11 TV Shows That Make You a Better Marketer

Igor: Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
which delivers cutting edge conversion strategies from the online trenches straight to
your earbuds. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
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List Builder’s Survival Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival and now
once again it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

Welcome back to another edition of the List Building Lifestyle, with your host
Igor Kheifets. I’ve always been an advocate of the fact that if you want to master
something, you have to immerse yourself and create an environment in which that
skillset, or idea, or belief system can easily take root. And everything from that
moment forward that you do will be governed by those ideas.

For example, when I decided to go into the field of influence and persuasion, when
I decided that I would like to influence other people for a living, I would like
to master this skillset and to be able to put some words on paper, put some words
on video, and have other people give me money for that, or do things that I asked
them to do, when I decided that that would be my quote-unquote “job,” I had to
make a conscious decision to create an environment in which that skill could
actually live, and the reason that I kind of did it I think is unconscious really,
but I felt deep down that unless I do it this way, then something else will take
my attention. Something else will steal my focus and attention away from the
skillset, and I will not be able to foster it.

As a result, as sort of like a byproduct of that, anything that I consume,
anything that is within my environment, I always look at it with that sort of set
of glasses. It really comes down to talking to someone and always consciously
looking for all kinds of different traits, and facts, and observations that either
reaffirm a belief about marketing, or help me develop my marketing skillset, my
influence skillset. It can go as far as choosing the TV shows that you watch. In
fact, as a result of becoming an internet marketer and becoming a student of
influence, I find that it’s harder for me to watch a movie or a TV show, or read a
book, like a fiction book, that does not deliver any useful lessons in that
department in my life.

That is why in today’s episode, what I want to do, even though I’ve been kind of
slacking off of the TV lately … Ever since I moved to Canada, I haven’t had much
time to actually just sit down and watch TV, so really had to cut it down to just
a couple of shows. But what I wanted to do today is I wanted to share with you the
11 TV shows that I watch or used to watch that I believe make me a better
marketer, which basically means the TV shows that you can watch, that if you watch
them with the right frame, okay, that’s really important to remember here. It also
depends on the kind of frame you approach something with. That can make you a
better marketer, a better influencer, or a better thinker, which, again, all
three, as far as I’m concerned, are really useful outcomes, right? They’re really
useful benefits of watching TV, because most people, when they sit down to watch
TV, they do it to sort of disconnect. What most people do is they use TV as a form
of a drug. They binge watch a TV series just because that feels better than doing
any actual work.

I used to do that myself. When I was just getting started in marketing, the first
two, two-and-a-half years, that’s a very critical time in any marketer’s life, and
what I noticed that I would do, any time I would have to do something difficult,
something that I would consider difficult, for example, writing an email, or
building a sales funnel, or creating something, which at the time I did not have a
habit of doing, but now I recognize as one of the most important habits you can
have in your business, and that is to create, meaning creating content, creating
marketing, creating sales funnels, creating anything. The mere act of recording
this podcast in and of itself is a creation process, which advances my business
forward. Therefore, any time in the first two, two-and-a-half years that I needed
to create something, I would kind of retreat back into the habit of binge watching
TV shows. At the time, I had two TV shows that I loved to binge watch, and those
were South Park and Top Gear. I’ll get to those in a bit.

My ideal outcome for this episode for you listening right now is to help you
choose the right TV shows you can watch so you can improve your skillset even
during your downtime, and get your fair dose of entertainment, because obviously
we all need some downtime. We all need some time to just decompress, as my friend
David Dekel says. You know, “Sometimes you just gotta decompress.” Even when
you’re decompressing, it feels really nice to be doing that and still learning
something that you can use in your business. That is why I’m gonna share with you
the 11 TV shows that make you, in my opinion, a much better marketer and a much
better influencer.

First, my all-time, I would say all-time, number one favorite TV show, House of
Cards. Unfortunately, this show has been discontinued due to Kevin Spacey’s recent
gay scandal or whatever, which I think, honestly, I don’t care if the guy’s gay. I
don’t care if he molested anyone. I just wish they’d bring back the show. I know
how inconsiderate that sounds coming from me, but I just enjoy the show so much,
and the last episode ended on such a cliffhanger that I have to see the next one.
I really hope they bring back Spacey and they bring back the House of Cards,
because the show is incredible. Since the very first episode, that show really
grabbed me, because it’s all about power games.

What this show really did for me, it gave me a glimpse into the world of politics,
first and foremost, and kind of the world where the state of the nation is being
determined, every single moment. When things can go wrong, and now you’re fighting
another country, or you’re on the verge of crisis with China, and now you have to
go. The hero has to go and fix that, while at the same time having three other
enemies trying to take him down, because they don’t like him. The hero, Francis,
he’s really, really good at not losing, this guy. This is what I really, really
respect about him. It doesn’t matter how difficult a situation is. It doesn’t
matter how unlikely his success is, but he always finds a way to not lose. He may
not always win. He may need to compromise, but he will never lose, and he always
finds that way. Even when the situation seems like it’s completely out of his
control, he never, never, ever loses, and he always faces the challenges head-on.

Now, not only that, but what this guy is doing as well is, he’s always playing
with high stakes. He’s never afraid to raise the bar for what’s going on. He’s
always sort of like walking on the edge, right? Balancing on a high wire. That
makes this whole experience even more exciting for me, just thrills me, because
every single time, I’m asking myself, “Why would he do that? Why would he not just
kind of settle and just stay where he is, and be happy with what he got?” But he
always raises the stakes. He lives dangerously, concerning his position, and to
me, the guy’s an inspiration because he’s always able to not lose.

There’s a phrase in one of the episodes, I think in season four or season five,
and he talks about it. He talks about, “You can’t afford to lose.” Like, “You may
not win, but you better not lose, because the moment you lose, it’s over.” “They
remember you,” he says, “until you lose for the first time. But for as long as you
don’t lose, for as long as you are still on your feet, still dancing, they will
remember you.” I just find that super, super inspirational. I really enjoy the
show. I highly recommend watching it.

In addition, there’s other things about it that really stand out. First off, the
whole body language situation. This is something that I’ve been discussing with my
friend Lana, who runs my office. She’s been paying attention to … Lana’s just
really great at pointing out the small, the tiny little details, which I often
miss. Then I go back and I watch the show again, and I’ve watched it I think like
three times now, and I pay attention to the looks, and the body language, and the
tone of the voice. Everything is perfect, down to the tiny little detail, and just
a standing ovation for the people who created the show, because they just
understand human psychology better than 99.9% of people out there. The more you
watch the show, the more you’ll understand where I’m getting at, so just go ahead,
put it on your binge list, if you wish. It’s called House of Cards, and you have
to get it. It’s on Netflix.

Now, the other one that is another top five favorite of mine is Breaking Bad.
Breaking Bad, and I wrote a lot about it, one of the reasons why I love Breaking
Bad is because it’s a story of a loser, of somebody who’s a schoolteacher, a
chemistry schoolteacher, who’s really smart, but who obviously settled in life. He
settled for a mediocre, boring life. He gets the news that he’s got cancer. Now,
at that point, under a certain circumstance, he comes across a world of drugs, and
he recognizes that his knowledge and skillset allows him to create drugs and sell
them so he can get rich. In other words, he can quickly make a lot of money, and
tuck that money away for his family.

But what ends up happening throughout the show is that through this journey of
becoming a drug dealer and a drug producer, he kind of falls into this world of
drugs, obviously, and crime, but in addition, it becomes a playground for him to
achieve personal growth, and he starts taking control of his life. In his journey
to doing so, he’s also got this sidekick, Jesse, who he’s got this love-hate
relationship with, who used to be his student in high school but is now an up and
coming drug dealer, and together they started doing all kinds of crazy stuff.
While Walter is the hero, while Walter’s brother-in-law is the head of the DEA, or
the FBI, whatever. Basically, he’s coming after him without knowing that it’s
Walter.

The show is incredible. You kind of have to push yourself through the first couple
of episodes. You kind of have to make yourself watch them, but then you get
hooked, and from that point it’s just an amazing show with lots of lessons on how
to be ballsy, how to be more daring, how to just step up to the plate and play on
the higher level, which again, I find to be inspiring, because oftentimes I find
myself playing on the smaller level in life. I often regret not playing on a
higher level. Only years, years, years, years later, then I know that I could have
much earlier. Breaking Bad is another one definitely in the top five of my
favorites.

The next one is actually from the same people who created Breaking Bad. It’s
called Better Call Saul. Now, Saul Goodman is a character in Breaking Bad. He’s a
lawyer, and he’s this really slick lawyer that manipulates people and uses all the
possible and impossible loopholes, breaks the law, does whatever he needs to do in
order to get the job done and save his ass from disasters and really dangerous
people. This guy, he was so good. The character was so good they actually created
a show for him, just specifically for him. The show takes us to way before Walter
White and the Breaking Bad. It takes us to the story of how Saul Goodman was
created.

It’s an incredible story of success. It’s an incredible entrepreneurial journey,
because he did not have a lawyer degree or whatever. He had a brother who was a
lawyer and had a law firm, and he started out in his brother’s mail room, and the
way life sort of turned out is that he needed to go from this criminal, because he
started out as a criminal, as a scam artist. He would try to rip people off, and
get them to bribe him not to file lawsuits. He was a professional suer, and he
stole people’s watches. He had done all kinds of crazy stuff, but then he decides
to step up and become a lawyer, which is a true American story, you know? Criminal
becomes lawyer. It doesn’t get any more Hollywood-like than that.

The show is shot in the exact same style, in the exact same frame, if you will, as
Breaking Bad, with great attention to detail, and with just showing you how to
overcome challenges and how to solve problems. Because once again, Saul Goodman
faces scenarios that require incredible creativity in solving those problems and
challenges and scenarios, and he’s often up against people much more powerful and
much smarter than he is, and in spite of that, in spite of that, he’s able to find
a way to succeed. Not always. I mean, sometimes he loses, but a lot of times he
succeeds.

In addition, there’s another character in that show that’s also on Breaking Bad,
and that … I don’t remember the guy’s name, but he’s an ex-cop, and this guy is
just like a Sherlock Holmes, but the American, old version. Somebody who’s really,
really tired. He’s got these huge bags under his eyes. The guy’s just tired, and
he’s a security guard, but ex-cop, and he’s helping out Saul every now and again.
They also show, in parallel, his life. His life of how he’s just getting by, and
doing these odd jobs, sort of GTA style. You know, when he’s going out to be a
bodyguard for someone, or … It’s just a really, really cool show, with really
interesting characters and really interesting life stories, while presenting you
with lots of examples of how you can creatively solve problems. That’s why I like
Better Call Saul.

Now, the next one is actually a sitcom. It’s called Silicon Valley, and this is a
sitcom about a company called Pied Piper that is basically a file compression
mechanism, okay? Now, this guy, he’s just a programmer. He lives in an incubator,
and he codes for a living for someone, and then he discovers this algorithm. It
gets public and becomes one of the biggest things out there, and throughout the
show, while it’s really, really funny, what it shows you is how completely
incompetent people try to run a high-level Silicon Valley business.

First and foremost, what this show does for me, it actually reminds me of how
lucky I am to be in the information marketing space, and not being a Silicon
Valley programmer or developer, because these guys have it much worse. Much, much,
much worse than we do. It is much easier for us, for information marketers and
internet marketers to start a business and start making really good living, and
just be free, be our own bosses, than it is to build a multi, multi, multi,
multi-million dollar software company, because when that happens, you’re literally
a prisoner of your business in a way where you can’t do anything without getting
approval of at least five other people.

Now, not only that, but the character Richard, Richard Hendricks, he’s so
incompetent, and he lacks confidence, he does not have any public speaking skills.
All he can do is just code. The only thing he can actually talk to is his
computer, and as you understand, to run a business, you need a bunch of different
skills. You need to be able to negotiate. You need to be able to have that vision.
You need to have a backbone of some kind. You need to have some connections. He’s
making every single mistake a business owner can make, and it’s just really,
really funny to watch that, and how, again, just like other shows that I mentioned
so far, in spite of doing it wrong, in spite of making all these mistakes, still
somehow he’s able to advance towards his goals.

Oftentimes another big lesson from the show is that oftentimes he sets out to
achieve something, and that doesn’t work out because of the mistakes he’s making,
because of circumstances he did not take into account, and that leads him into a
discovery that then sparks a different path that is much better than the path that
he was on, which is oftentimes that’s how it happened for me in marketing. I would
set out to create something, would set out to get something, but then in that
process of discovery, I would stumble into a completely different belief, or fact,
or accidental success that I would then take to the next level, which is how I
discovered solo ads. Solo ads were just a means of getting traffic for my funnels.
I never planned to become the biggest solo ad agency owner in the world, but it
did happen as a result of just me kind of figuring out solo ads, and then in that
process, I’m like, “Oh, wait. What if I did this?” Then I took it to a different
direction, and the rest is history.

Silicon Valley, highly, highly recommend it if you want to just have a really good
laugh, and at the same time, get some business lessons.

Now, the next one is Homeland. Now, Homeland is very dear to my heart for two
reasons. First off, it’s been created by an Israeli, or a bunch of Israelis.
There’s actually an identical show in Israel, with the exact same concept, only it
happens between Israel and Palestine, and other Middle Eastern countries, while
Homeland happens between the USA and Middle East. In addition to that, the reason
Homeland is so interesting, especially the first three seasons, is because the
most incredible, the most unlikely, the most outrageous scenario actually comes
true, which in life, it happens. We’re not ready to it. We often kind of brush
things off and we hope for the best, and we say things like, “Oh, it’s not gonna
happen to me.” But a lot of times, it does happen to you. A lot of times things do
happen, and you have to be ready for them.

The character, Carrie, she’s got this thing where she’s able to see through a
really complicated web of spies, a web of conspiracies. She’s able to kind of
reverse engineer that without having … At first glance, without having anything,
anything that might point her in the right direction. That is why it’s kind of
like a Sherlock Holmes kind of detective story, but in the context of the Middle
East, and the war that the Middle East has with the rest of the world, which I
find to be just very close to my heart, like I said, because I’ve been involved in
that conflict firsthand. I’ve lived in the country that gets bombed by another
Middle Eastern country, so this dynamic, this constant state of tension, and
pressure, and spy games, I just happen to love that stuff, and observing the way
the character deals with issues and is able to pivot constantly when another door,
and another door, and another door gets slammed in her face is inspiring to me to
watch.

These are the first five shows. If you noticed, a lot of them have a common theme,
and that is a problem solving exercise, okay? The reason that is important is
because as an entrepreneur, that’s what you are. You’re a problem solver. That’s
all you’re doing all day. You’re either solving problems for yourself, or you’re
solving problems for other people, and recently I hosted Armand Morin, one of the
most, well, I would say experienced internet marketers out there, and he shared
that his entire career was about overcoming a problem for himself and then selling
that solution to other people. That’s what he built his entire business on.

As an entrepreneur, anything that you watch, any TV show or any story you read,
where you get to learn how to better solve problems, that will usually benefit
you, simply because that is your business. Your business is solving problems. In
fact, we can even take this a level higher than that, and another person I
interviewed on the show, Mark Manson, and you should really check out his blog at
MarkManson.net, he talks about how life is nothing but a big problem solving
exercise. What you’re doing at every point in your life is you’re just choosing
which problems you want to deal with, right?

If you’re choosing to have a job, you’re choosing to deal with all kinds of
problems associated with a job, like a boss, and small paycheck, and this looming
threat of losing your income at any point based on someone else’s whim, and all
that kind of stuff. Or as an entrepreneur, you choose to solve different sets of
problems. For example, how to drive traffic, how to pay your taxes, how to get
better customers, how to deal with difficult customers, and so on and so forth.
It’s always a problem solving exercise, and oftentimes what I see is people who
fail at internet marketing or at marketing in general, or at just running their
own businesses, they suck at solving problems. Not because they lack the
creativity to do it, but because they see each problem as a huge wall that’s
impenetrable and unlikely to get solved sort of problem, and that’s a mistake,
because the more problems you’ll solve, the better marketer you become, the more
money you’ll make. Therefore, you should welcome problems in your life. You just
have to get better at solving them, and that would be my primary advice about
that.

Moving forward, moving on, we’ve got six more shows to cover, and we’re gonna kind
of speed through them. The first one … I’m sorry. The sixth one is Death Note.
Now, Death Note is the only anime on this list. It’s a cartoon. It’s a Japanese
cartoon show, and there’s also a movie, actually, but the movie kind of sucks, so
you better just watch the original Japanese TV show cartoon. The Death Note, quite
literally, is problem solving on steroids. It is incredible, because the story
takes place in a Japanese city where a really smart kid finds a notebook that fell
from the sky, and this is the only far fetched thing about the show, but he finds
a notebook that fell from the sky that’s called the Death Note.

What happens is, he can write anyone’s name in that notebook, as long as he knows
how they look, and he can describe how he wants them to die, and when, and every
single thing about it, about their death, and it actually takes place. The first
thing that this kid does is he starts killing criminals in prisons, because he
believes that people who are just really bad for society, that have done
unforgivable crimes, people have like 27 life sentences, and people who have
killed other people, and they’re not likely to change, he decides that he’s just
gonna kill them. He starts doing that, and as he does, obviously the government is
like going nuts, and they don’t understand what’s going on. They bring this
detective, whose name is L, and this detective starts looking up this kid. I Now,
imagine how unlikely he is to find him, given the fact that the kid can just write
your name in the notebook and you die. Yet the show, throughout the entire show, L
is always one or two steps behind the kid, and it’s incredible. It’s this constant
battle between them. The battle of the minds. It’s just mind-boggling, and the
strategies that L is using to find the kid are also mind-boggling. It’s the things
you least expert for a detective to do.

When you really look at that show from a marketer’s perspective, that is actually
very, very useful for you to learn, because the moment you become unpredictable to
your market, the moment you become what Frank Kern likes to call “the pattern
interrupter,” right? Somebody who interrupts lots of these marketing patterns,
that’s the moment when you start getting much better results with your marketing.
If you are a cliché, if you are boring and predictable in the way you deliver your
marketing, then the marketplace will punish you by not buying from you. Death
Note, absolutely incredible. Definitely in my top five all-time favorite TV shows.

Now, the next one is Westworld. You’ve probably heard of Westworld. You’ve
probably heard about it because of all the sex, and violence, and killing, and
blood. I think the only show that actually rivals Westworld in the amount of blood
spilling and sex is Game of Thrones, which did not make it on this list because I
watch Game of Thrones purely for entertainment purposes. Other than that, the only
other thing that I can say about Game of Thrones is that each character is so
vivid and specific that that is interesting, and you can structure your marketing
around characters if you want, but mostly it’s just for pure entertainment for me.

But Westworld actually shares a bunch of different lessons, the primary lesson
being is that while the Westworld people, they’ve created this world where you can
come in and there’s robots, but they look, and feel, and talk, and do everything
just like people. You can never tell they’re robots, and you can do whatever you
want with them. You can kill them, you can rape them. You can start a family with
them. You can do whatever. They start sending all these rich people into this game
world, they call it the Westworld, to basically entertain them. But what you
discover towards the end of the first season, that this entertainment is actually
much more to people than that. To many of them, especially to one of the
characters, it’s more about finding yourself and finding the meaning of life, more
than anything else.

It’s really interesting as a concept. It’s great filmmaking, great screenwriting,
and I highly recommend you watch it as a marketer. Definitely don’t watch it with
your kids. It’s PG, I would give it like PG-30. I mean, it’s just an incredibly
violent show, and I highly, highly recommend it for the sake of the lessons. I
also recommend, once you watch it, get on YouTube and go search for some videos
that explain to you the meaning of the show. In other words, the lessons from the
Westworld, because there’s more lessons to it than you initially can grasp, and it
really helps for someone else to point these lessons out for you, for you to be
able to better retain them, because the show does deliver quite a few powerful
messages which you will benefit from.

We’ve got four more shows to go. The next one on my list is Seinfeld. Now, the
reason Seinfeld is an amazing show is because it’s just an example of how you can
turn the absolutely most mundane and boring thing out of your life into a sitcom
episode, and make millions, millions, millions, and millions of dollars per
season, just like Jerry Seinfeld did. He takes an absolutely boring, everyday
scenario, like getting soup, right? Going into a soup kitchen or a diner and
getting a soup, and he turns that into a hilarious experience. You can do the same
thing with your emails. You can do the same thing with your marketing videos, with
your webinars. You can do the same thing with anything that you put out there, and
Seinfeld is a great testament of how it’s actually done.

My favorite episode by far is the Soup Nazi episode. I highly recommend you check
it out. Basically, again, Jerry Seinfeld, what he’s done is he took this most
mundane thing, the most common thing anyone can do, which is to go to a diner and
get some food. He turned that into a hilarious experience, and very, very
interesting episode. Something that’s stuck in my mind for years now, over 10
years. You can do exactly the same with everything you put out there, starting
with your emails. If you ever struggle to come up with ideas for your marketing
emails, for your marketing videos, I highly recommend you check Seinfeld out,
because it will be an inspiration.

By the way, the same thing I can say about Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is a show
by Larry David. He’s one of the guys, he’s basically a co-creator of Seinfeld,
along with Jerry, Jerry Seinfeld. Larry David, the Curb Your Enthusiasm show, I
don’t like it as much as I like Seinfeld, because Seinfeld doesn’t hurt as much.
In other words, Larry David’s show always hurts. I mean, it’s just emotionally
hard for me to watch it, because he’s always stuck in these awkward situations
that I would really hate to be stuck in myself, but again, they happen as a result
of completely boring, everyday things.

For example, he’s got this one episode. Basically he’s in the coffee shop, goes to
the bathroom, leaves the laptop on the table, but he notices a black guy sitting
to the right, so he goes to the bathroom, comes back, there’s no laptop.
Immediately he thinks that that black guy stole the laptop, and Larry David is
white. The entire episode is all about that, is all about him trying to find out
this guy, and trying to not make it sound to people that he’s a racist, because
he’s looking for a black guy who stole the laptop. Again, the situation is
awkward. I would really hate to be stuck in that situation myself, and you can
watch that show for the same reason you would watch Seinfeld, but in my opinion,
Seinfeld is just a little lighter. It’s kind of like eating that broccoli dipped
in chocolate. It’s really, really good for you as a marketer.

All right. South Park. You know, I used to watch a lot of Family Guy, and at some
point it just got boring, because the jokes are just stupid. South Park used to be
stupid, but then it matured into a bigger picture. In other words, they went from
having really stupid episodes making fun of just really silly things, to them
creating episodes that make fun of real issues, to then creating seasons that have
an overarching storyline making fun of a bigger issue. For example, they got a
whole season devoted to the presidential election between Hillary and Trump, and
they make fun of the Trump’s political campaign in a really unique and exquisite
way. Of course, no holds barred. It’s rated R. There’s lots of swearing, lots of
sex words and everything, but if you can get past that, South Park just offers you
lots of frameworks to use in your marketing to take ideas and make fun of these
ideas, and turn these ideas into profitable marketing material.

Okay. I really recommend you watch that if you’re looking to do something like
that. If you’re an entertainer, if you’re on social media, if you’re a podcaster,
if you want to write really interesting emails for people, you need to check out
South Park, because the way they make fun of political issues is just ridiculous.
I don’t think there’s anyone out there right now who’s better at it than South
Park.

The one before last that I want to share with you is Top Gear. Now, Top Gear,
here’s why I love Top Gear. First off, I love cars. I’m just a huge car buff, and
Top Gear always reviews all these crazy cars, but what they really do well, and
this is one of the reasons why I think I started writing emails really well, is
because they take what’s really boring, what other companies and TV shows do in a
really boring way, where they take a car, and it’s always the same thing. It’s
like, “Okay, let’s check out the interior. Let’s check out the engine. Let’s take
it on the road, and let’s see how it drives.” You get a few shots of it going up
and down hills and stuff like that, and that’s it.

With Top Gear, the presenters on the show, there’s three of them. There’s Jeremy,
there’s Richard, and James. They find unique angles, unique frames through which
they want to present cars. They’re not apologetic. They’re really unapologetic
about the cars they actually like. For example, one of the recent episodes they’ve
done, they reviewed Jaguars, and they wanted to prove to people that Jaguars are
reliable, and they’re good cars, which of course they’re not. They’re not reliable
and they’re not really good cars. There’s much better cars out there, but they
really love the Jaguars because the three guys are British, and they’re sort of
proud of the Jaguar as a brand.

What I loved about it is that, in spite of having all this proof that Jaguar is a
crappy car, they still insisted and tried to prove it through challenges, and
through different sort of angles and stories, and this is really good for you as
an email marketer or as somebody who wants to express an opinion on social media,
or somebody who wants to present something in a webinar, because you really can
not influence other people unless you have a concrete position about something. If
you want to talk about email marketing versus social media, which I talk a lot
about, I’m one-sided to email marketing, and I’m unapologetic about it, and that’s
one of the things that helps me in business. Same thing with the guys on Top Gear.
They often express an opinion that they’ve decided on that opinion way before they
started shooting the show about the car, and then they frame it in a way to make
you like it.

For example, I remember this one episode when Jeremy was reviewing a Ford Mondeo,
right? Ford Mondeo is a European version of Ford Towers, I think, and I used to
actually want to have that car. I used to dream of that car. I know how low I set
the bar for myself, but hey, I was only 17 years old. I really wanted a Ford
Mondeo, and Jeremy Clarkson was actually reviewing one, and you know what he did?
He brought a bunch of statistics to show you that it’s not a bad car. What he’d
done is that he said there were only 2,000 of them sold in that year, compared to,
say, 10,000 of Aston Martins that were sold that year. In other words, he says
basically you’re gonna stand out more if you drive a Mondeo than if you drive an
Aston Martin.

I mean, that was one of the ways that you take an idea and then you present it in
a very interesting form, with a concrete opinion attached to it. That is
important. If you want to influence people, if you want to have a voice in this
marketplace, you absolutely have to be presenting things that way. You can not be
wishy washy. You can not be undecided. I highly recommend Top Gear if you want to
learn how to develop your own voice, all right?

Last but not least is the Conan O’Brien. Now, I’m not sure whether Conan is still
out there. I haven’t watched it in years, but what I liked about Conan O’Brien is
two things. First, I really picked up a lot observing him on how to interview
people, which is something that became a big part of my online career. I’ve been
interviewing people in marketing for as long as I can remember. That’s actually
one of the secrets to developing authority and to developing an audience really,
really quickly. You start interviewing other successful people, and it sort of
rubs on you real quick.

In addition, what Conan O’Brien and any other late night show do really well is
that they take on things that are happening right now, and they make a joke. They
make fun of these things. They make a joke out of them. That is useful. That is
useful to you as an email marketer, because you can be writing about things that
are happening right this second, they will feel really good to people who read
them, and at the same time you’ll be able to spin these things into useful
marketing material.

Once again, the show list is House of Cards, Breaking Bad, Silicon Valley,
Homeland, Better Call Saul, Death Note, Westworld, Seinfeld, South Park, Top Gear,
and Conan O’Brien. Now, many of these shows you can get online for free. You can
watch the old versions, the new versions, whatever. Top Gear is now The Grand Tour
on Amazon. Anyway, if you’re into watching TV, if you want to decompress, watch
any of these, and I promise you will become a better marketer, a better problem
solver, a better thinker, and a better influencer. Not to mention that most of
these shows are fiction, right, so you can also become a better storyteller if you
pay attention to how the story unfolds, but that’s for another time.

These are the 11 TV shows that will make you a better marketer. This is Igor
Kheifets, and until next time we chat, have a good one.

Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle. Make sure to subscribe on
iTunes or Google Play to never miss an episode, because who knows? Just one
conversion tactic we share on the show might double your list and double your
business. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. And don’t forget to claim your complimentary copy
of The Wealthy List Builders Survival Guide at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival .
This is Igor Kheifets, and until next time we talk, have a good one.