Welcome to the six figure business mastery podcast, where every week

Kirsten and Jeannie dive into the essential topics to fuel your business

growth from copywriting to course creation, mindset to video marketing.

They've got you covered tune in for expert guest interviews on all things,

marketing and business, and learn how to work on your business, not just in it.

So get ready to unlock your business potential and take it to the next level.

Welcome everyone to our newest episode.

I am thrilled to have Nick Osborne with us.

He is a copywriter, trainer, speaker.

He teaches writers to combine AI and emotional intelligence.

So I'm excited to dig into that with them today.

So welcome Nick.

We're thrilled to have you.

Thank you for inviting me.

It's fun to be here.

Excellent.

Okay.

So tell us even a little bit more about you.

How did you get to where you are now?

So I started out as a trainee copywriter in an ad agency in London in 1979.

So I've been a copywriter forever and I started off doing print and

then I was doing it on a direct mail and then along the way.

In the web.

So I built my first website in 1995.

So as soon as that became a thing, I was just like fascinated.

So I've got a bit of a thing for leaning into new stuff.

I just, I don't know.

I'm like a magpie.

If something's shiny, I go for it.

And the web fascinated me right from the outset.

And so then I've been working with AI for about five years.

I was using in a kind of chatbot business where I was a partner.

But then along came ChatGPT and it is just, obviously it's groundbreaking

and fascinating and exciting and terrifying and just everything.

So as a writer, like I've been, I'm a copywriter, but I'm also

like a trainer, I create courses.

And so I started getting a lot of questions, like early 2023 of Nick.

What is this?

Should I pay attention?

Should I be worried?

Should I be excited?

So I've been doing a lot of work in that and I've been creating courses around it.

And I've done a lot of writing and speaking about it.

Yeah.

It just changes so fast.

Doesn't it?

I know, and I like it because you can't get bored, but also it's scary.

Oh, I'm totally with you and can appreciate your journey from the writing,

the direct mail pieces to the web.

I was totally all about that when that came out and, but the AI, I feel like it's

traveling faster than the speed of light.

So let's talk a little bit about digital copywriting

because that's really important.

Our listeners are a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs and they do

a lot of copywriting, whether it's.

On their website or in their emails or in their social media posts.

Let's talk a little bit about what do you see happening AI

and emotional intelligence.

Let's talk about that.

All right.

So the point you made is you're spot on.

Good copywriting is essential to any online business.

Because a badly written subject line will get half the open rate of a well

written subject line, and a medium quality email will get half the click throughs

of a well written email, so a good copy is very important to online business.

But you really see it in the online space, because of course we can

measure everything in real time.

I can send out an email and two hours later I can look at the metrics and see

the open rate and the click through rate.

So the impact and importance of copy becomes very evident very quickly when

you're working in the digital realm.

As opposed to the olden days when I was working with print with some have to wait

like weeks and weeks to get results back.

Now the arrival of artificial intelligence in this space has been like a boon

but also scary because some of these models, we'll talk about GPT GPT 4

or GPT 4 0 with the right prompting.

With some careful prompting, not just a kind of quick, easy prompt, but with

some careful prompting, you can get some pretty good copy out of that.

Can you get the kind of quality of copy you'd get from the best copywriter?

Probably not, certainly not yet.

But there are companies out there doing the math on this and they're saying, hang

on, if I can get a thousand pieces of content written, In a thousandths of the

time for a thousandths of the price, then that's going to take care of the fact that

it's not quite as good as a tier human copywriter, because I'm just getting a

volume at the incredible bargain price.

So that's the scary part.

And it's scary for a few reasons.

One is scary for copywriters because a writer can say, if you're a freelance

writer or you're working in house with a company, a writer can say, yes,

I'm better and the company can say, we know that, but look at the math.

Sorry, but there's not a problem here.

And that is, there are a lot of companies out there that have done the math.

And they are saying, okay, we're going to use AI and they're using the same

models like duty for Gemini or, or whatever their favorite model, they're

using the same prompt libraries, top 50 prompts, they're often using the

same kind of templates, the email template, the blog post template.

And so inevitably what happens is they start sounding the same because

they're using the exact same system.

Which is nuts because companies spend millions and then billions

of dollars building a brand that they want unique to themselves.

And then all of a sudden, they're taking the kind of using the easy

button, the cheap button to create the content with AI, but they're

sounding just like their competitors.

So that's when I start talking about adding in emotional intelligence.

So emotional intelligence is, has been a thing for a very long time.

It was probably best articulated by Daniel Goleman in his book, Emotional

Intelligence back in the mid 1990s.

And that's about listening.

It's about being empathetic.

It's about being emotionally intelligent to the people around you, and it's been

part of copywriting forever, like any good copywriter listens before they

write, they listen to their audience, the language of their audience, the

emotions of their audience, that they become familiar, they listen carefully.

And also any good copywriter will be empathetic to that audience.

They'll say, Hey, what if I walked in that person's shoes or saw

the world through their eyes?

What would my messaging be?

What would my language be?

So emotion has always been.

Very important to really good copywriting.

Good copyright is always understood that people buy for emotional reasons.

Not, it's not rational.

I don't buy a new pair of sneakers thinking, okay, the material in

the soles is like going to last for four years or five years.

I buy it because of the brand and the look and because I like it and

I want it as an emotional choice, so emotion is really important, but these

models, these artificial intelligence models, they can read about emotion.

They've read the script to love story and Romeo and Julia,

but they haven't felt them.

They haven't felt emotion.

They can't feel emotion.

They've never eaten ice cream.

They've never walked along the beach and felt the sand between their toes.

They've never cradled a baby at two in the morning.

They won't stop crying.

There's a lot of experiential side to being human and the emotional side to

being human and the sensory experiences we have, the stories we share, the

stories we have of the old friends.

Hey, do you remember that time when we were on the beach or that time we

went to New York City or whatever?

They have none of that.

And that is the kind of realm of emotional intelligence, being aware

of one's own emotions, being aware of other people's emotions, being

empathetic, being mindful, listening, Oh, we're such terrible listeners.

And if we get better at listening, then we become more emotionally intelligent.

So what I'm saying to people is, Hey, yes, you can use artificial intelligence.

It's fantastic for brainstorming.

It's fantastic for research, for outlining, for structure, for ideation.

I have a friend who's a very well paid, very famous copywriter.

And he's often looking for a big idea for a campaign or a sales page.

And he doesn't use AI for writing.

He says, that's what I do.

But he said, I do use it for help coming up with ideas.

Give me 20 random ideas on X.

So there's amazing ways that we can use AI as digital copywriters, as creators.

But what I say to people is like, don't fall prey to the easy button just because

it can then write a final draft for you.

It doesn't mean to say that's the best draft.

I know it's easy for you because it'll do it in 30 seconds and it might take you

four hours to write it, but be careful.

Because if you follow the easy button, then just get it to do

everything, then it doesn't have that layer of emotional intelligence.

Like, I've asked one of these models to say, okay, open this email with

just a little anecdote, little story.

And it did, and it just made up a story.

And it reminded me of a story, a real life story from my own life,

so I just rewrote that intro.

And now it was a real story, and there's a difference there, there's a nuance

there, there's a kind of reality there.

Because it was my experience that I was sharing rather than a chatbot.

Making it up based on what is read elsewhere.

So that is what I teach him.

What I do is say, for instance, on my website, I have a blog and it's

hard work writing this blog post.

I do one every week.

I've done one every week, almost for 20 years and it's worked,

but I never use artificial intelligence to write this blog post.

I might.

Use it to say, Hey, what should I write about next based on these last 10 topics?

What should I tackle next?

So again, I'll use it for research, for brainstorming, for outlining, but

I always write it because say for me as an individual writer or a trainer.

I am my brand.

My voice is my brand.

My writing is my brand.

So I have to be very careful not to break that.

And I think obviously you're right, it is your brand as a writer.

But I think also for people's businesses, they forget that, yes, AI can write

this for you, but it's writing something very similar for someone else.

And now you're both sounding like you do the same thing when you don't.

You probably don't.

Right.

So differentiation has always been a key to any kind of

marketing and you lose that.

Now that said, there are things that the AI is fantastic at.

I remember years ago, I was part of a startup and it was, we were selling

jewelry online and I was the copywriter and some of it was fun, but I also had

to write product descriptions, gold earrings, 30 different gold earrings.

It is the most tedious writing work in the world, writing product

descriptions on gold earrings.

Let me tell you, I wish I had artificial intelligence to do that.

So there are various tasks like that.

If I want just like, random blog post, 10 things you must do if

you visit Paris this summer, I'll get ChatGPT to do that for me.

It can do that really well.

But, if like I say, it's meant to be my voice, on whether it's on

LinkedIn, whether it's a blog post, whether it's me selling something.

Again, not just me as an individual, but it could be a small business

or a large business, where you want to protect your brand.

You want to protect your voice.

You can do part of that with AI is you can go in and say, look, here's

the avatar of our ideal customer.

You can create a lot of context for prompts.

You can get AI pretty close.

I always recommend is, uh, before you just click yes, at

the end of the conveyor belt.

So you're basically mass producing with these models.

And instead of just automatically falling off the end of the conveyor

belt into boxes, you need like.

Quality control, you need like the eyes of the creative director,

like someone to look at that output and say, is that good enough?

Does that reflect our brand voice?

Does it reflect our mission, our values, our culture as a company?

And if the answer is no, then you pause.

So there's this enormous temptation just to take the easy, inexpensive route, but I

think if you do that, you end up damaging your brand, whether you're an individual

or a small business or a large business.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

It's interesting you say that because I saw someone had posted something on

Facebook and someone responded to it.

And the response to that was, wow, AI prompt.

You gave him there is that totally is an AI answer.

And so I thought that was really interesting that

people are recognizing it now.

And it's complicated because sometimes like I've written stuff where somebody

said, Oh, hey, I ran this through a checker and your piece was written by AI.

And it's a false positive because I know it wasn't.

But it's a freelance writers federal kinds of problems with that, where

their clients have accused them of using AI when they were asked not to.

And they said, I didn't honestly.

And they said, Oh, look, we put it through the checker.

You did.

So false positives can be very difficult for writers to deal

with within companies as well.

Yeah, that's a challenge.

It was interesting.

We went to a conference in January where they were talking about

AI and using it in marketing.

And this one company, we're so proud that they were putting

out like 300 blogs a day.

And they, it went through 15 different AI.

So it wouldn't sound like anyone else's.

Quantity is important, but quality is more important.

And I just felt, you know, what if everybody did that?

We'd have an obscene amount.

We already have an obscene amount of information online.

Do we need more?

That is happening at scale and Google's trying to deal with that

and tackle that and they're giving a thumbs down because there are websites

out there that is 100 percent AI.

And thousands of pages of content and no humans ever reviewed or edited that

and Google's trying to manage trying to deal with that, but you're right.

The fact that you are out there at volume, what does it bring you in the end?

Does it build your brand?

Does it build your audience?

Does it build audience loyalty?

Does it create audience engagement?

Or is it just more stuff?

I feel like it's more stuff.

So what would you say, if you could give us some survival tips for people

who are writing their copy, or for copywriters who are listening, how

can you keep your brand in your brand, if you will, in your copywriting?

The first thing I'd say is don't ignore ai.

It's there it is.

Like if you ignore ai, you're like the candle maker.

Ignoring the arrival of Edison's light bulb, this is

a transformational technology.

It's not going anywhere.

And just because you don't like it doesn't mean to say it's

not going to swallow you whole.

My view is you have to lean into it.

And it is what I've done.

I've learned into AI completely.

I use it as much as I can to understand it as best I can.

I try to keep up to date with it.

Like I've really been putting in a lot of time to learn it

because I'm a writer, right?

And I see it as an opportunity, but I also see it as a threat.

To my future livelihood.

So, I have to understand my friend, my enemy, whatever it is.

So, yes, understand it, lean into the technology, don't ignore it.

Don't be the person who says, Oh, they can never write as well as a human.

Actually, they can write as well as most humans.

They can't write as well as good writers.

But honestly, most of us are not fantastic writers.

So don't underestimate how well it can write if prompted well.

So yeah, don't dismiss it, because that's not going to work for you.

Accept it, whether you like it or not.

I don't like it, honestly.

I don't like the fact.

I don't love it, but it's there.

I don't really, I don't see I have a choice.

But don't just stop at AI, and don't use it as an easy button

to do what you already do.

So if I want to write an email to my audience, I know my

audience, I'll write the email.

It'll take me 15 20 minutes, maybe less.

It's tempting.

Oh, I'll get AI to do that.

Don't do that.

Don't use it as an easy button.

Use it to help you do the stuff that you actually find hard.

So if I'm working on a new project with a new client or a new course or something,

and I have 200 pages of background information to go through, I'll throw

that into this model and say, hey, give me a thousand word summary of this.

So that's something I would find really hard to do, that I can get AI

to make easy for me, or I might say if I'm selling a product, I might copy a

hundred product reviews from Amazon, paste them into the model, and I'll

say, hey, create a sentiment analysis based on these customer reviews.

Really hard for me to do, like to get 50 or a hundred reviews.

And in my mind, somehow organize that as I said, very hard for the human

brain, super easy for these models.

So then I'll get this thing that they'll say 77 percent positive comments.

And I'll say, okay, what's the language that happy people are using?

And they'll give me the terms and phrases happy people use.

So now I have the language of my happy user and I can use that

when I start writing the copy.

So I like to use AI for the stuff that I find really hard.

But when it comes to the writing, like one of the first things that was drummed

into me as a very young man, as I started out, was that it's all about emotion,

people buy because of emotion, because how they feel, you make them desire

your product or make them fear the consequences of not having that product.

Okay.

It's all about emotion.

So, so that then is the final layer.

So not the easy button, not add volume, but use it to help you do the

hard stuff and then write yourself.

And hey, I've done copywriting where I'm like, say I'm doing a sales

page and I think, you know what?

There's something not quite, there's a transition here.

That's not right working, but I can't find it.

I might put it into one of these models and say, look, this is what

I wrote, but I feel there's a clumsy transition here in that first quarter.

Have a look at it for me.

And it does.

And it doesn't always come back with an answer, but sometimes it does.

And I think, man, that's right.

I say, okay, rewrite that little bit for me.

And it does.

And I think.

Okay.

Perfect.

Or maybe I think close to perfect and I'll tweak it a bit myself.

So sometimes I'll use the model to make myself a better writer.

Love that.

But that emotional intelligence part is for me, the kind of secret source,

because it makes the output better always.

And it's also, if I'm a freelancer or even working at a team within a company

and my client or my manager says, yeah, but we've got the, we've trained these

models now to pretty much do your job.

Thank you.

But no, thank you.

And I can come back and say, tell me about the emotional

intelligence you're seeing there.

And they're going to say, excuse me.

And now I have a conversation about what the model lacks and

how you need that human touch.

And it's almost like the messiness of a human.

We're messy.

We have messy edges.

We're imperfect.

We're a little eccentric.

We have our vulnerabilities.

We have our little, that's important.

That's how we relate.

That's what, in fact, that's sometimes what we must find most attractive

about each other is often was drawn to people's, the messiness of a person.

And that's what I try to bring back.

And that's what I say, if I'm talking to a company that says, actually, we

don't need writers anymore because we've got these models and I'm saying,

yeah, but are they messy like me?

And this, excuse me.

So now I have a conversation to have.

I've opened a conversation.

Yeah, I love that.

I love that messiness because you're so right.

That's what, or your imperfection, that's what makes you and

that's what makes you different.

Otherwise, if we have AI writing all this for us, we're all going to sound the same

and we're all going to sound very flat because you know, some of the mannerisms

you have are some of the things that you say that all needs to be in there.

I talk about that as being like the sameness trap.

If you use the same models with the same prompts in the same industry,

you fall into the sameness trap of things inevitably sound the same.

Which is the absolutely, we talked about this differentiation.

It's the last thing you want is to sound the same.

Throw in a bit of emotion, throw in a bit of messiness, throw in

that, that you, because we are.

We love to connect with people.

I was at a big box store the other day picking up some paint to do some

redecorating and I went to check out and it was one of those automatic

checkout things where you scan it and you bag it and you pay for it yourself.

And I felt disappointed because I didn't have that moment with the cashier and

the cashier is a stranger and would have maybe shared 10 words together at most.

But it means something, that human connection means something, and I felt

that loss of that when I was checking out myself, and I was disappointed.

So, as humans, we really want that human connection, even something very small like

that, it matters to us, and that again is what's missing from raw AI output.

Yeah, yeah.

We don't get that connection.

Things that are relatable and personal and just like you said, emotional.

It's the most powerful thing on the planet, emotion, story.

Nick, this has been fantastic.

You are so full of great information on how we can not be afraid of AI,

but we do need to use it smart, in a smart way and make sure that we're

incorporating emotional intelligence.

So, the people who are listening, how can they reach out to you if they are

interested in your copywriting help?

It's mostly training now.

I don't do a lot of copywriting now, I do mostly training, a lot of it around AI.

But yes, if you want to find me, go to my website, NickOsborne.

com.

So that's N I C K U S B O R N E And if you go to nickosborne.

com forward slash six S I X, there's a little page I put

together with some goodies for you.

If you're listening to this pre download and you can sign up for a newsletter,

you can get a discount on a course.

There's yeah.

Just go to nickosborne.

com forward slash six and then also find my socials on the site and stuff.

Got it.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

I so appreciate this.

I feel like I've learned so much and I know our listeners

have learned a ton as well.

So thank you, Nick.

Thank you.

I really enjoy being here.

It's very good to meet you.

Good.

Thanks for listening to the six figure business mastery podcast.

If you enjoyed listening to this episode and you are ready to leverage video

marketing on all online platforms, or maybe even start your own video

podcast, then you need to check out the done for you and done with you

program at themarketingvaadvantage.

com and take care.

Your business to the next level.