I learned about advertising from listening to my eighth-grade football coaches. “Every play is a touchdown play if everyone on the team does their assignment properly.” That was one of the two things they bellowed at us every day. The other one was this: “If you succeed in football, you will succeed in life.” I […]
Twenty-three years ago, roving reporter Rotbart said to me, “You are three different people. 1. There is the person you see when you look in the mirror. 2. There is the person other people see when they look at you. 3. There is the real you, the person no one can see but God.” Objective […]
“Hoare writes with the license of the nonexpert; you can feel the delight he takes in being unbound by anything but his enthusiasms.” John Williams was describing Philip Hoare when he wrote that line, but he could easily have been describing me. As a nonexpert, I am free to speculate and arrive at my own […]
The limiting factors that will challenge business owners in 2022 are inflation, Covid, and the recruitment of good employees. The bad news is that I can give you the solution to only 1 of these 3 problems. The good news is that it’s the big one: the recruitment of good employees. Ivan Pavlov won the […]
Matthew McConaughey writes in his book, Green Lights, “Cool is a natural law. If it was cool for THAT time, then it is cool for ALL time. A fad is just a branch on Cool’s trunk; a fashionable fling whose 15 minutes can never abide, no matter how long she trends to try. Cool stands […]
When your intuitive mind senses a pattern and begins to search for the completion of that pattern, we call this, “curiosity”. But sometimes our searching for the completion of a pattern goes sideways, takes a shortcut, gets it wrong. The false logic that springs to mind as a result of this wrong turn is so […]
I’ve been saying for 20 years that I’m going to write a buddy movie about Jesus and the 12. I’ve got the whole thing in my head. But who am I to put words in the mouth of Jesus? The idea of creating a fictional Jesus who does and says things that are not in […]
“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with.” – Rebecca Solnit In just 25 words, Rebecca gave “hope” a new identity, introduced a new purpose for it, and caused us to imagine the beginning of a new adventure. She […]
My friend Don has a time machine. He takes me with him sometimes. You should come, too! Every person who rides in Don’s time machine is changed by it. The United States Department of Justice has booked passage on Don’s time machine for countless prison inmates. State and local governments and hundreds of rehab centers […]
Creativity is counterintuitive. You hate it when you are handcuffed and expected to do your best work, but the secret of doing your best work is to be handcuffed. Creative restraints bring out the best in you. When Sean Jones sold controlling interest in Spence Diamonds a number of years ago, I left that company […]
When Pennie and I were preparing to move away from the town of our childhood, I told my friend Phil that I felt I was holding onto the end of a rope in the half-light of limbo, and I had no idea where the other end of the rope was tied. I have never forgotten […]
“Unless your goal is to go backwards, you cannot make progress while staring into the rear-view mirror.” An opening statement like that would usually indicate a motivational message, but I’m doing something different today. I’m not backing up and I’m not moving forward. I’m pausing to look at the long road behind me and the […]
King Edward of England inherited control of Gascony in France from his mother, Eleanor of Provence, a French noble. But when the 27-year-old King of France decided in 1295 not to let the King of England control part of his country, Edward asked his English nobles to raise an army so that he could regain […]
His father called him Bunny because he was born on Easter Sunday. Bunny’s younger brother got a scholarship to Harvard. I’ve had both of Bunny’s phone numbers memorized for the past 48 years and I mention his name at least once a week. “Don’t make me say Loren L. Lewis” has been a private joke […]
In America, “generosity” implies an openhanded sharing of material resources. A restaurant can serve generous portions. A donor can be generous with their money. A friend can be generous with their pickup truck, their lawnmower, or their cabin at the lake. While some people are generous with their money; others are generous with their time. […]
Did you know that mood and mode share the same root word?1 I point this out because you cannot take your customer where you want them to go until you first meet them where they are. And where they are is in one of two different moods, or modes of shopping: transactional mode and relational […]
“I did all the right things. I touched all the bases in exactly the right order and I was highly rewarded for it. If you had done what I did, you would have been rewarded, too.” Abel didn’t say it, but Cain heard it. And in his rage, Cain sent his brother to the other […]
When you list “features and benefits” in your ads, you are speaking to the customer who is currently, consciously in the market for your product. What percentage of the public do you suppose that might be? One percent? I doubt it. In most categories, it is only a tiny fraction of one percent. But what […]
Jeffrey Eisenberg and I had lunch in a Japanese restaurant on April 28, 2007. I know this because he said something I quickly wrote down and later added to my Random Quotes database: “Marketers are paid to make promises that businesses have no intention of keeping.” Jeffrey wasn’t talking about marketing; he was talking about […]
The illustration at the top of today’s Monday Morning Memo features Indy Beagle wearing a yarmulke as he says, “The FBI just released its hate crime statistics for 2020. Are you ready? 36% of victims were attacked for being black, 10% were attacked for being white, and 9% were attacked for being Jewish. Of all […]
Did anyone besides me grow up reading the King James Bible? Shakespeare was 40 years old when King James commissioned a new translation of the Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek Bible into English, and he was 47 when it was published in 1611. During those 7 years, Shakespeare wrote a dozen plays including Othello, All’s Well That Ends Well, […]
A snapshot is a message in a bottle floating on the ocean of time. We had “picture day” at school when I was growing up. Is that still a thing? Our 8th grade yearbooks were delivered to Sequoyah Junior High the following summer, just before we started the 9th grade. There was no internet, no […]
You are too young to remember when there were no search engines. Sit. Relax. I’ll tell you about it. In the days before the dawning of the internet and the Age of Aquarius, every household was given a fat telephone book, and in the White Pages of that book, the names of companies and individuals […]
A branded keyword is one in which the name of your company appears. When a customer types the name of your company into a search string, they are looking for you, they believe in you. A friend might have recommended you, but usually it was your advertising that won them over. Either way, you have […]
A verb avalanche is a highly engaging description that causes you to see, hear, and feel action all around you. You dodge each tumbling word-boulder only to leap, jump, roll and scramble to dodge the mountainside of word-boulders that follow close behind it. causes, see, hear, feel, dodge, tumbling, leap, jump, roll, scramble, dodge, follow […]
Isaac Newton discovered that force – impact – is the result of mass x acceleration. This is why the impact of any statement you make = the size of the idea x the speed of successfully transferring it from your mind to the mind of your customer. Newton also discovered, “For every action there is […]
Edwin Twitmyer failed to close a loophole and it cost him the Nobel Prize. Twitmyer was working on his doctorate in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation was on The Effect of Emotions on the Patellar Reflex, or Knee Jerk. To make his research possible, Twitmyer built an elevated chair with a remote-controlled […]
My friend Brian Scudamore shared a story with me last week. Today I’m sharing it with you. Ted Leonsis was on a little commuter airplane that lost the ability to use its wing flaps and landing gear. Face-to-face with the possibility of imminent death, Ted wrote a list of 101 things that he promised himself […]
Bad marketing is about you, your company, your product, your service. “I, me, my, we, our…” Good marketing is about the customer, and how your product or service can elevate their happiness. “You, you, you, you, your…” With every purchase we make, we shout to the world who we are. We are attracted to products […]
Peter Raible was born in 1929 and he died in 2004. Of all the interesting things he said, this is perhaps my favorite: “We build on foundations we did not lay. We warm ourselves by fires we did not light. We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant. We drink from wells we did not […]
It is 3AM on a Thursday morning and I haven’t yet written the MondayMorningMemo. In fact, I haven’t even started it. The fact that you are reading it right now means that I did, in the end, get it done, such as it is. Reading is a form of transportation that takes you to a […]
You choose a frame every time you look through the lens of a camera, sketch an image with a pencil, or write words with a pen. But today you’re going to start choosing your frames consciously, rather than unconsciously. The job of the ad writer is to introduce a new perspective and trigger a new […]
A small chapel was built in Spain in the year 1150. Its name translates into English as, “Our Lady of the High Grasses,” because a religious icon was lost and then found in the high grasses or “tocha” nearby. For nearly 1,000 years, this chapel of Nuestra Señora de Atocha has been standing in the center […]
Your ability to speak and understand words is a function of the logical, rational, sequential, deductive-reasoning left hemisphere of your brain. Your left-brain hungers for accuracy and seeks to forecast a result.1 But the other half of your brain – the wordless right hemisphere – is wired for pattern recognition.2 The right hemisphere has no morals, […]
My friend Brian Scudamore said something so insightful that Starbucks printed it on 10 million coffee cups: “It’s difficult for people to get rid of junk. They get attached to things and let them define who they are. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that you are what you can’t let […]
You lead the world in client attraction, client acquisition, and client retention. A prospective client has made an appointment with you. I am invited to watch and take notes. These are those notes: In your first meeting with a prospective client, always have a white board or a pad of those giant “stickie notes” to […]
At the bottom of last week’s Monday Morning Memo, I asked, “Does it surprise you that the multibillion-dollar investment funds that used to buy manufacturing companies and mortgages are now bidding to buy successful home service companies at record-setting prices?” Immediately following my publishing of that comment, a client of my partner Ryan Chute asked […]
Have you noticed that 2-day deliveries are taking 4 to 5 days to arrive? Shipping companies can’t hire enough warehouse workers and delivery drivers. Have you noticed how long it takes to get the food you ordered? Restaurants can’t hire enough kitchen workers and wait-staff to serve their customers. Service companies nationwide are seeing just […]
An overwhelming force enters the marketplace. A train is coming. You wish it wasn’t. 1. Will you stand on the track with your back to the train and deny its existence? This business owner is saying, “Their customer is not our customer. They will not affect us.” He is doomed by his delusion. 2. Will you denounce […]
Information can be objectively true but have no relevance to you personally. This is the difference between objective reality and perceptual reality. The opposite is true, as well. You can perceive a person to be beautiful when that person is objectively average. You can also perceive information to be important when in truth, it is […]
“Don’t look where you don’t want to go.” Every mountain climber knows this rule, and I want you to know it, too. Your mind has conscious and unconscious power over your actions. When you imagine something, you begin bringing it to pass. What is the mountain you’re trying to climb? If you want a happy […]
Your assumptions about the intelligence of your customer will colorize and slant your ad writing in ways of which you are not even aware. Is the customer stupid? The writer of the 139th Psalm did not believe that customers are stupid. He said to God, “I will praise you; for I am fearfully and wonderfully […]
When a person assumes they have superior wisdom, they will offer you their advice. This is an unmistakable sign they think you are an idiot. I smile when a person says to me, “Can I offer you some friendly advice?” They instinctively use the word “friendly” as a qualifier because, deep in their guts, they […]
Bad ads waddle like a porcupine and make lots of little points. Good ads charge like a rhinoceros and make a single point powerfully. This is true regardless of your choice of media. Ad budgets are like that, too. When universities ask me to address their Advertising & Marketing majors just prior to graduation, I […]
Brian, good thoughts! The Neuroscience of Behavior Change link you sent was a great explanation of what Dr. Alan Baddeley calls “Procedural Memory.” You will recall this from The Magical Worlds Communications Workshop at Wizard Academy. Working Memory is consciousness, imagination, the thought you are thinking NOW. Semantic Declarative Memory contains things you can remember, but you cannot remember […]
1492: An Italian, funded by the Queen of Spain, sailed west to find the east, discovered a small island in the Caribbean, decided it was India, and sailed home to share the happy news. Ponce de León, Balboa, Cordoba, Cortés, Coronado and 24 other conquistadors were sent from Spain to bring home whatever they could find. […]
Hollywood has been feeding us romanticized history ever since Birth of a Nation splattered across the silver screen in 1915. Romanticized history is a lie. People will always believe lies that reinforce their worldview. Hollywood feeds us romanticized history because we love it, and the fictions we love best are those heroic stories of pioneers and […]
They did not do it because they thought it would be funny. Four members of the Jamaica Defense Force did it as a statement of pride and determination. Dudley Stokes, Devon Harris, Michael White and Caswell Allen traveled from their tropical island to snowy Canada hoping to make it into the 1988 Winter Olympics. Miraculously, they qualified. When […]
“Giving a microphone to every human being is the worst mistake we have made in human history.” ME: Are you saying social media was a mistake? “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.” – Dale […]
We were sitting in my backyard sharing a $600 bottle of wine he had brought. He said, “I got all 250 of my employees together on a Zoom call and told them, ‘You can disagree passionately and share your opinion while we are in the discussion phase, but when a decision has been made, you […]
If one were to assume that a blank sheet of paper – complete freedom – is the best way to coax maximum creativity from the human mind, one would be wrong. The highest levels of creativity are launched from the tightest constraints. Consider this request made a couple of weeks ago by a student in […]
I have long been fascinated by twilight. In fact, I often use that word to describe flavors that are complex and muted. But what is twilight, really? “Twilight is the illumination of the lower atmosphere when the Sun is not directly visible because it is below the horizon. Twilight is produced by sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere, illuminating the lower atmosphere so that Earth’s […]
The 2021 we’ve been waiting for has not yet begun. I was reminded of this when I received a meme from a friend. It said, “Omg, what’s the first thing you’re gonna do when YOU get the vaccine shot?? You’re gonna go back home, wait a month, get your second shot, go back home, wait […]
We live in a nation that has mistaken pleasure for happiness. Pleasure can be pursued directly, but not happiness. Think of the times you have felt truly happy. In each of those moments, you were feeling grateful for something; a special moment with a special person, a beautiful sunset, the arrival of good news… Happiness is […]
INDY BEAGLE’S DAY OFF A Story by Indy Beagle, Written in 3 Chapters CHAPTER ONE Spraytan and Boxwine arrived in a white Cadillac convertible fringed in blondes. Boxwine slid out the passenger door and reached for the nozzle while I was filling up my new Hudson pickup on the other side of the pump. I […]
Reading the title of this essay, “What Would You Have Me Do?” might cause you to imagine me defending myself, saying in effect, “I had no choice.” But I want you to hear those words in an entirely different tone of voice. “What would you have me do?” is a quiet question that I often […]
“In a bombing run over Kassel, Germany, Elmer Bendiner’s B-17 bomber was barraged by 20-millimeter shells which resulted in direct hits on their gas tanks. But none of the shells exploded. The next day, the maintenance chief found 11 shells inside the gas tanks, any one of which should have taken the plane down. When […]
Do you have a deep-seated belief, but you’re not sure where it came from? I have passionately rejected the idea of goalsetting for more than 50 years, but I’ve never understood why I felt so deeply about it until just a moment ago. Welcome to Sunday morning, November 29, 2020. The word “goal” has a […]
The partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in 1979 happened because of a burned-out lightbulb. When a particular safety system was malfunctioning, that bulb would light up and the technician would alertly take care of the problem. No one anticipated a burned-out bulb. Their mistake, according to my partner Cedric, is that […]
Works of art are made by people who have tasted one or more of the nine juices of life and they want you to taste the juice, too. This was the belief of a teacher who lived in India 2,000 years ago. His thoughts were chronicled in the Natya Shastra of the Hindus. According to […]
This is what good marketers see when they close their eyes: Win the heart and the mind will follow. The mind of the customer will always create logic to justify what their heart has already decided. We buy what we buy to remind ourselves – and announce to the world around us – who we […]
Every beginning starts with an ending. This is one of the principles of Pendulum theory. And the middle is always in the middle. When our fight with King George ended in 1783, thirteen powerless colonies became “The United States.” This was the beginning of the first America; 3 million citizens clinging to the eastern edge […]
Dr. Seuss had 1. the courage to make up new words, 2. the confidence that his readers would understand what these new words meant, and 3. he was a master of meter, the rhythm that is created when you arrange your words so that the stressed and unstressed syllables fall into patterns. There are a […]
Jacques Cousteau, the man who made the world care about the ocean, said, “A lot of people attack the sea. I make love to it.” But he was French. Not being French, I don’t see each day’s work as a choice between attacking or love-making. I see the future unfurl each morning as a fork […]
The economy, commerce, business, the stock market and free trade: all of these were built on our ability to sell things to each other. This is why the job of the ad writer is incredibly important. Television and radio, newspapers and magazines, direct mail and email, word-of-mouth and live chat, social media and outdoor, telephone […]
Seinfeld was “a show about nothing,” but we couldn’t get enough of it because each of us knew a George, an Elaine, and a Kramer. Rebecca Solnit’s book, The Faraway Nearby, reminds me of Seinfeld. I love this book, but I can’t really explain what it’s about. Solnit can write about nothing and keep you […]
If you are going to communicate effectively with a person, you need to know something about their beliefs. Most writers assume their readers see and believe as they do. And when they knowingly write to people who believe differently, their writing often takes the tone of an argument, leaning heavily on evidence and examples, with undertones of […]
Every book is an island that exists only in the mind of its writer, and the hope of every writer is that you will visit their island and be glad you did. But in The Faraway Nearby, her book about how we make our lives out of stories, and how we are connected by empathy, narrative […]
I was 24 and Phil was 60 and he was a most unusual man. Articulate but quiet, passionate but calm, and possibly the world’s greatest listener. By the age of 60, Phil had traveled to more than 40 countries, published stories, articles, and poems in more than 50 magazines, and assembled a personal library of […]
I sit with a bag of popcorn and watch the frantic climbers of the ladder of success. The climbers who capture my interest are the ones who consider themselves to be “clever.” But look closely and you’ll see their only “cleverness” is that they are uncommitted and disloyal. Every person is a steppingstone for them […]
These are the basic principles of Chaotic Ad Writing as taught by Wizard Academy: 1. Approach your subject from an unexpected angle. 2. Tell two stories at once, using the relationship between two things as a pattern to reveal the relationship between two other things. 3. Allow the listener to arrive at their own conclusion. In the New […]
Robert Frost died when I was four, so we never met face to face, but throughout my formative years I spent an hour with him every night before I fell asleep. Robert Frost taught me how to write. If you will write like Robert Frost, you must approach your subject from an unexpected angle. Few […]
Above ground, in the sunlight, grain silos provide much of our daily sustenance. Below ground, in the darkness, hides another kind of silo. But it is not the missile silo that is killing us. People are disappearing into the bone-dry quicksand of grain silos in less than 5 seconds. “Once entrapment begins, it happens very […]
You are flying your small airplane on a beautiful day. There is a tiny speck on your windshield. Like the North Star, it doesn’t move. This is why it escapes your notice. Had that speck begun moving across your windshield, you would have recognized it as another airplane. The fact that it doesn’t move means […]
Few things are as annoying as unsolicited advice, for within it lies the assumption of superior wisdom. (So when you tell a person your PLAN for what THEY should do, always be aware that they secretly want to punch you in the mouth.) Uh-oh. Did I just give you some unsolicited advice? Heavyweight Champion Mike […]
Notice that title. It does not say, “How to Write Scripts for TV Ads,” but, “How I Write…” I have my own weird way of doing it. TV writers use a split-page approach: Camera instructions in the left column. Audio in the right column. I chose not to do it that way. Back when the world was […]
457 BC – In the 7th chapter of the Old Testament Book of Ezra, King Artaxerxes of Persia issues a decree to rebuild Jerusalem which results in the rebuilding of that city under Nehemiah. Go west from Jerusalem across the Mediterranean, west across the Atlantic, then halfway across the landmass of North America and you’re in Central Texas. […]
Every Wall Street investor walks tip-toe on the ice above an ocean of data. Some of them will tell you they are ice-skating on that data, but don’t let them fool you. Misinterpretation of the data is the ever-present danger facing investors AND marketers. Every business owner is a marketer. Misinterpreted data creates a faulty […]
I lived in Muskogee, Oklahoma for 3 years before Merle Haggard released his hit song, “I’m Proud to be an Okie from Muskogee.” Even though I was only 12 at the time, I realized Brother Haggard’s song contained more corn than the whole state of Iowa. I laugh about being an Okie, but in truth, […]
When it is time to write an ad, and there is no felt need in the heart of the customer to which you can speak, make a paper cigar. Teddy Roosevelt was a man of improvisation. He knew his paper cigars. This allowed him to explain the process of making them in the fewest possible […]
The generation of male Okies to which I belong has the inexplicable tradition of mercilessly teasing their friends. It’s a dumb tradition, I know, but these are the rules: We tease only our closest friends. To say to strangers the sorts of things that we say to our friends would be to invite a fistfight. […]
When James Madison drafted the First Amendment, “the press” referred to the newspapers of our nation, such as the Pennsylvania Gazette owned by Benjamin Franklin, the most popular paper in the 13 colonies. Things rocked along swimmingly for about 200 years, then one day we walked outside to get the newspaper, sat down to read it, and […]
Two weeks ago, I appeared onscreen during a business symposium in Montreal to answer a series of questions about, “How to Advertise Effectively.” Toward the end of my hour with them, a person in the audience asked, “What do you consider to be the top 3 books about Advertising?” The moderator smiled and said, “I […]
You’ve heard it all your life: “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well.” This seems to be a worthy admonition on the surface. But let’s not stop at the surface. Let’s look into the heart of it. Those seven words, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing well,” assume that one has the ability to do […]
The junkyard dogs of the business community are those misfits and mavericks, renegades and rebels, innovators and improvisors who know that traditional wisdom is often more tradition than wisdom. Lee Iacocca was a junkyard dog. The son of an immigrant hot-dog vendor, Iacocca was the visionary who gave us the Ford Mustang. He was later […]
The beagle who lives in the right hemisphere of your brain has an entirely different set of skills than the nerd who lives next door. The beagle in my brain is named Indy. What is the name of the beagle in yours? Your beagle gives you impulsive intuition and instinctive insight. Your beagle gives you romping recklessness, […]
Three friends, who have never met each other, all sent me the same advice last week. What makes this convergence particularly interesting is that there was no common trigger. Each of the three messages I received was prompted by something different. The essence of those messages? You’ve got to leave things out. Genius is rarely […]
Jaguars and leopards are classified as “Big Cats” (Pantherinae) because they have a U-shaped hyoid apparatus in their throats which gives them the ability to roar. Cheetahs and pumas are just as big as jaguars and leopards, but they are classified as “Small Cats” (Felinae) because their ossified hyoid bones prohibit them from roaring. Among cats, […]
Q: What do Jesus and the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus have in common? A: Grown-ups told us stories about them when we were children. And then one day we realized the grown-ups had been lying. Yes, they did it because they loved us and they wanted us to be happy, but […]
Admiral Boulevard is the margin of the page in Tulsa. It is that place where a person can do well while doing no good. It is where discipline encounters temptation and good fortune meets bad luck. Admiral Boulevard is the margin Johnny Cash sings about in “I Walk the Line.” The Outsiders – both the […]
In recent days, you and I have spent more time at home than usual. Bart Giamatti was a professor of English Renaissance literature, the president of Yale University, and the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. In less than 3 minutes, Giamatti caused me to understand “home” in a new way. I believe his thoughts on the subject are […]
A few years ago, Yvon Chouinard was asked, “How do you know if you’re making the right move? He said, “It’s a lot of gut instinct. If you study something to death, if you wait for the customer to tell you what he wants, you’re going to be too late, especially for an entrepreneurial company. That […]
Meats and vegetables are ordinary, but put them on a stick and it’s Shish Kabob. Frozen Kool-Aid is frozen Kool-Aid; put it on a stick and it’s a popsicle. A marshmallow is one thing, but a marshmallow on a stick means a campfire. A frankfurter is a weenie, but a frankfurter on a stick is […]
Before we examine the blind spot, let’s stare into the face of the truth for a moment: People don’t bond with a company. People bond with a personality. Apple didn’t wait until they were category-dominant to develop a personality. They had personality in 1984 when they aired their famous SuperBowl ad. They had personality in […]
The content of your heart is what your heart contains. Are you content? Same spelling, different meaning. We distinguish these words only by the syllable we stress. Words are amazing, don’t you think? If you are content, (satisfied, happy, at peace,) it is because of the content of your heart. If the content of your […]
We shall pass through this time of uncertainty and emerge as happier people. We will enjoy a renewed sense of the importance of relationships. Our priorities will be altered. Optimism is about staying focused on positive outcomes. I don’t know Andy Bounds but he’s a good friend of Doug Burdon and Doug is a friend […]
NOTE FROM INDY BEAGLE – After the wizard recorded today’s MMMemo, he recorded a video called Advertising in a Time of Crisis. You should watch it. Now here is today’s memo… One of my heroes, John Steinbeck, twice followed in the footsteps of another of my heroes, Robert Louis Stevenson. Travels with a Donkey in […]
Perhaps you’ve noticed that fewer couples are choosing to get married. This decline in the marriage rate has been slow, but it is a cultural shift that makes me uneasy. The first reason for my uneasiness is that I believe marriage is more than a piece of paper. Something wonderful happens when a couple embraces […]
A contrast of opposites is the foundation of effective communication. A thing cannot exist without its opposite. But opposites aren’t always easy to detect. As an example, the opposite of “freedom” isn’t really “slavery,” because slavery no longer exists in our society like it did 160 years ago. We need to contrast freedom with something […]
Twenty-one years ago I got a phone call from my publisher, Ray Bard. “Roy, a man in Denver just bought 350 copies of your book from a bookstore in Denver and then faxed the receipt to my office with a question scribbled on it.” “What was the question?” I asked. “He wrote, ‘Is this enough […]
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