“Looks like you just about cleaned everybody out, fella. You haven’t lost a hand since you got the deal. What’s your secret of your success?”
“Prayer.”
Let’s see if you recognize this magical Hollywood scene, and if you can spot the influence and positioning lesson within.
The scene in set in a Wild West saloon. Some cowboys are playing blackjack. One cowboy has been winning. Too much.
“You’re a hell of a card player,” says one of the other cowboys. “I know, cause I’m a hell of a card player. And I can’t even spot how you’re cheating.”
All the other cowboys push away from the table in a hurry. The accusing card player stands up. His hand is hovering at his hip, next to his gun.
“The money stays,” the accuser says. “And you go.”
I’ll continue the scene in a sec. I would just like to point out this is also likely to be how your prospects size up you and your business. “The money stays,” they say. “And you go.”
Moving on:
Suddenly, a new figure enters the scene.
This new guy is friendly and cheery. He goes over to the possibly cheating card player, who’s still seated. The new guy tries to pull the possible cheater out of the saloon before a gunfight goes down. But the guy won’t budge.
“I wasn’t cheating,” he says. “If he invites us to stay, then we’ll go.”
So now there’s this tense three-way standoff.
The accusing cowboy, standing and ready to draw his gun. The possibly cheating cowboy, still seated and looking cool and a little sad. And the third guy, cheery and helpful, trying to negotiate between the two of them.
“What would you think about maybe asking us to stick around?” the cheery guy says to the accusing cowboy. “You don’t have to mean it or nothing, just ask us—” But he gets shoved out of the way.
The cheery guy sighs and hangs his head. He turns to the seated, possibly cheating cowboy and says, “I can’t help you, Sundance.”
Suddenly the accuser, who was ready to draw his gun a second before, opens his eyes wide. Then he starts blinking.
“I didn’t know you were the Sundance Kid when I said you were cheating. If I draw on you, you’ll kill me.”
Sundance finally stands up from the table. “There’s that possibility,” he says.
But nobody dies in this scene, because, against all odds, the accusing cowboy decides to invite Sundance and his partner, Butch, to stick around.
“Thanks, but we gotta get going,” says Butch. So the two friends collect the money off the table, take a last sip of whisky, and head on out the door.
This magical scene, as you may have guessed, comes from Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, which won the Oscar for best screenplay in 1969. It’s one of my favorite films.
As for the influence and positioning lesson — well, I’ll leave you to think about that.
It’s particularly worth thinking about if you make a living via your expertise, your undeniable skill, in a world filled with other with other cowboys who might be faster draws than you are.
Because here’s what doesn’t happen in the scene above. There’s no demonstration of skill. No guns being drawn. There’s not even any bluster or talk of how fast anybody is. There’s just the mention of a name — Sundance.
I’ll write more about that one day soon.
Meanwhile if this topic interests you, take a look at my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. Not just for the content inside.
But for the fact that, out of tens of thousands of people who have worked as copywriters over the past century, there are just 10 that I thought worthy to highlight in this book.
How did they get to have that status and influence?
Well, you can get an idea of that by seeing how I talk about them in the book. To get that at an atrociously high price:
https://bejakovic.com/10commandments