You arrived naked.You will leave naked.You arrived without goods or money.You will leave without goods or money.Your first bath?Someone washed you.Your last bath?Someone will wash you. This is life. So why so much malice?Why so much envy?Why so much hate?Why so much resentment?Why so much selfishness? Be good to each other.Do the right things.We have […]

My 15-year-old son signed up for every free offer he could find.  But he was careful to use a pseudonym. The people who bought the house we lived in back when my son was 15 called me today to let me know that they are still receiving mountains of mail addressed to BC Williams,Booty C. […]

    Rob Kessler is a talented and ambitious entrepreneur. His company sells a brand of shirts with proprietary collar inserts designed to be worn without ties. Rob is the son of Richard Kessler who worked with the wizard for 35 years and became one of the most famous diamond jewelers in America before he […]

People think an ESOP is, “When you sell the employees the company.” But that’s NOT REALLY what happens in an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. Here is what really happens:1. The employees invest no money. Not a cent.2. The employees take no risk. They don’t have to guarantee the loan.3. The COMPANY is borrowing the money, […]

The strongest brands are the ones with the most distinctive personalities. But even a weak and faded personality is better than none at all. A brand with a personality is an imaginary character in the minds of the customers of that brand. It is similar to the characters in syndicated television shows, bestselling novels, and […]

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of. It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep, headstrong blue, and […]

  Elmer is trying to get permission to make some modifications on his home from the HOA. I just told him that, “When you’re done with that list, these could be next.”    1    A blood sacrifice, not much, just a few drops from a purebred Himalayan cat.    2    Approval from the neighborhood squirrel council (they’re very territorial).    3    A background check […]

The new “Structural” version is aboveand the original “Gestalt” version is belowand they are both awesome in their own wonderful way. – Hai, little sister of Bali

  Anya Cheng spent 15 years as an executive at Meta, eBay, and Target before launching her own venture. Today she uses AI and personalized styling to rent clothing to men who dislike shopping, but need to look good for professional and social occasions. Her two-year-old company has run a gauntlet of challenges, from limited […]

I found out about Joan. The way she talks, you’d think she was in Who’s Who. Well! I found out what’s what with her. Her husband owns a bank? Sweetie, nor even a bank account. Why that palace of theirs has wall-to-wall mortgages! And that car? Darling that’s horsepower, not earning power. They won it […]

Kameido Bridge by Yoshida, Hiroshi (1927)

These mist-covered mountainsAre a home now for meBut my home is in lowlandsAnd always will be. Someday, you’ll return toYour valleys and your farmsAnd you’ll no longer burnTo be brothers in arms.   Through these fields of destructionBaptisms of fireI’ve witnessed your sufferingAs the battle raged higher And though they did hurt me so badIn […]

“People who love to eat are always the best people.”– Julia Child “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”– J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Hobbit”, spoken by Thorin Oakenshield “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”– Aesop, “The Lion and The […]

    These words were written 33 years ago: “Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out […]

  Structural and Gestalt are two ways of thinking. Structural thinking is rational, logical, sequential, deductive reasoning. Gestalt thinking is intuitive, aspirational, global, big picture. Structural and Gestalt thinking are not typically considered to be functions of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, but if you are familiar with  hemispherical specialization, there is […]

If you have messed up royally, you might take comfort in Al Lewis’s Substack where he details the boneheaded choices and illegal antics of CEOs and executives. For most readers, Al’s independent newsletter is an opportunity to learn from other people’s mistakes, which is a lot less costly than learning from your own. Al has […]

The Irish tell the story of man who arrives at the gates of heaven and asks to be let in. St. Peter says, “Of course. Just show us your scars.” The man says, “I have no scars.” St. Peter says, “What a pity! Was there nothing worth fighting for?” We are rightly called to find […]

  Tell all the truth but tell it slant —Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truth’s superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind.– Emily Dickinson .

  Television is an extension of the human senses. When we watch television, our eyes and ears stretch to other times and places. Television allows us to see, hear, and experience things that are far away. A television recording does not present to us the world as it is. It reflects the sentiments that prevailed […]

“When we watch television, our eyes and ears stretch to other times and places. Television allows us to see, hear, and experience things that are far away. A television recording does not present to us the world as it is. It reflects the sentiments that prevailed during the time it was made. It shows us […]

  A timber-framed cottage was built in Frog Holt, England in the year 1450. Today, 575 years later, that cottage provides an important case study for business owners who are scaling their businesses upward. Douglas Squirrel is a technology leader and business scaling expert. According to Squirrel, if the army of artisans and technicians who […]

  “World class cereal-eating is a dance of fine compromises. The giant heaping bowl of sodden cereal, awash in milk, is the mark of the novice. Ideally one wants the bone-dry cereal nuggets and the cryogenic milk to enter the mouth with minimal contact and for the entire reaction between them to take place in […]

Harry Bosch and his daughter Maddie are sitting in Taylor’s Steak House late at night. Maddie is telling her Dad about the breach in relationship she is experiencing with her partner on the police force. M: “We just drive around in silence most of the time.” H: “You’ll get it back.” M: “I don’t know.” […]

“They came in the spring of the year to tell me you were dead.They spoke of war and pride, and how you’d laughed at fear,And called my name. All the while the sea grew black and still.Now you lie in a distant land, far from the summer dayWhen we left our tracks in the foamy […]

His name was Rab. He died in Bengal, the land of tigers, in 1941. On his way out the door, he said, “Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.” When Rab was sixteen, he published a book of poetry under the pseudonym Bhānusiṃha, which means “Sun Lion.” Those poems […]

“In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the […]

“He understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich.” – Oscar Wilde, speaking of Jesus in “De Profundis”. Oscar Wilde was 7 years old when Rab was born in Bengal, India.Strangely, I believe they would have been […]

  “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) “Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Philosophical Investigations” (1953)

    George Orwell wrote “1984” in this exact house on the island of Jura in the Highlands of Scotland. Two famous Shakespearean actors – husband Timothy West and wife Prunella Scales – crafted “Great Canal Journeys,” this fabulous series of documentaries, when they were in their 80’s. This excerpt is from Season 6, episode […]

  “This is a thin place. Only a tissue divides the material world from the world of the spirit.” – George MacLeod, speaking of the Isle of Iona in the Highlands of Scotland. This small isle, just three miles long by one mile wide, had a huge influence on the establishment of Christianity in Scotland, […]

“The Wise Men” by the weird, wacky, and wildly talented Marcel Flisiuk. If you would like to contact our main man Marcel, you can reach him at marcelflisiuk@yahoo.com – Aroo, Indy B.

  Talya Rotbart is shepherding our roving reporter and his deputy, Maxwell, this week in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, that lovely city where the 2026 Winter Olympics will be held. The Rotbarts are being escorted by Maxwell’s sister, Avital, and her husband Ben, who live in vivacious Vicenza, Italy, just two hours away. The roving Reporter […]

“Travel is not compulsory. Great minds have been fostered entirely by staying close to home. Moses never got further than the Promised Land. Da Vinci and Beethoven never left Europe. Shakespeare hardly went anywhere at all – certainly not to Elsinore or the coast of Bohemia…. Travel, which was once either a necessity or an adventure, […]

“In my somnolent state I also thought about the Czech Republic. The border would appear in my mind and that gentle, beautiful country beyond it. Over there, everything is lit up by the Sun, gilded with light. The fields breathe evenly at the foot of the Table Mountains, surely created purely for the purpose of […]

At 84 years old and married for more than 50 years, actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales take a moonlit gondola ride in Venice. “Great Canal Journeys,” season 5, episode 1, “Venice”

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We continue to watch Desert Drifter and miss our friend. – Indy and Roy

Pru Scales enacts a bit of French classical drama and her husband, Timothy West, does a bit of Shakespeare’s “Henry II” in the world’s oldest, unrestored theater in Drottningholm, the Royal country retreat in Sweden: “Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a […]

On Fri, Apr 18, 2025 at 2:32 PM Stephen Semple <stephensemple@wizardofads.com> wrote: Hey Roy and Jake. I like sharing with you some of the success that have been happening.   Roy, when I started the podcast I committed to the idea of being consistent and staying with it.  That is what I learned from you.  Don’t […]

  Michael Dell and Shaquille O’Neal planned their work and worked their plans. Dell understood the formulas, and followed the rules, of efficiency. O’Neal understood the formulas and followed the rules of basketball. Each of them faithfully followed a Structural plan. Michael Dell invented nothing, improvised nothing, and innovated only once. But that single innovation […]

“Last of the Summer Wine” is a BBC sitcom that ran 31 seasons, from January, 1973 through August, 2010. “The thing about growing up is that you get fewer scabs on your knees, but more internal injuries. Do you remember the day when that little yellowhammer flew straight at the window? You picked it up. […]

Dogzilla poster by Wizard of Ads partner Robin Kressbach.Dogzilla radio ad by Wizard of Ads partners Jacob Harrison, Dave Nevland, and Devin “Spraytan” Wright.

“Thank You” to our friend Ryan Deiss for sending this to our attention. – Indy Beagle

Lewis Caroll was a mathematics professor who stuttered when in the presence of anyone except young children. LC took the 3 young daughters of his boss on a boat ride down a canal on July 4, 1862, in a rowboat traveling on the canal from Folly Bridge, Oxford, to Godstow for a picnic outing, 10-year-old […]

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Here are some relational activation ads to be used in direct mail postcards. When you give Thrift Giant the clothes you no longer wear, you help a new friend get a better job. And you get delightful new closet space in return. 

 Drop clothing off at 
1. our 10 Thrift Giant locations 
    (List […]

Dear Roy and Pennie, Talya and I found this quaint restaurant with tables in its wine cellar and thought you’d love this place. (I don’t drink, but thought it appropriate to pose with a glass of wine — which our son-in-law ordered.) If your future plans bring you to Vicenza, Italy, this is one stop you […]

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https://youtube.com/shorts/G2tihYCvfXM?si=8ZvHGiCDzuZcWLt3

Have You Ever Clicked the WIKIPEDIA Treasure Chest? Roving reporter Rotbart will be away on a secret mission in Italy for the next two weeks. He didn’t tell us exactly what it was, but here are our top 3 guesses. One: He is studying the original manuscripts of Leonardo Da Vinci for a special series of investigative […]

.   My love must be a kind of “blind” love. I can’t see anyone but you. Are the stars out tonight? I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright.I only have eyes for you, dear. The moon may be high, but I can’t see a thing in the sky.‘Cause I only have eyes for […]

  Sales Activation within a Relational Ad Campaign Last week I spent 11 hours with 4 people who came to Austin. One of them owned a large company. The other 3 were his key people. They told Jacob, the president of Wizard of Ads, that they have long admired the 1-800-GOT-JUNK ad campaign, so they […]

  Are You Exit Ready? Business is a funny thing. When you are ready to sell your business, it is too late to get ready to sell your business. Serious buyers want to see a data room that proves you are making the profits you told them about. If they like what they see, they […]

Michael Drew helps authors turn their big ideas into nationwide influence and income. He has guided more than 130 book authors onto major bestseller lists, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. His methods aren’t just for seasoned authors. Michael has helped business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals turn their ideas into books […]

  “If we train our children only to harvest, who will plant the seed?” I wrote those words after contemplating the short-sightedness of so-called, “performance marketing,” on March 11, 2010. Performance marketing is the new name for direct response advertising. It works best when it extracts the value from a well-known brand. Its objective is […]

  A 17-WORD DISMISSAL “He is an anxious, envious, frightened little man with a sharpened stick, stabbing blindly at the dark.” (A friend of mine said this recently about someone he does not like. I wrote it down because I felt it was artfully phrased. – Indy Beagle) The TV campaign featuring the Chihuahua mascot, […]

.  “And it rained a sickness. And it rained a fear. And it rained an odor. And it rained a murder. And it rained pale eggs of the beast.” “Rain fell on the towns and the fields. It fell on the tractor sheds and the labyrinth of sloughs. Rain fell on toadstools and ferns and […]

“I wanted to take her hand. I wanted to brush her cheek with my fingertips. I wanted to tell her that she was the first beautiful thing I had seen in three years. That the sight of her yawning to the back of her hand was enough to drive the breath from me. How I […]

  “I am a small poemOn a page with roomFor another. Share with meThis white field,Wide as an acreOf snow, clearBut for these tinyMarkings like theSteps of a bird.Come. Now. This is the troughOf the wave, theSeconds afterLightning, thinSlice of silenceAs music ends,The freeze beforeThe melting. Hurry. Lie down beside me.Make angels. Make devils.Make who […]

The video below contains the lines from Andrew that you heard in the Monday Morning Memo for April 7, 2025, “Incisive and Insightful.” The first lines you heard are at the beginning of this video. The last lines you heard are at the end. But you should watch the whole thing if you have time. […]

. 80,268,548 views May 13, 2013   [NOTE FROM THE SINGER/SONGWRITER] lately i’ve been waking up at 4 or 5 a.m., turning things over in my head. so much to think about, so much to break down and process and decide. i’m only at the beginning, but it has always been important to me that everything […]

  “A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made […]

Waters of March A stick, a stone, it’s the end of the roadIt’s the rest of a stump, it’s a little aloneIt’s a sliver of glass, it is life, it’s the sunIt is night, it is death, it’s a trap, it’s a gun The oak when it blooms, a fox in the brushThe knot of […]

The reinvention of Gigi Meier is nothing short of remarkable. After three decades in banking — reaching the boardroom level of a multi-billion-dollar institution — Gigi reinvented herself as a successful romance writer. Gigi has published 16 books, some quite steamy, across three ongoing series. While you might expect Gigi to draw on her extensive […]

I was watching a few of Evan Puschak’s “Nerdwriter” videos when I heard my own inner voice composing a thank you note to him. In the quiet of my mind, I told Evan that I have always found his analysis of literature, movies, music, photographs, and paintings to be incisive and insightful. Incisive Insightful Those […]

Do you remember Anni’s “Pick of the Week” about her and Boz Scaggs? This lady had a reaction very similar to Anni’s reaction.

. . The video below is one of my favorites, ever, because of the shaker player in between Lani Hall on the left (Bali) and Karen Philipp (me). Keep an eye on him! He’s the star of the show!– Hai In the 1958 movie “South Pacific,” the pyramid-shaped Makana Mountain on Kauai’s north shore was […]