Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Business owners ask, “How can we get customers to do what we want them to do?”And then they create an app and insist that you download it.How many apps have you been told that you need to download? (Look at your phone and count them.)Generally speaking, retail apps are good because they reduce the friction of your shopping experience. Service provider apps are bad because they increase the friction of your service experience.How many times have you had to reset your password?Have you ever had an app demand the answer to a question that sent you on a mission to find the answer?How many times have you been presented with a pick-list that did not include your need?Do you sometimes feel like you are making things easier for the service provider instead of them making things easier for you?Six different service apps have recently increased my frustration to the point that I am now searching for six new service providers to replace them.I was not surprised when I learned that all six of those companies are in decline.And I’ll wager that none of them knows why.Operational efficiency is a worthy objective. Just be careful that you are not shifting your workload onto the shoulders of your customer.Every designer of a service app believes their app is going to be user-friendly, easy to understand, frustration-free, and save the customer a lot of time.In reality, these apps are felt to be unfriendly and frustrating.We both know that the objective is not to save time for us, but for us to save time for the service provider. They have established neat little cubicles to meet their own needs, and now they are telling us to crawl into each little cubicle and do what we are told.This technology is not working for me. It is forcing me to work for them.Wealthy superstar business owners do not ask, “How can we get customers to do what we want them to do?”Superstars ask, “How can we do what customers wish we could do?”Brian Scudamore, Dewey Jenkins, and Aaron Gaynor are superstar builders of service businesses.Each of these superstars has elevated their service business to become a shining star in the dark night of every customer.These men say:“How can we make it effortless and frustration-free for the customer?”“We have to find more ways to make it easier for people to do business with us!”“How can we delight the customer in ways they did not expect?”“We will always have a solution for every customer. No one will be left behind. We never walk away from a person who needs us.”Brian Scudamore built 1-800-GOT-JUNK into the World’s Largest Junk Removal Service by making every problem his problem.“We make junk disappear. All you have to do is point.”For many years Brian has been pondering the question, “How can we do what customers wish we could do?”Brian identified four big things that his customers wished were possible, but that were clearly impossible.Last month Brian Scudamore figured out how to do all four of those things!When he makes his big announcement, I expect his company to quickly double in size.I would tell you to buy stock in his company, but I can’t.Brian owns the whole thing. No investors, stockholders, or board of directors.Now you know how miracles are made.Roy H. WilliamsNOTE FROM INDY: I put an Aaron Gaynor radio ad on the first page of the rabbit hole for you. – Indy BeagleSmall-business growth creates a frustrating paradox: the more a business succeeds, the more overwhelmed the owner becomes. Small-business coach Jason Rosado helps small-business owners strengthen their teams, and create more free time for their owners.In this week’s episode of MondayMorningRadio Jason tells roving reporter Rotbart how a business owner can identify whether their business truly needs more customers — or whether it is operational inefficiencies and leadership inflexibility that are preventing growth. If you could use some practical techniques for reducing stress and preventing burnout, check out Jason Rosado at MondayMorningRadio.com

I promise that I will state plainly for you – in ten short words – the singular Rule of Success before you have finished reading this Monday Morning Memo.Stay quiet and stay close. We are wandering into a dangerous area. To see the glittering truth of the Rule of Success, we must quietly sneak up on it.The North Star never moves because it hovers directly above the axis of the earth. If you draw a line from the South Pole to the North Pole and then extend that line 323 light years into space, it will touch the North Star.Your life’s goal is your guiding light, your North Star. This is why you are forever traveling northward as you pursue your dream.But there is a limit to north. That limit is called the North Pole.When you go beyond that limit, you are now headed in the opposite direction.This is the bitter truth that has been tasted by every person who has achieved their life’s goal:“You work your whole life to reach the summit. And when you get there, all the roads lead down.”Like every rule, North and South are finite and achievable.Like every principle, East and West are infinite and unachievable.You can travel east forever and never reach the end of “east.”“The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement. But the opposite of a profound truth is often another profound truth.”Without intending to do so, Niels Bohr summarized in those two sentences the fundamental difference between a rule and a principle. The first sentence describes every rule. The second sentence describes every principle.The person who turns a principle into a rule is a fool.I call that person a fool only because their mind is not big enough to hold in stasis the contradictory tension that is at the heart of every profound truth.Did it ever occur to you that helping people get what they want is the foundational principle behind every business on earth?Do you want to be successful?This the only Rule of Success:“Find out what people want, then give it to them.”Jesus taught us the eternal principle behind the Rule of Success when he said,“Love your neighbor as yourself.”Remove “Love” from that principle, and you will have a similar principle that says,“It is always good to help people get what they want.”But here is the “opposite truth” of that principle:“It is always bad to help people get what they want when it would require injuring an innocent person.”In other words, removing “love” wasn’t such a great idea.People who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand always try to convince me that it is okay to damage naive, gullible, innocent people “because the only person that really matters is you, and you are not responsible for making other people happy. You are only responsible for making yourself happy.”Interestingly, that is exactly what Jeffrey Epstein believed.He died in prison for his belief, and his name has become a curse word.Bernie Madoff was only pretending to help people get what they wanted. He was perceived as “successful” for as long as he was able to sustain his con.Bernie likewise died in prison.Sam Bankman-Fried was a young fool who pretended to be helping people while he was robbing them blind.The courts took away the 11 billion dollars he stole. Then they locked him in a room the size of a walk-in closet where he will spend the next 25 years of his life.Removing love is never a good idea.– Roy H. Williams

Find out what people already want, then offer them exactly that. Quit trying to convince customers that they should want what you are selling.Speak to everyone, everywhere, about widely felt needs, deeply held beliefs, and personal values. Quit telling yourself that you need to reach “the right people” with your advertising.A: The media doesn’t make the message work. The message makes the media work. I’ve never seen a business fail because they were were reaching the wrong people. But I’ve seen hundreds fail because they were saying the wrong things.B: Anyone who has a friend, a relative, a co-worker, or a neighbor is an influencer. Is there anyone that you DON’T want to say good things about you?C: Powerful brands like Ferrari, Rolex, and Harley Davidson are known, loved, and admired by hundreds of millions of people who will never own a Ferrari, a Rolex, or a Harley. Do you think those brands would be better off if they were known only to the people that the brands chose to “target” as potential customers?Customers buy from personalities they know, like, and trust.A: People don’t bond with corporations, they bond with personalities.B: Brands that have personalities are exactly as real to us as our favorite characters in novels, television shows, cartoons, and movies. Who doesn’t love R2D2, C3PO, and Yoda? You realize those characters are purely imaginary, right? But we feel as though we know them.C: Does your brand have a distinctive personality? If not, why not?I will now summarize each of those 3 Steps in exactly 12 words.People want friends, honesty, encouragement, access, and to know that they matter.Buy mass media. Quit fishing with a hook. Use a net instead.Don’t be so boring. Find some courage. Be a distinctively memorable personality.Roy H. WilliamsZig Ziglar would have turned 100 this year.This week, Tom Ziglar shares some little-known stories about his father with roving reporter Rotbart and deputy rover, Maxwell, including the fact that despite Zig’s worldwide fame, he once carried a stranger’s luggage to the guest’s hotel room simply because the out-of-towner took one look at Zig’s red sports coat and thought he was a bellman.But todays episode is more than a nostalgic look backward, as Tom Ziglar offers a thoughtful meditation on legacy, leadership, and the enduring power of optimism. Things are looking UP at MondayMorningRadio.com.

Everywhere he went, Jeremiah warned people that their land would be subjugated, their way of life would be destroyed, and that they would become slaves of a government they did not choose.Jeremiah is remembered today as “the weeping prophet.”He was earnest, sincere, and entirely correct, but no one wants to be told that they have an inescapable appointment with a dentist and a gastroenterologist to receive a simultaneous root canal and colonoscopy in the outdoors during a rainstorm.Jeremiah painted a dark sky without a single ray of sunlight shining through. This is why no one ever gave Jeremiah a microphone, an audience, and a big pile of money to be their guest speaker.Polyanna was 11 years old in 1913, and she still rides around on her adorable little pony radiating sunshine and rainbows everywhere she goes. Pollyanna tells everyone who will listen that a magical genie will give you whatever you want if you just smile and laugh and think happy thoughts.Pollyanna is even less popular than Jeremiah. I promise I’m not making this up.Google tells me that Jeremiah remains a popular name for boys, always ranked in the top 100. Pollyanna is not nearly so popular among girls. It currently ranks somewhere between number 8,284 and number 13,776.Jeremiah and Pollyanna became the topic of conversation while I was comparing notes with Ryan Deiss and Jet Eisenberg and Robert Grebe during lunch last week. We were trying to figure out why we were suddenly seeing a sharp uptick in public speaking requests.We all agreed that a general feeling of unrest is shining out of every television screen and blowing through the ductwork of every home in America.That’s when Deiss said,“No one wants Jeremiah. No one wants Pollyanna. People are looking for someone who is aware of current difficulties, but who can also see a clear path forward.”It was one of those moments when everyone at the table instantly knew that Truth had been spoken.No one wants to hear the gloom and doom of Jeremiah right now. And no one wants to ride the pony or drink the sugarwater of Pollyanna.People are just looking for a promising path forward.My partner Todd Liles has been trying to tell me this for several months, but Ryan Deiss was able to condense it into a metaphor of paired opposites, the lightning bolt that is most likely to pierce my hard head and illuminate my mindMarcus Aurelius Antoninus was the last of the Five Good Emperors of Rome. Eighteen hundred years ago he wrote,“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born in the same year that Jesus was born. Late in his life, Seneca said,“True happiness is to enjoy the present without anxious dependence on the future.”But Jesus had already said the same thing thirty years earlier during his famous Sermon on the Mount. Jesus was teaching us to live in the present when he said,“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”Do not fret about an imaginary future.You will deal with the actual future when it arrives.Roy H. Williams

WORLDWIDE ANXIETY:Do you find yourself wondering what is going to happen next?You are not the only person who has that question echoing in their mind. Billions of people are feeling this way around the world.Instability creates anxiety and uncertainty causes worry.That’s why the price of gold has been shooting upwards like a bottle rocket on the Fourth of July.The stock exchange is a short-term barometer of American investor confidence.The price of gold is a long-term barometer of the entire world’s confidence in the future.Gold was $265 an ounce in the year 2000.It had climbed to $1,185 an ounce by 2013 as people all over the world began to bicker at ever higher levels of intensity.Driven by concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic, the price of gold exceeded $2,000 an ounce for the first time in history on August 4, 2020.Gold climbed to more than $3,000 an ounce on March 14, 2025 as the world grew anxious about “trade war tensions” according to Business Insider.Just seven months later – on October 8, 2025 – gold exceeded $4,000 an ounce. Reuters said the reason was “geopolitical and economic uncertainty.”That was less than 4 months ago.At the time of this writing – Wednesday, January 28, 2026 – gold is at $5,565.40 per ounce.Did you realize that the price of gold has climbed from $3000/ounce to $5,565/ounce in less than 11 months?Instability creates anxiety and uncertainty causes worry.The price of gold rises as the world gets nervous and consumer confidence falls.Uncertain about the future, people are becoming increasingly hesitant to spend money.LOCAL OPPORTUNITY:When their sales volume falls below last year’s sales volume, the first reaction of most business owners is to blame the marketing team. Their second reaction is to reduce their advertising, lay off some people, and hunker down.This creates an amazing opportunity for courageous business owners to grow their market share. Your ads stand out when your competitors go silent.Selling is a transfer of confidence. When the customer doesn’t have confidence that today is the right day, or that your price is the right price, or that your company is the right company to trust, your only option is to transfer your confidence to them.When you have successfully transferred your confidence to your customer, they will know that today is the right day, your price is the right price, and your company is the company to trust.But this takes1. a convincing message2. rock-solid courage3. staying power.Do you have the financial staying power to win droves of new customers when margins are shrinking? More importantly, do you have the emotional staying power?I believe that 2026 will be a year of anxiety and opportunity. You can duck and cover, or you can reach upward and rise.You cannot change your circumstances, but you can change your actions.Will you shrink, or will you rise?Roy H. WilliamsHere’s a Little Tidbit of News for You: the wizard has been handsomely paid to appear in a new movie about the global economy and his book “Pendulum” that he wrote in 2012. That movie will be shown in movie theaters across America, but only to private audiences. Roy said to the producer,“The Pendulum of western society does NOT predict the economy. It predicts ONLY that society will fracture and social violence will escalate for a period of ten years as we approach the zenith of a ‘WE’, which happened in 2023. Then it will slowly subside for the next ten years. The zenith of a ‘WE’ occurs only once every 80 years.”When this private movie has been produced and is available to be seen, we’ll let you know. Also, roving reporter Rotbart in still in Washington D.C. researching his next big book, but he’ll be back with new episodes of Monday Morning Radio in just a few more weeks.Thank you for subscribing to the Monday Morning Memo.

Before you borrow cash from a friend, decide which one you need most.Never tell a person that their child is ugly. Every child is the trigger on the gun of their parent’s rage.If you say, “I am only speaking the truth,” you can be sure that the child’s parent will just as truthfully amputate you from their life and throw shade at the memory of your name forever.“The Proper Priorities of Government” is a beautiful child that lives in the brain of every citizen. And that child is uniquely their own.Do you remember what I told you about children?AI is the newest baby in every family.I am a writer. My words are my children. If you tell me that your AI can replace me as a writer, I will know you to be a fool and a tragic waste of oxygen and skin.Can AI write better than you? If your words are not bone of your bone, blood of your blood, and flesh of your flesh, then yes, it probably can.When I began production on the “Great Writers Series,” I sent several of my friends a few of the AI-produced performances of the 8,000 grand passages of literature that I have laboriously transcribed from books over the past 50 years.When I sent those music-enhanced performances, I pulled the triggers on the guns that are carried by all of the musicians in my life.Shortly after being riddled with bullets,I received this text from Ryan Deiss on December 26, 2025, at 7:24AM:Paul Graham on why you shouldn’t write with Al:“In preindustrial times most people’s jobs made them strong. Now if you want to be strong, you work out. So there are still strong people, but only those who choose to be. It will be the same with writing. There will still be smart people, but only those who choose to be.”This was my reply to Ryan’s text:“Everyone loves AI to do the things they hate, but they hate AI when it does the things they love. I am no different. I think AI is dangerous and stupid and evil when it replaces writers. But I use it enthusiastically to make musical productions instantly possible. I would otherwise have had to spend many months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to create with musicians what I can create with Suno.com in a day. Musicians are well within their rights to resent me and be disgusted with me when I use AI to replace them.”The Great Writers Series will continue because it is important to me.If you click the image at the top of this page, you will see another clickable image. Below that clickable image is one of the first Youtube shorts – formatted for your phone – that I will be uploading once a day for as long as I am able to do so.If you click that performance and enjoy it, and would like to receive a new one each day, you can click through to Youtube and subscribe.If you do not like the performance, that’s 100% okay as long as you don’t tell me about it.All of my children are beautiful, almost as beautiful as yours.Roy H. Williams

In 1958, Paul made 85 cents an hour working in a limestone quarry in Oklahoma.He was a man of character, integrity, and kindness.He was quiet, smiled a lot, and was a wonderful listener.Paul’s humility, kindness, and confidence gave him dignity and authority in the eyes of everyone who knew him.He was happily married and had three little girls. On the day his fourth little girl was born he walked into a storm that could easily have ripped him apart.It was with great heaviness of heart that Doctor Franklin told him that there was a problem with the Rh factor in the little girl’s blood and that she was almost certainly going to die.She was barely, barely, barely hanging on.With tears in his eyes Doctor Franklin told him, “And your wife is also fading fast.” Doctor Franklin dropped his chin to his chest as teardrops splashed on his shoes.An ambulance rushed both mother and daughter to a larger hospital in a larger town.Paul was all alone with eighty-five cents an hour and three little girls.Several hours later, a happy and rejoicing Doc Franklin told Paul that both mother and daughter were going to live!They were going to live.The medical bill was more than a thousand dollars and there was no insurance; just a husband and wife and four little girls and 85 cents an hour.Being a man of integrity, Paul went to see Doc Franklin the next day to set up a payment plan for paying that thousand-dollar medical bill.Doc Franklin said, “What medical bill?”Paul was confused, and it showed on his face.Old Doctor Franklin spoke plainly,“There is no medical bill. You do not owe any money. Just be a good father to those girls.”“Just be a good father to those girls.”I can testify that he was a good father to those girls. I met Paul Compton when I was 14 years old and in love with his daughter, the one who nearly died on the day she was born.Here’s how I met him.One week prior to beginning my freshman year in high school, my mother received an invitation to come to an open house at the school on a Tuesday night where she could meet Coach Jerry Meeks, my home room teacher.He taught Oklahoma History, of course.Attached to that letter was a list of all the other students who would be in my first-hour class.I saw that Pennie Compton was going to be in that class with me. She knew who I was, but we had never actually met. This would be the first time that we would be in class together.Mom couldn’t go that night, which suited me fine. I had a plan of my own.I was the first person to arrive. The parking lot was empty except for the cars of the teachers. I met Coach Meeks, then took a seat at a desk in the back row. About 30 minutes later, a tall man came walking in with his wife and the girl that I knew I was going to marry.After Paul and his wife exchanged pleasantries with Coach Meeks, I walked up to him, introduced myself, then shook his hand as I smiled and said,“My name is Roy Williams and you’re going to be seeing a lot of me.”Last week Princess Pennie and I celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary.Paul never criticized me or gave me advice unless I asked for it. But when I did ask for it, he would tell what he thought, along with some true stories from his own life that explained why he believed what he believed.He always spoke slowly and gave me his full attention. His confidence in me was a great encouragement.In all the decades that I knew Paul Compton, I never saw him raise his head from prayer without having tears on his cheeks. When Paul talked to God, you knew that God was listening.I always looked forward to having him pray for me.He was the best man I ever knew.Roy H. WilliamsMonica Ballard knows why marketing campaigns fail. It’s not for lack of clever slogans, talented spokespeople, or catchy jingles. Monica says ad people fail when they try to project “perfection” rather than authenticity, which requires that you acknowledge the struggles and risks inherent in running a business. Monica is a veteran marketing strategist, storyteller, and one of the elite Wizard of Ads partners.Drawing on her background in theater, radio, and live performance, Monica explains to roving reporter Rotbart and deputy rover Maxwell why empathy and emotional honesty create bonds with customers that no discount or gimmick ever could. “Being real isn’t a liability,” Monica assures us. “It is a decisive competitive advantage.” Get Real with Monica Ballard at MondayMorningRadio.com

The best short stories leave out important information but evoke it in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections.*These are my secret rules for making that happen:Lead your listener toward a conclusion and then let them arrive at it on their own. If you state a conclusion and then try to support it with evidence, you are robbing your listener of the joy of discovery.Give your listener the new, the surprising, and the different.If you must give them old information, reframe it; give it to them from a new perspective, so that they will see it again for the first time.Leave out the parts that people skip.My Christmas gift to you is The Story of the Universe According to Roy.I call it “Way Back in the Long Ago.” You will find it at TribalGospel.comIt is an auditory opera, a campfire story of God and the Universe told under a starfilled sky by an old man who is accompanied by musicians who sit at the furthest edges of that circle of light.But your seat is closer.You feel the warmth of the fire as it dances the dance of the story, and the stars twinkle their agreement with glittering laughter.This is chapter one.Way back in the long ago, the maker spoke, and light exploded across the darkness. Energy radiated across the nothing.Time and space and order appeared from the nothing of the long ago.Bits of energy shot like shrapnel from a bomb into the grid that was created by the ordering of the nothing. Bits of energy bonded with other bits to become great lumps that went spinning across the grid.Their spinning caused these lumps to become spherical.Some of the spheres were made of gasses; ice giants and dwarfs, gas giants and dwarfs, and suns of every size and temperature were created by the energy within them.Others of those spheres became great rocks.Oxygen bonded to hydrogen so that water splashed in the hollows of those rocks.The maker smiled.Algae and moss and grass and trees emerged, and the maker smiled again.Winged creatures darted through the air and swimming creatures darted through the sea, and the maker smiled again.And then creatures appeared on the rock itself. Creatures appeared on the land.The maker looked at us and decided to make us into little makers with the power to choose whatever we would choose. We have the authority to say “yes,” and the authority to say “no,” as we stare into the eyes of the maker.The maker gave us this watery rock we live upon, and complete authority over it.We have the freedom to be guided by our choices. We are no longer the captives of our instincts.The maker is not held captive by time and space. The maker created time and space from the nothing.It is only we – you and me – who measure time and space.Our history of deciding for ourselves and living with the consequences has not been a good history.Seven billion of us are crammed onto a rock that circles an 11,000-degree fireball as it shoots through the nothing… at 52 times the speed of a rifle bullet.We are passengers on a world spinning out of control.Having wrongly been told that the maker is in control, we blame the maker for every sadness.You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself.I hope you will take an hour to enjoy my little campfire opera.Merry Christmas.Roy H. Williams*The same is true of the best jokes and the best ads.This week, roving reporter Rotbart and his deputy, Maxwell, offer their third annual holiday encore of their inspirational Yuletide tale, A Christmas Day Miracle, by Dean and Talya Rotbart. First published in 2021, A Christmas Day Miracle has become a holiday favorite. It is the true story of a man, Riyaz Adat, on death’s doorstep; and his devoted wife, Margaret. The story is a poignant reminder of the wonder and power of life’s unexpected blessings. The telling will begin as soon as you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com