Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

It is easy to understand a person who is driven by their passions.Your passions take you to your happy place.I have friends who have a passion for sporting events on television. Others have a passion for gambling, and the paripatetic have a passion for traveling to all the far-flung places on this spinning rock we live upon.People who have a passion for achievement live to make things different.Planning and research puts a candle to the wick of some people. They go without sleep and burn bright throughout the night as they gather, collate, and organize information that will set the future on fire.Your scars are the memories of bitter experiences.The pain is gone, but the benefits of those experiences remain. Your scars help you see danger on the horizon.Your scars are the diplomas of lessons you will never forget.It is good to have scars.But wounds… wounds are different.The pain remains and it triggers you to act in ways that everyone notices but no one understands. Sometimes not even you.I have known men whose only passion was to seduce every woman they encountered. Those men like to believe that they are “in love with falling in love.” But when you have known them long enough you will see a knife wound in their chest that has never healed. Way back in the long ago, they had a wife who began sleeping with another man. And ever since that day, they have been trying to become that man.The pain of a wound is a powerful thing. It shouts, “Never again! Never again! Never again!”I don’t believe that any of those men have ever figured out why they feel driven to become the living embodiment of the imaginary Don Juan, and I have never felt that it was my place to tell them.Every person is formed by their passions, scars, and wounds. Even imaginary people.All of the famous characters in literature were created from their passions, scars, and wounds.Novelists, playwrights, and screenwriters know this. Ad writers do not. This is why most advertising is dull, dead, and untwitching.When an ad writer is guided by the ambitions, demands, and expectations of their clients, you can expect to hear the glorious trumpets of a ringing call to action. “Come! Come now! Give me your money! Hurry! Hurry! I want your money Today! Today! Today! Act now! Don’t delay!”We are not enchanted by these ads.Did it ever occur to you that every successful brand is a character that lives in the mind of the customer?A successful brand is driven by its passions, scars, and wounds.Passion: Why does this brand exist? What is it chasing? What love does it represent?Scars: What does it know? What has it learned? Why can I trust this brand?Wounds: What is this brand trying to erase from the earth?To what does it shout, “Never again! Never again! Never again!”Roy H. Williams

A tribe is a group of people that share an identity marker. Every affinity group, every fan club, every self-selected group of insiders is a tribe.Last week we talked about Business-to-Business advertising (B2B) and Niche Marketing with a long purchase cycle (Niche-L).Today we talk about Niche Marketing with a short purchase cycle (Niche-S) and Business-to-Consumer advertising (B2C).Let’s talk first about (Niche-S):Niche Marketing with a Short purchase cycle will always be targeted to an affinity group. A Niche market is any self-selected group of insiders that has chosen to spend time, attention, and money on something that most people don’t care about.Short-cycle Niche Marketing is mostly consumable products and services that are purchased on a regular basis by a self-selected group. Some examples of this would be bullets, fish hooks, tubes of oil paint, and those little cloth foot coverings worn by medical professionals in hospitals and air conditioning technicians in your home.Niche Marketing with a Short purchase cycle is similar to B2B advertising: Features. Benefits. Price.Now let’s talk about Business-to-Consumer advertising with a Short purchase cycle. (B2C-S)Do you sell a small-ticket consumable product or service that a high percentage of the population will purchase regularly? You are selling Business-to-Consumer with a Short purchase cycle. Food, gasoline, and entertainment compose the majority of this category.If you own a grocery store, a restaurant, a convenience store, a gas station, a hardware store, or an “everything” store that competes with Amazon and Wal-Mart, all you need is a high-visibility location, legendary signage, and a staff that delivers a positive customer experience. That’s it. That’s your advertising.NOTE: If you want to drive immediate traffic, you will need(1.) an irresistible offer(2.) credible urgency(3.) high-frequency repetitionIf your ad doesn’t drive traffic,(1.) your offer was weak(2.) your urgency was not credible, or(3.) you didn’t pound the drums loud enoughNow let’s talk about Business-to-Consumer advertising with a Long purchase cycle. (B2C-L)If you sell a big-ticket product or service that a lot of Americans will buy “someday,” but only a fraction of one percent of the public is looking for it “today,” then you are in a B2C category with a Long purchase cycle.This category requires patience, commitment, and mass media: primarily broadcast radio, broadcast television, or billboards.You can use short-term-impact Transactional ads or long-term brand-building Relational ads.The objective of a Transactional ad is to make the sale. You can measure the Return-On-Ad-Spend (ROAS) of short-term-impact Transactional ads because they offer no long-term benefits.The objective of a long-term Relational ad is to create connection, relationship, and trust in your brand. Relational ads cannot be measured with ROAS because there is no moment when the benefits of relationship strengthening have been exhausted.Business people are instinctively attracted to Transactional ads because Transactional ads are more easily measured. This feels good in the short term, but in the long term it leads to frustration as you ask, “Why aren’t we growing like we should?”Now let’s talk about Business-to-Consumer advertising with a Mixed purchase cycle. (B2C-M)Halfway between Transactional and Relational – is Sales Activation. These ads are what transform this category into a gold mine. Ads that trigger Sales Activation can only exist within a Relational ad campaign.Sales Activation ads are NOT Transactional ads. If you inject Transactional ads into a Relational ad campaign you will create a confusing brand image.Sales Activation ads feel relational, but they contain a soft and friendly call-to-action that includes a specific reason why right now might be a good time to buy. The reason might be seasonal, event-driven, or be an exciting feature item that is temporarily available.To build a powerful brand that becomes a household word, 60 percent of your ads should be Relational (aimed at building a relationship) and 40 percent of your ads should be Sales Activation.Transactional ads will outperform a 60/40 mix of Relational ads with Sales Activation for the first 5 or 6 months. But the longer you run Transactional ads, the less well they perform.The longer you run Relational ads with Sales Activation, the better it performs.The brand that is using a 60/40 combination of Relational ads with Sales Activation will have gained so much momentum by the end of the second year that their Transactional competitors will be watching in wide-eyed wonder and scratching their heads in amazement.Sounds fun, doesn’t it?Roy H. WilliamsAt first glance, a website designed by Vi Wickam may look much like any other e-commerce or business site.But for reasons most visitors can’t quite articulate, they linger longer, engage more deeply, and are far more likely to become and remain customers. Vi — one of the elite Wizard of Ads partners — takes a holistic approach to web design that goes far beyond mere functionality. He blends audience psychology, authentic storytelling, real photography and the strategic placement of pages and visual elements to craft sites that feel genuine and reflect the very DNA of the products and companies they represent. As Vi explains to roving reporter Rotbart and his deputy, Maxwell, authenticity is today’s most powerful digital differentiator. Get differentiated! MondayMorningRadio.com

Today we’re going to do something fun. Are you ready?(Press the PLAY button to hear the audio version of today’s memo.)I will tell you how to advertise if you will tell me the nature of your business.Advertising can be broken into 6 major categories:Business-to-Business (B2B)Niche Marketing (Niche-S) with a short purchase cycleNiche Marketing (Niche-L) with a long purchase cycleShort Purchase Cycle (B2C-Short) Business-to-ConsumerLong Purchase Cycle (B2C-Long) Business-to-ConsumerMixed Purchase Cycle (B2C-Mixed) Business-to-ConsumerBusiness to Business.B2B: If you are in a business that sells to other businesses, tight targeting will be essential to your success, but you can easily identify the customers you need to target.Their addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses are readily available and direct mail, phone calls and emails are cheap. If you have some extra dollars, you can place ads in the appropriate trade magazines and websites to elevate your brand.Features, benefits, pricing, delivery, and payment terms are important elements within your message. How well your B2B ad campaign works will depend entirely on what you say.It will depend on what you say.Focus on saying the right things.Now let’s talk about Niche Marketing with a Long Purchase Cycle.Niche-L: If you sell a specialty product that appeals to an affinity group, social media is a powerful thing. A powerful thing.Danny sells the most rare, weird, exotic, and inexplicable guns the world has ever known. Firearms collectors are an affinity group. Collectible firearms are a Niche Market with a long purchase cycle.Danny will soon be producing a new daily short and posting it on YouTube 365 days a year. Each short video will be Danny showing you a different gun and telling you the story behind it. He is not going to shoot the gun. He is just going to tell you its story.Danny doesn’t need to find gun collectors. Gun collectors will find him. YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine. Danny just needs to produce interesting content.Brian Brushwood taught me that.Would you like to have an invisible garage door like the one that Batman passes through to enter the Bat Cave?Max can do that for you.But invisible garage doors can only be installed in houses that have no masonry. Max needs to locate charming houses with wooden exteriors.He can knock on their doors, leave a door-hanger, or mail them a glorious postcard. Max sells garage doors to a Niche Market with a long purchase cycle.Do you sell an intangible Niche product with a long purchase cycle?Are you a sales trainer, an ad writer, a nutritional expert, a motivational speaker, a psychic healer, an entertainer?Build fame. Ride the tidal wave of fame. Fame leads to word-of-mouth. Be remarkable. Advertising is a tax you pay for not being remarkable.Be remarkable.Next week we’ll talk about Short Purchase Cycle Niche Marketing and B2C.We’ll talk about B2C.You and me.Roy H. WilliamsPS – When you have achieved a little bit of fame, make yourself easy to find by paying Google for the click whenever someone types your name into the search bar. But that’s not advertising. That’s just helping people find you when they are looking for you by name. The people of Jackson, Michigan have loved Gilbert Chocolates for more than 110 years. Brian and Sally Krischbaum had zero experience when they bought the company in 2012, but set out to honor Gilbert’s rich heritage by expanding it into multiple stores and becoming a national distributor. Meet the Krischbaums as they share with deputy rover Maxwell Rotbart the real-world challenges and triumphs of running — and growing — a century-old family brand. They make great chocolate, but we believe you will agree that their story is definitely not sugarcoated. Now let’s get jiggy with it at MondayMorningRadio.com

When you understand how a person thinks, speaks, acts, and sees the world, you feel like you know that person.This is true whether you have spent time with them, or if you have spent time with them through the magic of modern media.Television, radio, and social media can be used to make sure that people know about you, or they can be used to make people feel like they know you.I have written a 4-stanza poem from the perspective of 3 different personalities.The story arc is the same for all 3 poems.The 4-verse, 4 stanza structure is the same.The rhyming conventions are very similar.The only real difference is that these short poems reveal the hearts of 3 different people; their perspectives, their attitudes, their personalities.My partner Gene Naftulyev directed the singers who turned these poems into blues songs.You can read the song lyrics in the text of the Monday Morning Memo, or you can listen to the songs in the audio version of the memo.These are the words to the first poem, and the song that was created from it:The faster I go, the more I fall behind.The map is fading in my mind.Landmarks are not where they were before.And cars don’t stop at red lights anymore.I don’t want to be unkind andMake innocent people feel malignedBut are all the gas pedals nailed to the floor?Why don’t cars stop at red lights anymore?Are these people colorblind?Are their panties in a bind?Are we fighting in a war?Why don’t we stop at red lights anymore?Is there an evil mastermindWho is making us feel that we are falling behind?Perhaps we can dangle him in an intersectionAnd see if he gets a new sense of direction.© Roy H. Williams
Oct. 18, 2025The singer of this song seems to be lamenting the loss of leisure. We perceive that he is troubled by the spiraling tyranny of the merely urgent. He doesn’t want to be unkind. His questions about the red-light runners being “colorblind,” or “having their panties in a bind” reveals a comedic wit. We sympathize with him. We agree with him. We like him.Now let’s tell that same story two more times using exactly the same structure, rhyming scheme, and storytelling devices. The only difference between that first poem and the next two poems will be the differing perspectives of the storytellers.I do not pretend to be a counselor-at-law,Or a judge, or a jury from Arkansas,But my heart does whisper this probing question:“When did people stop stopping at intersections?”We heard the words of Moses and foresawThat we would need to be a nation of Laws.But Moses did not give us “The 10 Suggestions.”So why did people stop stopping at intersections?Do you have a tragic flaw?Do you look good in-the-raw?If you want resurrection,You need to start stopping at intersections.Do you want sex appeal that makes ice thaw?Do you want people to look at you with awe?Do you want to achieve absolute perfection?Just hit your brakes at the next intersection.© Roy H. Williams, Oct 20, 2025That singer has a slightly more antagonistic attitude. His references to Moses and the Law reveal him to be more legalistic than the first singer. His additional comments about “counselor-at-law,” “nation of laws,” “resurrection” and “perfection” reveal the kind of black-and-white clarity that can result from a strict religious upbringing. We cannot be certain of these things, but we suspect them. He also has a little bit of a fixation on sexuality. “Do you look good in-the-raw?” “Sex appeal that makes ice thaw?” “Do people look at you with awe?” This cat is one complicated character!Are you ready for that same story to be told by a third singer whose perspective and personality is distinctly different from the first two?When I look inside my head,the only color I see is red.Behind my eyes I feel an itch.Red means STOP you son-of-a-bitch.It is NOT okay to go ahead.Keep it up and you’ll soon be dead.Green and red, you cannot switch.A red light means STOP, you son-of-a-bitch.Were you recently unwed?Are you sleeping single in a double bed?Did she not care that you are filthy rich?You need to stop being a son-of-a-bitch!Sometimes I think perhaps we oughtaUse your head for a piñata.I’ll sing it one more time with perfect pitch;‘Red means STOP… you son-of-a-bitch.’© Roy H. Williams, Oct 20, 2025Obviously, that guy is angry as hell and is predisposed toward violence. He sees red. “You’ll soon be dead.” This singer doesn’t joke around about “colorblind.” He says “Green and red, you cannot switch.” He doesn’t laugh about “panties in a bind.” This guy suggests that you’re not having sex because your wife left you, even though you are “filthy rich.”Every ad reveals a perspective. Your ads reveal what matters most to you.Your ads let people know how you think, speak, act, and see the world.And you thought ads were just about delivering information and a call-to-action.Roy H. WilliamsPS… As a special treat, this is the final version of the song that I wrote with Gene Naftulyev. You definitely want to hear the audio version of this:Faster and faster, but I’m losing ground.Red light flashing, nobody slowing down.The faster I go, the more I fall behind,The map is fading in my mind.Landmarks are not where they were before.And cars don’t stop at red lights anymore.Wheels spinning wild, world’s gone askew.Why don’t cars stop at red lights anymore?Gas pedals nailed to the floor.Whoa, what a war!Colorblind, panties in a bind,Are we fighting in the street, losing our mind?Red light’s burning, but we race right through.Why don’t we stop? Tell me, what’s the use?I don’t want to be unkind andmake innocent people feel maligned.But are all the gas pedals nailed to the floor?Why don’t cars stop at red lights anymore?Horns blaring, loud chaos in the air…Why don’t cars stop at red lights anymore?Gas pedals nailed to the floor.Whoa, what a war!Colorblind, panties in a bind,Are we fighting in the street, losing our mind?Red light’s burning, but we race right through.Why don’t we stop? It’s killing me and you.Is there an evil mastermindmaking us feel that we’re falling behind?Let’s dangle him out in the intersection,Watch the lights flash, give him a new direction.Hang him high where the red lights glow,See if he learns to just… let… go.Why don’t cars stop at red lights anymore?Gas pedals nailed, crashing through the door.Colorblind, panties in a bind,Are we fighting in the street, losing our mind?Red light! Red light!Why don’t we stop?© Roy H. Williams and Gene Naftulyev, Oct 21, 2025Rodney Dangerfield joked about it.Jackie Robinson said he’d earned it.Aretha Franklin sang about it:R.E.S.P.E.C.T.Respect is a virtue too often sacrificed in public discourse, online exchanges, and everyday interactions. Robert L. Dilenschneider wants to change that. Respect, Bob says, deserves, well … more respect. “Never take another man’s dignity. It’s worth nothing to you and everything to him.” Respect, Bob says, deserves, well … more respect. On this week’s episode of Monday Morning Radio, Dilenschneider shares his brilliant formula for healing the divisions in our country and restoring a culture of respect. Roving reporter Rotbart and deputy rover Maxwell and Bob Dilenschneider himself are waiting for you to arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com

Jeffrey Eisenberg and I were looking though a pair of antique doors at Austin Auction Gallery when I saw a remarkable oil painting on the wall behind them and whispered in wonder, “Ozymandias.”The auction catalog described the painting as, “Arabian horse and handler with Egyptian sphinx, signed lower right Maksymilian Novak-Zemplinski (Polish, b.1974), dated 2000.”But I knew that painting for what it was. I’ve loved “Ozymandias” since the 9th grade.You remember it, don’t you? Bryan Cranston read that famous poem in the final episode of “Breaking Bad.” The title of the episode was “Ozymandias,” and TV Guide picked it as “the best television episode of the 21st century.” It was also the only episode of a TV show ever to achieve a perfect 10-out-of-10 rating on IMDb with over 200,000 votes, putting it at the number one spot for the most highly rated television episode ever:I met a traveller from an antique land,Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;And on the pedestal, these words appear:“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bareThe lone and level sands stretch far away.When I returned home from the auction, I spent a delightful 90 minutes tracking down all the bits and pieces of how that poem came to exist.It was in 1817 that Percy Bysshe Shelley and his poet friend, Horace Smith read the news that the carved head of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II had been removed from its tomb at Thebes by an Italian adventurer and that it would soon be traveling to Britain.Shelly suggested to Smith that each of them should write a poem about it and title each of their poems “Ozymandias,” the Greek name for Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II.Look at the poem as it appeared in newspaper on that day in 1818, and you will see that Percy Bysshe Shelley signed it, “Glirastes.” He did it as an inside joke intended only for his wife, Mary Shelley, who, incidentally, published her famous novel “Frankenstein” that same year.Mary often signed her letters to Percy as “your affectionate dormouse.” So Percy combined “Gliridae” (Latin for dormouse) with “Erastes” (Greek for lover) to create “Glirastes,” (meaning “lover of dormice.”)So now you know how Google’s second-most-often-searched poem came to be published without anyone in London suspecting that it had been written on a bet with a friend by one of the most famous poets on earth who chose to sign it with a pseudonym as an inside joke to his wife.Did you know that I became an ad writer only because it was impossible to support myself as a poet?Now that you know that, you will not be surprised that Indy Beagle has collected Google’s Top 20 Poems for you to read in the rabbit hole. Indy also found the Horace Smith version of Ozymandias, and added it at the end of the Google’s Top 20 list.To enter the rabbit hole, all you have to do is click the image that appears at the top of today’s Monday Morning Memo. You’ll find this memo archived as “Looking Though Antique Doors,” the Monday Morning Memo for October 20th, 2025.This is the Google Top 20 List:“The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley“Sonnet 18” by William Shakespeare“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe“Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas“She Walks in Beauty” by Lord Byron“Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson“O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost“Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe“If –” by Rudyard Kipling“Invictus” by William Ernest Henley“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats“The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson“Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus“The Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth LongfellowCiao for Niao,Roy H. Williams“A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”– Dwight D. EisenhowerKen Blanchard says, “Focus on what’s working — and do more of it.” This is what places him among the most effective executive coaches in history.Martha C. Lawrence has worked closely with Ken Blanchard for more than 20 years.This is what makes her the perfect choice to write a biography of his life. From his boyhood in New Rochelle to his rise as one of the bestselling business authors of all time, Martha shows us a Ken Blanchard we never knew. Between the covers of her book hide the never-before-told backstory that made him the worldchanger that he became. That’s what roving reporter Rotbart has in store for you today at MondayMorningRadio.com

Dwight D. Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, in 1890. He was the President of the United States when I was born in Dallas, Texas, 68 years later.People called me “Little Roy.” People called him “Ike.”I worry that we have forgotten him.Ike Eisenhower graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1915 when he was 24 years old. His superiors noticed his organizational abilities, and appointed him commander of a tank training center during World War I.In 1933, he became aide to Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur, and in 1935 Ike went with him to the Philippines when MacArthur accepted the post of chief military adviser to that nation’s government.On June 25, 1942, Ike Eisenhower was chosen over 366 senior officers to lead the Armed Forces of the United States in World War II.After proving himself on the battlefields of North Africa and Italy in 1942 and 1943, Ike Eisenhower was appointed supreme commander of Operation Overlord – the Allied invasion of northwestern Europe.Ike was now commanding the Armed Forces of all 49 Allied nations – including Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China – in the war against Hitler and his minions. He personally planned and supervised two of the most consequential military campaigns of World War II: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy in 1944.Ike Eisenhower never talked like a tough guy, but only a fool would call him “weak” or “woke.”This past July, Robert Reich – an eloquent and intelligent spokesperson on the left – quoted a passage from an anti-war speech that Ike Eisenhower made at the beginning of his presidency in 1953. Reich ended his quote just prior to Ike’s unsettling reference to the crucifixion of Christ.Eloquent and intelligent people on the right refused to believe that a celebrated warrior had ever made a speech that could be classified as “anti-war.”Curious, I decided to get to the bottom of it.Here is a link to the complete transcript and original recording of the speech that President Dwight D. Eisenhower made before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953, from the Statler Hotel in Washington, D.C.This is the passage from that speech that got everyone worked up:“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.This world in arms is not spending money alone.It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals, it is some 50 miles of concrete pavement.We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”The title of that speech was originally “Chance for Peace,” but due to the vivid mental image contained in the middle of the speech, it quickly became known as the “Cross of Iron” speech.Words have impact when they contain vivid mental images.I own guns, but I am not a hunter. Neither my family nor my friends have ever seen my guns. But in the unlikely event of a home invasion, I am adequately prepared to protect the people I love.Working in a heavy steel fabrication shop from the age of 14, I spent my formative years surrounded by violent men who were older, larger, and stronger than me, but I was never afraid of them. I occasionally paid a price in blood for my lack of fear, but I never regretted my defiance.General John Tecumseh Sherman was a man familiar with violence. In 1864, when he was ravaging Atlanta during the Civil War, Sherman wrote a letter to a friend saying,“I am sick and tired of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.”I like Ike.I also like John McCain, who spent five-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Speaking at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1999, McCain said,“Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.”Based upon his speech to the assembled leadership of America’s armed forces, I am not sure that I like our current Secretary of War.It has been my observation that men who have experienced real violence are reluctant to speak of it. They are prepared to take decisive action when they must, but they leave the “tough-guy” talk to lesser men.Roy H. WilliamsTodd Sattersten is a book connoisseur. He reads, writes, reviews, and publishes books. In his newly released book, 100 Best Books for Work and Life: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You, Todd showcases 100 of what he considers to be the best books, including a wide range of topics, including personal growth, creativity, habits, leadership, sales, and communication.Since 2021, Todd has served as publisher of Bard Press, that legendary publishing house of business books that was founded by the incomparable Ray Bard. Todd curated his list of 100 books to include only those that are authoritative, well-written, and brimming with ideas that challenge conventional thinking and inspire fresh solutions. Fittingly, his own book does precisely that. Listen and be fascinated at MondayMorningRadio.com

Packaging is the art of presentation.Exciting packaging improves conversion.There are two important parts of packaging:WHAT IS IN THE PACKAGE?When package “A” and package “B” are the same price and contain the same basics, they are equal. But when package “B” contains something extra that people would love to have, the sale will always go to package “B”.Be the competitor that offers package “B”.The “something extra” that you include in your package has to be something that people actually care about. It doesn’t have to cost you a lot; people just have to want it. This is where most businesses screw up. They create a package by adding something extra that no one really cares about. Those packages always fail, so the business owner foolishly concludes that packaging doesn’t matter.It doesn’t take a lot of money to build an attractive package. But it does take a lot of time, energy, and creativity.And then it takes even more time and energy to source the “something extra” that will go into the package.SUMMARY: When your competitors sell the same things that you sell at similar prices, include a highly desirable “something extra” in your package.HOW IS THE PACKAGE PRESENTED?Two major movie theaters in Austin are showing the movie, “Gabby’s Dollhouse.” Both theaters have extensive menus and good food. Pivot your dining table out of the way. Sit down in your cozy recliner. Swing the table back across your lap. Order delicious things. Your smiling server will deliver whatever you want and keep doing so throughout the movie.When young children go to the movies, adults go with them. This is why both theaters offer an extensive selection of beer, wine, and cocktails.But only one of the theaters is offering a package that includes a map, some stickers, a plastic cup, and some plastic ears like the ones worn by Gabby, the main character in the movie. Every child will receive the movie memorabilia. Adults will not.Pennie and I waited too long to buy tickets for our two youngest grandkids.Are you ready for this? Every seat was sold on every screen for every seating time for “Gabby’s Dollhouse” at the theater offering the memorabilia made of paper and plastic. They even sold all the seats on the front row that are way too close to the screen.We had to take our grandchildren to the newer theater in the better shopping center. That huge theater was completely empty except for the four of us along with two other families. Eleven people in all.SUMMARY: Pennie and I were thankful that our grandkids didn’t know about the movie memorabilia at the other movie theater.2026: The Year When Challengers Overtake Market LeadersI believe that 2026 will be a year when consumer confidence* is in decline.As a result, most businesses will reduce their payroll and their advertising in an attempt to “cut their way to profitability.”They will do this because it makes sense if you don’t think about it.But smart-and-hungry challengers who do think about it will hit the accelerator instead of the brakes. They will do this because they understand that market share is easier to steal from the big boys when consumer confidence is in decline.The painful problem for these smart-and-hungry challengers is that they will be competing for a larger slice of a shrinking pie. So big gains in market share will show up as only small gains in top line revenue.But when consumer confidence returns, “All hail the new market leader.”Hitting the accelerator instead of the brakes is how smart-and-hungry challengers will overtake market leaders in 2026.Are you beginning to understand why I taught you about the importance of packaging?Roy H. WilliamsQUESTION: Are you competing against a market leader that was purchased by a private equity group? Be aware that private equity groups are notorious for trying to “cut their way to higher profitability” even when consumer confidence is high. This makes the companies they own especially vulnerable during times of declining consumer confidence.*Consumer Confidence is a statistical measure of consumers’ feelings about current and future economic conditions, used as an indicator of the overall state of the economy. In a business context, consumer confidence refers to the trust and belief customers have in a specific company’s products, services, or brand.It’s raining, it’s pouring, what are you ignoring?Are you aware of the current state of weather intelligence?A new era of meteorology has dawned. Weather forecasting is now a form of business intelligence. The weather forecasts of yesterday were notoriously inaccurate. They suggested only what we should wear and whether or not we should wait to wash the car.Tom Weber was the executive editor who decided what would be on the cover and which stories would be featured in TIME magazine. Today he is saying that the biggest story in America that everyone is ignoring is the degree to weather forecasting has become stunningly accurate. Even down to the level of micro forecasts confined to small geographic areas.Weather has an impact on every business. Find out how and why and what to do next, as Tom Weber explains it all to roving reporter Rotbart and his deputy rover, Maxwell. It’s going to be a day of thunder and lightning at MondayMorningRadio.com!

Peacocks want to be admired.Parrots repeat only what they have heard.Each of us has a little bit of Peacock in us, and perhaps a little Parrot, too.(I admit it about me. You should admit it about you.)Long ago I saw a movie in which an old Greek man says to a much younger man from England,“A wise old Turk once told me…”The young Englishman interrupts him and says,“What! A wise old Turk? I thought the Greeks and Turks hated each other.”The old Greek sighs, then says,“When I was young, I believed that there were only two kinds of people; Greeks who were good, and Turks who were bad. Then one day I met a good Turk. So I decided there were only two kinds of people; good people and bad people.”The Greek then looks into the eyes of the Englishman and says,“Now I believe there are just people.”On September 18th, I transcribed a single paragraph of an essay about the death of Charlie Kirk and posted it in my random quotes database:“After every mass shooting, after every fresh example of political violence, after every round of one side recriminating the other side for not holding up their end of the social contract, we need to hear what is right, what is true, what is good. That need is why we commit to memory lines of poetry, passages of literature, and—for religious believers—particular verses. Because when crisis arrives and the world presses in on us, we must work to remember what we’re about and what we hold to. Sometimes those things hold us more than we hold them, but only when we know them in our bones. So we keep telling ourselves, and each other, what is true and good.”“We should be telling each other this week to weep with those who weep.”– Nick Catoggio, Sept 18, 2025I have captured 7,761 quotes over the past 25 years. More than half of those were transcribed from novels, movies, television shows, emails and texts. About 10 percent of them are things I have written or said or thought or prayed; things that I wanted to archive somewhere lest I forget them. The rest of them are comical quips, well-worded witticisms, and profound thoughts uttered by friends and acquaintances that I quickly scribbled down.The Random Quotes database is off-site storage of ideas that I can access from anywhere in the world.You can access it, too. A new random quote will appear each time you refresh the page at MondayMorningMemo.com.I am writing this to you on September 22, 2025. The newest quote in the database is a text that was sent by Jeffrey Eisenberg to Tom Grimes and me just a few minutes ago. It says,“It’s my custom on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, to reach out and ask forgiveness from my friends. The holiday is a time for reflection, fresh starts, and making peace. By asking forgiveness, I’m acknowledging that I might have hurt someone—whether knowingly or not—and I don’t want to carry that into the new year.”“So if I’ve said or done anything that hurt or upset you, I sincerely ask your forgiveness.”– Jeffrey EisenbergI responded,“And we thank you for forgiving us, too. Especially Tom.” – RHWJeffrey sent a laugh emoji. Tom will laugh when he sees what I wrote.In truth, I have long admired Jeffrey’s tradition of calling his friends each year or sending us a text. It is a marvelous reminder that mutual forgiveness is essential to keeping relationships alive and healthy.Can you imagine what it would do for our country right now?Roy H. WilliamsEvery business owner wants to increase the online traffic to their website. But very few business owners recognize the importance of testing which website designs, which graphics, and which headlines are better at converting website visitors into customers. “A/B testing” is an ongoing series of controlled experiments to gather this knowledge. Roving reporter Rotbart talks with Brian Schmitt about how A/B testing can improve the number of fish you gather into your boat when fishing the deep, dark waters of the internet. MondayMorning Radio.com

There was a day when you found yourself in a strange situation and you did the best you could. Before you knew it, you were walking through it.You noticed a patch of wildflowers.You made a friend.Darkness fell. You saw an eye rise into the sky and believed it to be the moon. But now you know it was the eye of God, watching to see what you would do.With one of his eyes, he watches the world. With his other eye, he watches you.You kept walking.A ravine led to a stream and that stream led to a river.That first river led to a much broader river.Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn invited you onto their raft. You had an adventure.And then you had your heart broken.Got sick and recovered.Had a stroke of luck. Stretched it as far as you could.You closed your eyes as you clicked the heels of your ruby red slippers and said, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”When you opened your eyes, you knew that home wasn’t there anymore. The sun had risen while you were away, and home had evaporated into that thin blanket of warm air that wraps our bountiful earth.That was the day when you started looking forward and quit looking backAnd that is how you came to be where you are.The story that I have told you about yourself is the story of every successful business owner I have ever known.One of my business partners sent me a text at 3:37 this morning. It was a long and fascinating story that she wrote several years ago.This is how it begins.“Tomorrow, I leave the trailer park for good. I can never come back. None of us can. So I’d like to reminisce a little with some of my favorite memories of the place that I’ve called home for so many years. They make me smile…”The middle of her story is a delightful account of the all the crazy adventures she had with her companions on the log raft as it floated down the river of her youth. But it was the ending of her story that made it precious.“The giant trees were the big-top under which we conducted our circus of crazy. Here we created our own reality, full of unforgettable characters and ghetto fabulous adventures. No one could touch us. We lived in the middle of town, but existed in our own world. No matter what happened “out there,” we could always come home, be ourselves, start a fire, and connect. We were safe. We were a family.For years the echoes of our laughter have bounced off the old trees that have always shaded us. I like the think that the vibrations of our laughter are trapped inside the bark of those trees – that if you were to put your ear up to one of them, you could still hear the crackling of the fire and the cackling of our laughs.It’s been one hell of a ride. I’m sad to leave, but I can’t wait to see what comes next.Goodbye trailer park, hello world.”Today my partner lives in a sun-drenched house with a beautiful garden that overlooks the ocean.I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen the photos.She is a remarkable ad writer.Roy H. Williams

Icons represent ideas that are bigger than themselves.Myths are stories that represent ideas that are bigger than themselves.Archetypes are symbols of recognizable patterns of behavior.Letters of the alphabet are symbols (graphemes) that represents sounds (phonemes,) just as notes on a sheet of music are symbols that represent sounds.A role model is a personal icon, an archetype that you have chosen to emulate.The human brain loves symbols and patterns. This is why we embrace icons, myths, and archetypes.When we recognize a pattern that has been stored in our subconscious, we call it intuition. When we hear a pattern that has been repeated too many times, we call it a predictable cliché.Icons, myths, and archetypes evolve with each new generation.I was born in the 12th year of the 18-year Baby Boom generation that began exactly 9 months and 10 minutes after the end of World War II.Marilyn Monroe was the iconic sex symbol. The Statue of Liberty, Yankee Stadium, Yellowstone, and Woodstock were America’s iconic places. Rolls Royce, Cadillac, Corvette, Camaro and Mustang were iconic cars. Tetris, Pong, and Pac-Man were iconic video games.The mythic stories of Baby Boomers were mostly about combat. Sometimes we fought the Indians of the Old West. Sometimes we fought the Germans, or the Japanese. We fought the Establishment. We fought for justice. Or we fought just to stay alive.And we always won.Our definitive male archetype in these mythic stories was rugged, brave, independent, and honorable. John Wayne, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery.Baby Boomer female archetypes were smart, pretty, and strong; Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Andrews, Sophia Loren.Lots of movies ended with a wedding.These societal forces shaped the birth cohort known as the Baby Boomers.Gen-X was shaped by an entirely different set of icons, myths, and archetypes.Millennials had icons, myths, and archetypes that were all their own, as well.The Gen-Z cohort believes it is their responsibility to straighten out everything that the Boomers and X-ers screwed up.Gen-Alpha is determined to make their own decisions and decide for themselves what they want to do. They will be the vanguard of the next “Me” generation.Fortunately, there are elemental beliefs that bind us all together.It is upon those beliefs that successful customer-bonding ad campaigns are built. Openly name these beliefs and they lose their magic.If you claim to possess them, no one will believe you.EXAMPLES: Never claim to be honest. Just say something that only an honest person would say. Never claim to be a perfectionist. Just do something that only a perfectionist would do. Don’t tell people that you are an author or a podcaster. Just give them a copy of your book. Invite them to be on your podcast.If you would win the hearts and minds of tomorrow’s customers, this is what you must do:Imagine that you are standing face-to-face with three perfect customers and they are each looking into your eyes.The first one says, “Talk is cheap. Don’t tell me what you believe. Show me.”The second customer says, “Tell me a true story that lets me know who you really are, including the price that you pay for being you.”Customer three says, “If you betray me after I have given you my trust, I will burn you down so hot that grass won’t grow for 100 years.”Now you understand cancel culture. Frustration created it, and social media fuels it.People are looking for someone who really is who they claim to be.Is that you?Good. Now you just need to figure out how to communicate it.Roy H. WilliamsMick Torbay: “If you met a vegan who did Crossfit and invested in crypto and went to Harvard, which of those things do you think he would tell you about first?”Johnny Molson: “That’s a trick question. The first thing he would do is tell you about his podcast.”Unlike most experts, Mike Kelley believes that leadership begins with leading yourself. Every investment you make in personal growth will pay dividends at home, at work, and in your community. Mike led the executives at Michelin and Macy’s for more than 20 years before he launched out to coach others on how to grow and guide their organizations. Listen and learn as Mike tells deputy rover Maxwell Rotbart how focusing on faith, family, fitness, friends, and fun will make you a better person, as well as a more inspiring and effective manager. It’s grow-time, go-time at MondayMorningRadio.com