Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

March 16, 2026I am sitting in front of a computer that can deliver love letters to billions of addresses across the twenty-four time zones that encircle this watery rock we live upon.I sit and stare and look with wonder at the glittering ocean called Youtube, deeply aware that I know next-to-nothing about it. This gives me a tremendous advantage.It keeps me from doing what everyone else is doing.Naive ignorance becomes nitroglycerin when it is energized by the spirit of adventure. Handled carefully, you can move mountains with it. But if you are reckless, clumsy, or just plain unlucky, that same TNT can blow you into pieces.I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “Let’s go exploring.”Mirror-me thought it sounded like fun, so he passed through the glass to join me on my side of the mirror.Energized by the spirit of adventure, I launched @GreatWritersSeries on Youtube and Mirror-Me launched @TribalGospel.On Feb 12, 2026, GreatWritersSeries had 480 views and a few dozen subscribers.On March 12, 2026, it had accumulated 5,146,423 total views and 44,684 subscribers.TribalGospel had zero views on Feb 12 to but quickly accumulated 8,299,137 total views and 105,707subscribers by March 12.GreatWriters Series received fresh content once a day.TribalGospel received fresh content at a much faster pace, up to 3 times a day.Indy Beagle has posted some Youtube screenshots in the rabbit hole for you, along with a couple of the most successful videos.I will now answer your questions:Q: “Can you teach me how you did this?”A: Yes, but the information will probably not be useful to you. But if you insist on hearing all of the details, be in the tower at Wizard Academy on May 26-27. I will spend one hour of that two-day class answering the questions of whoever is in that room.Q: “Why has TribalGospel outperformed GreatWritersSeries?A: GreatWritersSeries is carrying water to the ocean. TribalGospel is carrying water to the desert.Q: “What do you mean?”A: GreatWritersSeries is published for people who love literature that was written in the English language. This widely diverse but relatively small group is scattered across the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and Ireland, with a few additional outliers flung here and there.GreatWritersSeries wants only to tempt people to become lovers of literature, whereas TribalGospel is published for people in every time zone who are thirsty for encouragement and hope.English is not their first language, but they can understand it if they can read along with what they are hearing.Look at the comments @TribalGospel and these things will immediately become apparent to you.A startling number of TribalGospel subscribers are in Iraq, Ukraine, Egypt, India, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and throughout South America. I knew this would be the case, so I leaned into it.Are you beginning to understand why only a spattering of what I have learned during these past 28 days will be useful to you? TribalGospel wants only to make a difference – to lift people up for a moment – so that channel went to where it could most easily encourage the largest number of people.Traditional wisdom would have said that only an idiot would sing flashes of Bible stories and the message of Jesus to nations that are predominantly non-Christian.But I have always been an idiot.Q: Does everyone consider it to be encouragement?A: Of course not. You will notice that about 10 percent of the Youtube comments are rage posts from people who want to tell me why I am wrong.But I ignore those people because have found more than 100,000 people in just 28 days who have clearly said, “Thank you! And will you please send me more of this?”Q: Do you believe this will be sustainable or is it a flash in the pan?A: I have no way of knowing. My suspicion, though, is that TribalGospel will continue to grow, but GreatWritersSeries will ebb and surge like the tide.Q: Why do you think so?A: The world has billions of forgotten people, overlooked people, and many of those people are carrying smart phones. The message of TribalGospel will be very consistent, mostly just variations of an uplifting theme. This causes me to believe that TribalGospel will gain new subscribers faster than it loses old ones.But I do not make that assumption about GreatWritersSeries.A person who subscribed when they heard a Shakespeare song is going to be angry and confused when they hear the gonzo writing of Tom Robbins. To have a stable subscriber base, GreatWritersSeries would have to choose a narrow niche within the already narrow “Lovers of Literature” niche.The hope of GreatWritersSeries is to expose people to a writer that enchants them enough to read a book by that writer. You can think of GreatWritersSeries as a dealer who is giving away samples in the hope of creating new addicts.I apologize for that metaphor, but I couldn’t think of a better one.The adventure continues. Snow-capped mountains loom ahead and winter is coming.Roy H. WilliamsMost people believe that business success is the product of talent, hard work, and persistence. But what if success could be analyzed — and improved — using the laws of probability? Kyle Austin Young maintains that most goals can be analyzed and improved by understanding their underlying odds. This is true of whatever you do. Launching a product, raising funds, publishing a book, whatever. Kyle calls his consulting methodology “probability hacking.” It says that the odds of your success are determined by the odds of each of the necessary things going right, multiplied together. Roving reporter Rotbart predicts that the odds are very high that this episode of MondayMorningRadio will improve your company’s top line. The explanation begins the moment you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com

One thing always leads to anotherThat’s why big sisters have baby brothersAnd how King George gave away a nationwhen he said “No” to representation.He did not not know how much it meantfor those colonies to have seats in Parliament.Think about it. The cry of the colonies was only this:“No taxation without representation.”What if King George had said…“That is a fantastic plan!Each colony needs to choose a man.”And if the colonies had responded,“We’d like to send two.”And King George had said…“Then two seats it will be!Because you people are important to me.”The difference that would have made in history,Will forever be an unsolved mystery.But I do know this, and I know it for sure:That having an open mind is a powerful curefor avoiding problems that can spiral out of controland haunt you forever, wherever you go.If there is a moral to this story,I guess it would be this:Never shout “No” when there isa workable way to say Yes.Never shout “No” when there isa workable way to say Yes.Never shout “No” when there isa workable way to say Yes.One thing always leads to another.I was speaking with Clara, the wife of Danny, one of my clients.Clara collects silverwork made by the world’s great silversmiths.One of Clara’s hopes is to someday acquire an exceptionally fine piece of silverwork made by – “The British are coming! The British are coming!” – Paul Revere.Were you aware that Paul Revere was a famous silversmith?The unseen silverwork of that midnight man was floating in a slow circle in the asteroid belt of my mind when the haunting voice of Paul Revere whispered silently in my ear,“What would have happened if King George had said ‘Yes’ and given each of his thirteen American colonies two seats in Parliament?”A conversation about what Clara collected quickly became a quirky poem that quietly abandons seven words of subtle sexual humor to move into the story of a stupid king who launched a faraway war he could never win.Creative thought is not sequential; it is relational, a pinball that ricochets off levers and bumpers at unexpected angles, the energy of the unexpected, triggering bells in the brain and flashing lights in the mind.Crazy Jack Kerouac had rules for writing:9. The unspeakable visions of the individual8. Write what you want, bottomless from bottom of the mind7. Blow as deep as you want to blow.My few lines of accidental verse soon became a song sung by imaginary singers who are currently touring the world.You can catch their show in the rabbit hole.Roy H. WilliamsCourtney De Ronde is a financial decoder. She studies the same financial data that business owners and their accountants review, but she uncovers opportunities and risks within those numbers that are almost always overlooked. This is why Courtney De Ronde has evolved as a scaling expert. She helps businesses grow by avoiding the missteps that non-strategic growth always causes.As Courtney shares with roving reporter Rotbart, most business owners will expand their revenues but end up working harder, hiring more people, piling on expenses, and somehow ending up with the same — or even less — profit. Learn what you need to know at MondayMorningRadio.com

February 26, 2026Kronos is chronological time.Kronos appears more than 50 times in the original New Testament.Kairos is a pregnant moment in time, an inflection-point of consequence.Does in surprise you that Kairos appears more than 85 times?Each of us vividly remembers those Kairos moments when we decided to turn the steering wheel of Life and begin traveling in a whole new direction.Jim Burns is a counselor. His voice is heard on more than 800 radio stations each day and he has 3 million books in print. But I didn’t know any of that prior to him appearing as a guest speaker at our church last week.I tell you this only because Jim Burns said something that I really needed to hear.“I had to learn to say ’no’ to good things, to say ‘yes’ to the most important things.”That was a Kairos moment for me because it instantly crystallized something in my mind that had previously been only the foggy awareness that I was speaking with so many people each day that I no longer had time to take a deep breath and calm my thoughts.Then Jim said it again, but differently. “Sometimes we just have to say ‘no’ to good things, even to say yes to the most important things. That’s how we declutter. That’s how we run light.”Two days later, I was surprised by a video on Youtube in which my friend Ryan Deiss mentions me by name. He had posted that video a couple of weeks before Jim Burns spoke at our church.Speaking of himself, Ryan says,“I literally had zero recollection whatsoever of what I did, or what any of my companies did those weeks, either. It’s just like they were a complete blur. More than likely, I spent all my time responding to whatever emergency someone else decided was important for me on that particular day.”Wow. Ryan Deiss was speaking exactly what I had been feeling for more than a year.There are now 87 Wizard of Ads partners and many hundreds of clients, so I go to bed most nights exhausted by the long days, the countless conversations, and the constant feeling that I am somehow letting everyone down.But Ryan wasn’t finished.“Scale creates chaos. So if you want to get bigger, you have to insist on focus and simplicity. It is a bit of a paradox, but the key to scale is actually to do less, not more. Because when you force yourself to do less, you shift the emphasis from quantity to impact. And at scale, output matters a lot more than activity.”We – not just me, but all of us – need to be on guard that we don’t allow the “merely urgent” to displace the truly important.Have you ever noticed that the things that are truly important are rarely urgent, and things that are “exclamation-point URGENT” are rarely of lasting importance?Urgent things are momentary, but constant.Important things are forever, but they can always wait.And then one day, they can’t wait any longer.And by then, it’s often too late.For those of you who are curious, Indy Beagle has posted in the rabbit hole the Ryan Deiss Youtube video that I mentioned, as well as the Youtube video of Jim Burns speaking at our church.Those two messages, just 48 hours apart, created a Kairos moment for me.If you have been feeling what I was feeling and what Ryan was describing, maybe those videos will do the same for you.You can watch the videos or click past them if you don’t have time.Believe me, I completely understand.Roy H. WilliamsAmerica’s top CEOs pay Doug C. Brown to teach them how to rethink their approach to sales. Doug has consulted Procter & Gamble, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and Embassy Suites. Doug C. Brown is not a lightweight. Doug tells roving reporter Rotbart, “most companies can quickly realize a 20-30% improvement in operating profits” when they follow his straightforward recommendations.Doug says that it is more important “to know the right prospects to approach” than to know how to close the sale. If you think you’ve heard it all, listen to Doug C. Brown. There is a chance that maybe you haven’t heard it all. Doug C. Brown will light you up. The right time to listen is up to you. But the place will always be MondayMorningRadio.com

Welkin is a poetic or archaic term for the sky, firmament, or vault of heaven.To “ring the welkin” or make the “welkin ring” is a literary idiom meaning to make a very loud noise, such as shouting, cheering, or singing, that seems to echo throughout the sky or heavens. It implies creating a celebratory or boisterous sound that fills the air.Will you ring welkin?“Jet” Eisenberg knew immediately why I was doing what I did. He said that I spoke about it on the day that we met more than a quarter-century ago.He said that I have spoken about it in every class that he has ever heard me teach.Most people continue to be confused regarding my commitment to @GreatWritersSeries, so I recently updated the description of that channel on Youtube. (You should subscribe, by the way.)You may recognize a line within that description that I used in last week’s Monday Morning Memo.This is my new description on Youtube: The goal of @GreatWritersSeries is to tempt you to read great literature: the novels, histories, poems, and news stories that won the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. The song lyrics and screenplays that won the Grammy and Tony Awards.Because they will change you.Great literature is the lightning bolt that will pierce your skull, illuminate your mind, and set your tongue on fire.“For as you read, so will you speak and write.”Roy H. Williams had a marvelous English teacher during his junior and senior years of high school in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.Her name was Linn Ball.She taught him to hear the music of great writing and dance to it.She taught him to lift his eyes to the sky so that he could fly.She taught him to hear the music of unexpected words as they bang into each other and fill the movie screen of the mind with scenes that are startling and true.He wants to do the same for you.Moments before I began writing this Monday Monday Memo to you, I posted on Youtube a musical video of a poem written in 1929 by Ogden Nash.The title of that poem is “No Doctors Today, Thank You.” You can see and hear that Youtube performance in today’s rabbit hole.This is it:They tell me that euphoria is the feeling of feeling wonderful,well, today I feel euphorian,Today I have the agility of a Greek god and the appetite of aVictorian.Yes, today I may even go forth without my galoshes,Today I am a swashbuckler, would anybody like me to buckleany swashes?This is my euphorian day,I will ring welkin and before anybody answers I will run away.I will tame me a caribouAnd bedeck it with marabou.I will pen me my memoirs.Ah youth, youth! What euphorian days them was!I wasn’t much of a hand for the boudoirs,I was generally to be found where the food was.Does anybody want any flotsam?I’ve gotsam.Does anybody want any jetsam?I can getsam.I can play chopsticks on the Wurlitzer,I can speak Portuguese like a Berlitzer.I can don or doff my shoes without tying or untying the laces because I am wearing moccasins,And I practically know the difference between serums and antitoccasins.Kind people, don’t think me purse-proud, don’t set me down as vainglorious,I’m just a little euphorious.I’m just a little euphorious.I want you to dance.I want you to fly.I want the movie screen of your mind to be filled with scenes that are startling and true.I want you to feel euphorious.Roy H. WilliamsRegular viewers of cable news will instantly recognize Arthur Lih and his ubiquitous commercials for LifeVac, the non-invasive rescue device he invented to save choking victims when the Heimlich maneuver and other traditional methods fail. To date, his invention is credited with saving 5,450-plus lives. As Arthur shares with roving reporter Rotbart and his deputy, Maxwell, developing a life-saving device is one challenge. Building a company around it and sustaining that business in a highly regulated, highly competitive environment is exponentially harder. Arthur’s insights are indispensable for entrepreneurs, business owners, and inventors committed to developing products that matter — and companies that endure. You can hear the entire, amazing story 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