How I Fixed My “Borat English”

Hello, hello, fellow earthlings and maybe an alien or two if you’ve got his brains and a bit of linguistic curiosity, then welcome aboard this brand new episode of the list building lifestyle show. I’m your phantom guest host today the names Carlin, George Carlin materialized straight from the cosmos just for your entertainment. And now without further ado introducing the star of our show the illustrious multilingual globe trotting email maneuver, Igor Kheifets. Now here’s a man who’s bounced around the globe more times than a basketball in the NBA Finals, born in Ukraine, became a teenager in Israel and then thought why not add a little frostbite to my life and move to Canada and he is now ready to pack his bags for yet another undisclosed destination. Igor is and your average marketer is a linguistic Acrobat who jumped headfirst into an English speaking market while he was still speaking what his mentor finally called Born in English through trial and error, and what I can only assume were some pretty confused English speaking clients. He got them all in his English into something quite spectacular. And in this episode, we’re going on that journey from I think he said hello to did this guy swallow a thesaurus, you better hold onto your hats as our host reveals the secrets of his rather impressive linguistic evolution, how he moved from Ballarat to Byron, and all the linguistic somersaults in between so ladies and gents, let’s get started.

01:26

I’m Igor Kheifets. And this is the list building lifestyle. The podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process. This podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my best selling book, the list building lifestyle confessions of an email millionaire at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 Bonus packages includes my best capture page templates, email swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle

02:11

I was gonna ask about learning English. Obviously you’re going to say in the book that you’re not a native English speaker. You refer to your English as bar in English, which I loved as well as hilarious. I’m definitely going to be telling my students that they’re speaking in English when they’re messing. Yeah, I just thought, what was your process with learning English? You’ve obviously had to learn other languages before so.

02:36

Yeah, so Well, first off, I have to admit that I was learning English as a student from the first grade, I got lucky, I was going to the original school number five in Ukraine, that was actually what it was called the School Number five, kind of like Mambo number five, but minus the Jamaican and the girls and the music. So we had one class, one class that had English, the other classes had German, because remember, we’re coming off of the Soviet Union falling apart. And back when the Soviet Union used to exist, the eastern part of Europe was basically, you know, East Germany, you know, so German and English and Russian were kind of tight in that sense. So, lots of schools actually taught German, but I got into a class maybe with my parent’s decision or, or whatnot. I didn’t know how to study English. And so naturally, I wasn’t great at it. Because first and foremost, you’re being taught English by a Soviet person who has never been to the US, London or any other places. So, they teach you textbook Soviet English, which has nothing to do with actual English parents. But my parents knew the alphabet. I could read, I could write. And so, then we moved to Israel, and in Israel. Everybody speaks English. They speak broken English more in English, if you will. But no one really cares. Honestly, no one gives a fuck how they sound. They just get the point across. Like, if you go to Tel Aviv, and you stop a random, absolutely random person. And if you talk to them in English, they’ll understand you perfectly. Seriously, it’s not an exaggeration. It’s an Israel, just a very international country. So many, many kids spoke English. And, you know, I was a part of the generation that got influenced by western movies by video games. I didn’t read in English a lot, but I definitely watched lots of movies with no translation, and I played video games that also had no translation. Therefore, my vocabulary was pretty decent by the time I was 16. Now, when I got into actually wanting to make money, with affiliate marketing and other methods that require a call content creation, you know, whether it’s writing articles, writing emails, filming videos, I mean, there’s still some YouTube videos you can find me from, like 15 years ago or 10 years ago, where it’s just funny to listen because it’s, it’s boring. I mean, some of them were so embarrassing, I took them off the internet, because my friends kept sending me the links and laughing. But I think it was through the practice, through writing a lot and reading a lot, I remember playing, we were playing football. And I was, I don’t know, maybe 16 or 17. And we’re playing football with this adult. And he was also an English teacher. And he told us that if you want to learn English, you need to write a lot in English, you need to read a lot in English, it was through these two not watching movies, but rather actually engaging through reading and writing. And I think it was after I got involved in affiliate marketing and started writing articles learning how to copy, my English got better. Then I got together with a mentor who was originally from Manchester. His name is Roz Bowering. But he lives in Philadelphia. And he was the one to tell me that my English was still a broad English because at the time, I was kind of taking my Russian thoughts, and translating them word for word into English. And that’s how I was writing my copy, too. So, he taught me to become aware of that, and start shifting the way we structure my sentences, work in my word choice, my sentence structure. And that was a tremendous help. But then I think I made the biggest leap with my English. When I got on the phone, At one point, I succeeded, then I had people ask me to teach them how to do what I do. So, I started selling coaching. And that required a lot of time, you know, spent on the phone, both to sell it, as well as to teach. So, if you spend a lot of time speaking with Canadians, Americans, Europeans on the phone, and I would do at least five hours a day, you start picking up on stuff, they start, you know, I started listening to them, you know, I would ask a question. And I would listen. And I would try to mimic and model the way they spoke almost like a parrot. And if they mentioned a phrase or statement that I really liked, I would write it down. And over the years, I got a lot better, a lot better. And then, you know, it is through practice, really. But again, what’s really important is you have to immerse yourself in the environment, because like my wife, for example, she also learned English in school, but she never really spoke it. She was a bit like a dog. You know, she basically could understand what you’re saying and she couldn’t reply back. That was her experience. But then we moved to Canada, and two, three years into it. She’s communicating perfectly. Yes, she’s got a thick Russian accent, as you would imagine, you know, anthropologist and stuff like that. The cavalry is decent, she can go and communicate in any government office, she can talk to our friends. And why? Because She immersed herself in an environment that forces you to get along with the program. And I think that’s the key thing that might be missing for most people trying to learn English. abroad. So, like, for example, I got my brother, my brother never really mastered English, even though I got him private lessons and everything. Because he would go do the lesson, he would try to communicate with a teacher for 30-40 or 45 minutes, then let me go home. There was no consistent practice, there was no immersion. And it didn’t stick. So, what language do you think you now think not speak? Now I actually do think in English, it’s a bit of a mix, because the thing the thing is about living in Canada is the kids speak English better than they speak Russian, even though we’re maintaining and really trying really, really hard to So, have Russian as our first language in the family. So, when the household was crashing once we could still have my daughter fluent in English, less fluent in Russian. So, she would walk up to me and she would ask me a question in English, when I’m trying to structure an answer. Like if she would ask me like a, like a challenging question. Like Daddy, what sex or Daddy, you know, how does it? Where does oil come from? You know, like, I actually have to sit there and try to formulate it in English in a way that you can understand. So, there’s a lot of mental Aikido that I have to do. And as a result, yeah, I think I now think in English on rare occasions. And the way you would notice too is when I have FaceTime with my parents from Israel. Oftentimes, I would be kind of lost for words. And it’d be like, I would be mid-sentence I’d be like, how do I say this? And then I would try and remember the word in Russian, you know? So yeah, I think at this point my brain switched.

10:19

Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle, get access to the previous episode’s transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also, remember to clean your free copy of my bestselling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email, swipe files and traffic. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package