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.

1. 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.
2. 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?
3. 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.

1. A: People don’t bond with corporations, they bond with personalities.
2. 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.
3. 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.

1. Roy H. Williams

Zig 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.

I write this with reluctance because I know that I will receive hundreds of emails correcting me on a few niggling little details.

But write on, I must.

“Write on, write on, write on.”

“Cost of Compute” refers to the $8 to $13 that every AI company has to spend on electricity and short-lived computer chips for every $1 that comes through the door.

Losing a dozen dollars for every dollar you touch isn’t a problem when investors are showering you with cash from a fire hose.

But it’s beginning to look like the well has run dry.

I did not want to defend where I got my information, so I went to the Goog and asked, “Oh Great Googness, why are people referring to the S&P 500 as the “S&P 10”?

Check this out, cub scout, straight from the AI of the Almighty Google:

“The S&P 500 is being referred to as the “S&P 10″ because a handful of massive technology-related companies dominate the index’s performance. Due to market-cap weighting, these top 10 stocks disproportionately influence the index’s total return, making the ‘broad market’ performance heavily reliant on these few, AI-exposed companies. More than $40 of every $100 invested in the S&P 500 is going into just 10 companies, creating a high level of concentration not seen in decades. In some recent periods, those top 10 stocks have accounted for nearly 90% of the entire index’s gains, indicating that the remaining 490+ stocks contribute very little to the overall upward movement.”

Allow me to highlight Three Big Problems.

1. Manufacturing companies, food companies, service companies, and all the other cash-hungry hopefuls that are the true wonders of the American economy have not been able to raise any money because way too many people have been dumping everything they’ve got into AI.
2. That money has now slowed down, which means that a lot of AI dependent companies are now being burned by their “burn rate,” a slang term for “precisely how fast they are losing money.”
3. AI is getting worse, not better, despite the fact that everyone is repeating like parrots, “AI is worse now than it will ever be. Hour by hour, AI will just keep getting better and better forever and ever.”

Okay, I can tell from the look of doubt that I see in your eyes that you need me to explain a little bit more about Problem Number 3.

They can’t raise prices fast enough to stop the bleeding, so most of the AI companies have reduced their Cost of Compute by 86%.

“But how?” you ask.

Here’s how. In the recent past, you could give your $200/mo AI some detailed instructions and it would go on a deep dive to bring you the golden nuggets of information that you requested. The 86% savings of Compute Cost is because they instructed the AI to just look in the cache for what they told someone else who asked a similar question. You get a recycled answer, and the AI company saves 86%.

I’ll wrap this up by giving you the storyteller’s definition of “inflection point.”

Bad storytellers say, “This happened, then This happened, then This happened, then This happened, then This happened.”

Real stories happen like this: “This happened, THEREFORE this happened, BUT then, This happened.”

“BUT then, This happened” is called “an Inflection Point.”

“So what’s going to happen next?”

Let’s wait and see.

Roy H. Williams

I could be wrong, but I think I see a line of 6,603 standing dominoes with a forefinger poised to flick the first domino.

Take a step back, I’ll give you some facts, and then we’ll return to the dominoes.

1. There are 6,602 FM radio stations in America, 597 FM stations in Canada, and 234 in Australia on which you can air radio ads for local businesses. These radio stations are producing miraculous results for business owners who hire great ad writers to enchant the audience and savvy media buyers to schedule those ads to air with correct repetition 52 weeks a year.

Sadly, most business owners do exactly the wrong thing. They run short schedules to “test the waters,” and then announce, “I tried radio and it didn’t work.”

1. ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX are producing miraculous results for business owners who hire great ad writers to enchant the audience and savvy media buyers to schedule those ads to air with correct repetition 52 weeks a year.

Sadly, most business owners do exactly the wrong thing. They run short schedules to “test the waters,” and then announce, “I tried television and TV didn’t work.”

Did you notice the similarity that united those two easily proven facts?

1. Anyone who believes that online media has made mass media obsolete is comically delusional. I never waste time attempting to correct these people.

We will now return to the dominoes.

1. Nielsen Audio is the media measurement company that allows savvy media buyers to create miraculous radio schedules. Without Nielsen, they are flying blind without instruments and very likely to crash their flying machines.
2. Cumulus owns multiple radio stations in 84 important cities in the U.S. Their current financial difficulties make it impossible for them to pay Nielsen for their measurement services.
3. Nielsen has responded by announcing that Cumulus radio stations will no longer be measured or listed in future ratings reports.
4. The resulting invisibility of those stations will cripple even the savviest media buyers.
5. An emerging measurement system, DTS AutoStage, shows promise but I remain convinced that it will be at least a few more years before it has sufficient breadth of data to replace Nielsen.

The finger of Nielsen is flicking the domino that will knock over the other 6,602 dominoes in the chain that will ultimately result in the demise of Nielsen.

I have no way of knowing whether or not Nielsen realizes that.

Nielsen was purchased by private equity on October 11, 2022, less than 4 years ago.

Things are looking good for ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX.

Roy H. Williams

When people talk about the Chicago Cubs and their historic 2016 World Series victory — ending a 108-year drought — Joshua Lifrak is a name you rarely hear. But he wears a Cubs World Series ring. Joshua Lifrak’s job was to help players perform under extraordinary pressure. Today Joshua works with business leaders to sharpen focus, build mental resilience and perform at their best. Be fascinated as Joshua tells roving reporter Rotbart and deputy rover Maxwell how peak mental conditioning is a “home run” skill that anyone can learn and practice, regardless of what they do for a living. Batter up! at MondayMorningRadio.com