First published 22 May 2023 on Your Best Year Starts Here with Nigel Risner.
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Two hundred and ten episodes in, and Nigel still couldn't quite believe it. We'd said we'd do this for a couple of weeks. He reckoned we were in year four or five (he's a mathematician, apparently) and I went with five.
He's been working with a client who moved from one tech company to another and wanted a copy of his book for everyone. He wrote it in 2006 and reckons 95% of it still holds up. So he asked everyone to picture someone finding their email or leaflet in ten years. I brought in one of mine. Content and content are spelt the same. Put out stuff you know you could've done better and you won't be happy with it. Be guarded with what you let in and be great at what you put out (two Gs, didn't plan it, I'll take it).
Then AI, because everyone else was talking about it. I use AI tools and I've never hidden that. I treat it like an assistant and I'm a ruthless editor, because it still has to sound like me. Nigel asked if ruthless was spelt R, double O, F, L, E, S, S.
I told him about someone who'd paid a person to handle their LinkedIn messages, signed with their name. Then they met someone at a live event who wanted to carry on a conversation they'd never read. Nigel's version goes back 35 to 40 years to his finance company, Milborne Management, where he did all the filing so he saw every letter going out. His newsletters later were full of missing commas, and chief execs liked them because they knew it was him. When they moved to Mailchimp and it all looked polished, the unsubscribes went up.
My music one was That's Entertainment by The Jam. For me the demo of Paul Weller singing it beats the single by miles, because there's a rawness in his voice that got lost in the studio. And Nigel finished by quoting Done Beats Perfect back at me and claiming he couldn't remember who said it.
What I took from this one
- Picture someone finding your email or leaflet in ten years. Check it would still stand up.
- Be guarded with what you let in and great at what you put out.
- Use AI like an assistant, then edit it hard until it sounds like you.
- If someone else writes as you, read what goes out. Nigel still sees every email his PA sends.
- Too polished can cost you. Nigel's unsubscribes went up when the newsletter stopped sounding like him.
So be guarded at what you let in and be great at what you put out.
Neil Martin
You can't litter negativity everywhere and then wonder why you got a trashy life.
Nigel Risner
