First published 15 February 2021 on Your Best Year Starts Here with Nigel Risner.
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Nigel opened this one by saying he was going from motivational speaker to irritational speaker. He'd eaten, so he wasn't hangry. Just angry. He'd sat in about 15 different rooms on Clubhouse, which everyone seemed to be on that month, trying to work out what the people handing out advice had actually done.
His worry is coaches selling coaching to other coaches who don't have much business themselves. And listeners signing up to affiliate schemes before they've applied a thing. He ran through his own background (finance, coaching tennis in Israel, his own businesses, five books) and said anyone's welcome to check him out. He even runs workshops at his house so people can see how he really lives. No borrowed Rolls-Royce in Dubai. In his finance days he used to helicopter to clients and never once posed with it on the lawn like it was his.
So I gave my own rundown, which I don't do often. Computer science graduate who realised he was better with people than screens, and in the end running sales and marketing for a software company with offices in four countries. Then a blog took off, people asked how I'd done it, and I started teaching it. Some of my biggest lessons on live selling came from a couple of stints on the home shopping channels, and people in one Clubhouse room had no idea. I prefer the small rooms. Not the clique bait ones, where a few big names co-host with their mates every single day. Nigel's line: how can there be 300 moderators in a room of 400 people?
We got onto seminar junkies too. The people who go to Tony Robbins' UPW every year, leave fired up and do nothing between one year and the next. Nigel said the come-down is really hard. Then books. A guy I know in the US says read every day until you learn something, then put the book down and go and use it. Nigel had heard Richard Madeley on 5 Live say that if a book takes more than four pages to get into, he stops. He offered his top 10 from roughly 700 books on his shelves to anyone who emails.
What stuck
- Before you take advice from a guru, check what they've actually done in a real business.
- The loudest people in the room aren't always the ones with something behind them.
- Finish one course and apply it before buying the next. Nigel's FOCUS: finish one course until successful.
- Read until you learn one thing, then put the book down and go and do it.
Sometimes the people that shout the loudest are the ones that actually have got the least substance behind them.
Neil Martin
When all is said and done, and I've said this thousands of times, much more is said than done.
Nigel Risner
