Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Dwight D. Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, in 1890. He was the President of the United States when I was born in Dallas, Texas, 68 years later.People called me “Little Roy.” People called him “Ike.”I worry that we have forgotten him.Ike Eisenhower graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1915 when he was 24 years old. His superiors noticed his organizational abilities, and appointed him commander of a tank training center during World War I.In 1933, he became aide to Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur, and in 1935 Ike went with him to the Philippines when MacArthur accepted the post of chief military adviser to that nation’s government.On June 25, 1942, Ike Eisenhower was chosen over 366 senior officers to lead the Armed Forces of the United States in World War II.After proving himself on the battlefields of North Africa and Italy in 1942 and 1943, Ike Eisenhower was appointed supreme commander of Operation Overlord – the Allied invasion of northwestern Europe.Ike was now commanding the Armed Forces of all 49 Allied nations – including Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China – in the war against Hitler and his minions. He personally planned and supervised two of the most consequential military campaigns of World War II: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy in 1944.Ike Eisenhower never talked like a tough guy, but only a fool would call him “weak” or “woke.”This past July, Robert Reich – an eloquent and intelligent spokesperson on the left – quoted a passage from an anti-war speech that Ike Eisenhower made at the beginning of his presidency in 1953. Reich ended his quote just prior to Ike’s unsettling reference to the crucifixion of Christ.Eloquent and intelligent people on the right refused to believe that a celebrated warrior had ever made a speech that could be classified as “anti-war.”Curious, I decided to get to the bottom of it.Here is a link to the complete transcript and original recording of the speech that President Dwight D. Eisenhower made before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953, from the Statler Hotel in Washington, D.C.This is the passage from that speech that got everyone worked up:“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.This world in arms is not spending money alone.It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals, it is some 50 miles of concrete pavement.We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”The title of that speech was originally “Chance for Peace,” but due to the vivid mental image contained in the middle of the speech, it quickly became known as the “Cross of Iron” speech.Words have impact when they contain vivid mental images.I own guns, but I am not a hunter. Neither my family nor my friends have ever seen my guns. But in the unlikely event of a home invasion, I am adequately prepared to protect

Packaging is the art of presentation.Exciting packaging improves conversion.There are two important parts of packaging:WHAT IS IN THE PACKAGE?When package “A” and package “B” are the same price and contain the same basics, they are equal. But when package “B” contains something extra that people would love to have, the sale will always go to package “B”.Be the competitor that offers package “B”.The “something extra” that you include in your package has to be something that people actually care about. It doesn’t have to cost you a lot; people just have to want it. This is where most businesses screw up. They create a package by adding something extra that no one really cares about. Those packages always fail, so the business owner foolishly concludes that packaging doesn’t matter.It doesn’t take a lot of money to build an attractive package. But it does take a lot of time, energy, and creativity.And then it takes even more time and energy to source the “something extra” that will go into the package.SUMMARY: When your competitors sell the same things that you sell at similar prices, include a highly desirable “something extra” in your package.HOW IS THE PACKAGE PRESENTED?Two major movie theaters in Austin are showing the movie, “Gabby’s Dollhouse.” Both theaters have extensive menus and good food. Pivot your dining table out of the way. Sit down in your cozy recliner. Swing the table back across your lap. Order delicious things. Your smiling server will deliver whatever you want and keep doing so throughout the movie.When young children go to the movies, adults go with them. This is why both theaters offer an extensive selection of beer, wine, and cocktails.But only one of the theaters is offering a package that includes a map, some stickers, a plastic cup, and some plastic ears like the ones worn by Gabby, the main character in the movie. Every child will receive the movie memorabilia. Adults will not.Pennie and I waited too long to buy tickets for our two youngest grandkids.Are you ready for this? Every seat was sold on every screen for every seating time for “Gabby’s Dollhouse” at the theater offering the memorabilia made of paper and plastic. They even sold all the seats on the front row that are way too close to the screen.We had to take our grandchildren to the newer theater in the better shopping center. That huge theater was completely empty except for the four of us along with two other families. Eleven people in all.SUMMARY: Pennie and I were thankful that our grandkids didn’t know about the movie memorabilia at the other movie theater.2026: The Year When Challengers Overtake Market LeadersI believe that 2026 will be a year when consumer confidence* is in decline.As a result, most businesses will reduce their payroll and their advertising in an attempt to “cut their way to profitability.”They will do this because it makes sense if you don’t think about it.But smart-and-hungry challengers who do think about it will hit the accelerator instead of the brakes. They will do this because they understand that market share is easier to steal from the big boys when consumer confidence is in decline.The painful problem for these smart-and-hungry challengers is that they will be competing for a larger slice of a shrinking pie. So big gains in market share will show up as only small gains in top line revenue.But when consumer confidence returns, “All hail the new market leader.”Hitting the accelerator instead of the brakes is how smart-and-hungry challengers will overtake market leaders in 2026.Are you beginning to understand why I taught you about the...

Peacocks want to be admired.Parrots repeat only what they have heard.Each of us has a little bit of Peacock in us, and perhaps a little Parrot, too.(I admit it about me. You should admit it about you.)Long ago I saw a movie in which an old Greek man says to a much younger man from England,“A wise old Turk once told me…”The young Englishman interrupts him and says,“What! A wise old Turk? I thought the Greeks and Turks hated each other.”The old Greek sighs, then says,“When I was young, I believed that there were only two kinds of people; Greeks who were good, and Turks who were bad. Then one day I met a good Turk. So I decided there were only two kinds of people; good people and bad people.”The Greek then looks into the eyes of the Englishman and says,“Now I believe there are just people.”On September 18th, I transcribed a single paragraph of an essay about the death of Charlie Kirk and posted it in my random quotes database:“After every mass shooting, after every fresh example of political violence, after every round of one side recriminating the other side for not holding up their end of the social contract, we need to hear what is right, what is true, what is good. That need is why we commit to memory lines of poetry, passages of literature, and—for religious believers—particular verses. Because when crisis arrives and the world presses in on us, we must work to remember what we’re about and what we hold to. Sometimes those things hold us more than we hold them, but only when we know them in our bones. So we keep telling ourselves, and each other, what is true and good.”“We should be telling each other this week to weep with those who weep.”– Nick Catoggio, Sept 18, 2025I have captured 7,761 quotes over the past 25 years. More than half of those were transcribed from novels, movies, television shows, emails and texts. About 10 percent of them are things I have written or said or thought or prayed; things that I wanted to archive somewhere lest I forget them. The rest of them are comical quips, well-worded witticisms, and profound thoughts uttered by friends and acquaintances that I quickly scribbled down.The Random Quotes database is off-site storage of ideas that I can access from anywhere in the world.You can access it, too. A new random quote will appear each time you refresh the page at MondayMorningMemo.com.I am writing this to you on September 22, 2025. The newest quote in the database is a text that was sent by Jeffrey Eisenberg to Tom Grimes and me just a few minutes ago. It says,“It’s my custom on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, to reach out and ask forgiveness from my friends. The holiday is a time for reflection, fresh starts, and making peace. By asking forgiveness, I’m acknowledging that I might have hurt someone—whether knowingly or not—and I don’t want to carry that into the new year.”“So if I’ve said or done anything that hurt or upset you, I sincerely ask your forgiveness.”– Jeffrey EisenbergI responded,“And we thank you for forgiving us, too. Especially Tom.” – RHWJeffrey sent a laugh emoji. Tom will laugh when he sees what I wrote.In truth, I have long admired Jeffrey’s tradition of calling his friends each year or sending us a text. It is a marvelous reminder that mutual forgiveness is essential to keeping relationships alive and healthy.Can you imagine what it would do for our country right now?Roy H. WilliamsEvery business owner wants to increase the online...

There was a day when you found yourself in a strange situation and you did the best you could. Before you knew it, you were walking through it.You noticed a patch of wildflowers.You made a friend.Darkness fell. You saw an eye rise into the sky and believed it to be the moon. But now you know it was the eye of God, watching to see what you would do.With one of his eyes, he watches the world. With his other eye, he watches you.You kept walking.A ravine led to a stream and that stream led to a river.That first river led to a much broader river.Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn invited you onto their raft. You had an adventure.And then you had your heart broken.Got sick and recovered.Had a stroke of luck. Stretched it as far as you could.You closed your eyes as you clicked the heels of your ruby red slippers and said, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”When you opened your eyes, you knew that home wasn’t there anymore. The sun had risen while you were away, and home had evaporated into that thin blanket of warm air that wraps our bountiful earth.That was the day when you started looking forward and quit looking backAnd that is how you came to be where you are.The story that I have told you about yourself is the story of every successful business owner I have ever known.One of my business partners sent me a text at 3:37 this morning. It was a long and fascinating story that she wrote several years ago.This is how it begins.“Tomorrow, I leave the trailer park for good. I can never come back. None of us can. So I’d like to reminisce a little with some of my favorite memories of the place that I’ve called home for so many years. They make me smile…”The middle of her story is a delightful account of the all the crazy adventures she had with her companions on the log raft as it floated down the river of her youth. But it was the ending of her story that made it precious.“The giant trees were the big-top under which we conducted our circus of crazy. Here we created our own reality, full of unforgettable characters and ghetto fabulous adventures. No one could touch us. We lived in the middle of town, but existed in our own world. No matter what happened “out there,” we could always come home, be ourselves, start a fire, and connect. We were safe. We were a family.For years the echoes of our laughter have bounced off the old trees that have always shaded us. I like the think that the vibrations of our laughter are trapped inside the bark of those trees – that if you were to put your ear up to one of them, you could still hear the crackling of the fire and the cackling of our laughs.It’s been one hell of a ride. I’m sad to leave, but I can’t wait to see what comes next.Goodbye trailer park, hello world.”Today my partner lives in a sun-drenched house with a beautiful garden that overlooks the ocean.I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen the photos.She is a remarkable ad writer.Roy H. Williams

Icons represent ideas that are bigger than themselves.Myths are stories that represent ideas that are bigger than themselves.Archetypes are symbols of recognizable patterns of behavior.Letters of the alphabet are symbols (graphemes) that represents sounds (phonemes,) just as notes on a sheet of music are symbols that represent sounds.A role model is a personal icon, an archetype that you have chosen to emulate.The human brain loves symbols and patterns. This is why we embrace icons, myths, and archetypes.When we recognize a pattern that has been stored in our subconscious, we call it intuition. When we hear a pattern that has been repeated too many times, we call it a predictable cliché.Icons, myths, and archetypes evolve with each new generation.I was born in the 12th year of the 18-year Baby Boom generation that began exactly 9 months and 10 minutes after the end of World War II.Marilyn Monroe was the iconic sex symbol. The Statue of Liberty, Yankee Stadium, Yellowstone, and Woodstock were America’s iconic places. Rolls Royce, Cadillac, Corvette, Camaro and Mustang were iconic cars. Tetris, Pong, and Pac-Man were iconic video games.The mythic stories of Baby Boomers were mostly about combat. Sometimes we fought the Indians of the Old West. Sometimes we fought the Germans, or the Japanese. We fought the Establishment. We fought for justice. Or we fought just to stay alive.And we always won.Our definitive male archetype in these mythic stories was rugged, brave, independent, and honorable. John Wayne, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Sean Connery.Baby Boomer female archetypes were smart, pretty, and strong; Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Julie Andrews, Sophia Loren.Lots of movies ended with a wedding.These societal forces shaped the birth cohort known as the Baby Boomers.Gen-X was shaped by an entirely different set of icons, myths, and archetypes.Millennials had icons, myths, and archetypes that were all their own, as well.The Gen-Z cohort believes it is their responsibility to straighten out everything that the Boomers and X-ers screwed up.Gen-Alpha is determined to make their own decisions and decide for themselves what they want to do. They will be the vanguard of the next “Me” generation.Fortunately, there are elemental beliefs that bind us all together.It is upon those beliefs that successful customer-bonding ad campaigns are built. Openly name these beliefs and they lose their magic.If you claim to possess them, no one will believe you.EXAMPLES: Never claim to be honest. Just say something that only an honest person would say. Never claim to be a perfectionist. Just do something that only a perfectionist would do. Don’t tell people that you are an author or a podcaster. Just give them a copy of your book. Invite them to be on your podcast.If you would win the hearts and minds of tomorrow’s customers, this is what you must do:Imagine that you are standing face-to-face with three perfect customers and they are each looking into your eyes.The first one says, “Talk is cheap. Don’t tell me what you believe. Show me.”The second customer says, “Tell me a true story that lets me know who you really are, including the price that you pay for being you.”Customer three says, “If you betray me after I have given you my trust, I will burn you down so hot that grass won’t grow for 100 years.”Now you understand cancel culture. Frustration created it, and social media fuels it.People are looking for someone who really is...

The weakness of our current version of AI is that it extracts its knowledge only from what we have taught it.Things that are rarely done are difficult for AI to imitate.AI has confidence in things that are repeated online ad infinitum.*Predictable ads follow the orthodox guidelines taught in every college in America. AI can find countless examples of these ads online. This is why AI can write predictable ads that look, feel, sound and smell like all those other predictable ads.Predictability is a thief that robs you in broad daylight.If you want your ads to remarkably outperform the predictable ads written by AI; if you want your ads to be noticed and remembered; you must do what is rarely done.Enter your subject from a new angle, a surprising angle, a different angle.Write an opening line that makes no sense.Cause that opening line to make perfect sense in less than 30 seconds.This technique is known as Random Entry and almost no one ever uses it.“I’m John Hayes and I’m talking today with GoGo Gecko.”“I was a 10-year-old boy holding a flashlight for my father.”“Mr. Jenkins?”“Yes, Bobby.”“How much should a hamster weigh?”“There’s Elmer Fudd, Elmer’s Glue, and me, Elmer Zubiate.”Random Entry is not orthodox. Random Entry is not predictable.“What makes our company, our product, our service different from our competitors?”If you ask yourself that question, you will come up with the same 3 or 4 opening lines that each of your competitors will come up with when they ask those same questions. Your ads, and their ads, will look, feel, sound and smell like ads.When you begin in a predictable way, it is hard to be unpredictable.AI ads feel like ads because AI cannot (1.) identify, (2.) justify, or (3.) rectify Random Entry.Identify.AI cannot find examples of what does not exist. But you can create it.Justify.AI cannot bridge a random opening line into an unrelated subject. But you can build that bridge.Rectify.AI cannot reconcile a random opening line so that it makes perfect sense. But you can create a metaphor out of thin air.When a novel becomes a bestselling book that gets made into a movie, you can be certain that it was built upon a weird and unexpected – but highly engaging – opening line.“Call me Ishmael.”– Herman Melville, Moby-Dick“Where’s Papa going with that axe?”– E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”– Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”– George Orwell, 1984“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”– Leo Tolstoy, Anna KareninaChoose any one of those opening lines and tell your favorite AI to write an ad for your business using EXACTLY that line as the opening line. If your AI is successful, it will be due to the fact that you gave it a series of extremely insightful prompts. (Probably based on some of the things you learned in this Monday Morning Memo.)Srinivas Rao recently wrote, “Confessions of a Master Bullshit Artist, aka ChatGPT.”You think I’m a genius. I’m not. I’m an overconfident parrot in a lab coat.I don’t know anything, check anything...

The advantage of being an old man is that you can remember the past. This gives you a different perspective on current events. But if that old man is foolish enough to share his thoughts, the average person will smile tolerantly and pat him on his head and tell him that he is just “a lovable old dinosaur who is out-of-touch and living in the past.”Screw it. I’m going to go ahead say what I’m thinking.A few years ago, Big Data was going to change the world. Big Data came and went.Then we got excited about ideas that were “disruptive.” Slash-and-burn disruption by a bunch of young pirates was going to change everything.The Blockchain was going to change everything. You couldn’t go anywhere without someone blathering about Crypto and NFT’s.Now AI is going change everything. And it definitely will, for awhile.Technology saves money by reducing labor costs, which is just a fancy way of saying that technology allows you to replace people with machines. Unemployment will increase, and Trump will blame Obama.And so it goes.I had an appointment in 1977 to meet with a loan officer at First National Bank in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, to borrow $1,000.The greeter at the bank sat me in a chair in the waiting room. I was 19 years old.Smart phones did not exist. My only option was to paw through the pile of old magazines on the coffee table in front of me. Can you believe that every one of those magazines was about banking? The banker puts his banking magazines on the coffee table in his lobby when he is finished reading them. And the dentist puts his dental magazines on the coffee table in his lobby. This is how the Business Titans of Smallville keep their costs under control.And they do it for our convenience.I began reading a magazine about banking and it catapulted my brain into a tumbling somersault from which I have never recovered. The feature article was about ATM’s, but it didn’t call them ATM’s. It referred to them as automated teller machines.“The modern bank executive can now reduce his payroll significantly because these new automated teller machines work without pay 24 hours a day, and they never make mistakes.”My eyes were jacked open so wide that I was unable to blink.ATM’s were not invented for our convenience! They were invented so that banks could fire 60% of their bank tellers!“These new tellers require no health insurance, no air-conditioned offices, no telephones, no sick days, and they take no vacations. Your customers will thank you for giving them the ability to make deposits and withdrawals 24 hours a day from a variety of convenient locations.”The man I saw in my mind was the banker in the old Monopoly game by Parker Brothers. The way to win the game of Monopoly is to gobble up all the things that people cannot avoid, then take everything they own when an unlucky roll of the dice puts them at your mercy. It’s perfectly legal.I played Monopoly when I was young, but I don’t play it anymore.Parker Brothers began selling Monopoly in 1935. But that game’s origins trace back to an earlier version called “The Landlord’s Game” created by Elizabeth Magie. She crafted her game back in 1904, when Teddy Roosevelt was making his mark on history by curbing the excesses of the richest and most powerful men in America.Google, Apple and Meta still play Monopoly. As do the insurance companies, the oil companies, the pharmaceutical companies and the medical corporations that control virtually all the doctors. But the version of Monopoly they play isn’t sold by Parker Brothers.To win, all you have to do is gobble up the things that people cannot avoid, then take everything they own when an unlucky roll of the dice puts them at your mercy. It’s perfectly legal.Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt are the Republicans on 

Some Writers Think Life is OverratedWilliam Shakespeare wrote, “This life… is but a walking shadow; a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”Songwriter K.D. Lang put it more simply, “Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.”Some Writers Think Life is an AdventureJoseph Campbell wrote, “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.”Susan Ryan said, “We get to show up. We get to step into this story.”Some Writers Think Life is SimpleSongwriter John Lennon said, “When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”Business writer Tom Peters said, “Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works.”Some Writers Think Life is About WritingNobel-Prizewinning author Gabriel García Márquez wrote, “Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.”Anne Lamott, the author of Bird by Bird says, “Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.”Some Writers Think Life is TransformativeWes Jackson said, “If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.”Studs Terkel wrote, “Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”Some Writers Think Life is ServiceDr. Albert Schweitzer wrote, “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”Dave Wolverton said, “When you grow up, you have to give yourself away. Sometimes you give your life all in a moment, but mostly you have to give yourself away laboring one minute at a time.”Some Writers Think Life is ContemplationA Blackfoot warrior named Crowfoot wrote, “What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”The Welsh hobo-poet W.H. Davies said, “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?”Some Writers Think Life is ConnectednessJohn Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less… Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”My friend Vess Barnes has his own definition of our purpose in life, “To encourage, to comfort, to awaken, and to stretch those who find themselves riding this big ball as it screams thru time in the silence of space. To be a bridge, not a barricade. To be a link, not a lapse. To be a beacon and a bolster; not a bragger or a bummer. To help bring the corners of life’s lips to their...

Open your ads with a big, emotional idea.Save the details for your web page.Use parallel structure if you can.Parallel structure is a writing technique that uses similar grammatical constructions to express related ideas. Patterns of words, phrases, or clauses that are repeated show that your selected ideas are of equal importance. Parallel structure uses clarity and rhythm in writing to create a balanced and harmonious flow.It is how you can sing to the heart without music.Parallel structure is a poem that doesn’t rhyme.Parallel structure is a song without music.This is parallel structure…Natural diamonds are rare and wonderful.Especially when they are perfectly proportioned. If you are going to ask a rare and wonderful womanto marry you, be sure that her engagement ring celebratesa rare and wonderful, perfectly proportioned,Earthborn natural diamond.This diamond was born when the earth was formed.It has been waiting millions of years to be theundying symbol of your love.An unspeakably rare and wonderful diamond;for an unspeakably rare and wonderful love:Earthborn natural diamonds. Available in only the finest stores.Visit earthborndiamonds.com to findthe earthborn diamond jeweler near you.Born, celebrates, waiting, undying… “Natural diamonds are rare and wonderful. Especially when they are perfectly proportioned.” 1. I suggest Earthborn Diamonds as a name to consider because:(A) the name clearly indicate that these are natural diamonds.(B) anything that is “born” is alive.(C) Your engagement ring also comes alive when it “celebrates” the Earthborn Diamond it holds.(D) I own the domain name.2. Let’s examine the central stanza of this 5-part, 4-stanza* song of love:“This diamond was born when the earth was formed. It has been waiting millions of years to be the undying symbol of your love.”(A) “Earthborn” is explained in that opening sentence.(B) “waiting” is the third activity that only a living thing can do, and fourth,(C) to be “undying,” a thing must be alive, like this diamond, and your love. 3. “Rare and wonderful” is repeated 5 times in just 30 seconds.(A) It describes the Earthborn diamond.(B) It describes the woman you love.(C) It describes the love that the two of you share.4. This love song employs a writing technique known as parallel structure. (A) The diamond, the woman, and your love all share specific attributes, and(B) twice the ad tells us that these diamonds are “perfectly proportioned.”(C) Due to the recurrent, parallel structure of the ad, “perfectly proportioned” will trigger the mind of a...

Pearl had the power of 5 different breeds. She was my Megadog. The Mustang was a 1971 convertible, white with a blue interior.The car and the dog could not talk, of course, but speech is not required to show love.Pearl and I found each other in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, when I was 8 years old. She had been abandoned by the side of the road and was starving. I was lonely and needed a friend.When Pearl realized that she had been adopted, she became as mellow and contented as a dope-smoking hippie in a tie-dyed T-shirt. But Pearl was not a little yapper dog. If you acted as though you were going to attack me, that 16-pound dog would become a gigantic werewolf that could move at the speed of light.Pearl followed the advice of E.W. Howe.“When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.”Speech is not required to show love.Rachel Dawes was a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne in the 2005 movie, Batman Begins. She said to him,“It’s not who you are inside, but what you do that defines you.”Matthew records a parable by Jesus in which he makes a similar point:“There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.”“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go.”“Which of the two did what his father wanted?”“The first,” they answered.Speech is not required to show love.Likewise, in the second chapter of James we read,“If a person is without clothes and daily food, and you say to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but do nothing about their physical needs, what good is that?”My ’71 Mustang, like Pearl, was abandoned by the side of the road.I left a note under the windshield wiper in 1991.“Might this be a good time to sell this car? Give me a call and I’ll buy it where it sits.”The man called me and I met him at the side of the road with the cash. He handed me the title to the car and asked, “Did you call a wrecker?”“No,” I answered, “I’m hoping to drive it home.”The man smiled and said, “Good luck,” as he drove away.I then took the pliers out of my back pocket and quickly replaced the fuel filter. The car started immediately and I drove it home. The fuel filter on a Ford 302 engine of that era was notorious for getting clogged up, and this Mustang still had the original fuel filter. I was shocked that it had lasted 20 years.I am going to tell you about that car, even though I know you won’t believe me.It never had a flat.It would perform as though it had 4-wheel drive if I needed to pull a friend’s car out of a ditch on an icy day.The car would refuse to run out of gas unless I was within coasting distance of a gas station. And if it absolutely had to break down, it would wait until I was within coasting distance of an auto parts store that had exactly the part I needed. (The car knew, of course, that I already had the tools that I would need in the trunk.)Speech is not required to show love.You have people in your life that you love. I know you do. You know it, too.Here are two other things that you already know.Talk is cheap.Actions speak louder than words.I am not against words. In fact, I am in the word business. Banging words together is what I get paid to do.And it is always a good thing to tell the people you love that you love them. But it...

“More agile than a turtle! Stronger than a mouse! Nobler than a head of lettuce! His shield is his Heart! It’s… El CHAPULIN COLORADO!”El Chapulín Colorado – The Red Grasshopper – was a Spanish-speaking television star loved by hundreds of millions of people around the world.The Red Grasshopper would shout “¡Síganme los buenos!” and leap into action whenever a ghost, a bandit, or any other threat appeared.(“¡Síganme los buenos!” translates to “Follow me, the good ones,” or “Good guys, follow me.”)And then he would run into a wall. Or tumble down the stairs. The results of following the lead of the Red Grasshopper were never straightforward. He had a good heart, but he was very poor, clumsy, and inept. His leadership would often increase the trouble, cause a mess, or create some other disaster that, through sheer luck, would always solve the problem.El Chapulín Colorado was Don Quixote dressed as a comedic superhero.Notice how these simple, concrete nouns are easy to visualize in your mind. “Turtle, mouse, head of lettuce, heart, red grasshopper.”And the verbs associated with El Chapulín Colorado are simple as well. “Leap, follow, run, tumble.”El Chapulín Colorado averaged 350 million viewers* per episode in Latin America alone during the mid-1970’s and 1980’s. The show has made $1.7 billion in syndication fees since it ceased production in 1992.Luis Castañeda, one of the Wizard of Ads Partners, recently sent an email to the partner group.Gentlemen,I was listening to this podcast “Outliers: Anna Wintour – Vogue” [The Knowledge Project Ep. #233] when I heard this comment:“Digital transformation isn’t about abandoning what made you successful. It’s about translating it to a new medium.”I took this to mean:“How can we translate what Roy has taught us into better digital marketing?”What do you think?LuisToday I will teach you a simple but profound answer to the question posed by Luis. In fact, I already have:These simple, concrete nouns are easy to visualize in your mind. “Turtle, mouse, head of lettuce, heart, red grasshopper.”And the verbs are simple as well. “Leap, follow, run, tumble.”Do you want to create better online ads? Avoid abstract words. Use simple, concrete nouns that people can easily see in their mind. Use simple verbs that are easy to visualize as well.Avoid abstract words. Use concrete words.Avoid abstract words. Use concrete words.Avoid abstract words. Use concrete words.And repetition is effective.Professional writers have long been familiar with that advice, but it was only recently scientifically proven. The publication is “Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.” The paper is titled, “Concrete Words Are Easier to Recall Than Abstract Words: Evidence for a Semantic Contribution to Short-Term Serial Recall.” The tests were performed, and the paper was written, by Ian Walker and Charles Hulme of the University of York.Their paper is long and filled with scientific jargon, but this summary sentence is relatively easy to understand:“It is also apparent that the short words were much better recalled than the long words, and that the concrete words were much better recalled than the abstract words, with the possible exception of the first and last serial positions.”When Walker and Hulme refer to “the first and last serial positions,” they are referring to the long-established laws of Primacy and Recency. These terms describe how humans tend to remember the first item...

A troubling statement makes us want to think of exceptions to it that would prove that statement to be wrong.“Outliers are interesting, but they rarely matter,” is a troubling statement, and you may already be thinking of exceptions to it. But it remains true nonetheless.This second statement is also true. “If there were no outliers, there would be no new inventions, no innovations, no progress. We would be trapped forever in the status quo.”These seemingly contradictory statements can both be true because there are two kinds of outliers.Leonardo da Vinci made marvelous art and filled fabulous sketchbooks with his insightful ideas, but he didn’t really change anything. He was just an interesting outlier whose mind was ahead of his time.Rare is the outlier who throws a pebble into the ocean of time and shifts the world off its axis. Electricity is harnessed. Computers are invented. Someone connects them and now everyone knows everything all the time.“What distinguishes the past from the present is not biology, nor psychology, but rather technology. If the world has changed, it is because we have changed the world.”– Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson in their new book, AbundanceTechnology changes the world, but persuasion changes hearts and minds.I am an ad writer.When I was in my 20s, I was told,“People never change their mind. If you give a person the same information they were given in the past, they will make the same decision they made in the past. When a person appears to have ‘changed their mind,’ what they have really done is made a new decision based on new information.*”Ten years later I realized that those people were trying to use logic to create “persuasion technology.” Their mistake was assuming that people make their decisions logically. But people do not trust new information when it disagrees with their belief system.New information may allow you to win the argument, but it rarely wins the heart.And a person convinced against their will, remains unconvinced, still.Wash away the opinions, bravado, and fluff, and you will find that most people are NOT seeking new information. They are seeking identity reinforcement.Bertrand Russell was a mathematician and a logician. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature eight years before I was born.He said,“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance with his instincts, he will accept it even on the slenderest evidence.”When your goal is persuasion, don’t begin with new information. Begin by agreeing with what they already believe. Meet them where they are. Only then can you hope to lead them to where you want them to go.Abraham Lincoln knew that persuasion is easier when you begin at a point of mutual agreement.“If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what you will, is the greatest high-road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the...

Clarity and Brevity are the highest creativity. But “clear and brief” does not mean simple and predictable.One the most talented writers of advertising in the world would be surprised to hear me call him that. Jonathan Edward Durham is a novelist. He recently posted this random thought.“‘Why am I so sad today?’ I ask myself after staring at my little handheld sadness machine and clicking all the sad little things that will definitely make me sad.”You may not agree with Durham’s statement, but you will agree it was artfully crafted.What Durham gave us was clarity and brevity without predictability. This is the mark of a great ad writer.“Why am I so sad today?” immediately gets our attention. We are compelled to keep reading.We are surprised that he owns “a little handheld sadness machine.” But our cleverness allows us to translate it as “iPhone” and we receive a tiny spasm of delight.You have never heard of “a little handheld sadness machine” but you knew exactly what it was.His 30-word sentence demonstrated clarity, brevity, and creativity, but none of what Jonathan Edward Durham wrote was simple or predictable.Durham’s ability to bring us – his readers, his listeners, his customers – into active participation in a one-way conversation is pure genius.Jonathan Edward Durham causes us to become engaged with what he is saying.You can do it, too.“Time + Place + Character + Emotion.” That’s it. That’s how Stephen Semple turns a weak story into a powerful one in his famous TED-X talk.Here’s how Jonathan Edward Durham uses Time + Place + Character + Emotion to tell us a story in less than 30 seconds.“About two years ago, we moved across the country. It was a big, stressful move, and anxieties were high all around, and it had only been about six months since we rescued Jack, so he was really just beginning to adjust to having a forever home. Needless to say, Jack didn’t understand why a bunch of strangers were taking all of our things, and he was having a very, very ruff time with the whole process.”“We want Jack to live forever. That’s why we feed him The Wizard’s Magic dog food.”Jonathan Edward Durham’s wonderful story became an excellent ad with my addition of just 16 words. “We want Jack to live forever. That’s why we feed him The Wizard’s Magic dog food.”You already know how to write the 16 words. Now you need to learn how to tell a wonderful story in 76 words like Durham did.Time + Place + Character + Emotion.  Give it a try.Roy H. WilliamsPS – Most people use too many words to make too small a point. The average writer wraps lots of words around a small idea. Inflated sentences are fluffy and empty like a hot air balloon. Good writers deliver a big idea quickly. Tight sentences hit hard. – Indy Beagle“Facts tell. Stories sell.” – Tom SchreiterWho do you call when you need your people to cooperate, innovate, and create? Meta, Google, Salesforce, and other big companies call a woman who has a golden reputation for legendary results. Her methods are unorthodox, unconventional, and irresistible. And her credentials are unique: she is an improv entertainer who trained to be a dancer at Juilliard. Her name is Melissa Dinwiddie and she can play the ukulele. Roving reporter Rotbart...

January 18, 1604: King James, a Protestant, announces that he will commission an English translation of the Bible.January 16, 1605: Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote is published in Spain. It is considered to be the first modern novel. Every sophisticated storytelling device used by the best writers today made its initial debut in Don Quixote.February 28, 1605: A 41-year-old Italian named Galileo publishes an astronomical text written as an imagined conversation. A pair of Paduan peasants talk about Kepler’s Supernova.One says, “A very bright star shines at night like an owl’s eye.”And the other replies, “And it can still be seen in the morning when it is time to prune the grapevines!”The observations of the peasants clearly disprove the widely held belief that the earth is the center of the universe. The authorities take note. Uh-oh for Galileo.November 1, 1605: Shakespeare’s Othello is first performed for King James in the banqueting hall at Whitehall Palace in London.Meanwhile, a group of English Roman Catholics stack 36 barrels of gunpowder under the floor of the Palace of Westminster. Their plan is to blow up the king, his family, and the entire legislature on November 5, 1605.The Gunpowder Plot is discovered by a night watchman just a few hours before Guy Fawkes was to have lit the fuse.Shakespeare immediately begins writing a new play. In it, a ruler gives enormous power to those who flatter him, but his insanity goes unnoticed by society. “King Lear” is regularly cited as one of the greatest works of literature ever written.May 13, 1607: One hundred and four English men and boys arrive in North America to start a settlement in what is now Virginia. They name it “Jamestown” after King James. The American Experiment has begun.Don Quixote, Galileo, Shakespeare, the crisis of King James, and the founding of Jamestown in the New World…All of this happens within a span of just 28 months. Flash forward…May 2, 1611: The English Bible that will be known as the King James Version is published.April 23, 1616: Shakespeare and Cervantes – the great voices of England and Spain – die just a few hours apart. (Galileo continues until 1642.)July 4, 1776: The 13 colonies of the American Experiment light a fuse of their own and the Revolutionary War engulfs the Atlantic coast.November 19, 1863: Abraham Lincoln looks out over a field of 6,000 acres. He says,“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”Lincoln ends his speech one minute later. His hope is that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”Lincoln’s fear is that “the people” will not remain firmly united enough to resist the takeover of a tyrant. We know this because he opens his speech by referring to our 1776 Declaration which rejected crazy King George. America had escaped George’s heavy-handed leadership just –”four...

I was whining to Clay Cary about the interest rate the bank was going to charge me to fund a real estate investment. I felt the percentage was way too high.Clay asked, “Is the deal you’re about to make a good deal? How much money will you make from it?”I answered his question conservatively. He said, “Now let’s calculate the total amount of interest that you will pay on the loan that makes this deal possible.”We calculated the dollar amounts.I was going to make hundreds of times more money on the real estate than I was going to pay in interest on the loan.Clay said, “As a rule of thumb, if the interest rate you are paying determines whether or not the deal you are making is good or bad, you are definitely making a bad deal. Don’t judge according to percentages. Judge according to dollars.”Here’s a thought.Why do banks never get angry about the huge profits that YOU make on deals using THEIR money?I have never heard a bank say, “We supplied the money, but you are keeping most of the profits. That’s not fair. You should give us more money than we originally agreed upon.”Banks never say that because banks always remember that YOU found the deal and decided to let THEM make some money on it with you.Here’s another example of how percentages can be misleading.Woody Justice had been in business for 6 years when I met him in 1987. His business was circling the drain. Woody’s biggest year had a top line of $350,000. His goal was to someday sell $1,000,000 worth of jewelry in a single year. That would put Woody in the top 10% of jewelers nationwide.I began working with Woody and we grew more than 100% a year for two years in a row. We blew past the $1,000,000 mark in the second year. About a dozen years later, Woody was grumpy. He said, “We used to grow by big percentages. But last year we only grew by ten percent. You need to get your shit together.”“Woody, how many dollars did our top line grow last year?”“We grew by a million dollars,” he said.“Woody, when we first began working together, a million-dollar jump from $350,000 to $1,350,000 would have been a 286% increase. We would have nearly quadrupled your best year ever and you would have wet your pants. Evaluate yourself by dollar growth, not percentage growth. Percentages will lead you to believe that you are doing better, or worse, than you really are.”Woody made a face but didn’t say anything, so I continued. “And by the way, we’re running out of people in this Dairy Queen town. If you want to grow by big percentages again, we’re going to need to open another store somewhere else.”I could say those things to him because we were close friends.Woody died unexpectedly 14 years ago but I still have his number on my cell phone. I tell myself that if I press that number, Woody will hear his phone ring.As long as I don’t delete that number from my phone, Woody Justice will never be...

Pain is a signal that something is wrong.Pain whispers, shouts, and screams, “Pay attention. Be careful. Something is wrong.”Jean Marzollo wrote a children’s poem in 1948 that romanticized Christopher Columbus. It inspired a generation of children during the Captain Kangaroo years. Her proud poem begins,“In fourteen hundred ninety-twoColumbus sailed the ocean blue”Bill Bryson wrote an insightful summary of that famous voyage on page 205 of his book, “At Home.”“Columbus’s real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer. It would be hard to name any figure in history who has achieved more lasting fame with less competence. He spent large parts of eight years bouncing around Caribbean islands and coastal South America convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset. He never worked out that Cuba is an island and never once set foot on, or even suspected the existence of, the landmass to the north that everyone thinks he discovered: the United States.”We learn the meaning of pain as children, but we train ourselves to ignore it as adults.Why do we do that?I’m talking to you about the pain of your Google spend.Is there a chance that you should pay attention – and be careful – because something is wrong?Twenty years ago, Google inspired and electrified American business owners with their promise of “holding ad budgets accountable” by making advertising results, “identifiable, measurable, and scalable.”Business owners romanticized Google by shouting,“Hooray! Advertising will now become just another mathematical equation! Hooray! Hooray! To double my customer count, all I will have to do is double my ad budget!”I watched a friend of mine raise his monthly Google budget from $20,000/mo. to $70,000/mo because he was convinced that he would get three-and-a-half times as many leads. When it didn’t work, I asked him to look closely at how many clicks he had purchased and compare that number to the total population of his trade area.Have you done that math?I watched another friend of mine elevate her Google budget until she was spending $90,000 a month. Her business was no longer profitable. I asked her to look at how many clicks she had purchased and compare that number to the total population of her trade area.Have you done that math?Have you ever raised your Google budget and had Google say to you, “We’re sorry, but it is not possible to spend that much money on your LSA. There simply aren’t enough people each day who are searching for what you sell.”Do the math.The past two decades have been the Captain Kangaroo years for millions of business owners.Bill Bryson wrote that Columbus was, “convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset.”How many years have you been believing that your big payday from Google was at the edge of every sunset? Have you been saying,“All we need to do is tweak our plan a little. As soon as we figure out the Google algorithm, we’re going to be rich.”A business owner from a major American city recently spent a day with me. He had been spending $100,000 on Google ads each month for the past few years because he was convinced that he could not afford mass media in his city.His budget could easily have made his name a household word by using television or radio. I know the town well. I have had clients there for many years.His budget would reach more than 2 million...

You want to succeed.But will you recognize success when it happens?What will be its indicators? How will you measure it?Most importantly, how long are you willing to pursue it?You probably overestimate what you can accomplish in a year, and underestimate what you can accomplish in ten years.How many years have you been pursuing your dream?Experience is the name you are allowed give to your mistakes, but only if you have learned from them.Some people have ten years of experience.Most people have one year of experience ten times.Ninety-nine percent of business owners* will continue to defend their marketing beliefs and management practices even when those beliefs and practices continue to underperform year after year.These business owners underperform because traditional wisdom often feels like common sense.The problem with traditional wisdom is that it is usually more tradition than wisdom.Here’s how that happens:Your goal is lead generation.You create an ad that mixes urgency – a limited-time offer – with a strong value proposition. The features-and-benefits of your limited-time-offer dramatically outweigh the price.Your plan is to upsell the customer after they allow you into their home.This is called “transactional advertising” because you are advertising a transaction.Here’s the problem: Transactional ads don’t differentiate you. In fact, they blur you into your category, making you indistinguishable from your competitors.This is Today’s Traditional Wisdom:STEP 1: Give Google most of your profits and keep your fingers crossed. Keep a sharp eye on your cost-per-lead, your conversion rate, and your gross profit per sale.STEP 2: Keep doing this, week after week, month after month.STEP 3: Once a year, calculate how much your cost-per-sale has increased.STEP 4: Contact the people in your peer group to see if their experience has been the same as yours.STEP 5: Yes. Their experience has been the same as yours.STEP 6: Tell yourself, “Everyone else in our category is experiencing exactly what we have been experiencing. This means that everything is under control.”STEP 7: Continue to do this. In 9 more years, you will have had one year’s experience 10 times.Roy H. WilliamsPS – A smart person makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise person finds a smart person and learns how to avoid that mistake altogether.A wise person discovers relational marketing.*ADDENDUMWe gathered data from 64 reputable sources. It can reasonably be estimated that there are about 117,000 companies in the US that provide HVAC services, 132,000 provide plumbing services, and 252,000 provide electrical services. (117,000 + 132,000 + 252,000 = 501,000)Let’s assume for the sake of this example that those numbers are elevated. A lot of home service companies offer two or more services.Let’s further assume that a lot of them are going to be commercial, not residential. So we will reduce the aggregate estimate of 501,000 companies down to just 100,000 companies competing for the opportunity to serve homeowners across America.Here is the fascinating part: we know for a fact that only 638 of those companies have a top line of $20,000,000 or more each year, and...

The Muses of Greek mythology were nine goddesses associated with the arts, sciences, and memory.They were the source of inspiration for artists, thinkers, poets, dancers, musicians, and philosophers. They were the goddesses of knowledge, embodying the wisdom and creative power found in poetry, songs, and myths.This is the point: a muse is never an actual woman.When a man chooses a flesh-and-blood woman to be his muse, she becomes the symbol of something deeper, wiser, and much more mysterious than herself.A muse is a point of access that puts a man in touch with his feminine side while allowing him to pretend that he does not have a feminine side.A muse is essentially the Jungian anima, the perfect woman who exists only in the imagination of a man.Just now, my muse whispered to me,“The reader will want to ask you, ‘What is a woman’s muse?’”“What shall I tell them?”“Tell them to ask a woman,” she said.In his book, The Magic Synthesis, Silvano Arieti writes,“Creative products are always shiny and new; the creative process is ancient and unchanging.”Arieti believed that perception is not just binary, with logic on the left side and pattern recognition on the right. He believed that our minds can blend rational with irrational, sophisticated with primitive, conscious with subconscious to create a third type of perception known as “creativity.”Psychology Today begins their praise of Arieti with this paragraph:“Silvano Arieti’s book Interpretation of Schizophrenia was awarded the 1975 U.S. National Book Award in the Science category. More than 40 years later, it remains the most significant contribution to the psychological understanding of schizophrenia since Kraepelin and Bleuler. Contemporary psychiatrists and psychotherapists would be wise to review Arieti’s vast contributions to the field.”Silvano Arieti was born in 1914. When he died in 1981, Arieti was perhaps the world’s foremost authority on schizophrenia. He wrote an award-winning book about it.The other book he wrote was about creativity.Coincidence? Perhaps. But I am convinced that creativity is a mild form of schizophrenia. How else would you describe a marvelous blend of rational with irrational, sophisticated with primitive, conscious with subconscious?Creativity is a wild and spontaneous act employed by artists, thinkers, poets, dancers, musicians, and philosophers. It is that conflicted insanity to which our Muses give us access.I think that “mild schizophrenia” is the perfect description.But perhaps I am wrong.Roy H. WilliamsToday’s rabbit hole is as wacky as today’s memo. You should check it out. I’m Indy Beagle.Steven Gaffney’s client list reads like a “Who’s Who of America’s Best Corporations.” His clients include including Allstate, Amazon, American Express, Best Buy, Booz Allen Hamilton, and BP. And those are just the “A”s and “B”s. Steven Gaffney builds high-achieving teams that set brave goals and then exceed them. In this week’s amazing conversation with roving reporter Rotbart, Steven Gaffney shares big-picture insights and detailed actions that will help any business improve their results over the next 30 days. Get your running shoes on, because the race is about to begin at MondayMorningRadio.com

The Muses of Greek mythology were nine goddesses associated with the arts, sciences, and memory.They were the source of inspiration for artists, thinkers, poets, dancers, musicians, and philosophers. They were the goddesses of knowledge, embodying the wisdom and creative power found in poetry, songs, and myths.This is the point: a muse is never an actual woman.When a man chooses a flesh-and-blood woman to be his muse, she becomes the symbol of something deeper, wiser, and much more mysterious than herself.A muse is a point of access that puts a man in touch with his feminine side while allowing him to pretend that he does not have a feminine side.A muse is essentially the Jungian anima, the perfect woman who exists only in the imagination of a man.Just now, my muse whispered to me,“The reader will want to ask you, ‘What is a woman’s muse?’”“What shall I tell them?”“Tell them to ask a woman,” she said.In his book, The Magic Synthesis, Silvano Arieti writes,“Creative products are always shiny and new; the creative process is ancient and unchanging.”Arieti believed that perception is not just binary, with logic on the left side and pattern recognition on the right. He believed that our minds can blend rational with irrational, sophisticated with primitive, conscious with subconscious to create a third type of perception known as “creativity.”Psychology Today begins their praise of Arieti with this paragraph:“Silvano Arieti’s book Interpretation of Schizophrenia was awarded the 1975 U.S. National Book Award in the Science category. More than 40 years later, it remains the most significant contribution to the psychological understanding of schizophrenia since Kraepelin and Bleuler. Contemporary psychiatrists and psychotherapists would be wise to review Arieti’s vast contributions to the field.”Silvano Arieti was born in 1914. When he died in 1981, Arieti was perhaps the world’s foremost authority on schizophrenia. He wrote an award-winning book about it.The other book he wrote was about creativity.Coincidence? Perhaps. But I am convinced that creativity is a mild form of schizophrenia. How else would you describe a marvelous blend of rational with irrational, sophisticated with primitive, conscious with subconscious?Creativity is a wild and spontaneous act employed by artists, thinkers, poets, dancers, musicians, and philosophers. It is that conflicted insanity to which our Muses give us access.I think that “mild schizophrenia” is the perfect description.But perhaps I am wrong.Roy H. WilliamsToday’s rabbit hole is as wacky as today’s memo. You should check it out. I’m Indy Beagle.Steven Gaffney’s client list reads like a “Who’s Who of America’s Best Corporations.” His clients include including Allstate, Amazon, American Express, Best Buy, Booz Allen Hamilton, and BP. And those are just the “A”s and “B”s. Steven Gaffney builds high-achieving teams that set brave goals and then exceed them. In this week’s amazing conversation with roving reporter Rotbart, Steven Gaffney shares big-picture insights and detailed actions that will help any business improve their results over the next 30 days. Get your running shoes on, because the race is about to begin at MondayMorningRadio.com

The greatest companies are the ones with the happiest customers.To create happy customers, you need to be customer-centric.Every company believes they are customer-centric. But while a great company keeps the happiness of their customer in the center of their thoughts, the average company puts their customer in the center of the cross-hairs of a rifle scope.Great companies ask, “How can we give our customers the buying experience that they would prefer?” They work at removing the friction from the customer experience.Average companies ask, “How can we get our customers to give us more money, more often?” Average companies tells their marketing teams, “Sales is just a numbers game. Bring us twice as many leads and we’ll make twice as many sales. You bring’em in. We’ll close’em.”But no matter what those marketing teams do, a decreasing number of people will respond to their ads. A negative customer experience drives customers away faster than marketing can bring them in.Do you want to see what real customer-centric thinking looks like?A client of mine recently wrote this email and sent it to all the people who work in his company. He forwarded it to me only as an afterthought.SUBJECT: Pricing Reflection — Serving the Everyday Working AmericanTeam,Today I had a realization around some of our pricing. I’m all for setting prices that protect our margins and keep the business strong – but I’m equally committed to making sure we have price point items that the everyday working American can actually afford.Let’s take a simple example: a toilet. Right now, most of our toilet installs are priced over $1,000. If we assume the median household income is $85,000, divided over 26 pre-tax paychecks, that’s $3,269 per check. A $1,000 toilet install is over 30% of that paycheck. That’s significant.We need to remember who we’re here to serve – the nurse, the police officer, the office worker, the firefighter. These are people raising families, keeping their homes together, and doing the best they can. We cannot price them out of basic service. If we do, we risk not only losing today’s job – but any future relationship with that customer.Let me be clear: I’m not trying to run a low-margin business.But I do want to make sure we have real options for real people. Today’s pricing structure on some of these essential services is a barrier – not just to customers, but to our own techs who are trying to present them.Because of this realization, I immediately asked Jacob to find a toilet that we could install at a price point of $699. Well, guess what – we found one today. And we’re bringing it in and adding it to the price book at $649.This one change will give our team more confidence to present a basic toilet option. What I’ve heard from Will – and it’s been consistent – is that this has been a never-ending battle. Technicians don’t feel comfortable presenting a $1,000 toilet to customers, especially when many of them wouldn’t pay that themselves. That lack of confidence translates to lower conversions and frustrated customers.This reminds me of what we went through in HVAC when we had no system options below $15,000. We lost installs constantly – not because we weren’t good, but because we didn’t have a simple, no-frills option for people who just needed heating and air. Once we corrected that, we started closing more jobs and rebuilding our pipeline.We need to apply that same logic here. During times like this, let’s price effectively so we can keep building our customer base and generate revenue day by day. When the tide turns – and it will – we can always maximize margin percentage where appropriate.There’s an opportunity here. We can maintain strong...