There’s an episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza, the fat short bald loser who is always making up exciting careers for himself to impress women, realizes that everything he has done in life has lead to failure.
Desperate, George takes another tack.
He goes bizarro. He does the opposite of whatever he would normally do.
George starts by ordering the opposite lunch from what he normally gets. He then notices an attractive woman looking at him from across the restaurant.
Bizarro George decided to get up and go talk to her — because normal George never would.
“Excuse me,” George says to the woman, “I couldn’t help but notice you were looking in my direction.”
“Oh yes I was,” the woman explains. “You just ordered the exact same lunch as me.”
George takes a deep breath.
“My name is George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.”
The woman turns to face him fully, her eyes sparkling and a smile spreading across her face. “I’m Victoria. Hiii…”
Chris Haddad said in a recent interview that if you are a freelance copywriter, then you should be constantly going on Facebook, bragging about how great you are, and sharing all of your successes and testimonials.
That’s one approach. It can definitely work.
But there’s another approach. It’s when you seek to not impress. Instead, you give clients reasons why you are not a good match for them. You refuse to talk about your experience and successes, or at least you put it off as long as possible.
This is nothing more than a page out of Jim Camp’s negotiation system. You’re looking for a no. More importantly, you are eliminating any neediness that’s typical when freelancers talk to clients.
Very likely, this approach is not right for you.
But if you find that the typical advice of confidence and bragging has lead you to failure over and over… then this bizarro George approach is worth a shot. Because it can work, and not on just on TV.
Here’s another thing that is very likely not right for you:
My daily email newsletter. Very few people subscribe to it. Even fewer read it.