March 16, 2026

I 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. Williams

Most 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 another

That’s why big sisters have baby brothers

And how King George gave away a nation

when he said “No” to representation.

He did not not know how much it meant

for 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 cure

for avoiding problems that can spiral out of control

and 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 is

a workable way to say Yes.

Never shout “No” when there is

a workable way to say Yes.

Never shout “No” when there is

a workable way to say Yes.

One thing always leads to another.

1. I was speaking with Clara, the wife of Danny, one of my clients.
2. Clara collects silverwork made by the world’s great silversmiths.
3. 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.
4. 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 individual

8. Write what you want, bottomless from bottom of the mind

7. 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. Williams

Courtney 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, 2026

Kronos 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. Williams

America’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 a

Victorian.

Yes, today I may even go forth without my galoshes,

Today I am a swashbuckler, would anybody like me to buckle

any swashes?

This is my euphorian day,

I will ring welkin and before anybody answers I will run away.

I will tame me a caribou

And 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. Williams

Regular 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 mind

Marcus 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

Relationships are easier to navigate when we realize that one person’s heaven is another person’s hell.

The things that bring us joy are subjective and personal and uniquely our own.

Can we talk for a moment about joy?

Joy is a mixture of appreciation and wonder.

You cannot appreciate something and be filled with wonder by it without also having a feeling of thankfulness for it.

Every garden of joy is rooted in the soil of gratitude.

Do not confuse pleasure with joy.

Pleasure is superficial and outward, barely skin-deep. But joy finds its rhythm in the beating of your heart and its home in the marrow of your bones.

You and I do a lot of things for a lot of different reasons each day. But what do you do just for the joy of it?

What do you do that makes you feel like you?

Every great consultant finds joy in the success of the people they advise.

Gary and Stephen help businesses grow by crafting totally true stories to tell the public.

Their stories are intensely interesting.

Yesterday Stephen told me something that fascinated me beyond words.

In a business category that is not interesting, in a trade area of barely a million people, a man built a business to about 5 million dollars a year before walking slowly backwards to 3.7 million.

Then he met Stephen.

Stephen guided that business owner to 12 million a year through better storytelling. Thirteen months ago that same business owner hired a bright young woman to become his social media marketer. He generously paid expensive social media consultants to train her.

When the bright young woman told Stephen what she had learned from these experts, Stephen asked his partner Gary if he would share his contrarian perspective with her.

In the end, the bright young woman and the business owner asked Gary to become her coach.

In 2025, that business had more than 50 million facebook views as a direct result of Gary’s coaching and the dedicated efforts of that young woman. Last month – in the 31 days of January, 2026 – that business had more than 12-and-a half million views on Facebook.

I love that story and I admire that business owner and the young woman he hired.

I am also extremely proud of Stephen and Gary.

In a fit of curiosity, I just now divided 31 days into 12-and-a half million views.

We’re talking about 403,000 views per day, which is 16,000 views per hour, which is 280 views per minute.

We’re talking about 4.7 views per second, 24 hours a day for 31 days.

Friends, I’m feeling joy.

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 takes

1. a convincing message

2. rock-solid courage

3. 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. Williams

Here’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.

David and I began building oilfield heat exchangers in a heavy steel fabrication shop in Oklahoma when we were 14 years old. We were universally known as, “them schoolboys.”

Steel shops are notoriously noisy, but when we heard “Schooolboy!” ring out above the cacophony of hammers and grinders, we would swivel our heads toward the sound and begin walking toward whomever was looking at us.

“Hard, dirty and dangerous” describes the work and the men we worked with.

To call them “drunks, deviants, and derelicts” would certainly be less kind, but no less accurate.

There were also 8 or 9 solid family men, most of whom were foremen and supervisors.

The oil coolers we built were the size of a two-car garage. And several times a day these metal monsters would be lifted 5 or 6 feet off the ground by an overhead crane and go swinging through the air to another part of the shop as far as 300 feet away.

Heavy steel flying through the air is entirely unforgiving. One of my responsibilities was to drive injured guys to the hospital. But few of my bloody passengers were injured in accidents. Most of them were injured in fistfights with coworkers.

When we were both 16, David and I were joined by a boy named Jay. Dark hair, dark eyes, and skin that was decidedly not English, Irish, Scottish, or German. We liked him immediately.

David put a quarter into the machine and yanked a Pepsi from its mechanical jaws. He handed it to Jay and asked, “Are you some kind of Puerto Rikkan or something?”

Jay scowled and said, “No, I ain’t no dang Rikkan.”

David smiled, clicked his Pepsi bottle against the one that Jay was holding, took a long drink, then said, “It’s good to meet you, Rikkan.”

We found out later that Jay was Italian, but his name was Rikkan from that day forward.

A few days later, Rikkan began calling David “Cliff” and my name somehow became “Dean.” Rikkan never told us why he chose those names, but he refused to call us anything else, so David and I fell into line. I began calling him Cliff and he began calling me Dean.

Jay, David and Roy became Rikkan, Cliff and Dean for the next 3 years. Utterly absurd, but completely true.

Devin Wright has a sparkling laugh and I’ve always enjoyed hearing it.

So when Devin began working with me 20 years ago, I would walk into his office each afternoon and ask a ridiculous question. Devin would laugh his sparkling laugh and I would walk away smiling.

One day I popped my head into his office and looked at him quizzically, as though I was confused. He looked back at me, equally puzzled. With a completely straight face, I asked “Did you get a spray tan?”

For once, Devin didn’t laugh. He vigorously denied it, utterly aghast that I would ever think that he was so vain and shallow that he would ever stoop to such a ridiculous…

I quit listening after that.

So now you know how “Spraytan” was born.

Jacob Harrison became “Boxwine” in a similar fashion,

Dave Cullen became “Skunkmeat”

Howard Wolowitz became “Fruit Loops”

George Costanza became “KoKo”

and Jeffrey Eisenberg became “Jet.”

No, “Jet” is not a reduction of Jeffrey.

When we agreed to meet for lunch last week, Jeffrey suggested by text that we meet at 1300 hours.

I texted him back, “I never knew that you were in the Air Force. Did you fly fighter jets?”

If all of this sounds lowbrow, redneck, hick, uncultured, ill-refined, outmoded, outdated, dinosaur-ish and in poor taste, I agree.

But no one can spend 4 impressionable years working with drunks, deviants, and derelicts and walk away without at least one bad habit.

Roy H. Williams

Dean Rotbart is taking a short Sabbatical from Monday Morning Radio for the next few weeks to travel across America gathering detailed information for an extremely important new book that he is writing. We have been sworn to secrecy not to tell you what this new book is about, because if it became known, it would make Dean’s research much more difficult to accomplish.

In his younger years, our roving reporter Rotbart was a Pulitzer-nominated investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Investigative reporting is his superpower. But Dean has promised us that when his research is complete and his new book has been published, all will be revealed.

But jump into the rabbit hole anyway! Indy Beagle has some treats for you.

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

1. Equity

I’m not sure how Google would define “equity,” but my definition of equity is “stored value.”

As a homeowner, you understand home equity as the stored value that it offers you.

Your equity in your home is a product of all the time, energy, and money that you have put into it, plus the value that has been added by the passage of time.

Relational equity is accumulated in the same way.

“What have we invested in each other? What have we endured? How many years have we traveled through life together?”

Relational equity is why we tolerate annoyances and troubles from the people we love. They have added value to our lives, so they have relational equity in us.

Likewise, customer-bonding ads create relational equity between today’s businesses and tomorrow’s customers. They do this by highlighting shared perspectives, beliefs, and values.

Customer-bonding ads communicate authenticity, and vulnerability. And they are always there, 52 weeks a year. Authenticity, vulnerability, and the passage of time are not easy to fake or accelerate.

Keep those things in mind as you read on.

2. AI

Eighty-seven Wizards of Ads who stay in regular touch with nearly 1,000 businesses are a reliable finger on the pulse of what is happening.

This is what is happening:

Google Search results have been altered in a dramatic and unexpected way. Some companies have benefited greatly from Google’s new methodology while other companies have been devastated by it.

You’ll understand what separates the winners from the losers in just a moment.

With 6,000 employees, Edelman is the world’s largest PR agency. They help companies worldwide manage their reputations and trust through stories published in mass media.

Edelman has been doing what they do since 1952.

On October 27, 2025, Christmas decorations were vibrating in anticipation of replacing Halloween decor when Brent Nelson – Chief Strategy Officer at Edelman – was quoted in Ad Age magazine.

Explaining why Google dramatically expanded their results-ranking criteria, Nelson said,

“What drives visibility isn’t your ad budget or keyword bids; it’s earned media. Analysis shows that 90% of what appears in AI summaries is ‘earned-driven’—pulled from reviews, press, blogs, forums and cultural chatter. Paid now plays a different role, amplifying what’s already there.”

“The new shelf space isn’t a store; it’s the AI summary. Brands need to understand their earned footprint across AI-generated answers.”

“Who gets cited? Who’s trusted? Who’s missing? That’s the new baseline of visibility.”

In other words, Google is now rewarding Relational Equity.

3. A Prediction

Hundreds of new companies are about to leap into the Public Relations business. Their goal will be to get their clients mentioned in online press, blogs, forums and cultural chatter.

PR is an easy business to get into. It won’t be long before you are approached by someone who has a PR solution to help you improve your AEO (Ask Engine Optimization).

If you remember any of today’s Monday Morning Memo, let it be this:

“If you don’t have anything interesting to say, don’t let anyone convince you to pay money to say it.”

Company slogans, mush-mouth clichés and traditional ad-speak are not going to move the needle.

Every month or two, you are going to need something new, exciting, different, and entirely real to say.

4. A Suggestion

Radio stations would be smart to start a daily or weekly blog that is fun, quick, entertaining, easy-to-read, and full of valuable things that every consumer would want to know about.

If I owned a station in Austin, I would call my blog “Cool Things Austin Needs to Know”

If my blog was well written and full of actionable information and enough people got into the habit of scanning it each day, my radio station could become an important contributor to the online press, blogs, forums and cultural chatter that are now so very important.

Could a Radio station become a major online player in their community? Absolutely!

Remember, radio stations have the power to popularize their online blogs FOR FREE. Announcers could quote interesting tidbits from it each day and build a massive readership. Offline radio excitement would become online blog excitement.

Do I expect that radio stations will do this? Nope.

But if a few do dare to do it, do I expect them to be successful? Nope.

These are the four ways that their bosses will force them to screw it up.

1. They will try to make it a source of direct revenue.

2. They won’t write about anything or anyone who doesn’t advertise on their station.

3. They will allow advertisers to influence what is said about them in the blog.

4. It will be badly written, boring, and of no value to anyone.

But it would absolutely work if they did it right.

5. Closing comments

We are overwhelmed by a Three Ring Circus of media: online, offline, local, national, audio, video, print, outdoor, broadcast, streaming, digital, analog, physical, old-school, new-school, professional, amateur, full-color and black-and-white.

It is never the media that makes the message work.

It is always the message that makes the media work.

If you don’t have anything interesting to say,

don’t let anyone convince you to pay money to say it.

Roy H. Williams

Lots of people know how to make money. But far fewer understand how to protect it, manage it, and plan for the long arc of life once the hard work of earning is done. Jeffrey Panik brings clarity to complex financial decisions. Listen and learn as Jeffrey shares with roving reporter Rotbart his emphasis on individualized planning, long-term thinking, and his belief that communication is absolutely essential between spouses, across generations, and with trusted advisors.

Drawing stories from his professional experience and from his personal history, Jeffrey will shake your beliefs and challenge your assumptions about financial planning and retirement readiness.

Jeffrey’s BIG TRUTH can be summarized in just six words: “Clarity today can prevent regret tomorrow.” We’ll say hello and shake your hand the moment you arrive at MondayMorningRadio.com

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. Williams

Monica 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