Seinfeld

Here’s something interesting you haven’t thought about before

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This morning I was chewing on a carrot — I’m trying to eat more vegetables — and to distract myself, I put on a standup comedy routine by Larry David, the writer behind Seinfeld and later the star of Curb Your Enthusiasm. David opened his set by saying:

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You seem like a very nice audience. I’m wondering, in case I break into some Spanish or French, may I use the familiar “tu” form with you people? Instead of “usted”? Because I think “usted” is gonna be a little too formal for this crowd. I feel already that I’ve established the kind of rapport that I can jump into the “tu” form with you.

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Larry David’s brand of humor is awkwardness. He always hits a snag on social interactions that others handle smoothly. He has to verbalize and negotiate things that others do subconsciously or nonverbally. That’s why his opening above illustrates the following point so well:

Comedians assume familiarity in their sets.

Why familiarity? Because being familiar is a precondition to being funny.

Comedian Bill Burr opens his “Why Do I Do This” special — my favorite — by saying, “It’s nice to be here. I didn’t do shit today. I didn’t. I’m a loser man. I just sat around watching TV and all that type of stuff. Let me tell you something…” Only then does he launch into his actual set.

You might wonder why I’m killing the joke in this way.

It’s because the same applies to you, at least if you want to influence other people, to sell your products, your services, or your ideas.

Comedians assume familiarity. So do pick up artists. Hypnotists do something similar that suits them, and that’s to assume trance.

The result is that their audiences, targets, and subjects, follow.

So that’s my suggestion for you too:

Figure out what goal you are trying to lead people to. Then figure out what the preconditions are for that.

And then, just act as-if. Assume that the preconditions are true.

Do it with enough conviction — not like Larry David, but like Bill Burr — and people will fall into step with you. This is as true of sales and copywriting as it is of comedy, magic, and seduction.

Speaking of seduction:

If you think you might learn a thing or two from me about influence, then consider my Copy Riddles course.

​​I break down the seemingly simplest type of copy — sales bullets — along dimensions you might not have ever thought about.

​​The result is you go from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence quickly… and then with a bit of practice to unconscious competence, where you simply own these copywriting skills, cold.
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​In case you’re interested:

​https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The George Costanza school of formulaic but effective emails

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In the new course I just released, Simple Money Emails, I gave the example of an effective “George Costanza school” email I wrote five years ago.

That email used “The Opposite” storyline from Seinfeld. George realizes every decision he has ever made in life has been a mistake, and decides to start doing the opposite from now on. Good things follow.

I used this story to open an email for my old aromatherapy list (I used to be a low-grade aromatherapy influencer once). Sure enough, I sold some copies of my aromatherapy book via that George Constanza trope. And I’m not the only one…

… ​​and not in the aromatherapy niche only.

Yesterday, I got an email from a long-time customer and reader (not sure he wants me to share his name), who wrote me after getting SME to say:

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Hey John! Loving the course so far, and very interested in the “9 sins” offer.

One thing that made me laugh while reading it is that I used this same episode and story about George Constanza twice in different emails for different lists to sell some courses, successfully.

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I don’t know which lists and which courses he made sales to with this story. But the smaller point is clear. ​​If you ever need a formulaic but effective way to open your email:

Use “The Opposite” storyline from Seinfeld. It can fly in pretty much any market.

Bigger point:

It might seem obvious that you want to open your emails with stories that help you make the sale. But it’s not obvious at all, at least based on the 100+ emails I’ve been paid to critique and review over the past year.

All the time, I see people who open their sales emails with cute or interesting stories that go nowhere, or at least nowhere near the offer they are promoting.

And then these same people wonder why they’re not making any sales — the email marketing equivalent of being unemployed and living with your parents.

And on that note, I’m putting on a live training next Monday, 9 Deadly Email Sins.

The above is one of the 9 sins. The others are equally as simple, equally as widespread, and equally as deadly.

If you’d like find out what these sins are, so you can take a 180-degree turn away from them and towards a new, more successful episode in your life:

https://bejakovic.com/sme-classified-ty/​​

The quantum theory of sitcom or blowing your readers’ minds

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Two weeks ago, I wrote an email all about my futile, morning-long search for a quote about Larry David and how he ran the writers for “Seinfeld” like a team of huskies pulling a sled.

It turns out my search wasn’t entirely futile. I did come across the following interesting bit by Larry Charles.

Charles used to be the supervising producer on “Seinfeld.” In a New Yorker article, he remembered the exact moment, during the development of season three, when he was talking to Larry David and when things clicked:

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We went, “What if the book that was overdue was in the homeless guy’s car? And the homeless guy was the gym teacher that had done the wedgie? And what if, when they return the book, Kramer has a relationship with the librarian?”

Suddenly it’s like — why not? It’s like, boom boom boom, an epiphany — quantum theory of sitcom! It was, like, nobody’s doing this! Usually, there’s the A story, the B story — no, let’s have five stories! And all the characters’ stories intersect in some sort of weirdly organic way, and you just see what happens. It was like — oh my God. It was like finding the cure for cancer.

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Last November, I put together a live training about creating an a-ha moment in your reader’s brain or brains.

I did a lot of research and a lot of thinking to prepare for that training.

One thing I realized is how there’s 98% overlap, perhaps 98.2%, between creating an a-ha moment and creating a ha-ha moment.

The difference mainly comes down to context, tone, the kind of setting you find yourself in.

On the other hand, the structure, techniques, necessary ingredients, and resulting effects are all the same between a-ha and ha-ha, insight and comedy.

So maybe it’s worth looking at Charles’s quote above in more detail, at least if you want to blow your readers’ minds.

Notice what it doesn’t say:

* There’s nothing about character development

* There’s nothing about carefully crafted language

* There really nothing about the substance of the thing, rather only about the form, the structure

Maybe you find all this kind of abstract.

Maybe you’d like some more concrete stories and examples to illustrate how to take the quantum theory of sitcom above, and use it to blow people’s minds.

If that’s what you’d like, I’ve put together a course about it, called Most Valuable Email. It tells you one way, which has worked very well for me, to take Charles’s idea above and apply it to writing daily emails.

Most Valuable Email also gives you 51 concrete examples of the most successful, influential, and insightful emails that use the Most Valuable Email trick.

It’s very possible you’ve decided Most Valuable Email isn’t for you. That’s fine. Otherwise, you can find more information here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The George Costanza sales close

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There’s an episode of Seinfeld in which George and his new girlfriend are walking on the beach — and George gets caught in a lie.

The whole time he’s been with the girlfriend, he’s been telling her he’s a marine biologist.

“Then of course with evolution the octopus lost the nostrils,” he says modestly as the girlfriend hangs onto his every word.

Suddenly, the two lovebirds come on a group of people on the beach who are all pointing to something out there among the waves.

It’s a beached whale, who seems to be struggling and maybe even dying.

“Save the whale, George,” says the girlfriend, “for me.”

And so rather than get caught in his lie, what does George do?

He throws off his baseball cap, rolls up his pants, and wades out there among the crashing waves to face the great beast like a true marine biologist.

Because George knows talk is cheap.

All the stories in the world won’t build a bullet-proof sales argument.

Not like one solid demonstration can build.

And that’s why Claude Hopkins, who has been called the father of direct advertising, once wrote:

“The way to sell goods is to sample and demonstrate, and the more attractive you can make your demonstration the better it will be.”

So if you’re looking to close a sale, think of ways your prospects can try out a sample or a demonstration of what you offer.

And if you can’t get them to sample your product directly, then at least make sure they witness a second-hand demonstration, just like George’s girlfriend witnesses him climbing out into the splashing waves to rescue the great fish. Mammal. Whatever.