First published 18 March 2024 on Your Best Year Starts Here with Nigel Risner.
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There'd been a gap between episodes before this one, and I'll admit I'd missed Nigel. We'd stayed in touch, but I'd missed the silly little comments. We'd also promised at the end of the last batch to cover two more topics. Neither of us could remember what they were. So we let it go, and Nigel brought something he'd picked up the day before.
He'd been on a short online seminar run by Jack Canfield, one of his coaches. Some of it was basic. But one line stuck, an acronym for LIFE. Letting Intuition Free Every Day. Nigel's been in business since 1983 and he's still taking lines from other people and making them his own, which was half his point. Most of us decide we've learnt it all.
He's been doing online workshops lately with no notes at all. One was for a firm of young accountants, and another was for the Virtual Speakers Association Worldwide, with people joining from the Philippines to Sweden. By his own admission he's not the greatest online presenter. Even so, the feedback was the best he's had. And the less he pushed to sell, the more people came back wanting coaching. I said life's a mirror. What you put out comes back, and quite often from somewhere that has nothing to do with the person you helped.
Then we got onto fees. Nigel had read that plenty of conferences wanted a woman speaker for International Women's Day and hoped not to pay her, with exposure offered instead. He'll do more for exposure when the supermarket takes it at the till. We've both knocked our own fee down before anyone asked, scared of hearing no (I've done it, though it's been a while). These days Nigel asks what the caterers are getting. One client told him what the catering cost and still wanted his fee lowered. He told them to have one of the coffees and there'd be enough left to pay him.
What I took from this one
- Letting Intuition Free Every Day. Nigel's acronym for LIFE, from Jack Canfield.
- Even 41 years in, Nigel's still picking up lines worth keeping.
- Help people without working out what you'll get back. Life's a mirror, and it pays you back from all sorts of places.
- Don't drop your fee before anyone's even asked you to.
Whatever you're paying the caterers, that's my fee.
Nigel Risner
The day you think you know it all is the day you've got a real problem.
Neil Martin
