The Observation
Paul Ampe would dictate letters. I didn’t know shorthand. So I’d catch the sense, then put the words back in his mouth. Paraphrase first. Then write like him.
That was only the start of the drill.
Sometimes I had to research. I’d dig, report back, and he’d dictate again from what we’d learned. Shared thinking. His knowledge and my research mixed into one letter. The page left the building as his voice, for his practice, for the client. Not as a memo that announced I had synthesized something clever in the back room.
Toward the middle and end of those years I could write letters in his voice without him dictating at all. He didn’t have to be in the room. I could simulate the office: judgment, register, restraint. That’s when I knew the muscle had transferred. I wasn’t copying a tape. I was carrying a voice.
I still run that pipeline. Input from a board peer, a business partner, a sales rep with a rough auction proposal. I hear them, research, think, then draft so it sounds like they would say it, or like the seat and the brand require. Co-think, mix, and put a single signature on the way out.
Most people in the auction world never knew that chapter existed. They see the auction career. I was already in the auction business while I clerked: law office most weekdays that weren’t auction days, auctions Tue and Thu at Schultz Auctioneers, and sometimes a law day cut in half so both jobs fit. The tracks ran in parallel until I left for Grafe Auction in January 2012.
The Pull Outward
The skill is not “be empathetic” as a soft trait. It is a production habit I still use.
I co-think first. Work the problem with another mind. Argue it. Devil’s-advocate it. Report back. Don’t treat the first dictation or the first rough proposal as the finished substance.
Then I mix the substance. Letters and positions fuse their knowledge with my learnings and research. Not stapled. If only one brain did the work, you’re either a stenographer or a solo author wearing a costume. I think the interesting case is the middle.
Then it leaves with a single signature for something bigger than me. I write, speak, and represent for clients, members, and the brand. My name can be on it. The work isn’t about me. At the NAA I was always representing something larger than the person in the chair. At Grafe Auction I represent the firm. Same muscle as writing as Paul without Paul in the room. The costume got larger. The drill stayed.
That’s why “ghostwriter” is the wrong word for this. A ghostwriter hides. This is a second brain in a first-person document. Shared thinking that comes out as one voice.
Peers later described the NAA residue in language that fits the same pattern: servant leadership, make room, character over title, care more about getting it right than being right. They weren’t describing a drafting tip. They were describing a posture where the room and the product don’t have to center you for the thinking to have been real.
When AI enters the loop, the same fork shows up as sparring versus ghostwriting. Owning the words versus paste-and-pray. This is older than that. It is the human apprenticeship: learn to think with someone, fuse the work, and still send the voice of the client, the members, or the brand.
The Failure Modes
Two ways this goes wrong.
One is self-erasure. You under-claim so hard that nobody can find the spine, or you resent it later when the room forgets who did the research. Representation isn’t disappearing. It’s visibility without making the work about you.
The other is laundering. “How I think they would say it” becomes your judgment wearing their name. Smooth. Useful. Slightly dishonest. The mix has to stay honest about whose knowledge and whose research built the position, even when only one mouth speaks.
I think the line is representation, not ventriloquism for ego.
Open Questions
- When the other person’s knowledge is thin and your research is doing most of the intellectual work, when should the document become yours so the thinking isn’t hidden?
- How do you teach this drill without turning it into “sound like the boss” as flattery?
- Does AI sparring strengthen co-thinking, or does it tempt a shortcut past the hard part of actually arguing with another human mind?
Related: What Stuck When the Chair Ended