Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

A germ is a tiny thing, but it can divide and become two germs, then four.Four becomes eight and after only 28 more cycles you find yourself handcuffed in the sad darkness of more than one billion germs.One billion, seventy-three million, seven hundred and forty-one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-four germs, to be exact.And they are all trying to kill you.Unlike the more beautiful forms of life, germs carry only one set of chromosomes instead of two. They reproduce by dividing into two cells, a process called binary fission.It began as a tiny cut. But every time you open that wound, you increase the pain of it.This is why it is dangerous to nurse a grudge. When we remember painful moments, we increase their strength.Did you know that most of what we remember never really happened? At least not the way we remember it.When we remember something that happened, we do not recall the event objectively. None of us do. We reconstruct the event according to how it made us feel the last time we thought about it. We remember only the memory of our memory.The memories you carry in your mind are distorted reconstructions, at best. But the assumptions you made – especially the motives and intentions you ascribed to other people – quickly crystallize into “indisputable facts” in your mind.That last statement bears repeating: the motives and intentions you ascribe to other people quickly crystallize into “indisputable facts” in your mind.Therein lies a great danger. When you nurse a grudge, you distort reality by crystallizing emotional impressions into “hard facts” that you believe with all your heart. And the more often you revisit that pain, the tighter your handcuffs and the deeper your darkness.We’ve heard it before, but it is good for us to hear it again:“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”Every person deserves to be remembered for their best moment.Take that thought with you into the new year. When you remember a person, search the secret corners of your mind for an event, a moment, something that person said, or did, that makes you smile a little. Replace your dark, sad memory with one that is happy and light.Don’t do it for them. Do it for you.Have a happy new year.Roy H. WilliamsSide Hustles, Online Retailing, Military Contracts, Bras, Walt Disney, Firefighters, Business Exit Strategies, and Worms. Those were 8 of the Top 10 Episodes for MondayMorningRadio in 2023. This week, roving reporter Rotbart – with brilliant co-host and son, Maxwell – revisit the highlights of 2023 and share an audio preview of their new book, a Monday Morning Radio anthology offering insights from 25 of the most interesting guests in the history of the show. The book won’t be released until March, but you can begin profiting from its compiled wisdom the moment you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com

“The thing about the systematic reduction of a woman down to her parts is that she doesn’t always know it’s happening while it’s going on. Just one day she wakes up and realizes that all she was,was a face,a line of cleavage,two legs,a couple of hands,the swivel of her pelvis,the swell of her breast.We were just the disembodied parts in the display cases. One day we wake up to find out that the diamonds were never chocolate at all; they were brown the whole time. And our bodies, which are finally ours again, can move on all we want, though they forever remain a library of our lives — of the hurt and the shame, and of what we either allowed or didn’t allow other people to get away with.”– Taffy Brodesser-Akner, The New York Times, April 23, 2019“The number of ‘likes’ a photo receives is correlated with sexualization on Instagram. This partially confirmed Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of self-objectification, where young women generally see themselves as objects for viewers to judge through ‘likes.'”– Amber L. Horan,“Picture This! Objectification Versus Empowerment in Women’s Photos on Social Media”“In a society where media is the most persuasive force shaping cultural norms, the collective message we receive is that a woman’s value and power lies in her youth, beauty, and sexuality, and not in her capacity, inner-self, or passions.”– Sonia SuarezLike most men, I’ve long been fascinated with women. But what, exactly, defines “woman”? Definitions are so conflicted that I believe anyone who attempts to define “woman” is certain to be criticized. But when has that ever been an impediment to a curious mind? Today’s examination of the mystery and magic of women begins with a handful of quotes that show us “the perfect woman” that can exist only in the mind of a man. Psychologist Carl Jung calls her the anima. I call her, “The Imaginary Woman.”“What do we know about the goddesses, those elusive female figures, stronger than human males, more dangerous than male deities, who represent not real women but the dreams of real men?”– Alice Bach, Women in the Hebrew Bible, p. 17“I think the idealization of women is indigenous to men. There are various ways of idealizing women, especially sexually, based in almost every case on their inaccessibility. When a woman functions as an unobtainable love object, she takes on a mythical quality.”– James Dickey, Self Interviews, p. 153Miguel de Cervantes gave us a perfect example of the imaginary woman 418 years ago. Don Quixote sees a village girl in the distance – Aldonza Lorenzo by name – and says,“Her name is Dulcinea, her kingdom, Toboso, which is in La Mancha, her condition must be that of princess, at the very least, for she is my queen and lady, and her beauty is supernatural, for in it one finds the reality of all the impossible.”In the book, Don Quixote never meets Dulcinea. He sees her only from a distance. Like Helen of Troy – the face that launched 1,000 ships – Dulcinea is the anima, that perfect woman who can exist only in the imagination of a man. Everything Quixote accomplishes and endures is in her name and for her honor.“The girls in body-form slacks wander the High Street with locked hands while small transistor radios sit on their shoulders and whine love songs in their ears. The younger boys, bleeding with sap, sit on the stools of Tanger’s Drugstore ingesting future pimples through straws. They watch the girls with level goat-eyes and make disparaging remarks to one another while their insides whimper with longing.”– John Steinbeck“Freda was a dazzle, a virtual watercolor of a woman whose moods and mannerisms were as electric as her wild black hair. Her grin alone, a flash of Ipana-white teeth, head tossed back, stopped men in their tracks, delayed them in traffic, and threatened their wives so completely even the milkman was not allowed to deliver at Freda’s house.”“At the age of thirty-five Freda had had a mastectomy. The bow and arrow was her therapy, to strengthen what was left of her chest muscles. Her body had been perfect, a sculptor’s model, and she’d worn her summer shirts tied up high under her breasts, braless most of the time.She still wore her shirts knotted at the rib cage, but now they were men’s cotton pajama tops, the material thicker so you could not see through; but often when she bent forward I could see the scarred bony place where the breast had been. I never knew if she was bitter for the loss, if she stared at the deformity in the mirror and wished for a time when she’d been whole. She never said. I never asked. She was not a woman martyred by tragedy, nor was she at all acquainted with self-pity. She’d tried once to kill my stepfather, whom she’d always referred to by his first and last names, Bill McClain, the two words run together in her odd accent so it came out ‘Bimicain,’ sounding like a fungal cream.”– Lorian Hemingway, Walk on Water, p. 38-39“Half a dozen global studies, conducted by the likes of Goldman Sachs and Columbia University, have found that companies employing women in large numbers outperform their competitors on every measure of profitability.”– Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, The Atlantic, April 14, 2014Dr. Nick Grant once told me,“Men worry about high and low. Women worry about near and far.”I asked him what he meant. He said,“When a man is speaking, he is thinking subconsciously, ‘What do you think of me now that I’ve said this? Am I higher or lower in your estimation?’ But when a woman speaks, she is thinking, ‘What do you think of me now that I’ve said this? Does it make us closer, or further apart?'”You may not agree with that, but like I said at the start, “Anyone who attempts to define ‘woman’ is certain to be criticized.”An International Peace Institute study of 182 signed peace agreements between 1989 and 2011 found that when women are included in peace processes, there is a 35 percent increase in the probability that a peace agreement will last 15 years or more.The Wise Men of the Christmas story in Matthew chapter two have been celebrated for two thousand years. But what if they had been Wise Women instead?“Three wise women would have asked directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, made a casserole, brought practical gifts and there would be peace on earth.”Merry Christmas,Roy H. WilliamsRiyaz Adat was on death’s doorstep, withering away in excruciating pain in the transplant ward of Toronto General Hospital. This week on a special edition of Monday Morning Radio, roving reporter Rotbart narrates the uplifting true story of Riyaz’s miraculous survival and recovery — reading from the Christmas book Rotbart and his wife, Talya, wrote and published two years ago. Their book has since become a perennial holiday favorite. You can hear it right now at MondayMorningRadio.com. Merry Christmas!

I don’t know if he was was an American Patriot or a British Loyalist. All I know is that he owned a 1726 edition of “The Gentleman Angler,” a leather bound book on fly fishing.That book was 50 years old when Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence.Speaking of Jefferson, that same fly-fisherman bought a first edition of the complete, 4-volume leather bound set of “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies” written by Thomas Jefferson and published in 1829. This leads me to believe that our fly-fishing friend purchased his 103-year-old copy of the 1726 edition of “The Gentleman Angler” at about that same time, roughly 200 years ago.There were no modern books in his collection.I just realized something. Our fly-fishing friend was obviously an American Patriot, or he would not have purchased Thomas Jefferson’s “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies” in 1829.“Hang on a moment, Roy, you identified that man as a ‘Fly-Fishing Fanatic’ in the title of today’s MondayMorningMemo. What led you to call him that?”I call him a “Fly-Fishing Fanatic” because the majority of the 18 books in his collection were about fly fishing, including a 1750 edition, a 1760 edition, and an 1823 edition of “The Compleat Angler” by Izaak Walton.I bought his entire collection because books are cool, especially books that are centuries old.What would have been REALLY cool, though, is if this lover-of-books who lived during the years of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington also owned an original, 1605 first-edition of Don Quixote de La Mancha. Wouldn’t that have been cool?There are only 10 known copies of that book in all the world, and the last one to change hands sold 35 years ago for 1,500,000 dollars. There are no universities that own a copy, and there are no copies available to public view except the one that is owned by the citizens of the United States of America, and that one is closely guarded in our Library of Congress.Did you guess already?Our colonial fly-fishing friend did, in fact, own a 1605 edition of Cervantes’ masterpiece, and I bought it with the rest of his collection.The mystery is that my copy is roughly 8 inches by 11 inches, much larger than the 4-inch by 6-inch edition owned by the Library of Congress. My copy is, without question, extraordinarily old. The attributes that bring me to this conclusion are not easily faked.The cover is wrapped in the remains of old, brittle vellum – tightly stretched animal skin – and the pages are substantial and thick. It is not, however, the unauthorized pirated version published in Portugal in 1605, because mine has the correct 1605 frontispiece and title page, identical to that of the 4-inch by 6-inch 1605 edition held by the Library of Congress.My copy has the vellum cover and ties, like the 1605 Portuguese edition and the 1620 English edition, but it is neither of those.It appears to a centuries old Presentation Edition, if such a thing existed so long ago.The print seems to occupy about the same dimensions as the smaller, first book, but the pages themselves are bigger and more substantial, as if the original press was used on larger paper, leaving a lot of unprinted paper bordering the original-sized text.Meredith Mann, a specialist at the New York Public Library, writes,“Don Quixote was first printed in Madrid in 1605. It was an immediate success—the first edition quickly sold out, and new ones were printed both in Spain and throughout Europe. I can’t neglect mentioning that the Rare Book Division holds one of these scarce early printings, in a contemporary and typically Spanish binding of limp vellum, labelled by hand on its spine.” She wasn’t describing my book when she wrote that in 2015, but she might as well have been.We have, for the moment at least, a rare and unidentifiable unicorn.I have no doubt that my friends in the Cervantes Society will be happy to help identify our unicorn, and the Rare Book Division of the New York Public Library very generously offers to help answer questions for researchers.In any event, I am content. My Don Quixote is old and rare and wonderful; beautiful on the inside, but outwardly rough and tattered like Quixote, himself. This Quixote reminds me of the Quixote within its pages; he began in a library, but then went out and did the things he had read about. This book has lived what Hunter S. Thompson was talking about when he said,“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!'”Until we know for sure exactly what it is, I will keep it in a safe deposit box at the bank. If it turns out to be as unique as it currently appears to be, Pennie and I plan to loan it to an American university that will keep it on display to the public. We have no stomach for hoarding treasure that might bring pleasure to others.I will, however, keep my Thomas Jeffersons and my fly-fishing books in the grand library on the catwalk above the Eye-of-the-Storm lecture hall in the tower at Wizard Academy.Anything can happen! Never forget that.The best things in your life are yet to come. I see them in your future, waiting patiently for you to arrive so they can jump out and surprise you and make you dance with joy.I smile, thinking about your happiness.Merry Christmas.Roy H. WilliamsPS – I discovered this Colonial collection of books only because my friend Dewey Jenkins flew into town and gave me a large sum of money with which to, “go and find some more of those crazy things you love that always have interesting stories behind them.” Dewey came to Austin principally to celebrate our achievement of a wild and crazy goal we agreed upon 11 years ago. If you can find a copy of “Mr. Jenkins told Me,” I promise you will enjoy it and that it will teach you things that will make you a lot of money.Chris McShanag has worked alongside two physician entrepreneurs to build a business that provides virtual assistants to doctors, dentists, and veterinarians. The service worked so well that Chris and his partners finally realized it would work for any company. Many business owners contemplate moving from one business niche to another, but very few actually do it. This week, Chris McShanag shares with roving reporter Rotbart the ups and downs, and lessons gleaned from doing what has rarely been done. The time is now. The place is MondayMorningRadio.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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