Category Archives: Alan’s Quest

Yesterday, I FedExed our luggage to a resort in Puerto Rico we’ll be visiting next week. The driver returned an hour later and said, “I didn’t realize it, but you gave me a domestic air bill. Puerto Rico requires an international air bill.” Sure enough, Puerto Rico is listed  on the FedEx site along with Estonia and New Zealand under foreign countries!

I completed the international air bill and customs forms, and then informed the resort that my luggage was en route. My contact there apologized, and said it couldn’t arrive today because it’s a national holiday and FedEx wasn’t working. But it would arrive on Monday. (We get in Sunday night, but always have an overnight bag, so no great harm done.)

I began to wonder what holiday would shut down FedEx in Puerto Rico but not the U.S. Upon investigation, I learned it’s the Epiphany, when the Magi visited the newborn Christ and brought gifts.

In a boringly politically correct world, I found these realities quite interesting. Puerto Rico, where people vote for President, is not considered part of the U.S. by FedEx, and then celebrating a Christian holiday as a “national” holiday. Who knows what today will bring?

As I’ve always maintained, I’m constantly surprised by how stupid I was two weeks ago.

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.

The Thinker or The Prayer? Captured by Guido Quelle on the shores of an island in Lago Maggiore, Stresa, Italy.

Some lessons from Hurricane Irene. By no means do I intend here to minimize the losses due to this storm for many people. But I think we all have to learn from extraordinary circumstances and, at all times, to be our own best counselor.

• On Saturday we had lunch at the Wauwinet Inn in Nantucket in an almost eerie calm, as still as I’ve ever seen that remote part of the island, not a leave or blade of grass stirring. We took the ferry to Hyannis that evening on a calm sea with mystical fog. We drove back to East Greenwich on empty roads, as quickly as we’ve ever traveled that route. The next morning we were in 60 MPH winds with tree limbs crashing down and no power. But our house had been well prepared and has an emergency generator. What are you doing in the calm before the storm? Many consultants tell me, as they bemoan lack of business, that they couldn’t handle the business if all four proposals outstanding were accepted at the same time. That’s beyond a crime—it’s stupid. You need to prepare for storms.

• In 48 hours of nonstop (and 95% repetitive) weather reporting, I found only one person of truth and non-calamity. (If you pay people to talk about catastrophe, they find or invent catastrophe.) The meteorologist on the NBC affiliate in Boston said something to this effect: “I don’t want to understate this or tell you not to take precautions, but by the time Irene gets to the Boston area it’s going to be a tropical storm and will not be as bad as predicted. There can still be damage and danger and you should use precautions, but I think we’re going to be better off than we had feared.” We need to use judgment and the facts available, and not jump on runaway trains. This was the only source I came to trust, and I loathed the “meteorologists” using computer models to talk about low pressure and worst cases reading their Teleprompters. Are you providing best judgment and creating trust, or trying to scare people and/or just repeating conventional wisdom?

• Both our town and the local power company sent recorded messages on several occasions to my personal and business phones apprising me of progress and what to expect, including: emergency centers, garbage collection, evacuation areas, traffic access, and so on. Knowing what was happening so easily was calming and obviated the need to make calls and search for information, which probably made their activities much easier to complete, as well. Are you keeping clients informed of both good and bad developments so that there are no surprises and people aren’t trying to find you and ask questions? Do you practice full disclosure?

• Our cable system went down for an evening. But we have satellite, so we could use that for TV, and I have a Verizon card which I could use on my lap top to take are of email and web business. Do you maintain alternatives to get key aspects of your business completed and maintain your important personal activities?

• Our daughter, her husband, and our grandchildren spent the day at our house when their power went down. We saw many homes with a dozen cars in the driveways. People were helping each other out. Do you have a support network that’s available and accessible?

• The inn in Nantucket told us that we could check out late on Saturday, and if our ferry didn’t run we could return for a few days at half-price to ride out the storm. Do you make offers to clients that gives them comfort and build relationships by the very gesture, even if the offer isn’t used?

• We toured the neighborhood as the storm subsided to learn what had happened and the extent of the damage, which was nothing compared to prior storms we’ve experienced. Then we found some entrepreneurial restaurants that had opened up as soon as they could, and tried a completely new place. This morning we’re going to work out, as usual on a Monday, because the owner of our health club will certainly have it running bright and early. Are you resilient and can you bounce back quickly?

Storms pass. Your values and beliefs don’t.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

I’m sitting in a beach house at the Castle Hill Inn in Newport, watching the Atlantic roll in about 20 yards from my porch. It’s the first sunny day this week, while I’m here conducting the Million Dollar Consulting® College.

It’s a bright day that holds a great deal of promise. But doesn’t every day? Nietzsche said that “a day has a hundred pockets if we but know what to put in them.” A great many people awake with that positive potential, but a great many also awake asking themselves how on earth they’ll crawl through the day.

There are reasons to dread a day: illness, loss, disappointment. Sometimes life hands us grief. But too often we create our own grief. We fear, we resist, we procrastinate. Most of the time, we create our own day through our own optimism or pessimism and, in so doing, inform our behavior, our impact on others, and our success (or lack of it).

Day after day we can build on the opportunity of life or flee from its threat. After a time, these habits become ingrained, which is why you meet constantly happy and supportive people, or those already sour and defeated at 8 am.

Life is short for all of us. The horizon draws closer every day. How we choose to spend those days is up to us. Those waves outside are unceasing, but life is not. Make the best of it while you can.

© Alan Weiss 2011. All rights reserved.

Easter Bunny

So the boys and I hit a bar famed for its burgers and for a psychic who chooses the beer for you. Unfortunately, the boys just can’t drink well.

Jean Marc XO vodka is the finest in the world in my opinion, and a couple of our favorite restaurants stock it just for me. At the Post Office Café in East Greenwich, the manager, Christopher, asked one of his other customers to engage in his favorite hobby and make a lamp out of one of my many exhausted bottles.

And for those of you who thought I was kidding, here are the tulips I’m raising in my retirement. (I am kidding.)