Today, the fourth section of the Wall Street Journal carried a lead article by Richard Greenwald, a professor and dean at Drew University in New Jersey, about how to make it as a solo consultant. At the risk of driving still more people to the article, I have to tell you that I began laughing out loud when he suggested that it’s a great idea to teach at a community college since it will enhance your consulting résumé! I can just see an executive at Boeing or JPMorgan Chase gaining confidence because you’ve taught at the community college level and you’ve got a résumé, as if you’re applying for a job!

One interviewee’s acquisition of new business cards, a “basic web site,” and a new cellphone has allowed him to reach 80% of his old salary (which was presumably somewhere in the four figures)!

If you wanted to commission an article on the pressures of working in an emergency room, wouldn’t you talk to a doctor or nurse? If you want an article on successful independent consulting, why not have one write the story, or interview a dozen? There is no mention of how to market, how to establish fees, how to build on past relationships, or how to use the Internet.

He does remind us that clients do not want an important phone conference interrupted by a nagging two-year-old. Ah, I wouldn’t have realized that.

Honest to goodness….

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

We took the train to The City, spent time with the grandchildren, and are now ensconced in the penthouse suite of the Mela Hotel, a boutique place on West 44th, within walking distance of everything. We’re ordering deli for a modest repast with the big game, accompanied by a Sonoma Merlot that management includes with a very nice gift package. Finished writing chapter 5 of Million Dollar Speaking on the way down, along with the Sunday New York Times. Finished Altar of Eden and began Wambaugh’s Hollywood Moon.

We head back after a haircut and more grandchildren time tomorrow, arriving in time for dinner in Providence before heading home.

Do you know there will be approximately 11 minutes of actual action during the entire SuperBowl? Where is Janet Jackson when you need her??!!

On January 23rd I wrote here that Taylor Swift had the worst voice at the Haitian Telethon performance. In my opinion, she can’t sing, has no range, can’t hold a note. Well, on the Grammy Awards the other day she sounded like someone in pain, and even the forgiving insiders at the event reached the same conclusion. We have the dubious ability to create “celebrities” without competence.

Let me understand this: Unemployment declined in January, the market pulled itself back from a 170-point drop, some firms are deliberately taking smaller bonuses because of public heat, the use of corporate jets us up at the SuperBowl for the first time in three years, the housing market is experiencing gains—and a lot of pundits are still predicting gloom and doom. If the bad times are truly bad, and the good times are illusions or ephemeral, there’s a word for that: cynicism.

New Orleans is a great city, and they deserve the rallying point that is the Saints phenomenon. But over the last six games or so they’ve been more lucky than good, and luck won’t beat Payton Manning. I’m rooting for the Saints because it’s more fun (I’m really rooting for the commercials), but if the Saints don’t sack Manning, they can’t win.

An employee is sitting in a coffee shop drinking coffee and eating, while using his cell phone. He finishes, goes in the back, and ignores a waiting customer. I asked the owner why she doesn’t just give him her bank book and let him steal money more easily.

If “safe” congressional seats, such as Patrick Kennedy’s here in Rhode Island, are FINALLY going to be seriously contested (he’s in trouble in the early polls), it’s a victory for democracy no matter who ultimately wins. The last time I looked there was nothing about hereditary aristocracy in the Constitution, and George Washington politely declined to be named “king.”

The first episode of the final season of Lost, which was supposed to begin to provide answers, confused me more than all of last season combined. I’m beginning to root against everyone, especially the writers, whom I wish the smoke monster (AKA John Locke) would devour. But I only have three advanced degrees. Maybe they should speak more slowly for me….

The funny thing is, the way James Cameron directs, I could believe that Avatar actually happened, but not the Titanic.

Professional basketball is about as exciting as watching someone else play a pinball machine that has the “tilt” mechanism disabled. If I could have ignored the rules like that when I was in high school, I would have been all-state!

Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw is a rare example of a compilation of articles producing a wonderful book. The guy can write.

Consultants take note: Toyota is a good example of a bad practice—allowing cost controls to dominate your business. Their ignoring early warning signs is a throwback to the GM and Ford errors of decades ago. We have not heard the last of this sordid story.

I remember watching the incoming tide as a kid, hoping it wouldn’t reach my sand castle. I’m watching that blizzard in Washington, hoping it doesn’t reach New York, where I’m headed tomorrow for the grandchildren, SuperBowl, and a couple of days on the town.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

We are all generally aware of the benefits of maintaining a health regimen. Some of us are more faithful than others, and it’s not an easy thing. I’m about to head for my personal trainer, and I’m less than excited by the prospect. (When I see people running vigorously down the road, I usually wonder who’s chasing them.)

Nevertheless, we need equivalent mental workouts. We need to stretch, increase our strength, build our stamina, and try to ensure that we’re in better shape than the week prior.

But too many solo practitioners fall prey to one of the worst downsides of being independent—they don’t talk to anyone but themselves. They get better and better at what they’re already good at (before my personal trainer, I used to do the same exercises at the same weights that I had already mastered and could easily complete). The books on the shelves are old, the methodology is writ in stone, the clients have become few and long-term, and the approaches are no longer contemporary.

We all need to work out mentally. We need to debate our approaches, learn what others are doing, be willing to consider changes to our regimen. Are we providing what’s best for our clients or “merely” what we’re already good at?

I’m constantly surprised by how stupid I was two weeks ago.

I try to engage every day. I’ve formed and am a member of a dozen or more communities. I teach and mentor and coach—activities which demand you stay on top of your craft and not only learn of, but contribute to, the state-of-the-art.

If you’re not stronger and don’t have more stamina than six months ago, your health regimen isn’t working too well. If you’re not smarter and able to provide more value than six months ago, your mental regimen isn’t working too well.

Maybe it’s time to get some guidance and lift some intellectual weight.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Alan’s Monday Morning Memo’s mission is to help readers to thrive.

February 01, 2010—Issue #20

This week’s focus point: What are your minimum and maximum objectives for an initiative, a meeting, a negotiation? (I call this “min/max.”) Unless you create your own expectations, you can’t calibrate your own progress. If you constantly surpass minimums, perhaps your goals are too modest. If you never meet maximums, you’re either underperforming or have unreasonable goals. Don’t rely on others’ feedback—create your own.

Monday Morning Perspective: Either you let your life slip away by not doing the things you want to do, or you get up and do them. — Carl Ally

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© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved

In my experience, about 85% of organizations attempting change of any sort are largely unsuccessful. Reasons:

• Fad
• HR sponsored or implemented
• Some manager’s pet project
• No long-term reinforcement
• No adjustments made for culture or beliefs
• No flexibility as conditions change
• No commitment (just compliance) from participants
• No results, just tasks

As consultants, we need to overcome those obstacles, and not fall victim to them. That means we should avoid:

• Non-buyers, unless they can introduce you to true buyers, and fairly quickly.
• Middlemen, such as brokers and agents, who claim they have contacts but you would work at their discretion.
• Trawler fishermen—those people who are issuing RFPs, inviting you to “meat market” auditions and casting calls, requesting you apply for inclusion in their conference (“We can waive your registration”).
• Meeting planners, who haven’t any clue about the buyer’s needs or any control over the budget.
• Human resource types who have no credibility, and pride themselves on extracting good deals from “vendors.”
• Purchasing people—the new “heavy hitters” after the economic chaos, with their sharpened pencils, eye shades, and myopic vision—who only see dollars and not results.

This is the marketing business. Hence, you must continually be:
• Attracting buyers via gravity
• Meeting with them
• Establishing trusting relationships
• Creating conceptual agreement
• Sending them proposals with options and definitive next steps
• Maintaining and nurturing the relationship once they are clients

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

Listen to Alan reading a chapter from his most recent book Thrive!

 

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I’m running a Mentor Mastery session in London in February, and secured the presidential suite at The Stafford Hotel through American Express Black Card. All details were taken care of.

However, I thought it would be a good idea to talk to management personally, so I put in a call the other morning. A senior manager promptly called me back. I asked where the hotel was by landmarks, having been to London 20 times but never to this property.

“We’re about two blocks south of The Ritz,” he said, referring to one of the most famous, and most expensive, hotels in the world.

“Ah, I know where you are,” I said, “we usually stay at The Ritz.”

He responded immediately: “Well may I congratulate you for upgrading, sir.”

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

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© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.

I receive Google Alerts each day, which inform me of where my name, “million dollar consulting,” “value based fees,” and other aspects of my intellectual property appear. Overwhelmingly, these are favorable notices, and I always try to say “thank you.” (On occasion, I find someone stealing my work. A favorite tactic of the plagiarists is to “excerpt” tens of pages and place them in their newsletters, which they sell, as a “review” of my work. I ask them to stop, then my lawyer asks them to stop. All have.)

The other day, I found a pretty amateur consulting blog with an exchange between two readers One had said, “Don’t read ‘Million Dollar Consulting,’ it’s not very good.” And the other said, “Thanks, you just saved me the money.”

There are dozens of things wrong with this transaction, but here are the salient points:

• MDC has sold 450,000 copies or something like that since 1992, globally. That doesn’t happen to bad books.
• Even if it isn’t a great book in someone’s opinion, it’s one of the fundamental books on solo consulting, and you need to read it if you’re going to be knowledgeable in a profession that refers to it. It’s like a strategist refusing to read Peter Drucker.
• Consider the source. The guy who didn’t like it is hanging out on an amateur site, with no credentials and no one has ever heard of him. Why would he be your muse?
• The book, in used copies, costs just few bucks, and maybe $20 new (or less on Amazon). Why wouldn’t you make the small investment to find out for yourself?

There is something worse than stupid professionalism (”I forgot to set the next date for the review of the proposal!”), and that’s stupid amateurism.

In any profession, listen only to those who are successful at what you want to be successful doing. Make sure you are familiar with the major issues and intellectual property. And don’t blindly take advice or make assumptions. (I had heard that Malcolm Gladwell’s new book wasn’t that good. It’s terrific. I wanted to see for myself.)

You may be new, you may be struggling, but you can still be a professional. If you are, you won’t be struggling for long.

© Alan Weiss 2010. All rights reserved.