A conversational coaching piece (video transcript) where Ramit Sethi and Susan Su discuss negotiation and interview strategies, centering on avoiding self-sabotage ('Eeyore syndrome'), valuing yourself, and the importance of preparation and practiced, crisp responses. They give examples (scholarship applications, freelance offers), recommend rehearsing answers aloud (10–30+ times), and advise against verbal tics, tangents, and prematurely saying 'no' or 'I guess.'
Chapters
Company say no to you. Don't you say no to yourself, Eeyore. What the hell? I'm so angry right now. Okay? This is. This infuriates me. It's like. It's like when people. When. Remember I applied to a bunch of scholarships in college, for college, and people would say to me, like, oh, I'm not gonna apply to scholarship. And I'm like, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Like, there's so much money out there, and they want to give it away. And they would say things like, well, like, my dad is a doctor, so I'm not sure that I would qualify. Or, oh, I'm not gonna apply to Stanford, because even if I got in, I couldn't pay for it. And I would get so enraged. And my answer was always like, dude, let them say no. Don't you say no. And I know this for a fact, because I run a scholarship, and people do not apply to it. The first time I ran it, $3,000, I got zero applicants. People said no in their heads, and they eliminated themselves from the pool.
Yeah. And, you know, it goes to. It applies to freelancers. It applies to many, many work situations when somebody says, hey, Susan, I've got this great opportunity for you, but do you know how to do XYZ thing? Do you know how to use Final Cut Pro? Or, like, do you know how to. I need somebody to run this marketing campaign. I don't really know how to do it. Now, if I'm an Eeyore, I might be thinking, I've never done that before. I can't do it. I mean, I know I'm smart. I know I went to Stanford, but I just can't do it because I've never done it before. So I could call and say, you know what? I've never done it before. As the first thing that comes out of my mouth. I've never done it before, but I'm willing to try really hard. What the hell? You just go in, and if you really want the work, you really want that job or that contract or that scholarship, and you walk in and you tell that person, yes, I can do this. Yes, I will totally blow everybody else out of the water. I will exceed your expectations. I can do this. And then if you have some struggles, you go home and take care of that yourself. You go home and figure out how you can exceed their expectations. You go home and figure out how to run a marketing campaign or how to put ads on a website or whatever skill you need to figure Out. But you should never say no before they can say no.
Yeah, part of valuing yourself. It goes back to that principle we talked about earlier, which was practice. And we gave the example of a Marine who has muscle memory of how to put his rifle together. If you do not practice what you're doing, if you simply read a book and remember, most people don't even read a book. If you simply just read a book, you will not have the muscle memory of the right phrases to say. And as a result, you will go off on these wild tangents. So why don't we do another role play where I ask you like a simple question and you will go off on these wild tangents which just reduce. Like, I don't want to listen to you, honestly, like, tell me something about me. Let's talk about why, how this company is going to succeed. Alright, so here's a simple question that virtually everyone will get in an interview. So, Susan, why do you want to work here? Um.
Well, you know, I've really been interested in this industry for a really long time. And, you know, it's not that much like what I used to do, but I've been interested in it since college and, you know, I think I could do a pretty good job. I've read a bunch of stuff about it and I know that it's like, interesting. I was reading this article in the New York Times about the industry and it seems like it's really growing a lot. So I'd really like to get on board and get involved. And I took this really interesting class when I was at Stanford.
Painful, in fact, I want to kill myself. But I want to kill you first. So first of all, you should have a crisp answer to all the basic questions that should be in your toolbox. What I call a toolbox. So you can pull it out at any time and utilize it.
And write those down, write them down.
And say them out loud and videotape yourself or have a friend do it.
And how many times should somebody practice.
Those out loud the first time you do it? At least 10.
At least 10.
I love that you said that. But you were shocked. I thought you were gonna be like, that's a lot of work.
Hell no. Hell no.
At least 10, right?
Try like 30.
Yeah. So fanatical people, like, you're fanatical about this. I'm fanatical about certain things, like go overboard. And that's why it's like the example people say, you know, there are all these skinny people at the gym and, you know, because some People are fanatical, and they constantly work at what they're already good at. So the same is true of negotiation. You'll see, like, okay, people who go on tv, I know this because I've gone on TV quite a bit, man. If you see someone give, like, a snap, crackle, pop answer, believe me, they've practiced it. And Chris Rock himself practices his comedy. He goes to local comedy clubs, so does Jay Leno. They test it out and they see what works and what doesn't. And so you have to do that with your negotiations. So that's muscle memory. And that way you're not making these embarrassing slips.
Absolutely.
Oh, I don't know. I guess that would be fine. Never say I guess. You don't guess anything in a negotiation.
You tell them you never don't know. You never guess.
You never say. I mean. I mean, there are a lot of these tics, verbal tics.
Don't interrupt yourself.
Exactly. Tangents are a no, no. You always want to have crisp answers, just like everyone on TV does. You want to do that in an interview, and then that frees you up to do things like smile and be engaging and lean in and ask them questions and actually listen to what they're saying. You've got all these things in your toolbox, and you can be free to walk around and really be yourself.
Right. So I think about Eeyore, the donkey character from Winnie the Pooh, and poor guy, he just never gets it his way. He never gets them to, you know, serve the food that he wants. He never gets them to, like, go do the activities that he wants, because not only does he not speak up, but before anybody else can say no, he's already in there interrupting himself, cutting down his own ideas, going off in these sort of wandering pathways. And we're just talking about a cartoon character here, so that's fine. It's funny. But when it's your job, when it's your salary and everybody could use more salary, we all have finance goals, we have bills to pay, debt to pay, then it's really serious. And, yeah, it's definitely worth that. 30 times of practicing, 100 times of practicing, whatever you need.
