Story Time with Ramit

You know, for many days, I've been doing these fireside chats and thinking about what I would do tonight.

Wait, hold on. Gotta read for it.

And as I thought about what I would do tonight, I reflected on many of the questions that I've received over the last few days, few weeks, even few years. Questions about money, questions about careers, questions about business, questions about life. But tonight, I wanted to take a different approach in tonight's fireside chat. Tonight, I want to tell some stories. Stories about my life. No need to make a long story short. Let's make a long story long. If this takes us 20 minutes, so be it. If this takes us four and a half hours and I run out of storage space on my phone, so be it. But tonight, we will be telling those life stories. So also, I will be accepting questions tonight, as usual through the question box. But if I get any questions about IRAs versus 401ks, I'm going to delete you from my life. Please, no questions about Roth iras. I've said what I have to say about Roth iras. Go read any of my books. Ramit, what bank account should I use? The High Yield Savings has certainly dropped over the last four weeks. I'm concerned that my point 1% interest rate has actually turned into 0.05. What? Have I actually run the numbers and calculated what that's worth on a $5,000 balance? Oh, it's less than $10 per month. Oh, no, I haven't done that. No. Even though you've said that 158,000 times? No, I've never done that. No questions about High Yield Savings Accounts tonight, my friends. But if you have other questions, I'll happily take them. I want to start with a story about not fitting in, because I think a lot of us have had times in our life where we didn't fit in. Some of you don't fit in right now. If you're about to ask a question about IRAs, I'm not talking about you. But I think back to when I was a kid and I went to. We moved to California when I was in fourth grade. And after sixth grade, I went and joined a different junior high. Man, these kids were smart. These kids had gone to a different elementary school than I did. They were way, way more advanced than I was. They'd been doing trigonometry in the, like, sixth grade. I didn't even know what that was. And I was used to being the smartest kid in my class. Suddenly I was, like, at the bottom of the class. And what's amazing is that some of those friends are still some of my good friends. And for whatever reason, it was cool in that group to succeed. Like, it wasn't. You weren't lame. You weren't a loser. You were actually really cool if you got good grades. And also, I learned that I suck at math. I suck. My mom tells me that she used to be able to see me coming down when she would pick me up from seventh grade. And she could tell if I'd had a math test because my head would be hanging like this now. I think she's a bit hyperbolic. Maybe. Maybe she's telling the truth. But I probably got. No, not probably. I got the lowest grades in my math class. Later on, years later, I remember asking some of my college friends, do you think if you had enough time, you can be good at anything? And all of them were like, yeah, like, give me enough time, sure. And I thought to myself, okay, either I'm stupid or you haven't tried something where you just are not great, great at it. And this is kind of unusual for a guy in self development to say, because I do believe in growth mindset. But I also believe that you could give me unlimited time and unlimited money, and I would probably never be as good as some of my junior high friends at math or at directions, any of these kind of rotational things. So I didn't fit in when I first went there. But what was amazing about being around smart people was they actually bring you up. So rather than people who bring you down, I was elevated by them then. I think anyone who maybe grew up with ethnic parents probably knows just a general feeling of maybe not fitting in. Maybe you took your Korean or Indian food to lunch and everyone's like, what's that? For me, it was having hairy arms. Look at that. Anyone need anyone low on hair? Let me know. We can set up an exchange. You send me some honey, which I'm currently low on, I will trade you for 4.5 cubic pounds of arm hair. Let me know. Send me an email. And like, nobody in my family used the word protein or carbs. We didn't even know what those were. I didn't know what those were until I was in my late 20s. So you discover these little things that your family's different than others as you grow up, especially if you come from maybe a minority culture. Anybody here have that experience? Like, what is it? It's, you eat different foods. You. If you live in New York, you don't have a summer home. The amount of what do you do on a Sunday? You just go to a family's place. Place. And that's what you do. There is no alone time. It's family time. As I after, when I went to college, I remember that, like, there were very common majors. Econ, computer science. These are like, common, common majors. And I always said I wanted to be a computer science major, but no programming and no math. And everyone's like, that does not exist. And I remember this hilarious moment. I was a freshman and my dad has some friends who work at intel. And he's like, hey, do you want to try to get an internship at Intel? I was like, yeah. He's like, send me your resume. So I sent him my resume. He forwards it to his friends, and just by chance, I opened up the email attachment he had sent it and BCC'd me. My son is, you know, available. He's a Stanford freshman. Whatever. My dad changed my major from sts, Science, Technology and Society on my resume to computer science. I'm like, dad, I can't program. I don't know anything. I don't even know if. Then he changed my own major on my own resume and then sent it along. I was like, so for anyone wondering, do your Asian parents stop once you get into Stanford? The answer, well, there's your answer. Fortunately, after I showed him some of my math scores, he finally, that and my inability to do Legos or Lincoln Logs, I think he's accepted. Dad. Sorry. So anyway, going. Going to Stanford and then doing all these weird majors and realizing the more, the higher up you go in life, it's not like one day somebody magically just decides to be different. Actually, we've mostly been following the rules our entire life. And to get into certain institutions, like a Stanford or a Bain, BCG, McKinsey, the people who are there actually are really good at following rules. So I found myself, like, I was trying to do all these weird things. I did research, like, as a freshman, I was trying to do all these organizations and clubs and there are a lot of amazing people and incredible opportunities. But I also found that the world pushes you to be vanilla. The world pushes you to major in econ, at least there and go work at these five companies and then go to business school and then blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I think I have a pretty good resume. I don't really want to do that. Like, when do I get to stop chasing the resume? And again, just another tiny example of not fitting it. Nobody ever came out and explicitly said it, but sometimes you don't have to have that happen. Sometimes you just know. You say something in a meeting and everyone just kind of looks around and then the meeting continues without acknowledging you. Nobody has to say it, but the message is clear. Like, what you said is not welcome here. So, again, nothing against the organization or the friends or anything like that that I was meeting, but I just found that at different stages at different levels, I think we all feel we don't fit in. Even when I moved to New York years later, I didn't know that many people, and I was like, okay, I'm going to be here for two years. And then it took me two years just to meet some friends, feel comfortable, understand how the city worked. So, again, it was nobody's fault. It's just sometimes you take a different approach, or sometimes you're new and it takes time to learn. Especially for millennials watching this. Fuck. You want to join a company and become CEO in two years? And I get that because I used to be like that. And now all of my friends who are CEOs are like, oh, my God. Like, there's value in slowing down and becoming really good. And I've seen that with the people that I work with. The people who are methodical can move really, really fast. But the people come in and say, I want to be CEO in a year. It's typically difficult for them. So I'm curious what people's experiences have been not fitting in. If you want to type a comment, I'd love to hear it. I think for a lot of us, it is right now. You're here, you're watching or listening to this, and it's. I do self development. I. I want to improve. I do things on a Friday night, I'm taking a class, and the people around me don't get it. And they'll even say stuff like, why are you doing that? Who do you think you are? Right. These are the little phrases again. It's not that people are often explicitly holding us down, but these little phrases make it clear that our worldview might be different than others. Anybody have that experience? I remember even graduating college and wanting to learn how to dress better. And I asked one of my friends, I was like, can you help me dress better? And she took me to the Palo Alto Macy's or whatever it is. And she was like, okay, this looks great. Oh, my God, this would look amazing. Try this. She pulled this whole thing, and then the first thing she said to me was, go try these on and don't look at the price. And I Was like, wait, what? That shattered my worldview because whenever I went shopping when I was younger, we didn't pick something up without looking at the price. So I took all these things into the dressing room and I tried them on. I came out and she was really enthusiastic. She like, that looks amazing. That's not so great. And I started to be like, wow, I feel really good. Because she feels good, right? She's making me feel good. And what she taught me was it's worth spending a little more on something you love and you can put all the like stuff back. Totally different view than I had ever had with clothes. Let's take some questions or what are people saying about their experiences? Feeling just a little different. Two degrees different.

So one woman says, as a woman, definitely hard to have opinions in the workplace and not be labeled as pre pushy and cold.

Yep. The next one, any women who heard that, anybody resonate with that, let me know another.

Self development is definitely a funny thing. In my family, even though they're in academia, it's only learning certain sorts of things.

Yeah.

I used to be self employed for the first 10 years of my career, so I didn't fit in with friends who took their career path.

Right now I want to point some things out because I have taken a different path with a lot of things. And if anything, if I'm proud of anything, it's not that I have a good job. I feel like that was a given. I was raised by two great parents. We have a culture of education, of valuing excellence. So whether I started a company or got a job, I was very confident that I was gonna succeed there. And I think for anyone, you have something that you grew up feeling like pretty confident or comfortable about, whatever it may be, that was mine. And I honestly think that a lot, not all, but a lot of Indian Americans feel very confident because it's drilled into us. We have a culture that and a set of behaviors about studying, education, excellence. But it's the things that I shouldn't have accomplished that I think are way more meaningful. Fitness, which is not as prevalent in our culture. Starting a company in self development is like almost unheard of. These are the things that really the stories behind them I think are way more interesting than how do you improve your conversion rate 2%. So for example, for the woman who said it's hard to have opinions. Yeah. So powerful. How many women do I know that post on Reddit, on Ask Women or a variety of other subreddits talk at work in different workplaces and Basically commiserate that they are. They feel a certain level of judgment around opinions. And from the outside, it's really easy to say just speak up. But there are a series of explicit and implicit things going on that you would not know unless that was you. So I really, I really resonate. And the more I've gotten into self development, the more I've heard from people who are actually kind of open about it, who talk about it. But with that said, I still do challenge people. Like, I have somebody Dming me on Instagram right now and she's like, ramit, how would you advise your. I have a roommate who won't stay inside. I'm quarantining myself. But she won't. And they live in Canada. And her roommate says that if she stays inside, she's going to become depressed. What would you say to her? So it's so easy for us on the outside to give advice. Of course, to her it's much more challenging. On a recent Fireside chat, there was a woman who said, I have a neighbor who keeps sending her kids to play. How do I stop her from sending her kid over? And I told her, this is potentially risky. At this point, you need to simply say, not ask, say. I appreciate it. I look forward to seeing your kid and letting our kids play in the future. But for now, we're closing our house out of safety and precaution. What was amazing was after that show, just like an hour later, she sent me a picture of her son who was drawing a sign that said, our house is closed for the time being and we look forward to welcoming you back later. Now, I don't know if she delegated the work to her son or she said it herself, but the point is there are some times where we need a little nudge, a little permission to simply say no, or to simply set some boundaries. That was a really hard thing for me to learn because growing up, it was. I think it's very easy to be a people pleaser. How many people here have the experience of being a people pleaser? Even when you know you might not, you probably shouldn't do it. The words just seem to come out of your mouth. I would say that if you want to succeed in self development business, being able to create those boundaries is a skill that nobody kind of talks about, but I found it to be incredibly valuable. Cass, any questions that we have coming in or any stories?

Who made your blanket?

I don't know.

How do you overcome imposter syndrome?

Maybe you are an imposter. Maybe you're actually not really good at the thing that you're worried about. Have you ever thought about that? There's something that almost nobody will say. But if you feel you have imposter syndrome, first it's really important to take a hard look in the mirror and say, am I actually good at this? Because maybe you're not. And maybe you need to develop the skill ills first and then the imposter syndrome will slowly start to go away. That's one approach, and I think it's something that's not as talked about as frequently as it should be. You know, you have folks coming in and saying, I want to teach people how to invest. I'm like, what does your portfolio look like? They're like, oh, I have like 300 bucks. And I'm like, mmm, you should feel imposter syndrome. Learn, build the skills. By the way, I'm talking about this as someone who started writing I will teach you to be rich at the age of 20. But I had money then. I'd been investing for years and I had learned a lot. And I also did not come out and say, you must do this. There was some of that, I will admit it, and some of the stuff, like I started off my first post ever, August 2004, was banking, budgeting, saving and investing. I hate at least one of those words. But there was also a lot of exploration. So if you're starting off and you feel like an imposter, maybe that's a sign that you have skills to learn. Now the second group is a group that's actually pretty good at what they do and they feel like imposters. That is a different strategy for that. We're talking about self confidence. We're talking about realizing that you're being a perfectionist. And as I say, perfectionism is for losers. You don't have to be the world's best, you just have to be a little better than the people you're trying to help. Just think about it. The personal trainer at your local gym, are they qualified to train Olympic lifters? No, that's world class level training. But they're probably good enough to train grandma down at the local gym. Okay, same thing for your local math tutor. Can they tutor fields medal winners, right? No, but they don't need to. They're not trying to be world class. They're simply a little better than the people they're trying to tutor. So sometimes I think we can shrink the field of play and that eliminates perfectionism. But I just want to say, like the question was about imposter syndrome. And the common answer is, you know, build your confidence, rah, rah, rah, pat yourself on the back. I think that's completely ineffective advice. I think for a lot of people, if you feel like an imposter, maybe you are. And so maybe you need to build your skills a little bit more. Right? And that is hard to hear. But as I got better, those feelings started to go away because I saw how many people I could help. And so finally, my final point with imposter syndrome is it's a very selfish feeling. You're sitting here spinning your head, oh, I'm an imposter. I'm not. But all the time you're forgetting to actually help people. And if you take yourself out of the equation and you help people, you focus on them, you fall in love with your client or your customer, suddenly you become less important, and your client or customer becomes less. A thousand times more important. That is how you get out of it. Okay, I got a. I got a story that I want to tell as part of Ramit's story time, and then we'll take more questions. So growing up, we didn't take a lot of vacations. And our vacations were mostly driving to Southern California to visit family. I went to India a few times. We would never, all of us go together. The tickets were too expensive. And also we flew economy to India, which now that I think about my mom or dad taking, like, however many kids would go at once, it is crazy for a 22 hour flight. Anyway, as we got older, my. My mom dreamed of taking an Alaskan cruise. What is it with moms and Alaskan cruises? Like, every mom read the same magazine article and they all want to go on Alaskan cruises. I don't understand it at all. And it's not just Indian moms. It's like every mom. So my mom's like, let's go on an Alaskan cruise. We're like, okay. So we went on this Alaskan cruise. It was awesome. And we got off in, I guess it was Anchorage. And, you know, whenever we went to any kind of place, my dad was hyper, frugal, like, hyper. He would never, like. I've never ordered room service until I interviewed at a company in college. We would never get any package offerings ever. My dad was like, stacking AAA and whatever, state discount anything. So, you know, these cruise ships, they have these experiences that they offer, like a local tour or go fishing, whatever. My dad's like, no, no, no, I got this. So we get off the ship. And we. He's like, wait here. We're like, waiting in, like, just a park or something. And he goes over to the visitor information center. He comes out like 25 minutes later. This is like a three hour stop. So 25 minutes later, he comes out. He's got a big smile. He's like, okay, come on over. We're like, okay. So we walk. We walk like three blocks away. Now we're away from all the tourists, all the jewelry shops. And he goes, come over here. I found the tour. We're like, all right. So we get on this bus and we're like, sitting, and the bus is taking us around. We're like, looking around. It's like, pretty cool. Totally different than we're used to in California. But then we start to notice some weird stuff. We're like, wait a second, why is this guy getting on with his groceries? And then, then the bus pulls over and the bus driver gets out and goes into a Target. We're like, what kind of. What kind of tour is this? And then finally another person gets on and looks at us. We're like an entire family. My dad is, like, dying. He's over here, like, just. My dad took us on a city bus that cost 25 cents per person. That was our tour in Alaska. Thank you, dad. That's where I learned that. Number one, just lie to your kids. You should just lie. Everyone who's like, oh, I'm only gonna tell the truth. Don't do it. Just lie to them. We had the greatest time of our life once we realized what was going on. I've never seen my dad laugh so, so hard. Oh, my God. It was killer. That and how my dad told us he was allergic to dogs for 20 years. He's not allergic to dogs. He just doesn't like him. I was like, greatest performance I've ever seen in my life. Beautifully done. All right, do we have any questions from this audience?

Yes. What is one new skill you're currently working on learning related to your business or not?

I'm learning a new level of delegation for my business. So we've done some multi year planning. And to grow to the levels we need to grow, I have to delegate beyond what I've done. We have an awesome team. The structure is in place. The entrepreneurial operating system is in place. So now there are things that I used to do that I'm not allowed to do and things that I'm working on getting them off my plate. It's kind of exciting. It's very Challenging, but it's exciting. That and then photography, once things cool down again, I want to pick that back up and get good at it, or just take classes and work on it. Get technically good enough that I can start becoming more creative at it.

How do you stay focused during a time of uncertainty?

I think that most of success is determined by what you did yesterday, the week before, the month before, the years before. So waking up, having a structure of this is what I'm doing and this is who I'm talking to, that makes it easy. If you're looking at a blank page, it's really hard. So even if you can put in three or four things per week that you're going to do, even if you don't know where they're going to lead, like I'm going to put one hour to read strategy books, or I'm going to put one hour to write. Even if you don't know what to write, that's a start. Put that structure in place, and that's how I stay focused, is to have a structure. And for our final question, what are.

The basic skills an entrepreneur must have?

The number one thing is they need to. They need to be active, not passive. It's very common in life to be passive. What's my boss gonna say? What's my partner gonna say? Who do I need to talk to to get this done? Or the most common phrase, somebody should do that. As an entrepreneur, you're that somebody. You have to make the rock move. You can't wait for somebody else to move it. I think that really incorporates 90% of being an entrepreneur. You push the rock and you own moving it one way or another, you cause it to move or that's it, your business doesn't work. I think there are other things, like a different understanding of risk and, you know, maybe having a passion. Although I don't think you necessarily have to have a passion to be an entrepreneur. I think you become passionate once you start winning. But all the entrepreneurs I know just had a little element of not fitting in. They just didn't quite fit in. Just at the edges. Like what I was saying about learning about what protein was, or my major, just little things where you just like, no, I don't see why it's like that. Or I just, I don't want to do that. And I think that if you have that and you feel that that might not be enough to be an entrepreneur, but it's a sign if you're the one who your friends maybe don't get, or you're talking about things and the people around you are not talking. You might just be an entrepreneur and you don't even know it. So tonight was story time. The good news is that as soon as this is done, I have nowhere to go. I'm just simply going like this. Now, the question that we need to ask ourselves is, should I livestream my sleep for the next eight hours?

Rock in that chair.

I'll leave that question open for now. I want you to tag a friend and tell them I don't know what the hell I just watched. I don't know what this guy's talking about. Actually, don't even tell him to watch this because what are you gonna say? How are you gonna convince them to watch this? I. I have no idea. Tag a friend if you want to. If not, what can I say? I wouldn't blame you. I'm here tonight and every night doing these Fireside chats. And as you can tell, I'm gonna have some fun with this, right? There's only so much we can sit here and talk about money or business every single night. And I'll do that. I got a lot of questions from you guys about what should I do with money and what do you think about this? And I love to come here and talk about that, but I think one of the things that I loved about creating my business for the last 15 years is I get to talk about what I want to. I love that. I feel like I have so many things I want to talk about. Fitness, business, what's on tv, how you guys think that cholula is spicy. It's not fucking spicy. Don't ever bring that to me. I could talk about this forever and I will. I'm going to talk about this all day, every day. That's the beauty of creating a business like you want. So. So I don't even know what tomorrow's topic is. I will tell you that those of you who have asked about creating an income, starting a side business, I am going to be launching Earnable starting this week. So keep your eyes open. Getting tons of DMs, emails, tweets from people. Basically, people have a lot of time and a newfound interest in self development, in taking control, whether it's about their money or their job or their business. So I love that if you have ideas for a Fireside Chat you want to send me, send them, send them over. I'm listening. I'm actively planning my next Fireside Chats and I would love, love to help you out whatever way I can. Thank you for watching. I will see you tomorrow.