How To Invest In Yourself

I am Ramit Sethi. And a few months ago I got an email from the Stanford Sociology Department and they were doing an event in New York City. And they invited everybody, all sociology people out for, you know, drinks. And I was like, you know what? Part of the theme that I'm working on this year is to say yes to more especially social events. So I was like, cool, I'm gonna go. I got on the train. It was a Saturday night at some bar. I walk in and there's like 30 people. I do not recognize anybody. Fine. I'm gonna look at it like a positive. This is 30 new people I can meet. So what do you do if you go into a place, you don't know anybody there? I'm like, ah. Also, I was sweating because it's a bit humid out. And I walk in, so I'm already humid. Then I don't know anyone. I'm like, oh, God, like, taking a napkin, wiping off my sweat. I go up to someone, I go, hello, you know, how'd you hear about this event? And he goes, are you. Are you part of the sociology? Are you an alum? And I go, yeah, yeah, I got my master's in sociology. And he goes, oh, what year? I told him. And he goes, oh, PhD. Like, he's very skeptical. Like, I'm pretty sure I have a degree from this place, so I'm, you know, I'm being very nice. And I go, so who. Tell me about the event tonight. He goes, it's for PhD students. I was like, fuck, it's all PhD students. PhD students and undergrads and masters do not hang out at all. They are in different worlds. Actually, PhD students pretty much hate everybody except PhD students. They actually hate themselves too, because being a PhD student is very hard. So here I am realizing I should not have come to this event. I don't fit in at all. But you know that thing where you can't just leave because it's too awkward so you need to stay another 20 minutes just to, like, talk or something? So that's what I did. So I'm like chatting with these folks and every one of them is looking at me like, who's this guy here? Like, they know all the other PhD students and I am not one of them. And so I spoke to some of them and what are you working on? What's your research? Oh, that's so interesting. And I was interested, but eventually I was like, alright, I got to get out of here. And I bounced. That was a failed opportunity at investing in myself. But even though it was a total failure, I walked out of there sweating. I'm sweating right now just thinking about it. I walked out of there sweating more than when I walked in. It was the right thing to do. And so tonight I want to talk about investing in yourself. I start with that example because it doesn't always work out. There's no perfect coffee meeting where you go out, you take someone out to coffee, and on the first try you, you get the magical job. That rarely happens. Instead, it's kind of like investing. It goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down. But over the long term, you probably end up better off than someone who didn't invest at all. So what are some common ways that you can invest in yourself? Well, the most common way is by getting a book, any book. And by the way, somebody wrote me the other day, they go, ramit, can you please convince me why I should get your book over any other personal finance book? I was like, alright, let's have this conversation. You know, I got like millions of readers, blah, blah, blah. But I'm humble. Let's have the conversation. I go, well, who else are you considering? And then he named off some super scammy authors. And I was like, this, this guy has horrible decision making. Okay? You know, we all started someplace And I go, how are you going to make your decision? He goes, well, I want to know your credentials so I can decide what makes you different than everybody else. I said to him, I said to him, you're sure? You sure seem like you're agonizing over a ten dollar book. And he said something like, don't you believe in doing your due diligence? I have something called Ramit's Book buying rule. It means if you find anything, if you find a book that is even remotely interesting, do not question, do not equivocate. Buy the book. If you can learn even one thing from a book, it's worth the $10 or $20, right? And it's the highest ratio of information you can possibly get. Some authors spent years of their life putting it into place. So you can invest in yourself by getting a book. And if you agonize over it, you really need to reframe your Life. Because a $10 book, hey, if you don't like it after 50 pages, move on to the next. You should not be asking $10 questions. You should be asking $30,000 questions. Courses. That's another way to do it. Cass, you've actually joined several courses while we've been here. What's an example of a course you joined recently, Intro to coding. Oh, really?

Yes.

So what's up with that?

I have always been curious about coding. I hear it often and I know it's a growing industry, so I thought why not? May as well learn.

Nice. Okay, awesome. So that's another way to invest. And I'm not going to give you a list of my courses. You can find them@iwt.com products. They're awesome conferences. Another one. Taking someone interesting out to coffee, going to a party where you might meet interesting people and new friends. Pretty cool. So those are the obvious ones. What I want to ask you today is what are some of the non obvious ways to invest in yourself? What are some of the non obvious ways to invest in yourself? You see, I'm going to give you some examples from my own life. I already gave you my sociology example. I find that this is a question most of us don't ask at all. We are consumed with the day to day and for us, a good day for most of us is going to work, eating something sugary, something that tastes good, not getting in trouble with our boss, going home, spending some time with somebody we love, maybe watching Netflix and calling it a night. That's a good day for most people. And I'm not blaming anybody, I'm not trying to be insulting. That is a good day for most people. So we're not even asking the question how do I invest in myself? But by watching this, you get the time and space to ask that question. So what are some of the lesser known ways that we might be able to invest in ourselves? Cass, do we have any answers coming in? What do we see?

Let's see. Meditation.

Okay.

Connecting with people on social media.

Connecting meaning what? What do you think they mean, Cass?

Maybe commenting or DMing them. Cool experiences.

Okay, these are pre quarantine.

What?

These words are kind of vague. What are we gonna say next? Oxygen. Okay, anything else that might be a little more specific than a word?

Travel.

Okay, so we're basically now saying everything is investing in ourselves. Okay, great. Cashmere. That's investing in myself. What the hell, you guys? I'm going to give you a few examples of some unconventional ways of investing and then maybe we can dial it back and stop just using words. Earth architecture. No, that's not investing in yourself. Okay, before I get into these example, what is investing yourself? It's doing something that can possibly improve your life without the certainty of an outcome. Think about that. You buy a book, you don't know if it's going to change your life. Unless it's this book, I will teach you to be rich, second edition. But you don't know. You don't know if you're going to go to a coffee meeting or sociology thing if it's going to work out. It actually didn't work out. A lot of my personal investments, like investing myself, do not work out. But we trust the process. We use the portfolio effect to say, If I do 10 of these, five of them probably just be like, fine. Three of them will be abject failures. One or two of them will crush it. And those can change my life. So whether it's personal finance, starting a business, getting fit, falling in love, these are things we need to make investments in time and. Or money. All right, so I do want to. Aside from mocking some of these answers, I do want to give you guys my perspective. So I had a buddy of mine, a classmate of mine from college, who went, you know, we went to college in the Bay Area. He ended up working in Seattle. And he told me this principle that he developed, which I really loved. He said, I want to stay. I'm going to be up in Seattle for probably three or four years. I want to maintain my network in the Bay Area. So I set myself a rule. If anybody invites me to an event, a birthday party, even drinks out, I will fly down on Friday night to meet them. And to be there and do it, I was like, damn, that is awesome. It's awesome on two things. First of all, it's just so extravagant. But second, I really love that he created a rule for himself, a rule where he didn't have to think, and it really shows his priorities. Now, what is your reaction to that story? What is your reaction to the story about the classmate of mine who worked up in Seattle and committed to flying down for any invitation? If your instantaneous reaction is ha, ha ha, must be nice, I wish I could set a time to fly down any must be nice. Then I would urge you to check yourself, look in the mirror and say, am I trying to find ways of tearing other people down? Or am I trying to find caveats and reasons why this wouldn't work for me? Or can I flip the script and say, hey, I can't afford to fly city to city whenever I want? Maybe I don't have the money. Maybe I have children, Maybe I have responsibilities or my job doesn't allow, But I can take the lesson in that story and apply it to my life. So what is the real lesson? The lesson is not getting on an Airplane and flying around just to meet somebody for drinks. That's not the lesson. What's the lesson? The lesson is saying yes. Saying yes to the things that are important. This friend of mine, his classmate, he decided that maintaining his network was important, so he put time and money behind it. If what's important to you is making new friends, then maybe the rule is I'm going to say yes to every invitation that comes or I'm going to invite. I'm going to host a birthday party for every one of my 20 closest friends. Okay? That is how you can apply. It doesn't have to cost you a lot of money. You don't have to fly around. But I really want to urge you, when you hear stories like this, if your first reaction is, hahaha, that sucks. I can't ever do that. Check yourself, look in the mirror and say, am I trying to find excuses why that won't work for me, or can I adapt it and make it work at a level that's comfortable for my life? Okay. Did we get any people with reactions to that story? Cass, I'm curious what the initial reactions were.

Initial reactions were, how does he afford that? It seems very expensive.

Yeah, he has a good job. That's how.

Wish I could do it. Someone said he's living his rich life.

Nice.

Mm.

Okay. Very good. You know what? I kind of love that question. How does he afford it? That's the question I should have asked when I was in my early 20s. I've told you guys this story about walking onto planes and kind of looking at the people in first class in business. So stupid. Why are they spending so much money? We all get to the same place. What I should have said was, how do they afford it? If they have money, how do they have enough money to spend two, three, four times on the. On a seat up here? What do they get out of it? Seems kind of dumb to me. But why? That's what I should have done. That would have been implementing the D to C principle from my success triggers program disparagement to curiosity. So instead of disparaging them. So stupid. I should have said, why are they doing it? In this case, why is this guy, how does he afford it? Well, the answer is he worked at Microsoft, he makes a lot of money, and he knew that he would be eventually coming back to the Bay Area. He wanted to work in tech, so the amount for a flight for him was not that much. And so he just prioritized it. That's the answer. Great question. Okay, a couple of examples of how I invested in myself. And then I want to ask everybody here tonight, what are some ways, first of all, what are some unconventional things we can do to invest in ourselves? And then I want to ask people, what have you invested in for yourself, unconventional or not? So about 10 years ago, I. No, 15 years ago, I discovered that Disney Disney Corporation has a Disney Institute and they teach classes to typically mid level and senior level executives. I was like, I gotta go. I love Disney. I admire their company, their values. There's a lot of things I really admire about what they do. In particular how they create a magical experience. And this is something that we have tried to do at iwt. What would make it magic? Right, for those of you who have joined Earnable, you'll see a video in there where we said, what would make this program magic? And we talk about it, right? It's easy to create videos and just show you, but we added a ton more that makes it magic and different than anything else out there. So I didn't attend Disney Institute for years. A lot of it was a bit advanced for what I needed. You know, I was just trying to grow my business. I was an entrepreneur, scrappy, but at a certain point we hired a lot of people and I found myself doing a lot of management tasks that I was not prepared for. And I read all the books, but it's hard. I hired some coaches and it's still hard. And so I have a list of things that I want to eventually join or try or buy. And I was browsing it one day and I saw the Disney Institute class and I clicked over and they have, oh my God, it's so good. Like I want to take them all. They have customer service, they have values, they have all kinds of things. I was like, you know what? We're talking about our company values. Gonna go. I forwarded it to my assistant. I was like, please get me there as soon as you can. Didn't even know what the price was because I knew that it was that important. Now there are certain things in our life that we are price insensitive to. If you are a parent, you probably have a favorite brand of diapers for your kids. You don't care that it costs X dollars or X cents more than the competitor. It's done. You trust it, it's done. So that's how it was for me and that's how it is for some of the IWT students. How many of you have joined one or more of our programs? And whenever you see something that comes out new that's relevant. You just scroll to the bottom and click buy. That is trust. Sometimes people join, they don't even know how much they paid. Believe it or not. They email me afterwards. They're like, wait, can you show me the exact itinerary for this course? That's trust. So that's what I did. I went down to Orlando. I attended this class for I think it was three or five days. We had amazing instructors who have been operators at Disney Senior leaders there for decades. We went into the park, backstage, we did all this cool stuff and I just, I had a new appreciation for how a massive company from the top, all the way down to a cotton candy vendor can embed and incorporate values. In the end, I think that program cost about five thousand bucks and five or seven thousand bucks and then I flew down and hotel and so on. But at the scale that I was operating at, it was amazing and a no brainer in terms of cost. It was an investment. So I really love it. And I wrote a whole post with some photos and some notes. You can search for Ramit Disney Institute and you can see more of my write up there. But I wanted to share that because an investment can be a $10 book, it can also be a multi thousand dollar program and you have to be ready, right? Like I wasn't ready for this five years ago and I knew that if I had gone it would have been a waste. But there are times where you know you are ready and you just go for it. Okay, so I share that with you. To share an unconventional way to invest. The fact that you want to be learning from people who are themselves learning. Great teachers are also great students. So if I were sitting up here telling you to invest in yourself and I don't invest in anything, what kind of example would that be? But going to a multi day course, putting myself in the mind of a student and saying I'm yours, I trust you, I paid, I am the student. I will do whatever you tell me for this time and I'm going to be an amazing student. That is how you truly start to excel. Okay, final example is hiring a trainer. So again, this is a luxury. You don't have to hire a trainer, but so is going to the Disney Institute class. You can find fitness advice for free on fitness.Reddit.com or loseit.Reddit.com if you're trying to lose weight. There's lots of YouTube, there's so many places. But I wanted to get results. I wanted to not have to think about It. I wanted to be able to show up, have some kind of outcome, and then do the process and get results. Simple as that. Okay, so I paid, and I have a trainer, Chris Colson. And it's pretty much as straightforward as that. What's interesting was. And we were. We were building a fitness course many years ago, and we started doing a very exploratory session. And I mentioned to a few of my folks on the product team that they were like, this product seems pretty stupid because people are just gonna use it like five times, and then they're gonna quit. I was like, why would they quit? And somebody said, well, once they hit their goal, why would they use a training program anymore? I was like, have you ever used a trainer? The person was like, no. Like, just because you hit your goal doesn't mean you quit. In fact, lots of great trainers have clients for years and years and years. Why? Because goals aren't just about a number on a scale. They change, they evolve. You want your goal to get higher and better, and also you want accountability. And sometimes people just become friends with their trainers. So these are all the reasons that I want you to. Whether it's a trainer, a book, whatever. I want you to really start to understand the dynamics of investing in yourself. So I'm going to ask everybody, first off, let's just start with the easy question. What is something that you have invested in for yourself? That is question number one. Let's see what people say.

Or do you want him to type in questions, too in the box?

Oh, yeah, Type in questions in the box. Is that a strong hint? Okay, it's like, I'm like, I got Stockholm syndrome. Yes. Type in questions.

You guys, there's a question box on the lower portion of the live. Please type your questions there. Okay, so we're getting some answers in what they say. French classes.

Nice.

Nice sheets.

Oh, okay.

That's a good one. Yoga retreat.

Nice.

Cleaning service.

Okay.

Mastermind Meetup trips.

Love it.

Home gym.

Okay, these are great. Very diverse.

Getting my masters.

Uhhuh.

Presentation skills.

Okay.

Buying your book. All right. PhD. Gym membership.

Wait, PhD?

Yeah.

Oh, wow. Okay. That person is the only person laughing at my PhD jokes from a few minutes ago.

Oh, a freelance blogging course.

Okay, so these are great. So what do we. And I'm going to ask question number two. Two. As I give a little reflection on what I'm hearing, question number two is, what do you want to invest in next? What do you want to invest in next? So as those answers are coming in, one thing I noticed is the diversity. We had yoga retreats. We had freelance course. We had so many different things. I also noticed that some of them were very outcome oriented, like a freelance business course. You know, you want to make a thousand dollars or $10,000, whatever, fine. Then we had ones like a yoga retreat. Sometimes you don't necessarily have to have a quantitative outcome. This whole world is pushing everybody to become quantitative at everything. What's your quantitative outcome? What's your KPI? And sometimes you just want to do it. Sometimes it's just cool. And your instinct is telling you, I got to go try this. I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm going to try it. Why do you think I'm doing this? There's no quantitative outcome. If anything, I should not be doing this at all. I should be sitting on the couch right now watching Family Karma, which just got posted. Okay, I should not be doing this. But when I saw what was going on, my instinct told me I got to find a way to help. And the way I know how to help is to teach. That's it. Now, I'll figure out the KPIs and all that stuff later, but sometimes you've got to trust your instinct. And if you don't have a good instinct, you need to develop it. What do we hear, Cass?

All right, so things people want to invest in. Public speaking and an improv class.

Okay.

Design skills. Making my life more simple.

These are. Wait, hold on. Notice that these are all. The last two are kind of vague, like design skills. What I really want to hear is I found this design course from this site and I'm going to invest in it. And if you don't have the money, set up a sub savings account and use this stuff from chapter five to automate it. What was this? What was the last one? Simplify my life. Get specific. I want to buy this book or I want to. Every Saturday, I want to put one hour aside and I'm going to go room by room by room. That is how you get more specific, saying, like, I want to improve, like, simplifying my life. It's a great goal, but it's very vague and I want to hear more specifics. What's next?

Okay, someone said sweet cardigans.

Okay, you're going to have to work for that one.

Meditation courses and starting a business.

Okay. Is that person an earnable student? Okay, let's keep going.

Let's see. Travel, post pandemic.

Okay.

Meditation retreat, archery.

Cass, do you think there's a difference between investing and just doing something because you want it, like travel, Is that an investment? I don't think I consider travel. And we go. We travel six weeks a year, right?

Yes.

Is that an investment? Do you think of it like that?

I think it depends on what you want to get out of it. I think just traveling to a beach.

Okay.

In my opinion, traveling to a beach and just lounging is not an investment. Okay. But maybe if you have different tours planned or you're going to be learning something, that's an investment.

To me, there's no right answer. Yeah, I'm just kind of. I don't know. I think sometimes we have this tendency that we just pick something we want and then we call it an investment. Right. Like I want to buy this really cool thing. Is that an investment? I don't know. So I would like, I would really push people. What did I talk. You create your own definition for what an investment is. But earlier I said an investment is something that can give us a positive outcome, but it's not necessarily guaranteed. Now, like, really push yourself. Is your positive outcome that you want to have a cool time? Is going to a bar on a Friday an investment? You could make the argument it's an investment in my relationships. Right. But sometimes I think an investment isn't just always what we like. So this is kind of a distinction I would challenge you to think about and come up with your own philosophy. Mm. That's it. Alright. Now I want to ask another question. What are some unusual ways of investing in yourself? What are some unusual ways of investing in yourself? Let's take a look at some of the comments and Cas. We're good on questions.

Yes, we have.

Okay. Oh, we do.

I'm gonna switch devices.

Okay. So while whatever responses are coming in, let me remind everybody that these are posted on YouTube. YouTube.com ramitzati I have a playlist called Fireside Chats. Check it out. What else? That's all. I have no other room.

Oh, tag a friend too.

Oh, yeah, tag a friend who wants to know about investing in themselves. Or frankly, maybe you should tag some people and say you really should invest in some newer clothes. You need that.

Okay, guys, you're gonna go a little, little dizzy.

Oh, boy.

We tried this new equipment tonight, so.

We'Re trying to get a little better each time. We got some tripods and other things. It's a work in progress, babe. Where am I supposed to look? I got.

You're gonna have to look here.

I'm gonna just. You know what? Let The Instagram people suffer tonight. Tonight it's all my YouTube friends. How you guys doing? I'm focused on YouTube tonight. Instagram people. What can I say? You get the profile. All right.

Okay. We're going to questions, right?

This is very awkward. Okay. Yes.

All right, let's see. Just looking through.

Horrible questions tonight. I can't even see the questions, but I can see Cass's face. Wow.

Yeah. You guys did not write good questions.

Hey, Cass, you've been. Hold on. You've been behind the screen a lot. What makes a bad question? Please just roast them.

When you don't listen to the instructions and you just type in one single word, that's like, what?

Like what?

Like, I think people get confused about where to type answers and when.

How can they find an Instagram Live and be confused about how to type a question? This is not easy to find, as I'm realizing, like, so many people every day. Where's the video? I'm like, I don't know. If you can't find it on IG Live, maybe you shouldn't be here. I don't know.

I was so excited because it said we had 16 questions and I'm not going to read you one of them.

Wait, just. What do they say? Like, horse. What do they say?

Yes. Like, one says, it's okay. Photography course.

Okay. That's reasonable.

Are you Punjabi?

Oh, God, you guys. Cass, I know you're too polite to make fun of my readers, but you guys are horrible sometimes. Some of the questions I get, I'm like, I thought we had educated above average. Sometimes I have to question it. All right, do we have any question.