Ramit Sethi | How to Design Your Dream Life, How Ramit Sethi Made $100,000 in One Day and How to Change Your Relationship with Money

Audio Transcription

Speaker 1:
Thrive nation. Get ready for a laser show. On today’s show, we’re interviewing Ramit Sethi. That’s Ramit Sethi, R. A. M. I. T. S. E. T. H. This guy is a two time New York times bestselling author and a multiple time guest on the Tim Ferriss show. And on today’s show, he joins us to teach why it’s important to design your dream life. He teaches how to start, build and grow a successful online business. He talks about how to buy your time back and how to optimize your schedule, and he actually teaches how he personally made over $100,000 and just one day he teaches why he likes everything to be organized and why he had to write a blog for three consecutive years before monetizing it at all. All this and more. As we enter into today’s edition of the dojo of mojo Fosha, it’s the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. Get ready to enter the thrive time show.

Speaker 2:
[Inaudible] Started from the bottom.

Speaker 3:
Now we’re on the top. Top knew the systems to get what we got. Come Dixon’s on the hooks, opportune the books. Who sees Brigitte’s of wisdom and the color look as the father of five. That’s why I’m a dive. So if you see my weapon kids, please tell them hi, it’s the seat and seat [inaudible] and now three, two, one. Here we go.

Speaker 2:
[Inaudible]

Speaker 4:
Yes, yes, yes and yes. What does it gentlemen on today’s show we are interviewing roommate, say T roommate. How are you sir?

Ramit Sethi:
I am great. That’s the greatest podcast intro I’ve ever heard.

Speaker 1:
Well, I’ll tell you what through the power of a a lot of editing and a lot of just focus. It’s a, it’s a good plan B intro for a guy who is a class, a interview guests like you like yourself, my friend. Thank you very much. Now you are a two, a two time New York times bestselling author and the founder of I will teach you to be rich. Can you share with listeners out there what I will teach you to be rich is all about?

Ramit Sethi:
Yes. And I want to start off by saying that I was sober when I picked the name. I will teach you to be rich. I was in college. I don’t know if I would choose the same name again, but I did it. I’m stuck with it so I’m going to roll with it. Got it. All right. I will teach you to be rich, although it sounds like a huge scam is actually about creating your rich life, and I started with money. A lot of people have no idea what they’re doing with money. What’s a Roth IRA? What’s a 401k? Hey, I have 5,000 bucks in my checking account. What should I do with that? And most of the advice tells him cut back on lattes. That is not the advice you want to follow. So I talk about how to make your money grow for you. How to invest low cost longterm investments. After that, a lot of people choose what their rich life looks like. Some people want to negotiate a $25,000 raise. I show you how to do that. Even the words to use, some people want to start a business. Some people want to travel for a month per year, so it’s all part of a rich life. But the critical thing is that you choose what your rich love life looks like. You don’t let somebody else choose it for you.

Speaker 1:
Your, your, your title of your book. Sounds like a scam. And I’m, I’m, I’m glad you said that because it makes it easier for me as a host here. It, it does sound like a scam. Just Justin, it sounds like a scam, but so does the four hour work week and somebody even argue that a think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill. Sounds like a scam title. How did you meet Tim Ferriss, your, your, your, your fellow a scam title guy?

Ramit Sethi:
Well, Tim and I are friends and we always joke that we definitely have the scammy sounding book titles that are not scams. I know they’re not. Okay. That’s the important thing. Let’s be clear. Okay. so Tim and I met many, many years ago. I think Tim’s book was coming out and a year or two from then and he reached out and we got together and I really liked him and we started talking about self development and testing. We’re both into optimization and testing and we just became great friends and I’ve been on his podcast a few times and et cetera, et cetera. So that’s how we got to know each other.

Speaker 1:
Now, you have had just unbelievable, Epic, mindblowing success in your career, but you said you were working on this book in college. Can you share with the look for the listeners out there that aren’t familiar with your background, what was your life like growing up and just kind of walk us through the beginning of your career?

Ramit Sethi:
I grew up in Northern California. I’m one of a family of six. My parents are immigrants from India and we grew up actually a very normal, nice childhood. But there are a few things we didn’t do. So we didn’t really go on many vacations. We certainly did not have a beach house or something like that. My mom stayed home with us, my dad worked. And as time went on, when it came time to apply to colleges, my parents basically said, look, you’ve got to get scholarships to pay your way to college. And so I’m a systems guy. I like building systems so that I can do the same amount or less work and get better and better results. Okay. So that really informs the rest of my life. And so I built a system to apply to about 65 scholarships.

Ramit Sethi:
And I got that first scholarship check. I’m 17 years old or so. It’s the tech boom, 1999, 2000. I think I’m a genius. So I invest in the stock market using my scholarship money. And pretty soon I learned I was not a genius because I lost half that money. And I I realized, man, I better learn how this money stuff works. And so as I went to college and I found enough scholarships to, for undergrad and grad school and I was learning about technology and psychology and at the same time I was learning about money. And so that was the origin of how I got interested in money and psychology.

Speaker 1:
So you’re, you’re interested in psychology and, and money. You’ve lost half of your money in the stock market. W at what point did you start writing a blog? When did that happen?

Ramit Sethi:
So after I got pretty good with my own money, it took me a few years, then I started trying to teach other people in my classmates. And this is a pattern and I actually love this pattern for everyone listening. I think all of us like getting good at something and a small amount of people like to turn around and teach other people what they’ve learned. So there’s this phrase that goes around those who can’t do teach. I hate that phrase because actually the very, very best in the world love to teach. The greatest coaches love to share their knowledge. The greatest leaders write books. Why? It’s not that they need the ego of being in a bookstore. They’re usually multimillionaires. But I wanted to turn around and teach what I learned. So I’m sitting there at the dining hall and one of my classmates would say, you know, Hey, I got my third overdraft fee at Wells Fargo and I would say, you should come take this class I put together. It’s free. And it teaches you the basics of money. And everybody was like, yeah, that sounds awesome. And then they would never show up. Never. And it took me a long time to realize why. And the answer is that people don’t like going to events about money. Any idea why?

Speaker 1:
Well, I know growing up in a home without money there’s a lot of sometimes shame about the subject. There’s a lot of embarrassment, a lot of ignorance about it. Yeah, all of that. I mean, am I missing something?

Ramit Sethi:
They don’t like to feel bad. And so you’re exactly right. Guilt, shame, anxiety. Is it too late? And keep in mind these were 20 to 22 year olds. Now if you’re listening in, you’re 40 or 50 you’re saying, I wish I had gone to that class at 20. But if you’re also honest, you wouldn’t have gone at 20. And so I was, I spent a year and a half trying to convince my friends to attend my free class. And there’s a point where it’s very frustrating where you feel like you know the answer to help someone, but they’re just not listening. And I think at that pivotal moment you can either give up or you can blame people or you can change your approach. So maybe a little cocky. I decided that I still had something the world needed to hear, but it wasn’t working what I was doing. So I started a blog, so it’s 2004, I’m I think a junior or a senior in college. And I started writing on my blog hoping that these lazy college kids will read from their dorm room and that turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
I want to ask you this because I know somebody out there would get a little frustrated with me if I didn’t ask you. How did you get, when you said you got good at managing money? Yeah, I was in college, I started a company called DJ connection, which became the one of the nation’s largest, you know, wedding entertainment companies. And I still, I got good by not being good for a long time, you know, years of trying to mix some music and make announcements and work the crowd. How did you get good at managing money? Because a lot of people would run out of money before they got good.

Ramit Sethi:
Well, I was earning money. That’s the answer. I’ve been working since I was 14 years old. So during college I had either a job. Certainly during summer I had internships where I was earning money. Yup. And I was taking that money. I was saving it, I was investing it. And you have to remember that you can get good at money even before you’re a multimillionaire. Right. So I was starting off with small amounts, but that is exactly the way to do it. People think, Oh, I’ll figure this out once I have a lot more money. You think you’re going to magically wake up, have $1 million in your checking account and know what to do with it? No. The way you do it is you start early with 20 bucks, 200 bucks, two thousand twenty thousand you make those little mistakes of overdrafts, of paying too much and realizing, Oh my God, 1% expense ratio actually matters a lot. So that’s how I was getting good at it. And then finally, you know, when you get the same questions 25, 30, 40 times, and it’s the same answer. You kind of know, okay, I know what people are thinking. That’s how I knew I was getting good. I get it

Speaker 1:
Asked by people all the time as we approach our 2000th show here, people ask me all the time, how do you win the mental battle clay of, of doing a show nine times a week? You know, how, how do you, and I would ask you the same thing because I think that doing a blog for many people is almost impossibly hard. You know, I remember when I started my first company, it’s like you make a bunch of calls, you get no successes, you make a hundred calls, no yeses. You make a hundred, you know, when you’re blogging. How did you fight that mental battle to quit the blog before you saw any fruit from it? And, and what was your process for writing this blog?

Ramit Sethi:
So those were probably some of the darkest days in the business. Because there’s no feedback at all. Right? Right. And it’s the worst. You know, at a certain point, you’d rather have someone telling you you suck. At least someone’s listening. That kind of explains why a lot of trolls are such losers on Twitter. But that’s another story. What, what I learned in the early days was I would try to get people to come to my classes for free and they wouldn’t work, right? They wouldn’t come. So that didn’t work. So then writing the blog, I started and I like to write. So I think if you hate to write, you can’t sit down and write a blog for the next 15 years. That’s never going to work. So I’ve changed my view, which, which is now, Hey, if you love video, start with video. Right? I know plenty of people who, my students who multiple six figure or even seven figure businesses and they basically have no blog.

Ramit Sethi:
They have an Instagram channel or a YouTube channel, a podcast, but they’re just like, I don’t like to write fine. In the early days for me, I was motivated by creating an awesome piece of content, something that I knew I would be proud of. That lasted a little while. Then I wanted to get people reading it. I wanted comments and that took me like six to 12 months to have anyone really start reading my stuff. Then it became this beautiful cycle where I could write something, get rapid feedback on it, and test it and test it and improve it. So I never even wrote my book for years. It didn’t come out until five years after the blog started because I, every day I was writing new stuff and testing it to make sure it worked before I ever shared it with the general public. So I never even wrote my book for years. It didn’t come out until five years after the blog started because I, every day I was writing new stuff and testing it to make sure it worked before I ever shared it with the general public. So I never even wrote my book for years. It didn’t come out until five years after the blog started because I, every day I was writing new stuff and testing it to make sure it worked before I ever shared it with the general public.

Speaker 1:
You know what, the first time I heard about you, there was a person who came to a conference, this would probably be maybe four years ago at one of our conferences. And they had said, you know, you should have this guy on your show. And the thing they said to me, I’ll never forget it, as I said, yeah, this, this guy, he actually is a blogger who made $100,000 in a day and right away mentally, this is what I thought.

Speaker 6:
[Inaudible]

Speaker 1:
Thinking that it was amazing. I was able to Mike my mind, but I thought, I mean that’s what I was thinking. My inner dialogue was like, there’s no, you know, cause you hear all these hackers, these, these scammers, these people that take advantage of people who are ambitious and the difference between what you and Tim Ferriss are doing versus the scammers who are out there. And the rest of the world that has a somewhat scammy title sometimes. Is it the stuff you teach is real and practical. I mean, it’s very practical and so it’s, can you share with the listeners, because I know somebody, as soon as I mentioned that you made $100,000 in a day, they’re thinking how could you share the story behind?

Ramit Sethi:
Yeah. Yeah. And first of all, I appreciate you saying that there’s a difference between the run of the mill person who promises you can make $1 million overnight, which is totally, no, you can’t. Right? Versus someone who says, you actually can increase your earnings dramatically, but you need to work really, really hard. And here are some tactics. Here’s the actual words you can use. But the most important thing is you’ve got to create something people want and you have to stick with it for a long time. Right? Right. Fundamental difference. I hate scammers. I call them out on my site and so I have zero tolerance for that. It’s my unfortunate or fortunate luck that the name I will teach you to be rich puts me in this genre. But you know, I try to bring my academic pedigree. I graduated from Stanford university. Yep. Right?

Ramit Sethi:
New York times bestselling author. This stuff is credible, right? It works. I put my reputation on the line from this. So for making something like $100,000 in a day, I’ll give you an example. So we had a, we have a product on advanced personal finance. This is just one of about 20 different programs that we have created. We create these online programs in areas of money, business careers, and psychology. So if you come to us, you’re like, I want to get, I want to change industries, I want to get a better job. Great. We can help you do that. Or like a, I want to improve my mental psychology, right? I kind of am always down. I’m spinning myself up into these holes. How do I get focused? Right? How do I finish what I start? We can help you with that. So one of our money programs is advanced personal finance.

Ramit Sethi:
And so what we did was we started off with this broad idea that we knew about advanced personal finance, which advanced means you make multiple six figures a year or you have a net worth of, let’s just say over 1 million bucks. So we know what to do in those scenarios, right? In our company we have institutional knowledge. So just like back when I was in college, I got good at something and then I turned around and taught it. Same thing with creating these online digital programs. So what we do is we went to the market, we interviewed lots of people who are advanced personal finance scenarios. They have a lot of money, they’ve kind of maxed out all their accounts. What should they do? So their options are they can do nothing, which is what most of them do. They can go get a financial advisor, but they don’t know how.

Ramit Sethi:
And some of these advisors are actually salespeople, or we can show them what their options are at a great price for them and something that is valuable for us. So we created this program and we, I think on one of our launches we launched it to our email list and we generated $482,000 and 482,851 in five days. So roughly about a hundred K per day. Wow. So how do we do that? That I would say that that is like a fine performing product for us. It’s not our largest, it’s not our smallest. How we did that was we do intense amounts of research before we ever build a program. So we’re interviewing lots and lots of multi-millionaires. Tell us what you do with your money. Tell us what you wish would be happening with your money. We interview vendors that I personally work with. We interview CPA CFPs. We take the best of that material, we put it into the program, we videotape it, we edit it, we tested again with people in our user group and then, and only then does it earn the right to be called. And I will teach you to be rich product. So that is how we go about our products. And that, as you can tell, that’s a lot of work. So yeah, it’s great to say, Oh, somebody made a $100,000 in a day, but, and that’s an asset that will continue generating revenue over the next 10 to 15 years. But really what I would prefer to talk about is the work that goes into it. Because if you can do that work, then you can make even much more money than that.

Speaker 1:
And I want to give the listeners out there some, some context who are not as familiar with your background as I am your courses. If somebody were to sign up and take these kinds of courses, what does it cost to attend to attend a course and is it all online? Or just kind of walk the listeners through what that looks like.

Ramit Sethi:
So typically when you think about buying a program, most people think about like a $39 $99 program and those are fine. You get five 10 videos, whatever. We’re not interested in that. Our programs range from a few hundred bucks up to 10,000 or so dollars depending on how advanced they are and what the area is. Probably one of our most popular courses is about 2000 bucks and that’s on how to start a business. Another one, similar price. How to find a dream job. Now, just to give you an example of the level of detail, if you came in and said, I want to find a dream job. Yeah, we would not only show you how to identify what your dream job is, we would show you actual videos of negotiations, salary negotiation, so you can watch the body language and you can watch what words to say when the recruiter or the hiring manager says, you know what?

Ramit Sethi:
Sorry, that’s outside of our budget. What do you say to that? We show you the exact words, so that’s the level of detail. Similarly, if you want to come and start a business, we have a new program, Ernie [inaudible]. It’s not enough to just show you, Hey, here’s how to find an idea. We actually have me doing sales calls and recording them so you can see exactly how these, how you can sell something and you can hear the words being shared. This is the kind of stuff that you would never find anywhere else because it’s extremely difficult and expensive to create. And that’s what we love to do.

Speaker 1:
So for people who are now Googling you, I know our listeners tend to Google our guests as they’re listening to the guests. That’s sort of the, the thing they do. I, I’d love to have you talk about creating automatic businesses that let you live where you want and earn what you want. Because I own brick and mortar companies with real employees who, you know, they have to come to work during certain shifts and we got up wash towels and we’ve got to you know, we’ve got to cut haircuts, we’ve got to, you know, clean carpets or whatever, the different businesses I’m involved in. And so I’m used to a lot of humans, a lot of moving parts. My partner has the largest auto auction in Oklahoma. He’s used to real mechanics doing stuff and you’re sort of in this digital world that in, in, and just in the way that a dr Zelner’s bank is very real to him are the auctions real to him or the haircut place is real to him. This world is real to you. Can you share about what it takes to go into what all it takes to, to create an automatic small business that allows you to live where you want?

Ramit Sethi:
Oh, I’ll give you an example of a small one and then I’ll take you up to a larger one. Right? So it’s different at every level. The beautiful thing is you can choose. So there are lots of people who have small businesses. They are one person, they work full time on the business and maybe they have a couple of contractors. Those contractors in the early days will tend to be maybe a tech person part-time, 10 hours a week, and they may have a marketing associate, maybe an SEO person or maybe an assistant or researcher, right? It can be as small as one or two contractors. And I know many of my students have that exact setup and they generate anywhere between, you know, at the very small end, five, $10,000 a year. Many of them generate up to about 250 to $400,000 a year. Okay, so, and how do you do that?

Ramit Sethi:
Because if you have an amazing product or service, usually a product though, and you have traffic, then you can connect the two and you can sell it effectively. So that’s pretty small and straightforward. Typically those people tend to do a simple model. They have an email list, they have a product that’s priced around a two to 500 bucks or so. Okay. Ballpark. And and that’s it. It’s really straightforward. There’s off the shelf templates that are basically free these days. Now what happens is as they scale up, then they start to add team members. And this is where it gets interesting. A lot of people, including me, started off saying, I just want to have a small intimate team. I don’t want to have a lot of people. And I realize years later that small was not my goal, my goal was impact. And so if you want a bigger impact, you probably need to bring more people onto your team.

Ramit Sethi:
And that is something that the internet world is becoming more and more comfortable with now because they realize, wow, in order to be really good at this, I need a team. So some people will go and they can generally make it to a million, maybe even a million and a half with a small team of roughly under 10. Again, now you have a couple of full time people, they could be contract or employees, et cetera. There’s a tiny group of people who are making millions and they might have a slightly or even quite considerably larger staff. And those are people who have multiple products, multiple funnels, multiple channels, that kind of stuff. So I can talk about any of those if you like, but that’s the way it works

Speaker 1:
For me. I want to have you a shit. If you can’t, I don’t want to paint you into a corner here. I just want to ask you, do you have a particular student that you like to brag on? You go, this is a case study of somebody who somebody who you know, wanted to know what to do. You, you told them what to do and they put in the work, or are you at Liberty where you could share maybe about a specific, a student or a specific website that we could direct our listeners to to check out? Or is that kind of outside of the bounds of what you want to,

Ramit Sethi:
No, no, no. I’m happy to do it. I have so many, I’m trying to think where to start. So let me give you the name of one of my students. His name is Zach Arnold. Okay. Zach Arnold. Email me just a couple of days ago, his subject line, which I want to send you the screenshot of this email after this. Okay, sure. Yeah. He says in the subject 200 K baby, and he writes, Hey,Ramit Sethi we’ll keep this short for today. Join ZTL August 8th, 2015 first product sale for $97 in January, 2016 and then exactly four years later, he hit 200 K in revenue while working full time in Hollywood. So this guy is so interesting because he’s an editor on some famous TV shows in Hollywood. I think power is one of them. And there’s a couple of others that you and I have heard about. Yeah. So he was working as an editor and he wanted to create a product on how to stay healthy while you are an editor.

Ramit Sethi:
It’s a pretty interesting niche. I wouldn’t have personally thought about it myself. So he creates this thing and I had him I invited him to New York once before we did a video. He was about to do a launch. The launch did not go well. Okay. So he tried it, but he didn’t give up. And a lot of times when you were selling something for the first time, you’re not that good at selling. You don’t know the market’s pain points, what they want. So most people give up. He stuck with it. Now he’s going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a year. So this is a great example of a guy, Zach Arnold from optimize yourself. Dot. Me is one of tons of students. We have about 42,000 customers,

Speaker 1:
42,000 customers. And where, where do you call home? Where? Where? Where’s your corporate office these days? I live in New York and New York. Okay. So you haven’t moved to Austin with Tim?

Ramit Sethi:
No, I have not. I came from California to Manhattan and I’ve been here for a long time.

Speaker 1:
He hasn’t aggressively tried to recruit you by pointing out to let the lower taxes has he?

Ramit Sethi:
Oh God, I got, I got a lot of friends who tell me about taxes. And my answer to them is why do you think that? I created my own business so I can live where I want to live, not where the taxes take me.

Speaker 1:
So you like New York [inaudible] you love New York. Okay. Okay. Now how many people are on your team now? How many people do you call it as you’ve grown, how many people are on your, on your team, just to give the listeners approximately 25, 25. Okay. And so you’ve got a team of 25 and so many great things are going on right now. Do you remember how you got your first three customers or your first four customers? Did they all come in as someone who found you online on your blog or something?

Ramit Sethi:
Yeah, well, I wrote my blog for free for, I dunno, four three or four years before I ever made a cent because I never started it to be a business. I started it because I wanted to teach people about money. It drove me insane to see the advice out there about cut back on lattes. I’m like, that’s not how you’re gonna become financially successful. That’s actually the worst advice. And so I started writing and I never sold anything. I didn’t want to do AdSense because it was just seemed like a waste of time. It wasn’t even going to cover my rent. So I just said, forget it. I’m just going to write stuff. And I eventually built an email list. It was a big mistake of mine, maybe one of my biggest mistakes to not set up an email list from day one because email is just huge.

Ramit Sethi:
It’s it’s one of the biggest channels in terms of business. So finally I did, and eventually in late 2006 I decided I wanted to try selling something just to see if anyone actually buys anything online. Remember back then, not the type of content purchasing that is happening now. And so I created an ebook called [inaudible] 2007 guide to kicking ass. As you can tell, I like provocative names. Okay. So I like had this thing illustrated and all this stuff and I was really, really nervous because the first time you try to sell anything, you are petrified. You think everyone’s going to call you a sellout, you think they’re going to call you a scammer, you think no one’s going to buy. And a two out of those three things happened. So it was actually amazing. So I launched this thing and I had such low self confidence that I didn’t even set up an automatic fulfillment system.

Ramit Sethi:
I literally said, PayPal me $4 and 95 cents and I’ll just email you the PDF because I thought like 50 people were going to buy it maybe. And in the first day I think we had like a hundred a hundred plus 200 plus, and over the course of that product to generated tens of thousands of dollars. Now what did I learn? Number one, I was scared. All these people would call me a sellout. A lot of people did. Yeah. They said, Oh, I will teach Rameet to be rich. And then on the other hand, a lot of people quietly bought and they asked me, Hey, this was awesome. What’s the next thing you’re going to create? By the way, the people who bought had quadruple the open rates of the non-buyers. So what’s going on there? Number one, if you sell something on the internet, people are going to call you.

Ramit Sethi:
They’re going to say, that should just be free. I could find it for free on YouTube. But you need to remember, why are people buying stuff? If I go to a restaurant, you think I go to them and say, I could make those eggs at home. They should be free. No, that doesn’t make any sense. You’re not simply paying for the eggs. You’re paying for the ambiance, you’re paying for the convenience, and you’re also paying for not having to worry. So in our material, you are going to get some new stuff or in any good material for that matter. Any book, any product you’re going to get new insights hadn’t had. You’re also gonna get organization and you’re going to get someone spending years of their life on this and you can comfortably say, wow, 10 bucks or 2000 bucks. That was the best money I ever spent because I could learn from this person. So that was what happened with that product. And those three first three customers were people I did not know. And that was magical because I was like, wow, if they found out about this in bot, that means I could get 30 or maybe even 300 that was my dream at the time. And that proved to be a small dream

Speaker 1:
Blowing my mind, blowing my mind. Remeet now I want to unpack this because you said I think, I believe that you wrote a blog for three consecutive years before you sold anything. Can you explain in general terms for the listeners out there, why when you’re doing something like creating search engine content, do you have to write for three years and how many pages of content were you writing a day? Or just walk us through what that look.

Ramit Sethi:
Okay, so I’ll tell you what I did back then, but now I don’t think that was the best strategy. Got it. Okay. So I’ve learned a lot, so I’m going to share what I did and why and then now what I would do differently. So back then I wrote for free because I didn’t know how to make any money. I was too scared to sell anything. I didn’t have anything to sell. And the whole point of this was not to make money. It was because I wanted lazy college kids to understand how to use their money correctly. Okay. You have to remember again, back at the time, AdSense was brand new. There was no affiliate networks like there are now. It was a totally different ball game. The second thing is I wrote, I think I wrote about two or three times a week consistently, so I was very consistent.

Ramit Sethi:
Some of my posts were multiple pages, some of them were short. I did not know anything about SEO. I just wrote good content that I thought would be helpful to people. Like if you and I were sitting around, you’re like, what should I do with my money? I’m like, okay, let me break it down. Boom, boom, boom, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Yup. Straight forward. Right, and I think the other thing is that I had a lot of fun with it. This is, this is something you don’t hear talked about a lot. If you’re deciding I’m going to start a business about office chairs, fine, that topic sucks in my opinion, but if you really love office chairs, be my guest, but you better find a way to be entertained.

Ramit Sethi:
Yeah, exactly. Can’t wait to meet this guy at a bar. Like, look, you’re gonna have fun. So when I was writing about money, you think I’m going to sit there and write about Roth IRAs every day? No. I was writing about that cheap friend who never tips when you invite them out for dinner, I’m talking about love and money. I’m talking about what happens when one person earns less than the other. This is fun. It’s stuff that I don’t care if you like it. I like it. And therefore when I like it, my audience loves it because everybody wants to see someone who’s passionate about what they’re doing. So that’s what I did. Now let me tell you what I would do differently. Okay? That was awesome. Back in 2004 things have changed. So number one, I would not wait years to sell something. I think that’s a mistake I didn’t sell because I didn’t know.

Ramit Sethi:
Now if I were going to go into this, it’s one thing if it’s a hobby, but it’s another thing if it’s a business. So if it’s a business, you can wait. You don’t have to sell on day one, but you should have an idea. Hey, I’m starting something so that I can generate revenue from this. And that would tell you probably office chairs would not be a great topic to write about because there’s probably not a lot of money in it. I’m just guessing. I don’t know the market. But like if people come to me and they’re like, Hey re-meet, what should I start a business around? I’m really good with people. Well that is not a topic that’s going to generate revenue. But you could narrow it down to social skills, relationships. I mean there’s a million different ways and some of those might be worth a thousand times more than other domains.

Ramit Sethi:
Okay. So that’s number one. I would have a purpose. If it’s a business, I would not wait years to sell. Number two, I would be thinking about creating assets. Assets can be the pages you write that will eventually rank for SEO. So I would be thoughtful about that and I would create proprietary products and even named concepts. So that is how you build a real credible business. You lead with value. And then people eventually come and say, I want to know what else you can offer me roommate and we’re going to go into the lightning round because I’ve got a five of final questions for you. A two for me, a couple of forms from other great guests we have here today during your most recent Tim Ferriss interview. It was so good, I think. I think I blacked out and had to watch it again.

Ramit Sethi:
And then I happened again. It’s like I was like almost like a fainting goat. You were talking about. I’m paying a little bit of money for a little convenience, you know, for spending a little extra money to have a much better experience. And I 100% agree with this. This is a core philosophy of mine. I just will not wait for my car at a hotel. I will find someone and pay them. I will not wait for seating at a restaurant or a bar. I will pay, I will just will not. I will not. I’ll throw $100 at a problem. I will not wait for 15 minutes. And I heard a lot of what you were saying and I’m like, Oh, this is good. And I fainted like a goat. Woke back up. Here I am. Can you kind of unpack that at your philosophy on this?

Ramit Sethi:
Cause that, that was powerful. Thank you. So I have a phrase, a concept called money dials and you can Google it and you’ll find the whole, the whole thing about it. But for everyone listening, let me ask you a question. What is something you love spending money on love. Not like love. Now most people, their answer is going to be, well actually let me ask you, what is something you love? Spending money on? Taking my wife on a hot date and then buying a Moscow mule. Oh, I like your taste and drinks. Okay, my man. Alright, so, so what if now you could quadruple the amount you spent on that thing. Okay. What would you do? If I could quadruple what I spent on that? Yeah, that’d be a big Moscow meal, but I don’t know. So let’s zoom out what you told me you love.

Ramit Sethi:
So most people answer is travel or eating out. Those are the most common ones. Yup. Mine is convenience. So like you, I will pay to have everything in my life like perfectly organized. I want it just like I look like a psycho. I wake up, I can close my eyes and I know where everything is. That’s my dream life free to. Yeah. Okay. So for you, but you added relationships, which I love taking your wife out the point that if we zoom out as you love to spend money on time with you and your wife, quality time. Yup. Okay. What if you quadrupled the amount you spent on it? What would that look like? I don’t know cause I’m afraid of traveling in airplanes and the whole thing. I don’t know. I was a very extended series of date nights probably. Hmm. How interesting you did what most people do?

Ramit Sethi:
Most people take what they do and they just say, I would do it four times more. Okay. Like I had a guy in DC, I went on book tour last year. He says, I like to eat out. I said, what would it look like if you quadrupled your spend? You know what he said I would eat out four times a week. I said, dude, think a little more creatively, man. What are you still going to be eating at Chipotle? A Drupal in your budget? 10 X. The guy finally gets quiet. He goes, I know what I would do. I said, what? He said, I would, I have a list of every Michelin starred restaurant in D C I would go and I said, who would you take with you? And the room is completely silent. The guy goes, I would take my family. Why? Because my family has never been able to eat at restaurants like that.

Ramit Sethi:
That is a money dial. Okay, a money dial. It’s called a dial because you can turn it way up like a stereo dial. And again, most people, they’ve never thought about this. When they think about spending, they only think about guilt and cutting back. Oh, I shouldn’t be doing that cause it’s bad. Why? Because some guy on TV told me it was bad. It’s blue. What I like to do with money is to start by saying, what would you spend more on? And then when they get it, it all clicks, their eyes light up because they’re like, okay, I would travel, I would travel for a month or really, where would you go? Oh, I’d go to Thailand. What seat would you sit in on the airplane? And they have never dreamed of actually considering sitting in seat twoF , which is in my opinion, the best seat.

Ramit Sethi:
And then where would you stay? What would you eat? Oh, room service for the first time. Yes. So a money dial allows you to start thinking about how can I spend extravagantly on the things I love as long as I cut costs mercilessly on the things I don’t. Now for me, I like traveling. I can tell you about my travels every year, but convenience is my number one. So I have a personal assistant. Everything is sort of in its place and it’s all organized. My calendar is like, it’s like ballet, it’s just beautiful. I know everyone listens. Like this guy just turned really weird. I know it’s weird, but no money dial is yours. That’s why we’re on the phone right now. That’s why we’re doing this interview. I listened to it. I’m like, he’s my brother. I was like, yes,

Speaker 1:
I have a calendar. It’s all blocked out. Everything’s organized. I was like, yes, yes. Like I would love to just sit someone down and give him a tour of my calendar. I’ll talk about it like it’s an infant child. Look at how beautiful this thing is. Oh my God. Look at the colors. Oh, so anyway, this is hot. This is hot. Sorry. I had it just, it’s a hot, this is a hot thing. What’s happening? Okay. Back to romantic podcast. Unbelievable romantic. Okay, so

Ramit Sethi:
For everyone listening, like the more you turn your money dial, the weirder it should be.

Speaker 7:
Yeah. The more you turn your money dial, the weirder it should get. The more you turn your money dial, the weirder it should get because

Ramit Sethi:
You, the more you turn it, the more it becomes uniquely you. Okay. I traveled to places that you probably would not want to go to. I set up my life in a way that you would not want to go to. That’s cause I turned my money down way up. So I want everyone listening to think about what are the money dials that are important to you. Everybody’s got at least one and you intuitively know it. Is it relationships? Is it food? Is it wellness, health? Is it travel or eating out? And when you think about it, what if I quadrupled my spending on it? You will discover lots of interesting little voices in the back of your head. Why would I do that? That’s wasteful. I could just go get it at target. Yes, you could, and you probably should for some things. But what if you actually dreamed bigger? Suddenly instead of living a life of scarcity, you get to live a life of abundance and start thinking, how can I turn that dial up?

Speaker 1:
Rameet w I want to respect your time. So here we go. Lightning round. Questions here, Josh, with living water. Irrigation is here. He’s been a long time client of mine. He’s built a very successful irrigation company. Josh you have Rameet here on the line. What’s a question you want to ask the man, the myth and the Rameet.

Speaker 8:
Hey Rami, thank you so much for being on the show and taking my question. The big thing I would ask for you is, and I know we went over a little bit earlier and we talked about shame and disgrace and, and all those things. How do you get people to just start to get over the hump of their relationship with money and the, the awkwardness of the conversation about it or, well, what would you encourage our listeners out there to just begin with getting over that that fear of it? I guess

Ramit Sethi:
That’s a great question and thank you for asking it. You know, when, when most people think about money and you ask them, what do you feel when you think about money, the answers are always the same, you know, shame, guilt, anxiety. Is it too late? And the first thing I do is I don’t try to change what they feel because people feel what they feel. You can’t change that. But what I try to do is to show them that money can actually be a positive thing and can actually make you smile and happy. And the way I do that is by asking them about their money dial and I really lean into that. So again, you will discover if you do this money, I’ll exercise. And there’s of me doing it online that people have never thought about money in a positive way. And what’s interesting is if you take a parent for example, and you ask them, what would you do if you could spend money on anything, what do you love?

Ramit Sethi:
They always say the same thing, my kids and you say, tell me about that. Where would you take them? If you could quadruple it, it’s always the same Disneyland. And then you say, okay, let’s put your kids aside for a second. Tell me about yourself, you and your husband or wife or girlfriend or boyfriend, what would that look like? And then they’re stumped. You can then begin to make the connections of the joy that they feel when they give their children something. What about just taking a little bit of that joy and sharing it with their partner. Suddenly they start to see a path forward and it never involves you telling them stop feeling guilty or anxious. You’re never going to get someone to stop by telling them to stop. The best way to do it is to show them a path forward that makes them happy, that makes them feel in control. And then, and only then should you start talking about asset allocation and Roth IRAs and all that stuff.

Speaker 1:
Knowledge bomb, knowledge bomb. Then one more knowledge bomb just to blow my mind. I’m going to pass out again here. It’s like the whole fainting goat thing. Now we have now Corey mentor, he is a listener of the thrive time show. A great, great guy. He and his wife have built a company called Trinity employment.com which is one of the top a staffing companies in all of Oklahoma for hospitals and medical organizations of you’re here with roommate. This has talked about how to, how to make $100,000 in one day. How he’s made millions online. He’s a multiple time Tim Ferriss guest. He’s been blowing my mind. What question would you like to ask this man about money, life optimization or anything really? I love the idea of this money dial and it really got me thinking when I was just listening and one of the things that I, I, I would just be interested. What are some of the most valuable decisions that you’ve watched people make whenever you propose the idea of turning up this money doll? What, what are some of the greatest examples that, that you’ve seen?

Ramit Sethi:
Wow, I love this question, Corey. Thank you for the question. So I went on book tour last year and I got a chance to ask this question across the country. And the DC example of the person going to a restaurant was mindblowing. There was another young woman in Pasadena who said to me, she loves, she goes, I love buying clothes. I would buy clothes all day every day if I could. And the whole bookstore was just cracking up and I said, awesome. And what would you do if you could quadruple it? She goes, I’d buy more clothes, I’d have boxes everywhere. And then I pushed her a little. I said, where do you buy clothes from? And she mentioned some store, it was like a equivalent of a gap. And I said, where would you shop? She goes, gap. I said, you have four X 10 X 20 X the money to spend on this, what would you do?

Ramit Sethi:
And she, she got very quiet. She didn’t know because she had never considered actually thinking outside of that box of the same store. She shopped it. I said, if you truly turn that money dial up to 10 maybe you would fly to Italy and maybe you would go to the factory of the Italian brand that you love the most and have something created custom for you. How do you think that would make you feel? And the entire room looks at her and she’s just complete this huge smile on her face. Why? Because she had never considered thinking bigger than she was thinking right now for her. She loves gap. Nothing wrong with gap. It’s great. But people and humans are intuitively wired to want to think about what’s next. It doesn’t mean you have to go out and buy it, but at least to know, Hey, if I worked really hard, what could I get? What could I do? Maybe I could buy more and give it to a charity. Maybe I could buy a nicer thing for myself. You know what, maybe I could do both. So that is one of the biggest breakthroughs that I’ve seen is people realizing it’s not simply linear, that you can actually think exponentially larger with your money dial,

Speaker 1:
Thrive nation. I want to get this disclaimer out there. I never meet too worried about it. He’s not a hater of gap. He and he loves the gap band. Even from Tulsa. He doesn’t hate the gap band. West card. We have time for one final question. West Carter here. Remeet he’s a partner with winters king.com. His law firm represents huge personalities, like a TD Jakes and Joyce Meyers and pastor Craig Rochelle, that kind of thing. And WIS always paints our guests into a, into a corner. So it’s, it’s really a battle of the minds here. So, so West, what final question do you have for the life optimization and wealth creating expert? Mr Amit?

Speaker 9:
Well, this one’s a little bit of a softball, but you know, Korea just asked some of the best decisions that remeet seen someone make. Oh, I’m curious about what are some of the worst decisions, the ones that are most likely to lead to failure, some of your horror stores.

Ramit Sethi:
Oh man. Okay, this is great. Hey listen, extend the tape. We’re going to talk for the next three hours about that.

Speaker 1:
Oh, talks tend to take, we’ve got to extend the tape and get another track.

Speaker 10:
I extend the tape and get another track ready, but not fell first. A Bruce wants to come in and I talked to you. He’s got a quick a update for you guys.

Ramit Sethi:
Well, I’m telling you fellows, you’re gonna want that cow bell.

Speaker 10:
We’re rolling in. Three, two, one back to you with a booth.

Ramit Sethi:
Okay. So this is a great question because I think it’s good to know what success looks like, but it’s also great to know what failure looks like. So the most common failure modes that I see are number one, it’s simply procrastination, not doing anything. I see this with money. I see it as with business. I did a survey of my let’s see about 300,000 email subscribers and I asked them, how long have you been waiting to start a business? For those of you who are interested? And around 50% of them said, Oh, years. More than two years. Like that is way too long in my opinion, to be waiting to even try something. You see this with money. People say, yeah, I ought to do that. I should do something around that. And then they wake up at 45 with two kids and a mortgage and they say, Oh, Whoa, where do I go?

Ramit Sethi:
I’ve got to go to some financial advisor today. It’s, I’m running pretty late. Yes, you are. It’d be better to start right now. Another failure mode that I see is skeptics. I really find it difficult to work with cynics and skeptics. And I know what this feels like because the name of my book, I will teach you to be rich, et cetera. And the truth is there’s a lot of people out there you really shouldn’t be listening to. Okay? You got to get educated. You got to read the reviews, you got to do your homework, but you will see people. It’s so interesting. They’ll come in and say prove that this works. Okay. So they’re already starting off looking for a reason. It will fail. And if you show them the proof, if you answer their questions, they’re actually not looking to take action.

Ramit Sethi:
They’re looking for an excuse to do nothing. So even when they win, in their own argument, they lose. And if you want a Google, I wrote an article about eight types of buyers who will never buy from you. You can search out remeet eight types of buyers. And I actually catalog these emails that they send me where they seem like they’re interested. But I actually can tell right now within less than three seconds that they’re never going to take action. So procrastination and cynicism are two of the biggest failure modes. And then the final one, this one’s a little tough is people who just can’t stick with it enough, right? They’ll actually join a program or a book or go to a gym, but they give up after four or five days or four or five weeks. And the key there is not that they are weak people.

Ramit Sethi:
It’s not that at all. It’s they haven’t built the right systems into their lives. And many of them have not seen the behaviors that successful people use. So they just keep doing what they’ve been doing, but praying that they’ll somehow lose 30 pounds or make $100,000. They need to see what successful people do and start to model that. Rameet before we wrap up today’s show, I spent like, I don’t know, several hours or minutes. It’s hard to tell, I believe with all the blackouts, but listen to your knowledge bombs. But here is a book idea tip that you can share for free with Tim Ferriss. It’s called the 72 hour workweek pro tips for how to just get by in the world of entrepreneurship. And then the second for you, this is for you. This is heart trip from the heart. I will teach you how to be slightly above average most of the time. Wow. Wow. That is, I think we’re going to get ahold of new market with that one. It’s awesome. Hey man, thank you so much for, for being on the show. I know our listeners love this. Is there a specific place

Speaker 1:
You want all of our art, all of our listeners to go or a specific action you would like for all of our listeners to take today.

Ramit Sethi:
So the you can find me on, I will teach you to be rich.com. You can also find me on Instagram and Twitter at remeet, R a M I T and just so everybody knows, we for the first time in four years, we have a brand new business program coming out right now. It’s going to blow your mind. I would love to show you how to start a business, find an idea, show you those sales calls that I made for everyone listening. You can hear me bomb on some of these calls. You can also hear me close deals and see what worked and what didn’t. And then I’m going to be touring the country and I’d love to meet all of you in one of the cities that I’ll be in SOCOM. The program is called [inaudible], E a. R, N. Burnable search for it. Rameet [inaudible] sign up and I would love to see you there

Speaker 1:
And I don’t want any of our listeners to forget your website. So let me get out my megaphone here for the subtle reminder, subtle reminder here. We got to meet,

Speaker 11:
Check it out. I won’t teach you to be rich.com that’s, I will teach you to be rich.com

Speaker 1:
Rameet you’re, you’re a great American. My Fred, hopefully this has not been the most disturbing podcast you’ve ever been on.

Ramit Sethi:
I love it and I just want to say I want your sound effects everywhere I go. It’s absolutely amazing.

Speaker 1:
Oh dude. And he also, Hey, one way to optimize your life. If you want to hire a bunch of guys that kind of look and act like the Wu Tang clan to cheer for you everywhere you go and to yell. That’s right. You’ll get more respect. I love it. Okay. That’s why new money dot. All right, man, you take care. Thank you very much. And now, without any further ed do

Speaker 12:
[Inaudible]

Speaker 13:
1980 was the year of my conception from the dorm room fell in DJ connection, entrepreneur Yerba no. Seven. My path to the top line for the [inaudible] sit down a couch, right? And the parenting rapid. Just overview like a trumpet. Rosie MCAP in Nopa getting stuff done like you having a crap in the jock and a Bama competition. Now there was the thrive time show on your bringing. Y’all catch the broadcast on the pockets now and you gotta be really open quo. God’s got a plan he just didn’t yet know about workflows, system scripts and hirings motivating yourself when you need inspiring his face to me for Brady or would not TB talking everything from [inaudible], he sold it to the masses. He has no classes or prerequisites. Just business as raw is against this. The thrive time show already know all about you, all about all about you, all about you.

Speaker 13:
So we bring the Z and clay, broadcast it from the box in the mag one 88 mr [inaudible], the topic today [inaudible] no is not a move with a proven system will make you laugh and you’re more than just a Rhymer like a horse with blinders focused on the lap time shop before you find us and happy to see, teach you business skills from clay to Z. We both grew up poor no more. The goal of the show is to help you [inaudible] until my son could see up at the rock the bike in Alaska, like you’ll deal with the million dollar dream, you know, to gain that rejection like a slight bombers waited for that green hour on your rating. Oh, with a thank you and please share this podcast with a friend of [inaudible] already know all about you. About you bring the ball.

Speaker 2:
Yes. Hands up. Conversation with ordinary and exceptional and ordinary. Always have a conflict. Anytime exceptional people dwell in the midst of ordinary thinking people, there’s always going to be conflict.