Rudy Giuliani

02/15/24 • 11 min

I’ve met Rudy Giuliani. We belonged to the same cigar club in New York (which has since lost its lease). Those were the days when he was still in the afterglow of “America’s Mayor” from the way he led after 9/11. And those were the days when crime in New York was way down. He and the police commissioner, Bill Bratton, instituted tough approaches to “minor” violations, believing they would lead to arrests and halting of major violations. So there were penalties for blocking intersections (today in Manhattan, city buses block intersections with impunity), for jumping turnstiles in subways, for the guys who tried to wash car windshields at red lights. And crime greatly diminished. Today, we have district attorneys and other highly progressive politicians who have either made “minor” crimes acceptable or have refused to prosecute them. Here’s the simple math for those of you who never majored in math (I certainly didn’t): When shoplifters steal from stores without any worry about being prosecuted, fined, or jailed, the store ownership decides to close those stores in such areas because they can’t afford to conduct business at a loss. So the pharmacies, local retail shops, clothiers, and so forth close up or relocate. Instead of walking for a few minutes to pick up drug prescriptions it then requires a 20-minute drive or public transportation for 40 minutes to a store that’s in a safer neighborhood. Activists demand that laws be passed preventing the chains from closing local stores, rather than laws preventing the “free” looting of local stores. Now ain’t that poor math? And who’s most hurt by those pharmacies that close? The elderly, the disabled, the people without personal transportation, single parents, and so forth. If you don’t want stores to close, stop the cause: crime. And to stop crime, stop ALL crime. Once you forgive the “small stuff” people move on to the larger stuff. Have I mentioned that auto theft in the US and Canada is on a severe upward trend?

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A Conversation with Noah Kagan II

How do you create a million dollar idea and begin earning on it in one weekend? Noah Kagan is one of my buddies and a guy I greatly admire. He’s founded and sold several multi-million dollar enterprises—and readily admits to his share of failures, as well—and he’s put together an approach, summarized in Million Dollar Weekend, which is a clear recipe for success. I know about how to make millions of dollars in consulting, for example. Noah has accelerated that process for most of you. He makes fascinating points about quantity winning over quality, in that quantity tends to find many more powerful solutions. He talks about how the Rule of 100 will get you started, and stresses something we all know but don’t practice nearly enough: You don’t get if you don’t ask. So join us here as he explains how he simply asked people to board their private jet, and wound up flying to Boston without any luggage or plans and then was terribly disappointed in flying home again commercially! Listen to what he says about making your first sale immediately, over that weekend. We talk about the internet as the “great equalizer” today (neither of us had its benefits as we built our businesses), and the traits that people need to genuinely accept his counsel and make rapid progress. (Resiliency is mandatory.) Listen to the only person ever to appear twice on The Uncomfortable Truth, and for good reason, and also find out how to access more of his smarts and this book.

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A Conversation with Jeffrey Magee

Jeff is the publisher of Performance Magazine which has featured interviews of and articles from people as diverse as Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Shaquille O’Neal, Sir Richard Branson, Joan Rivers, and Larry King, among hundreds of others. In this conversation we talk about the effectiveness, and lack thereof, of the media; the major issues on the minds of executives post-pandemic; how to convince people to accept an interview even if they haven’t heard of you or the publication; and why Jeff, living in Vegas with plenty of Super Bowl invitations, will be on an airplane heading to a National Guard operation in New England to work with the leadership. Jeff is controversial (he will not pursue an interview with the current occupant of the White House) and outspoken. He feels that the pandemic, even now, has caused a seismic shift in global business and leadership, and that promotions are based on being seen frequently in order to be known. One of his clients says, “If I don’t know you, I can’t promote you, and if I don’t see you, I can’t know you.” We talk about whether or not there’s a generation gap, and what talent is really all about. And we hear the story of a cabinet member appearing in Jeff’s magazine because he saw a copy on another cabinet member’s coffee table with that person’s picture on the cover, and wanted to do so himself!