If you walk into a buyer, a high level buyer, someone with P& L responsibility or the owner of a company, if you walk in there with a laptop or a deck or something, you ought to be thrown out. People who tell me they make elevator pitches, I said, I'd stop the elevator, throw you the hell out. You know, you don't sell on airplanes. That's from the 50s, for God's sake. No, you're a peer of the buyer.
But if you start walking in like a pack animal, with laptops and presentation equipment, all this stuff. You're no longer a peer, you know, you're a subordinate.
Hi, this is the marketing meeting and I'm your host Itir Eraslan. Every two weeks I meet with experts and we talk about topics related to brands, marketing and businesses, and we sometimes add random lifestyle topics too. I hope you enjoy the show. Welcome to the marketing meeting podcast. My guest today is Alan Weiss. a globally recognized consultant and an authority in the consulting industry and known for his transformative insights. He has authored over 60 books, if I'm correct, right?
And including the bestseller Million Dollar Consulting, which is one of my favorite books. And he's also a celebrated speaker inducted into the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame. Welcome, Alan.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
I'm really happy that we are recording this at the almost the last day of the year. Uh, I have a lot of friends. I'm doing consultancy for seven years and a lot of friends. Who are interested in consulting, ask me questions about consulting. And I always ask them to go back to your books because I learned many of the fundamentals of consulting from you and from your books.
Uh, so, uh, just recently I had a conversation with a friend, he is a former CEO, and I know that he will be very helpful and valuable for a lot of companies out there, but since he is a former. CEO, he doesn't want to go all in, in social media or so on. And he doesn't know where to start. Uh, can you please explain where can, how can people start consulting businesses?
Well, there's a difference. If you're somebody who's retiring and looking for a second career, such as the CEO you talked about, very difficult. People think that's the easiest way. It's very difficult because such people used to having resources around them. They're used to having people who can do things. The worst thing is they're not used to marketing. Very few of them have been marketing executives.
And so the thing about consulting, what you and I do is in the marketing profession, and even though different consultants provide different kinds of services, it's all about marketing. So there are people who are great consultants, but they don't know how to market. And they start, there are people who are great at marketing and just mediocre consultants, but they make a living, but to really be successful, you have to know how to market and how to consult.
So I would say to your executive friend, if he or she wanted to go into a consulting position, open their solo consulting business, they should make a list of everyone they know. Get their value proposition straight. What are they providing for people now? And then decide how best to reach them and how they can reach the individual. Uh, and what you'll have to do is not tell people about what you do, but about what you create for them.
Um, and your books, you talk about, I'm moving through the discovery calls. Um, you talk about that, uh, if you want to grow a consulting business, you should be meeting at least two new potential clients every week. Uh, this is a dilemma that I have also, but how can we find those potential clients and how can we structure those discovery calls?
Well, first of all, I don't call them discovery calls. Uh, I just call them meetings. Discovery calls, uh, are too reminiscent of a pitch of selling. That's not what we're doing. Creating relationships. The second thing is what I talked about was meeting two buyers a week, and the buyers don't have to be new. They could be past buyers, but meet two buyers a week because buyers have referral business and expansion business and so forth.
And getting to the heart of your question, though, how do I do that? There are six ways to meet buyers. One of them is mandatory, and that is you ask for referrals. And so you ask people you know, they might be buyers or not. They could be your attorney, your doctor, your, your accountant. You ask for referrals. Uh, a second way is through speaking. You alluded to the fact that I, I speak. A third is networking. A fourth is publishing. A fifth is doing pro bono work.
And a six is a hosting an event. Uh, when I was fired in 1985, I was president of the consulting firm here in Rhode Island. Uh, I said to myself, what am I good at? And I said, I'm good at speaking. I'm good at writing. So I wrote, and I spoke, I wrote, I spoke, what am I doing today? I'm writing and speaking.
And when you say publishing, do you mean publishing content or publishing books?
I mean, uh, both. In other words, I consider podcasts publishing. I consider videos publishing. I consider blog posts publishing. Newsletters are publishing. Social media, not so much. I find social media pretty much a waste of time if you want to build a consulting firm. Because you're not talking to buyers there. And so, books certainly. You know, I've published, as you said, over 60. My newest one came out earlier this month. But it could also include e books.
It could include any number of things. People learn in different ways. Some learn audibly. Some learn visually. Some learn kinesthetically. So you have to be able to put your material in a wide variety of avenues so people can access it. And
I have one question because your books are a lot about consulting and then I'm a consultant. I'm reading your books as a consultant to learn from you the consulting business. It's still useful for a company to get consulting from you through reading your books. Because it feels to me that I might be wrong, but it feels to me that usually the consultants are learning a lot from you right now.
Well, it's not useful for anybody to try to do anything solely through books. No one ever learned to ski by reading a book. No one even learned to ride a bike by reading a book. And so books create awareness. Million Dollar Consulting, which you pointed to there, has been on the shelves for 32 years. Six editions. I've written more books on consulting than anyone in history. But I don't sit back and say, I'm going to make a fortune. I'm not in the book selling business. Right?
And so, books create awareness. Speaking and teaching and training create skills transfer. But the only way you really get application is through consulting and advising. And so that's the continuum. So don't think because you've written a book, as I did with my very first one, you can sit by the phone and wait for it to ring. It doesn't happen. Uh, but what you have to do is get people's attention via books.
And books are very credible, and despite all the wrong predictions, they're more popular today than ever.
After the meetings with the potential clients, then there is a point where hopefully they would be asking for a proposal from you. Uh, and on the proposal side, you talk about the concept of focusing on summations rather than explorations. Uh, could you please elaborate a bit on this?
Sure. Uh, when you meet with a buyer, uh, I believe that there are four components. So if you have an hour, each one would take 10 to 15 minutes. The first one is if you don't know the buyer, uh, you have to establish trust. So you speak a bit about market conditions. You speak a bit about the industry you talk about with some of your other clients are doing and so forth. Now, if you've written books and you have a brand and so forth, the trust is pretty much done.
The second is to look at issues. That, uh, are relevant for the buyer and don't assume the buyer's in pain. Too many consultants assume the buyer's damaged or in pain. Look for opportunities. So I say to the buyer, you know, all of my clients look at these four issues as keys to growth. Do you find it the same way or do you have more? And then when you move into the third phase, which I call conceptual agreement, you get agreement on objectives, which are business outcomes.
Measures, which are indicators of progress toward those outcomes. And then finally value, which is the return on investment, the ROI. You have to monetize that. That's conceptual agreement. And then finally you pour concrete on it. That's the fourth step. In other words, you say, look, is there anything we haven't spoken about besides fees? that might stop you from accepting one of the options in my proposal. If so, let's talk about it while we're together.
So that conceptual agreement means that, and a proposal is simply a summation of what's already been discussed. There's nothing new. There's nothing shocking. The buyer has admitted to these are the objectives and measures, and this is my value and starts to see a 10 to one return based on your fee. That's how it works.
Do you ever, um, use presentations when you are meeting with potential clients?
Presentations?
Yeah.
No. Uh, if, if you walk into a buyer, a high level buyer, someone with P& L responsibility or the owner of a company, if you walk in there with a laptop or a deck or something, you ought to be thrown out. You know? It's like people who tell me they make elevator pitches, I'd say, I'd stop the elevator. I'd throw you the hell out, you know, you don't sell on airplanes. So that that's from the fifties for God's sake.
Uh, no, you're a peer of the buyer, but if you start walking in like a pack animal with laptops and presentation equipment, all this stuff, you're no longer a peer, you know, you're a subordinate. And so you have, I walk in with a file of facts, which is how I take notes. And, uh, and that's it. So, uh, I don't think you should make a presentation. What you have to have is a conversation. And I keep telling people who are my clients.
Consultants do not make presentations, engage in conversations.
Yeah, because I mean, like I, oftentimes at the beginning of my consulting career, people started asking, okay, do you have a presentation to share? And can you share with upfront so that we can have a look and so on.
That's not a buyer. No buyer asks that. Human resource people ask that. Learning and development people ask that. Low level people ask that. And you have to ignore that. You shouldn't spend time with those people because they can say no and they can't say yes. So if you meet an HR person, you have to ask them, Can you introduce me to The vice president to the executive director to the CEO never deal with hr. I, I think HR stands for hardly relevant.
Makes sense. So the next question is about pricing. I know that you are a strong advocate for moving from our fees to value-based pricing. Um, have you been always pricing per value or have you ever priced hourly?
When I went out on my own. I promised myself to understand two things. The first was that this is a relationship business and you had to sell yourself. You had to be involved in a relationship with the buyer. The second thing is I would never sell to any buyer based on a time unit or a box of materials or a day in a classroom. Uh, and the reason is, and I pioneered value based fees for consultants in the nineties, you know, one of my books is called value based fees. It's in this third edition.
What I found was not just that I could make a lot more money with value based fees. I mean, that's obvious, but you have. You're in an unethical relationship. If you're in a relationship where the client is best served by a rapid response, but the consultant's best served by staying there forever, building the billing by the hour. And I don't want to be in a relationship that's unethical. Also real wealth is discretionary time.
And if you build by the hour, you're never going to have much discretionary time if you want to make money.
With the value based pricing, because I moved to value based pricing, uh, after I read your books, actually, and that's the, one of the best things that I've done for my business, uh, because I recognize that even when I'm walking out, uh, to clear my mind, I'm thinking about the project and there is no end to the marketing world. And this is also for the consulting world. But I find I struggle a lot with time management, uh, because.
Value is something not always countable, like you cannot count it, and the value can, you know, increase or less, so the long story short, I'm struggling a lot with time management, what would you suggest me to do in that time management part?
Well, there are three ways to reduce your labor intensity. One way is to streamline your business model, and not enough consultants do that. There are six steps to my sales process. Well, maybe there needn't be six steps to your sales process. Maybe the client's already good at two of them. And so, consultants who come in with a program, with a model to superimpose structure, are going to spend much too much time.
Uh, in fact, the sleekest way, To provide value for client is on an advisory basis where there is very little labor involved, except what we're doing now, really discussions like this remotely, the second way to reduce labor is by having the client perform the labor. You give the work to the client. And so if there's research to be done, that there are statistics to be gathered, uh, you let the client do that. Now, if you have to do interviews, you do that yourself.
You can't have client people interviewing client people. But in many cases, you can have the client do the information gathering. Then the third way is to hire subcontractors. And use subcontractors whom you trust, whom you use often, and they can do a training program, or they can facilitate a panel, or they can talk to people, or they can observe and so on. So, you have these three ways to simplify what you do in lower labor intensity.
But if you're going to make more and more money, and it's going to force you to engage in more and more labor, uh, that's not a good way to live.
I have one question about subcontractors because many times that the reason that a client is going to work with me is because they want my involvement. They don't want another person's involvement. And I assume that it's Pretty much the same for you. Uh, I might be wrong though. Uh, I cannot hire another strategist to help me out, but because I need to be present. Uh, what type of subcontractors do you usually use or do you recommend people?
Well, let's say that the client says, you know, he has agreed to my proposal to six focus groups. I'll still work with the buyer, but I'll tell the client one of my people is going to run the focus groups.
And provide us with the information gathered the kind of people I work with, and I don't do this much anymore because where my business is today, which is only strictly advisory, but the way I did that was I found a couple of people through my contacts and my experiences who really appreciated being able to work with me and learn and could use the money because subcontractors don't cost a fortune. A lot of them are people who can't market. They can deliver, but they can't market.
So they like the work. Uh, and when you use them repeatedly, you have loyalty and they're available for you. And so that's what happens. I do think that, um, too many consultants become embroiled with their own ego. And they feel that they have to do everything because no one can do it as well as they can. And the fact is that it doesn't matter if someone can do it as well or as fast as you can. The only thing that matters is can they do it,
That's an important opening for me, to be honest, because I try to get the subcontracting work, especially on the operational stuff like, you know, accounting, bookkeeping, that takes my time. But now this is another level of thinking, which, which is quite interesting. Do you have any suggestions on ensuring long term engagement and trust with the clients? Because consulting work is advisory at the end of the day, and it's not easy to put KPIs behind what you do. Or maybe it is. I don't know.
How do you make sure that the work sustains and then you have long term clients?
Well, uh, first of all, as I said before, you'd have to have application on the job to sustain long term results. So I make sure that there are consequences. In other words, negative consequences for not doing what you're supposed to, and positive consequences for doing what you're supposed to. I worked with a firm in Pittsburgh to improve innovation, and I said to the president, You can't just reward victories or people will be afraid that they'll fail. You have to reward the behaviors.
And if people have the right innovative behaviors, they'll win enough. And so at the annual banquet every year, we gave out an award, the best idea that did not work. And it was a huge hit. Uh, and that's the way the president's, uh, signified that it was the behaviors that were important. And don't forget your client has an accountability here. And not only that your client has authority. You and I don't have authority. We only have accountability.
We can't fire people and change people and so forth. And so. You say to the client, here are your accountabilities to sustain this level of operation. Now I worked with Merck for 12 years, I worked with Hewlett Packard for 10 years, I worked with Calgary for 5 years, I could go on and on. And the reason is, I did outstanding work, and I was very, very honest in what I should be doing, but what they had to be doing.
You developed the sentient strategy approach. And even you have a book on that. Um, can you explain this concept a bit? Because I personally, I found it quite interesting, but I would like also the audience, like the listeners to learn it a bit also.
Sure. Well, you know, sentient means self awareness, right? And, um, somewhere just before the pandemic. I had been a fan of Peter Drucker for my entire career, you know, whatever, 10 years ago. And he invented strategy, uh, in, in the fifties with Sloan over at General Motors. But I said to myself, you know, 70 years, whatever, it's a long time. So what are we talking about?
And I realized that I had been involved throughout my career with too many companies that spent two months to set a strategy that looked 10 years out. So I started writing this book and then the pandemic hit and I realized that. All you can do these days is look a year or so out, 18 months, maybe. And you should take about two days to do this. And there were ways to do it. So sentient strategies about how you get the right people in the room, as few as possible. You look only a year or so out.
You identify the vision of where you want to go, which is a very easy and short term thing to do. Creating vision is not all that elaborate. It's the mission that's important. The mission is raison d'etre. Why are we here? So Merck is here. to bring the greatest in scientific research to the greatest areas of human health need. That's their mission. If you don't like that mission, you don't go to Merck. You don't join Merck.
And so, I created this model that can be taught to a company, can be facilitated within a company in about two days, and optionally, the person leading it can work with the company to help make sure that the accountability is spread down through the ranks. Uh, and I actually certified people, uh, in sentient strategy, and we now have about 60 people certified around the world, uh, and they have taken this product and, and they've run with it.
So, uh, there's an appetite, you know, there's an interest in getting strategy done on a much more pragmatic basis.
For people that are doing this strategy, that are leading these strategy sessions. Is it possible that someone can lead a strategy session without knowing the background of a company? I mean, is it, I assume that I can do it, for example, for the current clients that I have, because I have enough of history. I know the industry a lot and so on. Uh, but can it be done, uh, without knowing anything about the industry or anything about the company?
Yes. Well, I'm a process consultant. And so if you look at strategy or decision making or conflict resolution and negotiation, those are processes and you superimpose those processes, regardless of what the content is. Now, if I were a specialist in, uh, automotive, uh, fuel injection, uh, that's different. And I'd have to know the Mercedes Benz or the Bentley or the General Motors methods of fuel injection to be an expert there. But as a process guy, I don't.
I work with Mercedes Benz, and when I did, the Vice President of North America said to me, you know, what do you know about cars? I said, that's not important. Your problem is service. And I know everything about service. So, it doesn't hurt to be conversant. In other words, you should know what a defolcation is in a bank. In a chemical company, you should know about continuous flow processes. You know, these days, supply chains and things like that.
You don't need to be an expert in the industry. You need to be an expert in your process.
Meaning the strategy processes that you are doing. That's
right. Nobody can say to me, look, your strategy process doesn't apply to a bank. Show me where it doesn't apply. You don't have strategic factors. You know, you don't have threats and opportunities or whatever it happens to be.
Can you share a significant challenge that you faced while you are growing your business?
Well, yeah. I mean, the, the early in my business, um, don't forget there was no internet and the challenge was meeting a sufficient number of people. So for example, I didn't capture names sufficiently. I never realized how important capturing names would be. Now on a computer, it's easy on your iPhone. It's easy. The fact that I didn't do that. So I had to meet people, but fortunately. I had some contacts in these large companies and I did great work and they started mentioning me to others.
Uh, another challenge is trying to understand what you need and don't need. That's why these executives have to understand. They're not going to have unlimited resources on their own. When I was fired, my wife said, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to get an office. And my wife said. Well, why do you need an office? I said, well, I'm my own boss now. She said, yeah, but people won't come to you. You will go to them. You don't need an office.
She said, I'll tell you what, if it turns out you need an office, then get one. So about 18 years later, I still had no office. And, um, I calculated it would have cost me 450, 000 to have paid a mortgage or rent. Repairs, insurance, part time secretary and so forth, 450, 000, which is almost exactly the amount it costs me to put my two kids through private school, from kindergarten through undergraduate school.
And so you have to be careful about what you need and don't need, because I meet consultants all the time. They come to me for coaching, they want advice, and their virtual assistant is arranging things for them. And I said, I'm not talking to your virtual assistant. I'm not talking to your full time assistant. I'm not talking to your alter ego. I'm not talking to whomever. You talk to me directly. You don't need an assistant. But this is an ego thing.
So they always want the latest, you know, in, in lights and sound and action. And, you know, I want, I met somebody doing Zoom work with three cameras. You know, I have a camera up here in my Mac studio and that's it. I don't need two more cameras. I mean, we're doing okay. You know what I'm saying? My microphone, you know, is right here. So you have to understand what you need. because debt will kill you. It will kill you as a solo. And I'll tell you one more thing.
That is that A lot of us are refugees from large companies and we've come out and we formed our own solo business and now we have worst bosses.
My boss is quite strict and disciplined and wants me to work every day.
Creates guilt.
Exactly. What tools or technologies do you use in your business?
Well I probably use 20 percent of the available technology that I have, like, I have this big desktop computer here, and I have a laptop behind me, and of course I have an iPad, and I have an iPhone, and God knows what else I have, but the 20 percent I use of them, I do 100%. And so, uh, I'm very responsive with email. Uh, I create my own videos. I have a minute with Alan, which shows every day. I have a monthly, um, uh, the writing on the wall is once a month, which I do with a videographer.
Uh, I have a cartoon that goes up on my set every Friday. I have a podcast every Thursday. One of my technical people, uh, estimated I have 1800 hits a year with my, uh, best client and prospect base. So I use technology in that manner. But I don't use technology for its own sake.
What I'm thinking of doing now, just to give an example, is creating AI, but not artificial intelligence, Allen intelligence, which means somebody can go to my site if they're a member and ask a question and the AI will bring together video, audio, text and everything to answer their question right there. So it's totally passive income for me.
It's totally effective for them, but it also enables me to say to them sort of suddenly, you know, if you're not getting sufficient stuff here, you need to deal with me directly.
One question about that just came out now, uh, about book writing. Is there a process like top few things that you suggest to someone who hasn't written a book? I mean, what's the best way to start it?
To start a book?
Yeah. Start writing a book. Yeah.
All right. All right. Well, to publish a book, you need a book proposal. That's what starts a book. Don't sit down and write a book, write a book proposal. And there are about seven steps. You know, I run something called the book sprint where I work with people. And in 90 days we create a book proposal and I've got an 80 percent hit rate with publishers, which is pretty damn good. Uh, and so the way you do this is you start with your title and subtitle and don't fixate over it.
I mean, the publisher might change it. You know, a million dollar consulting was called confessions of a consultant. And, uh, it was about to go into production and the, the, uh, senior editor says to me, we can't call this Confessions of a Consultant, what are we going to call it? I said, well, I'll think about it. She says, don't think about it. Don't leave my office. I need it right now. I said, Betsy, what can I tell you? It's about million dollar consulting. And she said, that's the title.
So don't sweat the title. That became the franchise. Uh, the second thing is you create a table of contents. And so the table of contents is 10 or 12 chapters. Your book's going to be 150 to 200 pages double spaced, maybe 15 to 20 pages per chapter double spaced. And then beneath each chapter you create four sub points. So if a chapter's 20 pages, each sub point is five pages. And that includes visuals, it includes little case studies, it includes anything. Five pages.
And then you write a sample chapter, could be any chapter you want, but a powerful chapter. You do an analysis of similar books in the field, maybe five to eight. And you do the marketing platform, which is extremely important. And the extreme, the marketing platform shows how you can sell about 10, 000 books through your alumni association, or clubs you belong to, or clients you have. So the publisher feels the press run is is safe. Publishing is a tough game. That's it.
And so you submit that to an agent or an acquisitions editor. Everything I just described, that proposal, you could easily do. I help people through 90 days. You could easily do it in less than that. But that's how you do it. And don't talk about writer's block because there's no such thing. It's like talking about the abominable snowman. There's no such thing. And so writer's block, writer's block, you know, write a sentence. Two sentences. Now you have a paragraph. Write two paragraphs.
Congratulations. You're all be right as well.
I mean, also, like, as I see that, like, you have a process in strategy, you have a process in book writing, you have a process in so many things that it's really sounds. easy listening to it. I think this is one of the most important strengths that you have.
Listen, I believe in the 1 percent solution, which is you improve by 1 percent a day in 70 days, you're twice as good. And you just hit on something that for your viewers and listeners might be the 1 percent and it is this. Process is everything. And you have to be able to master it. I killed every test I took in college and in graduate school. You know, I had a full scholarship to law school because I killed the law.
The LSATs, thank God I didn't go to law school, but I had a full scholarship because I know how to take a test as a process and one of my therapists, I'm a big believer in therapy, you know, my PhDs in psychology, one of my therapists said, Alan, you've created a set of pipes that only you can play. And those are the processes.
Um, a few days ago, we had a discussion with a person and he was like showing his process, creative process as a do it yourself, uh, tutorial, uh, at his website and to the social media. And I said, I mean, it seems that it looks very easy. However, the reason that This is you is because you created that. Uh, of course, you create a process. But the thing is that the value of the outcome is because you are following that process is a creative person.
So I told him it's okay to make it look like easy, but at the end of the day, it's gonna be your values. Uh, that makes it more available. So it's not like because people's things that's okay. So the process strategy is a process and it can be easy. I know that you are not in that one. Like I'm not talking about you, but people are like talking about processes which are made quite easy.
Uh, but it's at the, as your psychologist says, it's at the end of the day, it's you who apply that process to your work.
No, that's true. But that's about discipline. You know, maybe We can refer to Occam's Razor here, you know, Occam said the easiest way is always the best way. And I'll give you an example, so we're not talking theoretically. Uh, I came up with an approach a few months ago. Uh, and what I looked around at was this, the statistics that we were reading every day was that we are a declining population. So morbidity is outpacing fertility. We're not replacing ourselves.
And this is Western Europe, it's most of the developed world and China. Uh, it's a real problem because labor is declining. And so I said, well, how do we compensate for that? I mean, you can't tell people to have more kids. Doesn't work. Doesn't work in China. And anyway, even if you did, that's a two generation job there. And I said, well, there are ways to alleviate this.
Uh, one way is you have an intelligent immigration policy, which we always used to have, where, uh, both blue collar and white collar, we get people in here who can help us. And in fact, over the past year, the United States population growth was fueled by more than 40 percent by immigration. Number two, uh, you use artificial intelligence correctly. Everybody's talking about it, and it can be used. Right now, UPS and FedEx aren't laying off blue collar people.
They're not laying off drivers, they're laying off schedulers, because they no longer need it. And number three is, you don't throw seniors out into the woods. You use people who have wisdom. Nobody 28 year old, Oh, she's very wise, you know. They say that about older people. And you cannot throw these people out anymore. So this whole idea of retirement is stupid, you know. Uh, you don't have to keep working at a particular job, but you have to keep contributing to society.
And so we have to tap into that. So if you look at this, seniors, intelligent immigration, AI, that's the answer to declining population. Uh, and so there's IP, right? There's intellectual property. Uh, and I didn't invent any of that. All I did was look around and combine it.
It's also a strategy process. Uh, the thing that you've done right now.
Could be, but anybody could do what I did if they're paying attention.
Wrapping up, I want to ask about the future of consulting, but also the future of marketing consultants, because I'm a marketing consultant. And the nature of the marketing industry is quite dynamic, as you know, and especially when you look at companies, the CMOs, tenors are getting shorter because of the huge ROI expectations. How do you see the marketing consulting evolving in the coming years?
Well, um, it's going to be high opportunity. You know, uh, my friend Dan Pink has written books like this and one is called to sell as human and Dan spoke for me at one of my events. And the fact is that influence, if you look at marketing as influencing, um, influencing is going to be important for everybody in every kind of service and product and so forth. I mean, we have professional influencers now on social media, for God's sake.
Uh, Jonah Berger from Wharton University, who also spoke for me at one of my events, he published a book called, I think, Contagion or Contagious and Invisible Influence, and he talked about how executives really make decisions. And so, uh, marketing is going to grow, but marketing is not going to be a direct mail. It's not going to be spam on the internet. It's going to be arranging for people to talk to each other and to evangelize.
And so my new book, um, which just came out this month is building dynamic communities. And it's how you can get people together to evangelize for you. I think that's the future.
What do you think about the consulting outsourcing companies? Because like many of my friends suggested at the beginning that I become a part of an outsourcing company like another company that is outsourcing consulting businesses. But I Never did that. What do you think about those companies?
Well, good for you. That, that's, that's crap. That's garbage because this is a relationship business. And so why would you deal through a third party? It's like there are speakers bureaus that connect you with a company who need a speaker. And the Speakers Bureau think that the company's their client. I'm the talent, not them. All they're doing is introducing us, uh, and for 25 or 30 percent. So as soon as I didn't need them, I got away from them.
Never put a third party between you and a buyer.
Thank you. It's, uh, it's helped my thinking also. Um, What's one business book you've written so many businesses and I keep on like adding your books to my book suggestions and so on. Last year I had like 1 million consulting, uh, is, uh, I, I keep saying it's 1 million consulting because that's the, that's the, my revenue targets for, uh, the, you know, short feature. Uh, but what's one business book that you would recommend other than the books that you have?
You know, I'm just thinking, I think that One of my books is in Turkish. I can't remember which one because the publishers keep track. I'll take a look. Anyway, I don't want to digress, but it just occurred to me. Uh, look, you asked me for one good book that's not mine, right? Um, I don't think I can answer that with one book, but I'll tell you this. If you're a marketing consultant, uh, I would read Andrea Gabor, The Capitalist Philosophers, which is a history of consulting, really.
I would read Peter Drucker. I would read something like Managing in Turbulent Times, which is as effective today as ever. And I would read a book by Jonah Berger or Dan Pink, whom I've mentioned, on really how you influence others. Those come to mind easily. Those are probably my best suggestions. Uh,
in Rhode Island, is there a favorite coffee place that you go?
Well, this will disappoint you because I go where my dogs want to go and my dogs want to go to Dunkin Donuts because they get treats when I drive through. Uh, and so, but I happen to like Dunkin Donuts coffee and I don't have to get out of the car and the dogs are happy. Uh, and I think, excuse me, but you know, ordering a double shot of latte soy with some kind of a cow dander on it is an affectation. So Dunkin Donuts is good for me.
That's good to hear. How many dogs do you have? Two dogs?
I have two dogs. I have a Cavapoo, which is a King Charles Spaniel poodle or something. And then I have a white German shepherd.
Thanks so much for joining me. And it was really useful. And Million Dollar Consulting is. I mean, as you see, like we have a very small apartment in New York city. And the thing, when I moved to here, the thing that I have to get, uh, you know, just say goodbye to is, was my bookshelves. And I left them in Turkey, in our summer house, all the books are there. And I only keep the books like top five books that I want to keep. And a million dollar consulting is one of them, which I continue.
Going back to a lot, uh, thank you so much for being such an inspiration and, uh, such a mentor that maybe you don't know, but you are already a mentor for me for many years. Thank you so much for that.
That's very generous of you. And let me just say, if you go to alanweiss. com, there are free resources, you know, books and video and audio alanweiss. com help yourself. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.