My Problem With Ted Nicholas

by Glenn Fisher

Hey look, Ted Nicholas is an absolute internet marketing legend...

I’ve learnt a lot from him and he’s obviously a massively successful entrepreneur and businessman.

But.

Recently, I received an email from him that really rubbed me up the wrong way.

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In my opinion, the email was a perfect example of what happens if you ignore what I believe to be one of the most important ‘rules’ of modern internet marketing...

The Rule of One.

I talk about it a lot; in fact I’m worried I’m getting a bit militant with this.

But I promise you...

If you follow this as your one and only rule, your ability to communicate an idea will improve unlimited.

Put it this way...

If I were teaching you to play guitar, I would not try to teach you fretting, chord structures, hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides all in one go.

You just wouldn’t take it all in.

Instead, I would teach you one thing at a time...

I would teach you how to strum. When you had that, we’d tackle the next thing.

You can see the logic, right?

So, how come I got so angry about Ted’s email?

My problem with Ted Nicholas

Well, let me tell you the subject line of his email...

"21 Books I’ve Read That Changed My Life"

Grrr.

And so you open the email and there are 21 books, each with a paragraph summarizing what each is about.

I managed to get to book 14 before I’d simply given up.

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And the worse thing about it...

It’s actually a very useful concept.

As I say, Ted Nicholas is a legend in the business and I’d like to know what influenced him.

But this is simply not the way to communicate this.

Some people who read the email will maybe take note of one, maybe two book titles, thinking that they’ll check them out at some point.

Other people will simply feel daunted by how many books are being discussed and disregard the email altogether.

The vast majority, though, will think: fair enough, that’s quite interesting - I’ll put that email to the side and look at that later.

And you know what happens with that ‘look at it later’ email.

Fact: it doesn’t ever get looked at.

A sound idea is lost.

The email may as well not have been sent.

So come on, Glenn, what’s your alternative?

Apply the Rule of One.

Here’s the amended subject line:

"The one book that changed my life"

You already know the content of the email, because I know you already get this...

It would discuss very simply why that one book changed Ted’s life, how it could change yours too.

If that email arrived in my inbox, I would have to open just to see which book it was.

And I would finish reading the email with one clear idea in my mind: to read that one book.

Simple as that.

It was Michael Masterson who first taught me this rule and at the time I thought it sounded reasonable enough.

But as I started to apply it to my own writing, to my own communication, I started to realise just how fundamentally important the idea is.

The next email you send, be it an instruction to a colleague, an email to your readers, a request for things to be done...

Whatever it is, restrict yourself to communicating just one idea and see how much more effective your message is... how much quicker the request is done... how much more receptive the recipient is.