MBA1673 Extended Interview: Ramit Sethi – How To Start Your Own Thing

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $1 the Business podcast that powers your businesses strategies and improvement every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And today's episode is a very special guest interview episode with New York Times best selling author Ramit Sethi. Ramit Sethi's been building businesses online for as far as I can remember. He is the two time New York Times best selling author of I will teach you to be rich and the founder of Earnible. And in today's guest interview we're going to be discussing how to build your own thing, how to build your business even on the side while you're working right now. What are the steps you have to take, how to know what you're good at, how to leverage that into a profitable product or service and take it beyond. I had the privilege to sit down with Ramit to pick his brain on how to do exactly that, how to take Those steps from 9 to 5 employment to full time entrepreneurship. We got a lot in today's episodes a little bit longer than usual, but it's not every day you have Ramit Sethi on the show so we wanted to make sure we give you as much value as possible. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I've been a follower and a student of Ramit Sethi's work for the past eight years and I love his take on building sensible, sustainable businesses in a practical, step by step way. His book I Will Teach youh to Be Rich is a must read here on the $100 MBA and for good reason. It's a sensible, practical guide on getting your personal finances in order. One of the things that we discuss in today's guest interview is a lot of your money problems can be solved by making just a little bit more money, earning more income. But how do you build that business to allow you to do so? How do you get started? And that's what we get into in today's episode with Ramitzadehi. And if you want to take it beyond today's episode, then you're going to want to check out Ramit's new program called Earn. More about that later. But if you're curious, you can head on to iwt.com earn but for now we're going to segue into my conversation with Ramit Sethi on building your own thing. It's great to have you, Ramit, on the show. I've been a fan of your work, a follower of what you do for a very long time. It's funny because we have similar friends who talked about this before and I've learned a lot of things through those people who learned them from you. So it's great to actually get the source on today's podcast and we really want to focus today on the subject of building a business on the side where hopefully it can become their full time thing. I want to hear a little bit about why you think this is important and a little bit more about why do you think our listeners can benefit from today's lesson?

When I ask people in their 40s, what is their number one concern, the answer is always the same. Money. And when you think about money, the way that we have been taught to think about money, especially in America, is one of restriction. It's saying, no, no, no, no, you can't spend money on lattes. No, you can't go on vacation, no, you can't do anything. And implicit in that is the idea that we only have a fixed pie. This is my money. Don't, don't tax me, don't charge me anything, because this is all I have for the rest of my life. It's Such a fixed mindset. And I have a different framework called the CEO framework. Cut costs is one that we're all familiar with. E is for earn more and then O is for optimizing your spending, like negotiating your credit cards and things like that. The E part is really what I want to talk about because it is so powerful. It's really a force multiplier. And if we all take a hard look in the mirror, we will all probably realize that there's a limit to how much you can cut, but there's no limit to how much you can earn. So if you think about starting a business and you earn 500 bucks a month, hey, for a lot of people, that's life changing. Maybe you start there and you say, hey, I earned 500 bucks, I made a couple of sales, wow, maybe I could turn that into 3,000. Well, if I can turn that into 3,000, I could turn that into 30,000. Of course I need to learn skills that are different along the way, but I can see a path to that number. And once you start to earn that money, you can decide, hey, do I want to go full time on this or do I actually love my job and I just want to keep this on the side and spend Saturdays doing it. And that's gives us options, it gives us empowerment, it gives us the ability to create our rich life. So that's why I'm excited to talk about starting a business. How to it, pricing, psychology. This is the stuff that I love talking about.

I love this. For those who will follow the show, they know that I side hustled for over a decade before I went into full time entrepreneurship. And one of the things that I am so thankful of, that side hustle, period, was that it gave me time with a safety net to find out what kind of entrepreneur I want to be. What kind of business do I want to run, Do I like retail, do I like online, do I like products or like services? And it's such a luxury to have that safety net. But I want to ask you the question, at what point and how do they know or how did you know? It's time to say, you know, I've been playing it safe. I've been side hustling for a certain amount of time. When is it time to make the leap and say, you know what? Leap of faith? Bet on myself. Full time entrepreneurship.

Here's what I did. I set a rule for myself. I'm not even going to think about leaving my full time job until I earn more from my side hustle. Three months consecutively. That's a pretty high bar. That means that month one, I might do it. Month two, I didn't get it. Back to square one. Start again. So it's a pretty high bar. Why did I do that? Because I wanted to organize my finances before I decided to make a leap. Because when I started a business, it's very much the same for me as when I go to make a purchase for something that's really important to me. I would rather save up or invest so that when I go to get that thing, I don't have to think about money. I can get whatever I want. And that's the same way that I approached it with knowing when to make the leap. Now, for other people, that may not be the case. You may decide if I'm making X dollars per month, I'm going to make the leap.

Fine.

Little less conservative, a little bit more aggressive than my rule, because I did it consecutively, but that's your rule. The key thing here is to have a rule ahead of time. Once you start making money generating customers, you're going to start thinking about other things. And it's always good to have a guideline before you start. You can adjust it later. It's just on paper, but it's good to have a rule, whether it's my rule or your own personal rule, for how to know when you're ready to make a move.

Love it. Okay. I'm a listener, one of the 120,000 daily listeners. We get on the show, and I'm loving what you're saying. Awesome. I'm sold, Ramit. But I'm worried to start even a side hustle. Given the fact we're in a pandemic, is this a bad time to start a business?

Maybe, maybe not. I mean, I think candidly, it's probably hard to reach some people that you used to be able to reach. But if your first question is about all the things that can go wrong, then maybe entrepreneurship isn't the right thing for you. Or maybe it's not the right time. It's like when people email me and the first question they ask me is, what's your refund policy? I just tell them, this program isn't right for you. And there's a couple reasons. Number one, the refund policy is on the website.

Read it.

But number two, if you're focused on all the things that can go wrong, then I could give you the perfect program. Hell, I'll fly to your house. Okay, I'll fly to your house in Peoria. Illinois. I could do your copy for you, and still it wouldn't work. Because if your entire worldview, if the lenses that you look at the world through are all the things that can go wrong, then they're gonna go wrong. And I guarantee you that the people who write in, asking about refunds and etc. That worldview seeps into other parts of their life, relationships. What can go wrong instead of what can go right, and a variety of other things. So my challenge to you is if, first of all, take a hard look in the mirror. Part of entrepreneurship, really getting to know yourself deep down, like you said, what type of entrepreneur did you want to be? That is not an easy question. And you have to be really honest because, you know, first day, you start off, it's all glamorous. Maybe you want to fly on a jet, this and that. And then as you become an entrepreneur, you realize, oh, my God, half the things I thought I wanted, I don't really want. It's similar to being in a relationship, being a parent, achieving any kind of career, success. Wow, I thought I wanted to be the big boss, but there's costs. Same thing here. Taking a hard look in the mirror is a challenge. And asking yourself, do I look at the world with all the things that can go wrong? And what if I flip that just for 48 hours? And I said, what if everything went right? What would happen then? So in a pandemic, I've had people start businesses, they've already made thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. Here's a simple example. Remember those wine and paint classes people used to go to on Friday night? One of my earnable students started a painting class. She does it through Zoom, and you bring your own wine, and, you know, watch via Zoom and Paint, and boom, she's selling that for about 100 bucks per client. You can do a very nice business doing that. That's just one of many, many, many examples of what people have done. So we can talk about all the things that can go wrong. And trust me, many things have gone wrong. But I also would like to add in a different part of the mix, which is, what are all the things that can go right?

I love this. So you remind me of. You reminded me of this little video clip that always stuck in my brain from Jim Rohn, where he says, yeah, starting a business is risky, but not starting a business is also risky. And it's all risky, like taking action and not taking action. It's also a risk. You're making a decision either way. And that really stuck. That really stuck with me. And what you said really harkens back to that. That, yeah, you know, starting a business now might have its own challenges, but you're always going to have challenges. And I love that. That was a really good point.

So you mentioned earlier, Jim also said, don't wish for it to be easier, wish for you to be stronger. And that is very profound. Reframe. Sometimes I find that one to two sentences of powerful reframes can completely change the way I think about life. I heard a Navy SEAL on an interview where he said, when other people do push ups, they get tired. When I do pushups, I get stronger. Just think about that. The idea that, oh, I'm so tired after work, ooh, this is going to drain me. I need my time to recharge. Fine. I'm not going to disagree with you. If that's what you need, great. We all have our own needs for self care. But what if just for 48 hours we reframed it and said, you know what? I need an exciting challenge in my life. When I come home from work, I'm going to try something I've never tried. Yeah, it's going to be hard. Yeah, I'm probably going to be bad at it at first, but I've done things like that before and I know I can succeed again. What a completely powerful reframe to trust yourself and to say, you know what? I'm going to try this thing. I know it's going to be hard. I know I'm going to fail the first time, maybe the second time. But I know that if others have done it, I can do it too.

You mentioned earnable earlier and I took a look at some of the things that you're going to be covering in this course. Who's it's catered to incredible powerful stuff. A lot of new entrepreneurs that are looking to start a side hustle will feel a little bit of overwhelm. Like I don't know what to work on first, in what order. What are some of the things that you teach not only in earnible, but just in general, with your books, with your blog that help people understand that, hey, you don't do everything all at once. Step by step is what ADP knows.

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There are two things that I really specialize in that made me want to create my book and earnable. The first is psychology and the second is specifics. So when I started writing my book I Will Teach youh to Be Rich, which is about personal finance, I found that most of the books started off by telling you, hey, let's track your money for the last 60 days. And everyone just threw the book back on the bookshelf. No thanks. Because that makes everyone feel horrible about themselves. Who wants to do that? I don't know what the numbers are, but I know they're horrible. So I don't think I'm gonna read this book. So, you know, I studied psychology, I understand human behavior. And in my book, which is really a psychology book disguised as a personal finance book, we start off with credit cards. Everybody's got a credit card. Everyone sucks at using credit cards. And there are a few simple tweaks that people can make to get perks they have no idea they already have. Like your credit card will write you a check if you spill coffee into your laptop. And also to negotiate your APR and get your late fees waived. So that was one. Psychology two is when I started learning about money and business. There are so many vague platitudes out there. You know, get on social media or treat your customers like gold. I was like, what do I say if I'm trying to make a sale? Literally, show me the emails. And I don't want some random person's. I want someone who made a million dollars. Show me how you did it. Show me the difference between the emails that sell a $200 product and a $2,000 product. And then this is my favorite part for earnable. Don't just tell me what to do on a sales call. Oh, be confident. Get a good microphone. Who cares? Show me actual sales calls that I can listen to. And this stuff does not exist. So I decided to create it. So in earnable, we're not going to give you five platitudes about five things you must do on a sales Call. No, it's listen to these actual sales calls that I did and then listen to my analysis. Why did it work? Or in some cases, why did it not work? What was I doing when I said this sentence? How can you apply that to your own sales calls? Same for email, Same for selling hundreds of thousands of dollars via Instagram. We show you the actual campaigns and why they worked. So two things that I really crave in my own life that I wanted to put into earnible. One is psychology. If you're starting off, you don't have an idea. We wanted to show you how to generate a ton of ideas, test them for profitability, and then two ultra specific, here's what works for us. Here's the actual campaigns, here's the actual sales calls, the actual funnels, and here's why they work. Here's the data. Now you know exactly what to do to grow your business.

I've never heard of anybody doing this. This is so in business, I've seen this in other things. I played high school and college basketball. One of the things you have to do is study film. Study what happened in the last game when you played this team. So you know what you did wrong, what you did right. I did this with public speaking. I was fortunate enough to be trained by Michael Poor, Amy Poore. And we study my speeches and I'm like, damn, I do do that. I do pace, I do, you know, and it allows you to understand what's going on. We also study, obviously the greats. This is what, you know, this is how it's done. And doing this in business is so good because when you show them an example of how it's done properly, not only do they see how to do it, but they see it's possible. You know, sometimes we don't know what is possible. We don't even believe it's possible because we have never seen it. I've never seen somebody have a successful funnel and then sell on a webinar and then make great launch. I just never actually saw behind the scenes. So you presenting that to them is not only instructional, but it's inspiring.

Thank you very much. I think that deep down my dream is for the entire industry to be more specific about what works and what doesn't work. So for example, in earnable, we have a whole section on Instagram sales and I actually show people the DMs that I get from somebody who's interested and I show them how I go from a DM to a multi thousand dollar sale. On the other hand, Sometimes it's good to see what doesn't work. So people DM me, they have no intention of paying whatsoever, and they might just waste the next three hours of your time. You need to know how to spot that.

Right.

I had to learn it painfully through trial and error. But what if you can just actually see the DMs and listen to. To actual sales calls with people who have no interest in your product whatsoever? They're just there to take up time. Both of these things are valuable, and it actually makes you a better entrepreneur because you're not resentful anymore. And you actually shouldn't be resentful of someone trying to take your time. What you should learn is it's not personal. It's my job to better communicate my value. Oh, I saw how that person did it. Oh. Ramit brought in other people and he coached them on their sales calls. Right there. You can listen to the recording. Suddenly, I don't need to be resentful or confused by what's going on. I know exactly how to pattern match my customers, and I know how to communicate my value with them. These are all things that you learn the ultimate specifics of in earnable.

Yeah. If you guys want to see a great example of somebody running their Instagram page really well, check out Ramit. Follow him on Instagram. I do. And I love just how you market your brand, what you're doing in an educational way, and not in a, look at me, I'm a winner. Look at all my accolades, because that falls on deaf ears. We're all sick of it. We're all sick of people selling their books off private jets. You know, that just does. Doesn't work anymore.

Thank you.

So I really think that's something that an actual thing somebody can do right now to just really see it from that lens, and not only from the lens of, like, what's Ramit up to? But, like, how can I be more like Rami in terms of how do I promote my stuff?

Thank you very much for saying that. I appreciate that. I never wanted to be the kind of person who, you know, takes a picture from a yacht and says, like, oh, it's not my brand. It's just not what I would do. If anything, I do have a few things that I truly love. I would call it quiet luxury. You're never gonna see the brand of clothing that I'm wearing with a big brand.

I've seen that wardrobe. That's a beautiful wardrobe.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

But you'll never see a big FAT logo across it. And I think that for a lot of people, finding one or multiple people that you trust where they run their business in a way that you admire. Oh, that's so important. Because if you think that success means you have to start being all flashy and posting these photos from a private jet, that's just not true. There are a lot of very successful people who are quietly successful and you can choose where you want to go. But thank you for encouraging them to follow me, you and others, because you can start to see, hey, what do I like, what do I admire? Do I want somebody who is screaming in their videos or do I want someone who's a little bit more quiet and which one do I find more credible that you can get from following different people? And remember, as an entrepreneur, you choose. It's your business, you're the CEO. So if you don't ever want to post a picture in front of a beach, you don't have to. And if you do want to, you can also do that too. But you choose. You're the CEO.

I love it. You know this better than most people. You know, no one builds a business alone. Even if you're a solopreneur, you need to build relationships along the way. And somebody who's brand new, who's joining Earnable, that's learning from you. What are some tips of just getting started in that relationship building process? Because, you know, they're new to the niche, they're new to business. I could say firsthand, like all the people that I got to know when I first started, you know, the John Corcorans of the world, the Jordan Harbingers, Noah Kagan's and Nathan Barry's, these people that are now building seven, eight, nine figure businesses that are now my contemporaries. And we all kind of went up together and we helped each other out, I can firmly say without those relationships, I would not have the success I have today. I could see that now that I'm here. But when you're just getting started, how does somebody start getting those relationships going?

Well, first off, is good to do a little audit of where you are right now. So if you were to hang out with three of your friends and you mentioned to them, hey, I'm thinking of taking this business program, Earnable, I want to learn how to start a business, what would their first reaction be? Everybody listening, really think about that. Close your eyes. Picture those three friends. You just told them you're going to take a program on how to start a business. What would they say? What if their answer was, why would you do that? Sounds like a scam. Can't you just find stuff for free on YouTube? What a waste. You should just be lucky you have a job. That's one type of person. Now, what if, on the other hand, they said, oh, my God, that sounds amazing. Oh, wow. Like, if. What if you were able to start a business? What would you do? What would you do with a successful business? Those are two types of people. One does not like change. One is resistant to change. One sees all the problems that could happen. They're skeptics. They're cynics. They think everyone's a scam out to get them. The other says, what an amazing opportunity. And hey, if that opportunity doesn't work, maybe the next one will. And if that doesn't work, the third one will. And the one that wins is going to make up for all the ones that didn't work. So doing an audit of your own contemporaries right now will really quickly reveal to you. Are you surrounding yourself with positive people who push you, or are you surrounding yourself with skeptics who hold you down? That's number one. Number two is you have to remember that friends and entrepreneurs serve different purposes. A lot of my friends are not entrepreneurs. That's okay. They don't. That's not their world. That's perfectly fine. We still hang out.

We still.

I'm going to them for friendship, but I'm going to some of my entrepreneur friends for business advice. So even though your friends may not support entrepreneurship, you can certainly still benefit. I want to give everyone a really specific exercise they can do. Right now, many of you are stuck on an idea for a business. What is my idea? I want to start a business, but I don't have an idea. Pull out your phone. Text three friends individually, and I want you to text them this. Say, hey, I'm listening to this guy on a podcast. So he's doing this exercise. Just do me a favor, and I'd love it if you could give me an answer to this question. What is something you think I'm good at? What do you come to me for advice on? Now, here's what's going to happen. First of all, about 10% of you, you're gonna be too afraid to even do this. Cause my friends will think I'm showing off. Just send a text, okay? Just send the text. You'll be pleasantly surprised. Oh, my friends are gonna say something good about me. That scares me. Just send a text. The remainder of you are gonna find some really interesting things you're gonna have friends who say things like, you're really good at listening. I always feel like if I have a problem, I can come to you. You listen, you're amazing. You always look great. Your style is on point. You are amazing at decorating or something even as obscure as your dog is really well trained. Okay. Each of those things. A good listener, good at style, good at home organizing, and good at dog training. Each of those things can be a six figure business. Each one of those things. But right now, as a beginning entrepreneur, we're so in our head that we don't realize the people around us can actually provide us these super valuable clues about what type of business we can build. So that's my challenge to everybody listening. Do that exercise and then send us both a message on Instagram or on Twitter. Tell us, show us a screenshot, anonymized of what your friends told you. I'm Amit on Instagram. And just show me what they told you. What you're going to do is you're going to find, wow. Some of these answers are ones I wouldn't have expected. And then you're also might say, okay, cool, that's interesting. I don't know how to turn that into a business. Well, that's what earnable is there for. It shows you how to take that idea and turn it into a profitable business. But I want you to do this exercise right now and you will be pleasantly surprised by what you find.

I actually did this exercise. This is like over maybe 14 years ago. So it was a phone call. It wasn't text. Text wasn't big back then. And it's so interesting because the answer I got is exactly what I leverage in my business every day. And the answer I got was, you're a great teacher. You explain things very easily and you keep things light because you like to joke around and things like that. So those are kind of just highlighted. Okay. These are my superpowers. And I was like. And I always go back to that when I feel like things are not working. I'm like, am I leveraging that? Most likely I wasn't. And I actually shared this story a bunch of times on the podcast. But, you know, before this podcast, we had a different podcast that totally failed. Right? It was a total tank. And it's because I did not leverage those strengths. And when we pivoted and changed, it just changed the whole ball game. It just changed everything. And I think sometimes we neglect our past, we neglect our skills. Like you said the dog training thing or Some people might call you and say, oh, I go to you whenever I have a tech problem or I have a problem by website or whatever it is. And a lot of us be like, you might be a developer all your life and then you switch and like, now I'm going to be a life coach. Why don't you coach developers to start their business? This is a goldmine of information, you know. So do you guys walk through some exercises like that in cultivating their idea in earnable and tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah, well, like I said, we love specifics. So what we did was we have now we have over 45,000 customers. We went to some of our successful students and we said to them, we want to take your business and reverse engineer it, but first we want to verify your income. So we went through their income and we verified and created a series called Verified six Figure Earners.

Why?

Because we want to show you what winners are doing. We believe at IWT that it is critical to study winners. Of course, mistakes matter and you should study those. But when you're building a business, it is really valuable to see all the nuances of what winners do because they do things completely differently than everybody else. They have patience in a different way, they look at customer research in a different way. Even their marketing campaigns are different. So we verified and stamped with authenticity that these are verified six figure earners and then we deconstructed their business. For example, we have a certain type of coach who earns six figures and we deconstructed all the way back to his first ideas. And his first ideas look nothing like his business today. Or in your case, for example, you know you're good at teaching, but how would people ever translate that, for example, to a podcast? Back then, podcasts didn't even exist. So it's very hard to connect the dots for people, okay, I'm a dog, I'm good at training my dog, but what am I just supposed to train a bunch of dogs? Maybe, but there's 10 other business ideas that you could take with that alone. And so when you see multiple six figure verified six figure earners and you see where they are today, and then you reverse engineer back, what was their first idea? What was that marketing campaign that got them $10,000? How did they get their first hundred customers? Suddenly you start to realize these patterns and again, you're studying winners. You're not just studying a random free blog Post or a YouTube video. You're actually studying carefully curated winners. So that is how we go about It. And that is how we let you study the winners. And then you go back to your own ideas, which you've collected following our proprietary process, and suddenly you realize, oh, my God, two days ago, when I looked at these ideas, there were just five ideas on the page. Now I can see 50 different businesses. Wow, let me go to the next step of earnable, where I'm going to sort it and figure out the most profitable one. And that's how you go through it.

I love the fact that you study winners, you study people that do it right, and you show that to people in earn a bowl. The reason why I think that's so powerful is because sometimes you need to see what it takes to. To win. Sometimes you need to see who you need to become to have success. And it's either going to do one or two things. Either it's going to be, like, inspiring. Okay, man. Like, I, you know, that's why I love reading biographies. Whether it's Elon Musk's biography by Ashley Vance or Shoe Dog, you know, you realize, wow, you got to have patience, man. You really got to eat a lot of shit, excuse the French. But, like, you know, that's really what you learned. But in this specific example that you're giving in earnable, you learn that, okay, I'm going to need to pivot. I'm going to need to be flexible. I'm going to understand that it's not this one Eureka idea all the time. That's one option. The other thing that might happen that is also a huge benefit is you might realize, maybe I don't want to do this, and you are going to save so much money and time and effort and in trying to make this happen and build a business and then be sad and be upset that this is a bet and feel resentment to yourself sometimes. Like, you know, we do this all the time in university. Like, for example, we'll take a semester in physical therapy and spend ten grand to the university. And we're like, oh, you know what? I don't really like physical therapy. I want to do philosophy, right? And we're okay with it because you just see, as you know, I Learned it through 10 grand, right? You're going to do this for far less with a course through earnible or whatever products that RAMIT can offer you. But the point here is that sometimes you need to invest in yourself to investigate. Hey, can I do this? Is this for me? Is this something I want to do? And hopefully that's a yes. But even if it's A no. It's a really inexpensive way to find out.

I'm so glad you pointed that out and thank you because what you just did is an example of how winners think differently than everybody else. So winners see an expenditure, whether it's a book or a dinner out, lunch out with somebody they've never met or a program and they say, okay, that's going to cost some money. One way or another, I'm going to learn something. If I can learn just one thing from this book, the $10 was worth it. Everybody else thinks about it in a different way. I get emails where people say, how do I know this will work for me? I'm left handed, I live north of the equator, I like spaghetti, but I don't like rigatoni. How do I know this is gonna work for me? They're special snowflakes and what I really want to challenge them to do is to listen to what you just said, which is trust in yourself. Give yourself every advantage if you can afford it, invest in yourself. And whether that's a $10 book or a program that's much more extensive, experiment a little bit. And I just find that that's much more fun way of living instead of it needs to be perfect. And I, and you know, this is a question people have. How do I know how quickly I will get roi? That's a big red flag. You'll get ROI if you follow the process and you continue trying. But if you're looking for quick results, I would say earnable or frankly, any self development is probably not right for you. You wouldn't walk into a therapist's office and say how quickly can you solve this psychological problem I'm having? How quickly? You would never say that. And yet when it comes to buying a business program or sometimes a fitness program, how quickly can I get to this target weight? It's the wrong way to approach it. And I don't want people to start off on the wrong foot. I want them to start off by doing what you're doing, the right foot, saying, you know what? I experimented in college, I'm going to experiment in my life. And I know that eventually, with enough time and hard work, I will find the right answer for me.

I got one more question, but before I ask it, I want to kind of put a pin on what we just talked about.

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And then.

Thank us later because I really do think that what you're doing is great because you really nailed personal finance. And now that you're moving into, you know, you've done this on some smaller courses, but now that you're doing earnable and showing people step by step how to build that side hustle, that's great. And I want to just wrap up with one question, last question. What's the one, like, the biggest regret you had as an entrepreneur? Whether it's a mistake, whether it's something you overlooked early in the, in your, in your journey, what is like one regret you had or one thing you would like to do over.

I hate thinking about this, but I'm glad you asked because it's so painful and visceral when you think back to what it was like as an entrepreneur in the beginning. I'm rewinding now back to 2006. I had been writing my blog for about two years. I hadn't made any money, like literally zero dollars. It wasn't meant to make money. It was just I had learned about personal finance and I wanted to share it with other people. And in 2006, I wondered, does anyone pay for anything on this stupid Internet or is it just a bunch of cheap freeloaders? That was my question, you know. So I decided to create an ebook. Now, I didn't know how to do that, but I did it in Microsoft Word and I got a friend to illustrate it for free. And I printed it to PDF and got it all designed and this and that, and I sold it. I was petrified to sell it $4.95. And I remember being afraid that people would call me a sellout. And looking back, I just want to go back and grab my old self by the collar and just shake him and say, stop worrying about all the things that can go wrong. Stop it. You're selling from your heels. You're being defensive when you don't need to be. Just be candid. I created this thing. It's awesome. You're gonna love it. And it's only five bucks. And if you don't love it, I'll give you a full refund. That's what I should have said. Instead, I was so scared that I wrote this copy that it was like this. Yeah, guys, I really like that you've been reading my blog. Anyway, I created this PDF. I have some cool stuff. So, like, I know you could probably find it for free. So let me explain in six paragraphs why I'm actually charging for this. Anyway, I hope you guys try it, but if you don't, that's okay. There'll be a lot more free stuff coming tomorrow.

Okay, bye.

And it's just so cowardly, you know, I was so afraid. And you know what happened? The worst happened. There were people who called me a sellout and they said, oh, so the whole blog is just about you making money? Oh, I will teach Ramit to be rich. Now I see what the angle is. And if there's one saving grace that happened is I woke up the next day and I looked at these comments and I felt that horrible pit at the bottom of my stomach. But I also looked in PayPal and there was, I don't know, 30 or 40 orders, which was more than I expected. And here I am. I'm looking at one side of the screen where everyone's calling me a sellout, and I'm looking at the right side of the screen where people are buying and they're like, this is awesome.

Thank you.

Are you coming out of anything again? And at that moment, I realized, I don't understand what's going on here. I need to figure out why. There's a lot of people who are complaining, but then there's these other people who never leave comments, but they're buying and they're asking for more. And I spent the next three years trying to understand sales, psychology, monetization. Eventually, I had basically, I recycled my entire email list because I realized I wanted to focus on people who were willing to invest in themselves and wanted growth, didn't just want random tips on saving money. That was a really difficult time in my life. So biggest regret would be being scared of selling, feeling like I had to explain myself, and accepting the premise of the question, why are you selling? Why am I selling? I'm gonna sell more because this is amazing and you can't get audio analysis of sales calls for free. That's why it doesn't exist on YouTube, because you need a profit motive in order to spend the hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop it, or in Ernable's case, over a million dollars to develop all the things that went into it. So am I gonna sell? Yes. I'll give away 98% of my stuff for free.

Percent.

The truly amazing stuff is going to be not just premium, it's going to be super premium. And for the right people, it's going to change their lives.

That story was a masterclass, dude. That story was a masterclass in believing in yourself and understanding that it's important to know what you want. Understand, like what do I want? What do I want out of my business? What do I actually want to do? And you mentioned it before. It's your choice as an entrepreneur, which is fantastic. But you nailed it, man. If you don't believe in yourself, no one's gonna believe in you. Like, you have to have that conviction. And I love the fact you shared the story because it's not like something you have. Either you have or you don't. Something you cultivate. Something you cultivate and I love that. Guys, check out Earnible. More about Earnible in a moment about how to find out, how to sign up, how to get started, and more about Ramit. But I wanna thank Ramit for his time being here in our Masterclass interview. Ramit, thanks so much for being on the show again and you dropped some serious great knowledge today with today in the audience.

Thanks for having me.

I always enjoy sitting down with Ramit Sethi, picking his brain, asking these questions that I know many of us have in our heads. Especially when you're starting out, especially when you're trying to earn a few thousand dollars on the side and then parlay that into a full time business. Here's your homework. You heard me mention you got to check out Ramit on Instagram. So go ahead and follow him on Instagram so you can have a good example of how to really present great value on social media. The second homework assignment is to check out earnable. Go to iwt.com earn and learn more about the program and how you can get started. One of the things that Ramit and I really agree on is that it's very hard for you to build an innovative creative company, product or service. If you're operating from a space of fear, of scarcity, of worrying about paying your bills, you're in desperation mode. Then it's really hard for you to be creative. So you need to tackle your financial problems. You need to tackle the financial pressures that you have. And building something on the side allows you to do that. Do yourself a favor and begin with that while you're still in a job, while you're still in a 9 to 5 and then that's going to help you bridge that gap, allow you to be a lot more creative, use some of those resources that you earned in that side income with that side business to reinvest into the business to make it your full time thing. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe right now on whatever you use to listen to podcasts. Also, if you loved today's episode, go ahead and share it on social media right now with your friends and family. Take a screenshot, give them a link. Anything that you can do to help another person benefit like you benefit today is paying it forward. So go ahead and do that right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this Starting a business is an adventure. It is a masterclass in self improvement because you're constantly learning new things so you can do new things. It's going to be a little bit challenging, a little bit difficult at the start, but the more you get used to getting over challenges, the stronger that muscle becomes, the easier it is for you to continue to grow and to build a better business. So get over those initial fears and that initial humphrey of resistance of I don't know if I can do this of the doubts. Get over that and you're gonna thank yourself a thousand times every single day as you build and grow your business. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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Yeah, but we'll be with family. You're in a good mood.

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The past 180 days ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people.