Alan Weiss’s Monday Morning Memo® – 06/10/2024
Every so often I receive a communication from someone who tells me that they can’t order on my website and therefore I need to correct something. Some of these people are so helpful that they take the time to tell me, with prelatical certainty, I’m not presenting a good image or don’t understand customer needs.
I usually take one attempt to tell them what they did wrong. When they fail again, doing it wrong again, and admonish me again, I tell them: “Hundreds if not thousands of people use this process and procedure continually. Yours is the only complaint that it doesn’t work I’ve received in ages. Do you think this is my technology at fault, or your use of it?”
If they apologize in the face of rationality, I walk them through it. If they become further enraged I ignore them. They wouldn’t understand my material even if they could get the order through or the workshop registration paid.
I admit I’m not immune to this irrationality. I’ve followed signs and driven off the highway into city streets where I don’t want to be. But as I looked around, apparently no one else has. So, I obviously missed a sign or instruction and I no longer waste energy cursing out the department of highways. When I build a model and can’t find a piece, I’ve stopped assuming the manufacturer’s instructions are wrong, and look to see that I’ve chosen the wrong set of parts.
My wife, of course, is always right, so there’s no need to even debate that one. At one point we owned two identical cars, only differing in color. She complained, upon coming home one day, that the Newport Bridge tokens in her car had stopped working. Rather than explain the impossibility of that, I gave her the tokens from my car. The following week, coming back from the next trip, she told me mine had stopped working.
So, I took a page from the great movie, “Fate is the Hunter,” and I sat next to her while she drove to the bridge, under my instructions to do everything she normally does. Drive at the same speed, use the same toll lane, lower the window at the same point. She did this faithfully, stopped, opened the console, retrieved a token, and threw it into a garbage can.
She then honked twice as she usually did, and an attendant came over as he usually did and raised the gate which was ten yards ahead, adjacent to the actual toll box.
“You see?” she said, “they’ve screwed this up!”
In the good old days when there was no social media and no mobile phones, when you were forced to actually physically meet someone and you often mixed in the same social groups, there was a sense of accountability about things. —Ulrika Jonsson
The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. —Albert Ellis
Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself. —Joseph Campbell
You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame. —Erica Jong
The superior man blames himself. The inferior man blames others. —Don Shula
2024 Virtual Workshop Series:
Major Growth Issues for Professional Services Providers
I’ve designed this series around the most frequently asked questions in my global coaching program, and from the advice I’ve provided that has most rapidly propelled people to much higher income and far less labor intensity. Everyone enrolled in each 90-minute program will receive a recording. I also encourage questions in advance.
All sessions are on Mondays at 10:30 US Eastern time so that you can begin your week with new approaches. The sixth session is intended to create a far more powerful 2025.
Session One: Ghostbusters
July 22, 2014: Learn how to prevent people from “ghosting” and what to do in case they do refuse to return calls and emails. However, my methods for avoiding this entirely are highly effective, and can be applied immediately—in fact, as soon as you leave the workshop or video. People call me back because they can’t afford not to.
Session Two: The Real Story: August 26, 2024
Story telling has been proven to be one of the most effective and high impact methods to influence others. Learn the three components of any great story, how to create them, introduce them, deliver them, and exploit the results. Discover the events in your life that are great stories that you don’t even realize you own. And learn how to immediately recall the appropriate story when needed extemporaneously.
Session Three: Brevity: September 23, 2024
Learn to shut up.
Session Four: Achieving and Sustaining Results Leadership: October 21, 2024
Step away from the hackneyed “thought leadership” (Does that mean you have more thoughts than everyone else?) and into the rarefied atmosphere of unequivocal achievements and concomitant brand power. Believe it or not, the thinking didn’t go into creating drills, but rather how to create holes.
Session Five: How to Be A Contrarian and Live to Tell About it: November 18, 2024
You need an “edge,” the ability to unsettle people. There IS such a thing as “too much quality,” and “overly happy employees.” The customer is NOT always right, and while the early bird may get the worm, it’s the early worm that gets eaten. Follow me right to the edge without falling over it, and learn how be a constant object of interest.
Session Six: The 20-Hour Week, the Million Dollar Year: December 9, 2024
Some people say, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” I say, “The smarter I work, the luckier I get.” Learn how YOU can create a 20-hour-a-week approach to your profession and/or practice, and how that can create a million dollars (or more) annually. These are not metaphors. I’m serious. You don’t believe that? Well, what if a thousand people bought this entire series that you are considering right now? That’s over a million dollars for me “working” 90 minutes a month for six months. If you think I can do that, but not you, I thank you, but shame on you! Don’t you think you ought to invest enough to see what you’re capable of, and if it’s possible for you? I mean, even if it’s 25 hours….
All sessions are recorded and distributed promptly as part of the program. The Special Sessions (below) are arranged with me at mutually-convenient times over the ensuing 12 months.
Single Session: $350
Two Sessions: $650
Three Sessions: $900
Four Sessions: $1100
Five Sessions: $1,200
Six Sessions: $1,300
Special Sessions: All six plus six 30-minute Zoom coaching calls with me, one-on-one: $2,500. These appointments will be adjusted to accommodate differing time zones.
Register here: https://alanweiss.com/
