• Home
  • Memo
    • Past Memo Archives
    • Podcast (iTunes)
    • RSS Feed
  • Roy H. Williams
    • Private Consulting
    • Public Speaking
    • Pendulum_Free_PDF
    • Sundown in Muskogee
    • Destinae, the Free the Beagle trilogy
    • People Stories
    • Stuff Roy Said
      • The Other Kind of Advertising
        • Business Personality Disorder PDF Download
        • The 10 Most Common Mistakes in Marketing
          • How to Build a Bridge to Millennials_PDF
          • The Secret of Customer Loyalty and Not Having to Discount
          • Roy’s Politics
    • Steinbeck’s Unfinished Quixote
  • Wizard of Ads Partners
  • Archives
  • More…
    • Steinbeck, Quixote and Me_Cervantes Society
    • Rabbit Hole
    • American Small Business Institute
    • How to Get and Hold Attention downloadable PDF
    • Wizard Academy
    • What’s the deal with
      Don Quixote?
    • Quixote Wasn’t Crazy
      • Privacy Policy
      • Will You Donate A Penny A Wedding to Bring Joy to People in Love?

Monday Morning Memo

War and Peace

August 15, 2022

Before Gandhi, there was Tolstoy. When Leo Tolstoy was 54, he wrote a book about the ethical teachings1 of Jesus as revealed in the Sermon on the Mount. For the rest of his life, Tolstoy advocated the use of peaceful, non-violent forms of resistance in the struggle for social change. Gandhi – the person we associate […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Man Bites Dog

August 8, 2022

Predictability is the silent assassin of persuasion. When static electricity saturates the sky, lift the lightning rod of the new, the surprising, and the different and let the concert begin. The booming of the big bass drum will make the draperies tremble as the lasers light up the night. Give that anxious electricity something to […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

How to Recruit and Retain Good Employees

August 1, 2022

Rugged individualism is the essence of America. It is also the reason that we, as a people, feel isolated and lonely. Our focus on personal, individual success is the reason we feel disconnected from one another. This is happening even in our marriages according to Ian Kerner, author of the book, So Tell Me About […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

My Favorite Francis

July 25, 2022

I’m telling you up front that I’m not sharing anything valuable or useful today, but don’t let that keep you from continuing. Today we’re going to talk about 7 guys named Francis. Alan Lightman is not one of those 7 guys. Lightman is a past professor at Harvard and a current professor at MIT and […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Gerald

July 18, 2022

Gerald was an unwanted third son to his father, so his mother took Gerald on long walks each Saturday night so they would not be available when his father came home drunk. To avoid a beating, Gerald and his mother would wait outside in all weathers until his father fell asleep. Gerald was 16 when […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Inflection Point

July 11, 2022

The long-ago Greeks had two words for time: Kronos (χρόνος) and Kairos (καιρός). Kronos is chronological time, sequential time, the metered time of the regimented left hemisphere of the brain. Kairos is an inflection point, a time-window of indeterminate length during which something consequential happens. On the other side of the Kairos, things are forever […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Magical Thinking

July 4, 2022

If you win the heart, the mind will follow. The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided. In 1981, Dr. Roger Sperry won the Nobel Prize for his documentation of brain lateralization, which basically says that we don’t have 1 brain divided into 2 hemispheres as much as we have […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Just Keep Showing Up

June 27, 2022

It’s impossible not to like someone who likes you. This is why the secret of success is to just keep showing up. My friend Brett was studying theater in college until the day a professor told him to lie on his back, close his eyes, and “breathe blue.” Brett did his best, gave up, got […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Inside the Box, or Out?

June 20, 2022

My partner Kyle started a non-profit called “Neighbor in Need” after a developer made a comment that caused Kyle to become concerned about all the elderly people in his neighborhood who didn’t have the money to repair their homes, buy hot water heaters, replace air conditioners, or fix roof leaks. So Kyle decided to do […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

A Colorful Cast of Characters

June 13, 2022

The ancient Greeks understood psychology a lot better than they understood science. Hippocrates, the father of the Hippocratic Oath, believed that our information-gathering and decision-making processes are determined by an imbalance of 4 bodily fluids – red blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm – two of which have never existed in the form that […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

The Promise I Made You

June 6, 2022

I made you a promise on November 22 in a Monday Morning Memo called “Time Travel”. This was how that memo began: “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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Wide & Shallow vs. Narrow & Deep

May 30, 2022

A successful cluster manager was one of 36 people in a class I taught 2 months ago. When we went into Q & A, he asked for suggestions about what to do with a poorly performing radio station in his cluster. He expected me to suggest a format change, or a clever promotional campaign using […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

What You Do Today is Important

May 23, 2022

What you do today is important, because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. What will you do today? “If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.” – Wes Jackson I knew a man who used to say, “I don’t ever get my hopes up. […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Do You See?
Do You Stand in Wonder?
Do You Take Off Your Shoes?

May 16, 2022

I write advertising because I’m good at math. According to my calculations at age 18, the odds of making a living as an ad writer were 117,682% higher than the likelihood that I could make a living as a poet. But really, poems and ads are the same thing. Good poems promote a new perspective […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

What They Didn’t Teach Me at Oxford, I Learned in Jail

May 9, 2022

In his 3,000-year-old book, Ecclesiastes, King Solomon tells us of the stages and phases of his life, his fads and fancies, his regrets and realizations. Then he gives us his final conclusions and advice. Next to the Good News of John, Ecclesiastes is probably my favorite book in the Bible. Oscar Wilde wrote a similar […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

When to Write It, and When Not.

May 2, 2022

If relationships matter to you at all, don’t put your negative emotions in writing. Spoken words land softly on their feet like a cat that has fallen from a tree. But written words often land with a thud, and the crack of a fractured relationship. My son Jacob taught me an African proverb last week, “The […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Affinity Groups

April 25, 2022

An affinity group is composed of people who share an identity marker. Backpackers are an affinity group. Corvette drivers are an affinity group. If you like to sew, you are part of an affinity group. Every sports team has “fans,” an affinity group. If you like wine, you are in that affinity group. People who […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Caribbean Santa

April 18, 2022

Thirty-five years ago, he patrolled a stretch of beach as long as two football fields on a Caribbean Island whose name I cannot remember. He pushed a wheelbarrow full of ice as he pranced from one end of his empire to the other, the music of his voice rising and falling over the sound of […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Not Happy With Your Profits?

April 11, 2022

It is easier to increase sales than it is to cut expenses. In the words of Adrian Van Zelfden, “You cannot shrink your way to profit.” Cost-cutting CEO’s are hailed as geniuses by Wall Street and lauded as saviors by private equity firms because cost-cutting always works in the short-term. But that’s not how you […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Elegant Absurdity

April 4, 2022

The choice between a good thing and a bad thing is never a hard choice. The only hard choice is between two good things. Science is a good thing. And so are the Arts. Why choose? Rube Goldberg became wildly famous 100 years ago because his elegantly absurd inventions combined Science with Art. Elegant absurdity surprises […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

How to Win in Business

March 28, 2022

The great game of BUSINESS does not come with an instruction manual. The assumption of most players is that Customer Acquisition – lead generation – sales opportunities – is how you win the game. But the understanding of a Highly Skilled Player goes 2 levels deeper: Customer Acquisition (lead gen) Conversion (closing the sale) Remove […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Let’s Go Time-Traveling

March 21, 2022

Gordon Atkinson’s Land of La Mancha is the finest literary work of loneliness that has been chronicled since Henry David Thoreau spent 2 years on Walden Pond. Here is how Thoreau opens that most iconic of early American books: “When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Was I Wrong in 2011?

March 14, 2022

In 2011, the attention of our nation was consumed by the economic problems caused by the sub-prime mortgage debacle of 2008. That’s why everyone thought I was crazy when I wrote these words… “Western Society is in danger of becoming self-righteous, sanctimonious and insufferably judgmental. If history is to be our guide, the next 20 years […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

The Purpose of Heroes

March 7, 2022

Johnny Molson sent me a video of an elderly Ukrainian woman walking up to a heavily armed Russian soldier, the point man of a force that was occupying her town. Looking him in the face, she said, “Put sunflower seeds in your pocket so flowers will grow when you die.” * The note that came […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Look, See, and Feel.

February 28, 2022

Motivational speakers often tell their followers to visualize accomplishing their desired outcomes; to mentally go into the future and feel the joy of that not-yet-happened moment. Visualization is the mental rehearsal of possible future events. When the word “rehearse” was invented more than 700 years ago, it meant to hear again; to re-hear. I am […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Branding is Not Informational.
It is Relational.

February 21, 2022

The goal of branding is to build a relationship with future customers. When a relationship has finally been established, you become who these people think of immediately – and feel the best about – when they, or any of their friends, need what you sell. Direct marketers often disdain mass media because it doesn’t allow […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

When Words are Images
and Images are Words

February 14, 2022

There are four kinds of thought. Verbal Thought is hearing a voice in your mind. Analytical Thought is deductive reasoning that seeks to forecast a result. Abstract Thought embraces fantasy and all things intangible. Symbolic Thought relates the unknown to the known. The pattern-recognition power of the right brain connects new ideas [abstract thought] with known information [analytical thought] in […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Storm’s Passion

February 7, 2022

Storm is a character in my mind. No, not so much a character as a caricature, an icon, an archetype. I occasionally meet Storm in the real world. Storm is sometimes male, sometimes female. You’ve met Storm, too. Storm is easily infatuated.  Storm is in love with Love.  Storm talks a lot about passion. But […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Carl Jung, Peter Pan, and Egypt

January 31, 2022

You and I spoke last week about shadows being “holes in the light” that speak of past actions and their consequences. We are not the first to make that observation. The ancient Egyptians believed your shadow was the spent energy coming off you and dying in this world. Your shadow was separate from you but […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Shadows and Silhouettes

January 24, 2022

Your actions cast a shadow across space and time, affecting people directly – or indirectly – for generations. You already know this. The rest of what I’m about to tell you is speculative, but I believe I am right: Visually, a shadow is a hole in the light. A shadow carries the distorted shape of […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Correct and Expected, Right and Proper

January 17, 2022

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

A Second Reality

January 10, 2022

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

At the Fingertips of an Ad Writer

January 3, 2022

“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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

These Will Be Your Challenges in 2022

December 27, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Old Cars in Barns

December 20, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Your Inquisitive Mind

December 13, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Me and New Orleans

December 6, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

You and Your Lottery Ticket

November 29, 2021

“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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Time Travel

November 22, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Creative Handcuffs and Isaac Asimov

November 15, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Your Time in the Elevator

November 8, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Looking in the Rear-View Mirror

November 1, 2021

“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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

The Favorite Con of the Plantagenet Kings

October 25, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

On a Rainy Autumn Day…

October 18, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Which Type of Generous are You?

October 11, 2021

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. […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Meet Your Customers Where They Are

October 4, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Lonely and Ignored, Outcast and Rejected

September 27, 2021

“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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

The Path that Brought You Here

September 20, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Do You Deliver What You Promise?

September 13, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right*

September 6, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

No One in the Bible Spoke English

August 30, 2021

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, […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Floating on the Ocean of Time

August 23, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Unbranded Search and The Yellow Pages

August 16, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Branded vs. Unbranded Keywords

August 9, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

How to Write a Verb Avalanche

August 2, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

A Lesson in the Physics of Advertising

July 26, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Twitmyer’s Mistake

July 19, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

20 Minutes Left to Live

July 12, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Identity Marketing

July 5, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Peter, Brian, Richard and Indy

June 28, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Such As It Is

June 21, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Framing: You’ve Been Doing It All Your Life

June 14, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Lost and Found

June 7, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Our Need to Solve a Mystery

May 31, 2021

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, […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

You Are What You Can’t Let Go Of

May 24, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

So You Say You’re an Expert…

May 17, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

The Sneak Attack to Expect When Selling Your Company

May 10, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

The Obstacle/Opportunity of 2021

May 3, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Train Tracks and Race Cars

April 26, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

How to Sell Diamonds and Other Illogical Things

April 19, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Why You Should Reinvent the Wheel

April 12, 2021

“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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Is the Customer Stupid?

April 4, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Four Big Words of Encouragement

March 29, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

10 Tips for Advertisers

March 22, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Methods of an Ad Writer

March 15, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

The Ever-Changing Song of America

March 8, 2021

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. […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

One Too Many John Wayne Movies

March 1, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Hot Country. Cold Sport.

February 22, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Our Biggest Mistake Ever

February 15, 2021

“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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Disagree and Commit

February 8, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Those Glorious Creative Handcuffs!

February 1, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

The Twilight of Consciousness

January 25, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

The Bounce: How High? How Long?

January 18, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

The Secret of Happiness

January 11, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Indy Beagle’s Day Off

January 4, 2021

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

What Would You Have Me Do?

December 28, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

A Message in a Bottle

December 21, 2020

“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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Why I Don’t Believe in Goalsetting

December 14, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

The Absence of Goodness

December 7, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

The Nine Juices of Life

November 30, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Inside Your Eyelids

November 23, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Like I Was Saying…

November 18, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Do You Seuss?

November 16, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Battleground or Playground?

November 9, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Is Your Company Out of Rhythm?

November 2, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Seinfeld and Solnit

October 26, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

How to Walk Through an Advertising Minefield

October 19, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Islands of Writers

October 12, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

My Inheritance from Phil

October 5, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

God’s Dog

September 28, 2020

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 […]

Read | Listen | Download (right click to save)

Next Page»
«Previous Page

Email Newsletter

Sign up to receive the Monday Morning Memo in your inbox!

Download the PDF "Dictionary of the Cognoscenti of Wizard Academy"

Random Quote:

“Two different writers frame two different ways of seeing the world. And so it goes.”

- Indy Beagle, in the rabbit hole of the MondayMorningMemo, Dec. 27, 2021

The Wizard Trilogy

The Wizard Trilogy

More Information

  • Privacy Policy
  • Wizard Academy
  • Wizard Academy Press

Contact Us

512.295.5700
corrine@wizardofads.com

Address

16221 Crystal Hills Drive
Austin, TX 78737
512.295.5700

The MondayMorningMemo© of Roy H. Williams, The Wizard of Ads®