Lightning Round: Ask Me Anything

Right, welcome to tonight's Fireside Chat. We have an express lightning round Fireside Chat tonight called Ask Me Anything. So tonight I am taking your questions. I'm going to answer as many as I possibly can. You've got a question box below. I'll take your questions about money, psychology, body, hair.

Morning routines.

Oh, God. Morning routines. No business questions tonight because in half an hour I'm going to be doing a live presentation launching earnable. And if you guys want to open up another tab, this is a good time to do it. Iwt.com earnlive Put that aside for the next 30 minutes, but let's take some questions from people. Let me just think about the most common questions that I get in my email inbox. The good ones are like fairly technical questions. I got one today saying, hey Ramit, I watched your Fireside Chat where you said you need to build up a one year emergency fund. I am still contributing to my 401k. Does your advice matter or is it relevant? If you're getting a 401k match, that's a fairly intermediate or advanced question. So I appreciate that. It shows that you have done the work. You've really gone through the material. Probably the worst questions in the world are the ones. Well, first of all, the ones where people say, you're a shithead. I'm like, how come people who write those kind of emails, their name never matches what's in the from part of their email. Why is that you guys couldn't even take the time in Gmail to set up your right name. It says G Space. Space Space M. That's where it's coming from. And then their name is Mike. What? That has nothing to do with each other. So I already know how to deal with these crackpots and critics, by the way, any business owners. I took years of insights and shared eight types of people who will never buy from you. You can Google it, Ramit. Eight types of people who will never buy from you. And I share all these insights after responding and reading over a million emails of the crackpots and loonies who will never ever buy from you. All right, let's go to a question.

What is your favorite food to cook?

Oh, God. Did you set this one up, babe? I'm. Well, first of all, I just want to say you're looking at a very recently experienced chef because the other day I think Cass was taking a nap and I was starving. I don't know much about cooking, but I did whip up a very special meal of grilled Cheese with pepper jack cheese and two fried eggs.

Whoa, two.

That's about the limit of what we're gonna get out of meat. So. Love my wife. Thanks, babe, for. We do food prep together, normally on Sundays, but she's the master chicken maker.

What made you start caring about your style and clothing?

Wait, are these all your questions?

No, they aren't.

What made you hire at next level wardrobe for your amazing immaculate style? Wow, what an unloaded question. I think yesterday I mentioned that when I was in my early 20s, I decided I wanted to improve my style and I just wanted to dress better. And the thing was, I could see these celebs in these magazines and they looked amazing. I could never figure out how to make that work for me. So it's like walking into a beautiful house and you're like, this is stunning. But then you are at Ikea and you don't know what to do to even start. That's how I felt. So I started asking friends for help and getting advice. And eventually you realize that people who have style spend a lot of time, like reading magazines. It's actually fun for them. It's not a choreography or if it is a chore, they hire somebody to help them do it. So that was the beginning. And then as I started to get more public, I kind of enjoyed dressing better. And finally it became one of those things that wasn't just vanity, it wasn't just a puzzle. It was actually really enjoyable. So that was my journey.

What psychological advice would you give in current times?

This week we're going to be talking about how to stay positive. That's a fireside chat that we're going to be tackling. So stay positive. You know, it's interesting when you hear that typical advice. It's mostly people like telling you it's not so bad. You should, like think about positive things. There are other people worse off than you. I've never really found that to be helpful or convincing. Never. I'm not saying that it doesn't work for others, but for me, I found it helpful to accept what was going on, accept reality, and then make a plan. And I'll share some examples of how I do that. But I do think positivity is not just about smiling and thinking of people worse off than you. Quite the opposite. It's actually being candid with what's going on. It's focusing on what you can control and it's also remembering that you can serve others, which can actually help you become more positive and forward looking.

What's the most Important thing for a.

Successful relationship, picking the right person. Everything else is a tactic, picking the right person. And that means that you are aligned on the big things in life. You know, you can worry about who loads the dishwasher, how or what time do you wake up? Those are tiny details. I think anyone who has very long relationship would tell you you can work those out. But picking the right person, where you generally agree on the big things in life, how do you want to live? How important are relationships to you? What do you think of family? Do you want to have kids? You know, the basics, how do we want to relate to each other? Those are things that are very, very difficult to change, I think. And so it's interesting, I have a lot more to say about relationships. Maybe Cass, we can talk about this one day. But you know, it's funny, we will spend more time evaluating a sales page and counting features than we will reading a book about relationships and really consciously deciding what kind of person am I looking for. So that is my answer to that question.

All right, give me some tips for introverts on how to cope with public speaking.

Speaking. Let's take introvert out of the equation. Because whenever somebody first starts off by introducing themselves as an introvert, what are you doing right there? You're creating a label for yourself. And in this, typically when people are doing this, they're using it as a reason for why the thing after the word introvert is hard or distasteful to them. As an introvert, how do I go to parties? I'm an introvert, so I find it hard to do public speaking. Let's just take that out of the equation. Okay? A better question is, how can I become a great public speaker? What skills do I need to learn and where can I do that? So that is lesson number one, is really think hard about the language you're using and the labels that you've attached to yourself. You might very well be an introvert. But is that relevant right now? Is that helping or hurting you as you introduce this exam? The second thing that I will say is I started off with a lot of self study. I went to watch at that time, the Today show or tonight, sorry, Tonight Show. It had a ton of celebrities. And if you watch celebrities, they are the absolute best in the world at public speaking. Watch them, notice their mannerisms, notice their tonality, notice, notice their body language when they're telling a story like this versus when they're telling a story like this. And so I started watching, and that was the first part. The Second part was I got lots and lots of practice. Public speaking is one of those things. You can't learn it just by reading a book or even watching YouTube videos. You got to get out there. So if you don't have opportunities to do it, like presentations in class or, you know, you're speaking on panels or something, where else can you do it? Who else knows? Where else could you find opportunities to practice your public speaking? Toastmasters. Awesome. You can create a book club or join some kind of organization where you have to go around and talk about something. Find a way. And then finally, when I got more intermediate, I started getting more formal training. I did a media training group in New York. I hired a speech coach for my Forefront Chicago speech was my best speech ever. And that was because I had reached the limits of my speaking ability. So I hired a coach. So that was my trajectory. But I think the key thing is there. Number one, you can start with some self teaching. Number two, you need practice, you need to take a lot of swings. And then if you get more intermediate or advanced, you can hire coaches and things like that.

When is refinancing student loans a good idea?

It can be a good idea. You can run the math. There's lots of articles on refinancing student loans. Just search for that. It can be a great idea, particularly if you have a long loan period and your interest rate is high. I will say that a lot of times I find people in large amounts of debt will do everything they can to find tactics to like, try to work their way around the debt. They do everything except paying off the debt. So these are the people who come to me and say, ramit, should I find a 0% credit card transfer? Should I do this refinancing? And you know, sometimes you can. The math can be compelling in certain cases, but they forget they do all the other things except for follow the advice in chapter one of my book, create a debt payoff date and then automate money towards that debt. That is really powerful. The rest of it is nice to.

Have three top foods you loaded up for this isolation.

Oh, wow, that's a good question. So Cas and I know what we eat. We eat the same thing every day and we use a food scale. Maybe we can actually do this on a fireside chat with you, like, how do we eat? So we, we know exactly what to eat and it's just about varying the amount. So I knew we were going to be out here for X weeks and so we got lots more yogurt, lots More chicken protein. Lots more rice. Yeah. And then, like, actual protein powder. Those are, like, the basics. And then there are a few other random things, like frozen blueberries and things like that. But I think the key was we were not trying to just randomly get ingredients like I used to. There's an old Instagram post, actually, years ago, there was some kind of storm that came into New York, and everyone was stocking up, and I lived alone, I was single, and I went to the grocery store and I bought baby corn. I bought low calorie something. I bought some protein powder. I bought the most random things. And everyone on Instagram was making fun of me, like, dude, what. What kind of meal is. What the hell are you doing? I'm like, thank God that we learned more about eating, because now it's a lot easier.

All right, next, what's your favorite taco?

Hard shell ground beef, habanero salsa. Oh, are they asking what place in New York?

Yeah. Include that.

Okay. Los Tacos, number one is awesome. Its sister place, Los Mariscos. Los Mariscos is also amazing. What's the dish we get there?

Aguachile.

Aguachile. I would have never ordered that had you not told me about that. That was amazing. The spicy one with green chilies and then dos toros is also very good.

When is the best time to start teaching kids money management?

Hmm. So that's a great question. We have our nieces and nephews. When do they start learning about money? Five, four or five. You know, it's simpler stuff for them, but as you get older, there's a lot more you can do in terms of, here's an amount of money. How should we spend it? Or we're going to go on a vacation. Here's the amount. Where would you go? Oh, you want to stay at a really nice hotel? Okay. That's going to mean that, you know, we can't. We can. We have to cut our vacation shorter. So what do you think we should do? Problem is, sometimes kids come up with the wrong answers. So what do you do? Then you're like, oh, okay. This is when you have to be like, oh, thank you for your advice. We'll take it under advisement. Then you're like, I don't know. We'll deal with that another day. All right, next question.

All right. How are you staying fit while staying inside?

Ooh, that's a tough question. So on the food side, we're pretty good. We know we're doing exactly what. With minor modifications, we're basically doing what we do that's like 80, 90% of it right there. So, you know, we have a scale, we have a food scale. We can kind of tell. All right, we're on track. Basically. The exercise part's a little more difficult. We're working out, but you know, normally we have access to full gyms, not so much right now. So we're making do with what we have. We're modifying it. We're asking my trainer, Chris Colson. I think he's Hechris Colson and he's awesome. He's created some custom workouts for us. So we do that. Let's do the last question now.

All right, let's see.

Oh, and while. Oh, no, go ahead. Sorry.

Okay.

Okay. While you're looking, I'm gonna give him a URL again. The reason that we're doing a lightning round tonight and keeping it short is, is that in 15 minutes I'm going to be talking about creating a second income stream. So a lot of people have asked, what do I do about I need a second income stream? Or they're like, I've been thinking about a business for years. Maybe now is the time I'm going to be talking about that. I'm going to share some numbers and I'm actually going to open up earnable. So everyone else has already registered. I'm just going to give you guys this straight URL. Open this URL in a separate table tab. It's iwt.com earn live. Iwt.com earn live.

All right, all right, last question. Would love to know how you build your resilience. Thanks, Ruby.

Oh, wow. Resilient. Such an underrated comment.

That could be a good one.

That's one of the things that we have talked about, you know, like we've, we've talked about, talked about what skills are important to develop in children and what are the things that we learned as kids. And resilience was right up there. Resilience to me means trying something in a controlled way and going further and further each step of the way. So in fitness is called progressive overload. And it's something that I didn't really know. I used to go work out. I used the same 30 pound dumbbells for like a year. And when I finally got a trainer, I learned about this concept of progressive overload. You don't want to just stay doing the same thing. You want to push it. So there's a program, you go from 30 to 35 to 40 and on and on and on. And there's all these, there's like kind of a science behind it. Same thing in life. Whether you're skiing, playing soccer, or starting a business, you want to get help from someone who has built a system that allows you to. To gradually go. In other words, you would never go out and do Black Diamonds your first time out. We kind of intuitively get that. But when it comes to business, how many people have written me saying, oh, I've tried to start a business myself, and it just hasn't worked. I've been doing it for three years. I'm stuck. I'm like, who'd you learn from? And they're like, oh, I kind of glanced at a couple of books, but, you know, I try to do on my own. I'm like, do you not see the connection? You're trying to do something that has systems built into it and you're doing it alone. So the best advice I can give you for building resilience is to follow a program. A program is going to meet you where you are, and then it's going to gradually push you until if you get to that level, you achieve escape velocity. And that is a really powerful moment. So tonight we did a lightning round. Q and A. Thank you guys for coming. I'm here tonight and every night doing these fireside chats for as long as this goes on. And I'm going to be live in 15 minutes at iwt.com earnlive I post these on YouTube.com ramitzethi tag a friend.