Jerry Seinfeld

“Do you know who I am???”

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Today I have another valuable story for you about personal positioning.

So let me take you back to 2007, when Jerry Seinfeld went on Larry King Live, and when green-colored sparks started flying.

For reference:

Larry King hosted a massively popular live interview show on CNN, which ran from 1985 to 2010. Over a million people tuned in each night.

King had a habit of friendly and conversational interviews. He did over 50,000 of them — fifty thousand. He never did any research or prep.

For more reference:

Jerry Seinfeld is a comedian. He was the biggest television star of 1990s, thanks to his hit sitcom Seinfeld, which wrapped up in 1998.

Larry: You gave it up [the show]. They didn’t cancel you, you canceled them?
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Seinfeld: [pauses, then shakes his head for a split second] You’re not aware of this?

​Larry: I’m asking you.

​Seinfeld: You think I got cancelled? You’re under the impression I got cancelled?

​Larry: Have I hurt you Jerry?

​Seinfeld: I thought this was pretty well documented. [Looking around] Is this still CNN?

​Larry: Don’t most shows go down a little?

​Seinfeld: Most people do also. When I went off the air, it was the number one show in television. Larry, do you know who I am???

​Larry: Jewish guy, Brooklyn.

​Seinfeld: 75 million viewers!

Theories online say this exchange was all a joke, a good gag between pals.

I don’t think so. I think if you look, you can tell Jerry is first stunned and then annoyed at Larry King’s uninformed questions.

​​”Do you know who I am???” was a genuine, irritated, ego-led outburst.

​​And yet, it didn’t sound arrogant or repulsive in the actual live interview.

That’s because it was delivered with a smile, and with a bit of exasperation in Seinfeld’s voice. This was the stage persona Seinfeld had practiced over thousands of standup appearances and thousands of hours of shooting Seinfeld episodes.

I did a bit of research on how the mass mind reacted to this video. Some of the top comments read like this:

“i feel like seinfelds a real cunt irl.”

“He’s a classic narcissist. He is undoubtedly profoundly insecure about himself.”

“i loved Seinfeld. but i find Jerry very uncharismatic. he comes off as a douche sometimes.”

I don’t know whether Jerry Seinfeld is a narcissist or a cunt in real life. I do find it very possible.

Still, I love watching Seinfeld. And I personally like Jerry — at least the Jerry on the TV show.

So that’s my point for you for today.

If you want personal positioning that can win you an audience of millions, then you won’t do better than what I call “perfect neighbor positioning.”

Think Jerry Seinfeld. A smile, a bit of self-deprecating exasperation. But that’s just the start.

It’s worth studying Jerry Seinfeld, and fellow 90s sitcom stars like Ellen DeGeneres, Tim Allen, Jennifer Aniston, to see how they got to appear so likable, even if they’re not likable in real life.

I’ll write more about this. As I mentioned in earlier emails, I am working, slowly but shakily, on a little book about personal positioning.

In the meantime, I’d like to remind you of my Most Valuable Email training. It’s not about personal positioning, but—

If you write about persuasion or marketing, it can show you how to make your emails fun and even likable — without you investing your personality in the email at all. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Jerry Seinfeld’s serious joke about the news

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Today I watched a clip of Jerry Seinfeld on the Johnny Carson Show. Jerry smiles his precocious-boy smile and says:

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To me the most amazing thing about the news is that whatever goes on in the world, it exactly fits the number of pages that they’re using in the paper that day. [Johnny Carson chuckles off screen. Jerry continues:]

They must stand around after each edition going, “I don’t believe we just made it again! If one more thing happens, we’re screwed. There’s no more room in this paper!”

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This is a joke if you hear Jerry Seinfeld tell it, or imagine him with his mannerisms, or if you include that exaggeration at the end.

It’s not a joke if you just read the first sentence of that quote. It really is amazing that the day’s news always just fit the newspaper.

Of course, who reads newspapers any more — but the underlying point still stands:

The news was and is just a constant drip of telling you what to think, how to feel, how to react.

The news is not what’s worth knowing. At least that’s the way I look at it.

If you’re still reading, you might wonder what I think is worth knowing. I call it anti-news.

I’ve written before of my policy of not reading books that were published in just the last year.

I’ve been informed this has a clever name, “the Lindy effect,” after some long-surviving deli in New York.

The idea is, if something is worthwhile, it will still be worthwhile in a year from now. More generally, the longer something has been around, the more likely it is to keep being around.

This simple but powerful idea impacts everything I do, from the books I read to the emails I write to the offers I create. And since it’s time to start promoting:

It also lies behind my Copy Riddles program.

Copy Riddles is built on examples of winning copywriting that have been around for three, four, five, six decades or more.

But I’d take it still further back:

I believe Copy Riddles is really about the principles of effective communication, going back thousands of years. That might sound high-heeled, but it’s really what direct response marketing is — a merciless distillation that purifies and concentrates the evergreen principles of effective communication.

These principles were relevant yesterday, last year, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago.

And if you are looking to influence or manipulate people, these principles are your best bet for what will continue to be relevant tomorrow.

As marketing consultant Khaled Maziad wrote me to say after going through Copy Riddles:

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Man, this’s the best course on bullets I have ever seen. And believe me, I have seen a lot. I loved that you didn’t include bullet templates but went deep into the psychology behind each bullet. This course is not just about the “how-to” of writing bullets but understanding the artistry and the deep psychology behind them… Plus, when and where to use them.

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As you might know already:

This is the last week I am giving away two free bonuses with Copy Riddles. The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But if you decide you want to get Copy Riddles, you have until tomorrow, Saturday Jan 21, at 12 midnight PST to get Storytelling for Sales and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets as free bonuses.

After then, Copy Riddles will remain available, but the free bonuses will disappear.

To get the whole package:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Hot takes are dead… here’s why

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About six months ago, I wrote an email that for some reason I never sent. In that email, I wondered what had happened to James Altucher’s writing.

The background is this:

James Altucher is an online personality, a podcaster and also writer who used to write daily.

James is one of few people whose daily writing I enjoyed reading. Plus I’ve gotten multiple really valuable ideas from James that have transformed how I work.

James used to write regularly on his own site.

But his last post there came on June 15 2021. Since then he’s published a few pieces on other sites including LinkedIn, but his writing has largely disappeared.

There aren’t many people online that I would miss if they got swallowed by a sinkhole.

But James Altucher is one, largely because I’ve found his writing both insightful and valuable.

So I was wondering what happened to his writing and wishing somebody could tell me.

Well, I found out. James revealed it himself on a recent podcast.

Back in August 2020, he wrote an article titled, “New York City is dead forever… here’s why.”

James lived most of his life in NYC, but in that article, he predicted the death of the city based on the effects of the corona pandemic.

That article went very viral. It got a huge amount of readership, and also a huge amount of blowback.

And maybe most painful to James, who used to own a comedy club, “The New York is dead” piece got Jerry Seinfeld to write a trolling response in the lying New York Times in which he only referred to James as “some putz on LinkedIn.”

With all that blowback, and the personal attack by Jerry Seinfeld, James gradually retreated from writing. Maybe he will get his courage back to write daily. Or maybe he won’t.

I’m not sure what my point is. I guess there are many.

Such as, it’s harder to not care what people think that most of us would like.

Such as, don’t pick on people who are known to be combative (New Yorkers as a group, who knew about Jerry Seinfeld).

Such as, writing hot takes can burn you as well. And putting your own attitudes into your writing makes you vulnerable to personal attacks.

If you agree with me on these points, then what can you do?

Well, develop a tougher skin… only pick on people who will take it… or find some other way to get readership and attention than by writing hot takes and sharing your own personal attitudes.

I can’t help you with the skin part or with finding meek targets to pick on.

As for that last part, about other ways to get readership and attention, I can remind you of my Most Valuable Email trick.

A few of the emails I’ve written using my Most Valuable Email trick have gone semi-viral — they got unexpected forwards and shares in the small direct marketing community.

And using the Most Valuable Email trick allows me to write in a way that’s separate from what I believe personally. And yet my readers don’t mind this lack of “authenticity” — in fact, they even seem to enjoy it.

Maybe it’s not too clear how this can possibly be true.

If you’re curious, try out my email newsletter and witness it for yourself. Click here to sign up.

Jerry Seinfeld’s harsh words of encouragement

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Today I read an interesting article by a guy named Sam Sussman, who might be Bob Dylan’s son.

Sussman’s article starts out by describing how Sussman’s mom and Bob Dylan got together, back in 1974.

Dylan asked the mom, then 20 years old, to host a party in her tiny New York apartment.

He then showed up in red cowboy boots, along with a bunch of other people.

The other people left around 2am.

Dylan stayed. And with a flick of his red cowboy boots, he closed the front door behind the last guest, and then turned to face Sussman’s mom. And so their relationship started.

I thought Sussman’s article was worth reading for that boot-flicking seduction move alone.

Of course, Sussman has more serious soul-searching to do, including this bit:

But perhaps more than seeking a literal father, I looked to Dylan for evidence that I could make it as a writer. Besides my mother and my tenth-grade literature teacher, nobody had ever given me a reason to believe I could.

I guess Sussman turned out ok as a writer, in spite of a lack of early encouragement. His article appeared in Harper’s, and I think he’s got a novel out.

Still, that quote above made me think of a bit of advice Jerry Seinfeld gave in the 1980s to would-be comedians who had signed up for a stand-up comedy class. Jerry’s advice might sound harsh. In any case, it’s all I want to say for today, so I’ll leave you with his words, and you decide:

The fact that you have even signed up for this class is a very bad sign for what you’re trying to do.

The fact that you think anyone can help you or there’s anything that you need to learn…you have gone off on a bad track.

Because nobody knows anything about any of this.

And if you want to do it, what I really should do is I should have a giant flag behind me that I would pull a string and it would roll down, and on it the flag would just say two words:

Just work.

“That’s fine for today,” you might say, “but what about tomorrow?”

Tomorrow I’ll have something new for you. And if you’d like to read it, you can sign up for my email newsletter here.