MBA1398 Guest Interview: Ramit Sethi – Creating Your Rich Life

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Hey Ramit, it's great to have you here today.

Thanks for having me.

It's awesome to finally speak to you. We got mutual friends, friends of the show, Jordan Harbinger, Noah Kagan, John Corcoran. We all kind of have the fortunate pleasure to have great friends in this space. And it's good to finally meet you. I know that Cass speaks to Nicole a lot, a producer of the show and my partner. So it's great to have you on the show.

Thanks man. Small world. And yeah, it's great to be here.

Yeah, totally. I want to start with something that I've been wondering for some time about you. I've been following your work for About a decade. I read I Will Teach youh Be Rich when it first came out. And as an American Brown person, as an American that comes from an immigrant family, your voice really resonated with me. Mainly because I never saw a successful brown American entrepreneur before. And for me, I was really inspired by how you owned that and what a lot of our listeners kind of struggle with at the start is finding their voice as an entrepreneur, finding their voice as a writer, as a blogger, how were you able to do that, kind of navigate that, and then also just be like, hey, this is who I am. I'm proud of it.

Wow. Thank you for saying that. First of all, that means a lot that you recognize that, and I'm really proud of it. I have to say, at a certain point when you grow your business, when you're starting out, you think that if I have a million dollars or if I have 100,000 followers, that it will be amazing.

And.

And those things are nice, but at a certain point, that becomes less meaningful than what you just said. And so I really appreciate it. And I can tell you that growing up, I remember never seeing an Indian superhero that simply does not exist in the world that I grew up in, in America. And I didn't think that a guy like me could have muscles. Okay, so I was a skinny Indian guy. I used to joke about it. And then finally, in my mid-20s, I asked one of my friends if he could train me and teach me how to work out. And that began a 10 to 15 year process of learning how to eat and how to work out. And it's funny now. Once in a while, I'll post a workout photo on Instagram. And it's not for my ego, right? I know what I look like. It's because I know that there are Indian men and women who see that and say, oh, my God, I didn't know somebody like me could look like that. And that is worth all the customers and all the conversion rates I could possibly get is to know that that representation matters. So when I think about it, if I had followed the default process, you know, I'd probably be a Cisco engineer wearing an extra large T shirt. And I just knew that that wasn't the right life I wanted. I knew it. And I think there are little clues, little clues in our history that tell us we were meant to do something different. For example, when I was in high school, I was a soccer referee. I worked at a pizza place. And I also convinced a company to hire me as a salesperson. And at that Time, pay for my cell phone, which is a big deal. Back in the 90s, going to college, I took a different route. I chose an unconventional major. I customized my curriculum. And I remember the clues are within yourself, but they're also the people around you. If you try something different, you probably encounter people saying things like, why are you doing that? You should just be happy to have a job. Or if you decide to put on more muscle or cut weight, you might hear people saying, okay, that's enough. You're starting to look too skinny. All these little phrases that people say, and these are from your family and friends. They actually like you.

They love you.

But people are unused to change. I encountered a lot of that. I had offers to go work at some of the best companies, and I remember one of my friends saying, hey, if you go there, you will have a really good pedigree, AKA a really good resume. And I resented that because I said, I already have a really good resume. When do I need to stop chasing the next entry on this cv? So I think that as you go through life, you start to make these slightly different decisions. Listening to this podcast is a great example. I bet you, for everybody listening right now to my voice, if I were to ask you how many of your friends listen to a podcast like this, probably most of you would say, not that many. You might be one of just a few around you who does. And so I think that embracing that, I think that saying, look, I don't need to go preach to everybody about what I'm doing. I just need to focus on my customers and stop trying to convince my siblings or mom and dad or everybody around me. That's not my market. My market is the people I'm trying to help and trying to serve. And if I can do that, eventually one day those questions like, when are you going to just get a real job? Those will disappear and they will turn into phrases like, wow, must be nice. Oh, you work from home. That sounds like a dream. It is a dream, but it's a dream that took 20 years to achieve. And so it will take you time. But just remember, don't focus on the people around you questioning. Focus on your customers, your clients, and the people you're trying to serve.

I love that. I mean, you got me thinking along those lines, along those same ideas. You know, my parents are immigrants. They came from Egypt. They came to the States. I was born and raised in the States. And, you know, as immigrant parents, you know, they. They've sacrificed a lot to come to America. They've Sacrif a lot for a better life. So by nature, you know, they're sort of risk averse for their kids. Like they took some big risks. They don't want us to take risks. They want us to kind of like, you know, safe route, all that kind of stuff. And that kind of seeps in when you're growing up. Like, you can't help but inherit some of that. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, that transition? I knew you were in a job back in the day, from working in a job 9 to 5 and transitioning to building your own blog. I know it didn't happen overnight and then finally switching over and making it your full time thing.

I started my blog in 2004. And the reason I started it was not that I was like, I'm gonna be rich. Actually, I was really frustrated because I had learned about personal finance. I'd gotten pretty good at it. And I heard my friends in college complaining about money and overdraft fees in the dining halls. We'd be sitting around dinner and I started saying, hey, I made this curriculum. I'll teach it to you for free. It's this one hour class. And I found most people said, oh my God, that sounds amazing. I'll be there. And then they would never show up. And it was incredibly frustrating to me to have to go chase people down to attend a talk I was giving to them for free, which I knew was going to solve their problems. And I think every entrepreneur has had this experience where you know the answer. You can help someone achieve something they want, and yet people don't seem to listen. And I think that is a moment where entrepreneurs have a path they can choose. One is they can get frustrated, get resentful of people, start to eventually just give up. My approach was I tried it for a year and a half. It didn't work. I felt like I was running uphill. And I finally said, look, I have something the world needs to hear, but this format is just not working. And so I started a blog. And the blog my thesis was college kids are lazy and college kids prefer to read about money online as opposed to coming to an event where they're going to feel bad about themselves. Turned out to be correct. Nobody likes to go to events about money. Makes you feel guilty. And the older you get, the worse you feel because you should have learned it when you were 20. But of course, nobody teaches you this. So I started the blog. My focus with the blog was forget about making money. I had no intention of turning it into A business. It was a hobby. I didn't make a cent for years, but I had something the world needed to hear. And over time, I started to build this community. I treated it like a lab. I would test things experimentally and eventually started to make decent money. And I tried all the different models. So I tried sponsorships, ads, products, everything. I found that I really liked products. I wasn't great at ads and just like there are other different models that didn't resonate with me. What happened was I was working a full time job at a tech startup that I co founded and there was this tension because the startup was venture backed. We raised millions of dollars. I had people I was managing, but I also had this blog I was doing on the side. And so what I decided was I needed some kind of framework to decide whether I was ready to leave or not. And that framework that I came up with was, I'm not even going to think about leaving this full time job until my blog makes more than my salary three months in a row.

Not even think about it.

Wow.

Not even think about it. Because I was driving myself crazy every day. Should I do this, Should I do that? Right? And a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs, they drive themselves crazy. But I knew that I wanted to be financially secure and I knew that this was a good road mark for me to know that I need to grow this blog before I even consider it. Okay. So eventually that started to happen and the blog started to make really good money. I was like, whoa, people actually read this thing and it generates revenue? I can't believe it. People do pay for stuff on the Internet. It was shocking. And eventually when I went full time on it, that allowed me to really put my attention wholeheartedly within it. And I would say that within approximately 18 months of going full time, it turned into a pretty large business for one person. And then from there, it's grown to dozens of employees all around the country. So I would say that, number one, knowing when to make a decision is important. Don't drive yourself crazy. Don't agonize. Create some kind of framework. You don't have to use mine, but create your own. And then the second thing is, don't underestimate how powerful it is to be able to focus on your business. When you can wake up in the morning, go to sleep at night thinking about this business that you love, it will grow faster than you possibly ever imagine.

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You know, you mentioned you got started with your blog in 2004. You know, I started my entrepreneurial journey online around the same time. But, you know, a lot of people don't know that. You know, it's. It was early days back then. You know, there's not, not many resources back then, you know, and, you know, only thing that we kind of saw out there as an example of how to sell online was what we would call today as like spammy Internet marketing courses. People and, you know, big yellow buttons and weird things like that. But what I love about your branding, about your marketing, about your website, about the way you sell your products or courses, is that you don't throw the baby out with a bathwater. Like, you actually take some of the great fundamentals that they kind of pioneered without the, you know, unethical, scammy stuff, the high pressure sales stuff. Can you talk a little bit about how are you able to kind of take a look at a technique, a sales technique, a marketing technique, and say, hey, there's some merits here, let me take that. Let me put my own flavor, my own spin to it.

Yeah, thank you for noticing that as well. So I think that there's a lot of really amazing things in the direct response world. Direct response means a type of marketing where you can measure what you are doing. A direct response. Think about running an ad where you can track it, or creating a sales page where you might split, test the headlines. That's direct response. The opposite of that would be something like a billboard ad with people dancing, holding an iPhone. You can't really track that. That's different.

Just for those who are listening, a couple weeks ago, we had an Episode on where I mentioned Dan Kennedy. Dan Kennedy is kind of one of those direct response kind of Godfather has passed away, unfortunately. But that whole episode is about why pay less when you can pay more. That's right.

What a great quote. What a great quote. I love that quote. It totally dovetails with what I talk about with personal finance. But on the marketing side, what I recognized early on was that there's a lot of merit in many direct response techniques. Things like pricing, things like long form sales copy. But I also recognized that you tend people in direct response often, not always, but often tend to sink to the lowest common denominator. They sell the scammiest products, they package it in the scammiest ways, and they sell something that they honestly would not want their mother or father or best friend to buy. And I refuse to do that. I have a reputation, right? I know that on my email list of hundreds of thousands of people, I have New York Times reporters, I have Stanford professors, I have my parents and my mentors. So I vowed I would never sell something that would not make them proud. Okay? And so what I started doing was learning and mastering direct response fundamentals. And these are quite subtle. A lot of people say things like, who would read long sales copy? Well, I can tell you that one of our sales pages is 77 pages long and it sold millions and millions of dollars. Okay, who would read to the end? The buyers. They're the people who would read to the end. So that's very counterintuitive because if you've only spent time on Twitter, you believe that, oh, nobody has any attention span. Oh, make it quick. Make your emails short. No, you do what works for you. I like to write, and I believe that I want to write for smart people. So rather than go down to the lowest common denominator, my thesis was I want to bring everyone up with me. And so we wrote with bigger words, with more complex topics. We were not afraid to be cerebral. We were not afraid to use things like intellectual frameworks, which you will never see in typical direct response, because that's not who they're trying to sell to. But you have to remember that our products are roughly 10 times the price of other people's products. Right? We're selling multi thousand dollar programs and our customers are happy to pay. One of the things that we point out is price is a mere triviality once they trust you and once you understand them. So what I did was I wanted to honor my background, my education, my upbringing, but also wanted to borrow some of the Best of direct response. And I will tell you, I wrote an article called why you should never ever call yourself an Internet marketer. You can Google around for it. Got a lot of people mad at me. But I don't believe you should define yourself as an Internet marketer. I don't. In fact, I don't go to any parties where there's an Internet marketing circuit in there. I don't want to do that. That's not who I'm focused on. I'm not a channel. I'm focused on my customers. And so I would say that you can use some direct response techniques, but you can also be highly credible. And you don't have to, like you said, throw the baby out with the bathwater. You can be yourself, speak your own voice, and you can do it in a way that actually converts as well.

That's brilliant. I love it. I Will Teach youh to Be Rich. One of my favorite books. Read it when it first came out. I know you have a new edition that just got released, updated version. It's the number one book I have to say that I recommend to anybody who's like, you know, I'm making a bit of money. I don't know what to do with it. How do I get things in order? You know, I have a bit of debt. It's the number one book I recommend to it. And it's one of those books I say, well, have you read the thing I just gave you? You know, it's a book that I gift and I often n people to read it. Thank you.

One of the things that you mentioned.

In that book that I love is money dials. The idea of your priorities, of where do you actually really want to spend your money or should spend your money, because it's a life priority. One of your money dials is convenience, and it's one of my money dials, too. I'd love to hear a little bit more about. What are some of the things you do to turn up your convenience? Money dialogue.

Okay. Love it. So money dials is a concept that we pioneered at I will Teach to Be Rich and a little bit of context on it. If you think about most people who talk to you about money, what's the first thing they do they tell you not to spend on anything? No lattes, no vacations, no clothes. Just sit in a cave and wait until you're 85 and just maybe we will allow you to spend that money. What a bullshit way of using money. And you know the worst part of it? It doesn't even work, nobody wants to hear somebody lecturing them on what they can't do with their money. And I recognize this. In 2002, that's why I started I Will Teach youh to Be Rich. If you understand human psychology, you understand that nobody wants to be told no as the first thing. So instead, there's a lot of different ways you can approach your money. And I say spend extravagantly on the things you love, as long as you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't. So everybody's kind of like, oh, that sounds good. What a cool phrase, Ramit. And then I started actually sharing what extravagantly really means. And when you ask people, what do you like to spend money on, they stare at you blankly and they will give you the same two or three responses. Oh, I like to travel. Oh, cool. When was the last time you traveled? Oh, I've been really busy. It's been three years. I'm like, dude, what do you actually like to spend money on? And because we have been subject to so much propaganda about saving money, which, by the way, most of us don't even do, we actually forget to develop a muscle for spending. In other words, everybody talks to you about saving, but nobody teaches you how to spend. So I decided I was going to change that. And I learned, because I have changed my net worth over the last 15 years. And I grew up very frugal in a large family, two immigrant parents. Now that my business has grown and my investments have grown, I have had to learn how to spend more and how to spend differently. This is a skill that nobody really teaches you, okay? And so I concept. I came up with this concept of money dials. And everybody has at least one money dial. A money dial is a thing you absolutely love to spend on. The most common money dials are traveling food, like eating out. And there's a few more, like wellness, fitness, etc. Mine happens to be convenience, which is mostly uncommon, except for entrepreneurs tend to be pretty into convenience, like you and me. And so the concept of a money dial is you can turn that dial all the way up to 10 and really spend extravagantly. Okay? So to give you an example, I have turned convenience up, way up. But I also turned other things way down. My wife and I eat at home. We hardly ever eat out, and we have no tv, Right? Little things like that that save us a considerable amount of money. But, for example, we love to travel, and we travel quite a bit. For me, on convenience, I have a personal trainer who coordinates with a personal Assistant. My assistant schedules everything. My trainer sends my macros, and it all kind of flows into this system. So I'm eating correctly for the target weight and muscle that I'm going for. When I leave my apartment to travel, I have something called a travel protocol that gets activated. And my assistant answers my emails differently. She makes sure that my plants get watered, even though she lives in a completely different state. She makes sure that certain orders are expedited or held. And so we've built this massive playbook and I share some of that in one of our courses called Delegate and done. Point being, when I wake up in the morning, I want to have everything in its place. I want to have the food ready to go. I want to know what I'm writing about today. I want to have it on the calendar because that allows me to be more free. So when I'm here with you, I'm like, how long do you want to talk? I'll talk for as long as you want. Because I know that the schedule is already arranged behind the scenes and that allows you and me to be way more present.

I love that so much. I have some funny convenience.

Money dials, but yeah, let's hear it.

I'm 6 5, so when I travel, I like to travel conveniently as much as possible. If I can't get upgraded, I try to at least go with premium, select, whatever economy. That's kind of my money. That was kind of my. This is the first thing I will spend money on once I have established my business and been able to kind of have some success. So for me, that equal, that's my trophy. That's like equal success for me. I also really love convenience when it comes to like my time. So like, I don't like to be told what to do anytime I feel like I want to have control over my time. So I'm very, very much, you know, covetous of my calendar. So I'll spend as much money as possible in terms of, you know, EAs or apps or, you know, just in terms of like spending the time to organize my time. That's really important to me, which kind of is a double edged sword because I really can't stand it when people are late or waste my time and it's just like, oh, I know time doesn't mean anything to you, but to me it means a lot. But that's something I got to work on being a little bit more patient or maybe communicating. Communicating my priorities.

Yeah, yeah.

I love the intentionality behind it. I think for everybody listening by the way, one of the key lessons is that each person's money dial is different. And when you're standing on the outside, it can seem completely absurd. Completely. And I'll give you an example. I have a friend who loves food. It is their true money dial. And so they will get reservations at some of the world's best restaurants, for example, Noma, and they will plan a vacation around that. Now, each of these meals might cost 500, $1,000 or more, plus the vacation time. Just somebody who doesn't care about food. That can sound completely preposterous, but what we need to understand is this person loves food, okay? And then they've turned that money dial all the way up to 8, 9, or 10. Okay? That is their money dial. One of my money dials is convenience. Me talking about a personal assistant coordinating with a personal trainer. It can sound crazy, but that's mine. So for most people, travel is one. They say they like to travel. Great. My emphasis here is awesome. What if you quadrupled the amount that you currently spend on travel? What would that look like? And this is where people get stuck. They go, oh, I would travel four times as much. Okay, maybe that's quantity. That's very linear. But maybe you would stay at a nicer hotel. Maybe you would order room service every day. Maybe like we did for our honeymoon, you would bring your parents on part of it. And we told them, just show up at the airport, don't worry about a thing. And we had the chance to experience this amazing once in a lifetime trip with our parents because part of our rich life is creating these memories, these experiences. So I really want everyone listening to ask, don't say, oh, that's ridiculous. I can't believe this guy spends that or that person does that. No, focus on yourself. Ask yourself if you quadrupled the amount that you spend on your money. Dialogue. You can Google money dial and find a different ten different money dials. What would your life look like? It can be pretty exciting and suddenly you have something meaningful to work towards.

Yeah, I love this. Like, allow yourself to dream it, but be specific because you're not going to know what you're working for and think. Sometimes we just work and hustle and grind and we don't realize, you know, what we're doing it for. So this is a good exercise for everybody. Just take a few minutes, step out to your porch, step out to a park, and just write down some notes about like, you know, where do I want to spend more money on? And I think that's a great approach. I heard you say this quote many times in interviews and conversations and things like that. I want you to talk a little bit more about what you mean by this. And I hear you say a lot. When it comes to investments, when it comes to buying things, when it comes to money, you say my money is good money. What do you mean by that?

Okay.

Oh, wow. I love this. Okay. So I have a. I have a program that I created, Wealth Triggers. And what that was was sharing some of the psychological learnings I've had of increasing my wealth. And not only mine. I went out and I interviewed many millionaires who went from a very frugal upbringing to being quite successful financially. And I integrated my lessons as well as some of the other lessons. And I have a phrase called my money is good money. And I think it's been profoundly impactful. The best example is one of my former co workers. She hired somebody to come and clean her apartment once a month. And the person who was cleaning her house would not take her shoes off. So she took it off the first time, but then she would kind of keep it on. And my co worker felt uncomfortable having to constantly ask. And I said to her, it's important for you to understand that your money is good money. And what this means is when I hire a vendor, somebody who works with me, maybe a consultant, whoever it may be, if it's a big project, we have a conversation ahead of time where I tell them about my expectations. And here's what I tell them. I say, I will be your best client. I've been with my trainer for over five years. I've been with some of my vendors for 10 plus years. I will pay you on time, I will not nickel and dime you. And I will refer people to you more than you can possibly imagine. I'll be your best client, but I will also be a high expectations client. Here's what I expect. I expect you to show up on time. I expect you to send me a weekly report or monthly depending on who they are. I expect a response within business hours of this amount. If you can do that, we're going to have a great relationship. And then this is kind of unspoken, but in my head I know that if they can't, my money is good money. And there are 20 other people in line who would love to have that money and that client. So if you are working with a vendor, whoever, it could be the person cutting your hair, it could be the person cleaning your house, it could be the person designing your website. It's important for you to lay out those expectations, but it's more important for you to get internally congruent and realize you've got money. And there's a lot of people who would love to work for that money. I'm not saying be an asshole. That's not the point. The point is it's actually respectful to clarify your expectations and then if somebody is not following them, to have the boundaries and congruence to say, I appreciate it, but my money is good money. I'm gonna have to go elsewhere.

I love that it kind of empowers you, reminds you that you worked hard for that money and that you have a choice. You have a choice, and it's. You shouldn't feel pressured.

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I want to wrap up our conversation.

With something that you've mentioned throughout the conversation. Your commitment to fitness and health and nutrition. This is something that I've got into the last few years. You know, I was an athlete growing up as a kid and in college and all that kind of stuff. But then when I became an adult and started working, I thought, you know, that's child's play. Let me get serious. Let me get a job. And I slipped into bad habits of not exercising and not really watching what I'm eating and all that kind of stuff. I realized that this was affecting my work life. It was affecting my, you know, my entrepreneurial journey, my entrepreneurial success, my business, and how sharp I was making decisions. So the last few years, for me, I would say the last three, four years, I've really dedicated to exercising four or five times a week and having a regime and really eating right and eating at home, like you mentioned, which is a great money saver as well. I want to hear your experience in how much that decision of saying this is important has affected your money, your business, your life.

Well, just to put it in perspective, I think hiring a trainer was probably one of the best investments of the last decade for me, and that really speaks to how important it's been for me. I think that anyone who's really good at what they do knows the power of a great teacher, because anyone who's made it to a certain level has had multiple great teachers. Now, I could go on YouTube and I can figure out fitness myself, and many people do, but there's this phrase which says, if you have a problem that money can solve, you don't really have a problem. Now, when I started off with fitness, it was purely vanity. Like, I just wanted to learn how to put on some muscle, and I didn't even know where to start. I didn't know anything about calories. I grew up never using the word protein, carbs or fats. I had no idea what those were. We didn't use those words in my family. So I was really starting at a pretty basic level. I asked my co workers and friends for advice, and they would take me and show me some basic workout stuff. Only over time, only when I moved to New York and I said, you know what? I'm really going to take this seriously. I think that if you truly are going to take something seriously, then you need to be using a notable amount of your discretionary time and or money to prove that you are actually taking it seriously. For example, if you claim you want to get fit, then let's look at your calendar and your spending. Okay? I'm not saying you need to spend a bunch of money to get fit. You don't. It's easier. But you don't have to do that. If you claim you want to start a business, show me your calendar and show me your spending. I want to see where you're spending your time and money. You claim you want to have better relationships. Show me the same thing. When it came to fitness, what changed for me was everything. I learned that I loved it because it was very linear. I go there, I do what my trainer says, my body will change. Then I started to discover secondary things. The vanity part was great to start. We can all start a business. Maybe you just want to make money. Whatever. Over time, I fell in love with the craft. I fell in love with these, like, very, very subtle things. Oh, can I get an extra 2.5 pounds on this one lift? It's going to take me three months, great. I'll take as long as it's going to take. And I learned that if I could control that, if I could show up, if I could get better, then business stuff is very simple. Because the fitness stuff takes a long time, right? It takes discipline, it takes showing up, it takes being humble with a teacher, trainer, YouTube video, whatever. And then just like final subtle things. I don't get tired after lunch anymore. I think that many of us in America, we start to believe that that's just normal. It's normal to be tired after lunch. It's normal to feel like you need to take a nap. It's so normal that we joke about it, right? Oh, the lunch, post lunch slump. But that's not actually necessary. In fact, you don't have to have that at all. You can have full energy throughout the day. So these are like crazy things that changed in my world and I thought they were just normal. So what fitness and food has taught me is that you can change your body if you want to. You can benefit from having teachers who know how to teach this. And by being a student of fitness, I've become a better teacher of money, business careers and psychology. So I'm forever thankful to my teachers, trainers, all the people that have helped me and continue to help me. And I think that really shows in the work that I do with my own students too.

I love that man. Seriously. And I follow you on Instagram. So you're looking good, man. So well done what you're doing.

You do, brother.

You're looking real good. And I've been, you know, I've been kind of following you along last few years and some, some really good improvements and I really believe that. I want to congratulate you on that success because that's just as important as the financial success because you're not going to be able to enjoy that stuff later in life if your health deteriorates, if you don't feel well, you're not going to enjoy the day to day journey of being an entrepreneur and building your business. So I love the message you just sent to our audience. Fantastic. Guys. You have to, have to, have to pick up I Will Teach youh Be Rich. It's one of my must read episodes here on the show. It's one of my must reads on the blog, my must read books. I have a top list and it's for good reason. It's because it's solid advice, it's practical. You can, you can pull it off. It's not theoretical. It's not something that, you know, you have to be some sort of financial genius or like Ray Dalio or something like that to make it happen. And that's what really, I think your superpower is, Remi, is being able to distill complex, difficult things into each easy, digestible chunks. Something that we try to do here on the show. Guys, please check out ramirezedhi.com and of course I'm gonna put all the show notes, put all the links, all the links to the courses he's mentioned. I've seen a lot of your videos, a lot of your courses, saw your creative live as well. And you're a great teacher. And watching great teachers, guys, is a great way to become a great teacher. You know, one of the things, you know, for those who have been following me for years, you know, I've been an educator for 13 years at a high school teacher, college, university teacher. I was a teacher trainer.

And one of the things you do.

In teacher trainer is you actually watch film, game, tape. You actually watch what makes a great teacher. And if you don't want to observe classroom observations, you can observe Ramit because he's a real master. So thanks, Ramit, for your time. Really appreciate you being on the show.

Thank you. It was a real pleasure.

It was so good to sit down with Ramit Sethi and have that conversation. It's funny, it's the first time I actually spoke to him. I've known about his work. We have a lot of mutual friends, but, hey, life gets me busy. And I guess we just never crossed paths over the years. But I felt like despite that, we had a pretty comfortable and natural conversation. So one of the biggest takeaways I got from the conversation is how much he had to invest in his branding, in his messaging, in his content, before he even made any money. He started blogging for years and years and years before he even decided to write a book, before he became a New York Times bestseller. So he put in a lot of reps, he put in a lot of work, a lot of investment in becoming the quote unquote expert in his own style of personal finance. So overnight successes are always years in the making. This is a huge takeaway. The other one I love is that he's able to stand out from the crowd. Personal finance is a huge niche. There are so many experts out there. There are way more people that came before me that had a lot more money and access in their own, you know, radio shows. But he carved out his own style, his own brand by being true to himself. When you read I Will Teach youh to Rich youh'll see a lot of personal stories from his own life, from his own upbringing, growing up as like an Indian American. There's a lot of stories about his father and how he used to love a good bargain, a good buy, and how you take, you know, over a week to buy a car from a dealership and bargain to the last penny and make him throw in free floor mats. And he gives these examples to show, hey, that's one way to do it, but there's other ways to save money and to make money. That's something that I really thought was very eye opening to me when I first read the book was, hey, everybody talks about saving money and cutting costs and they don't talk about, how about just make more money. You know, it's a lot easier to manage your finances and to save for the future and to save for retirement if you're making more money. And Ramit talks about that in the book. He talks about that on his blog. Talks about how to ask for a raise and how to get a better job and how to, you know, make money on the side, how to build a business, all that kind of stuff. But he was able to stand out because he was himself, he owned it, right? And by being yourself, you become unique. Guys, I have three action items I want to give you for you to take on today. First action item is I want to hear from you. Did you like today's format? Do you want to see more of this? Maybe once in a while we'll do some interviews and have some chats with experts like Ramit. If you do, I want to hear whether you like it or you don't like it. I want to hear from you. You can tweet at me at Twitter. My handle is Theomarzenholm. Just me and say, hey, love, love this style of episode. Or I prefer the lessons not so hot about the actual interviews. I want to hear from you. I don't want to see my Twitter blowing up with your messages, so go ahead and do that. Second action item, I want you to decide today what's your number one money dial? What is the one thing that you'd like to spend more money on, right? Whether it's convenience or travel or maybe dining out, whatever it is, choose your number one money dollar. Identify it. Don't just be a passive listener of today's episode. I want you to get engaged. I want you to actually implement. And if you could be as specific as possible, that'd be great. So if it's Travel. What kind of travel? Like travel that is immersive with a personal guide. Travel that is, you know, over the top, luxury, first class, five star hotels. What are you talking about? Get specific so you know what you want and what you're willing to work for and spend money on. What is your money? Dialogue. All right, action item number three. And I would say this even if Ramit was not on the show. Pick up. I will teach you to be rich. The paperback is like $10 or something like that on Amazon. The Kindle version's like nine. It's like nothing. It's gonna be one of the best investments you've made when it comes to clarity in your personal finances and your future and your finances. If you already have the book, buy it anyway and gift it to somebody. It's one of the best gifts you can give somebody and it doesn't have to be, you know, coming from a place of, you know, on a high h, you know, and saying, hey, you know, you need to fix your finances. Nobody's like, hey, I read this book. It was super helpful. Hey, if you ever have some time and you're lying on a beach, you're having breakfast, read a chapter or two. I'd love to have some discussion about it. It's an easy read. We all have friends that love to improve and love to listen to podcasts like this, so it makes a great gift. And, hey, holidays are just around the corner. All right, There are your 3 action items. Tweet at me. Let me know what you think of this type of format for an episode. The Omar Zenholm at Twitter. Number two, decide on your money dial. And number three, pick up. I will teach to be rich. Thank you so much, guys, for listening to today's episode. But before I say goodbye, I want to leave you with this. One of the takeaways I didn't mention from my chat with Remy is that Remy was just focused on having a good conversation and giving great value to her audience. If you're ever on a podcast, don't worry about plugging your products or services. Ramit didn't do any of that. He knows that, you know, if I really believe in what he does, I'm going to talk about it. He knows that if he gives great value that people will check him out. He knows that his work and his website will do all that work for him. So focus on giving great value. If you're on a podcast, if you're being interviewed for a blog, if you're getting on stage at a conference, if you deliver and give great value, people will feel compelled to learn more about you. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode.

I'll see you then.

Take care.

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