Alan Weiss's The Uncomfortable Truth® is a weekly broadcast from “The Rock Star of Consulting,” Alan Weiss, who holds forth with his best (and often most contrarian) ideas about society, culture, business, and personal growth. His 60+ books in 12 languages, and his travels to, and work in, 50 countries contribute to a fascinating and often belief-challenging 20 minutes that might just change your next 20 years.
Last refreshed: ⓘ
Follow this podcast in the Metacast mobile app to refresh it and see new episodes.
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more
SHOW NOTES: We’ve lost trust in major institutions: universities, medicine, journalism, the law, politicians, religion. (The recent rise in Catholic converts and church attendance is not due to any great marketing by the church, but rather due to a desperate need for a source of faith by many.) We tend to see AI as a magic bullet that will help us out of our uncertainly, lack of success, confusion, and sense of loneliness. Yet AI is the product of humans and has the notorious imperfections that ...
SHOW NOTES: At a restaurant, I’m asked if I have food allergies when I make the reservation, then by the hostess when I arrive, then by the server who has my table. While I appreciate all the precautions, I think they’re afraid of being sued. Isn’t it the responsibility of someone with a serious food allergy who’s make the decision to dine in a restaurant to inform people themselves? The Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, a wonderful place, actually has a sign informing its guests that the china,...
SHOW NOTES: Wherein Alan shares his views of exotic car density, cab maneuvers, High Tea, American advantages in admiring the Royals, and the lies and deception around priority luggage.
SHOW NOTES: “No worries” doesn’t mean “you’re welcome” it means “You didn’t bother me all that much.” “Perfect” doesn’t mean “thank you” it means “You got that right and didn’t waste still more of my time.” “You guys” is terribly inappropriate if the people addressed are not entirely “guys,” and is most misused by women, especially women in the media. “February” and “library” each have two “r’s” in them, or the first is not a month and the second is some kind of fibbing fruit on a vine. These us...
SHOW NOTES: The fallacy is that you should be prepared to “spring” in a sales call to “pitch” the sale, like a cheetah on the Serengeti chasing an eland. Well, cheetahs can only maintain high speed for a limited duration, and they’re only successful getting a meal one time in ten (as are all predators). One time in ten is not sufficient for a successful career. We need to empty our heads, and not allow our minds to be crammed with facts, figures, “closing” language, and one-upmanship comments. T...
SHOW NOTES: The following guest column by Randy Gage is an excerpt from his new book, Wealth Without Apology, which is being released this week, and which will be the subject of my conversation with him on my podcast this Thursday: Alan Weiss's The uncomfortable Truth Magnitude of Scale: Why Thinking Bigger Pays Better I’m currently conducting a comprehensive, groundbreaking, rigorous, cross-sectional, peer-reviewed, gold-standard, double-blind, placebo-controlled, first-of-its-kind, breakthroug...
SHOW NOTES: The airlines’ major frequent flyer programs began with American Airlines back in 1981 (thought Texas International Airlines had one in 1979). Everyone quickly followed. Travelers fell in love because they were earning free trips without paying anything extra for the ticket. You may feel the travelers were and are silly. Well, the average major airline today has a liability of about $7-10 billion if these points were all cashed in. Although there are attempts to squelch this with blac...
SHOW NOTES: "Josephine Victoria 'Joy" Behar is an American actress, playwright, comedian, and television host. She's best known for co-hosting the ABC talk show The View, where she won a Daytime Emmy Award in 2009. Behar is known for her sharp wit and asking questions that others might avoid, such as asking Chris Christie if he was too overweight to be president. She's also hosted her own shows, including The Joy Behar Show on HLN and a call-in radio show on WABC. She is 83." The above is a PR d...
SHOW NOTES: • Two great American novels: Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. • She championed “objectivism” and individual accomplishment. • It’s not subtle, and it’s not modest. It’s a full-throated defense of reason, individualism, and self-interest—often misunderstood because people hear “selfishness” and stop listening. • Today we have “soak the rich” and “tax the rich” and “occupy Wall Street” and people defending Luigi Mangione who killed an insurance executive on the streets in New York. • I...
SHOW NOTES: • If you’re in love with golf, and especially hitting a ball into a bed sheet, I suggest you don’t listen to this. • Is watching multi-millionaires hit balls into a screen and then in a confined stadium with undulating greens really interesting? Is it really a sport? Are they really “athletes”? • Maybe the Americans should focus on trying to win a Ryder Cup out in the real world before trying to excel in a virtual world. • Are we ruining tennis, baseball, football with endless algori...
SHOW NOTES: Learn how to learn from ducks, geese, otters, herons, egrets, turtles, osprey, and fish. They're bolder than many of you. Of course, they have to eat to live, but so do you...
SHOW NOTES: Higher education is going extinct. Tuitions are sky high forcing parents to take out second mortgages or kids to mortgage their future by owing $300,000 to teach history in high school for $60,000. Brick and mortar is giving way to remote learning. Government is increasingly intervening in college admissions, curricula, and hiring. The Epstein and other sexual scandals are undermining (and ending the careers) of faculty and university officials. The president of Ohio State just resig...
SHOW NOTES: INMJ (It’s not my job.) Some people define their job as the absolute minimal effort to be expended and not be penalized. It’s about laziness, lousy attitudes, and low esteem. Some people define it as pleasing and delighting the customer. It’s about pride, resourcefulness, and helping the organization. I’ve just returned from an eye doctor who is magnificent and has a great personality. But her technical assistant is a drip, with no personality who never utters a word like “please” or...
SHOW NOTES: •There are no "humble" jobs •The less on Downton Abbey •The doers vs. the administrators •Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night •Blue is trumping white •AI isn't plowing your driveway •Maybe your daughter should marry a cowboy
SHOW NOTES: Alysa Liu won the woman's gold medal for figure skating a couple of days ago, our first in 24 years! Watching her and listening to her prior, during, and after her final performance (she was in third place at the time), she exhibited a carefree and total joy in her skating. It wasn't about competition or medals, it was about sheer delight. Scottie Shuffler is about sheer delight on the golf course (Tiger Woods was strictly about competition), Sinatra singing on stage, Helen Mirren ac...
SHOW NOTES: The winter Olympics had a boring opening ceremony except for Andrea Bocelli. Some of the events seem duplicative, especially figure skating and skiing. Some seem like efforts to avoid death or injury, and not just competing—skeleton, luge, giant slalom, ski jumping, distance skiing. Skiing in ruts is rather boring, and then the women collapsing over the finishing line and gasping for air is frightening. The giant slalom hits about 85 MPH. Luge and skeleton runs are between 80 and 100...
Alan Weiss introduces the concept of a "reverse bucket list," encouraging listeners to look back and take pride in their past accomplishments instead of focusing on future unmet expectations. He shares a series of captivating personal stories, from flying blimps and piloting a B-24 bomber to surviving a lightning strike and escaping an escape room, illustrating a life lived to the fullest. The episode emphasizes appreciating one's journey and living in the present rather than chasing an endless list of future goals.
SHOW NOTES: • Suddenly we have “toxic workplaces” (and need “psychological safety” and have “unhoused” people and “food insecure people). • We try to wallpaper over real problems with euphemisms and ideologically-biased language. • Can you have a “toxic workplace” without toxic employees? Chicken and egg? • On social media we see complete nonsense such as “52% of all workplaces are toxic,” which is preposterous and without any valid study. • Can we have so many successful businesses with such ma...
SHOW NOTES: • Parents and kids were united in what was watched, experiences, and enjoyed in the early 50s. Gunsmoke, Soupy Sales, MASH, Bonanza, Sink the Bismark. • Then came Dick Clark and American Bandstand. • The 60s saw the Beatles, Sex/Drugs/Rock and Roll. • Viet Nam and campus occupations. • A man on the moon. • Assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King. • Woodstock. • The Cuban Missile Crisis. • The Schism has evolved into polarization. • We don't trust each other...
SHOW NOTES: • The point is to live with imperfection. • Free of mistakes, we’re free of critique and ridicule is false • Perfectionism leads to huge stress • It’s a fictitious expectation (dining, travel, relationships, etc.) • We think it protects us, but it ruins us • It’s based on the fear of being imperfect—and human!! • Engage in vulnerable conversations and actitivies • Accept results of a task that are “OK” • My wife’s formula for long-term marriages • Perfectionism assumes control you do...
SHOW NOTES: • Defined as moral and mental qualities; strengths and reputation. • It’s a matter of self-worth, or esteem, of personal dignity. • Also a matter of our willingness to help others, to have an abundance and not a scarcity mentality. • It’s a quiet confidence, not braggadocio. • It’s legitimate and earned, not bogus or borrowed. • The lessons of the Ritz-Carlton. • It’s also with whom we choose to spend our time. • It’s refusing to cheat at golf but trying to cheat in football. • There...
SHOW NOTES: Did people whine as much years ago as they do now? They won't let me succeed at my job. They won't hire me anywhere else. Maybe "toxic workplaces" are caused by toxic employees? Maybe terrible bosses are just leaders expecting employees to meet deadlines and fulfill assignments? The fault is with the "Boomers" or GenX because they took advantage, they led great lives, and left nothing for us! Nothing but a healthier, safer world and the last decade of constantly improved living stand...
SHOW NOTES: New Year celebrations date back 4,000 years to ancient Babylon, where the festival of Akitu marked the new year around the spring equinox with religious rituals, debt-paying promises (early resolutions), and kingly renewals. Early civilizations linked it to agricultural cycles, like Egyptians with the Nile's flood. The Roman calendar, shifted to January 1st by Julius Caesar, became the basis for our Gregorian calendar, solidifying the date, though many cultures still celebrate at dif...
SHOW NOTES: Two of the most popular Christmas Songs (aside from Mariah Carey’s cloying All I Want for Christmas Is You) are I’ll Be Home for Christmas (Kim Gannon, Walter Kent, Buck Ram) from 1943, introduced by Bing Crosby; and Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane) introduced by Judy Garland in 1943, also. Frank Sinatra later recorded the canonical version of each of them. The year 1943 was in the middle of World War II. These songs, unrealized by many who hear th...
SHOW NOTES: We had left Vigil Mass on Saturday night where I helped serve Communion as a Eucharistic Minister. (I’ll be the lector next week.) We drove ten minutes to the restaurant for dinner and immediately heard of the shooting at Brown University. (And as I write this, a similar horror at Bondi Beach in Australia which was aimed at Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah.) The streets, the classrooms, public gatherings—none is immune to the violence of the mentally ill, the racist, the anti-S...
SHOW NOTES: I am neither aware nor unaware. Did. you lobby to get her on the board? She'll make an excellent board member. But did you arrange for her appointment. She's a stellar candidate. Weren't you in charge of this huge problem area? No, I inherited it. But before that you were a top officer of the company. Surely you must have known that the operations were illegal. Under my watch we reduced the impropriety by 41%. I have not spoken to the man but have made it clear that I would do so if ...
SHOW NOTES: I heard an "influencer" today on a morning talk show explain that dating, or having any ongoing relationship, is no longer considered favorable. In fact, he pointed out, many people are finding that being single—is "aspirational." Now, I can understand independence and self-sufficiency, hell, I write about them as positive traits. But to seek to remain unattached to another person as "aspirational"? We all need others. We need companionship, love, solace in defeat, and celebration in...
SHOW NOTES: I've been consulting, coaching, advising and otherwise helping people to achieve success, personally and professionally, for over half a century. Those clients include CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, top governmental elected officials, executive directors on nonprofits, solo entrepreneurs, entertainers, athletes, and lawyers, accountants, designers, architects, and a myriad of employees. Until the 21st Century kicked in, this was standard work on skills, behaviors, attitudes, and self...
SHOW NOTES: If you want to maximize your business growth, you need to generalize and not specialize. There may be exceptions, but generally, the more potential buyers you have the more business you'll generate. A content expert knows the "what." It may be insurance, or auto manufacture, or solar panels. You sell insurance to people to need insurance, auto manufacture skills to, well, auto manufacturers, and solar panels to people who desire it, have the capacity for it, and have a roof (or a lar...
