I began talking to business owners all day, every day, when I was twenty years old.

This is why I have I have been writing 20 ads per week for the past 48 years. Poke those numbers into your computer and you will see that my lifetime total will exceed 50,000 ads in just 4 more weeks.

This is what I have learned from 48 years of writing radio and TV ads for owner-operated businesses across the U.S., Canada, and Australia:

1. The game begins and ends with your ideas and your words. When your message is right, every media delivers results. When your message is wrong, no media delivers results.
2. Don’t be fooled by short-term results created through false urgency. Short-term results are not scalable or sustainable.
3. Advertising cannot be divorced from operations. If your advertising causes your customers to have expectations that your people fail to deliver, your ads will be working against you.
4. Sales managers love to say to ad writers, “The job of advertising is to generate sales opportunities. If you double our sales opportunities, we will make twice as many sales. Show me what you can do.” These sales managers need to grasp the fact that when a customer has an experience that is different from what the ads promised, that customer will be dissatisfied and resentful, even if you made the sale.

Take a snapshot of that customer for your photo album because you will probably never see them again.

1. When a customer is annoyed at you and resentful toward you, they tell an average of 28 people. And that statistic is from 25 years ago, prior to the advent of social media. I suspect the damage is bigger and happens faster today.
2. Your business is doomed the moment your customers begin to ask, “When does this go on sale?” (If you are too young to have ever asked that question, this is because the huge companies whose salespeople were asked that question every day have mostly disappeared. If you have 3 or more “percentage discount” sales every year, it will take only a few years for your customers to realize that they will be able buy it cheaper if they wait until your next sale. This is when your “sales event” spikes get taller and taller on the sales graph, and the valleys in-between get wider and deeper. “Percentage-off” sales are addictive and destructive. If you don’t believe me, just ask anyone from one of the dozens of big discounting giants of yesterday who have filed for bankruptcy and disappeared from the earth.
3. I have never seen a business fail because they were “reaching the wrong people.”

I have seen hundreds of businesses fail because they did not understand the Purpose of Advertising.

The Purpose of Advertising is to:

1. Differentiate yourself from your competitors
2. Become the company that people think of first, and feel the best about.
3. Sell products and services

When you work all day, every day, with business owners, and follow the most credible research, those are the things you will learn.

Roy H. Williams

Most people have heard of the “Great Wealth Transfer” — the trillions of dollars that will pass from aging Baby Boomers to their children.

What is seldom discussed is the “Great Stuff Transfer”: All the personal and business possessions — including collectibles, furniture, vehicles, and sentimental keepsakes — that younger generations stand to inherit.

Mindy Godding is an award-winning organizer and down-sizer who understands the rewards and the pitfalls of deciding what to do with possessions accumulated over a lifetime.

Listen in as she explains to roving reporter Rotbart how this transition requires more than just deciding what to keep, donate, or discard. It begins with understanding the emotional and psychological attachments that make letting go so difficult. This is the episode you need to hear at MondayMorningRadio.com

Pennie and I are looking forward to 2027.

She and I have always known that I will never “retire,” but we recently realized that several inflection points will soon align like stars in the sky between now and the end of 2026.

Pennie summarized it perfectly when she said, “You will be laying down the hammer, but not the pen.”

Forty-six of our fifty years together have been dominated by the non-stop construction and remodeling of houses and offices and auditoriums and libraries and dining halls and gymnasiums and student mansions along with a tower, a star deck, and a distillery.

The new Wizard of Ads Home Office will be our final construction project.

This will give the Wizard of Ads Partners 5 impressive conference rooms, as well as a library, an art gallery, a kitchen, a dining area, a 500-bottle wine cabinet, and two private bathrooms.

We expect to have it finished, furnished, and open by Thanksgiving Day.

This is when I will finally lay down the hammer that Pennie bought me as a gift for our 4th Wedding Anniversary in December of 1980.

I plan to hang it on the wall in one of the conference rooms.

My laying-down-of-the-hammer will align with these 7 other inflection points.

1. Jake Williams has become President of Wizard of Ads, Inc. and is doing a magnificent job of elevating the Wizard of ads partners and their many hundreds of clients scattered across the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

2. Rex Williams continues to grow and expand Crowded Barrel, the world’s only crowd-sourced whiskey distillery that creates its whiskies under the direction of the 5,000 voting members of the Whiskey Tribe. The first whiskey they ever made won the official blind tasting to win the crown of “Best Whiskey in Texas.” They won by only 4 tenths of a point, but it was still enough to beat two previous “World’s Best Whiskey” champions.

3. Chancellor Daniel Whittington continues to be marvelous in his management of Wizard Academy under the authority of the 501(c)3 Wizard Academy board of directors. Wizard Academy’s famous Chapel Dulcinea has hosted more than 1,100 weddings per year for the past 21 years.

4. Joe Davis is managing the events at all our rental venues as well as creating beautiful gardens and lawns across the property.

5. Zach Norby is happily handling the maintenance and repairs of all the buildings.

The free time I will gain by laying down my hammer is enhanced and enlarged by these five trusted captains who have taken over my load of daily duties.

This will allow me more time to write ads for my clients, Monday Morning Memos for my friends, training and guidance for my Wizard of Ads partners, and public performances for our 5 Youtube channels.

But I said there were 7 inflection points, did I not?

6. I am stepping down from the twice-a-month column that I have been writing for a national magazine for nearly thirty years.

7. Princess Pennie and I will be celebrating our 50th Wedding Anniversary in late December.

Like I said, we are looking forward to 2027.

It will be the beginning of a brand new era.

And I am delighted that you will be part of it.

Roy H. Williams

When business owners think about selling their companies, they tend to focus on what they believe the business is worth.

Buyers look at things differently.

Mark Sims is an expert on what makes buyers hesitate, why promising deals fall apart, and what owners should do to attract the best offers. Listen in as Mark tells roving reporter Rotbart how due diligence can reveal risks in even the strongest companies. To learn how business values are truly evaluated, join Mark Sims and Dean Rotbart at MondayMorningRadio.com

I am troubled by the station of our nation in these amber waves of grain.

What happened to “crowning our good with brotherhood” across the fruited plain?

What did we do with our purple mountain majesties?

How did we let this happen to our country, you and me?

We need to get back to crowning our good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.

You know the words.

One hundred and thirty years ago, Katharine Lee Bates wrote,

“O beautiful for spacious skies

For amber waves of grain

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain

America, America

God shed his grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea”

In 1996, one hundred years after Katharine Lee Bates wrote those words,

George Carlin said, “If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders.”

Bill Clinton was president in 1996, but George wasn’t talking about Bill.

This is exactly what George Carlin said that day, thirty years ago:

“You might have noticed I don’t complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens.

This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out.

If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders.

Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand-new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans.

So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck.”

George Carlin stood on that stage, looked his audience in the eye, and told them that they were selfish and ignorant.

And that they sucked.

And they laughed, and clapped, and cheered.

I’ve been pondering this problem since I first noticed it in 2003. You might remember “Pendulum”, the book I wrote about this problem more than a dozen years ago.

Having had that thought in 2003, I’ve had 23 years to ponder it, so I will offer my final word on the subject:

The solution to the station of our nation,

it seems to me,

is to cast away our selfishness:

I care about you. You care about me.

Ignorance will always be with us.

There will always be things we do not know.

But if we decided no longer to have enemies,

I believe our world would begin to glow.

Roy H. Williams