless your previously-whistling windshield is now pouring quarts of water into your car.Things went downhill from there for several days.I won’t bore you with the details because the real purpose of this note is to tell you what happened that turned everything around for us.We discovered a wonderful French cafe just two blocks from Clearfork Hospital in Ft. Worth. Halfway through the meal, I went to their website to see if they had a location in Austin. They don’t, but I’m sure they soon will.Meanwhile, Pennie went to romanticspotsfortworth.com to see if Clarissa had discovered and listed this amazing cafe.Of course, she had. Clarissa is really good at her job.Angela brought our next course to the table.I said, “We found out about you at romanticspotsfortworth.”To our delight, Angela said, “Yes! They sent us an award with the cutest logo on it! Everyone was excited.”Pennie and I chose not to mention that we own the romanticspots websites.When Angela departed, I scrolled all the way to the bottom of the cafe’s website where I encountered a carousel of remarkable quotes. “People who love to eat are always the best people.”– Julia Child“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”– J.R.R. Tolkien, from “The Hobbit”, spoken by Thorin Oakenshield“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”– Aesop, “The Lion and The Mouse”“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.”– Andre GideHaving been distracted by every bad thing that had happened since our 4-hour trip in a flooded car, these next two quotes hit me pretty hard.“You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.”– Dr. Seuss“The flower that blooms in adversity is the most beautiful of all.”– Walt DisneyEach of the remaining quotes at the bottom of that menu lifted me a little bit higher.“All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.”– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince”“Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”– Frances Hodgson Burnett, “The Secret Garden”“True love is like a fine wine, the older the better.”– Fred Jacob“It is better to know how to learn than to know.”– Dr. Seuss“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”– Antoine de Saint-ExupéryAnd then this line lifted from “A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Wolf made me smile and remember where I was.“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”And then Andre Gide encouraged me to quit looking at what was behind me.“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”In the space of just a few minutes, a carousel of curated quotes at the bottom of a cafe menu convinced me to look beyond the windshield.As you read this, I am adding a 450-year-old quote from Michel de Montaigne to that transformative list of quotes from Rise cafe at the shops in Clearfork. Are you ready? This is it:“The surest sign of wisdom is continual cheerfulness.”Look beyond the windshield, friend. It’s a beautiful world out there.Roy H. Williams

“If people were paid according to how hard they work, the richest people on earth would be the ones digging ditches with a shovel in the hot summertime.”That’s what my mother told me when I was a boy. When she saw the puzzled look on my face, she continued.“People who make a lot of money are paid according to the weight of the responsibility they carry and the quality of the decisions they make.”Second only to grief, the weight of responsibility is the heaviest burden that a person can carry. Compared to those, a shovel full of dirt feels as light as feathers on a windy day.When forced to choose between two evils, it brings a good person no joy to choose the lesser evil. Fewer people will be hurt, but the pain those people feel will be real.A person who is not wounded by the pain they cause others is a sociopath.Authority is power, and power is attractive. Tear away the tinsel. Scrape away the glitter and you will see that authority is just a fancy costume. You wear it when you are about to cause someone pain.Every good person in authority has scars on their heart, memories of the pain they know they have caused others.Sociopaths don’t care about the pain of others. They crave authority because they are weak, and the fancy costume lets them pretend they are strong.Things get ugly when a sociopath has power.“In the alchemy of man’s soul almost all noble attributes – courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, etc. – can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.”– Eric Hoffer, “Reflections on the Human Condition” (1973)A person in authority who lacks compassion is a very small person wearing a badge.As a young man, I admired cleverness. But I have lived enough years and cried enough tears that now I see the world differently. Today, I admire goodness. This shift in perspective helped me understand what Viktor Frankl wrote in his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.”“Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth… In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”Viktor Frankl was a medical doctor, a psychologist, and a survivor of the holocaust. He was imprisoned in four different concentration camps: Theresienstadt, Auschwitz where his mother was murdered, Dachau,and then Türkheim.Viktor Frankl believed in freedom, but he refused to see it as a license to do whatever you want. To him, freedom without responsibility was an idiotic idea.Isabella Bird was a well-educated woman who left Victorian England to explore the world in 1854.When she arrived in the United States in 1873, she bought a horse and rode alone more than 800 miles to Colorado. In her book, “A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains,” (1879), Isabella wrote,“In America the almighty dollar is the true divinity, and its worship is universal. ‘Smartness’ is the quality thought most of. The boy who ‘gets on’ by cheating at his lessons is praised for being a ‘smart boy,’ and his satisfied parents foretell that he will make a ‘great man.'”“A man who overreaches his neighbor, but who does it so cleverly that the law cannot take hold of him, wins an envied reputation as a ‘smart man,’ and stories of this species of ‘smartness’ are told admiringly ’round every stove. Smartness is but the initial stage of swindling, and the clever swindler who evades or defies the weak and often corruptly administered laws of the States, excites unmeasured adoration among the masses.”These are the thoughts of people who have lived a lot of years and cried a lot of tears.I offer these thoughts to you merely as food for thought.Roy H. WilliamsIf you have messed up royally, you might take comfort in Al Lewis’s Substack where he details the boneheaded choices and illegal antics of CEOs and executives. For most readers, Al’s independent newsletter is an opportunity to learn from other people’s mistakes, which is a lot less costly than learning from your own. Al has served as business editor of the Houston Chronicle and The Denver Post, and was the Markets Editor at CNBC. According to Roving reporter Rotbart and his deputy Maxwell, skipping this conversation with Al would be a business blunder of the highest magnitude. The gauntlet had been thrown down. Are you going to pick it up? MondayMorningRadio.com