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

Living people have personalities and imaginary people have personalities.

Corporations do not have personalities.

Corporations have brands.

The average corporate brand consists of a trademarked logo, minutes of board meetings, and a manual of policies and procedures.

A brilliant corporate brand has a personality that lives inside our mind.

We do not bond with corporations.

We bond with personalities.

The personalities of living people are revealed by their statements, actions, and reactions.

The personalities of imaginary people are revealed in the stories that are told about them.

A brand personality is an imaginary person that lives in the mind of the customer.

The more deeply that a customer feels like they “know” the brand, the more likely they are to choose that brand. They are buying from a trusted friend.

Sustainable and scalable ad campaigns are a series of stories that reveal the personality of a brand.

Notice that I said “reveal” the personality.

You cannot explain your brand personality. You must allow the public to experience it.

You cannot say, “We are tender-hearted and generous.” You must allow the customer to listen to your stories and realize that you are tender-hearted and generous.

Do not say, “We are bold, innovative leaders.” You must allow the customer to listen to your stories and decide for themselves that you are a bold, innovative leader.

Let me say it again. You cannot explain your brand personality. You must allow the public to experience it.

This was what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did in 1887 when he launched a series of stories about a man named Sherlock Holmes.

This was what Marvel Comics did in 1962 when they launched a series of stories about a young man named Peter Parker who was bitten by a radioactive spider.

This was what Steve Jobs did in 1983 when he began urging us to Think Different. The more we read and heard his ads, the more we perceived Apple to be innovative and visionary, simple and intuitive, sophisticated and elegant, and delightfully, humanly, rebellious. But Steve Jobs never said those things. Those are the conclusions that we came to on our own

You have story to tell. And you have the rest of your life to tell it.

Are you ready to get started?

Roy H. Williams

At the center of every cliché is a point that deserves to be made.

We need to learn to make these points in new and different ways.

Overuse make clichés predictable. Familiarity makes them sound “correct”, even though clichés are always a mistake.

A cliché is a phrase that is overused.

It is overused because it is familiar.

It is familar because it is overused.

Are you beginning to see the swirling pattern that accelerates and perpetuates the sucking of our language down the drain of imbecility?

Your goal as a writer should be to delight your listeners. You want them to be engaged in what you are saying.

There can be no delight without an element of surprise.

Predictability is the killer of surprise and delight. Clichés are the tombstones that mark the graves where their corpses lie.

Allow me to summarize: Clichés are bad. Do not use them.

NOTE: Every Large Language Model (LLM-AI) received its education by being immersed in an ocean of clichés.

May I teach you a new way to write that is new, surprising, and different?

Will you allow me to introduce you to meter?

Meter is music that is heard in the subconscious mind.

I will give you the names of a few different meters, but you do not need to remember them. The names of the meters are irrelevant. Your ability to create sentences that have rhythm is all that matters.

The most common meter in the English language is iambic pentameter, a rhythmic pattern created by an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.

(da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM)

Robert Frost used iambic pentameter in Mending Wall

John Milton used iambic pentameter in Paradise Lost

Shakespeare used iambic pentameter in Hamlet

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

“Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit…”

“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”

to BE, or NOT to BE, that IS the QUEStion.

(da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM)

If you reverse the order to create

(DUM-da DUM-da DUM-da DUM-da DUM-da

you are now using trochaic meter.

“Darkness settles on the city.”

“Children playing in the garden…”

“Winter brings a bit of sadness.”

“Silence covers hidden places.”

We will now playfully alternate those random phrases written in opposing meters.

Listen to the “call and response” that happens:

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

“Darkness settles on the city”

“Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit…”

“Children playing in the garden…”

“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”

“Winter brings a bit of sadness.”

“Silence covers hidden places.”

When you have mastered meter, you will be tempted to add rhyme. Do not do this.

Rhyme draws attention to your meter and makes it predictable. Need I remind you that predictability is the killer of surprise and delight?

Blank verse is the name for words written in meter that do not rhyme.

Blank verse creates magical music in the mind.

Do you want your words to be remembered?

Learn to write blank verse.

Roy H. Williams

PS – There are a multitude of meters. You do not need to know them all. But if you are curious to know a little more, visit Indy Beagle’s rabbit hole.

Your best ideas always come to you when you stop trying so hard to find them. Sara Connell has studied why moments of clarity often surface while walking, showering, or just letting the brain wander. Sara teaches her readers and clients how to generate breakthrough ideas intentionally.

Do you have more ideas than time to pursue them?

Sara can solve that for you, as well. Do you want to listen in as Sara Connell shares her methods with roving reporter Rotbart?

Do you want to learn how to:

1. slow the mental noise,

2. identify which ideas are worth exploring, and

3. turn flashes of inspiration into concrete next steps for business and life?

The place to go is MondayMorningRadio.com

Linda Pastam wrote a marvelous poem called “Driving West” in which these lines appear:

We are the pioneers

of our own histories, drawn

to the horizon as if it waited just for us

the way the young are drawn

to the future, the old to the past.

“…the way the young are drawn to the future, the old to the past.”

I need you to hold those words tightly in your hands, even though they wriggle and thrash like slippery fishes anxious to escape your unfamiliar fingers and return to the quiet darkness where they can breathe water and feel entirely at home.

Hold on to those words.

Dr. Roger Sperry was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981 for his documentation of the differences between the two hemispheres of our brains.

One half of your brain puts you in touch with this Present Moment in this Real World.

The other half puts you in touch with the Past and the Future in that mystical – magical – hallucinatory unreliable World of Imagination.

Dr. Sperry discovered that what appears to a brain divided into two halves could more accurately be described as two separate, competing brains.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Sperry said,

“Each brain half appeared to have its own, largely separate, cognitive domain with its own private perceptual, learning and memory experiences, all of which were seemingly oblivious of corresponding events in the other hemisphere.”

Dr. Sperry later said,

“Each hemisphere of the brain is indeed a conscious system in its own right, perceiving, thinking, remembering, reasoning, willing, and emoting, all at a characteristically human level, and both the left and the right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even in mutually conflicting,mental experiences that run along in parallel.”

Regardless of which half you prefer, both halves are equally important.

One half of your brain puts you in touch with This world.

The other half puts you in touch with Possible worlds.

One half puts you in touch with the sciences.

The other half puts you in touch with the arts.

Now let’s get back to those wriggling fish that I asked you to hold.

The Future to which the young are drawn, and the Past to which the old are attracted, are different time zones in the world of imagination.

The young live in the brightness of the noonday sun. The old live in the twilight and remember the light of day.

Most Americans attempt to persuade each other with facts. We do this because we trust Science and we worship Mathematics, and that is why we write such terrible ads.

Most of us, most of the time, trust our instincts.

We trust our intuitive hearts.

This is what Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman described as System 1 or “Thinking Fast” in his book, “Thinking Fast and Slow.”

Behavioral scientists estimate that roughly 90% to 95% of our daily decisions are made automatically and unconsciously using System 1 thinking.

Most people don’t want to admit it.

In fact, most people refuse to accept it.

But the scientific truth is that we make at least nine-tenths our decisions in that half of the brain where the darkwater fish glimmer effortlessly and thoughtlessly, silver and gold in the moonlight.

Study the arts. Learn to win the heart.

If you win the heart, the mind will follow. The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.

Roy H. Williams

Paul Kesig uses the acronym L.O.V.E. to encapsulate his approach to sales.

L is for celebrating Little wins.

O is for asking Open-ended questions.

V is for creating and communicating Value.

E is for building an Emotional connection.

Paul says that pairing love with sales strikes many people as contradictory. This is usually because their experiences with bad salespeople have taught them to truly hate the sales process.

Listen in as Paul explains to roving reporter Rotbart that those who have adopted his approach have quickly discovered that L.O.V.E. really can spell success; MondayMorningRadio.com