Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Everything I’m about to share with you happened in England and France during the lifetime of Thomas Jefferson, while America still had its “new baby” smell.The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge gave us “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in 1798, while Napoleon sailed to Egypt to fight the Battle of the Pyramids and famously discover the Rosetta Stone.Coleridge died of heart failure due to his opium addiction.Wordsworth gave us “The Rainbow” in 1802, while the people of France enthusiastically approved a new constitution that elevated Napoleon to dictator for life.Wordsworth died of a lung infection.Shelley gave us “Ozymandias,” the tale of a fallen and forgotten emperor, in 1818, while Napoleon languished in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic.Shelley died in a boating accident at the age of 29.Keats gave us “La Belle Dame sans Mercy” in 1819, while Napoleon continued to languish on Saint Helena.Keats died of tuberculosis at the age of 25.“Le Belle Dame sans Mercy” in English means “The Beautiful Girl without Mercy,” but you and I know her as Fame and Fortune.You’ve often heard the names of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, but did you know that each of these English Romantic poets was inspired by an imaginary 15th-century monk named Thomas Rowley?But imaginary through he was, Thomas Rowley re-ignited the flames of romantic literature in England during the colorful years that he lived in the mind of an adolescent boy in poverty.That boy, Thomas Chatterton, was born 15 weeks after his father died in 1752, when Thomas Jefferson was just 9 years old. Napoleon would not be born for another 3 years.Little Thomas spent his days with his uncle, the sexton of the church of St Mary, Redcliffe, where he would crawl through the attic of that vast, ancient building, examining the contents of oak chests stored there since 1185, where documents as old as the War of the Roses lay forgotten.By the time he was 6, young Thomas Chatterton had learned his alphabet from the illuminated capitals of those documents. By the time he was 11, Thomas had become so well-versed in the language and legends of earlier centuries that he began sending poems to “Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal,” claiming they were transcribed from the writings of a monk named Thomas Rowley who had lived 300 years earlier.Aside from the hundreds of poems written by this imaginary monk, Chatterton wrote political letters, song lyrics, operas and satires in verse and in prose. He became known to the readers of the Middlesex Journal as Decimus, a rival of Junius, that author of the forever infamous Letters of Junius. Chatterton was also a contributor to Hamilton’s Town and Country Magazine, and the Freeholder’s Magazine, political publications supportive of liberty and rebellion.While the brilliant submissions of Thomas Chatterton were happily accepted by editors across England, he was paid little or no money for them.On the 17th of April, 1770, 17-year-old Thomas Chatterton penned a satire he called his “Last Will and Testament.” In it, he hinted that he was planning to end his life the following day.That famous poem by John Keats, “La Bella Dame sans Mercy,” may well have been written with Thomas Chatterton in mind. For the beautiful, merciless girl in that poem is a fairy – let us call her Fame & Fortune – who makes love to a medieval knight in his dreams, then leaves him sick and dying on a cold hillside when she abandons him.Four months after writing his “Last Will and Testament” Thomas Chatterton was so much absorbed in thought while walking in St Pancras Churchyard, that he did not notice a newly dug grave in his path and tumbled into it. His walking companion helped Chatterton out of the grave, joking that he was happy to assist in the resurrection of a genius.Chatterton replied, “My dear friend, I have been at war with the grave for some time now.”Three days later, broken-hearted that he had not been able to support his destitute mother by making money as a writer, 17-year-old Thomas Chatterton, that strange and solitary boy whose poems would inspire a generation of English Romantic poets, committed suicide by drinking arsenic.But wait. It gets worse. A few days later, a man showed up at the London house in which Thomas Chatterton had lived in the attic. This man was Dr. Thomas Fry, a literary scholar who had discovered that young Thomas Chatterton was not merely the transcriber of a supposedly long-dead English monk, but was, in fact, the author of all the remarkable works that were currently whirling through England.Dr. Fry had come with the intention of becoming Chatterton’s patron, supporting him with an income.That was 253 years ago.“The Death of Chatterton” is an often-visited painting in the Tate Museum in London. It was painted by Henry Wallis during the years when English romantic poetry was at pinnacle popularity. In that painting you will notice a pile of shredded paper in the bottom-left corner, beneath the shoulder of the boy. Dr. Fry gathered these shreds and reassembled them to find the final poem of Thomas Chatterton.The painting was shown at the Royal Academy summer exhibition and was an immediate success. The following year it drew huge crowds at the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester, and then it drew huge crowds in Dublin. In the 19th century, “The Death of Chatterton” was the most popular painting sold as a reproductive print. Every household had one.When lovely Fame and Fortune – that girl without mercy – did finally kiss the cheek of young Thomas Chatterton, she smiled as she noted that it was as white and waxy as a snuffed-out candle, and it smelled faintly of arsenic.Roy H. WilliamsYou can see the painting on page 2 of the rabbit hole. Indy Beagle will tell you how to get there.Dr. Noah St. John called himself the “nerdiest nerd,” while living in a 300-square-foot basement apartment with no money, no girlfriend, and very little hope.  In the shower one day an idea came to him how to turn his life around.  That core idea has helped improve the lives of 1.8 million others since then through speaking engagements, consulting, and 20 self improvement books and counting.  He has a happy marriage and a 6,000-square-foot mansion on a hill.  Today, Dr. St. John tells roving reporter Rotbart his proprietary formula for success.  It's surprisingly simple. If it worked for a nerd like him, it can work for anyone.  Start the work now at Monday Morning Radio dot com.

You cannot suffer the past or future because they do not exist. What you are suffering is your memory and your imagination.Friend, you are not a good worrier, so you might as well quit.Most of the things you worry about never come to pass. And the majority of those things that do come to pass are inconsequential, unworthy of your worry, or they cannot be changed, no matter how well you worry.Of all the things you worry about, only a tiny percentage are worth your worry, and can be changed. These things things are called, “Things you know you need to do.” And you already know the actions you should take:When a friend pops into your head, call them, and say, “I’ve had you on my mind. Is there anything going on in your life that I should know about?”Talk to God.Get a colonoscopy.See? The things you know you need to do are simple, they just make you uncomfortable.Do them anyway.I believe we worry because it keeps us from being bored.We don’t want to be bored. We want to be excited.Fear is a form of excitement. Anger is a form of excitement.Have you ever noticed how easy it is to become famous? All you have to do is spread anger and fear. Spread it deep and wide. People will treat you like a god. Conversely, a person who spreads good and happy news is patted on the head and treated like a child.If spreading anger and fear is not your thing, and if spreading good and happy news is not your thing, perhaps you should consider lifting the spirits of the strangers you encounter.When you lift the spirit of a stranger, you lift your own as well.Someone in my life made a suggestion last week and I really, really, really didn’t want to do it. My friend said that every time he was in a restaurant, he made sure to remember the name of his server. And when the server brought the food, he would say their name, and then, “As soon as you leave, I’m going to pray over this food. While I’m doing that, is there anything I can pray about for you?”My friend said he had done this 20 or 25 times and every time, without exception, the servers were deeply touched and immediately shared something they were worried about. He then assured them that he would include that in his prayer.Like I said, I knew it was something I needed to do. But I didn’t want to do it because I knew it would make me uncomfortable. Extremely uncomfortable.I was worried the person might be frightened and think I was a religious nut. I was worried the person might be offended and create a big scene. I was worried it would be awkward for me to ever go back to that restaurant.But I remembered what my friend told me. “I’ve done this 20 or 25 times and it always turns out the same way. They always have something they want me to include in my prayer and they always seem to be deeply touched.”I’ve now done this exactly once, and it turned out exactly as my friend said it would. And the friend I was having lunch with didn’t seem to mind at all. In fact, he said he might start doing it, too.I have interesting friends. I’ll bet you do, too.Your interesting friends have interesting friends.And one of them is you.Roy H. WilliamsLieutenant Colonel Ricky Howard has handled more than $1 BILLION in purchase contracts, many of them with small businesses. His client is a reliable buyer, and once your company is selected as a vendor, you will likely remain a vendor for decades to come. Howard is an expert on how to win government contracts, from office supplies to HVAC equipment to hi-tech computer programming. During his service in the U.S. Air Force, Lt. Howard flew 555 combat hours. Listen and learn as he explains to roving reporter Rotbart how your business could qualify as a government contractor, even if you never suspected you were eligible. Check into it and your profits could soar up, up, and away! MondayMorningRadio.com.

When a thought knocks politely on the door of my mind, I open the door and entertain the thought. But when an unseen thought shines into my mind through a skylight, I am always startled by the mystery of how words-not-my-own came to echo in my empty skull.“What, then, is Love?”Those four words, like the feet of a proud, white goat, prance in the snowy landscape of my mind.“What, then, is Love?”Unable to escape the music of those words, I will do my best to answer their question:“What, then, is Love?”Low-voltage love is a noun. It is something you feel. It surrounds you and you are “in” it.High-voltage love is a verb. It is something you do.E. W. Howe was 5 years old when Teddy Roosevelt was born, and he was 10 when the American Civil War began. E. W. Howe died 85 years ago. But while he lived, he said,“When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.”In those 25 words, we see love as a verb; love with its sleeves rolled up.Love as a noun comes and goes but love as a verb comes to stay. “For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…”Alexander the Great died 323 years before Jesus was born. Alexander loved adventure and battle. He felt it, was surrounded by it, and was “in” it. Jesus loved people. He fed them, healed them, encouraged them, and died for them. Verb, verb, verb, verb.Alexander and Jesus both died at the age of 32.During the 12 years that Alexander was conquering and ruling the world, his soldiers taught every nation a simplified form of Greek so that everyone could understand what Alexander was saying. This “Koine” Greek became the world’s first international language.The entire New Testament – including all the stories of Jesus – were written in the “Koine” Greek of Alexander, a language with four different words for love, although only two of them were used in the New Testament. The two that do not appear are:Eros: sexual love.Storge: the love between members of a family.The two words for love that appear repeatedly in the New Testament are Philia and Agape.Philia: the love between close friends.Agape: sacrificial love; “I care about you more than I care about me.”The Harvard Grant Study is the world’s longest running and most comprehensive psychological study, and it talks about love. The study says the happiest people are those who have chosen to do 5 things.(5.) suppress unproductive and distressing thoughts,(4.) maintain a realistic view of the future and its difficulties,(3.) turn frustration and anger into productive energy,(2.) make light of stressful events,(1.) focus on the wellbeing of others.The world’s longest running and most comprehensive psychological study says the secret of happiness is to see love as a verb, something you do: focus on the wellbeing of others.Albert Schweitzer was a polymath. He was a physician, philosopher, musicologist, theologian, humanitarian, and a writer. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952.On September 4, 1965 – the day Albert Schweitzer died – the song “Help!” by the Beatles, went to #1 on the charts. Do you remember the lyrics?When I was younger, so much younger than today,I never needed anybody’s help in any way.But now these days are gone, I’m not so self assured,Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors.Help me if you can, I’m feeling down.And I do appreciate you being ’round.Help me get my feet back on the ground.Won’t you please, please help me?Albert Schweitzer spoke of love and happiness in much the same way the Harvard Grant Study spoke of love and happiness. Albert put it this way:“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”Not being able to answer the question myself, I put the question to you: What, then, is Love?Roy H. WilliamsDateline: Austin, TexasHeadline: Mickey Kennedy Has Spent 25 Years Helping Small Businesses Write and Distribute News ReleasesBody: Mickey Kennedy believes small businesses should not have to pay exorbitant prices to write or distribute news releases. In October 1998, he launched a news release service that has since provided hundreds of thousands of small businesses the media reach that the giant public relations newswires offer at a fraction of the cost. As Mickey tells roving reporter Rotbart, the key to news release success is knowing what will and what won’t capture the imagination of influential journalists.Contact: MondayMorningRadio.com, of course.

We have a need to belong. We want to be seen and heard. We want to be missed when we are not around. We want to have genuine connection. This is the basis of relational ad writing.Never heard of it? That is because most ads are transactional, not relational.In a transactional ad, an air conditioning company might claim to be, “The Honest Air Conditioning Company.” But in a relational ad, the owner does not claim to be honest. They just say something that only an honest person would say.The people in relational ads are marked by their vulnerability.KARLA: When something at home isn’t working right and you need a guy,  your friend says,JOHNNY MOLSON: “I’ve got a guy.”KARLA: Hi, I’m Mrs. Michael and I want to be your guy. You need a plumber. You need an electrician. You need an H-Vac technician; I want to be your guy. I’m a happily married woman with two grown children, but back when I was raising two babies, my husband and I started a plumbing company, an electrical company, and an air conditioning company. Make no mistake: Mr. Michael is a genius with tools, but he did NOT enjoy running 3 big companies, so he asked me to do it. Guess what? I LOVE IT! I know that if I make your problems vanish into thin air, then when your friends say,SARAH: “I’ve got a thing at home that isn’t working right, and I need a guy,”  KARLA:  you’ll say,JOHNNY MOLSON: “I’ve got a guy. Her name is Mrs. Michael.”KARLA: Plumber, Electrician, H-Vac technician. I’m Mrs. Michael, and I want to be your guy.DEVIN: Go to MrsMichael.comKARLA: OR… go to Iwanttobeyourguy.comDEVIN: MrsMichael.comRelational ads are not portable. They are true only of the company that airs them. Transactional ads are portable. They can be used by anyone who wants to make the same offer, use the same gimmick, tell the same lie.Mrs. Michael does not use transactional ads. She uses relational ads that let you know who she is, what she believes, and how she thinks. You are free to like her or not. Most people like her. A lot. No surprise, right? We tend to buy from people we like, people with whom we agree, people who remind us of ourselves.Did it ever occur to you that a transactional ad with an urgent, “limited-time offer” is erased from the mind as soon as the deadline is passed? We do not retain information that is no longer relevant or meaningful. The only thing we remember is to never pay that company their asking price because they will soon be having a sale.Goldcasters Fine Jewelry sells a startling amount of jewelry per capita in a town that is located less than an hour from the inspiring city of Indianapolis. Goldcasters’ sales volume would be impressive for a jewelry store in Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Chicago.Like Mrs. Michael, Goldcasters uses relational advertising.DEVIN: Brad Lawrence, owner of Goldcasters Fine Jewelry.BRAD: When I opened the store, I had no money. We didn’t have the money for inventory. I brought wax models from school to use to cast into projects for customers. And hence the name Goldcasters. Things were so tight at times I remember the backside of my wedding ring was gone because I didn’t have the money to buy gold to size rings. So I’d cut the pieces out of the back of my wedding band to use as gold stock to size rings for customers. And then when we could afford to, then I’d replace it back onto my band.JACOB: Did your wife ever find out about that?BRAD: (laughter) Well, when she saw the bottom of my ring, obviously she did. When you looked at it from the top, it looked perfect. (laughter subsides) It was a very, very humble beginning. I always believed that if you took care of the customers that the costomers would come back and that you could build a business that way.DEVIN: Goldcasters. At Second and Washington in Bloomington.Do you want to measure the results of your ads immediately? Write transactional ads that make an impressive offer that is available only if the customer acts quickly.Do you want to be the company people think of immediately and feel the best about? Write relational ads that allow them to get to know you.The longer you use transactional ads, the less well they work. The longer you use relational ads, the better they work.Is there ever a time in a relational ad campaign when the customer is given an opportunity to experience something special? Yes, but these ads are not transactional. They are simply an invitation to take the relationship to the next level.Relational ads are a courtship.Transactional ads are a one-night stand.Enough said.Roy H. WilliamsPS – If you were wondering why Mrs Michael said the two syllables “H-Vac” instead of the two syllables “A/C”, it’s because she lives and operates in a Northern city. Relational ads feel personal and sound local.President John F. Kennedy said, “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” Mac Lackey says something similar, “The time to think about selling your business is long before you plan to sell.” Having founded and sold six companies, Mac is something of an expert on entrepreneurial exits. Two of his buyers were NBC Sports and the Remington Outdoor Company. Across the microphone from Mac Lackey is roving reporter Rotbart’s brainiac son, Maxwell, a Master’s degree candidate who, after listening to his dad’s weekly podcasts for the past dozen years, will begin hosting the show once a month. Welcome aboard, Maxwell! The time is now. The place is MondayMorningRadio.com

It would appear that journalists can no longer see clearly or talk plainly. They hand you something twisted and bent and assure you that it is straight.Propaganda hangs thick in the air around us and we are weary of it.It has gotten so bad that each of the people I could count on to keep me informed have chosen to cut the umbilical and set themselves free from the pollution of newscasts.I was contemplating these things in the predawn darkness when I remembered a comment made by Hosea 2700 years ago. His words were translated into English in 1611: “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal.”The Contemporary English translation of the Book of Hosea was published in the year 2000: “If you scatter wind instead of wheat, you will harvest a whirlwind and have no wheat.”This morning’s Roy H. Williams translation says, “If you scatter falsehoods instead of truth, you will harvest confusion and have no truth.”You can use nuclear energy to illuminate great cities, or you can use it to vaporize them. Nuclear energy has no conscience, no ethics, no obligation to do what is right. It is we humans who must have conscience, ethics, and a sense of obligation.Artificial Intelligence is like nuclear energy. You can use it to solve complicated problems, or you can use it to create them.In recent weeks millions of people have seen photos showing Donald Trump being tackled and carried away by a group of police officers. We have seen Pope Francis wearing a white puffer jacket. We have seen an explosion at the Pentagon.The Pentagon bombing was believed by enough people that it affected the S&P 500 on Wall Street.But those things were the work of mischievous amateurs.I wonder what is going to happen when the big boys decide it is time to play for higher stakes?America has been losing its grasp on the truth ever since the Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987 and the 12AM/12FM/12TV limitations on broadcast ownership were lifted 20 years ago. This made it legal for anyone with a lot of money to buy all the TV and Radio stations and replace the news with falsehoods, half-truths, and outright lies. And we called it Freedom of Speech.Now we are holding onto the truth by our fingertips, trying not to let it slip from our grasp.As I sit in the predawn darkness, I see the rapidly approaching freight train of a Presidential election and I hear the sound of an approaching whirlwind.Roy H. WilliamsDr. Michael Lenox is an expert on artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cryptocurrency. He knows the opportunities and the dangers of digital technology. Dr. Lenox advises business people on how to prepare for 2024, a year in which more data will be generated than in all previous years combined. Dr. Lenox is interviewed today by roving reporter Rotbart, a flesh-and-blood journalist. But Dr. Lenox says Rotbart could easily be replaced by a sophisticated algorithm. (Don’t tell Mrs. Rotbart.) The joy, the fear, and the wonder await you at MondayMorningRadio.com.

Do you remember that scene in Jurassic Park when the park’s founder revealed that he had extracted the blood of a dinosaur from a mosquito trapped in fossilized tree sap?Forget the blood. Forget the dinosaur. Our interest is in that mosquito trapped in amber.I sometimes think time is the amber in which we mosquitoes are held captive.As Edwin Abbot demonstrated in his breakthrough book, “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions,” we live in 4 dimensions: Height, Width, Depth, and Time. We have access to the 3 lower dimensions, but no access to the 7 dimensions in M-Theory that lie above and beyond our 4-dimensional “spacetime continuum.”According to theoretical physicists, those 7 dimensions are as real as the 4 in which we live. And here is the interesting part: beings in those dimensions are outside of time. They are above it. We, however, are like those mosquitoes trapped in amber. Time does not expand us; it inhibits us, shackles us, makes us wear blinders. This would seem to confirm the idea that we are not physical beings who occasionally have a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings who are having a temporary physical experience.You might be wondering what catapulted my mind into this strange, metaphysical sky this morning, so I will tell you. My partner Craig Arthur lives in Townsville, Australia, where his winter is our summer and his night is our day. This gives Craig and me a brief window to chat when he is ending his day and I am beginning my own.This morning I opened my laptop just as Craig forwarded a meme from Cat Damon. It said,“My son just walked into my room and said, ‘Daddy, I’m scared to die. Not of going to hell, I don’t think there is such a place, but I guess I’m scared there’s nothing. There was nothing before, so what if there’s nothing after?'”Cat Damon wraps up his story with these words,“My son is 37 years old and on acid.”I’m not on acid. My drug of choice is called “Speculation.” You make it by combining Knowledge and Intuition in equal parts. Stirring this mixture is not required. Speculation explodes into existence when the two ingredients make contact.Speculation is susceptible to confirmation bias, of course. We quickly see confirmation of what we already believe.There is another formula, more popular than my own, that is just as susceptible to confirmation bias, though its practitioners like to believe their formula is objective, reliable, and scientific. This more popular formula is “Knowledge plus Data.”Am I against data? Of course not. But I can tell you that the most skillful users of data – people like Sean Jones, Dewey Jenkins, Cedric Yau, Vi Wickam, Gene Naftulyev, Pyotr Belov, Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg, John Quarto von Tivadar, and Luis Castañeda – these people always ask themselves whether the data might be indicating something other than what they saw at first glance.But most people do not question their initial interpretation of data. In the words of Andrew Lang, they use data, “like a drunk man uses a lamp post – for support rather than illumination.”Knowledge + Intuition = SpeculationKnowledge + Data = SpeculationMy observation has been that these 2 formulas are really just 2 different paths that lead to precisely the same destination. The key that unlocks the golden door of miracles is to have an independent partner who is using the formula you are NOT using. When both of you arrive at the same conclusion – even though you came at it from different directions – you can be far more confident that you have found the answer you were seeking.Data is a snapshot of reality expressed in numbers in a database or on a spreadsheet. Data is the logic of the rational, sequential, deductive reasoning left hemisphere of your brain.Intuition is a snapshot of reality expressed in similes, metaphors, and instincts. It is the logic of the wordless, pattern-finding right hemisphere of your brain.Data can be gathered and processed by the latest and greatest AI, artificial intelligence.Intuition is gathered and processed by the original AI, actual intelligence.One uses chips and processors. The other uses neurons and synapses.These are the things that were triggered in my mind when my partner Craig sent me a meme this morning.Roy H. WilliamsJoanne Lipman was the first woman to become a deputy managing editor at The Wall Street Journal. She was the founding editor-in chief-of Condé Nast’s Portfolio magazine. She served as editor-in-chief of USA Today and chief content officer of its parent company, Gannett. Currently, Joanne is a regular contributor to CNBC and a lecturer at Yale University. In her latest book — garnering blockbuster reviews — Joanne provides numerous examples of people who reinvented themselves. Listen in as she tells roving reporter Rotbart precisely how anyone can make the successful leap from one career to the next, and then the next and the next after that. Who? What? Where? MondayMorningRadio.com.

There are places in geography.There are places in the heart.There are places in time.Where shall we start?– Indy BeaglePlaces in Geography:“We have thought how places are able to evoke moods, as color and line in a picture may capture and warp us to a pattern the painter intended.”– John Steinbeck, Sea of Cortez, p. 256Places in the Heart:“God only knows what I’d be without you. If you should ever leave me, though life would still go on, believe me, the world could show nothing to me. So what good would living do me?”– Brian WilsonPlaces in Time:“There are places I’ll remember all my life, though some have changed; some forever, not for better. Some have gone, and some remain. All these places had their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall. Some are dead and some are living. In my life, I’ve loved them all.”– John LennonMy favorite singer-songwriter, James Taylor, was interviewed recently. When James was asked about his life-controlling addiction to drugs as a young man, he answered with these words:“The key for an addict is how much of a relief the addict felt when they first discovered their drug of choice. When that really works for them, watch out for the backend, because you’ll hold on until the very end. You’ll be the last person to admit that it’s gotta go.”I was considering these places and spaces in the darkness of early morning when the tone of an arriving text turned my eyes toward the telephone. My friend had been reading the Monday Morning Memos in the archives from 15 years ago and had a couple of questions for me. One of those questions triggered the memory of someone whose life briefly intersected with Pennie’s and mine 38 years ago.And Now We Shall Start:Patrick is two years older than me. He is insightful and articulate, but his life has been shattered into sharp little shards. When a person has been irretrievably shattered, they have a hard time holding themselves together.When he was a boy, Patrick saw his mother kill his father in the street outside their home. He and his mother did not get along after that.And all the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Patrick together again.Watching your father fall is not at all like watching the rainfall, or the snowfall, or the light fall softly on the window pane. Watching your father fall is different. In Patrick’s case it led to him being held tightly in the sharp talons of the law like an eagle holds tightly to a mouse.Policemen are attracted to Patrick like iron to a magnet. And Patrick is pulled toward prison like a moth is pulled toward the flame.Patrick was headed back to prison when Pennie and I let him sleep in our spare bedroom 38 years ago. He was there for only a few weeks, but it was long enough to get to know him and all the monsters he was fighting in his mind.Patrick’s life has a rhythm. He serves his time, gets out of prison, and promptly goes back to prison again.Patrick isn’t crazy. He has a sharp, clear mind, an impressive vocabulary, and a deep understanding of the reality that surrounds him. His crime is that he uses illegal chemicals to escape that reality, and he is smart enough to manufacture those chemicals himself.“Uh-oh. That’s a no-no. We’re going to have to put you back in your cage, Patrick.”In the 67 years of Patrick’s lonely life, his only romantic interest has been his love for chemical escape. Chemicals are the music of his life. To him, they are like the Big Band music of Glenn Miller and Cole Porter. In my mind, I see Patrick dancing with a mirror-image of himself as he looks back at the day he first learned how to escape his pain.“That’s the way it began, we were hand-in-hand, Glenn Miller’s Band was better than before. We yelled and screamed for more. And the Porter tunes made us dance across the room. It ended all too soon. And on the way back home I promised you’d never be alone. Hurry, don’t be late, I can hardly wait. I said to myself, ‘When we’re old, we’ll go dancing in the dark, walking through the park, and reminiscing.'”*Patrick is now old and dancing in the dark of an Oklahoma prison, reminiscing his lifelong love affair with perception-altering chemicals. But his sharp mind, his impressive vocabulary and his deep understanding of the reality around him rose to an unprecedented height in 2020 when he borrowed some legal books from the prison library, wrote his own legal petition, and filed a case with the United States Supreme Court.I think we can agree the odds are low that an incarcerated felon could write their own petition and have it not only reviewed but ruled upon by the United States Supreme Court.But that’s what happened. In July of 2020, Supreme Court Justices Roberts, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh read Patrick’s petition and ruled in his favor. From what I can gather online, it didn’t get him released from prison, but it did overrule and reverse certain judgments of the lower court regarding Patrick’s case, and it opened the door for his appeal.I hope to see Patrick again. But more than that, I hope to see Patrick escape the torture of the monsters in his mind.Roy H. Williams“I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me … Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”– Jesus, in Matthew chapter 25*lyrics by Graeham Goble, guitarist of Little River Band (1978)Dave Albin helps business executives and employees face and overcome their fears. But that’s nothing special. What makes Dave a legend among corporate coaches are the methods he employs. Dave is the #1 firewalk instructor in America, having cajoled more than one-half million people to walk, barefoot, over a bed of hot coals exceeding 1,000 degrees in temperature. Dave ran firewalks for Tony Robbins for almost 20 years before striking out on his own. Dave says, “Like most things in life, the hardest part of walking on hot coals is the first step.” Want to overcome the fears that are holding you back? Here’s that all-important first step: Zip over to this week’s red-hot edition of MondayMorningRadio.com. Dave Albin and roving reporter Rotbart are patiently waiting for you to arrive before they start the show. And what a show!

She is dead now and so is he.He was a friend of mine; lean, rangy, and muscular.She was his mother. “You’re getting fat,” is what she told him, right up until the day he died.Criticism will often cause you to see yourself worse than you are.Did it ever occur to you that criticism – sometimes disguised as unsolicited advice – always springs from an assumption of superior intelligence?When a person begins by saying, “With all due respect,” they are making it clear they do not respect you.“Constructive criticism” is how they make you feel small while they tell themselves they are helping you. Ignore those people. Even the ones you love. They are having a bad day. Or maybe a bad life. Either way, don’t swallow what they are feeding you.Criticism is destructive. Encouragement is instructive.I am reasonably self-aware, I think. I believe I know the panoply of Roys that live inside me. The most widely known are Outraged Roy. Generous Roy. Foghorn Leghorn Roy. Introvert Roy.Pennie and I have a friend who stays with us when he is in Austin. A few years ago he started a church in a weird part of the weird town he lives in. Last week, he sent me a text:“Of all the Roys I know, my favorite version of you is Robe Roy. Robe Roy don’t give a shit. And if you lucky, you catch Robe Roy in a hat. Or them bluelight sunglasses. Eating a vitamin cookie. Drinking Shrooms. Feeding Squirrels. On a porch swing.”I replied, “I like that Roy, too.”My friend is an encourager. He will always find something inside you, no matter how ordinary you consider yourself to be, and then he will tell you a delightful new truth about who you are.Does it surprise you that my friend’s very large congregation is teeming with beaten-down homeless people, cast-off prostitutes, struggling drug users, and a handful of regular folks like me and you who care about the broken and the broken-hearted?They flock to that church because he makes them feel the love of God as they belly-laugh with glee when he tells wonderful stories from the Bible and gives them back their dignity.And then they walk out the door with a smile of renewed hope.A simple Welsh monk named Geoffrey – hoping to instill in his countrymen a sense of pride – assembled a history of England that gave his people a glorious pedigree. Published in 1136, Geoffrey’s “History of the Kings of Britain” was a detailed, written account of the deeds of the English people for each of the 17 centuries prior to 689 AD.And not a single word of it was true.Yet in creating Merlyn, Guinevere, Arthur, and the Knights of the Round Table, Geoffrey of Monmouth convinced a dreary little island full of ordinary villagers to see themselves as a wise and powerful, magnificent nation.And not long after they began to see themselves that way in their minds, they began seeing the reality of it in the mirror.When I said Geoffrey told his countrymen a story, “and not one word of it was true,” I should have said, “not one word of it was true YET.” Geoffrey of Monmouth spoke a future truth about his countrymen because he saw something they did not see. He saw the greatness that was within them. So he called it out.Geoffrey was not a flatterer. He was an encourager.Encouragement causes you to see yourself differently. Embrace it, and you can become in reality that different person you saw in your mind.“Encourage one another daily, while it is called ‘today’…”That line from “The Letter to the Hebrew Christians” has always intrigued me. The writer emphasized our need of encouragement by adding these further instructions to the word “daily”… “while it is called ‘today.'”One last little tidbit about that church: when they built an activities center with basketball courts and other fun things to do, they encouraged all the ragamuffin, latchkey, unparented kids to hang out there.One man brings more than enough food from his Chick-fil-A for all those kids. I hope it does not surprise you that this generous man’s Chick-fil-A location has become one of the most high-volume fast-food stores in the nation.A person who believes in you more than you believe in yourself is always an important person in your life, because they encourage you.Everyone needs a person like that.Why not become one?Roy H. Williams

William Shakespeare, wearing the mask of an imaginary Prince of Denmark – Hamlet by name – suggested that human knowledge is limited.“There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”Each of us lives alone in a private, perceptual reality. We can communicate with one another only to the degree that our perceptual realities overlap.There is an objective reality, but humans are ill-equipped to experience it.The degree to which you understand the limitations of your private reality is the degree to which you are self-aware.Dr. Jorge Martins de Oliveira is Director of Neurosciences at the University of Brazil, on the Editorial Board of Brain & Mind magazine, and is the author of “Principles of Neuroscience.”This is what he has to say about Perceptual Reality:“Our perception does not identify the outside world as it really is, but the way that we are allowed to recognize it, as a consequence of transformations performed by our senses. We experience electromagnetic waves, not as waves, but as images and colors. We experience vibrating objects, not as vibrations, but as sounds. We experience chemical compounds dissolved in air or water, not as chemicals, but as specific smells and tastes. Colors, sounds, smells and tastes are products of our minds, built from sensory experiences. They do not exist, as such, outside our brain. Actually, the universe is colorless, odorless, insipid and silent.”“Although you and I share the same biological architecture and function, perhaps what I perceive as a distinct color and smell is not exactly equal to the color and smell you perceive. We may give the same name to similar perceptions, but we cannot know how they relate to the reality of the outside world. Perhaps we never will.”Dr. Roger Sperry won the Nobel Prize in 1981 for discovering that we don’t have one brain divided into two hemispheres, as much as we have two separate, competing brains. Sperry was able to demonstrate that we have a logical, rational, sequential, deductive-reasoning (SCIENTIFIC) Left Brain, and a romantic, artistic, connection-seeking, pattern-finding, (ARTS & HUMANITIES) Right Brain. He said,“Each hemisphere of the brain is indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and… both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel.”Did you notice it? The Left and the Right hemispheres can have “simultaneous, mutually conflicting, mental experiences.” You can have a single experience and walk away with two opinions of what just happened!“In fact, romanticism and science are good for each other… The scientist keeps the romantic honest and the romantic keeps the scientist human.”– Tom RobbinsBut what happens if the Left Hemisphere completely ignores the voice of the Right Hemisphere? What happens if the Right ignores the the Left?C. P. Snow published “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution” in 1959. He believed that Science and the Humanities were the driving forces of western society, but they were splitting us into a society of “two cultures.”Looking back over the culture war that has increasingly devoured us these past 20 years, it would appear that C.P. Snow was right.In May of 2023 the world renowned neuroscientist Dr. Iain McGilchrist was discussing the (SCIENTIFIC) Left Brain, and the (ARTS & HUMANITIES) Right Brain when he said,“Something I discovered in medical school, was that this corpus callosum, this connecting band, spent at least half its time, if not more, sending messages to the other hemisphere, ‘You keep out of this, I’m dealing with it.’ So it wasn’t so much facilitating as inhibiting. Primates have more inhibiting neurons than any other mammal and humans have more inhibiting neurons than any primate. In fact, about 19% of the human brain consists of inhibitory neurons telling us where we may not go, which is the important part that resistance, negation, plays in creation.”Continuing to speak of our split brains, McGilchrist said,“Attention is actually how our world comes into being. So if you attend to something in one way, you see one thing. If you attend in another, you see something quite different. It’s not that we’ve all got schizophrenia, of course we haven’t… we are all neglecting the Right (ARTISTIC) hemisphere. And if you like, schizophrenia is a case in which the Left (SCIENTIFIC) hemisphere has gone into overdrive and the Right Hemisphere has been wound down, or is not really being listened to. And this leads to delusions and hallucinations. I think we are now in a world which is fully deluded.”Interviewer: Such as?McGilchrist: “There are aspects of our culture that have become very vociferous and very irrational, and very dogmatic and very hubristic: ‘This is right and anyone who says other is wrong.’ Now that’s the way the Left Hemisphere likes to be. It’s cut and dry, black and white. But the Right Hemisphere sees nuances, gradations, that there’s good and bad in almost everything.”Interviewer: Do you think we have ever been in as left-hemisphere-dominated a moment as we are now?McGilchrist: “No. No. I think this is un-hither-to seen.”Interviewer: Do you think technology has something to do with that?McGilchrist: “Yes. And I am a scientist.”Interviewer: Do you recognize that in the more day-to-day political world as well? Do you think we can learn from your framework when just reading the paper or watching the news? Do you think we need to be thinking, ‘This is left brain stuff, block it out.’?McGilchrist: “I hope people will apply these ideas. I find that people spontaneously do, in all walks of life, which is very pleasing to find out. During Puritanism it was absolutely not tolerated for you to disagree with a certain way of thinking, which was in fact a very dogmatic, reduced, abstracted way of thinking. But even that did not reach the stage we are at now, where it’s hard to articulate what needs to be articulated. At that time in history, people lived close to nature; they were surrounded by nature. Most people belonged to an inherited culture, a coherent culture which also had a religious element. And art had not been turned into something conceptual, but was visceral and moving. And religion was not presented as something that only a fool or an infant would believe in.”Interviewer: When does science become Scientism?McGilchrist: “When it quite simply says that it can answer all our questions. But a moment’s reflection shows that are so many things that are important in our life that science can’t fully explain to us. The beauty of a rainbow, of a wonderful landscape, of a piece of music, its importance and meaning, which is very real. It’s not irrational or unscientific, it’s just beyond the grasp of science and reason.”“Being reasonable was something I remember from when I was growing up. They were reasonable people and they were admired and the idea of an education was to make you reasonable. But now that has been supplanted by something quite different, which is a rationalizing framework such as a computer could follow, that we’ve been pushed by the development of our machines, the increasing sophistication of our machines, the intoxicating feeling that we have power over the world, into viewing it in this reductionist, materialist way. We’re living in an age of rationalizing and reductionism in which everything can be taken apart, and it’s just the bits. So open oneself to poetry, make a habit of reading good poetry, listening to good music, appreciating a walk in nature, just being aware of one’s surroundings, and then one finds there are good things there, despite the overall picture that I’m afraid I’ve given.”– Dr. Iain McGilchristWe began this little soirée with an examination of Perceptual Reality, which tells us that we don’t see things as they are, but as we are.In other words, how you see things is determined by how you are.So here’s my question:How… are you?Roy H. WilliamsBob Johansen has been forecasting the future for the past five decades. He and his colleagues get it right 60% to 80% of the time. Bob is no pointy hat, crystal-ball-gazing fortuneteller. In addition to helping clients like Procter & Gamble, Walmart, and McKinsey, he is an instructor at the Army War College. Bob tells roving reporter Rotbart that his focus is always ten years ahead. “What,” he asks, “would you do differently today if you knew what to expect in business, culture, and politics in 2033?” It’s hot, tasty, and ready to serve straight-from-the-oven at MondayMorningRadio.com

“No one listens to the radio anymore. Radio is dead.”When someone says that to me, I beat them unconscious with a Portable People Meter.“Wait a minute. When you say, ‘beat them unconscious with a Portable People Meter,’ what do you mean by that?”Okay let’s role play this. Say to me, “No one listens to the radio anymore.”“No one listens to the radio anymore.”How well do you understand the science of statistical measurement?“I understand the basics, I think.”You’ve heard of the Gallup Poll, right?“Sure.”The Gallup Poll measures the opinions of the 260 million adults in America with 95% confidence and only a 3 percent margin of error. Do you know the sample size required to do that?“Tell me.”One thousand and sixty-seven people.“That doesn’t sound right.”Statistical scientists know their measurements are reliable because of the Law of Large Numbers. Are you familiar with the Law of Large Numbers?“No.”The Law of Large Numbers guarantees stable long-term results for the averages of random events. While a casino might lose money on a single spin of the roulette wheel, its earnings will return to a predictable percentage over a large number of spins. Any winning streak by a player will eventually be overcome by the parameters of the game. The margin of error depends inversely on the square root of the sample size. In other words, the smaller the universe, the larger the percentage that has to be queried to get an accurate result. But the larger the universe, the smaller the percentage.“What are you saying, exactly?”In a universe of just 100 people, you have to ask nearly all of them to get an accurate measurement. But in a universe of 1 million people, you need only 600 people in your survey. To measure the entire United States of America, you need just 1,067 randomly chosen adults.“So how many people participate in a radio survey in the average city?”Name a city.“San Francisco. It’s a tech city. Silicon Valley. There’s no way radio is reaching San Francisco.”The Nielsen sample size in San Francisco is three times the number of people required to measure the whole United States. And Nielsen doesn’t measure just once per quarter. Nielsen measures San Francisco 365 days a year.“How?”What do you mean?“How are they measuring it? What’s the mechanism?”It’s a digital device worn by thousands of randomly selected people. Nielsen’s Portable People Meter knows precisely which station you’re listening to, when you started listening, when you changed channels, and when you quit listening. It doesn’t rely on human recall, and you can’t lie to it. Nielsen’s Portable People Meter is as reliable as anything offered by Facebook or Google. Nielsen isn’t guessing when they tell you how many people are listening to the radio. They’re measuring it 24/7/365.“You still haven’t told me how many people listen to the radio in San Francisco.”41.6% of the people in San Francisco – 2,565,817 persons – spend enough time listening to the radio that we can efficiently reach each of them an average of 3 times a week, 52 weeks in a row. This means 41.6% of San Francisco will hear your new, surprising, and different radio ad 156 times this year.“Yeah. But is it working? Radio, I mean.”Radio is delivering better results for less money than it has ever delivered. I can say that because my 70 partners and I have been using radio to grow owner-operated businesses for more than 40 years.“Okay, but isn’t attribution a problem? Sure, maybe your clients are growing, but how do you know that radio is what’s driving that growth?”We don’t use a media mix when our client can’t afford to swing that hammer.“What do you mean?”We believe in doing one thing wholeheartedly instead of two things halfheartedly. A focused budget always outperforms a scattered one.“Are you doing any digital marketing?”Of course. Google is the new phone book, so you’ve got to be there when the customer goes looking for you by name.“So you’re buying only branded keywords?”Bingo. That’s how we track attribution. When we agree to work with a client, we look at how many people per week are typing their name into Google, and then we begin measuring (1.) the increase in branded keyword searches along with (2.) the top line growth of their company. Those are two of the three metrics we care about.“What’s the third one?”Cost Per Person/Per Year.“Never heard of it.”That’s because we invented it.“Are you allowed to do that?”Yeah. Welcome to America.“How is Cost Per Person/Per Year different from Cost Per Point or Cost Per Thousand?Food and Entertainment have a short purchase cycle. This means you will see results quickly when you make an enticing offer and create urgency. But most advertisers have a long purchase cycle. Consequently, they’ve got to become the company a customer thinks of first and feels the best about when that customer’s buying event occurs, and that takes massive repetition. Radio people call it frequency. But you also need 52-week consistency, which is essentially the frequency of the frequency, the repetition of the repetition.“You still haven’t answered my question.”Cost Per Thousand and Cost Per Point measure the cost of reaching an individual only once. But radio works its magic through relentless repetition. When you make your scheduling decisions based on Gross Rating Points, you will reach too many people with not enough frequency. Reach is easy to achieve on radio. But reach without frequency and consistency is a recipe for disappointment. If I buy 100 Gross Rating Points how many people have I reached?“You’ve reached the mathematical equivalent of 100% of the population 1 time.”Or perhaps I’ve reach 50% of the population twice. Or 25% of the population 4 times. Or 10% of the population 10 times. Or 100% of the population 1 time. Are you suggesting that each of those schedules is going to result in the same outcome?“So how is your Cost Per Person/Per Year different from Cost Per Point?”Cost Per Person/Per Year requires the same individual to be reached 3 times within 7 nights sleep, and this needs to happen 52 weeks a year. It is a mistake to multiply reach times frequency. They are not interchangeable. When you multiply reach times frequency to calculate Gross Rating Points, you are crippling the effectiveness of radio. For radio to work its magic, you have to protect 1-week frequency at all costs, and then you have to have consistency. If you want to reach 100% of the people and convince them just 10% of the way, make your buying decisions based on Gross Rating Points. But if you want to use that same budget to reach 10% of the people and convince them 100% of the way, use Cost Per Person/Per Year.“You’re saying a weekly 3-frequency is the non-negotiable?”Correct.“So what is your target for reach?”When you are certain you are achieving a weekly 3-frequency, you add Net Reach by adding more stations to your weekly schedule until you run out of money.“I’m beginning to see what you mean when you say that you would rather do one thing whole-heartedly instead of two things half-heartedly.”Technically, you could say that we are doing a second thing when we use Google ads to measure the increase in branded keyword searches.“Yeah, but that’s going to be cheap. You’re really just doing radio.”Yes, we’re really doing just radio. Or we’re doing just TV. Either way, we’re doing just one thing.“And you say that’s working out for you?”When you write ads that are new, surprising, and different, and make your media placement decisions using the criteria I’ve just outlined for you, your clients will grow until they become so big that they sell to Private Equity for hundreds of millions of dollars.“Damn!”Yes, damn indeed.Roy H. WilliamsPS – If you want to understand the Law of Large Numbers, go to https://www.surveysystem.com/sscalce.htm What we call margin of error, they call “confidence interval.”Nick Loper has helped tens of thousands of people bring home some serious extra cash on top of what they earn in their day jobs. In fact, Nick’s podcast, which offers a steady diet of “side hustle” ideas, has been downloaded more than 25 million times. Nick is a fountain of money-making ideas. Near the top of his list, he tells roving reporter Rotbart, is providing local services that are otherwise fragmented and poorly marketed. If you or someone you love can use an extra $1,000, $2,000, or even $5,000 a month, hustle to MondayMorningRadio.com.