The Nudge
Getting paid without torching the relationship.
BeforeHi, just following up on invoice 1042, please let me know. Thanks!
AfterKen, invoice 1042 is at 41 days. I figure it got buried. Can you get it into this week's run?
I built myself a set of email voices. One for proposals, one for checking in on an invoice, one for making an introduction. I tell the machine which voice and what happened, and the email comes out sounding like me on a good day. I will build you the same thing.
Every small business owner has a folder of emails they have not sent.
They do not go unsent because they are hard to write. They go unsent because writing them badly has a cost, so you wait for the energy to write them well. That energy shows up about once a month.
A voice system takes the energy out of it. The tone gets decided once. After that you are describing a situation, not composing a letter.
Getting paid without torching the relationship.
BeforeHi, just following up on invoice 1042, please let me know. Thanks!
AfterKen, invoice 1042 is at 41 days. I figure it got buried. Can you get it into this week's run?
Saying no to “can you just” without losing the client.
BeforeSure, I can probably squeeze that in!
AfterThat is a real piece of work, not a tweak. Let me price it separately. If the number works, we do it next.
Bad news, delivered before they find out on their own.
BeforeUnfortunately there have been some unforeseen delays...
AfterThe site is going to miss Friday. New date is Wednesday the 14th, and I am not moving it again.
Referral intros that actually get replied to.
BeforeHi both, connecting you two! I will let you take it from here.
AfterDana, this is Mike. He runs the plumbing outfit and will need your help in about four months. Mike, Dana is who I send people to. I am stepping out of the thread.
Proposal sent, then silence. Day five.
BeforeJust wanted to bump this to the top of your inbox!
AfterYou have had the proposal a week. Wrong number, wrong timing, or it fell off the desk? Any of those is fine. I just need to know whether to hold the slot.
First contact that does not read like a template.
BeforeI hope this email finds you well! I came across your website and...
AfterYour contact form has been broken since June. I filled it out twice and nothing came back. Get it fixed, you are losing calls.
01Two hundred emails you actually wrote, not a questionnaire about how you think you write. The voice comes out of the evidence.
02Every business has different emails it dreads. A contractor needs a change-order voice. A therapist needs a boundary voice. Yours will not be my six.
03You get the voices loaded and ready. You run real situations through them for a week and tell me where they sound wrong. They get tuned until they do not.
04They live in your tool, not mine. No subscription to me, no rewriting them next quarter, nothing to renew. If your business changes enough that the voices stop fitting, you call me.
It means AI writes the first draft in a voice built from your own sent mail. You read it, you change what you want, you send it. Nothing goes out that you did not look at.
They will know it sounds like you, because it does. The voices are built from how you already write, which is the entire point of reading your sent folder instead of handing you a template.
Whatever you already use. If you use nothing yet, I will set you up on one and show you how it works. There is nothing proprietary here that only I can service.
That is what the break-it week is for. They get tuned until they sound right or that voice gets scrapped and replaced with one you will actually use.
Sometimes, for a specific thing, yes. But it is the worse deal. Paying me per email means you are still waiting on me at 9pm when the invoice needs chasing.

That is usually the first voice we build.