Alan Weiss's The Uncomfortable Truth®

Jeff is the publisher of Performance Magazine which has featured interviews of and articles from people as diverse as Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Shaquille O’Neal, Sir Richard Branson, Joan Rivers, and Larry King, among hundreds of others.

In this conversation we talk about the effectiveness, and lack thereof, of the media; the major issues on the minds of executives post-pandemic; how to convince people to accept an interview even if they haven’t heard of you or the publication; and why Jeff, living in Vegas with plenty of Super Bowl invitations, will be on an airplane heading to a National Guard operation in New England to work with the leadership.

Jeff is controversial (he will not pursue an interview with the current occupant of the White House) and outspoken. He feels that the pandemic, even now, has caused a seismic shift in global business and leadership, and that promotions are based on being seen frequently in order to be known. One of his clients says, “If I don’t know you, I can’t promote you, and if I don’t see you, I can’t know you.”

We talk about whether or not there’s a generation gap, and what talent is really all about. And we hear the story of a cabinet member appearing in Jeff’s magazine because he saw a copy on another cabinet member’s coffee table with that person’s picture on the cover, and wanted to do so himself!

I’ve met Rudy Giuliani. We belonged to the same cigar club in New York (which has since lost its lease). Those were the days when he was still in the afterglow of “America’s Mayor” from the way he led after 9/11. And those were the days when crime in New York was way down. He and the police commissioner, Bill Bratton, instituted tough approaches to “minor” violations, believing they would lead to arrests and halting of major violations. So there were penalties for blocking intersections (today in Manhattan, city buses block intersections with impunity), for jumping turnstiles in subways, for the guys who tried to wash car windshields at red lights. And crime greatly diminished.

Today, we have district attorneys and other highly progressive politicians who have either made “minor” crimes acceptable or have refused to prosecute them. Here’s the simple math for those of you who never majored in math (I certainly didn’t): When shoplifters steal from stores without any worry about being prosecuted, fined, or jailed, the store ownership decides to close those stores in such areas because they can’t afford to conduct business at a loss. So the pharmacies, local retail shops, clothiers, and so forth close up or relocate. Instead of walking for a few minutes to pick up drug prescriptions it then requires a 20-minute drive or public transportation for 40 minutes to a store that’s in a safer neighborhood.

Activists demand that laws be passed preventing the chains from closing local stores, rather than laws preventing the “free” looting of local stores. Now ain’t that poor math?

And who’s most hurt by those pharmacies that close? The elderly, the disabled, the people without personal transportation, single parents, and so forth. If you don’t want stores to close, stop the cause: crime. And to stop crime, stop ALL crime. Once you forgive the “small stuff” people move on to the larger stuff. Have I mentioned that auto theft in the US and Canada is on a severe upward trend?

How do you create a million dollar idea and begin earning on it in one weekend?

Noah Kagan is one of my buddies and a guy I greatly admire. He’s founded and sold several multi-million dollar enterprises—and readily admits to his share of failures, as well—and he’s put together an approach, summarized in Million Dollar Weekend, which is a clear recipe for success. I know about how to make millions of dollars in consulting, for example. Noah has accelerated that process for most of you.

He makes fascinating points about quantity winning over quality, in that quantity tends to find many more powerful solutions. He talks about how the Rule of 100 will get you started, and stresses something we all know but don’t practice nearly enough: You don’t get if you don’t ask.

So join us here as he explains how he simply asked people to board their private jet, and wound up flying to Boston without any luggage or plans and then was terribly disappointed in flying home again commercially! Listen to what he says about making your first sale immediately, over that weekend.

We talk about the internet as the “great equalizer” today (neither of us had its benefits as we built our businesses), and the traits that people need to genuinely accept his counsel and make rapid progress. (Resiliency is mandatory.)

Listen to the only person ever to appear twice on The Uncomfortable Truth, and for good reason, and also find out how to access more of his smarts and this book.

Isn’t Starbucks just a tad affected when the have “baristas” and sizes like grande and venti and trenta and Huey, Dewey, and Louie? Is it possible not to want to body slam a “barista” who informs you they don’t like to put whole milk in a cappuccino because of “poor frothing”? I saw a couple enter a diner for breakfast carrying takeout Starbucks coffee. That level of self-absorption can cause implosion.

When it’s ten degrees with a wind-chill of minus 15, why do women in skirts and dresses have bare legs? Is that really comfortable or just a concession to fashion that can cause serious illness? When I buy shoes, I can wear them right out of the store. Women, a year later, are still complaining about the pain (and apparently some hire other women to “break them in”).

Talking to the movie screen or to performers on stage in a theater is not a cultural manifestation. It is simple unbounded rudeness.

Trying to pay a dinner bill proportionately (“We didn’t have an appetizer and I only had one drink”) is the hallmark of a scarcity mentality. If you can’t afford to simply pay an equal share, don’t go to dinner. Eat the dog’s kibbles.

I’m not impressed by a picture of an empty hall where you will be speaking. I’m impressed by a picture of a full hall while you are speaking.

Revving your engine or playing your radio at jet-take-off levels is not a sign of masculinity, but rather a lack thereof.

Learn of the former presidential candidate who drives me into the shower.

One of the major issues with a lack of success is that people don’t hold themselves accountable. They fail to meet deadlines, fail to fulfill obligations. 

They put more work into making excuses than they would have doing the actual work. The old “dog ate my homework” is now “there was traffic,” “we have child care issues,” “my internet was down.” There are no consequences for our failing our own accountabilities, and no rewards for meeting them. I’ll get around to it, unless I decide not to.

Symptoms include lateness, unpreparedness, seeking last minute help or replacements, begging for more time. If you don’t think this is systemic as well as individual, think of Pearl Harbor (or 9/11, when flight schools had Muslim pupils who wanted to learn how to take off, navigate, and fly, but not land).

We are unorganized and rarely penalized for it. We are able to blame others or the system of the deep web or some conspiracy, somewhere. Occupy Wall Street, Soak the Rich, down with Big Pharma.

And, eventually, these people justify their lack of discipline by pointing out they can’t achieve anything because they’re not getting a fair shot. That’s what happens, of course, when you’re a dollar short and a day late.

If you want to see writing exhaustion, this is the series. After two pretty decent seasons, the show devolved through the ensuing six as if the writers had become deprived of oxygen.

Every time someone knocks on a door, the response is, “What are you doing here?” It’s not, “Good to see you,” or “How can I help you?”, or “Are you lost?” People discussing matters in a private office are interrupted with a solution or dramatic new information by a colleague simply traipsing in from the halls.

There are continuing confrontations and apologies, prefacing further confrontations and apologies, between and among the same people, often multiple times per show. People hard to reach are ambushed in the streets—outside their offices, at hot dog carts, in public garages—as if they were on a schedule and could easily be found. Similarly, people barge into private offices in other buildings without bothering to go through security or secretaries or assistants. And the person being accosted says, of course, “What are you doing here?”

All the women, from the stars and supporting cast to the extras wear stilettos all day long. I’m assuming the producers have a fetish about this. (And the clothing is out of Vogue and hugely out of place as office attire.)

I’m told they’re trying to conjure up a ninth season. If this appears on any of my streaming platforms I’m going to ask, “What are you doing here?”

• We’re seeing huge changes in healthcare.

•  About 25% of patients used telehealth last year, far exceeding the 5% who accessed care this way before the pandemic.

• Pharmacies with physicians present (like pet stores with vets present)

• Physicians in private practice greatly reduced.

• The share of doctors who worked in practices wholly owned by physicians fell from 60.1% to 46.7% from 2012 to 2022.

• More people seeing nurse practitioners

• From 2016 to 2021, the number of primary care physicians billing Medicare declined each year, from 142,000 physicians in 2016 to 135,000 physicians in 2021. 

• Physicians tell me that the paperwork, reimbursement bureaucracy, and corporate demands are terrible. Example: 5-8 minutes allowed for patient questions during visits.

• Some exceptions: dermatologists have modestly increased. There are no midnight emergencies for dermatologists.

• Faith in the medical establishment has been undermined by the conflicting medical and political decisions during and after COVID.

• Religious institutions, education, and medicine have all suffered damage to their integrity.

• Patient costs are rising in terms of copays and over coverage denied by insurers.

• The limited government data available suggests that, overall, insurers deny between 10% and 20% of the claims they receiver

• When I consulted with RI Hospital it started every year in the red by $14 million because they were required to provide care to indigents.

• Recent studies of medical errors have estimated errors may account for as many as 251,000 deaths annually in the United States, making medical errors the third leading cause of death.

• Sepsis is a leading cause of death in hospitals.

• Emergency room waits can be 12 hours and worse.

• It wasn’t all that long ago that doctors were not washing their hands between seeing patients!

• Cut your expenses: virtual assistants, subscription software, subcontracting (even in the Philippines).

• Move work to the client.

• Focus on advisory work, not project work.

• Increase number of sales.

• Increase amount of sales.

• Increase duration of client relationships.

• Increase solicited referrals.

• Create community evangelism.

• Produce new products and services for existing clients.

• Reduce marketing expenses.

• Reduce time waste (internet).

• Stop overdelivering/providing what wasn’t requested.

• Track your time in a journal.

• Get paid in advance.

• Never tolerate delayed payments.

• Focus on total days to cash.

• List and evaluate all possible expenses (e.g., office rent at home, medical).

When you have a great talent on stage, do we really need dancers, other singers, flashing lights, and magic tricks? What does Starbucks gain giving us all those choices in its own strange language?

Have you ever noticed how visitors from Europe are astonished at the size and number of our restaurant dinner courses? Have you ever tried to quickly find something in a car’s owner’s manual? Can you read all the menu options at Dunkin’ Donuts drive through window before the person in the car behind you becomes homicidal because they haven’t had their coffee?

Do you love being “pitched” to buy credit cards on airplanes (which probably all lower your credit score)? Can you really decipher the bond issues you’re asked to vote upon with their triple negatives and boiler plate language?

We tend to provide so many options to appear as if they raise the overall quality of our offerings. Or the lawyers insist we cover all the ground we can and leaver out nothing. Maybe the customers are at fault—do we need instructions that include “turn bike light on at night” or “do not eat or consume any of these pool chemicals”?

We don’t recycle all that wasted food. People bring home prodigious amounts, which they don’t finish there, either. Maybe we need to look at quantity in a new way.

To quote Miss Piggy, “Never eat anything you can’t lift.”

•The American Council on Education reports that 33% of universities and colleges have female presidents.

• In the Ivy League it’s six of eight. Several for the first time ever.

• The three women in front of the congressional committee were clearly over their heads, ill prepared, stunned, and soon reversed some of their testimony.

• We’re focused on identity, not talent.

• Boards used to seek academic excellence and a track record of outstanding leadership.

• Now they want the first woman, or minority, or trans person, or whatever.

• When Biden promised a black, female Supreme Court nominee, he found Ketanji Brown, by all accounts an excellent jurist.

• But he had reduced her to the “best black female” available, instead of the “best candidate available.” That’s demeaning.

• The Boston Association of Female Marketing Executives. Why me? Best role model.

• Your freedom stops at my nose, I think John Jay.

• When you advocate the mass murders of 9 million people, already attempted to begin with beheadings, rape, murder, and kidnapping, that’s well beyond my nose and yours.

• And it won’t stop there. It didn’t with the Nazis, or the Russians, or the Chinese or the Khmer Rouge. It doesn’t stop with any corrupt “ism.”

• A letter writer on a university faculty claimed that students know which professors will involve them in political indoctrination before they register for the course. This is the worst kind of sophistry.

• Students pay absurd tuition to understand how to learn and evaluate differing points, not to hear absurdist, Marxist views from people protected from consequences by tenure, another ancient artifact.

• The question is who’s running the asylum?

• Oh, and by the way, after the University of Pennsylvania president was forced to resign after her failure in Congress, over 500 Harvard faculty members signed a petition supporting their president. What does that tell you?

• It tell me she doesn’t have the spine to interfere with their provocation and indoctrination.

• The “safe zones” on campus certainly aren’t intended for Jews these days, are they?