A society grows great when old people plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.

Trees that live long do not grow quickly.

It requires patience to grow a tree that will endure.

The root word of patience is the Latin verb “pati.” It means “to suffer” or “to endure.”

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.

The second-best time is today.

A person with a purpose is a person on a mission.

A person on a mission is a person with a passion.

Passion is another strange word. It does not mean what you think it does.

The English word “passion” comes directly from the Latin noun “passio” which means “suffering.” If you have “compassion” for someone, it means that you are “suffering with them.” Every Easter we hear about “The Passion of the Christ.”

Patience and passion share the same Latin root. Pati is the noun. Passio is the verb. And they both mean suffering.

A person with a passion has a vision of the future for which they are willing to suffer.

The builder of a brand is the planter of a tree: a visionary missionary.

And their principal tool is storytelling.

Stories build personalities.

Stories build people.

Storytelling is world-building.

Stories build cultures.

Stories build brands that endure.

Be careful what you say.

A word of affirmation is a spark that can become a flame that will illuminate a person’s path into the future. A word of discord, disdain, or disharmony can quench that vital spark.

We carry the power of light and darkness in our tongues.

Be careful what you say.

You can build a brand with your stories.

You can build people, too.

Say the right things and you can build a life.

You can speak happiness.

You can build happiness.

Say the right things and you can live happiness.

Speak it. Build it.

Say it. Live it.

Roy H. Williams

PS “It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.”

– John Steinbeck

Eveline Shen is an operating-systems programmer — not for computers, but for people.

Eveline helps leaders rewire the limiting patterns that hold them back — including perfectionism, people-pleasing, and self-sacrifice — and replace them with what she calls “courageous” actions. Her clients are primarily organizations advocating for social change, many of whom instinctively view business leaders and entrepreneurs not as partners, but as adversaries. But as Eveline explains to roving reporter Rotbart, everyone wins when they make a more deliberate effort to communicate with, understand, and learn from one another. It’s MondayMorningRadio.com

You can hear Roy read today’s MMMemo by clicking the “listen” link at the top of the page. Or you can hear it wailed by a tribal elder who is teaching the tribe around a campfire. Just click the play bar below. Crazy? Absolutely. – Indy Beagle

It is easy to understand a person who is driven by their passions.

Your passions take you to your happy place.

I have friends who have a passion for sporting events on television. Others have a passion for gambling, and the paripatetic have a passion for traveling to all the far-flung places on this spinning rock we live upon.

People who have a passion for achievement live to make things different.

Planning and research puts a candle to the wick of some people. They go without sleep and burn bright throughout the night as they gather, collate, and organize information that will set the future on fire.

Your scars are the memories of bitter experiences.

The pain is gone, but the benefits of those experiences remain. Your scars help you see danger on the horizon.

Your scars are the diplomas of lessons you will never forget.

It is good to have scars.

But wounds… wounds are different.

The pain remains and it triggers you to act in ways that everyone notices but no one understands. Sometimes not even you.

I have known men whose only passion was to seduce every woman they encountered. Those men like to believe that they are “in love with falling in love.” But when you have known them long enough you will see a knife wound in their chest that has never healed. Way back in the long ago, they had a wife who began sleeping with another man. And ever since that day, they have been trying to become that man.

The pain of a wound is a powerful thing. It shouts, “Never again! Never again! Never again!”

I don’t believe that any of those men have ever figured out why they feel driven to become the living embodiment of the imaginary Don Juan, and I have never felt that it was my place to tell them.

Every person is formed by their passions, scars, and wounds. Even imaginary people.

All of the famous characters in literature were created from their passions, scars, and wounds.

Novelists, playwrights, and screenwriters know this. Ad writers do not. This is why most advertising is dull, dead, and untwitching.

When an ad writer is guided by the ambitions, demands, and expectations of their clients, you can expect to hear the glorious trumpets of a ringing call to action. “Come! Come now! Give me your money! Hurry! Hurry! I want your money Today! Today! Today! Act now! Don’t delay!”

We are not enchanted by these ads.

Did it ever occur to you that every successful brand is a character that lives in the mind of the customer?

A successful brand is driven by its passions, scars, and wounds.

Passion: Why does this brand exist? What is it chasing? What love does it represent?

Scars: What does it know? What has it learned? Why can I trust this brand?

Wounds: What is this brand trying to erase from the earth?

To what does it shout, “Never again! Never again! Never again!”

Roy H. Williams

A tribe is a group of people that share an identity marker. Every affinity group, every fan club, every self-selected group of insiders is a tribe.

Last week we talked about Business-to-Business advertising (B2B) and Niche Marketing with a long purchase cycle (Niche-L).

Today we talk about Niche Marketing with a short purchase cycle (Niche-S) and Business-to-Consumer advertising (B2C).

Let’s talk first about (Niche-S):

Niche Marketing with a Short purchase cycle will always be targeted to an affinity group. A Niche market is any self-selected group of insiders that has chosen to spend time, attention, and money on something that most people don’t care about.

Short-cycle Niche Marketing is mostly consumable products and services that are purchased on a regular basis by a self-selected group. Some examples of this would be bullets, fish hooks, tubes of oil paint, and those little cloth foot coverings worn by medical professionals in hospitals and air conditioning technicians in your home.

Niche Marketing with a Short purchase cycle is similar to B2B advertising: Features. Benefits. Price.

Now let’s talk about Business-to-Consumer advertising with a Short purchase cycle. (B2C-S)

Do you sell a small-ticket consumable product or service that a high percentage of the population will purchase regularly? You are selling Business-to-Consumer with a Short purchase cycle. Food, gasoline, and entertainment compose the majority of this category.

If you own a grocery store, a restaurant, a convenience store, a gas station, a hardware store, or an “everything” store that competes with Amazon and Wal-Mart, all you need is a high-visibility location, legendary signage, and a staff that delivers a positive customer experience. That’s it. That’s your advertising.

NOTE: If you want to drive immediate traffic, you will need

(1.) an irresistible offer

(2.) credible urgency

(3.) high-frequency repetition

If your ad doesn’t drive traffic,

(1.) your offer was weak

(2.) your urgency was not credible, or

(3.) you didn’t pound the drums loud enough

Now let’s talk about Business-to-Consumer advertising with a Long purchase cycle. (B2C-L)

If you sell a big-ticket product or service that a lot of Americans will buy “someday,” but only a fraction of one percent of the public is looking for it “today,” then you are in a B2C category with a Long purchase cycle.

This category requires patience, commitment, and mass media: primarily broadcast radio, broadcast television, or billboards.

You can use short-term-impact Transactional ads or long-term brand-building Relational ads.

The objective of a Transactional ad is to make the sale. You can measure the Return-On-Ad-Spend (ROAS) of short-term-impact Transactional ads because they offer no long-term benefits.

The objective of a long-term Relational ad is to create connection, relationship, and trust in your brand. Relational ads cannot be measured with ROAS because there is no moment when the benefits of relationship strengthening have been exhausted.

Business people are instinctively attracted to Transactional ads because Transactional ads are more easily measured. This feels good in the short term, but in the long term it leads to frustration as you ask, “Why aren’t we growing like we should?”

Now let’s talk about Business-to-Consumer advertising with a Mixed purchase cycle....