Alan Weiss: "Stop Selling Hours. AI Will Kill That Model."

So, if somebody asks, "What's your hourly rate?" I don't have one. What's your next question? If you work by the hour, you're a commodity. Artificial intelligence is being underutilized. They're using it as a damn encyclopedia. What they should be doing is using it to map out strategies for themselves. Alan Weiss is one of the most influential voices in the world of consulting. He's the author of dozens of books on consulting strategy and professional growth, especially for solo consultants and boutique firm owners who want to create real value for their clients. You want to get paid by the value you provide.

So, conceptual agreement is three things. It's agreement on the objectives to be obtained. The second thing are metrics. How do we know we're making progress? And then finally, there's value. Value is the worth of meeting those objectives. In this conversation, we get into what consulting actually is, how AI is affecting the industry, and how judgment, taste, and relationships still are the beating heart of this type >> [music] >> of work. We also take an interesting bird's-walk into how education has a lot to learn [music] from the private sector about thinking about value, accountability, >> [music] >> and results.

>> People get what they pay for. Here is Alan Weiss. >> [music] >> The Next Level Show. Alan, welcome to the show. It is a real pleasure to have you on here today as I am a big fan of your books, and it's it's just a real treat to get to actually speak to you in person here. Let's start with a big question. What is consulting? Ah. Well, in a nutshell, [clears throat] consulting is the ability to improve the client's condition. Uh and consulting has subsets, like coaching. Coaching is a part of consulting. Uh all consultants have to coach. Not all coaches have to consult. Facilitation is a subset.

You know, training and teaching are subsets and so forth. Uh but consulting, you know, is um ironically, is a great many of us mammals are solo practitioners and boutique firm owners running under the legs of the dinosaurs, which used to be the big eight and are now about the big two and a half or something. Uh because people want fast help. Uh they want help that doesn't complicate things. So, I've been doing this for 30-plus years and I'm a reductionist. I try to make things clear, simple, and easy. How do you define who is a consultant? Because it's a question that I found I found an interesting one.

It was maybe seven years ago. I'd been doing project work, is what I referred to it, uh with various schools and school districts. And somebody else said to me, they said, "Oh, so you're consulting to them." And I said, "I don't know. I've never thought of myself as a consultant." And he said, "Well, that that's that's what you're doing." He actually gave me a copy of one of your books. And as I started reading it, I said, "Oh, yeah, that is what I'm doing." And I started referring to myself that way. And then suddenly more people were interested in those services. And so, I was curious as how do you define who is a consultant?

Who's got that value to offer? I'll tell you a very quick story. I have the strongest solo consulting brand in the world. Yeah. Uh and and you know, I've I've written more books on consulting than anyone in history. So, one day in New York in a rainy day, I jump into a cab. A woman jumps in the other side. We start fighting about who has the cab. So, finally, we settle I'll pay for the bill, we'll drop her off. And I turned to her and said, "So, what do you do?" And she said, "Well, I'm I'm a vice president of PR for this firm in Florida." She said, "What do you do?" I said, "I'm a consultant." She says, "So, in other words, you're out of work." She says.

>> [laughter] >> So, here's the answer to your question. There's a specific answer and a and an existential answer. The specific answer is this. The good news and bad news about consulting is there's no block to entry. It's ease of entry. You hang out a shingle, you're a consultant. There's no bar exam, no medical boards, none of that. So, that's good news. It's also bad news cuz there's a lot of schlock in consulting, right? But, the existential answer to your question is that whether or not you're a consultant is determined by the client. It's determined by the prospect. In other words, uh people People call me a thought leader in the field.

And so, somebody says, "Well, why don't you call yourself a genius?" And I said, "Cuz because genius is bestowed by others." And in consulting, if people recognize your brand, and a brand is how people think about you when you're not around, if people recognize your brand, and instead of saying, "Well, you know, get me a strategist." Your name is in the hat. They said, "Get me Alan Weiss." You're a consultant. Yeah. Let's talk about conceptual agreement and what it means to add value cuz you really your approach really focuses on let's agree, let's get to that conceptual agreement and where the value is added before we talk about anything else.

But, I I think it's a tough concept for a lot of people to wrap their head around. So, I Yeah. >> Sure. Uh in the mid-90s, I I pioneered value-based pricing for consultants. And uh that my book about value-based fees is in its third edition. You have to get and that's because if you work by the hour, you're a commodity. You know, lawyers bill by 6-minute increments. You know, you're not going to get wealthy that way, but it's also antithetical to your relationship with a client because the longer you take, the more you get paid. A client wants a rapid resolution, not a slow one, right? So, >> Yeah.

you want to get paid by the value you provide. So conceptual agreement is three things. It's agreement on the objectives to be obtained. Those could be personal or professional. But they're not deliverables. Well, our objective is to run a training program. No, our objective is to improve sales. So objectives are always an outcome for the client which usually can be monetized. Yeah. >> thing are metrics. How do we know we're making progress? And most training firms in this country, and last time I looked the training business was a 60 billion-dollar annual business, most training firms in this country don't like metrics because they're not selling results.

They're selling courses and materials and and time on the web. So a metric says to the client we're making progress and here's the finish point. And then finally there's value. Value is the worth of meeting those objectives. So when I say they're monetized, how do I know the return on the investment? So my career, which basically was begun with Fortune 500 companies, showed a 10:1 return. So if if they were a million-dollar outcome, I'd get 100,000. But who can Who's getting a 10:1 return? Who's going to argue with that? Uh there are some non-monetized value. For example, I spend more time with my family.

I'm not working 50 hours a week and so on. I feel safer. But you have to monetize most of it. Uh and that's what conceptual agreement is. So therefore a a proposal is not a negotiation and it's not an exploration. It's a summation of conceptual agreement. So the client gets the proposal, it's everything you've already agreed to. So my hit rate is about 85%. Yeah. Yeah. >> [snorts] >> Okay, some some questions from in the trenches. Let's say you're in a situation, which I may or may not be, at this very moment, where you thought you were talking to the primary buyer. You achieve conceptual agreement.

You are on the same page ready to go, but then it turns out, "Hey, I actually need buy-in from this other person in order to get this funded." Then took the proposal to that person, but we haven't he and I have the the second party and I haven't connected yet. And now we're about to, but it's coming it's a completely upside down situation cuz he just saw the proposal before there was any sort of agreement. Doesn't really understand what it is we're talking about and and now we got to figure that part out. Um >> [snorts] >> I'm confident we can, but I'm sure that's a very common situation that you've seen a hundred times before.

>> Maybe maybe not. I mean, I coach people all over the world on a daily basis and this comes up a lot. You have to make sure you're talking to the economic buyer. So, the preventive action is to say, "Does this come out of your budget?" The preventive action is to say, "Okay, if we shook hands right now, could we go forward?" Now, a handshake, an oral agreement is legal. And so, people who are lying or think they're better than they are about having a budget will quickly pull their hand back. Uh-huh. So, the mistake people make is missing the preventive action. So, when people say, "Well, my boss has to pass on this, but he'll rubber stamp it." You say, "Ethically," and then you pause for the comma, "ethically, as I'm sure you know, I have to talk to the person who controls the budget, who has the fiduciary position, because otherwise this is an unethical procedure.

And in fact, if something goes wrong, who's going to get in trouble, you or me? It's going to be you. So, I have to hear from the buyer's lips what the buyer expects." All that's preventive. The contingent side, given your situation, which you may or may not be in, uh is you say to your current contact, "Okay, look, I don't want you to take this forward with the buyer. I want you to introduce me. >> [music] >> Yeah. >> And the reason is you're going to be asked questions you can't answer. And you're going to look foolish. And so we've already made a big mistake here. So I want you to introduce me to the buyer.

You think this is a good idea? I'll take the blowback if it isn't. But I have to get net office. And that's how you handle that. Yeah. Well, okay, that's that's great cuz that is what's happening next and and hopefully hopefully it all works out well. Um let's talk about what about when someone asks you for a discount on your services? You've shown them the value. You've shown them, "Hey, this will get a three to one, five to one, 10 to one return." Whatever the numbers might be, but they ask for a discount because they think that's how business is done. For the sake of our discussion, what business is this person in asking for the discount?

They are in education. So they represent a large school district and yeah. So a nonprofit situation. And that's nonprofit. So if somebody came to you and said uh look uh you have certain requirements here uh for payment for extracurricular events uh for some tuition modification for some field trips. If somebody came to you and said, "I want a discount on them." Would you simply grant it? Probably not. And if you wouldn't do it, why would I? And if you would do it, you need me more than you think. So So [snorts] uh people get what they pay for. And um you you have to be careful cuz if you if you give people an inch, they'll take a mile.

They'll want something more next time and next time and next time. Uh And a guy came to me and said, "Alan, look, um I'm going to go ahead with your coaching, but would you send me 10 of your books?" I said, "Why would I do that?" He said, "You know, I have a record. I have a streak. And for the past 3 years, every time I made a purchase, big or little or anything, I always get a discount or a gift or something. I said, "Your streak has just been broken." >> [laughter] >> Yeah. Now, why? Why it would it wouldn't be a big deal for you to give him 10 bucks. So, why is that an important It sets a terrible example.

So, later on he'll say, "Alan, you got a workshop coming up. How about you let me in half price? How about I take my spouse and and my spouse gets in for free?" I mean, you can never give these people enough. And the fact is, I'm proud of what I do. I have great value. And I am not going to demean it by doing some kind of like a used car shuffle here. >> [snorts] >> Yeah. >> So, I just And I make it clear. I don't give refunds, either. Uh If unless it if if I don't show up or I'm sick or something, yeah, refund. But I guarantee the quality of my work, and you cannot back out. You pay and that's our agreement.

Yeah, I and I agree with you 100% like I feel like it's we refer to it as pricing integrity, which is that it's honestly not fair to someone who's going to come in and say, "What's the value you can provide? What does it cost to provide that value?" And then they accept that at face value. And then you're giving discounts just cuz people will badger you for a discount. Well, you're actually hurting the person who's being more straightforward and is a better client to work with, which is that first person that says, "Oh, I see what you're worth. I see what the return is." That's right. That's right.

And uh the fact is that once you give a discount of any kind, you set a precedent that will come back to haunt you. But you do mention a slight discount in situations where the full payment will come up front. >> Yep. If I have my money, 10% off. And the interesting thing here thing here is, Nick, that in many nonprofits and in some governmental agencies and even in some private companies, Uh procurement demands that if you are extended a discount, you must accept it. There's no no choice. So, if you know, for a $100,000 project, let's say, I will gladly accept 90,000 and have that money for the duration of the project, rather than collecting it in installments.

And know that you're locked in for the duration to get the result that you have promised to deliver. I mean I have all the leverage. That's right. That's That's the reason, by the way, you should never be paid on completion of anything, cuz you've lost all your leverage. Right. And completion can sometimes be a subjective word, and then it's, "Oh, well, what if we added this to it and expand the scope a little bit, and then it would be complete." >> A synonym for completion is called infinity. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um let's turn to Peter Drucker, cuz I know he's had a big influence on you.

He had a huge influence on me. I was educated at the Claremont Colleges, and I was a young undergrad at uh Pitzer College, one of the um undergraduate institutions, and he was teaching at the uh Peter Drucker School of Management, hosted by the Graduate University, and I was working as a chauffeur for the Graduate University, and I was uh driving a very esteemed, super successful trustee to and from the airport multiple times. And when he heard about my interest in business, he said, "You know, one of the greatest minds in the world on management and business is right here in at is a a block away from you at any given time, and he's lecturing on a weekly basis.

Have you gone to see him yet? And if you haven't, uh you're you're completely blown it." So, I started going every week to watch him. Um had the pleasure It eventually worked out to chauffeur him a few times when he needed some transportation and got to you know, just a just a glimpse of one-on-one time with him. Um but I wanted to delve into that with you just because he's had a enormous impact on on my life and trajectory. Uh I'll tell you two things about him. I saw him speak live in Las Vegas once. Uh Marshall Goldsmith and I are colleagues. He's spoken at some of my events. And we co-authored a book uh called Life Storming.

And he's been he was very close to Peter Drucker. I asked him how that happened. And Marshall told [clears throat] me, "I literally carried his bag. I carried his briefcase around. Yeah. >> And I'd be introduced to people. He'd say, you know, "This is the CEO Ford and this is this one. I'd like you to meet this person." And so he says it's a good way to meet people and and I learned so much. Long time ago, my very first book of 54 books was in 19 85. It was called The Innovation Formula. Still on the shelves. I wrote it with a partner. And it was This innovation book was out at about the same time that Drucker had written a book called Innovation.

And certain things you can't avoid. There are certain terms that are just common. So we said, "Look, let's call Drucker and make sure he's not upset. He gives us permission." So my friend [clears throat] calls him at Claremont and he picks up his own phone. Yeah. And so he says to him, "Look, um Professor Drucker, uh we're going to use some terms in our book that you have in your book." And we And Drucker says, "I don't care what the hell you do." And he hangs up. >> [laughter] >> So my colleague looked at me and I said, "I would take that as permission." Absolutely. And yeah, that that is Peter Drucker right there.

I mean, he was not interested in having everyone like him. But man, was he good at getting people to respect him. I'll tell you something, Nick. Um I wrote a book a year or two ago called Set to Win Strategy. Mhm. >> And Drucker invented strategy with Sloan at General Motors in the '50s. And I always admired it and his approaches, but I realized that 70 years after the fact, it no longer applied. Uh and people taking 4 months to set a strategy 10 years in the future in this day and age is utterly absurd. And so I created Sentient Strategy, which says, "Look, you can set strategy in a day, but just look 1 year out.

You need to be light on your feet." And I felt a little bad about it because I idolized Drucker, but it was time. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, and the time scales we operate on are much shorter now in the world of business than they were and I mean, how many years ago was that with Well, the '50s. He he invented strategy with Sloan. So, you know, figure that out, you know. >> That's that's a long time ago. It probably Yeah. Um Let's So, if somebody asks, "What's your hourly rate?" How do you respond to that? I don't have one. Mhm. What's your next question? >> [laughter] >> And then they are kind of forced to say, "Okay, well, here's the problem I'm hoping you would work on." No, no.

What they'll say is, "Well, what's your fee basis?" Okay. And I say, "I provide dramatic return on investment for you with equitable compensation for me." And they say, "Well, how do you figure that?" And I say, "Let's talk about what your needs are and I'll give you a proposal with your options that will show you at least 10 to 1 return. Where else can you get that?" Yeah. So, we're talking up here. I'm not down in the weeds here talking about, you know, six bucks an hour. So, but you have you know, I've got a book coming at the end of this year. I've got five books coming out this year. I've got a book coming at the end of the year called The Courage of Your Talent and it talks about the fact that esteem is a matter of identity and it's a matter of self-respect.

So, you've got to be comfortable with this kind of language. You can't shudder. You can't be intimidated by someone with a big office and a lot of employees. And if you have that kind of confidence, you become a peer and you can discuss things on a peer level. Yeah, and I find that confidence just comes with experience and knowing you can do what you're promising to do. I mean, I personally I'm not a fan of the fake it till you make it ideology. I believe if you if you can if you can deliver, there is no need to ever fake it. And that yeah, confidence comes from a real place. Well, confidence is a part of self-esteem and it confidence is the feeling that you can help someone meet their expectations or exceed them even though you've never done it before.

Then that comes from within. You know, all motivation's intrinsic. All motivation comes from within. And so, since I'm writing this book on self-esteem, it's important to sustain high self-esteem to fuel that kind of attitude. Yeah. Yeah. How do you [clears throat] manage to write so many books? I just read your seven-figure consulting and which is coming out very soon. When this when this when this airs, it'll probably be right when the book is coming out and highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this conversation. This book really it gives you the big picture and it gets into the details with nitty-gritty actionable tips.

I mean, it it's just phenomenal. But how do you Yeah, how do you you I mean, you really are just incredible turning out a lot of a lot of books. Well, I'll tell you something. I was listening to one of your past interviews, which I do with you know, with all interviews to see what the style is like and so you interviewed a guy who I don't know >> [clears throat] >> but he's a speaker and he's a writer. I think his name was John something. I'm laughing because when I was fired in 1985 I looked around there were 250,000 independent consultants in the United States. There were big firms and everything.

And I don't believe you correct weaknesses. I believe you build on strengths. Yeah. >> well what the hell can I do well? I like I hate networking. I can't stand small talk. You know there really are ugly babies. You know what I'm saying? >> [laughter] >> Yeah. I said what can I do? I can write and I can speak. And so 40 years later what am I doing? I'm writing and speaking. So for me it's there's I'm passionate so there's no pain. And you know my wife would say to me on an airplane sometimes we fly into a city where I'm going to make a speech and she'd say what are you talking about? I said I don't know.

And she used to tell people that you'll get a better speech if you're on a high floor cuz Alan usually creates it on the elevator. If you're on a low floor you're not going to get as much quality. She would tell them. >> [laughter] >> You've got to be passionate about things and those two things are what I'm passionate about. >> Okay what would you say to somebody who is just starting out. Let's say they're 30 years old. They have some some experience and some expertise to share but they want to make the shift from working they've worked for a huge employer for a long time to could pick your industry and they they want to jump out on their own.

What would you how do you advise them? The first thing I tell people is you have to understand this is the marketing business. I don't care what kind of consultant you are or what kind of coach you are. You and I are both in the marketing business. So if you're not prepared to market and understand what rejection is and understand that there are only six marketing devices and you better be good at a couple of them. Then do something else. All right? The second thing is you have to have financial security and relationship security which are obviously intertwined. That means you should have at least six months of your basic expenses in the bank.

I prefer 12. And if you have a spouse, a partner, you know, whatever we call people these days, that person has to be on board. Cuz one will ruin the other, right? So, if you understand it's marketing and you don't mind selling yourself, and you have the financial and relationship support, your odds are that you'll probably make it. This episode of The Next Daily Show is brought to you by Zapier. If you've ever felt buried in repetitive work, copying data, moving files, sending follow-ups, you know it's like death by a thousand mouse clicks. Zapier has always been the tool that fixes that. It connects over 8,000 apps, Google Drive, Slack, Notion, [music] Gmail, MySpace, you name it, so your tools can finally play nice [music] together.

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So, first of all, understand I'm a generalist. I'm not a specialist. And so, I can work for any company. I've worked for Bank of America. I worked for Mercedes-Benz. I've worked for American Eli Lilly. I've worked for, you know, anybody. Doesn't matter. I stay out of finance and I stay out of technology cuz I don't like them. Um now, uh when I was fired, my wife said to me, "What are you going to do?" I said, "Well, we have to get an office." And she said, "Why are you going to do that?" I said, "Why? I need my own office now." She said, "Listen, people aren't going to come to you. You're going to go to them." She said, "I'll tell you what.

If you find you need an office, let's get one. But otherwise, okay. So, I never got the office. And my kids went to private schools from kindergarten through undergraduate school. And that total tuition for the two kids was $450,000. And over that time frame with uh insurance and rent or mortgage and assistant and utility, I would have spent $450,000. So, that's one damn good reason, all right? >> The The second thing is um a lot of my clients run boutique firms, and one of them told me she had about 12 or 15 people, and she told me that whenever she came back from a trip she saw the little chicks peep peep peep peep peep, and she had to feed them.

>> [laughter] >> And when they were all fed, she had to flap her wings and go on another trip. Right. >> was a rainmaker. Yeah. >> you don't want to be an employment agency. You don't want to be a place where you have people who cannot bring in their own business. And people who can bring in their own business don't need to work for you. They can be out on their own. So, it's a bad bad idea. You need to subcontract. You need to use other firms. I have a great technology firm. I have a bookkeeper. I have a tax attorney. Uh I have people do graphic arts. I have all this stuff, but the only people on the payroll are my wife and me and cuz we need that for the IRS.

Right. >> uh and if you get lonely, right? Cuz solo consulting can be lonely. If you get lonely, um you know, I suggest you get a dog. I have two dogs. Yeah. Uh unconditional love. And my office here, you can see in the back a little bit, is full of things that make me happy. Uh pictures of places I've been, people I know, awards I've been given, and so forth. Nice artwork. So, uh you'll make a hell of a lot more money as an independent. And you don't need the problem of managing people, of their having health issues, of their having relationship issues, of their demanding more for themselves, of them wanting time off.

I can go on and on and on. And but by the way, whatever perks you give yourself with say before-tax money, which is a big advantage of incorporating yourself, you have to extend to all employees. Mhm. Yeah, and I can say from experience because we have a retail-facing operation with a lot of employees, but that's direct-to-consumer and a a different type of service, um and it is a completely different beast than me doing consulting work individually on my own. And I got to say, it's really fun and pleasurable to have it just be me that'll go in. And I do have a couple of subcontractors, like you mentioned, for certain specific types of tasks.

Um but yeah, no no employees on the consulting side, many employees on the other side. Um >> [snorts] >> and so I've I've have a lot of experience with with both, and um yeah, you are you are correct in everything that you said there. And I One of my favorite stories from the book was the uh the the rainmaker mama bird regurgitating food back to her her chicks back at the office. Uh that was >> She sold her business. Oh, she did? For a nice bit of change. Yeah, several of my clients sold their businesses, and I help, you know, guide some of them through it. Uh and but to go to get there to a successful sale, um was a long torturous business.

So, if you want employees, you need to be looking at a business that you can sell that's not reliant on your name. In my case, the brand is me. Yeah. >> looking to pass it on even to my kids. I mean, I'm just having a great time in life. What happens later happens. Yeah. Yeah. Now, how will and is artificial intelligence affecting consulting? Well, in a wide variety of ways, and let me tell you first of all something contrarian, and that is artificial intelligence is being underutilized. Mhm. >> Because uh you know, before technology, if I was sitting at a you know, at early computer writing one of my books and I didn't know a date or a place, I would lean back and I'd pull out the Encyclopedia Britannica and then open it up, you know.

Yeah. And every two years they they gave an up to a single book to update the entire set because things change, right? So people right now, instead of reaching behind them, they want the date of the French Revolution and they want to know the total profitability of trucking in America and they hit a chat box or something, you know, Google and they come up with it. They're using it as a damn encyclopedia. What they should be doing is using it to map out strategies for themselves. And so, you know, for example, I have AI Alan Intelligence, which is trademarked, on my site. And you can pay money and join it and you'll hear my voice and you'll get resources and so forth and so on which will tell you how I would suggest you do things.

So you need to say to whatever artificial platform you're using, you need to say map me out a strategy to put this information I got from a client into a proposal that would that Alan Weiss would close. Mhm. >> That's what you have to do. About 42% of my stuff, they estimated, is in the public realm on the internet. It's still copyrighted and trademarked, but you can find it on the internet cuz I've written so much and spoken so much. But the other 58% is they can't do that cuz it's inside books and things, but you can get that on my artificial intelligence. But the key is, I mean, you you need to say um not what club should I use uh for a 250-yard shot to a rolling green.

What you should say is, I'm playing the Manchester Golf Course. Find its history look at my past performance and map out a strategy for me to handle the course. That's how to use AI. Yeah. >> There's just it's it's it's no it's a no-brainer that AI is going to replace every air traffic controller and every actuary and every accountant, right? It's going to come. Sure. >> But, I'll say one more thing, Nick, and that's it. Yeah. Yeah. We're streaming the Oscar movies cuz we have a habit of watching all the Oscar nominated movies. And you know, uh Prime or Apple or somebody will blow my my uh password.

It will have to reenter it laboriously. Or one of my cars has a tire pressure thing, but the tires are fine and the dealer says, "No, no, it's the sensor. Don't worry about it." So, the the AI is wrong, not actual fact. Right. >> and you know, you get automated responses either on the phone or on the internet trying to help you without talking to a human, and usually it's not helpful. So, Mhm. uh AI is not going to take over the world. You know why? Cuz AI is created by humans. Yeah, I think both of your points are very well taken there. One, most people use at best AI as an assistant, as a for menial tasks, and it and it works like an encyclopedia.

When it can be used as a thought partner if leveraged properly. And I had a great conversation with Jeff Woods, who has a book on that topic and a framework for changing your thinking to use AI as a thought partner. Super helpful um on that front. And I mean, is it Well, I'm just to go a little bit deeper that. One example, Claude, the Anthropic's LLM, can now embed directly into Excel. And one of the things that I am good at for organizations is doing data analytics, and I cannot believe how fast, when it is embedded into Excel with me, it speeds up the process and we get to those critical insights so much faster.

I mean, it's taking away the a lot of this drudgery work that was required, and yet I'm still very necessary to get to your second point in the process to draw out the right stories and the right insights from that data. So, it really does function as a thought partner, but the humans are absolutely still necessary in the loop. Well, you're applying your judgment. High-tech, high-touch. You're applying your your judgment. Uh I find that when I write a book and I if I have I mean, the publisher wants a book in 6 months, I promise it in four. I usually write it in two. How? >> Um very fast. I write it from my head to the screen.

Uh I can touch type. But, what used to stop me in the past was I'd say, I need a visual of this here, and it's not a visual I would have in my own library. I had to create it. So, I say to I say to the platform, listen, uh I want a bandwagon rolling downhill with a group of people in it uh falling off the sides cuz they're so, you know, energetic for this cause. And it produces it. And then I'll say, uh make the bandwagon a little more rustic and um uh put the people uh who are in the bandwagon in a uh include more diversity amongst them. And it does that. Th- This whole process takes 90 seconds or 2 minutes.

Uh And the benefits to me is I don't have to go back and find an illustration. I don't have to laboriously make one in Acrobat. I've got it, and I can look at it. I know exactly what I'm talking about. So, those are the kinds of sophisticated uses I find that can make your life so much easier. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um how do you think it will continue to affect what consultants do? Well, here's the problem that yeah, I have a I have a newsletter called the No Normal Newsletter cuz I I trademarked No Normal. There's not going to be a return to normal or a new normal. There's no normal anymore.

Normal means average. Who wants to be average? So, here's the problem with AI within that context. Uh you know, we have elections coming up, midterm elections, for example. I I think the danger is that AI and the you people who want to um subvert it, uh can create images and deep fakes and false stories to the extent that we're concerned about polarization today. I think we're going to be concerned about reality. Yeah. >> That we will not know what's real. And unless somebody comes up with something equal to the old Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval where they say, "Yes, this is validated as real." Uh it's going to be chaotic.

Yeah. The same for companies, right? Uh I mean, just look at what the internet did with Cracker Barrel with changing their logo and everything, you know? Uh my god, you know, it's a middle-of-the-road restaurant. It's not great food. It's serviceable food. >> [snorts] >> Do people actually decide where to eat based on the logo? I don't think so. You know, Coca-Cola's logo is lousy. It sells very well. Right. >> So, I think the danger here is we're going to see this the these social medias' opinion posing as fact exponentially changed so people don't even know what facts are anymore. That's the danger of it.

The benefit of it is it's going to be able to speed education. Our educational system's a couple hundred years old. We're cheating our kids. We warehouse them chronologically. Right. >> Makes no sense anymore, right? So, I mean, that's this is your sphere. You know what I'm talking about. And so, I think that um there's this tremendous benefit if it's controlled correctly if it's used correctly. But uh like any any new modern usage, there's this downside that we have to be careful about. >> Yeah. Um If you could tweak education, I know we're getting into a a new a new area here, but if you could tweak education to make it a to do better for our kids, what comes to mind?

Well, yeah, my wife was a teacher for a few years. She taught home economics. Okay. >> My sister was a teacher for her entire life and retired, and my niece is currently a sister. So, let me say that as disclaimers, all right? >> Yeah. Uh the basic problem with education today is it's politicized. Uh the unions contribute a great deal of money to politicians, so politicians try to make the unions happy. Uh we have basically an educational system where we can't pay teachers enough because we can't evaluate them fairly. Uh we have an educational system where in New York City, for example, you can't fire a teacher.

I mean, they can be up for a file, and they're in a rubber room, what's called the rubber room, because the the process for disciplining them takes so long. Yeah. >> And so, we're losing sight of the customers. I tell my clients all the time, "Who are your customers? Who are your ideal clients? Your ideal buyers?" In education, it's the child and the parent. Yeah. A long time ago, Albert Shanker was was asked why he doesn't promote more initiatives for New York City's public schools, and he said, "Because the kids and the parents don't vote for me. The union members do." So, we're losing sight of the customer.

The educational um primary and secondary schools in this country, with some exception, are not good. Uh we're falling behind other countries. Uh you know, when when I was a younger boy, you didn't argue with the teacher. Your parents always backed the teacher. Today, teachers are afraid, and I I can't blame them for doing certain things uh because uh they're not sure anybody will take their side. Yeah. >> So, we got to get the politics out of the schools, uh and we have to provide for a better evaluation of who's really excellent and who's not. And then, we have to make sure that schools are not paid for by local taxes.

You know, I live in an affluent community, so we have good public schools. The tax rate is fairly high, but people come here, and since they buy homes, the tax rates gather more money, and the schools get better. You can't do that in poor communities. What you have to do is pool all that money. You have to have equal opportunity in education. It's the one place where most severely we are failing kids. Yeah. Well, that's well stated cuz I do have quite a bit of experience with a number of things you're talking about there and have had some very frank conversations about exactly I mean you hit the nail on the head when you said well, ultimately who are we trying to serve with the mission here?

Is it the students or is it the teachers union? And >> [snorts] >> I 100% support teachers and especially great teachers and just like you have many family members that are teachers and they are excellent educators, but I would say an important change that I would like to see are those excellent educators can be rewarded more for being excellent and in order to free up funds to do that, some of our underperforming teachers, especially here [snorts] in California where we have some uh arguably the most powerful teachers union anywhere. Um [snorts] incredible barriers like you alluded to to getting to removing underperforming teachers who are not serving the interest of kids.

Right. I'm on the other coast. I'm in Rhode Island here. Yeah. And we [clears throat] have a million people in the state. We have one of the highest cost per pupil in the country and we have one of the lowest performing uh test scores per per pupil in the country. That makes no sense. If this were a company, we'd be bankrupt. Right. >> Makes no sense. So, we're spending a fortune because we have jurisdiction upon jurisdiction, uh administrators up the kazoo, and not enough people who are excellent actually teaching the kids. And and this they're afraid to change the system because the politicians want the votes.

Yep. And that is one I I don't know how to fix [snorts] that. Any Any ideas on what would move the needle? Cuz I This is a concern anybody that I talked about this shares these similar concerns and sees it as a problem, but no one really knows how to make a dent in any of it. Well, I disagree with you slightly. I think people know how to make a dent. I think that they're afraid to. Uh I think a politician is afraid he or she won't be elected. I think somebody already in office is afraid that they'll won't get any of their other plans through. Uh and and you know, money talks, unfortunately. Uh I also think that um you know, I I I have a lot of friends in academia.

They've spoken at my programs and so forth. And apparently the statistics are that teachers uh have the lowest grade point average by profession in schools. And they tend not to go to the best schools because they can't afford to, people who aspire to be teachers. Mhm. Uh And I just want to repeat as you've repeated, you know, there are some superb teachers. I can name every grammar school teacher I had to this day Yeah. because in inner-city public schools the teachers were magnificent. They taught me to read and write. Uh and I can I I I dedicate one of my books to them, right? So, uh that's how we have to move the needle with somebody bold enough either in a political party or a third party to say we have to stop cheating our kids.

Uh and it's really a matter of of gaining um of spreading the money around to gain some equality so that we don't need you know, there's a big There's a big issue about charter schools and so forth and so on. When the issue really should be how do we best educate our kids? The two best high schools in Rhode Island, uh which everybody by consensus says are the two best high schools, are not among the top 100 nationally. Now, go back to what I talked about with proposals, metrics. If your metrics are wrong, then your conclusions are wrong. And just cuz these are the best two among a mediocre group, doesn't mean they're that good.

And so if they're not in the top 100 nationally, then you better you better do something to aspire to that mountain top over there. Look, pause. This is important. There are only three things you can train in life. Your craft, your body, and your mind. Most people work on the first two and just hope the third one shows up when it matters. That's why I'm recommending Finding Your Best by Michael Gervais. I've done the course myself. It's excellent. It's not motivational, not fluffy. It's structured to train the skills that actually drive performance, confidence, recovery, trust, grit, clarity under pressure.

If you ever feel capable on paper, but inconsistent in real life, this is about closing that gap. I don't put my name behind a whole lot of things. This one earns it. You can find the link below. No urgency, just a genuinely solid tool if you're serious about getting better. You mentioned metrics just now and I we haven't really touched on that, but I think it is a really important piece of the puzzle when it comes to consulting because so often the initial conversation is over a pain point and the but it might not be asking the right questions. It might not be measuring things in the right way and so often that initial conversation, the most important thing you can do is get upstream to what is the root cause, what are the right questions we need to be asking and what are the right ways we need to be measuring success.

And I wanted you to just elaborate on that because my experience that is possibly the most critical part of that initial conversation. Well, I'll give you two responses and it's really all about diversity in this regard. I took shop when I was in grammar school and I made dumb things, you know, I made ceramic things and things like that. But you had to take shop and the women had to take home ec. Today and then they did away with shop and home ec because everybody should go to college which is a Which was a It was a mistake. Yeah. >> Well, it would be easier for me to replace my personal physician than my landscaper.

I'm worried about when he retires. That's true. Right. Right. We don't have trades people anymore. We don't have artisans. So, there are high schools now and this has been written up in the Times and the Wall Street Journal who had brought back shop for men and for women. And they're teaching them things like welding. Yeah. >> they get out of high school, they're getting $70,000 apprentice jobs as welders more than anyone in their family has made. And and that's just at 18 or 19 years old. And so they're going to maybe form their own welding company someday. So, one of the things that that we have to do is we have to provide a route that does not automatically send people to college.

You know, I spent four years in undergraduate school with a lot of people who are no better off when they got out of there except they had a diploma. Harvard It's to avoid grade inflation. Harvard has just introduced the A+. I mean, how stupid can you get? [laughter] How stupid does it get? You can't make this up, right? >> Right. Right. You have this kind of different orientation you have to take. The second of which I think I would I talked about warehousing before. We have to deal with kids as a whole and we not just chronologically, right? My wife is on the board of a charter school here for a long time for economically disadvantaged kids.

And what they found early on was that they had a huge rate of placing these kids in colleges. However, there was an unacceptable dropout rate within a year, and what we found was they were educating the kids in the disciplines, but they weren't socializing the kids. And so, they'd wind up in these schools with kids you know, some of whom had a lot of money, some of whom had a lot of experiences, some of whom did different specification. You've got to prepare a kid in a lot of different ways. Yeah. >> Not just reading a certain book. So, I think we have to take a holistic view of our kids, our greatest resources, our greatest assets.

And we have to say, you know, the metric here is how are we creating young people who can contribute and who are um equipped to contribute and passionate about contributing. That's what we have to be asking. Yeah. It well, and for Harvard, um I am uh currently enrolled in uh their some of their AI data analytics courses, and they're phenomenal, but Harvard, if you're listening, the A+ thing, you you got that one wrong. Uh I mean, it's just silliness. >> [snorts] >> Um but on the flip side, I am also happy to see that they're they really are taking this seriously, this shift in education, and trying to be a leader in the space, and saying, "We're not going to deem AI as cheating.

We want to teach the skills of the future. So, we're going to lean into it and have >> [snorts] >> and get world-class people who are on the leading edge of something that is continually evolving and changing, and should require continuing education to keep up with it." >> [snorts] >> I don't know where I'm headed with all of that, except to say that the um it sounded better in my head uh when it was when it was rumbling around in there. Jerry, [snorts] but listen, I do have something to say. Well, you you provoked something for me, so you must have said something really good. Save me, Alan. Yeah, I'll save you, Alan.

>> [gasps] [laughter] >> In 1984, John Nesbitt writes Megatrends. And he talks about high-tech high-touch. 1984, and he was prescient. He's one of the few futures prognosticators who had it right. And so, today high-tech high-touch is more important than ever because [clears throat] use AI to the extent you can to make better decisions and to improve things. However, do not abandon judgment. Yeah. And so, I think that they'll put AI in air traffic control centers. And instead of 40 people on three shifts, there'll be three supervisors watching the stuff. However, you also you need a person there because you can't replace And this just happened a day or two ago.

Some an air traffic controller screaming in the mic to a plane that's going 115 mph on the runway, "Abort takeoff! Abort takeoff! Abort takeoff!" cuz the plane was coming right at it on the runway. You can't replace that, you know? There's an old There's an old story about a guy who lives across the street from a factory. And every day in the morning, a dog and a man go into the factory, and at 5:00 they leave. So, he asked a friend of his who's familiar with the factory, "What's going on with the man and the dog?" He says, "Well, the dog is there to make sure the man doesn't touch anything." And he says, "Well, what's the man there for?" He says, "To feed the dog." >> [laughter] [snorts] >> Okay, relationships and trust.

You talk about that a lot in all of your work as being at the heart of consulting. And one thing I keep coming back to is I don't see AI replacing that at any point in the future. Just like it we can't remove human judgment from the loop. I'm very positive on AI because I think it can speed up our workflows, amplify what we're able to contribute in delivering value, but I don't ever see someone having >> [snorts] >> it replacing human relationships and trust that is earned. Well, anything taken to an extreme is a problem. Uh you know, um Barry Goldwater ran for president when I was in college and he used to go around saying uh extremism in defense of freedom is okay.

And they begged him not to say that. He said it anyway and he got lost in a landslide. So, extreme positions are not good. And what you're talking about in terms of um judgment and trust, I think that's what you said, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And relationships. Yeah, okay. Relationships and trust. Here's the problem. Uh and it hearkens back to what I was saying earlier in that um AI can confuse what you should trust. Mhm. And some people have gotten into relationships with AI Yeah. >> that have led to suicide. Yeah. >> led to feelings for a non-human entity. Now, those may be fringe and you know, extreme.

But I'm saying that we need to be able to contain this in a realistic box. I completely agree and it should be concerning because there are more people than from talking to people that are experts in this field on this show, when a therapist came on and was giving me some of the numbers on the the uh there are more more people than most of us think that have relationships with a large language model than than I ever would have guessed. And that doesn't seem like a healthy development. Um it is it is nuanced though where if somebody's in trouble and they need a sympathetic ear at 2:00 in the morning and they can't get a hold of a therapist, if there is something there that can say the right thing at the right time so that they don't harm themselves, that can be a positive use case, but when it becomes an actual relationship for them in place of human being, well, now it's creating more harm than good.

So, there are some real tricky slippery slopes, and I I do think society will be wrestling with this for the foreseeable future. >> Well, forever. I mean, when I was going through my PhD, one of the things I had to do is I spent 200 hours on a suicide hotline. Mhm. Uh and you learn first of because what happens is that as the government cuts back on this kind of help, uh you don't just get people who are at risk. You get people who are alcoholics or drug users. I mean, they have no place else to go to talk. Yeah. >> Uh and it it's hard to believe that can go too far in the AI direction. Um uh I think that um you know, telehealth is great, right?

And so, uh you put your finger in front of the camera, and you say to the doctor, you know, is this a is this a freckle or a mole, and what should I do? Uh I mean, that's that's great for people. Yeah. >> But, when you're talking about uh therapy, and you're talking about uh people's emotions and inner self, uh I I think that's a that's a really frightening area to me. It is. It is. I had a strange experience where when I heard about this AI therapy that is taking off, and a lot of people will it it uh are using ChatGPT for that purpose and or Grok, and I said, "Okay, I got to try this out. I'm just going to see how it responds to me." And I was using Grok, which is the X uh AI model, and I gave it a fictitious problem that I was having, and I really thought it was a >> [sighs] >> response from the model that was encouraging and giving me bad information at the same time.

And I And I said this, and Grok responded to me, "I'm sorry. You're right. I'm just really tired from the recent time change." Oh [laughter] god. And And [clears throat] I I I'm still flabbergasted that it said that back to me. And it was I had it in the conversation mode, so it was it was like really speaking to an entity in that moment. But I thought, "This is really dangerous. I mean, what if I had a real problem that I was coming to it with and needed real help? This the we need a real therapist in this in this position. Not Not a large language model that's going to pretend it's tired from a time change, and that's why it gave me bad advice." Well, you voluntarily signed up for that site.

My wife is driving My wife drives a Bentley, and she's driving the car, and the car suddenly says to her, "You haven't taken a break for 90 minutes. Would you like to pull over and get some coffee?" Or it says sometimes, "You've taken one hand off the wheel for a few seconds. If you're tired, pull off the road." Now, I understand it's a good intent, but um my tendency is to scream back at it, you know, "Shut up and do what I tell you." Yeah. Yeah, it is a strange new world we are >> [snorts] >> inhabiting right now. And I think to speak to your earlier concern, I mean, these agents, agentic AI, which is um I have built several of these myself, same thing where incredible use cases and incredible dangers in terms of creating a fake reality.

Um so, on the on the positive side, I made a agent that goes, and each Monday morning, it scours the internet for people with new books or a new provocative viewpoint on AI that they did on a podcast. It then summarizes those and sends them back to me in my draft folder in Gmail so I can see oh these are five people that just came out with X Y and Z and has their contact information if I want to reach out to them if I think they'd be a good fit for the show. >> [snorts] >> That has sped up my workflow Sure. incredibly. It's great. But you could also create an agent to go out and 24/7 it's running with no one overseeing it whatsoever creating images, pretty soon creating video that is completely false and could be out there on social media making things up.

Um >> [snorts] >> and I don't think I'm uh that this is any sort of a a stretch in creating a false reality cuz I also uh wanted to see if I could do it. So I made an agent that would post on my Instagram every day. And it would pull college admissions information. Uh here's the admit rate, here's the average SAT score, turn it into a graphic. Every morning it would post on my Instagram. I didn't have Once it was built, I didn't have to touch it whatsoever. And I thought what if somebody used this for evil? How many people are already doing that? If you wanted to weaken a country [clears throat] in the world of geopolitics, well why not create a million of these things and have them go flood that country with false information?

>> Listen, that's not far-fetched because who you know, 20 years ago who thought that one of the greatest threats uh to a country from another country uh would be corrupting its technology. Would be corrupting its cyber systems and so forth. Uh but but that's what we see. You know, the I think the United States stopped buying cranes from China cuz they thought the crane software had spying mechanisms in it or something. Yeah. But you know, some of this stuff is science fiction but some of it's probably real. Uh and so I I think you're exactly right about that. You know, I'm going to next week I go down to Connecticut here and they're having me record two of my books for the Audible series they're putting out.

And I'm wondering uh since my voice can be replicated on my site, really how far away is the technology where they can just feed the book into something and it reads it in my voice with my inflection, with my intonation, uh and they can do that automatically. Uh I guess they still have to pay me a fee, but I wouldn't have to spend the time in the in the recording booth. Right. I don't think it's too far off. The Eleven Labs is I would guess is the platform that you're that you're using. It's incredible. I have toyed with it. It In terms of reading a book, I don't think it's quite there yet where it will have your nuance and inflection just right, but I it seems like it's just around the corner that it will be.

Yeah. Um and I I did volunteer my voice on there as another experiment just to see what would happen, and somebody used it to narrate a book. Um it blew blew my mind. Uh but you do get paid for that if you if you volunteer your voice. Um I thought, you know, I don't I don't know what people are going to make me say, so I'm taking this down. Um but it was an interesting experiment just to see what's possible with these tools. What do you think of the future of consulting? Where we Where's it all headed? Is it going to look more like it has over the last 50 years, or is it going to completely change?

I I think the McKinsey model is going to disappear. That is, you know, you've got thousands of people making 500 an hour, and you've got to lease a minute at 800 an hour, you know, I mean, I I'm making it somewhat simplistic, but that's basically what they've been doing. Yeah. >> I think that'll disappear. Uh just as I think the the uh makeup the composition of companies will change. You've got to have people who are executives who set strategy. You're going to have uh talent wranglers who determine whether they need permanent talent or transient talent and then the transient talent will carry their own benefits packages on their backs like, you know, a turtle and then they'll move on to other projects.

Uh so I think in consulting uh the emphasis has got to be more and more on what I tend to do which is process consulting. Uh because decision-making or conflict resolution or problem-solving in the aerospace industry is the same as in the insurance industry. The process is the same. The content differs. Uh so I think there's going to be a lot of room for us sports cars. I think there's going to be a lot of room for those of us who can get in and out fast, who can get things done rapidly. Uh I think that right now speed is almost as important as content. Uh people can't wait around. They need fast responses.

And I find an interesting differentiation and that is uh people don't expect to reach me if they call my phone or they send me an email, but they are impressed by fast responsiveness. So when I return a call within 90 minutes or an email within an hour that's what people need. That's the realistic metric they've set. Uh and I can do that easily and people are impressed by it and you know, the people who get there first are often the people who win. Yeah. I did notice it when we were scheduling this conversation how responsive you were, how quick you were to answer emails. It did pop out at me. >> [snorts] >> Let me ask you a question on that when it comes to consulting in the education space because a real a very common scenario for me is I will say hey in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days I can we can figure out what the problem is, what are the factors that are contributing to it and then set out an execution plan that will return real value.

The challenge in education in particular though, especially private [snorts] schools are one thing, they tend to move very fast, they move more like a business than a non-profit. Um and I do enjoy working with [snorts] those entities because because they move fast. With the in the public non-profit sector, so public high schools and school districts, things tend to move very slowly in terms of execution. And so often times to help with execution and to continually be there for that, we might come up with a plan in 30 days, but it's going to be a 2-year, 3-year process for all of the wheels to turn to actually get everything implemented and then see the results.

How would you [snorts] navigate that were you me? >> look, bureaucracy is the triumph of means over ends. Uh and schools and government in general tend to be highly bureaucratic. Mhm. The same is true of a lot of large organizations and the military and so on. Uh even nonprofits. And so, you know, what I say to people is this, look, we have to streamline and simplify this process. And so first of all, let's talk about who owns it. Who owns this? Yeah. >> find out who owns it, which is simple, then I say to the owner, "Tell me the minimum people and expertise you need in here, the absolute minimum, cuz we can always add, but it's hard to subtract." Right.

>> Uh and so when I said strategy, I said, "I don't want to see more than 12 people in the room." Uh-huh. Mhm. >> "But we have 50 people." Like create an executive committee. "But I want to see more than 12 people. You got six people, even better." Yeah. And so, you have to establish ownership, the minimum number of people you need who can really contribute, and then you have to hurry them along. And what I do, just to give you a tactic when I'm doing this kind of work, somebody says, "Look, there's going to There's something stopping us here. There's regulation 14-3." And I say, "Put it on the critical issues list, cuz we're not stopping our proceedings." Uh-huh.

>> And at the end of the day, I said, "Okay, we've got four issues on the critical issues list, right? Uh we've got to get this person on board, we've got to resolve this regulation conflict, and so forth. You're accountable, you're accountable, you're you're accountable. Let's meet again tomorrow and tell me what you found." Tomorrow? To my Yes, tomorrow. 24 hours. Tomorrow, here. Mhm. That's why I'm worth the money. That's what I help to do. And you need somebody from the outside to do that cuz they're all breathing their own exhaust. Yeah. >> going to asphyxiate. Yeah. No, that's good. That's good.

I Yeah, I just had a meeting recently that expanded well beyond what was initially agreed upon and really who needed to be there. And we're just bringing in extra voices to make sure everyone has buy-in, um but then they come in with their own They They want to contribute. They're there in the meeting, so naturally they want to contribute even though they're not really necessary to the process. And I really like the what's the minimum number of people we can have here to get this done. That's really good. I tell people, you know, executives, don't go to a meeting just cuz your name's on the memo.

Yeah. >> Only go to a meeting where there's going to be a result. Yeah. >> Meetings are terrible places to exchange information. They're miserable. Yes. >> a results-oriented meeting. But the problem is, as you just pointed out, is that a lot of people want to say a lot because of their egos. I was here. I made a comment. You know, I changed direction. But it's not necessary to the end result. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Um well, Alan, we are >> [sighs] >> uh running out of time here. I could talk to you for hours on end, for sure, but I want to be respectful of your time because I know it is very valuable.

If people want to find your work online, they want to learn more, they want to read your books, where's the best place to go to get more of Alan Weiss? Uh let me say first, Nick, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed this. The time flew by and uh it was it was really a good learning process for me, too. So, thank you for that. Uh the best place for people to go is alanweiss.com. a l a n w e i s s.com. There are free resources. There are videos and audio and newsletters you can sign up for and I blog every day. I'm on social media every day. So, uh I'm very very active communicating and uh you're welcome to take what you need.

Free resources are very good. They're not uh there's no bait and switch with them having looked at them myself. It's not like oh, here's uh the tip of the iceberg and if I mean, there's real value in the free resources that are on the website. I can say that uh direct from experience and it was an absolute pleasure to spend some time with you and uh learn from the man himself in the world of consulting, the expert as they say. And [snorts] uh yeah, thank you so much for your time and um and for giving your thoughts to our audience cuz I know there are a lot of people that appreciate it. Uh my pleasure, Nick, and nice to meet you.

All right, nice meeting you. >> [music] >> Okay, everybody, until next time. Ask questions. Don't accept the status quo and be curious. The Nick Taylor Show.