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The Poverty Mentality

David Newman of my Mentor Program has forwarded me the announcement below from the Institute of Management Consultants, sent to its members via email:

“One quick way to lower your expenses is to take advantage of hidden deals on office supplies. Because some technology supplies are pretty pricey, taking a few minutes to uncover these deals can save you several hundred dollars a year.

“Your professional association, business organization or credit card may offer discounts on office supplies from a specific store or vendor with whom they have a relationship. Some online stores allow you to save a ‘favorites’ list and will notify you when these go on sale. It takes very little effort to save some significant cash.

“However, one way to get discounts many people are not familiar with and fro (sic) unadvertiswed (sic) specials, is to use online coupon broker sites. I just had to buy toner and paper that would have cost about $400. I went to a broker site and found a coupon for $40 offered by the store for a quick savings that wasn’t advertised by the store itself.

“There are lots of such sites - you’ll need to look over a few and select the one or two to check out each time you make a significant online purchase. Examples are EDealsEtc and Coupons2Grab (no endorsement of either of these sites is implied, just illustrative of ones available that use coupons to drive business to stores).”

Okay, who can guess where I’m going with this?

This was “consultant’s tip of the day….saving precious cash.” My take on this is that it originates in a poverty mentality. Save money. Times are tough. Let’s make a deal. A few hundred dollars is important.

You don’t thrive in consulting by saving 10% here and there or by selling the conference table to make a few bucks, or deciding to find a cheaper phone carrier. You make money by marketing your value.

I’m not advising anyone against being economical, if they so choose, but I do believe that the organization that is supposed to be representing the “voice of the profession” should be aggressively branding the IMC itself and its members as the best of the best. But instead, they send around emails advertising job openings—not consulting assignments, but nine-to-five jobs—for the membership. In other words, we know that you may not be successful, and we know we’re not helping you all that much, so here are some escape routes. Aren’t you supposed to attract members, not send them packing?

There are a lot of good people in IMC (I used to be on the board) who labor mightily at national and local levels to try to improve the profession, and my hat is off to them. But there are too many who seem to think that success means making every member as unsuccessful as the most unsuccessful member. In other words, let’s not have anyone stand out too much, and let’s not celebrate singular success, because that means the rest of us just may be doing something wrong (like still billing by the hour).

Honest to goodness. If you want to hang around people, make sure you hang around confident, successful people whose habits and enthusiasm rub off on you. But if that piece of advice for this week up there from the IMC appeals to you, there’s not much I can do.

I can’t help you get bargains (such as saving “several hundred dollars a year”!) and I can’t help you find work. All I can do is to help you become successful on your talent and your terms in this wonderful profession.

© Alan Weiss 2008. All rights reserved.

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Posted by Alan Weiss on June 9th, 2008 filed in Business of Consulting |

3 Responses to “The Poverty Mentality”

  1. Danielle Keister Says:
    June 9th, 2008 at 12:38 pm

    I have been lamenting this kind of activity for years in my own profession, where we have so-called professional associations that post junk jobs in their RFP sections instead of qualified, quality client leads. It’s not the role of a professional association to become an unemployment center! Their focus should be on raising standards of excellence and improved business consciousness.

    Sort of a tangent but related I think… I really HATE when people use the word “reasonable” when they’re shopping for providers. What they’re really saying is “I want to make it your problem that a) I’m a cheapskate, b) I have a mentality of poverty and c) I’m not properly prepared to be in business. Ugh.

    From my perspective, the poverty mentality is much more pervasive in the online world probably because there is no barrier to entry. It’s to the extent, again from my perspective, that I divide the business world into two sectors: the “real” world and the online world. They seem to be entirely different cultures in so many ways. The poverty mentality is pervasive in the online word; in many respects, I see it even nurtured and cultivated. What do you see as the influences of this phenomenon?

  2. Alan Weiss Says:
    June 9th, 2008 at 4:50 pm

    Just what you pointed out: Zero barrier to entry. Anyone can create a web presence without any qualifications for content, intellect, experience, or even positive intent. There is way too much attempt at self-validation and rationalization.

    Frankly, you read things that no sane person would utter or put up with in pubic in many cases.

    Some people drive poorly because the standards for obtaining a license are so minimal. But those are like the bar exam compared to web entry, where anyone can post anything, and too often do!

    You also have the “generalized exception,” wherein someone is found via Twitter of Flutter or Pratter, and all of a sudden it’s a marketing route for everyone. A lot of people are trying to write a book on nuttiness like telepathic selling because someone they met in an airport “confirmed” it was a great idea! That, in essence, is the coinage of the web, an egalitarian wonderland.

  3. Gareth Kane Says:
    June 10th, 2008 at 7:04 am

    I have been a self employed environmental consultant for two years and the business is finally booming, despite the doom and gloom in the press. While some of this is down to my service offering (it is a very good time for my clients to cut waste, water and energy costs), much of it is down to a recently adopted abundance mentality (helped no doubt by the five Alan Weiss books on my shelf…).

    Where I live, North East England, they have a saying: “shy bairns get nae jam” and they’re damn right. Upping fees is a strong part of that - it seems to instil respect amongst prospects.

    I have, however, avoided all the ‘look in the mirror and tell yourself you are brilliant 20 times every morning’ stuff. That would just make me feel like an idiot!

    BTW Two hi-tech techniques have helped me - my blog does attract some ‘long tail’ search phrases and my e-newsletter has brought in quite a bit of work recently. But LinkedIn has given me nothing and I’m not twittering!

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