The Secrets of Entrepreneurial Success in a Challenging Economy
on the PRICE IS RIGHT Stage at CBS Studios (7800 Beverly Blvd Los Angeles CA)
Date: March 14, 2009
Time: 9am- 2:30pm
You will learn:
How to raise fees in a down economy
Why most people you listen to professionally are wrong
Why middlemen belong in middle earth
How to turn a speaking event into a consulting process and quintuple your fees
For more details and to register- www.nsaglac.org
Print This Post
Reminder that the auction for a full day with me at my home, dinner, plus other goodies ends at noon Eastern time on Monday, February 9. You can enter your bid by placing a comment with your email and bid amount here: http://www.contrarianconsulting.com/spend-a-day-with-alan-and-get-a-charitable-tax-deduction/
This is transferable, so it could be used as a gift, scheduled at our mutual convenience with no time limit, includes tickets for two to all events at the Newport International Film Festival, and still more! All proceeds go to the non-profit Newport International Film Festival.
The Odd Couple® with Patricia Fripp and me continues with its annual frolic in Las Vegas on June 25-26. You can find information and advance registration here: http://fripp.com/oddcouple.html.
Also, an extra Six Figures to Seven has been scheduled for May: http://summitconsulting.com/seminars/from-six-figures-to-seven-2009_May_27-29_Providence.php
(Last chance to attend Six to Seven in Sydney on February 19-21: http://summitconsulting.com/seminars/from-six-figures-to-seven-sydney.php)
And an extra $0 to $300,000, also in May:
http://summitconsulting.com/seminars/0-to-300_2009-05-19.php
I’m be speaking for the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the National Speakers Association on March 14. For details contact Kelly Hill: kh@kellyhill.org.
Print This Post
Every time you pick up a newspaper or turn on the television you’re apt to read and hear bad news. That’s because the media thrive on misery. And that’s because everyone likes to point fingers at everyone else—from political parties to entire countries, from labor to management, from regulators to the regulated—rather than accept accountability and actually try to improve things.
As a consultant, you’re in the improvement business. So you might as well get good at it. And blaming people doesn’t help.
Here are some guidelines to improve your own morale and find new business during these rather fascinating times:
1. Never assume at the outset that the prospect (or anyone else) whom you meet is damaged. That is, never default to the belief that he or she is the problem. Look for evidence and assume the person to whom you’re speaking is as healthy as you are, unless proved otherwise by observed behavior.
2. You must spend money to make money. This is the time to invest in self-development, your brand, your web site and collateral, your outbound marketing, and so forth. You will not grow your business, nor even increase the likelihood of survival, by cutting expenses, selling your desk, or taking the bus. Would you hire someone who is obviously cutting back or someone who is clearly confident and investing in the business?
3. End co-dependency and commiseration. DO NOT GO to meetings wherein the participants have reached Ciceronian oratory about how bad things are and there’s nothing to be done about it, because it’s “their fault.” There is no “they.” YOU are “they.” Stay away from people who try to camouflage their own ineptitude with rants against the fates.
4. Seek out the best, most successful organizations you can find, even if they may not be in your basic market or strategy. They are the ones WITH MONEY. It’s easier to adjust and adapt your services to them, than it is to try to sell your services to struggling outfits. Results are results. Focus on their improvement, and not on your methodology.
5. Use the martial arts of language. When someone says, “You’ve never worked in our industry before,” or “What do you know about sheepherding?” (I’ve actually been asked that, stop smirking), don’t tap dance all over the room uttering banalities such as, “I’ve never worked in the computer business but I have owned them,” or “I wear wool.” Simply say something like this, “Why do you ask?” or “Why is that important at this juncture?” Because they don’t need another content expert, they are tripping over them in the rest rooms. They need your outside, objective, and process approach.
6. Use any excessive “down time” to begin or extend the long term projects you’ve been procrastinating about: write the book proposal, upgrade your web site, clean out your files, create a mass mailing to past contacts, design a new workshop or intervention. If you’re too busy to do them when things are hectic, and you don’t get around to them when things are slow, they will NEVER get done at all.
7. Contact everyone you know in some kind of priority: current clients; current prospects; past clients; past prospects; professional colleagues; friends; family; others. Tell every single one what kind of value you’re providing today, and ask every single one if you can be of help to them AND/OR if they know a few people to whom you may be of help. This is concurrently one of the best ways to generate leads and one of the most neglected by consultants. Why? Because of low self-esteem. Too many consultants think they are trying to sell something, take money, and inconvenience people, instead of providing value, improving conditions, and helping people.
8. Raise your visibility. In an electronic age, it’s a crime not to, and it’s easy to stand out since most blogs and newsletters are rend-your-garments-awful. It’s easy to stand out in this crowd IF you offer originality, free help, easy access, consistency, and boldness. (I have had a mathematics major at Brown University calculate that one posting on my blog is worth 7.8 million contacts on linkedin. Don’t forget, I’m the King of Social Media.) Make yourself so valuable that you’re irresistible.
9. Diversify your offerings. Turn your workshop into a speech, your speech into an booklet, your booklet into a consulting intervention, your consulting methodology into a workshop. Facilitate meetings. Audit operations. Create benchmarks and best practices. Consider teleconferences and podcasts.
I’m stopping here because top ten lists are too David Letterman. But I’ll tell you true: This is a great time to be a consultant, because talent and courage stand out now more than ever. And to paraphrase the inestimable impresario, Mike Todd, “Boldness is not about smoking cheaper cigars.”
© Alan Weiss 2009, at 40,000 feet. All rights reserved.
Print This Post
Day Five
Four Seasons Hotels are always quite nice, but this one was exceptionally so. I found out that a contributing factor was that two former Irish Prime Ministers are in residence here. There is a handful of Bentleys and Rolls Royces neatly arranged around the porte cochere. Security is low visibility but high comfort. The top floor comprises residences, and one of the gentlemen bought his for six million euros. (He had sold his nearby home for 14 million when the Celtic Tiger was still roaring.)
Bless Amex, Aer Lingus, or the fates, but I’m sitting in a bulkhead, first class seat out of Shannon with huge legroom and the only empty seat in the cabin next to me! I figure I have about 25 square feet of “living space,” not bad. I’ve finished reading my second book on the trip (“Scarpetta”) and also finished the next five editions of the Writing on the Wall video series, which we’ll shoot next Tuesday morning.
When I walked on the plane in Dublin, I was seated next to a fight attendant. “My own flight attendant,” I said. “Look around,” she suggested. Still standing in one of the aisles, for the first time I glanced up and saw 16 flight attendants, each in the company’s green uniform, a field of perky shamrocks. They all smiled. “Service will be good!” said one. They were all returning to Shannon after coming home on overnight trips, and every single one fell asleep during the 25-minute hop to Shannon.
The plane was deiced at Dublin, not something they are accustomed to doing very often, then landed in the sun at Shannon. We all had to get off the plane, go through U.S. immigration, then through a security check (“Go ahead,” said the security guy, not opening my bags, “you look like an upright gent to me!”), and then another identity check. We walked in a huge circle beyond the gate, then back on the plane.
“It’s a U.S. requirement, not Irish,” the gate agent informed me when I questioned the stupidity of the process. “I should have guessed,” I told her.
I’m home for about 11 days, then I head for Australia and New Zealand and I’m not scheduling anything like this frequency of travel again. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I assumed my wife would be with me on at least one of the trips. But winter in Ireland and grandchildren at home trumped those plans.
President of Ireland’s House
© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.
Print This Post
Great conclusion to the program this morning. We had people from Ireland, the U.S., Germany, and the U.K. (despite the snowstorms). My favorite line: “They never used to throw me the ball, and when they did, I dropped it.”
Toured Dublin, you’ll see a photo here of me in the courtyard of Dublin Castle, where I’m pretty sure the driver shouldn’t have taken the Mercedes, but no one was looking. Visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Trinity College, City Hall, and a variety of other places. I’m going to return (in warmer weather) with my wife and also visit the west coast. This is a wonderful country with terrific people.
Met with two officers of the Institute of Management Consultants here, and they came equipped with a photographer, so we posed for publicity shots in the courtyard. They have 600 members in a country of perhaps 5 million (the U.S. IMC has about 1500 members in a country of 300 million).
Returning tomorrow on Aer Lingus.
© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.
Print This Post
Day Three
The Self-Esteem Workshop was a blast with twelve hardy souls, unfortunately four people from the UK couldn’t get here because of the snow. Andy Bass sauntered in having come from Manchester, telling me, “There’s always a way!”
Only people with healthy self-esteem attend self-esteem workshops.
Dinner tonight at Roly’s, wonderful conversation, good food, fine wine.
We continue tomorrow morning, then a tour of Dublin after noon.
© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.
Print This Post
Click Here for entire series table of contents
© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.
Print This Post
I stayed up until 3 in the morning watching the Super Bowl and awoke at 9:30 this morning to find snow falling. The limo driver told me yesterday that it never snows in Dublin, only “up in the mountains.” You can see the view from my balcony in the photos accompanying this post. A fair amount of snow, zero mountains.
Heathrow closed both runways in London, canceling 250 flights, which has to create a world-class mess.
Last night in the lounges, restaurants, and bar I found some people in business attire and some in track suits. There were small children and babies in abundance. The bartender told me that Sunday evenings are family evenings, and local people visit to socialize and have drinks or a meal. I think that’s a great tradition.
Both teams last night had flashes of brilliance among errors, penalties, and nerves. It’s tough to play at your best when the pressure is greatest. It turned out to be a very exciting game, and I didn’t care who won. Both quarterbacks engineering drives in the waning minutes is a testimony to their abilities, and also an endorsement of the fact that the defense is at a disadvantage most of the time.
Always choose to play offense. Take possession of the ball. Your odds are better when the game is in your hands.
© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.
Print This Post
This has been travel like the old days. The car brought me to Logan Airport, where I walked to an empty (of passengers) Aer Lingus counter, then went through a deserted security line (this is 6:30 pm on a Saturday) and thence to a first class lounge inhabited by four people. This took all of six minutes before I had a drink and was finishing my reading on the Battle of Britain.
When I wandered to the gate for boarding, I was the first one on the plane and there were ultimately five of us who were seated up front, barely outnumbering the three flight attendants, who provided, as you’d guess, very personalized service. The pilot announced that everyone was on board who ought to be, so we were leaving early, and we did, by 15 minutes!
This is my first trip to Ireland, unbelievably, after visiting over 50 countries. Aer Lingus does a funny piece of flying. The A330 zips over to Shannon in just five hours, discharges and takes on passengers, now becomes a domestic flight, and then hops over to Dublin in just 30 minutes. That means the big jet hardly attains much altitude and it zooms along at treetop level, as we watch people brewing their morning tea while we’re roaring past their clotheslines and mailboxes.
After walking the traditional five miles to get to immigration, I clear it and customs in nine seconds, the car picks me up, and I’m deposited in a wonderful Four Seasons Hotel. Church is a mile walk away (this violates my three-block maximum walking rule) but off I go, to an old, beautiful, gothic Church of the Sacred Heart.
They are showing the Super Bowl here on TWO different channels, beginning close to midnight. I’ll watch it with a pot of coffee by my side.
This is a gorgeous place with wonderful people. I’m not up to a Guiness, but I did have Smithrick’s Ale with my burger at the bar, though only after the Belvedere to warm me up.
I don’t see how the Cardinals can win tonight, but I hope they do.
They just announced it’s going to SNOW in London!
© Alan Weiss 2009. All rights reserved.
Print This Post
Did you see where Wikipedia reported that both Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy had died? Eventually, they will, and eventually Wikipedia will be a reliable source. But if you’re trying to make a case, or do research, or simply enlighten yourself, I’d suggest you go with primary sources and not what is often the biases of contributors.
Print This Post
