Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Irwin Michnick, the Brooklyn-born son of a Jewish furrier from Ukraine, was a jazz musician who wrote radio commercials and advertising jingles for companies like L & M cigarettes and Ken-L Ration dog food.Bob Levenson was a copywriter at Doyle Dane Bernbach who needed a tune to go with the words, “Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.” Irwin Michnick got the call.But it was a different call that led to Irwin Michnik winning a Tony Award and the Contemporary Classics Award from the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Placido Domingo, and more than 70 other superstars of music have recorded the song that Michnik wrote.Josh Groban included it on his 2020 album, Harmony.Aretha Franklin sang it at the funeral of civil rights activist Rosa Parks.Senator Edward Kennedy asked that it be sung at his funeral, as well. And it was.The song teaches us that passion does not create commitment, but that commitment creates passion. It is a song that teaches us that we can achieve the miraculous only if we are willing to attempt the ridiculous.Do you remember the Ze Frank quote I shared with you last week? The one where Ze talks about how the hero throws himself into battle against impossible odds, fiercely pushing, shoulders back, despite the knowledge that he can’t win, that he will die in the end?Irwin Michnik wrote the music and Joe Darion wrote the words. It is the theme song of Wizard Academy, that school for entrepreneurs and ad writers and educators and ministers and researchers and every other agent-of-change who has become infected with an impossible dream.Do you remember the song now? Of course you do. It starts like this, “To dream the impossible dream; to fight the unbeatable foe; to bear with unbearable sorrow; to run where the brave dare not go.”You probably don’t remember Irwin Michnik because he was known professionally as Mitch. Mitch Leigh.I’ll bet you can guess what Indy Beagle has for you in the rabbit hole.In other news about impossible dreams, last week I bought an extremely old copy of the book Miguel de Cervantes wrote that inspired the song by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion.Perhaps I’ll tell you about it after the beginning of the year.Ciao for Niao,Roy H. WilliamsGood business ideas often die on the vine because of the cost and logistics of bringing those ideas into reality. Uzair Ahmed saw all these missed opportunities, so he figured figured out how to use technology and automation to make these good business ideas come alive. Uzair tested a high-tech, low-overhead system to launch a business that provides on-site car repairs. Guess what? It succeeded wildly. Now, Uzair tells roving reporter Rotbart, he can help other businesses cut their costs up to 60% by following his model. And this also reduces the number of hours a business owner has to spend at work. We’ve struck the match and lit the fuse. If you want to see the fireworks, hurry over to MondayMorningRadio.com

Back in 2012, Ze Frank recorded a video I’ve contemplated for 11 years.“What was it about?”The hero and the clown.“What made it so interesting that you’ve contemplated it for so long?”The hero and the clown are the same person.“You’re going to need to explain that to me.”Here’s the transcript. Read it:“Once I was lucky enough to take a class with the great clown teacher Giovanni Fusetti and one of the things that he talked about was the ancient idea of a hero. In the Greek myths, humans were subject to massive and unknown forces outside of their control. The whims of the gods – fickle gods – the gods of wind, waves and war, of luck, of love, of age and death. And from up on Mount Olympus, humans, humans look like little ants in the face of all these things. Giovanni said that despite these unknowns the hero pushes, pushes up against all these forces, fiercely pushes, shoulders back, despite the knowledge that he can’t win, that he will die in the end. The clown on the other hand, celebrates the falling, the failure, the absurdity of skipping along the bottom, the absurdity of trying at all…”– Ze Frank, Unfair, June 22, 2012“Okay, that was interesting. But I don’t see how you could still be thinking about that after 11 years.”It answered a question for me.“So, what was the question?”How can one person look at Don Quixote and see a hero, and another person look at him and see a clown?“Sometimes you think about some really weird crap. You know that, right?”Yeah, I know that.“You need to tie all this together for me.”Cervantes wrote Don Quixote in 1605, and for the past 418 years, a person’s interpretation of that book has depended almost entirely on when and where they lived.“For real?”Yeah. For real.“Why?”Why, what?“Why does it depend on when and where they lived?”There are two specific times when people read the story of Don Quixote:When a nation is pursuing a beautiful dream, the artists of that nation will paint, and sculpt, and write plays about heroes who fight against impossible odds. And they will cheer for Don Quixote, a visionary hero who saw beauty, justice, and honor in a common village girl who didn’t know he was alive.Generations later, weary, disheartened, and brittle, those same nations will laugh at the absurdity of believing in heroes, and their comedians will mock the foolishness of relentless determination. And they will sneer at Don Quixote, a man who saw visions of beauty, justice and honor in a common village girl who didn’t know he was alive.“So what does America believe about Don Quixote right now?”Answer me this, Indy: Do you feel our nation is pursuing a beautiful dream? Or do you feel we are weary, disheartened, and brittle?“Considering that everyone is suspicious of everyone right now, I’d say that we are the second one.”Indy, I want you to research the founding fathers and find out whether they were reading Don Quixote when they were dreaming the dream of America, and fighting against impossible odds to escape from under the bootheel of King George.“You want me to put it in the rabbit hole?”That’s up to you, my little Beagle friend, but I’m hoping you will.“I will under one condition.”Name it.“Tell me what brought this on. I need to know why you’re telling me all this.”Do you remember what I told all those people who came to Austin to hear my final presentation of ‘Pendulum’ 11 years ago?“I remember the tower was full, but you said a lot of things during those 2 days. Which of those things are you talking about?”It was near the end, when someone asked me how soon I would be teaching ‘Pendulum’ again.“I remember that you told them you wouldn’t be teaching it again for at least 10 years. And everyone was shocked and asked you why. And you told them it was because there wasn’t going to be any good or happy news for the next 10 years, but that they were going to be crappiest 10 years in the whole 80-year, round trip of the Pendulum. You said there wouldn’t be even a glimmer of light at the end of that dark tunnel until 2024, when everything would start to slowly get better, little by little, at the speed of agriculture.”You have a good memory, Indy.“I’ve got one more question.”I’ll answer it for you in the rabbit hole.Roy H. WilliamsUX stands for “user experience,” and a deep understanding of it has allowed Satyam Kantamneni to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional income for his clients. Think of it this way: if you could experience your business the way your customers do, you would know exactly what to change to make it a more magnetic experience, causing customers to come back more often and from farther away. The most powerful differentiator in today’s competitive business environment is the customer’s experience. UX: Master it and win. Find out how at MondayMorningRadio.com

Ninety percent of motorcycle riders who attempt this corner at 100 mph crash and die, so 9% of riders who attempt it at 10 mph will also crash and die, right?The fact that you answered silently ‘No’ indicates that you instinctively understand the concept of an inflection point.Somewhere between zero and 100 mph is the inflection point where crashes begin to occur, and every mile-per-hour above that inflection point increases the likelihood of a crash.Although we instinctively understand the reality of the inflection point when reducing from the greater to the smaller, we somehow believe things are infinitely scalable when moving from the smaller to the greater.If we can navigate the corner at 77 mph, then we can do it at 78 mph. And if we can do it at 78 mph, we can certainly do it at 79 mph. And if 79 is doable, then so is 80, right?I’m talking to you about lead generation for your business.A few days ago, I was having a conversation that I find myself having far too often. I have an acquaintance in the air conditioning business who told me he was planning to increase his Google budget. He said,“If I increase my Google budget by 50%, I’ll get 50% more leads.”He’s been in business about 11 years and is a major player in his city, so I asked, “During peak season, how many calls do you get on the average day?”He told me the number, then I said, “Now think of all your competitors and estimate the number of calls they could possibly be getting. Give it some thought. Don’t leave anyone out.”I gave him time to think, then said, “Add that call volume to your call volume. Now tell me, what is the largest possible number of people that could possibly need air conditioning service during peak season?”He gave me a number. I asked, “Is there any way it could be higher than that?”“No.”“Peak season has been over for awhile. How many clicks are you currently buying each day?” His eyes got big and he said,“I’m already buying more than 3 times that many clicks every day! How is that possible?”“Are you asking me how it is possible that a finite number of people in your city are in the market for your product today, but the number of clicks available today is infinite? Is that what you’re asking?”He shook his head yes, so I told him the answer.I run into the same problem when talking to clients about radio ads. They say,“Every time I have increased my radio budget, my sales have increased. So I want to increase my budget again.”“It won’t do you any good.”“But it has always worked in the past.”“It won’t work this time because you are already reaching all the people who spend enough time listening to the radio each week to make it possible for you to reach them with sufficient repetition. The only people left are the ones who don’t spend enough time listening. We’re going to have to add a new media: TV, or billboards, or maybe direct mail.”“Will it work as well as the radio?”“Of course not. Because we’re at an inflection point.”“What do you mean?”“You’re already reaching 39% of your city with enough repetition for those people to know who you are and what you do and how you do it and why they should choose you. So whatever media we buy next, you’ve got to keep in mind that we’re already reaching 39% of those people with relentless repetition on the radio. The best-case scenario is that you’re going to see about 60% as much business growth per ad dollar as you’ve seen in the past.”No one wants to hear that.People want to believe that everything related to business is infinitely scalable. But there is always an inflection point when lead generation becomes more expensive.The happy times are when you reach that glorious inflection point when things really begin to take off. Like when you are far enough into a 52-week TV or radio campaign for the public to have heard enough about you to finally start choosing to buy from you.Sadly, this TV/Radio inflection point is usually somewhere between week 13 and week 26. Not always, but usually. Most advertisers don’t stay with it that long, because most advertising salespeople don’t have the courage to tell them it’s going to take that long.The exception, of course, is when you have an urgent message about a limited-time offer. Those ads usually start working much sooner.Problem solved, right? Just run direct-response ads with an attractive offer and a strong call to action!But inflection points in advertising are funny:Anything that works quickly, will work less and less well the longer you do it.Anything that works better and better the longer you do it, will always seem, at first, like it’s not working at all.Roy H. WilliamsEvery day, 3,000 new people decide to get into the game of online selling. Ninety percent of them – 2,700 per day – will never make a single sale. Matthew Stafford knows what they are doing wrong and how to fix it. Matthew’s magical formula for won’t drive potential customers to a website, but it will definitely convince prospects who visit a site to click the “buy” button a lot more often. Listen as Maxwell Rotbart – rising star son of the roving reporter – convinces Stafford to explain how tweaking the backend can can help businesses convert twice as many front-end sales. The miracle will begin the moment you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com.

Poetry is not limited to poets.When you1. say more2. in fewer words,you are being poetic.Pithy, insightful statements are poetry.Frederik Pohl was not trying to explain why we increase our purchases of ice cream, alcohol, and entertainment when we are sad, but he summarizes it perfectly in just 20 words:“What I wanted very badly was something to take my mind off all the things that were on my mind.”1In another of his books, Frederik Pohl uses just 15 words to remind us of something we have often seen and always known:“No circumstances were ever so bad that a little human effort couldn’t make them worse.”2Frederik Pohl was not a poet or a philosopher, but a science fiction writer born in 1919.Does this next statement conjure an image in your mind?“How clearly I saw what he had become! A man who so loved religiosity that he traded his ethical responsibilities for the brightness of that love.”3 – Arkady MartineArkady Martine is not a poet or a philosopher, but another science fiction writer.“Vanity manifests itself in overseriousness. To the vain, the trivialities of this world are of momentous importance. Everything that happens to a vain person is terribly important.”4– Eric Hoffer, a dockworker“It’s steel country, anthracite country, a place full of holes. Smokestacks fume and locomotives trundle back and forth on elevated conduits and leafless trees stand atop slag heaps like skeleton hands shoved up from the underworld.”5– Anthony Doerr, a novelistPoetry is not limited to poets. When you say more, in fewer words, you are being poetic.Most people avoid poetry because they feel it to be sissy, elitist, and irrelevant. After all, who wants to say more in fewer words?Every advertiser on the planet, that’s who.Poetic statements jump over the wall of the intellect to land on the softest parts of the heart.And if you win the heart, the mind will follow. The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.Transactional writing wins the mind.Relational writing wins the heart.Transactional writing is about features and benefits.Relational writing is about identity reinforcement.Learn to say more in fewer words.People will pay close attention when you speak.Your ads will produce miraculous results.Your meetings will be shorter and more productive.You will be widely admired, much remembered, and often quoted.In the 6th chapter of Matthew’s Good News, Jesus tells his followers not to include mindless repetition in their prayers. God doesn’t need filler words, and he doesn’t need us to repeat ourselves in order to be heard.That’s right, God doesn’t need filler words.And neither do the rest of us.Roy H. Williams1The Annals of the Heechee, p. 912 The Other End of Time, chap. 153A Desolation Called Peace, p. 2694Working and Thinking on the Waterfront, p.955All the Light We Cannot See, p. 24He started with $200,000 in 2018. Today it is $200,000,000. You can do it, too. Bronson Hill heard Warren Buffet say that people will work the rest of their lives if they don’t find a way to make money while they sleep. This week, Bronson reveals to roving reporter Rotbart his successful strategies for passive investment in real estate. You can always count on our roving Reporter to seek out interesting people with fascinating stories for you to hear at MondayMorningRadio.com.

Fiction is an ancient virtual reality technology that specializes in simulating human problems.“Like a flight simulator, fiction projects us into intense simulations of problems that run parallel to those we face in reality. And like a flight simulator, the main virtue of fiction is that we have a rich experience and don’t die at the end.”That was Jonathan Gottschall. This is the stunningly brilliant Chris Torbay.“My name is Michelle, and I work for Chapman Insurance. I work in the call center answering the phone. ‘What kind of job is that?’ you’re thinking. Well, when it’s your call, maybe I make a difference for you. Maybe you were dreading another one of those stupid corporate phone things with their ‘press one’ and ‘press two’ and ‘press six if a palm tree just fell on your doghouse,’… but you get to talk to a person, and you get to tell a real person how worried you are. And I get it because I’m a real person and I do this for a living! And I can see your policy and answer your questions because I know how confusing this can be, and when you hang up, you feel like someone with a heart and a soul, and a pretty awesome understanding of insurance has had the basic human decency to answer the phone and talk to you like a person instead of making you press six!!!!! My name is Michelle!!!! I work with Chapman, and your insurance call matters to me!!!!”[MALE VOICE] Visit cigFlorida.com© Chris Torbay 2023Jonathan Gottschall goes on to say,“Fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction, which is designed to persuade through argument and evidence. Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard.”“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.”– Doris Lessing, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature“Escapist fantasies are laughably superficial. Attaining them isn’t what we really want. If we did, they’d no doubt bore or disappoint us. We don’t want the fantasy. We want to fantasize.”– Evan Puschak, Escape into Meaning, p.109“The one thing emphasized in any creative writing course is ‘write what you know,’ and that automatically drives a wooden stake through the heart of imagination. If they really understood the mysterious process of creating fiction, they would say, ‘You can write about anything you can imagine.'”– Tom Robbins“Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.”– Francisco GoyaBut how does a person become creative?“When you notice a commonality between two or more things, you say, ‘Oh there’s something there.’ And now we make what’s called a charm bracelet: You take these things and you find a way to associate them. So that’s the process: I’m thinking about this [one] thing and then remember this [other] thing, and then you go, ‘Oh there’s something there — let me connect those 2 things.”– Jerry SeinfeldBrandon Sanderson agrees with Jerry Seinfeld:“The way that human creativity works is by combination. That’s what we’re really good at. We don’t come up with a completely new creature. We put a horn on a horse and go, ‘Look at that, that’s cool.’ That’s how we create on a fundamental level.”And Steve Jobs agreed with both Seinfeld and Sanderson:“Creativity equals connecting previously unrelated experiences and insights that others don’t see.”But where do you find all these bits and pieces to put together to make Seinfeld’s charm bracelet, or Sanderson’s unicorn, or Steve Jobs’ iPhone?“I had a boss in radio when I was 18 years old, and my boss told me to write down every idea I get even if I can’t use it at the time… and have a system for filing it away—because a good idea is of no use to you unless you can find it… A lot of creativity is discovery. A lot of things are lying around waiting to be discovered, and our job is to just notice them and bring them to life.”– George Carlin, explaining the origin of his “capture habit.”Every innovation is the result of creativity, and every innovation has a purpose. But does this mean that fiction writing must also have a purpose?“I maintain that fiction has no duty or obligation whatsoever except never to be boring—and even that is usually subjective. I’ve found that when a talented writer is operating with such wild poetic energy, such freedom from academic rules, social pressures, and normal expectations, that he or she is on the verge of losing control and crashing (like a daring downhill skier, for example), the resulting prose can be very nearly hallucinatory and absolutely exhilarating.”– Tom Robbins, talking to François Happe (March, 2009)But fiction can serve a purpose, can’t it?“Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.”– Francis BaconKurt Vonnegut was one of the major writers of the 20th Century. He wrote 14 novels, 3 short-story collections, 5 plays, and 5 works of nonfiction. He once joked that he never won a Nobel Prize because he had offended the Swedes by being a terrible salesman at a Saab dealership in the 1970s.From Kurt VonnegutNov. 5, 2006Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Conglusta:I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) In his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana. What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six-line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite It to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces and discard them into widely separated trash receptacles. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.God bless you all!Kurt VonnegutI think each of us should do – today – what Kurt Vonnegut told those kids to do.You will learn about what’s inside you,and you will make your soul grow.Or do you not care about those things?Roy H. WilliamsNOTE: You really, really, really don’t want to miss the rabbit hole today. – Indy BeagleFreedom Day, according to Jeff Kikel, is that juncture in our lives when work becomes optional, not a financial necessity. His formula begins with a shift in your mindset regarding your relationship to money: “It should work for you. You should not work for it.” If the idea of working for pleasure rather than necessity appeals to you, join roving reporter Rotbart for a rowdy and rollicking ride to Freedom Day at MondayMorningRadio.com.

Beautiful people know they are beautiful.Smart people know they are smart.Rich people know they are rich.You don’t need to tell them.If you speak about surface qualities, your words are superficial.If you speak about inner qualities, your words are deep.Flattery is an attempt at superficial bonding. It is the pickup line of a creep in a bar, hitting on a pretty girl. Creeps talk to women about the ‘features and benefits’ they see on the surface of the woman, and then they describe their own ‘features and benefits.’I am talking to you about advertising.Transactional ads describe something that is outside your current possession. Transactional ads are written to entice you to buy a product. Their offer of features and benefits is basically this: “Give me what I want, and I’ll give you what you want.”We settle for sex when we cannot find love.Most ads focus on ‘features and benefits’ because most marketing is created by morons.The woman in the bar is your customer. She is standing alone on a tiny island surrounded by an ocean of ‘features and benefits’, but it is an ocean only a few inches deep.What do you think would happen if you offered her what she really wants? What do you think would happen if your only goal was to rescue her forever from that tiny island?Relational ads speak to values and beliefs deep in your customer’s heart. Relational marketing is about meeting your customer’s needs today, tomorrow, and forever.Transactional marketing is about satisfying the need of the hour.Relational marketing is about satisfying the needs of a lifetime.“But,” you say, “product marketing isn’t about a relationship. It is about the features and benefits of the product.”Apple was the first company in the world to achieve a trillion-dollar valuation. Did Steve Jobs build that brand on transactional ads that described the features and benefits of Apple products? Apple-solutely not!In 1985, when Steve Jobs was fired from the company he had founded, a moron took over the marketing at Apple and immediately began talking about ‘features and benefits’. Those superficial ads plunged Apple into obscurity and brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy.When Steve Jobs came back to rescue Apple, he made a 7-minute speech to his team. (Indy Beagle has a video of that speech for you in today’s rabbit hole.)Steve begins that speech with these words:“To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world. It’s a very noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us, no company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want ’em to know about us.”Four minutes later, he finishes with this:“The things that Apple believed in at its core are the same things that Apple really stands for today. And so we wanted to find a way to communicate this. And what we have is something that I am very moved by. It honors those people who have changed the world. Some of them are living, some of them are not. But the ones that aren’t, as you’ll see, you know, that if they ever used a computer, it would’ve been a Mac. The theme of the campaign is Think Different. It’s the people honoring the people who think different and who move this world forward. And it is what we are about. It touches the soul of this company. So I’m going to go ahead and roll it, and I hope that you feel the same way about it I do.”“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”The strategy of Apple was to romanticize the idea of being an outsider, a renegade, an independent thinker, free from the handcuffs of tradition.Steve Jobs never spoke of the superficial differences between his products and the others. He spoke of what was in his heart, your heart, and my heart.He also spoke of Nike:“One of the greatest jobs of marketing that the universe has ever seen is Nike. Remember, Nike sells a commodity. They sell shoes. And yet, when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company in their ads. As you know, they don’t ever talk about the product. They don’t ever tell you about their air soles and why they’re better than Reebok’s air soles. What does Nike do in their advertising? They honor great athletes, and they honor great athletics. That’s who they are. That’s what they are about.”Apple and Nike were not built on transactional ads.Transactional ads are a desperate attempt to win the customer who is currently, consciously, ready to buy a product or service in your category today. This is the customer you have “targeted.” In her eyes, you are one more face in a crowd of faces, each trying to set themselves apart. You gave Google your money and hoped to attract enough customers to make a profit. All the other faces did the same. You are paying for clicks from people who are currently interested in your category.Category ads are high-cost and Low CAP: low Conversion, low Average sale, and low Profit margin, because your offer is the only thing that makes you different than all the other faces staring at this woman on her tiny island. Yours is just one more face in an ocean of shallow faces.Apple and Nike were built on relational ads.Relational ads don’t target customers who need a problem solved today. Relational ads are written to make people fall in love with you. They will love you because you believe what they believe, and you value what they value. This is why you will always be who they think of first – and feel the best about – when they need what you sell.When people who love you go to Google, they type in your name, not the name of your category.These name-clicks are low-cost and high CAP: high Conversion, high Average sale, and high Profit margin because these customers have already chosen you. They aren’t comparing you and your prices to your competitors and their prices. Your competitors are no longer part of the equation.Relational ad writing builds a relationship with future customers. This is its Power.Now here is its Danger: you have to be exactly who they believed you to be.If they believed in you, chose you, trusted you, and then you let them down: they will feel deeply and personally betrayed.So no, this isn’t a marketing ploy, a gimmick, or a con.It’s just a simple explanation of how – and why – people fall in love.May you live forever, and love forever.Amen.Roy H. WilliamsOne Last Thing: On May 26 of this year, my close friend Don Kuhl shared his insights on relational bonding. Pay attention, and you’ll realize that Don is talking about transparency and vulnerability:“This is how it goes. If I trust a friend and want to strengthen our relationship, I share a personal part of my life that has emotional capital. Often, I feel a weight lifted or a sense of loneliness dissipate. Almost always, I feel unconditional support. A door has opened. My friend now feels safe. It may be the next day or weeks later when my friend confides in me. Now it’s my turn to be an honest and supportive receiver. I may have something substantial to offer. I may not. It makes little difference. Our friendship has reached a higher level due to mutual trust and sharing.” – Don KuhlNick Barrett’s invention is only as long as a paperclip and as thick as a quarter, but it won the $10,000 prize for “coolest product” at this year’s National Retail Federation trade show. Monday Morning Radio co-host Maxwell Rotbart says inventors and entrepreneurs can learn a lot — and save themselves huge headaches — by listening to Nick Barrett explain how he went from selling gadgets at flea markets to becoming a major Amazon success story. Nick’s first bit of advice is, “Start small. Build large.” You can hear the rest of it the moment you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com.

Portals are openings that lead from one place to another.The best screenwriters, novelists, poets, and ad writers use portals when they want their readers, listeners, and viewers to follow them to a new and different place.Portals can be visual, auditory, or literary.Visual Portalslike windows, doors, and tunnels, are used by painters, photographers, and graphic artists.A portal makes a 2-dimensional image psychologically 3-dimensional.There is(1.) the foreground,(2.) the portal (window) and(3.) a different reality on the other side.We see a kitchen, with people sitting at a table in the foreground. The kitchen counter is covered with the implements of cooking. But our eyes are attracted to the portal: a window under which the table sits… Looking through that window, we see that we are high up on a mountain overlooking a valley through which a whitewater stream makes its way to the sea.There is one world on this side of that window, and another world on the other.Portals make it easier for readers, listeners, and viewers to follow you on your journey of imagination.Auditory portalsbeckon you toward a world beyond. These portals of sound are another type of window that pulls you toward the valley, the river, and the sea.Pitch, key, tempo, rhythm, interval, and contour are the 6 sub-languages in the language of music. Each of these involves movement up-and-down, and/or left and right. This is what makes them two-dimensional. To create a portal, we must add depth, the 3rd dimension.Harmony provides depth, thus opening an auditory portal.Major 7th chords provide depth, and thus open auditory portals.When you strike the 1, 3, 5 and 7 keys in the major scale on a piano, you are playing a major 7th.Strike the 1 and the 7 without the 3 and the 5, and you will create a truly horrible sound; a sound from which you will want to escape. Add the 3 and the 5 to that ugly 1 and 7, and you will hear a rich, lush sound with all the transcendent DEPTH of rich harmony. Auditory portals make is easier for people to follow you to the place you are trying to take them.Literary Portalsare references from books, plays, movies, and TV shows that allow you to transfer a vivid mental image using only a few words.Example: “I was so deep in thought I felt like Hamlet talking to the skull of Yorick.”Example: “A drug dealer is a reverse Robin Hood, robbing the poor and giving the money to the rich.”Example: “When you step off a train in Switzerland, you step through the wardrobe into Narnia.”Literary Portals are another type of window, door, or tunnel.The tunnel of a rabbit hole takes Alice into Wonderland.The tunnel of a telephone landline allows Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity to get in and out of the Matrix. (They cannot do it over a cell phone.)Doors called waygates allow Moiraine and the Aes Sedai to go from place to place in the Wheel of Time.The spiraling tunnel of a tornado takes Dorothy into Oz.The portal of Platform 9 3/4 in the train station allows Harry Potter to leave the world of muggles.The shape of a spiralis a portal that pulls you in. It is always associated with a feeling of spin.Elevator Portalstake you to a different level. The concept of going up or down is easily communicated by the image of a ladder, stairs, an escalator, or an elevator.Elevator portals can be visual, auditory, or literary.A Dreamis a portal into a symbolic world; a waygate that allows you a glimpse of the unconscious as your pattern-recognizing right-brain processes your unresolved thoughts and impressions.When you want to speak of hope or fear, confidence or anxiety, fantasy or nightmare, speak as though you are dreaming, and you will be heard and understood.“I have a dream,” said Martin Luther King.Portal Stackingdeepens perception. When you have become familiar with portals, you will see and hear them in hit songs, TV shows and movies; photographs, paintings and illustrations; visual ads, radio ads, and television ads.You will notice that big, signature moments in hit songs, TV shows, and movies always feature multiple-layer portal stacking.Portals can be stacked in two ways:They can happen simultaneously.They can happen sequentially, in rapid succession.Example: Climbing up or down the scale on a musical instrument is an auditory elevator portal that helps the listener imagine travel up to a higher level, or down to a lower one.“Just as Jack climbed the beanstalk into the clouds, you can climb to anywhere you want to go at Mid-State Community College.”Now hear the musical scale ascend, as you see Jack climbing. That’s portal stacking.Your body contains approximately 100,000,000 sensory receptors, allowing you to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell physical reality. But your brain contains more than 10,000 billion synapses. This means you – and each of your readers, listeners, and viewers – are 100,000 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist, than a world that does.If you hope to persuade your readers, listeners, and viewers, take them on a journey filled with scenery and surprises. Through every window, show them undiscovered beauty. Through every doorway, introduce them to new friends. Through every tunnel, show them a different world.Cause your audience to imagine doing what you want them to do.And then don’t be surprised when they do it.Aroo,Roy H. WilliamsZeynep Ekemen is the founder of a company that sells antimicrobial film for high-touch areas, such as door handles, elevator buttons, and staircase rails. A few years ago, sales of her product took off like a rocket… then fell like a rock when Covid was no longer part of the daily news. Listen and learn as Zeynep explains to roving reporter Rotbart how she is turning her rock into a rocket again. What comes down can always go back up at MondayMorningRadio.com!

I bought an old oil painting. It’s not a large painting or an important one, but it came from the private collection of the founder of the Whitney Museum.I bought it because I’ve always admired Cornelius Vanderbilt and his great-grandson, Willie K. Vanderbilt II, and I consider the delightful Gertude Vanderbilt-Whitney, the great-grandaughter of Cornelius, to be the third, truly interesting Vanderbilt.The First Vanderbilt:The fourth of nine children, Cornelius was in the first grade when George Washington died. At sixteen, he borrowed $100* from his mother to buy a little sailboat to haul passengers and freight between Staten Island and New York City.By the time he was forty, the Vanderbilt fleet was hauling passengers and freight to ports all along the Atlantic coast, earning Cornelius the nickname “Commodore.” He then began buying up struggling railroads and turning them around.The difference between Vanderbilt and his competitors was that his boats and trains ran on schedule and the service was always excellent. If Cornelius Vanderbilt was running an airline today, you would no longer dread going to the airport.The Second Vanderbilt:Willie K. Vanderbilt II (1878–1944), was often seen covered in grease with an automobile engine spread out in pieces around him. Young Willie K outran Henry Ford in 1904 to set a new world land speed record of ninety-two miles per hour. Later that year, Willie held the first Vanderbilt Cup Auto Race and singlehandedly changed the course of American auto making.By offering a first prize of about a million dollars (by today’s standards), Willie K inspired more than 3,000 entrepreneurs to leap to the task of manufacturing stronger, better, faster cars. The Vanderbilt Cup was discontinued after its seventh year because the crowds of more than 400,000 spectators could no longer be safely controlled.He then built a modest home for himself with an excellent wharf and boathouse. His energy was forever after focused on marine life in all its strange and wonderful forms. Every day was a new adventure in the waters of the deep. Prior to his death in 1942, Willie K. Vanderbilt II discovered and documented sixty-eight species of ocean life previously unknown to science.The Third Vanderbilt:Gertrude Vanderbilt (1875–1942,) married a thoroughbred horse breeder named Harry Whitney when she was 21 years old. Harry was a descendent of Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin in 1839.Shortly after she got married, Gertrude began studying sculpture in Paris with Auguste Rodin. Her love of the arts, her skill as a sculptor, and her Vanderbilt fortune allowed Gertude to become one of the world’s foremost collectors of art. Her artistic fever inflamed New York’s Greenwich Village and caused it to burn brightly as a new bohemia in the early 1900s.In 1931, Gertrude donated 600 of her most precious paintings to create the Whitney Museum of American Art.She kept only a few paintings for her private collection at home.Pennie and I plan to hang the one we bought in Alchemy, the Renaissance coffee and cocktail bar being built by our son, Rex. The painting is of two young women in a kitchen, painted in that style for which Frans van Mieris is famous. If those women aren’t twins, they are obviously sisters.When you visit Wizard Academy next year, perhaps Alchemy will be completed, and you’ll see it there.Aroo,Roy H. WilliamsPS – Of the 111 descendents of Cornelius Vanderbilt, I consider Timothy Olyphant, the actor, to be The Fourth Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper, the broadcast journalist, to be Vanderbilt #5. You can see the entire list on WIKIPEDIA.

It is easy to attract attention:Predictability is death. Spontaneity is life.Day and night, left and right,timid and bold, young and old,up and down, smile and frown.Start and end. Do it again.Negative and positive, effected and causative,passive and active, repulsive and attractive:Paired opposites are the essence of magnetism.You can attention now attract!But opposites quickly get old.To keep that attention,you must learn how to hold.Straight lines are okay, but so are twists, and twirls.Learn to do all three and create Magical Worlds.Two opposites can only disagree.Scientific Chaos begins with three.Opposites collide and we hear the laughter,but the space in the middle is what we’re after.Relieve opposing tensions and you’ll get no respect.Make them work for you, and you’ll be an architect.Marley Porter had the idea, so I gave it words:“Let other people have seconds; we want thirds.”Big endings and beginnings come with a riddleand the answer is hiding in that space in the middle.When a character is tri-flicted, we get addicted.When your story is hollow, fill it with what you can borrow.When your joke has a hole, fill it with what you stole.When your ad has a cavity, fill it with gravity.You can tap your foot. You can play the fiddle.But the dance will happen in that space in the middle.To hold attention slickly,transfer big ideas quickly.If you want to hit hard,make them drop their guard.When they quit thinking and start feeling,you’ll have them reeling.So now you know – but you always did –attention is auctioned but you have to bid.And you, my friend, are a story-telling squid.Wrap the audience in your multiple arms.Pull them in closer. Ignore the alarms.Hold their attention, and they will hold their breath.And what they will feel is life, the opposite of death.Roy H. WilliamsOn October 16, 1923 — precisely 100 years ago today — Walt Disney and his brother Roy launched an entertainment business. It filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter. But the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio rebounded and evolved into one of the world’s best-known and most beloved companies. This week, roving reporter Rotbart explores the history of The Walt Disney Company and reveals an incredible Disneyland document that he and his son Maxwell discovered deep in the archives of a Kansas museum. You know that our roving reporter began his career as an investigative reporter and award-winning columnist for The Wall Street Journal, right? Finding things that no one ever found before is what Rotbart does best! Prepare to be amazed at MondayMorningRadio.com.

Most of us cheer for the little dog that doesn’t have a chance. The underdog.We like them because they need us.Underdogs are those little dogs that rise above their circumstances and overcome their disadvantages. It is the underdog we see in our mind when we say, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight that matters; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”Underdogs do the best they can. They push and struggle and hope for a brighter future. They remind us of ourselves.“The scientific literature suggests that fans of losing teams turn out to be better decision-makers and deal better with divergent thought, as opposed to the unreflective fans of winning teams.”– Dr. Jordan Grafman, a researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders (2011)That’s interesting, don’t you think? People who cheer for little David in his fight against big Goliath are reflective, good decision-makers, and unafraid to think new thoughts.We cheer for the underdog, always and forever. We go out of minds with ecstasy when the underdog finally wins. That’s our dog! We look at each other and we know, “That little dog is you and me.”The underdog is a cultural hero.“How do human beings put into words their ideas about the meaning of human life? How do they convey through art and religion their beliefs about the significance of human life? They do it partly by investing in certain transcultural stories, like the one about the adventures of a culture hero, which, after a period of trial and hardship, always ends in triumph.”– Barry Lopez, Horizons, page 323Do you know what has me concerned?The United States began as a nation of underdogs, but it took us barely 10 generations to become a nation of overdogs, victors, champions, and our values have changed because of it.Today we believe, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.“We want more subscribers, more influence, more likes, more admirers, more fame, and more money. How much is enough? “Just a little bit more.”I suspect Louis Menand was contemplating all of this in June, 2011 when he wrote:“In a society that encourages its members to pursue the career paths that promise the greatest personal or financial rewards, people will, given a choice, learn only what they need to know for success. They will have no incentive to acquire the knowledge and skills important for life as an informed citizen, or as a reflective and culturally literate human being.”Wouldn’t it be great to have a nation – and a government – of people who were informed citizens and reflective, culturally literate human beings?Wouldn’t that be great?Roy H. WilliamsCurt Tueffert has spent four decades helping people enjoy world-class sales success. When it comes to selling, Curt has seen it all, done it all. Qualify customer prospects, help them past their hesitations, and never feel rejection when rejected: Curt can tell you how. According to roving reporter Rotbart, this week’s episode will instantly boost your batting average in the great game of selling. MondayMorningRadio.com