The best screenwriters in Hollywood use the principles of David Freeman, as do Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning novelists and all the most effective ad writers, even if they have never heard of the man.

I know David well, as he has taught a number of classes at Wizard Academy. His always-and-forever question is this: “What causes this character to think, act, speak, and see the world the way they do?”

NOTE: As a writer, you don’t necessarily need to tell your viewers, readers, or listeners why a character thinks, acts, speaks, and sees the world they way they do; it is only important that YOU know.

When you know the backstory of a character, that character comes alive. It glistens with perspiration, and your audience feels it’s heartbeat. Your heroes will never be perfectly pure and good, nor will your villains ever be entirely evil. Your audiences may even begin to wonder whether they ought to change sides and start cheering for the character they originally thought was a villain.

The question you must ask each of your characters is this: “What happened to you that causes you to think, act, speak, and see the world the way you do?”

You, as a writer, need to know why your characters are the way they are.

Friend, with every sleeper you wake, every heart you break, every choice you make and action you take, you are writing the story of your life. Take a breath and say this next sentence out loud. “What happened to me that causes me to think, act, speak, and see the world the way I do?”

Seriously, say it out loud. “What happened to me that causes me to think, act, speak, and see the world the way I do?”

I believe my friend Tucker Max understands the magic of writing memoirs better than any writer who has ever lived. Tucker is the only writer I know who has had 3 books simultaneously on the New York Times bestseller list. And each of those 3 books was a memoir.

Tucker Max is currently writing what will probably become the memoir equivalent of the Ring of Power that Frodo Baggins carried to Mordor. “One Memoir to rule them all, One Memoir to find them, One Memoir to bring them all and in the bright light bind them.”

I won’t tell you anything more about Tucker’s soon-coming memoir because I don’t want to ruin it for you, but I will tell you what Tucker said to me privately:

“The reason to write a memoir is to tell yourself the truth about your life. Memoir is an inherently therapeutic process. Whether or not you ever let anyone read it is irrelevant. You are giving yourself a private space to uncover, and consider, and speak the whole truth about your life.”

Today is the day that you will start writing your memoir. So say this out loud with me one more time. Are you ready?

“What happened to me that causes me to think, act, speak, and see the world the way I do?”

Ciao for Niao, and Indy Beagle told me to tell you “Aroo” and that he will see you in the rabbit hole.

Roy H. Williams

Dr. Laura Gabayan is an emergency medicine doctor and associate professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, and for many years she has conducted a scientific study of wisdom, including how to define it and cultivate it. Dr. G., as she is known, recently published her findings and is sharing them today with roving reporter Rotbart in an effort to help him discover a more fulfilling, meaningful, and prosperous life. MondayMorningRadio.com

Every person on earth belongs to several cults.

Calm down. I’m not talking about what you think I’m talking about.

I’ll start at the beginning.

Cult: any group of people who share a devotion to an idea, activity, or identity.

Cults become toxic and dangerous

only when the devotion of the group is

(1.) to a specific individual,

(2.) focused on the destruction of an enemy.

Culture: patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give those activities significance, importance, and meaning.

Cultivation: to till or refine. Seeds are more likely to grow and produce a harvest when you till the soil to soften and refine it.

Cult Brands: Apple, Lululemon, Tesla, Harley Davidson, Starbucks, Nike, and Star Trek are notable examples of brands that have become associated with an idea, activity, or identity.

Cult brands make a lot of money.

Do you want to create a cult brand? I’ve been telling you how to do it for 30 years, but I’ll say it one more time for those of you who are new:

“Win the heart, and the mind will follow. The mind will always find logic to justify what the heart has already decided.”

To build a cult brand, all we need to do is abbreviate those earlier definitions and tilt them slightly toward advertising.

Cultivation: to plant the seeds of an ideology by allowing potential customers to perceive and conclude that you believe and value exactly what they believe and value.

Culture: the recurrent activities of a self-selected group.

Cult: a group of people who are strongly attracted to a brand.

The best storytelling ads gently cultivate the mind, loosening the soil of public consciousness so that you might sow the seed-thoughts that will grow into profitable persuasion, causing your brand to be the one people think of immediately – and feel the best about – when they need what you sell.

These seed-thoughts are what my partners and I call brandable chunks, a collection of carefully crafted signature phrases that are unique to your brand. Like all seeds, these brandable chunks must be sown in abundance if you hope for a bountiful harvest.

The seed-thoughts contained in these brandable chunks will germinate – and magnetic connection will occur – when a person perceives that you believe what they believe. When your brand stands for something that people believe in, you have the opportunity to become a cult brand.

When this cultivation and germination of your seed-thoughts has occurred, the next step is for your customer to be introduced to your culture.

Uh-oh. I just heard someone think, “I’m not affected by advertising, so I’m not in a cult of any kind.” Friend, I know you don’t want to hear this, but you’re a card-carrying member of the “Don’t Label Me” cult. I could tell you several interesting things about your little group, but that would not be a friendly thing to do, so I won’t.

Instead, I will tell you about a cult I joined in 1972.

“Roses for the Living” is the name of the cult my mother started completely by accident. I was there when it happened.

It was 1972. We were struggling financially due to my father having fled the scene three years earlier. My mother had found a job, worked hard, kept a roof over our heads and food in our mouths for three long years before she finally had a few dollars she could spend on herself.

She spent those dollars taking a friend with her on a 2-day trip to Taos, New Mexico.

When I asked her why she did it, she said,

“People will take time off work, buy a plane ticket and fly across the country to lay a dozen roses on the grave of a friend who has died.”

“But their friend...

I never write click-bait headlines, but I wrote this one just to prove I can.

Brad shines from Shawnee, Ron comes from Duncan, and I bailed from Broken Arrow.

We’re all Okla-Homeboys.

Now that my click-bait headline has done its job and convinced you to keep reading all the way down to this third paragraph, I will transition to the real reason I wanted to speak with you today: Amway.

Here’s how it works. You buy stuff from me that I buy from someone above me, and they buy it from someone above them, and so on. But through the mystical magic of multi-level marketing, we all get rich by making a tiny commission on whatever you bought!

What you need to do is find some friends who dream of financial freedom and convince them to buy this same stuff from YOU. And guess what! THEY WILL GET RICH, TOO! Don’t you want all of your friends to be rich with you? Think of all the fun you rich, rich, rich people will have after you all become rich, rich, rich!

Welcome to Oklahoma. Now you know why Brad, Ron and I decided to leave.

Honestly, I have fond memories of Oklahoma and I cherish all the valuable lessons I learned there. For real.

1. Never deal with an idiot. Escape while you can. Keep an eye on them until they become a tiny speck disappearing in your rear-view mirror.
2. Fall in love with an actual person. Do not fall in love with falling in love.
3. Commitment does not flow from passion. Passion flows from commitment.
4. Patience will make you wealthy much more quickly than luck.
5. Business is nothing more than a search for purpose and adventure, and failures are footlights along the dark pathway to success.
6. Everyone has a superpower. When you have figured out their superpower, that’s when you know a person.
7. Never lose sight of your closest friends and always be there for them.
8. Every conflict is an auction. The winner will be the one who is willing to pay a higher price than anyone else. (This is why you should try to avoid conflicts.)
9. There is a time for incremental escalation and there is a time for overwhelming force. Take no action until you know what time it is.
10. What you are currently thinking and feeling is a product of where you have turned your attention. Be careful where you turn your attention.
11. Learn to speak in color and to write poetically.
12. Poetry is any communication that changes what you think, and how you feel, in a brief, tight economy of words.

Those are some of the things I learned as an Okie, and now I have shared them with you. That makes you a little bit Okie, too.

Ciao for Niao,

Roy H. Williams

Becoming a children’s book publisher is not “sugar and spice and everything nice.” It is one of the toughest journeys an entrepreneur can undertake. When Georgia Lininger launched her children’s book imprint in January 2020, she quickly discovered that success was going to require more from her than sweet stories and colorful illustrations. Join roving reporter Rotbart and his deputy rover Maxwell as they uncover a classic American story of struggle and defiance along with the happy ending dreamt of by every entrepreneur offering a product or service that comes from the heart. MondayMorningRadio.com