Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Two thousand years ago, Confucius was as old to the people of China as Christopher Columbus is to us today. Five hundred and thirty-two years before the wise men followed their star to Bethlehem, Confucius wrote,“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by contemplation, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”I agree with Confucius, but I believe it is the wisdom gained by bitter experience that runs the deepest in us. The boy who travels from village to village shouting “Wolf! Wolf!” learns things about wolves and villagers that no one else can know.I was once a wandering wolf-shouter.There is a red flashing light in my soul that keeps me from writing hard-hitting “sales activation” ads, not because it is foreign to me, but because I am extremely good at it.When I was a 20-year-old ad salesman, business owners would say to me, “Show me what you can do with a small amount of money, and if it works, we’ll talk about a long-term commitment.”Being young, confident, and stupid, I wrote sales activation ads that could only be measured with a seismograph, and my career took off like a race car in a gravel parking lot. I’m told the gravel is still flying somewhere between Jupiter and Mars.I wore my tie draped around my neck like a scarf and I never tied my shoes. People said, “Your shoes are untied.”I smiled and said, “Yeah. I know.”That young fool was the diamond-ring Cadillac man. He was like Coca-Cola, baby, he was everywhere. When people called and ask if he delivered, he would say, “You want a crowd? Crowds cost money. How big a crowd do you want?”For 3 years he was the King of Making Big Things Happen Fast. He was going in circles faster than a NASCAR driver on a Saturday night and making more money than a heart surgeon. But he didn’t like the person he had become.He was thinking about how much he hated working with anxious, impatient advertisers when it hit him: “Every one of those twitchy little bastards is a short-term results addict and I am their dealer.”I was writing the advertising equivalent of meth-laced, crack cocaine.In 1942, Edwin Arlington Robinson wrote,“The world is not a prison house, but a kind of kindergarten, where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.”Realizing that I had been trying to spell success with the wrong blocks, I climbed out of the car I had been driving on the fast track to nowhere and saw what T.S. Eliot was trying to say when he wrote,“We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.”Finally standing with my feet on the ground, I looked with fresh eyes at what needed to be done, and knew the place for the first time.I saw Seven Truths that corresponded with The Seven Secrets of Sales Activation.These are the Seven Truths.You’ll never see a bigger crowd than the first time you cry “Wolf!”Anything that delivers big results quickly will work less and less well the longer you keep doing it.You cannot build a strong and resilient company on gimmicks and empty promises.Anything that works better and better the longer you keep doing it will deliver disappointing results at first.It takes awhile to make people feel like they really know you.This is why winning the hearts of customers requires months of meaningful courtship.The average business owner does not have the faith and patience to build an attractive brand.(This is particularly true of business owners who trust metrics more than they trust their own heart.)There have been a few occasions in the past 35 years when longtime clients have persuaded me to use the Seven Secrets of Sales Activation to give them a hard jolt of meth-laced, crack cocaine. In every instance, both the client and I have regretted it.Detox is a bitch.Uh-oh. You want to know how it’s done. I can feel the strength of your curiosity vibrating through the keyboard beneath my fingertips. You want to know the seven secrets of meth-laced, crack cocaine!(sigh)Lest you believe I have written you a fiction, I will tell you how it is done, but I wash my hands of the disasters that await you.FINAL WARNING: before you click this link, believe me when I say that meth-laced crack is addictive. People who know the Seven Secrets of Sales Activation usually overdose and kill their business.I have rarely seen an exception.Roy H. WilliamsMany of the people close to you are neurodiverse and face challenges that are not immediately visible. In fact, one in five Americans is neurodiverse, which includes conditions such as Autism, ADHD, OCD, Dyslexia, and Tourette’s syndrome. Dr. Matthew Zakreski is recognized as an expert on neurodiverse employee/employer relations, and is an advocate for neurodiverse individuals in the workplace. Listen as “Dr. Matt” shares with deputy rover Maxwell this week, employers who welcome and accommodate those who think and behave differently reap the benefits of enhanced workplace productivity, job satisfaction, and innovation. It’s always win/win/win at MondayMorningRadio.com

Leadership = Energy + DirectionDirection = Vision + CourageTherefore, leaders are people of Energy, Vision, and Courage.If you are a person of energy, vision, and courage:(1.) I have noticed that people like you often become surrounded by wanderers who are looking for a leader. It is hard to make money when you are stumbling over puppies who gather at your feet. Resist the temptation to become a thought leader. Oh, I forgot. The new word is influencer. Don’t become one.(2.) Do not become a zookeeper. When you find yourself among persons of energy, vision, and courage like yourself, do not try to “manage” these untamed creatures. Zookeepers diminish energy, dull vision, and punish courage. You will never meet a wealthy zookeeper.(3.) When you see pent-up energy, unexplored vision, and fearless courage, become the friend who delivers that person from their captivity. Hire them. Unlock their leg irons. Empower them, encourage them, unleash them.(4.) Be a leader who gives vision and direction to other leaders and encourage those leaders to do the same. Model correct behavior. Lead by example. Spread the joy.(5.) Your life is about to become very interesting.ADDENDUM: Lest you become too anxious as you search for world-changers like yourself, I have asked Albert Bandura to share this word of warning with you:“Let us not confuse ourselves by failing to recognize that there are two kinds of self-confidence—one a trait of personality and another that comes from knowledge of a subject. It is no particular credit to the educator to help build the first without building the second. The objective of education is not the production of self-confident fools.”– Albert Bandura, Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, p.65Do not be attracted by self-confident fools.Tinsel and glitter stand proudly in the spotlight, but true gold is found surrounded by mud.SURPRISE! Seventeen years ago the wizard recorded a memo that reminds me of the one he shared today, so I time-traveled back to November 5, 2007 and retrieved it for you. – Indy BeagleI thought Bill Clinton was a good president for the same reason I thought Ronald Reagan was good; both were excellent Head Cheerleaders. Their politics, personalities and characters were different, but each had a similar ability to keep things from spinning out of control.Every organization has a Head Cheerleader. Their business card usually says “manager”. The Head Cheerleader’s job is to keep talented hotheads, sycophantic suck-ups, whining excuse-makers, moon-eyed lunatics and plodding paranoids all headed in the same general direction. They have to make everyone feel like everything is going to be all right.Are there really people who can do this job?Thrown into the deep water at 26, I was possibly the worst manager ever to assume the position. But over the years, I’ve had a chance to observe the great ones, and I’ve noticed an unusual but recurrent characteristic:Great managers are rarely excellent at any of the things they manage.Great coaches are great not because they were superstars, but because they know how to awaken the star that sleeps in each of the players around them.Excellent don’t show you photos from their own vacation. They ask to see the photos from yours, and it makes them happy to see you had a wonderful time.Life-changing managers look for things to praise in their people, knowing that it takes seven positive strokes to recover from each negative reprimand.Think about it. If seven out of eight times we encounter our boss, we receive an authentic, affirming comment, a bit of happy news or a piece of valuable insight, we love to see our manager coming down the hall. But if our encounters with the manager leave us deflated, discouraged, or scared, our hearts sink when we see them coming.Do your people love to see you coming?If not, begin looking for things to praise. Keep your ratio of positive comments seven times higher than your negative ones, and they will soon begin to smile when they see you coming. This newfound attitude and confidence will bring new levels of productivity, and all because you believed they could do it, and made them believe it, too.Great managers are never afraid to hire people better than themselves.Each of the 217 times David Ogilvy opened a new office for Ogilvy and Mather, he would leave a set of Russian nesting dolls on the desk of the incoming manager. When the manager removed the top half from the largest of these bowling pin-shaped dolls, he or she would find a slightly smaller doll inside. This would continue until the manager came to the tiniest doll and retrieved from its interior what looked to be the note from a fortune cookie:“If each of us hires people smaller than ourselves, we shall become a company of, but if each of us hires people bigger than ourselves, we should become a company of giants.”– David OgilvyNow walk down the hall and find a sleeping superstar disguised as a plodding paranoid.For each of the next 21 days, compliment that person every time you see them take a right action. Then prepare to meet a whole new employee on the 22nd day.Don’t be surprised if they have the same name as the plodding paranoid that used to stink up the place.Go. The hallway awaits you.– Roy H. Williams“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”More than half of all customers are willing to pay more for the same product or service if the seller also provides a single intangible: trust. Natalie Doyle Oldfield studies the dynamics that drive customer loyalty and business growth, and “Trust,” she finds, “is the critical value that top companies rely on to secure their market dominance and drive substantial growth.” Prepare to feel wonderfully affirmed when Natalie reveals to roving reporter Rotbart the proven methods companies can use to amplify their trustworthiness and strengthen their reputation and their brand. If there is only one episode you are ever going to listen to, this is the one. MondayMorningRadio.com

Riding this rocket toward my 67th birthday, memories of my life flicker in the twilight of my mind like shooting stars in the night.My gaze lingers on a long-ago day when I began writing ads for a jeweler.I saw the cover of a book that said, “Follow Your Passion. The Money Will Follow,” and remember thinking, “I would hate to become famous for writing ads for a product I couldn’t care less about.”“Follow your passion” is an idea that makes sense until you think about it.I had no appreciation, no affection, no commitment to jewelry. But I did make a commitment to the jeweler. My job was to communicate his appreciation of jewelry, his affection for it, his commitment to it.For a quarter of a century I wrote ads for my friend that made both of us famous. He died unexpectedly in a frozen moment a dozen years ago.I continue to have his number programmed into my iPhone and there is part of me that believes if I touch his name with my finger he will answer and bellow “Good mornin’, Sunshine!” before the second ring.There is another part of me that knows I will be shattered if he does not answer. His name will continue on my phone, and I will continue not to touch it.Our friendship of 25 years taught me an important life-lesson I will now share with you:Commitment does not flow from passion. Passion flows from commitment.I do not have to love the products I write about. I have to love the people who are going to sign their names to what I write. My words are spoken from their hearts, not my own.Lest you think I am wandering aimlessly down Melancholy Lane, I will push my point home like a syringe:Are you one of those sad-eyed souls who sigh and say, “I’m searching for my passion. I just don’t seem to be able to find my passion. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I find my passion?”Yes, the needle hurts, but there is medicine flowing through it.Every form of work is for the benefit of other people. You do not need to love the work to be happy. You need to love the difference you are making.Are you ready for me to push the needle a little deeper?You will never discover happiness when you work only for yourself. You will discover the joy of life when you work for the benefit of others. I believe the need to serve other people is hard-wired into the body, soul, and spirit of every person who walks upon this planet.Self-centered people can have pleasure, of course. But they can never have happiness.I’m sorry, but the needle still has to go deeper.These two quotes by Tom Robbins fit together perfectly although they were written 20 years apart.“Among our egocentric sad-sacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation (2005).* The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you’re unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously (1985).*”– Tom RobbinsThe needle is now all the way in.This is the pure, uncut medicine: The next time you see a need, step up and fill it. Experience the joy of making a difference. Do this ten times and you will be addicted to happiness for the rest of your life.Pay it forward.Roy H. WilliamsDutch explorers in 1625 found a forested island between the East and Hudson rivers known to the Lenape Indians as “Manhattan.”Every square inch of that island was developed in the ensuing 400 years except for a 6.7-acre plot of land 3 blocks south of the United Nations building. That land is owned by the Soloviev Group, an organization run by Michael Hershman, a renowned expert in governance, ethics, and transparency. Although he rarely grants media interviews, Hershman opened up to roving reporter Rotbart and deputy rover, Maxwell, to share some fascinating insights about civics and the principles of good governance and how these elevate us to create a thriving economy. This is a conversation that will lift your spirits and renew your hope for humanity, and it will begin the moment you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com*(2005) Wild Ducks Flying Backward, Tom Robbins*(1985) Jitterbug Perfume, p. 210, Tom Robbins

You are inside your business, looking out.The customer is outside your business, looking in.Your inside-out perspective makes you blind in one eye.Confirmation bias makes you blind in the other eye.You cannot see yourself the way your customer sees you. You imagine how they see you based on your mission statement, your policies and procedures, your employee training, and your good intentions.But you alone know those things, see those things, and care about those things. Your customer doesn’t know, doesn’t see, doesn’t care.Bad ads talk about all the things the customer would care about if they knew everything that you know.Good ads talk about what the customer already cares about.When you have convinced an ad writer to see your business in the same way you do, that ad writer has nothing left to offer you but flattery.I’m not trying to offend you, friend. I am trying to open your eyes.Why do so many business owners think effective advertising can be discovered by studying the data?Bob Hoffman is an old ad guy like me. I’ve never met him, but I like him.Bob writes,“Our industry is drowning in math and starving for ideas. We need people who can dream shit up. We need impractical, illogical people. We have plenty of data. We need more of the opposite. We have forgotten that the only unique benefits we can provide to clients is imaginative thinking and creativity. Everything else, aside from ideas, they can get somewhere else. Good ideas are good ideas. Things that are entertaining, interesting and uplifting will always be attractive to everyone.”“On social media, for every success there are 10,000 failures. You have to be really good at it and there are very few people that can do it. Why are 97 per cent of all ads, books, movies and films crappy? Because it’s really, really difficult to make good stuff. And it’s the same with social media. Most of it is worthless and has no creativity or imagination to it.”Instead of look at the data, we should be looking at first principles.“First principles is kind of a physics way of looking at the world. You boil things down to the most fundamental truths and say, ‘What are we sure is true?’ … and then reason up from there.”– Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX“Good inventors and designers (and marketers) deeply understand their customer. They spend tremendous energy developing that intuition. They study and understand many anecdotes rather than only the averages you’ll find on surveys.”– Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com“Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them… Indeed, the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.”– Peter Thiel, PaypalGreat ad strategies are discovered when we return to first principles.These are the first principles of effective ad creation.Don’t try to convince the customer to think and feel like you do. Learn how to think and feel like the customer.The customer isn’t looking for a product or a service. They are looking for transformation.Those first principles will never change.Everything else is execution, which requires impractical, illogical people who can dream shit up.Roy H. Williams“Life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference between those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other… I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.”– H.P. Lovecraft“Tell me, what’s troubling you?”“Profits are down. Our employees are unhappy. And I don’t know where I should be going.”The client is not a person, but the therapist is real. Dr. Nikki Blacksmith uses data analysis to help companies diagnose the business personality traits that are preventing them from achieving their goals. Dr. Blacksmith, an industrial-organizational psychologist, tells roving reporter Rotbart that many businesses fail because they don’t understand the company-wide psychology required to achieve success. Prepare to be amazed at MondayMorningRadio.com

Every company has an inside, an outside, and an engine.This is why successful companies have a Mother, a Trumpet, and a CEO.The CEO chooses a destination and builds a machine to take us there.The Mother looks inward to the people in the company.The Trumpet makes beautiful noises for the public to hear.The Mother in your company is the person everyone goes to when they are frightened, angry, or confused. The Mother keeps your family traditions alive and makes sure that everyone feels included. (“Mother” refers only to the role in the company. It can be a man or a woman.)If your company has a strong culture, your people will deliver exceptional customer service. They will do it because their Mother has convinced them of who they are. Your company culture and your customer service will be average at best if your people don’t have a strong Mother to comfort, encourage, and motivate them.The Trumpet is the person who makes the public think highly of you. Your company will become the one people think of first – and feel the best about – when your Trumpet plays the kind of music that people love to hear.Let’s review:The CEO is the visioncaster who is building a Rube Goldberg machine of systems and procedures and vendors and processes and levers and pulleys and profit margins represented by all those flow charts and diagrams and spreadsheets.The Mother makes the internal business strategy come alive through employee feelings and actions.The Trumpet makes the external business strategy come alive by using media to deliver stories that will bond future customers to your company.The Mother and the Trumpet must know, like, and respect each other, because they are the left and right hand of a person playing basketball.Back in the early 2000’s, when McDonald’s had lost their way and was circling the drain, they asked their original Mother to come out of retirement and help them get back on track.In a June 27, 2004, story called “McDonald’s Finds Missing Ingredient,” Chicago Tribune staff reporter David Greising wrote:“Fred Turner did not need to look at financial statements to know McDonald’s was in trouble. He could taste it. The man who worked alongside founder Ray Kroc to turn McDonald’s into a global colossus, Turner noticed when penny-pinchers at corporate headquarters changed recipes to cut costs.”The article ends by saying,“The return of the special sauce is one of hundreds of changes, big and small, that McDonald’s made after they made a return to ‘Inspect What They Expect,’ and the result was one of the most stunning turnarounds in corporate history.”Fred Turner’s ‘Inspect What They Expect’ program taught and encouraged McDonald’s employees to make sure that customers received the happy experience they were expecting.Fred Turner was the “inward-facing” Mother who made McDonald’s operationally excellent.Keith Reinhard was the “outward-facing” Trumpet who made McDonald’s famous.Keith Reinhard told us that a trip to McDonald’s would be a transformative experience:“You deserve a break today, so get up and get away, to McDonald’s” and that famous advertising jingle for the Big Mac, “Two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun… You deserve a break today, at McDonald’s.”When Keith Reinhard wasn’t busy writing McDonald’s ads, he wrote, “Just Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm Is There.”Reader, do you trust me enough to let me to offer you some insanely good advice?Tear up your mission statement. It’s just a collection of aspirational words on paper. The hearts and minds of your people are not guided by that paper, but by the mother whose face they see and whose voice they hear. Do you know who your Fred Turner is?Quit looking for an advertising person who has experience in your business category. Ray Kroc did not choose Keith Reinhard because Keith understood the fast-food business. Ray Kroc chose Keith Reinhard because Keith understood people.Friend, you are in the people business. Some of these people are inside your company. The rest of the people are outside your company.The CEO is the visioncaster who says, “We’re going to the moon. And here’s how we’re going to get there.”The Mother is the person who comforts, encourages, and motivates your people.The Trumpet is the person who wins the hearts of the public for you.Peter Koenig tells a story about a company in Japan that has been building Japanese temples for more than 800 years. When they were asked the secret of how they have kept their company alive and vibrant for eight centuries, their answer was simple:“A business can last forever if it is passed from hand… to hand… to hand.”You are in the people business, friend.Roy H. Williams“Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention.”– Rachel Naomi RemenShe served as an FTC Commissioner and as staff director of Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. Her name is Margot Machol Bisnow. In her post-government career, Margot is guiding parents on how to grow their children into successful business owners. In essence, Margo is an evangelist for entrepreneurism. Although she focuses on kids, teens, and young adults, her blueprint for success is ageless. Listen in as she shares the lessons of 99 families — many well-known — who followed the golden path and raised their children to become wildly successful entrepreneurs. Roving reporter Rotbart and deputy rover Maxwell are on the move and the game is afoot at MondayMorningRadio.com

The best screenwriters in Hollywood use the principles of David Freeman, as do Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning novelists and all the most effective ad writers, even if they have never heard of the man.I know David well, as he has taught a number of classes at Wizard Academy. His always-and-forever question is this: “What causes this character to think, act, speak, and see the world the way they do?”NOTE: As a writer, you don’t necessarily need to tell your viewers, readers, or listeners why a character thinks, acts, speaks, and sees the world they way they do; it is only important that YOU know.When you know the backstory of a character, that character comes alive. It glistens with perspiration, and your audience feels it’s heartbeat. Your heroes will never be perfectly pure and good, nor will your villains ever be entirely evil. Your audiences may even begin to wonder whether they ought to change sides and start cheering for the character they originally thought was a villain.The question you must ask each of your characters is this: “What happened to you that causes you to think, act, speak, and see the world the way you do?”You, as a writer, need to know why your characters are the way they are.Friend, with every sleeper you wake, every heart you break, every choice you make and action you take, you are writing the story of your life. Take a breath and say this next sentence out loud. “What happened to me that causes me to think, act, speak, and see the world the way I do?”Seriously, say it out loud. “What happened to me that causes me to think, act, speak, and see the world the way I do?”I believe my friend Tucker Max understands the magic of writing memoirs better than any writer who has ever lived. Tucker is the only writer I know who has had 3 books simultaneously on the New York Times bestseller list. And each of those 3 books was a memoir.Tucker Max is currently writing what will probably become the memoir equivalent of the Ring of Power that Frodo Baggins carried to Mordor. “One Memoir to rule them all, One Memoir to find them, One Memoir to bring them all and in the bright light bind them.”I won’t tell you anything more about Tucker’s soon-coming memoir because I don’t want to ruin it for you, but I will tell you what Tucker said to me privately:“The reason to write a memoir is to tell yourself the truth about your life. Memoir is an inherently therapeutic process. Whether or not you ever let anyone read it is irrelevant. You are giving yourself a private space to uncover, and consider, and speak the whole truth about your life.”Today is the day that you will start writing your memoir. So say this out loud with me one more time. Are you ready?“What happened to me that causes me to think, act, speak, and see the world the way I do?”Ciao for Niao, and Indy Beagle told me to tell you “Aroo” and that he will see you in the rabbit hole.Roy H. WilliamsDr. Laura Gabayan is an emergency medicine doctor and associate professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, and for many years she has conducted a scientific study of wisdom, including how to define it and cultivate it. Dr. G., as she is known, recently published her findings and is sharing them today with roving reporter Rotbart in an effort to help him discover a more fulfilling, meaningful, and prosperous life. MondayMorningRadio.com

Every person on earth belongs to several cults.Calm down. I’m not talking about what you think I’m talking about.I’ll start at the beginning.Cult: any group of people who share a devotion to an idea, activity, or identity.Cults become toxic and dangerous only when the devotion of the group is (1.) to a specific individual,(2.) focused on the destruction of an enemy.Culture: patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give those activities significance, importance, and meaning.Cultivation: to till or refine. Seeds are more likely to grow and produce a harvest when you till the soil to soften and refine it.Cult Brands: Apple, Lululemon, Tesla, Harley Davidson, Starbucks, Nike, and Star Trek are notable examples of brands that have become associated with an idea, activity, or identity.Cult brands make a lot of money.Do you want to create a cult brand? I’ve been telling you how to do it for 30 years, but I’ll say it one more time for those of you who are new:“Win the heart, and the mind will follow. The mind will always find logic to justify what the heart has already decided.”To build a cult brand, all we need to do is abbreviate those earlier definitions and tilt them slightly toward advertising.Cultivation: to plant the seeds of an ideology by allowing potential customers to perceive and conclude that you believe and value exactly what they believe and value.Culture: the recurrent activities of a self-selected group.Cult: a group of people who are strongly attracted to a brand.The best storytelling ads gently cultivate the mind, loosening the soil of public consciousness so that you might sow the seed-thoughts that will grow into profitable persuasion, causing your brand to be the one people think of immediately – and feel the best about – when they need what you sell.These seed-thoughts are what my partners and I call brandable chunks, a collection of carefully crafted signature phrases that are unique to your brand. Like all seeds, these brandable chunks must be sown in abundance if you hope for a bountiful harvest.The seed-thoughts contained in these brandable chunks will germinate – and magnetic connection will occur – when a person perceives that you believe what they believe. When your brand stands for something that people believe in, you have the opportunity to become a cult brand.When this cultivation and germination of your seed-thoughts has occurred, the next step is for your customer to be introduced to your culture.Uh-oh. I just heard someone think, “I’m not affected by advertising, so I’m not in a cult of any kind.” Friend, I know you don’t want to hear this, but you’re a card-carrying member of the “Don’t Label Me” cult. I could tell you several interesting things about your little group, but that would not be a friendly thing to do, so I won’t.Instead, I will tell you about a cult I joined in 1972.“Roses for the Living” is the name of the cult my mother started completely by accident. I was there when it happened.It was 1972. We were struggling financially due to my father having fled the scene three years earlier. My mother had found a job, worked hard, kept a roof over our heads and food in our mouths for three long years before she finally had a few dollars she could spend on herself.She spent those dollars taking a friend with her on a 2-day trip to Taos, New Mexico.When I asked her why she did it, she said,“People will take time off work, buy a plane ticket and fly across the country to lay a dozen roses on the grave of a friend who has died.”“But their friend won’t be able to enjoy those flowers, or have a nice dinner with them, or laugh and talk with them about whatever is on their mind. So I have decided that I will not attend the funerals of my friends.”“Instead, I will take time off work, and buy plane tickets, and fly across the country to visit the people I love while we can still do things together. I believe roses are for the living.”I have watched my mother buy countless plane tickets since that day in 1972 when she told me what she believed and what she valued. What my mother got in return for her time, her energy, and her money was a lifetime of marvelous adventures, deep friendships, and happy memories.Like my mom, I believe roses are for the living. If you believe it, too, I have good news for you. The culture of our “Roses for the Living” cult – the recurrent activities of our self-selected little group – is that we make the time and find the money to create new memories with old friends. Other than that, there is nothing to buy, no one to notify, no forms to fill out, nothing else at all that you need to do.1. Just Stop.2. Call your friend.3. Tell them you are coming for a visit.4. Make your travel arrangements.And remember to take some pictures, okay?Roy H. WilliamsWhat can business owners learn from America’s Michelin Star and James Beard award-winning chefs? David Page, creator of the mega-hit Food Network show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, has interviewed numerous world-class chefs including Dan Barber, Nancy Silverton, Jonathan Waxman, and Michael Stern for his new podcast that launches on August 27th. David says these culinary maestros not only know how to dazzle the palate, but they have a recipe for business success, as well! According to the super-chefs, the ingredients that allow a business to thrive are pretty much the same regardless of the product or service you sell. Enjoy this tasty episode at MondayMorningRadio.com.

Brad Pitt, Ron Howard, and MeI never write click-bait headlines, but I wrote this one just to prove I can.Brad shines from Shawnee, Ron comes from Duncan, and I bailed from Broken Arrow.We’re all Okla-Homeboys.Now that my click-bait headline has done its job and convinced you to keep reading all the way down to this third paragraph, I will transition to the real reason I wanted to speak with you today: Amway.Here’s how it works. You buy stuff from me that I buy from someone above me, and they buy it from someone above them, and so on. But through the mystical magic of multi-level marketing, we all get rich by making a tiny commission on whatever you bought!What you need to do is find some friends who dream of financial freedom and convince them to buy this same stuff from YOU. And guess what! THEY WILL GET RICH, TOO! Don’t you want all of your friends to be rich with you? Think of all the fun you rich, rich, rich people will have after you all become rich, rich, rich!Welcome to Oklahoma. Now you know why Brad, Ron and I decided to leave.Honestly, I have fond memories of Oklahoma and I cherish all the valuable lessons I learned there. For real.Never deal with an idiot. Escape while you can. Keep an eye on them until they become a tiny speck disappearing in your rear-view mirror.Fall in love with an actual person. Do not fall in love with falling in love.Commitment does not flow from passion. Passion flows from commitment.Patience will make you wealthy much more quickly than luck.Business is nothing more than a search for purpose and adventure, and failures are footlights along the dark pathway to success.Everyone has a superpower. When you have figured out their superpower, that’s when you know a person.Never lose sight of your closest friends and always be there for them.Every conflict is an auction. The winner will be the one who is willing to pay a higher price than anyone else. (This is why you should try to avoid conflicts.)There is a time for incremental escalation and there is a time for overwhelming force. Take no action until you know what time it is.What you are currently thinking and feeling is a product of where you have turned your attention. Be careful where you turn your attention.Learn to speak in color and to write poetically.Poetry is any communication that changes what you think, and how you feel, in a brief, tight economy of words.Those are some of the things I learned as an Okie, and now I have shared them with you. That makes you a little bit Okie, too.Ciao for Niao,Roy H. WilliamsBecoming a children’s book publisher is not “sugar and spice and everything nice.” It is one of the toughest journeys an entrepreneur can undertake. When Georgia Lininger launched her children’s book imprint in January 2020, she quickly discovered that success was going to require more from her than sweet stories and colorful illustrations. Join roving reporter Rotbart and his deputy rover Maxwell as they uncover a classic American story of struggle and defiance along with the happy ending dreamt of by every entrepreneur offering a product or service that comes from the heart. MondayMorningRadio.com

These are stories of a bright day, a dark night, and a monster.The story of the bright day happened last year just before Christmas. You may recall that I told you about finding an undiscovered 400-year-old copy of the 1605 edition of Don Quixote at a used furniture auction in a village in New England.This is the rest of that story.After I bought that book (and 18 other books nearly as old,) I learned the nearest place that could ship those books to me was a 35-minute drive from the auction house. When I called them, they said,“Dude, we’ve got more than 200 orders stacked all around us that have got to be packed and shipped before Christmas and more people are coming in every day. We’ll be buried here for at least the next two or three weeks. Your books will just have to wait.”Discouraged and worried that someone was going to realize that a 2-million-dollar book was sitting on a table in an empty auction building in a rural village, I was whining to Joe Davis while he was scrolling on his telephone. When I had finished telling him my story, Joe looked up and said,“I’ve booked myself on the 6:30AM flight to Baltimore. I’ll be back tomorrow night with your books.”Joe Davis is one of those rare people who sees and solves problems immediately. Joe lives his life by three words made famous by Nike.“Just Do It.”Are you lucky enough to have a Joe Davis in your life? Have you told them lately how much they mean to you?And now the story of the dark night and the monster.Twenty years ago, Pennie and I wrote a check to purchase several acres on a high plateau and much of the land in the valley below. Our plan was to build Wizard Academy, then donate the land and all the buildings to a non-profit that would forever after run it as a 501c3 educational organization.A few months after we bought that land, we published Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg’s book, Call to Action.The brothers funded the printing of the book, but we used my publishing company to give it an ISBN number and nationwide distribution.In the book business, bookstores pay the distributor, then the distributor pays the publisher, then the publisher pays the authors twice a year.The book made all four bestseller lists: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, and USA Today. Jeffrey and Bryan’s first check was going to be more than $100,000. They needed it to refresh their bank account since that was approximately what the printer had charged to print those tens of thousands of books.BANG. I got a phone call from Adrian Van Zelfden. His voice was quavering.“Roy, your name appeared in a public notice this morning. The IRS is in the process of taking your house, your cars, your furniture, your bank accounts, and everything else they can find that has your name on it.”“Adrian, that’s crazy, there’s been some sort of a mistake.”“Roy, this cannot be a mistake. This is happening.”The financial reports that I was seeing showed that we still had lots of money in several bank accounts, so when Adrian told me how much we owed the IRS, I said,“Okay, we’ll just pay it.”Meet the Monster:We had copies of all our tax returns along with photocopies of the checks, but our bookkeeper had never sent any of those checks to the IRS. Over a period of 5 years, our bookkeeper had systematically drained every cent from our bank accounts, leaving only the cash from those unsent IRS checks to keep the boat afloat.The check we wrote to buy the plateau hit that boat like a torpedo.That’s when I found out we were broke. The bookkeeper who had been with us for 5 years had been keeping 2 sets of books. One set showed the dollar amounts that should have been in our bank accounts, the other set revealed there was nothing there.The following week was when I was supposed to write a 6-figure check to my friend Jeffrey.When I turned my full attention to the problem and saw that everything was gone, I called Jeffrey and told him exactly what was happening. He immediately said,“You are going to recover from this and everyone you owe is going to get their money, but I want you to please pay me last.”“Last?”“Yes, pay me last. I have been where you are, and I have felt the way you are feeling right now, which is why you need to listen to me: Don’t let yourself think about things beyond your control. Don’t think about what you cannot do. Think only about what you can do, today, before you go to bed tonight. Do what you can do each day, every day, and don’t think about what you cannot do. You’re going to come through this.”Jeffrey called me each day to make sure I stayed in the right frame of mind. He spoke wisdom and hope into my life that day, and I regard it as some of the most valuable advice I have ever been given.Are you in a dark place?I have been where you are, and I have felt the way you are feeling right now, which is why you need to listen to me: Don’t let yourself think about things beyond your control. Don’t think about what you cannot do. Think only about what you can do, today, before you go to bed tonight. Do what you can each day, every day, and don’t think about what you cannot do. You’re going to come through this.Roy H. WilliamsPS – The IRS had sent multiple foreclosure notices, but our bookkeeper had generously volunteered to collect and sort the mail every day, so I’m guessing those notices went straight to the shredder. Although we were able to dodge the bankruptcy bullet, I did learn that 22% of all businesses have been, or will be, victims of embezzlement, and fully one-third of all the small business bankruptcies in America are the direct result of embezzlement. Bad News: your police department doesn’t have the manpower to investigate embezzlements. This is why fewer than 2% of embezzlers are ever charged with a crime, and almost none ever go to jail. You have several friends who have lost large sums of money to embezzlement but they never talk about it because they think it makes them look stupid. It was only when I started talking about it that I learned how common it is. – RHWAngie Hyche is a clutter expert. Whether it is a storage room, garage, basement, self-storage unit, or your email inbox, Angie knows how to help you sort your possessions and your calendar. Angie is a professional organizer, helping a wide array of organizations and individuals clean up the chaos in their lives. She is also the author of two books on how to free yourself from disarray in your mind, your body, and your business. This week, Angie tells roving reporter Rotbart how to defeat disorganization, even when it has been accumulating for decades. Isn’t Rotbart awesome at finding great guests! MondayMorningRadio.com

Twenty-nine years ago, Carl Sagan wrote a book called The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995).One of the observations Carl shared in that book is particularly troubling:“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”Twenty-nine years later, half the nation is traumatized by an old white guy they believe will destroy America. The other half is traumatized by a different old white guy they believe will destroy America.When did old white guys become so scary?Why do we have these feelings of impending doom?During the Covid crisis we lived in an unfamiliar world for more than a year, a world of continual anxiety.Half of America was traumatized by the threat of vaccines and masks. The other half was traumatized by the people who rejected vaccines and masks. All the places that made us feel normal were closed. Restaurants and churches and schools and movie theaters and sporting events and theme parks and weddings were memories of a past life.When our circumstances returned to normal, we, ourselves, did not. The boat was gone, but the wake remained. It is hard to swim in rough and choppy waters.According to mental health professionals, the wake of that boat is a condition called hyper-vigilance.Think of it as a sort of PTSD. Even now, something inside us remains crouched, ready for danger. Are you beginning to see why so many people are anxious and uncertain?I never experienced hyper-vigilance until I was 40. When I had completed my second book, Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads, I began to spend countless hours revising and rearranging it. In the mornings I would eliminate a comma, and in the afternoons I would put it back again.Ray Bard saw what was happening and spoke wisdom into my life.He smiled and said to me these words,“Roy, you’re not making your book any better or worse. You’re just making it slightly different. It’s time to put down the pen. What you are experiencing happens to writers who take their craft seriously, and you obviously take your writing seriously. You are a wonderful writer. You have written a great book. But now it is time to lay down the pen.”Three weeks ago, I told that story to a close friend of mine who was trapped in a never-ending loop of revisions to a project he had been working on for more than a year. My friend is not a writer, but his project is just as big as mine, and his identity was all wrapped up in it, just as mine had been. He listened to my story of Ray Bard and the Pen and saw himself in it.I was able to open the door of his cage, just as Ray Bard had opened the door of mine.Whose cage door will you open today? Someone else’s, or your own?Roy H. WilliamsBernie Madoff perpetrated the biggest Ponzi scheme in human history, and before he died in prison in 2021, he met Richard Behar face-to-face 3 times, had more than 50 phone conversations with him, and exchanged more than 300 emails. How did Bernie Madoff pull it off? Who were his accomplices? Why were his investors so gullible? And how can you make sure it never happens to you? You’ll hear the answers to these questions and others, plus a couple of recordings of phone conversations between the two men, as investigative reporter Richard Behar reveals The Real Bernie Madoff to roving reporter Rotbart on this week’s edition of MondayMorningRadio.com